Hey Rair players! This week is going to bring some updates everyone will be happy about: lots of performance-related changes have been made, so the game should be way faster to load and play. There’s also been a couple of other new additions and fixes that should make gameplay much smoother. All of the holiday events have been implemented, too, with a bonus!

Item Animations

Some items have been animated! A lot of these sprites don’t exist in the game yet, but they have animations now for when they do. You might recognize the Chakram from Risan, and of course the rune scrolls. One item in here is an upcoming item, although you won’t see it until Halloween!

Decor Animations

The decor in the world has been animated, which should make it feel much more alive! A brief list of some items that have been animated:

• portals
• fires
• fountains

As a bonus, check out this animation that I’ll have to fix eventually:

XP Changes

XP gain has been slightly changed. We’ve bounced around on this a bit, but I think this is where we’ll settle.

The first iteration of the system would allow you full XP until you reached the map cap, then 1 exp.

The second iteration would allow you to gain unlimited XP to 50.

This iteration, the third, will allow you to gain XP past the map cap in a limited fashion. To start, you will gain 100% XP when under the map cap. If you’re 1-2 levels over the map cap, this will be reduced to 90% XP. If you’re 3-5 levels over the map cap, it will go down to 75%. After that (6+) it will be reduced to 25% XP. So, you’ll always be able to gain XP on the map, but it will encourage you to move on after a while.

Forsaken Forest

The Forsaken Forest is the new Halloween map. The entirety of the old Halloween event is in place (zombies attacking people and turning them into zombies), but there’s now a new map filled with undead to kill. You will help a monster town stay alive and defeat their main threat: a necromancer.

With this, a couple new items have been added with fairly unique effects. I can’t wait to see them in action!

Turkey Forest

The Turkey Forest is the Thanksgiving event for the game, filled with, well, turkeys. As well, there are a bunch of pilgrims hanging out, a wild turkey to find, and a shooting minigame to take part in!

Winter Wonderland

The Winter Wonderland is the Christmas event for the game. There are elves to help and snowmen to fight. Jack Frost has taken over the wonderland and taken Santa Claus prisoner, but with your help, you can save Christmas! Find presents for Santa, help elves with presents, support Frosty in his quest to be magical again, and of course, find the reindeer!

Other Fixes & Features

• lots of performance improvements
• encrustable items now have better validation and should theoretically always work
• npcs being dead will stop their raid events from happening
• instances reset for parties correctly again
• targetting fixes for creatures dying and aoe attacks
• every decor item has had flavor text added (I think)
• enemies can aoe other people again
• some items, when broken, will emit a powerful attack
• aoe works while blind again
• welcome text when logging in was changed
• the game now logs when a lair dies in the open world
• a new “double trouble” event was added
• find familiar for npcs now sets their monster group correctly, so they no longer gang up on the summon
• aoe spells no longer cost mp per target
• augury now works across maps
• items are now animated
• when a rare spawn is killed, a notification is sent to the world
• fur upgrader rebalancing
• chain stun can no longer happen from cstun
• xp bar now shows the % you are to next level
• market resets correctly when leaving
• market no longer allows you to “buy” items without the gold required
• aynamai and other mood-affected characters no longer instant heal when ooc
• AoE spells have been moved up to level 10 for mage
• there is a new “tabs” option for lockers
• scroll wheel can now scroll through your lockers for ultimate ease
• spritesheets have been moved and changed up, so the instructions to get them for Tiled have changed
• teleportto GM command was added
• searchitems GM command was added

As always you can find the full changelog here.

What’s Coming Up?

The game is mostly feature complete. We’re missing tradeskills and AXP. I think AXP will happen next week, and maybe one or two tradeskills if they end up not being too bad. Tradeskills will be getting an overhaul from last time, and I think they’ll end up much nicer than before. The modkit is going to need some work, too, soon.

As always you can find the full roadmap here.

Until next time,

• Seiyria