Smaller numbers, flat mana, aimed Dash and boss arenas

⚔️Combat#

All damage and HP are divided by ten, for players and NPCs alike, and the early game has been slightly rebalanced.

• Your HP is now 50 plus 10 per Hitpoints level. At Hitpoints 10 you go from 1,000 HP to 150, at Hitpoints 50 from 5,000 to 550, and at Hitpoints 100 from 10,000 to 1,050.
• New characters start at Hitpoints 5 with 100 HP. They used to start at Hitpoints 10. Existing characters keep their levels and XP.

Low-level fights take longer and hit harder. These are for a greatsword and plate of your tier against an NPC of your level, worked out rather than timed in real fights:

• Level 2: kill in 4 → 8 seconds. You last 182 → 55 seconds.
• Level 5: kill in 10 → 12 seconds. You last 73 → 38 seconds.
• Level 10: kill in about 20 → 18 seconds. You last about 36 → 35 seconds.
• Level 21 and up: about the same as before.

Kills pay more combat XP, most of all at low levels. Every NPC got a little extra HP, and XP comes from damage dealt. About what a same-level kill pays:

• Level 2: 17 → 58 XP.
• Level 5: 42 → 83 XP.
• Level 10: 83 → 125 XP.
• Level 21: 175 → 217 XP.
• Level 41: 342 → 383 XP.
• Level 81: 675 → 717 XP.

Food and potions heal a tenth of what they did. That makes early food weaker: Cooked Meat used to heal 30 against a Goblin Runt's average hit of about 26 before armour. Now it heals 3 against about 9.

• Food: Cooked Shrimp and Meat 30 → 3, Trout and Auroch Meat 50 → 5, Salmon and Bear Meat 80 → 8, Sturgeon and Boar Meat 110 → 11, Barnacle Bass 140 → 14, Stormjaw 170 → 17, Vesperfin 200 → 20, Cinderpike 230 → 23. Omelettes and cakes heal the same as their plain dish.
• Health Potion I to IV: 300, 800, 1,300, 1,800 → 30, 80, 130, 180.
• Well Fed: a full dish adds 24 max HP per tier, was 240.

Why: smaller numbers, and a better start. Level 1 NPCs had almost no health or damage, while new players began at Hitpoints 10 with gear well above them.

Mana works differently now. Levelling no longer grows your pool, robes add much less, and higher ranks of Heal, Ward and the Blasts cost less. Your MP bar will show a much smaller number when you log in too, and spells cost less to match.

• Pool: 100 plus your robes. A full Toetoe set at Magic 41 goes from 1,106 to 185.
• Heal, ranks I to VII: 70, 100, 130, 160, 190, 250, 310 → 35, 34, 33, 32, 31, 31, 31.
• Ward, ranks I to VII: 50, 75, 100, 125, 150, 200, 250 → 26, 26, 25, 24, 23, 23, 23.
• Blasts, by orb tier: 80, 100, 120, 140, 160, 200, 240 → 39, 38, 37, 36, 35, 35, 35.
• Strength and Dexterity specials: 20 → 5 mana.
• Orbs and Bound Blade: each bolt or hit that lands restores 8 at every tier. It was 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 50, 60.
• Food: gives no mana when eaten. Plain food's Well Fed mana regen is 0.25 a second at every tier. It was 0.43 to 2.25.
• Mana Potion I to IV: 100, 300, 500, 700 → 50, 70, 90, 110.
• Mana Regen Potion I to IV: 150, 450, 750, 1,050 → 75, 105, 135, 165.
• Osmund's Ring: 1 → 0.2 mana a second.

Why: a smaller pool needs cheaper spells, or you'd run out after a few casts. Orbs restore less because cheaper spells at the old restore would never run you dry.

Abilities pay when they fire, not when you press the key. This covers the Blasts, weapon specials, ults, Arcane Surge and Home Teleport.

• Mana or HP comes off when the cast, draw, gather or windup finishes, and the cooldown starts then too. A Blast with an 8 second cooldown now comes round every 8.3 seconds.
• Cancel by moving and it costs nothing and starts no cooldown.
• If the target is gone by then, or your bow has no arrow, it costs nothing. The cooldown runs, unless the target died or vanished.
• If you've spent the mana or HP during the cast, it stops with no cooldown.

Why: every ability should follow the same rule, and a cast that never fires shouldn't cost you.

The Blasts are now a short cast. Arcane Blast, Fire Blast, Ice Blast, Healing Blast and Exsanguinate take 0.3 seconds.

• You stand still while casting and can't cancel it. If you click to move during it, you walk as soon as it ends.
• The damage lands as the cast ends. It used to land half a second after you pressed the key.
• Your auto-attack timer now pauses during the cast instead of resetting.
• NPCs that cast Blasts stand still for it too.
• Crystal Shatter and Lightless Lance are 0.8 second casts, and moving cancels them. The crystal and the beam stay where you aimed when you pressed the key, so a target can step out of them.

Why: nothing flies on a Blast, so the old half second's wait is now a short cast. With the timer paused, you still get the same auto-attacks over the 8 second cooldown. Crystal Shatter and Lightless Lance take longer so that players can dodge them.

You can cancel an auto-attack. Until the blow lands or the shot leaves your hand, walking or starting a special or ult cancels it for free. The timer, the arrow and an armed Hobble all come back. That window is 0.25 seconds for orbs, 0.4 for bows and one-handed melee, and 0.5 for two-handed melee. Chasing the target you're swinging at doesn't cancel it.

Every boss now shows its arena. You used to get no warning, and crossing the edge reset the boss on the spot.

• A white ring marks the edge, and turns red when you're fighting within 6 m of it, with an "Arena edge" banner.
• Step outside and a "You left the arena" banner counts down 7 seconds to get back. Get twice as far from the middle as the ring and the boss gives up at once.
• When a boss resets, its adds leave straight away. Telegraphed charges now stop at the edge, so a charge can't reset the fight.
• In a private fight there's no countdown: leaving ends it.

Why: leaving the arena had caught a few players out.

Venom now goes by power. A venom's power is the level of the NPC that bit you, and it decides both the damage and which anti-venom stops it.

• Different venoms now sit side by side, one effect card per power. A new venom used to replace the old one.
• Each stack deals a fiftieth of its power every second, so a power 50 stack deals 1. Venom ticks once a second, was every 2 seconds.
• One stack falls off every 3 seconds, and a new bite doesn't restart that clock. It used to be a 60, 90 or 120 second timer that each bite refreshed.
• Anti-venom I, II and III now block venom up to power 20, 40 and 60, for 20 minutes. They used to take 10, 45 or 135 off each tick.
• Venom Spit (Brood Ettercap) deals no hit now. It adds 5 stacks, and blocking doesn't stop it.

Longer casts show on the progress bar with their time left: Home Teleport (Teleporting, then Arriving), Resurrect, Aimed Shot, Arcane Surge, Pillar of Fire, Frozen Field, Bloom, Shatterblade, Sanguine Burst and Eclipse Lance.

📖Abilities#

Dash goes where you aim. It used to need an enemy target.

• You land at your cursor, up to Dash's reach. The shortest hop is 1.5 m, and it still costs the full cooldown.
• An enemy under the cursor means you land in front of it and attack.
• It doesn't start a fight. A target you land within reach of stays yours, and one you leave behind is dropped.
• Walls and drops stop you at the last clean step. With no clean ground at all you get "There's no room to dash there." and nothing is spent.
• Dash and Charge both work from inside melee reach now. They used to say "You're already in reach."

Why: dashes you aim are what make this kind of combat engaging, and a move shouldn't be refused for being too close.

Rank 2 for six picks. Buy the scrolls from the trainers in Harwic. A scroll replaces Rank 1, and your bar keeps its slot.

• Alwin Snell, Dexterity: Hobble II at 27 (cooldown 15 → 13 s), Dash II at 33 (8 → 9 m, 30 → 25 s), Disengage II at 40 (6 → 7 m, 20 → 17 s).
• Ordric Strang, Strength: Brace II at 27 (blocks 3 → 7), Charge II at 33 (8 → 9 m, 30 → 25 s), Taunt II at 33 (6 → 7 m, 10 → 8 s).

Each weapon keeps its own keys 2 and 3. Change weapon and they change to what you last had on that weapon. Stay on the same weapon and nothing moves them, including page flips and logging back in.

• Two swords are two weapons, each with its own picks.
• A weapon you've never used starts from the last picks you set on that kind of weapon.

Casting changed, and you'll notice it. Settings has two modes under Spell Casting, and Normal is still the default.

• Normal: hold a key to see the range, release to cast on what's under your cursor. It used to arm a cursor for you to click, and weapon specials fired on the key press.
• Quick cast: casts at your cursor the moment you press, with no preview.
• In both modes, Heal and Ward with no one friendly under your cursor now cast on you, and sweeps swing toward your cursor.
• Esc or right-click cancels a hold. On phones a tap still arms and a tap casts.

The Spellbook is now Abilities. Same tab, same key, with everything sorted by where it goes.

• Keys 1 and 4: your weapon. Your weapon special and ult. They follow whatever you're holding.
• Keys 2 and 3: picks. Heal, Ward, Dash, Hobble, Disengage, Brace, Charge and Taunt.
• Keys 5 to 0: anything else. Bound Armour, Bound Blade, Resurrect, Home Teleport and Mount.
• Clicking a tile only casts it in the last section. Clicking the others shows its card.
• The right-click menu and hint on each tile now say what that ability can do.

Why: it had become an ability list, and an unorganised one.

Picks only go on keys 2 and 3. Two picks now really means two.

• Check your bar when you first log in. A pick on keys 5 to 0 moves to an empty pick key. If both are full, it comes off your bar. You still know it, and you can drag it back from the Abilities tab.
• A pick your weapon can't use now leaves your bar too, instead of moving to keys 5 to 0.
• Picks only cast from keys 2 and 3, so you can't cast one from the Abilities tab any more.

Why: you get two picks so that choosing them means something. Spare ones on the rest of the bar got around that.

🪟Interface#

Two tabs at once. Click a button on the taskbar, or press its key, to open that tab next to your bag.

• Both open tabs light up on the taskbar. Click or press a tab's key again to close just that one.
• A third tab replaces the one next to your bag.
• Friends, Party and Clan work there too.
• It needs a wide enough window, and it steps aside while the bank or combat stats are open or your bag is minimised. It comes back next session unless you closed it.

A new Customise tab. Title, Mount and Emotes now live together here. Title and Mount left the Equip tab, and Emotes left the side panel. It has no key until you set one.

The taskbar is one row of nine. It sits on the bottom edge with bigger square buttons, and folds to two rows under your bag if it would hit the action bar. The eight old icons are repainted, and the bank's Deposit worn and Deposit inventory buttons use the new ones.

The minimap is square. It sits tight in the top right corner, and resizing it now shows you more of the world instead of magnifying it. Drag the new grip in its bottom left corner, or the rim as before.

• Run is now a round button in its top right corner: a winged boot when you're running, a plain boot when you're walking. Hover it to see which, and the label changes as you click.
• Map is the same round button with a map icon, next to the resize grip. Both show their key as a small letter.
• The clock sits in the bottom right corner.
• The worn gear icon is gone from the minimap's corner. Chat still warns you when a piece is badly worn.

Buttons moved to clear the corner beside your bag.

• Auto-retaliate is now an icon at the end of your HP and MP bars, which are a little shorter to fit it: crossed swords when it's on, one sword when it's off.
• Loot now sits centred above the action bar, and still only appears near drops.
• First-time tip cards drop down into that corner.
• With one tab open, your action bar stays on one row in narrower windows than before.

Examine an NPC to tag it. Examine still prints in chat, and now also opens a side panel sheet with its name, level, title and examine line.

• Tag keeps that one NPC outlined, even through walls, while it's alive and nearby. It's that NPC, not everything of its type, and it comes back when it respawns. Player suggestion
• In your bag, Tag sits under Examine and gives every stack of that item a steady yellow outline.
• Only you see tags, and they follow your account across computers.

More tidying.

• Quests: click Active, Not started or Completed to fold that section. Completed starts folded, so a long list stays short. It remembers your choice, across computers too.
• World map: when you zoom right out, NPC dots fade away so you can see the land and its icons. Their legend rows dim while the dots are gone. Dungeon maps, your Slayer pin and quest markers stay as they are.
• Cursors: action cursors are now a small pointer with a big icon, so the action is the main thing you see.
• Selected items: an item you've picked to use now gets one solid white rim, which reads better than the old outline.

🌍World#

Brown earth in the meadow. The meadow used to be green right up to the rocks and the water.

• Bare earth now shows on steeper slopes, around the feet of rocks and along the water's edge. The land decides where it goes, not random patches.
• Less grass grows on it, so the brown shows.
• Dark patches in the grass now fade out over about 7.5 m, was about 3 m.

The Great Swamp is repainted. The ground was flat olive. Now it's bottle-green sedge with drifts of straw, moss, dead sedge and peat, and it looks the same right across the swamp.

• Sedge grass now matches the ground under it.
• The swamp now blends into the meadow over about 25 m. It used to meet it in a hard line.
• Red blood seeps spill out into the channels, 16 of them across the swamp.
• The mist is no longer moss green, and on High it's half as thick, with clearer gaps.

Why: the mist was an unreadable dark olive wash, and the ground had no blending at all where it met the meadow.

Ferns. Ferns now grow under the trees around Fallhaven, on Low and above.

Walk into more buildings. These used to be shut:

• The farmhouses, bunkhouses and byres around Fallhaven and the Reaver Dales.
• The windmill in Hartwold, some houses in Fallhaven and the Great Swamp, and a shelter.

Climb. Stairs and ladders too steep to walk now show Climb. Click it, and you walk over and go up or down a floor. You'll find it in the windmill, in the Tavern, and in houses in Harwic and Fallhaven.

Things leave your view by one rule now. Every placed object disappears when it would be one hundredth of your screen's height. Small things go sooner, and big things stay in view far longer.

On Low, how far away things disappear:

• A small plant (half a metre): 115 m → 42 m
• Another small prop (half a metre): 200 m → 42 m
• A 1 m prop: 200 m → 98 m
• A 2 m prop: 200 m → 211 m
• A 5 m prop: 200 m → 548 m

Most props now disappear at once rather than fading.

Why: objects used to follow a handful of fixed distances. Now one number covers everything, chosen after trying how much smaller and larger ones cost and where each made things vanish.

Far things switch to their simplest version sooner. A 16 m tree does it at about 130 m on Low, was about 346 m. Trees and foliage fade across a stretch of distance now, rather than over half a second.

Why: the old point kept full detail a very long way out, at a real cost on High.

The same air on every setting. High now has Low's haze, so the air looks thicker there.

Why: how thick the air looks shouldn't depend on your graphics settings.

The download version draws the world a new way. In our test runs with a low camera on Low, it did about two-fifths less work drawing Harwic and about a third less at the aurochs. At a steeper camera it was about a fifth in Harwic, with no clear change at the aurochs. We haven't timed it on a release build yet.

Fewer stutters from trees. The game used to fit an exact click box to every tree it loaded, whether or not you ever pointed at it. Now each tree does it the first time your pointer touches it. In our test runs through town, long stutters fell to about a tenth.

New names: Harwic and Hartwold. Alderwic is now called Harwic, and the land around it is Hartwold. Aldermere is the name of the whole world.

• You'll see Hartwold in the Codex, on your friends list, on Slayer tasks, in the Farm tab and in your Discord status.
• Alderwic Huscarls, Rangers and Thegns are now Harwic Huscarls, Rangers and Thegns.
• The song Alderwic is now called Harwic.

Why: Aldermere is the game's name, so the town and the land around it get names of their own.

The Crags. The land where the green dragons live now has a name on your world map, and the people of Fallhaven use it.