AGS released the patch notes for the February patch! Let’s take a closer look at all New World Update 1.4 Changes!
Updated to include PTR Patch 2 Notes
New World’s Update 1.4 recently hit the PTR, bringing with it a slew of bugs being squashed as the main goal. There are plenty of other balance changes affecting both endgame PvE and PvP content as well. Let’s go over the Highlights of this PTR, covering Each patch as it releases to PTR.
PTR Patch 1 Highlights
There’s a lot to unpack here, but we think there are a few standout things in the list of changes. We’ll cover them below and also provide our thoughts on the changes.
Combat Changes
Weapon Swapping
- You can now swap weapons during hit-reactions, dodges, traversal and while using consumables (except weapon coatings). This will not interrupt those actions. There’s a 1 second swap cooldown in these cases.
- Weapon swap buffers will no longer be canceled if you are staggered before the swap can occur.
- Weapon swaps and attacks can now be queued simultaneously (e.g. if you press swap during an attack’s recovery, then immediately press an ability key, the weapon will swap at the first swap cancel frame, then immediately perform the desired ability). Note that actions still have buffer and cancel windows. This change just makes them easier to use and more reliable.
Dodging & Blocking
- We have shortened the recovery time for all of our dodges. Transitioning to movement after a dodge should feel more fluid for all players now.
- Basic attack startups (melee & ranged) can now be dodge and block canceled up to 2 frames before the first active frame. For melee attacks the first active frame is the first frame the weapon can deal damage and for ranged attacks this is the first frame that the projectile is spawned.
- When performing light attacks with a melee weapon, block and dodge inputs will now take priority over the next light attack in the chain. This change is aimed at preventing accidental attack queues that leave the player vulnerable when they intended to defend.
AI Improvements
- We’re introducing a new Player-vs-AI physics collider solution that will significantly reduce the amount of pushback from bipedal and simple-shaped creatures colliding with player characters. Quadruped and long-creatures will receive a similar update in the future.
- Improved AI targeting to fix instances where AI sometimes attacks locations the player used to be (instead where they actually moved to)
- Reduced pushback on block from most creature attacks.
Our Thoughts
These changes should significantly make combat feel smoother and a bit less clunky overall. Having attack cancels back will be a good thing for making combat a lot more interesting. Though dodging and blocking taking priority over light attacks sounds like it could cause more problems. The AI changes for blocking will make tanking in PvE so much easier to deal with.
Fire Staff
Fireball
- Increased Fireball projectile radius from 0.01 to 0.33 to make it easier to hit with.
- Fireball can now critical hit.
Reheat
- Fixed an issue where Reheat could persist through weapon swaps and ability usage.
- Updated Flamethrower and Meteor Shower to trigger Reheat’s 4s timer when the ability exits.
- Fixed an issue that caused the flyout icon for Reheat to incorrectly show as “Empower”.
Pillar of Fire
- Reduced the delay between Pillar of Fire’s activation and the spawning of its damage AoE. The fire pillar now spawns when the player finishes extending their staff forward.
- Reduced Pillar of Fire recovery by 14 frames.
Flamethrower
- Increased Flamethrower’s base movement speed so that haste buffs have a more notable effect. The new move speed is approximately 2x faster than the previous speed.
Our Thoughts
This puts the Fire Staff is a super good place right now. In addition to the ability to queue an ability alongside a swap, giving Fireball the ability to crit and making Pillar of Fire a faster spell, this will certainly be a weapon to keep your eye on. Reheat is taking a hit here, but only a small one. It sounds like it’s intentional to gain reheat during Flamethrower and Meteor Shower, but for balance they will now trigger the reheat cooldown as they end. The flame thrower buff is fairly minor, but could see the ability being a little more useful overall combined with fixes to the Accelerating perk.
Check out the in-depth Fire Staff Guide and recommendations for best builds for that weapon.
Ice Gauntlet
Ice Gauntlet
- Ice Spikes
- Spiky Reach: Adjusted the projectiles fired from this upgrade to reduce the chance that a single target is hit with all 4 parts of the attack.
- Ice Storm
- Fixed an issue where if two different players had different amounts of modifiers and perks for the Ice Storm ability they could stack the damage from it instead of it just being a single instance of damage.
- Punishing Storm: Added clarification on the tooltip to state that it will only increase Ice Storm’s damage.
- Ice Shower:
- Fixed a desync issue that could occur when players dodged through Ice Shower.
- Fixed an issue that could cause Ice Shower’s root to fail when players dodged through it.
- Fixed an issue where Ice Shower would not start its cooldown immediately when the first ice patch appeared.
Our Thoughts
This is a hit to Ice Gauntlet’s current power overall while fixing a few critical bugs. The Ice Spike changes will likely see this ability possibly being used less in PvP, or at least reducing the damage of the Ice/Void Gauntlet combo. The Ice Shower fixes are super nice, as Ice Shower is what the Ice Gauntlet heavily relies on to maintain a safe distance in most PvP situations.
You can read the detailed Ice Gauntlet guide and best builds recommendations here on VULKK.com.
Musket
Sticky Bomb:
- Fixed an issue where Sticky Bomb’s crit damage was not increased when the crit damage numbers would appear. Crits will now deal ~273% weapon damage.
- Reduced Sticky Bomb base damage from 235% weapon damage to 210% weapon damage.
- Fixed an issue where Sticky Bomb had broken and inconsistent transitions upon exiting the throw depending on the actions performed after the throw. This could cause the player to be locked out of other abilities until they moved or switched weapons.
Shooter’s Stance:
- Fixed an issue where firing too quickly after entering Shooter’s Stance would not consume a shot, allowing players to bypass the 5 shot limit.
- Fixed an issue where exiting Shooter’s Stance would reset stacks of the Heightened Precision passive.
- Fixed an issue which could allow players to bypass the animation for Shooter’s Stance and fire from a standing position.
Stopping Power:
- This ability has been reworked and no longer empowers your next shot, but instead fires a special bullet after a short warmup time that knocks back your target if it hits.
- Stopping Power can be fired from aim down sights or hip fired.
- Stopping Power’s hit-reaction animation changed to better match the timing that the target is staggered.
- Ability description updated to reflect new functionality.
- Cooldown increased from 15 seconds to 20 seconds.
Powder Burn and Power Shot:
- Loaded shots can now be overwritten. Activating one of these abilities to load a shot while the other is already loaded will replace the previously loaded shot with the new shot.
- Fixed an issue where loaded shots from these abilities were not counting towards the Heightened Precision passive stacking.
Hustle: Fixed an issue where this passive had a shorter duration than intended while the Back it Up passive was also active. Players can now use consumables while reloading. Using consumables in this way will interrupt reloading.
Our Thoughts
This is the first time since release any ability has been reworked by AGS, and no surprise it’s on the Musket of all things. I’m not entirely sure how much impact this will have based on what’s given, and it will need to be re-evaluated after the patch goes live. Sticky Bomb seeing fixes is nice, as it’s easily one of the Musket’s more clunky skills, and this may make it easier to use. Though, I get the feeling that Stopping Power will end up being clunky.
As always, we have an always up-to-date Musket Guide with best builds for it. Take a look when you are ready to master this weapon.
Sword and Shield
Sword and Shield
- Shield Rush: The hitbox of this ability has been moved closer to the player to prevent situations where the the ability could hit targets that appeared to be out of range. The distance traveled by the rush has been increased to compensate for this loss of range.
- Reverse Stab:
- Tactician: This upgrade will no longer reduce the cooldown of Reverse Stab. It will still reduce the cooldown of other sword abilities when triggered.
- Leaping Strike:
- The leaping and attacking portions of this ability now have separate properties for their homing and movement in order to improve the overall accuracy based on distance.
- Adjusted homing for better translation against distant targets.
- Adjusted homing for more accurate and consistent tracking against closer targets.
Our Thoughts
The Reverse Stab change will likely only end up hurting PvE Tanks a fair bit. They often rely on the skill to reduce their taunt cooldowns, and now it’s going to be a longer cooldown. I feel they may have been better offer adjusting how much it affects the ability, rather than removing it as the first option. The Shield Rush change shouldn’t set it back too much, and may actually make the skill feel better to use, especially with a range increase. Leaping Strike isn’t a popular ability for the weapon, but this could help make it a bit more consistent.
We have a great in-depth Sword and Shield guide including the best builds for you to play with this weapon.
Outpost Rush Changes
- Bugs
- Fixed an issue causing the Corrupted Legionnaire to have no stamina.
- Fixed an issue causing the Corrupted Priest’s hounds to quickly appear skinnable upon death.
- Fixed an issue causing the Outpost Rush fort barriers to show the name of objects the player had previously interacted with.
- Fixed an incorrect description present on the Brute summoning stone.
- Fixed an issue causing Turrets to appear as if they were on fire after being rebuilt from the destroyed state.
- Fixed an issue preventing the Command Post in Outpost Rush from properly showing up as a ghost
- Fixed an issue with the Outpost Rush map appearing misaligned.
- Tuning
- Reworked Outpost Rush scoring:
- Dealing damage now increases the player’s score.
- Reduced the amount of points granted from killing players.
- Reduced the amount of points granted from killing AI.
- Visually changed the nameplates of several Outpost Rush AI to better clarify their difficulty. The changes in nameplate do not mean there were tuning changes to those AI unless called out below.
- Increased the health of the Corrupted Priest by 10%
- Reduced the damage dealt by the Corrupted Brute by 10%
- Reduced the health of the Corrupted Brute by 13%
- Summoned Ghosts and Summoned Bears now take 150% bonus damage from Siege Damage.
- Summoned Corrupted Brutes now take 200% bonus damage from Siege Damage.
- Increased the base damage of the Repeater by 20%
- Increased the base damage of the Fire Dropper by 16%
- Increased the benefit of having more friendly players on a control point. Each friendly player on an uncontested point now reduces the time it takes to capture the point by 3s (was previously 1.5s) On an uncontested point, this benefit maxes out at 10 players for a minimum capture time of 30s.
- Reduced the length of Baroness Hain’s score lock from 3 minutes to 2.5 minutes.
- Replaced the Explosive Barrel Launchers on either side of Outpost Sol with Ballista Turrets. These cost 50 Infused Ore and 50 Infused Wood to build and will be great tools in taking down the defenses of Outpost Sol.
- Adjusted the emplacements so they’re more flush with the ground.
- Adjusted Rewards granted from Outpost Rush
- Outpost Rush now rewards Umbral Shards on completion of a match. 100 shards for the winning team, and 50 shards to the losing team. Players must meet the minimum score threshold to be eligible for this reward. – This will be in the next PTR update
- Outpost Rush now rewards Faction Tokens on completion of a match. Players must meet the minimum score threshold to be eligible for this reward.
- Outpost Rush Caches now reward 2 pieces of Outpost Rush specific armor and an Outpost Rush specific weapon. There is an additional 15% for a 4th item, a piece of Outpost Rush Jewelry.
- There’s a 2.5% chance that the rolled Outpost Rush item is a named item, the same chance as exists today.
- Significantly increased the likelihood that the rewards in the Outpost Rush Cache will increase the player’s Expertise.
- Outpost Rush gear now rolls off a fixed list of perks that are more ideal for PvP combat. This means that traits like Beast Ward won’t be found on Outpost Rush gear.
- Removed Beast Ward from Illusory Enigma and replaced it with Keen. Please note that this change isn’t retroactive and it will only apply to new Illusory Engima’s granted after the patch.
- Players can now access the Scoreboard while waiting for a respawn.
- Reworked Outpost Rush scoring:
Our Thoughts
These changes lead to a more rewarding and beneficial experience as an endgame activity. The Reward Adjustments make it a viable option to push both Gear Score and Expertise up, particularly in the 590 range of Gear Scores as it now rewards Umbral Shards. With it also rewarding Faction Tokens, it can be a good means of getting additional Expedition Orbs that don’t involve Corrupted World Events or farming Faction Tokens. The Outpost Gear changes also make it a decent way to try and farm up decent PvP gear once Faction Gear runs its course for that purpose. The Scoring changes are super nice, making it easier for actively playing players to gain enough score for rewards and making it harder for bots/afk players to gain from participating.
PTR Patch 1 Full Notes
These notes are taken directly from the forums, as they were listed in this forum post.
World Experience
Notable Fixes
- Expeditions
- Fixed an issue where Taxodius mini boss can be exploited to be killed and looted twice in a single instance.
- Addressed missing collision allows player to get into out of the playable space in the Depths.
- Fixed an issue in Starstone Barrows with the Ancient Guardian’s animation intro.
- Fixed an issue where player has the option to join ongoing expedition from another Expedition entrance.
- World
- Fixed issue where players could build camps off of each other to reach high locations using environmental features.
- Fixed an issue where Ancient AI are too numerous and difficult for solo players at Syleio Seko in Reekwater.
- Removed extra tendrils in Sha Makogai and Sunken Aspect POIs, as well as toning down enemy count in Sunken Aspect for solo play.
- Fixed an issue where players can climb over a wall to enter Siren Queen Arena.
- Adjusted loot chest for at Adamant Mine in Monarch’s Bluffs to increase challenge.
- Fixed issue where players pop up and down when interacting with the Giant Elite POI Orichalcum Veins.
- Added more lights in in Lower Slag Mine.
- Fixed issue with a pile of floating stones found in Elafry Pyrgo POI.
- Fixed issue with half of a large rock is missing in Mrykgard.
- Various fixes to floating assets and bad collision across the world.
- Fixed an issue where the players face may look visually incorrect while on low graphics settings.
General AI
- Introduced a new Player-vs-AI physics collider solution that will significantly reduce the amount of pushback from colliding with characters.
- This update applies to bipedal and simple shaped creatures (Withered, Ancient Guardians, Corrupted, Lost Pirates, Brutes, Tendrils, etc)
- Future updates will look to improve collision vs quadruped and long creatures (cats, elk, wolves, alligators, etc)
- Improved AI target evaluation algorithm to fix some instances of AI attacking locations the player has long since moved away from
- Reduced pushback on block from most creature’s attacks to 0.
- Corrupted Ogre
- Fixed an issue causing the Ball spell’s damage area to not properly match its visuals.
- Dryad Soldier
- Fixed an issue that could cause the Soldier to repeatedly spam his Empower ability if shot from more than 30 meters away or when the player was unreachable.
- Elemental Bears
- Reduced the rate at which Elemental Bears regenerate stamina.
- Swamp Dryad Soldier
- Fixed an issue causing the Swamp Dryad Soldier’s downward slam to sometimes spawn a damaging area of effect. The damaging area of affect has been removed
- Swamp Dryad Beast
- Fixed an issue with the Pull ability that would cause players to be pulled higher in the air based on their distance from the Beast
- Undead Navigator
- The Undead Navigator’s self-buff will now properly show up as a status effect on the character’s nameplate.
- Siren Arena Boss
- Fixed an issue preventing the Siren from attacking players at the edge of the arena
- Big Cats
- Updated knockdown animations to be more distinct from standard reactions
Expedition AI
- Garden of Genesis
- Blighted Greenskeeper
- Increased the size of the Blighted Greenskeeper’s headshot hit volume.
- Genesis Shaman
- Fixed Mist Attack VFX to be in sync with damage.
- Angry Earth Naga
- Improved visibility on attack VFX.
- Blighted Greenskeeper
- Lazarus Instrumentality
- Chardis
- Increased length of Chardis’s stun phase by 5s.
- Increased the time before the final laser during phase 3 from 75s after phase start to 90s after phase start.
- Reduced the downtime between lasers during Phases 1 and 2 from 60s to 30s.
- Increased damage of the base laser during Phases 1 and 2
- Increased Chardis’s damage by 25% across the board.
- Increased Chardis’s laser damage by an additional 15%
- Reworked Chardis’s final laser to now deal 15% of health as damage per second.
- Fixed issues with the swipe animations causing safe spots on the back walls.
- Fixed an issue causing Chardis to not take bonus damage from Ancient related perks and coatings.
- Fixed an issue causing Chardis to not have proper Strengths and Weaknesses against certain damage types.
- Fixed an issue that could cause Chardis’s laser to persist after his death.
- Increased the size of Chardis’s headshot hit volume.
- Chardis
Mutators
- Reduced Desiccated timer: 60s → 45s
- Normalized curse damage to ensure that curses are always a threat to players of any size health pool
- Censored damage normalized to 65% base health
- Desiccated damage normalized to 50% base health
Combat
General
- Weapon Swapping
- You can now swap weapons during hit-reactions, dodges, traversal and while using consumables (except weapon coatings). This will not interrupt those actions. There’s a 1 second swap cooldown in these cases.
- Weapon swap buffers will no longer be canceled if you are staggered before the swap can occur.
- Weapon swaps and attacks can now be queued simultaneously (e.g. if you press swap during an attack’s recovery, then immediately press an ability key, the weapon will swap at the first swap cancel frame, then immediately perform the desired ability). Note that actions still have buffer and cancel windows. This change just makes them easier to use and more reliable.
- Dodging & Blocking
- We have shortened the recovery time for all of our dodges. Transitioning to movement after a dodge should feel more fluid for all players now.
- Basic attack startups (melee & ranged) can now be dodge and block canceled up to 2 frames before the first active frame. For melee attacks the first active frame is the first frame the weapon can deal damage and for ranged attacks this is the first frame that the projectile is spawned.
- When performing light attacks with a melee weapon, block and dodge inputs will now take priority over the next light attack in the chain. This change is aimed at preventing accidental attack queues that leave the player vulnerable when they intended to defend.
- Jumping
- Jumping off lower height objects will no longer trigger a fully committed land animation, this will allow you to keep your momentum as you move through Aeternum.
- Attributes
- 300 Focus Attribute Bonus: The mana regeneration from this attribute bonus will now trigger when the caster drops to 15 mana or less.
- Equip Load
- Equip Load descriptions have been updated to include the amount of stamina consumed when dodging.
- Fixed an issue where the strafe movement speed would vary based on equip load.
- Bugfixes
- Fixed attack cancels not working in shallow water (e.g. canceling one ability into another).
- Fixed an issue that could cause some attack animations to play incorrectly when used while running.
- Fixed an issue where players could get stuck while resting at a camp if they were encumbered.
- Fixed an issue where player was able to clip through outcropping collision by using certain abilities while prone.
- Fixed an issue what could allow players to avoid some damage from AoE attacks while in the prone position.
- Bow
- Rain of Arrows:
- Fixed an issue where Rain of Arrows could trigger backstabs.
- Fixed an issue where the Rain of Arrows bleed duration was not able to be extended by perks and passives that extend Bow/Bleed effect durations.
- Evade Shot:
- Energizing Evade Shot (Item Perk): Fixed an issue where this perk was not triggering if any upgrades were unlocked for Evade Shot
- Fixed an issue that allowed Rain of Arrows, Penetrating Shot and Poison Shot to be used while encumbered or in deep water.
- Fixed an issue that allowed bow light attacks to be activated underwater.
- Fixed an issue with bow hipfiring that made the canceling windows different than when firing down sights. This fix normalizes the firing rate between hipfiring and firing down sights.
- Rain of Arrows:
- Fire Staff
- Fireball
- Increased Fireball projectile radius from 0.01 to 0.33 to make it easier to hit with.
- Fireball can now critical hit.
- Reheat
- Fixed an issue where Reheat could persist through weapon swaps and ability usage.
- Updated Flamethrower and Meteor Shower to trigger Reheat’s 4s timer when the ability exits.
- Fixed an issue that caused the flyout icon for Reheat to incorrectly show as “Empower”.
- Pillar of Fire
- Reduced the delay between Pillar of Fire’s activation and the spawning of its damage AoE. The fire pillar now spawns when the player finishes extending their staff forward.
- Reduced Pillar of Fire recovery by 14 frames.
- Flamethrower
- Increased Flamethrower’s base movement speed so that haste buffs have a more notable effect. The new move speed is approximately 2x faster than the previous speed.
- Accelerating Flamethrower (Item Perk): Fixed an issue where the haste effect from the Accelerating Flamethrower perk was only triggering off of exactly 3 stacks and not 3 or more stacks.
- Let it Burn: Fixed an issue where the burn status effects from Fireball, Burnout, and some passive abilities were not triggering the Let It Burn passive.
- Fixed visual issues with some Fire Staffs.
- Fireball
- Great Axe
- Swapped the placement of the Frustration passive and the Keen Edge passives. Ability points spent on Great Axe ability trees will be refunded and require a respec after this update.
- Gravity Well:
- Updated damage area to match Vortex visuals.
- Reduced Vortex pull force to allow players a chance to escape.
- Pulling force ends just before Vortex damage occurs to allow players a chance to escape by dodging.
- Removed unintended damage from the initial pull and area effect of the Vortex.
- Updated and clarified the description of this ability.
- Maelstrom:
- No Reprieve: Fixed an issue where the cancel window was set too early this upgrade, resulting in the ability being cancelled out prior to the 2nd spin on the attack.
- Enduring Strike:
- Reduced the damage reduction provided by this passive from 20% to 12%.
- Updated the tooltip to clarify that the damage reduction occurs while any grit is active and not just the grit provided by heavy attacks.
- Hatchet
- Fixed an issue where the Accumulated Power and On Fire passives were not consistently triggering with hatchets that had perks with alternative damage sources (DoTs, Chain Elemental, etc).
- Ice Gauntlet
- Ice Spikes
- Spiky Reach: Adjusted the projectiles fired from this upgrade to reduce the chance that a single target is hit with all 4 parts of the attack.
- Ice Storm
- Fixed an issue where if two different players had different amounts of modifiers and perks for the Ice Storm ability they could stack the damage from it instead of it just being a single instance of damage.
- Punishing Storm: Added clarification on the tooltip to state that it will only increase Ice Storm’s damage.
- Ice Shower:
- Fixed a desync issue that could occur when players dodged through Ice Shower.
- Fixed an issue that could cause Ice Shower’s root to fail when players dodged through it.
- Fixed an issue where Ice Shower would not start its cooldown immediately when the first ice patch appeared.
- Ice Pylon:
- Pylon Burst (Item Perk): Increased AoE to 3m radius from 1m. Added new burst VFX to show this new radius.
- Ice Spikes
- Life Staff
- Beacon
- Speed of Light:
- Fixed an issue where the Speed of Light haste was not applying to the caster if their weapon was sheathed.
- Haste applied by Speed of Light will now apply to all targets within the AoE, not just allies who are healed. The tooltip has been updated to reflect this new functionality.
- Speed of Light:
- Beacon
- Musket
- Sticky Bomb:
- Fixed an issue where Sticky Bomb’s crit damage was not increased when the crit damage numbers would appear. Crits will now deal ~273% weapon damage.
- Reduced Sticky Bomb base damage from 235% weapon damage to 210% weapon damage.
- Fixed an issue where Sticky Bomb had broken and inconsistent transitions upon exiting the throw depending on the actions performed after the throw. This could cause the player to be locked out of other abilities until they moved or switched weapons.
- Shooter’s Stance:
- Fixed an issue where firing too quickly after entering Shooter’s Stance would not consume a shot, allowing players to bypass the 5 shot limit.
- Fixed an issue where exiting Shooter’s Stance would reset stacks of the Heightened Precision passive.
- Fixed an issue which could allow players to bypass the animation for Shooter’s Stance and fire from a standing position.
- Stopping Power:
- This ability has been reworked and no longer empowers your next shot, but instead fires a special bullet after a short warmup time that knocks back your target if it hits.
- Stopping Power can be fired from aim down sights or hip fired.
- Stopping Power’s hit-reaction animation changed to better match the timing that the target is staggered.
- Ability description updated to reflect new functionality.
- Cooldown increased from 15 seconds to 20 seconds.
- Powder Burn and Power Shot:
- Loaded shots can now be overwritten. Activating one of these abilities to load a shot while the other is already loaded will replace the previously loaded shot with the new shot.
- Fixed an issue where loaded shots from these abilities were not counting towards the Heightened Precision passive stacking.
- Hustle: Fixed an issue where the this passive had a shorter duration than intended while the Back it Up passive was also active.
- Players can now use consumables while reloading. Using consumables in this way will interrupt reloading.
- Fixed an issue that allowed musket basic attacks to be activated underwater.
- Sticky Bomb:
- Rapier
- Flurry: Updated ability description to clarify that Flurry can be canceled by other abilities as well as by dodging.
- Evade: Fixed an issue where sheathing the rapier after triggering Evade would result in the player getting a persistent movement speed buff.
- Spear
- Sweep:
- Refreshing Reach: Fixed an issue where Refreshing Reach would not trigger correctly with Coup De Grâce.
- Javelin: Fixed an issue where swapping weapons while using Javelin could result in a bad animation state.
- Sweep:
- Sword and Shield
- Shield Rush: The hitbox of this ability has been moved closer to the player to prevent situations where the the ability could hit targets that appeared to be out of range. The distance traveled by the rush has been increased to compensate for this loss of range.
- Reverse Stab:
- Tactician: This upgrade will no longer reduce the cooldown of Reverse Stab. It will still reduce the cooldown of other sword abilities when triggered.
- Leaping Strike:
- The leaping and attacking portions of this ability now have separate properties for their homing and movement in order to improve the overall accuracy based on distance.
- Adjusted homing for better translation against distant targets.
- Adjusted homing for more accurate and consistent tracking against closer targets.
- Void Gauntlet
- Mending Evasion: Fixed an issue where this passive would reset your lowest active cooldown in addition to its listed effects.
- War Hammer
- Armor Breaker: Fixed an issue where players could not buffer attack inputs from any of the war hammer abilities into the Armor Breaker ability.
- Hardened Steel:
- Reduced the damage reduction provided by this passive from 20% to 12%.
- Updated the tooltip to clarify that the damage reduction occurs while any grit is active and not just the grit provided by heavy attacks.
- Empowering Armor Breaker (Item Perk) Fixed an issue where the this perk was applying to all hits for 5 seconds, and not just the initial hit.
Perks
- Weapon Ability Perks: Updates to perks for specific weapon abilities can be found in that weapon’s update notes section.
- Chain Perks
- Fixed an issue where Chain perks could hit targets through obstacles, resulting in unintentional aggro of AI near the original target.
- Fixed an issue where chain perks could appear on weapons they were not intended to appear on (such as shields).
- Evasive: Fixed an issue that caused the flyout icon for the Evasive perk to incorrectly show as “Discrete”.
- Plentiful Shells/Plentiful Arrows:
- Fixed an issue where the Plentiful Shells/Plentiful Arrows bag perk was not properly scaling its refund chance based on gear score.
- Fixed an issue where the refund chance would not stack properly if you had multiple bags with the same perk.
- Shirking Energy: Fixed an issue which caused this perk to incorrectly activate in equip loads other than light.
- Gathering Recovery: Fixed an inconsistency with this perk being incorrectly referred to as “Gathering Restoration” in some tooltips.
- Keenly Jagged: Fixed issue where the tooltip for the Keenly Jagged perk was showing the incorrect bleed duration.
- Aversion: Fixed an issue where the Elemental and Physical Aversion perks were not stacking properly.
- Slotted Gems: Fixed an issue which could cause gem perks to show debug strings instead of their actual values.
- Fixed an issue where the “Harbinger Life Staff of the Sage” and “Harbinger Fire Staff of the Scholar” staves had a perks for the opposite weapon on them.
War/Invasion
- Fixed issue where the Void Destroyer could survive after both its eyes were destroyed.
- Fixed issue where Cleansing Elixir was removing but not properly preventing the re-application of debuffs during its duration.
- Players can now access the Scoreboard while waiting for a respawn.
Outpost Rush
- Bugs
- Fixed an issue causing the Corrupted Legionnaire to have no stamina.
- Fixed an issue causing the Corrupted Priest’s hounds to quickly appear skinnable upon death.
- Fixed an issue causing the Outpost Rush fort barriers to show the name of objects the player had previously interacted with.
- Fixed an incorrect description present on the Brute summoning stone.
- Fixed an issue causing Turrets to appear as if they were on fire after being rebuilt from the destroyed state.
- Fixed an issue preventing the Command Post in Outpost Rush from properly showing up as a ghost
- Fixed an issue with the Outpost Rush map appearing misaligned.
- Tuning
- Reworked Outpost Rush scoring:
- Dealing damage now increases the player’s score.
- Reduced the amount of points granted from killing players.
- Reduced the amount of points granted from killing AI.
- Visually changed the nameplates of several Outpost Rush AI to better clarify their difficulty. The changes in nameplate do not mean there were tuning changes to those AI unless called out below.
- Increased the health of the Corrupted Priest by 10%
- Reduced the damage dealt by the Corrupted Brute by 10%
- Reduced the health of the Corrupted Brute by 13%
- Summoned Ghosts and Summoned Bears now take 150% bonus damage from Siege Damage.
- Summoned Corrupted Brutes now take 200% bonus damage from Siege Damage.
- Increased the base damage of the Repeater by 20%
- Increased the base damage of the Fire Dropper by 16%
- Increased the benefit of having more friendly players on a control point. Each friendly player on an uncontested point now reduces the time it takes to capture the point by 3s (was previously 1.5s) On an uncontested point, this benefit maxes out at 10 players for a minimum capture time of 30s.
- Reduced the length of Baroness Hain’s score lock from 3 minutes to 2.5 minutes.
- Replaced the Explosive Barrel Launchers on either side of Outpost Sol with Ballista Turrets. These cost 50 Infused Ore and 50 Infused Wood to build and will be great tools in taking down the defenses of Outpost Sol.
- Adjusted the emplacements so they’re more flush with the ground.
- Adjusted Rewards granted from Outpost Rush
- Outpost Rush now rewards Umbral Shards on completion of a match. 100 shards for the winning team, and 50 shards to the losing team. Players must meet the minimum score threshold to be eligible for this reward. – This will be in the next PTR update
- Outpost Rush now rewards Faction Tokens on completion of a match. Players must meet the minimum score threshold to be eligible for this reward.
- Outpost Rush Caches now reward 2 pieces of Outpost Rush specific armor and an Outpost Rush specific weapon. There is an additional 15% for a 4th item, a piece of Outpost Rush Jewelry.
- There’s a 2.5% chance that the rolled Outpost Rush item is a named item, the same chance as exists today.
- Significantly increased the likelihood that the rewards in the Outpost Rush Cache will increase the player’s Expertise.
- Outpost Rush gear now rolls off a fixed list of perks that are more ideal for PvP combat. This means that traits like Beast Ward won’t be found on Outpost Rush gear.
- Removed Beast Ward from Illusory Enigma and replaced it with Keen. Please note that this change isn’t retroactive and it will only apply to new Illusory Engima’s granted after the patch.
- Players can now access the Scoreboard while waiting for a respawn.
- Reworked Outpost Rush scoring:
Quests
Notable Fixes
- Improvements to the 3rd Fishing Quest, “Baited”, so that the baits are more easily caught and must be salvaged rather than just having the items in inventory.
- War Camp Loot PvP Faction Missions now reset when fast traveling.
- Asking First Light Faction Representative about dye will no longer block players from subsequent quests
- Baetylus Headpiece Item can now be properly looted to complete the quest
- “Ebonscale Alligators” quest can now be completed without resetting
- Optional Siren Tuning Orb now drops properly during the “Long Live the Queen” Quest
- Adjusted difficulty of the final enemy in “Shivering Timbers”
- Map Markers added to “Insuring the Investment (Part 2)”
- Map Markers added for “Paths Unseen”
- Token Rewards updated for Faction “Rank Up” Quests
- Map Markers added for “The Queen is Dead”
Economy/Progression/Rewards
Progression
- Levelling for Arcana, Armoring, Engineering, Furnishing, Jewelcrafting, and Weaponsmithing trade skills will now require 10% less XP.
Rewards
- Fixed an issue preventing T5 family muskets from dropping. This also corrects an issue where lower tier family muskets were dropping at incorrect levels.
- Bartholomew at Thunder Harbor was dropping some level-inappropriate gear. This has been fixed.
- Two missing housing items have been added to potential loot drops. (Wooden Sidet Desk and Rickety Twig Table)
Crafting
- Several T5 weapon schematics were incorrectly displaying Legendary rarity, even though they crafted Epic items. These schematics have been corrected to indicate Epic rarity. Affected schematics: Voidforged Harbinger Longsword, Maker’s Mark Hatchet, Stonerend Warhammer, Eternal Dusk Greataxe, Needler Rapier, Inquisition Musket, Hidden Truths Spear, Veilpiercer Bow, Windsinger Lifestaff, Waning Crescent Firestaff, Frost Fairy’s Gift Ice Gauntlet, Empty Promise Void Gauntlet.
Fishing
- Employed new measures to reduce effectiveness of fishing bots
End Game
- Yellow Topaz no longer has a minimum drop time
- Black Gypsum min drop time has been reduced from 10m to 5m
- Purple Gypsum min drop time has been reduced from 120s to 30s
Aptitude Leveling
- Smelter Crafting gear now drops from T3 Aptitude boxes
- Drop of Viscous Azoth now drop from armor Aptitude boxes
Notable Bug Fixes
- Some weapons dropping in the Lazarus Instrumentation Expedition were not salvaging into the correct tier of material. This has been fixed. They now salvage into T5 material. This was also the case for some crafted versions of these weapons. These have also been fixed.
- Forest Warden’s set previously salvaged into incorrect values for repair parts and coin and also had incorrect repair part costs. The Forest Warden’s armor pieces now salvage into the correct amounts and cost the correct amount of repair parts.
- Fixed the description for the ‘Shard of Crystalized Azoth’ Perk Item. It now correctly states that it provides the Divine perk.
- Fixed an issue causing the Skinner Tradeskill armor set to filter into the incorrect armor weight on the trading post. It now correctly filters into Medium Armor.
- Ancient Armor Plates, Ancient Metallic Thread, Cold-Forged Buckles were not earnable in game and are no longer incorrectly listed on the trading post.
- Removed several unused attribute mods from trading post
- Fixed an issue causing some items to display on the trading post even though they were not tradeable.
- Previewing weapon skins from the store while in housing area will no longer cause player to use incorrect weapon animations afterwards.
- Fixed a visual issue with the Blighted Growth apparel set.
- Fixed a visual issue with the Golden Rage Coat apparel set.
- Fixed visual issues with the Swashbuckler apparel set.
- Fixed visual issues with the Studded Leather apparel set.
- Fixed visual issues with the Saturnalian Skewer weapon skin.
UX, UI, & Social
- Created a Trade Chat channel.
- Added a Camp Warning notification to alert player when out of range or low on health from their camp/no camp. A status of your camp displays in the banner when entering a point of interest.
- Players can now see both friendly and enemy progress towards the Brute at the corrupted portal in Outpost Rush.
- The Crafting Screen should no longer select the first recipe if you quickly select another recipe while it is opening.
Notable Fixes
- Players can no longer attempt to schedule their siege windows during a maintenance window.
- In Trading Post UI, the popup when cancelling a buy order should now correctly show the refunded coin based on the unbought remaining quantity.
- Resolved an issue causing Ancestral muskets to display without an icon.
- Resolved an issue after being disconnected due to bad connection and the client crashed on loading screen while taking part in an ongoing invasion.
- Resolved an issue where voice over for Bercina Thornton was missing during the Friends in Fashion quest.
- Resolved an issue where weapon gear score adjustment information was not fully translated for all languages.
- Resolved an issue where Timeless Ring Shard and Timeless Amulet Shard icons did not match other resource icons.
- Resolved an issue where the PVP indicator icon was appearing while at War and Outpost Rush.
- Resolved an issue where partnered Twitch Accounts could see themselves in a Sub Army listing.
- Resolved an issue where an objective failed banner shows a check mark instead of an X.
- Resolved some localization issues with the Expertise tooltips on items.
- Added an Item Restrictions tooltip for Housing items to convey limits on animated and lighting items.
- Added a Purchase timer (hourglass icon) in Faction shop items when they have a cooldown between purchases.
- Added explanation of Fishing Hotspots as a conversation topic to fishing NPC. Also added a tooltip on the top right of the Fishing skill details page of the Trade Skills tab.
- Rephrased Housing Loading Screen tooltips to better describe the act of picking up your furniture and placing it into your Settlement Storage.
- Fixed a typo on the Archaeologist’s Defender spear.
- Addressed multiple grammar mistakes on Quests and Crafting Stations.
PTR Patch 2 Full Notes
End Game
Expertise System
- Yellow Topaz no longer has a minimum drop time.
- Black Gypsum min drop time has been reduced from 10m to 5m.
- Purple Gypsum min drop time has been reduced from 120s to 30s.
- Increased the Umbral gained from casts from 3-200 to 100-400.
- Increased the Umbral gained from crafting from 1-85 to 25-100.
- To provide another avenue for players to increase their Expertise by adding a Gypsum Orb that can be purchased from the Faction Shops once per day.
Aptitude Leveling
- Smelter Crafting gear now drops from T3 Aptitude boxes.
- Drop of Viscous Azoth now drop from armor Aptitude boxes.
General Fixes
- Ancient Armor Plates, Ancient Metallic Thread, Cold-Forged Buckles were not earn-able in game and are no longer incorrectly listed on the trading post.
- Created a new icon and new font color for the new Trade Chat channel.
- Removed the option to use Umbral Shards to upgrade an item when the item was removed from the Player’s inventory and in a bag on the ground.
- Fixed an issue where expired orders from the Trading Post did not notify the player they would be returned to town storage shed.
- Fixed multiple issues involving consistencies and typos on Loading Screen Tool-tips.
World Experience
Open World
- We learned a lot from lower housing taxes in December, and want to further reduce the costs and friction with taxes to players that own homes and have greatly reduced housing taxes. We also increased the amount of company revenue earned from housing taxes to not soften any disruption to their income. We are continuing to evaluate and make optimizations to our overall territory tax system, here are the changes introduced for the February Monthly Release (not in the PTR):
- Updated housing tax minimum band to 0.1% down from 5%.
- Updated housing tax maximum band to 1% down from 10%.
- Controlling company receives 5x coin from housing taxes.
- Dynasty Expedition bosses now give the same amount of coin as bosses in other endgame normal and Mutated Expeditions.
- Fixed a bug causing some players to be locked out of chat for a few minutes at the beginning of their session.
- Fixed bugs causing the tool tips on Infused Silk apparel displaying incorrect Gearscores.
- Ensured that Expertise bumps are always granted by the first item dropped by Expedition bosses.
- Corrected some debug text displaying on the Starbound Remembrance Earring.
- Speed of teleports into and out of war has been increased 2x.
- Increase xp from quests level 10+ by 50%.
- Fixed an issue causing Fire Staves and Life Staves to roll with the incorrect attribute perk in mutators.
- Fixed broken collision at Outpost Rush Northern Spawn allowing enemy players access to the spawn.
- Fixed an issue that caused player to receive a large amount of Poinsettia. Adjusted to 4.
Travel
Azoth cost for fast-travel has long been a pain point for players trying to complete quests, deposit items or just exploring the wilds of Aeternum. With an already high base cost plus additional penalties for distance and encumbrance it could feel like getting to the next step of your quest was more of a burden than it had to be. In order to ease this burden on traveling, we are reducing the cost of fast-travel as well as the cooldown on recalls to your last inn.
- Fast-travel from Towns and Shrines will now have a base cost of 20 Azoth. There are no longer cost adjustments for distance or weight.
- Recall time to the Inn has been reduced from 1 hour to 30 minutes by default.
We realize these changes will significantly reduce the sinks for Azoth and will result in many players having more than they can use in the immediate future. We are also aware that it will result in FCP (Faction Control Point) bonuses for certain regions being nullified. While we are planning out ways to address these issues in a future update; we didn’t want that to get in the way of improving your travel experience now.
Expedition Mutations
- Updated the Combustible tooltip text to properly describe the effect on players.
- Mutated Dynasty Expedition now gives Sapphire Gypsum upon completion.
Server
- Trading and sending gold require players to be in the same location. If players are in an invalid location they will receive a message letting them know.
- Fixed an issue causing players to be stuck on the “Play Button”, unable to enter their world.
- Fixed several backend issues involved with character world transfers.
Combat
General Fixes
- Resolved an issue causing Corrupted Priests in Invasions to repeatedly navigate back and forth inside forts instead of attacking.
- Updated Keenly Jagged perk tooltip to state the correct duration. It previously showed the 10s cooldown duration as the DoT duration instead of the intended 6s duration.
Void Gauntlet
Void Gauntlet is currently a little too effective at locking down and then killing targets before they can recover from the root on Petrifying Scream. We are increasing the cooldown on Petrifying Scream to lower the frequency of this kill combo and lowering the damage of Orb of Decay to make it less likely to kill tougher targets. As Orb of Decay already has many other functions including healing and debuffing we feel like it’s safe to reduce its damage in this way without hurting its overall viability.
- Petrifying Scream
- Increased cooldown from 15s → 25s.
- Orb of Decay
- Base ability damage reduced from 100% → 90%.
- Detonating Orb: Detonation damage reduced from 100% → 70%.
Rapier
We’re seeing a lot of players taking rapier as a secondary weapon for it’s defensive capabilities over its offensive ones. While we expect this behavior in a dual weapon system, we currently feel like it’s a bit too effective at running away. As a result we are increasing the cooldown of skills in the Grace tree. To offset the longer cooldown of Evade we are swapping the upgrades Crescendo and Breathe In so that players using Evade offensively have better access to cooldown reduction.
- Riposte
- Increased cooldown from 12s → 18s.
- Evade
- Increased cooldown from 6s → 12s.
- Swapped the positions of the Crescendo and Breathe In upgrades. As a result of this change, points in this tree will be refunded and need to be respecced.
- Fleche
- increased cooldown from 17s->20s.
Great Axe
We’ve heard your feedback that the changes to Gravity Well on the PTR went too far in terms of reducing its effectiveness so we went back to the drawing board and are trying a different approach. This new version of Gravity Well includes a root that occurs after the initial pull to help hold your targets in place and includes a stronger slow after the pull to make it harder for foes to escape the damage pulse without using a movement ability.
- Gravity (Passive) – Fixed a bug that prevented this ability from functioning.
- Gravity Well – This ability has been reworked from it’s previous PTR version.
- Improved pulling tech to more reliably pull foes to the center.
- Foes who are pulled to the center of the vortex are rooted for 1 second.
- Increased slow from 55%→60%.
- Slow field duration restored to 3s so that it will last until the explosion occurs.
The list of changes is sourced from the official announcement by AGS on February 3, 2022..
