Huge patch incoming

Quizzical

The game has minor patches all the time, but this is the first really big one since last October.  The full details are here:

https://treeofsavior.com/news/?n=874

One major new feature is hunting grounds, which is new zones designed purely for farming rather than questing.  There will be such zones added with recommended levels of 100, 150, 170, 190, 210, 230, and 240.  Nothing above 240, though, as compared to a level cap of 330, so this clearly isn't regarded as endgame content.

Another is item identification, which is new pieces of five and six star gear that start out unidentified.  Apparently identification can cause the gear to have more sockets than normal gear.  No clue whether the gear will be good enough to be useful.  As this is only for five and six star gear (required level 120 or 170), as compared to a max of nine stars (required level 315), they clearly don't regard this as endgame gear.

A third new feature is Hethran badge quests.  These are quests with required levels of 260 or 300, and you have to use some special drop to get access.  It sounds like this might be the new high-level "dungeons", though I'm not sure.

Instanced dungeons get a major overhaul, too.  Three dungeons are removed entirely, and most of the rest had their levels changed.  There will now be a new dungeon every 30 levels, still starting at 50, and now going up to 260.  Drops from the removed dungeons will be available in other dungeons instead.

There are a ton of bug fixes and minor tweaks.  Many classes had some little thing fixed.  Cannoneer, Monk, Barbarian, and Rune Caster got some major buffs, while Psychokino, Cryomancer, Doppelsoeldner, Kabbalist, Corsair, Elementalist, and Wugushi got what looks to me like smaller buffs.  Most other classes that got changes are just bug fixes.  Not that all bug fixes are small:

"Using this skill will no longer cause the channel to crash."

Quizzical

Aori said:

Oh hey they've been listening to me, fancy that.

On what?

Quizzical

Aori said:

Quizzical said:

Aori said:

Oh hey they've been listening to me, fancy that.

On what?

Hunting grounds.

That was announced more than two months ago:

https://treeofsavior.com/news/?n=808

They're just now adding it to the game, along with a ton of other things.

Quizzical

I don't think they thought through this "let's change the dungeon levels" thing very well.  Let me give you two examples.

First, Historic Site Ruins used to be a level 90 dungeon.  You can get to the dungeon through Bellai Rainforest, which is a level 92 region.  A level gap of 2 isn't very big.  Well, now it's a level 80 dungeon.  So you can go through a level 92 region to get to a level 80 dungeon.  You can also do the dungeon through Zachariel Crossroads, but that means that for characters that start in Orsha, you now have to run through a whole bunch of regions to get to a dungeon at its intended level.

Second, Underground Catacombs gives the catacombs gear, which is some of the best six star (level 170-220) gear in the game.  It used to be a level 200 dungeon.  Now it's a level 230 dungeon, but it still gives some of the best level 170-220 gear in the game.  So it's literally impossible to get some of the best gear for a level range to drop yourself until you've leveled past it.  Fortunately, it's all tradeable on the auction house, so it's still possible to get the gear yourself for its level range.  But that doesn't seem ideal.

Quizzical

The new hunting grounds gear ranges from four stars to seven stars.  That's still not top end gear, but that does span level requirements from 75 to 220.

The gear tends to have its top line number (the one improved by enhancement) not that great, but good other stats compared to most other gear.  Some of the armors are quite nice, but the weapons tend to be less so.

The possibility of extra gem sockets seems to mean that most pieces of gear can have up to 2 sockets, but two-handed weapons can have up to four sockets.  For comparison, good "normal" gear tends to be 2 sockets for armors or main-hand weapons, 1 for off-hand items, or 3 for two-handed weapons.  I've only ever seen one two-handed weapon with 4 sockets on the auction house.

For item that go up to 2 sockets, it seems to be about a 1/4 chance of getting 2 sockets rather than 1.  I've identified 24 items, of which 6 got two sockets.  That's a small sample size, so it's entirely consistent with the real probability being 1/6 or 1/3 or something not really all that close to 1/4.

The hunting grounds seem to be generally deserted.  The difficulty is about what you'd expect of a group instanced dungeon, minus the bosses.  So it's soloable at not very far above the level requirement if you've got good gear.  It seems like a pretty effective way to farm silver, as it's the unique source of some pretty good gear and hardly anyone does it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On another topic, psychokino was nerfed, not buffed.  Psychic pressure used to be interrupted by getting knocked back, but not by ordinary damage.  Now it gets interrupted by ordinary damage.  But they added an attribute to restore the old behavior.  The problem is that the attribute adds 10 seconds to the cooldown.  I'm guessing that they did the same with gravity pole.  So basically, the main psychokino damage skills have longer cooldowns.