Happy Mid-Month-ish Patch Day everyone!

This maintenance focuses primarily on some balance updates and fixes that have been overdue for some time.

Before we start though, one thing to keep in mind is that with the SQI updates we are working on, several of these effects (as well as others) may or may not change again. These current updates are intended to address certain ongoing issues that have been bothering the server for a while, as the SQI updates will take a little longer to complete.

For now though, after extensive testing and cross referencing builds (many thanks to Blackstar for the major testing efforts) we found issues that were a combination of things that broke through updates that happened after the latest SQI release as well as unintended balance problems. We feel that these updates offer a more balanced experience that gives more justice to all other classes involved.

• Twin Fang Updates:
  • Fixed a bug with Twin Fang bonus where Quagmire and Slow Grace / Please Don’t Forget Me effects were completely dispelled when in Cloaking, rather than temporarily disabled during Cloaking. Many thanks to the people who have reported this to us recently.
  • Updated Twin Fang Soul Breaker damage bonus to only do 10% instead of 25% in PvP.
  • Updated Twin Fang Soul Breaker def-pierce bonus to have a 10% damage penalty against Player race.
• Gunslinger Updates:
  • Spread Attack:
    • Spread Attack now has a 0.5s after cast delay rather than no delay at all. This can, just like Sharp Shooting, be reduced by ACD gears as well as Poem of Bragi.
    • Lowered ASPD of the Scouter bonus for Shotguns from 25% to 15%.
    • Lowered Spread Attack boost on Rolling Thunder from 5% per refine to 3% per refine.
  • Ground Drift:
    • Fixed being able to put up to 40 mines at a time. You are now able to put up to 25 at a time, which is the official amount. This got broken due to us fixing Meteor Storm’s units disappearing too soon.
    • Soldier Grenade Launcher’s ATK boost now only triggers on regular attacks in PvM. In PvP it still triggers on skills.
  • Piercing Shot:
    • Lowered Piecing Shot boost on Scouter bonus from 25% to 20%.
    • Lowered Piercing Shot bonus on Color Scope from 20% to 10%.
    • Lowered Piercing Shot refine bonus on Color Scope from 3% per refine to 5% per 2 refines.
• With these balancing updates, we have also reset the leaderboards for instances such as Ancient Tower, Mystic Tower, Sara’s Memories and Old Glastheim. We felt that these have been heavily skewed due to class unbalance. In the near future we will introduce ranking seasons and rewards for the best parties in most instances as well, which will be accompanied by regular leaderboard resets.
• Our website and control panel now show GM Ktulu’s amazing Calculator as well as the brand new Battle Reports feature. You can use the latter to upload replay files and check out your battle stats after an intense battle!
• Battlegrounds Updates:
  • Changed scoring mechanics in Eye of the Storm. Capturing the Neutral Flag is a lot more rewarding now. It will reward you with 10 points (5 previously) when you own both bases and 6 points (3 previously) when you own one. Additionally, the point scoring for owning bases now happens every 10 seconds rather than every 7.
  • Lowered mode rotation time if existing mode remains empty from 10 to 7 minutes.
  • Updated mode rotation to be less random. Where previously certain modes (i.e. all Tierra modes) were randomly chosen and could be repeated multiple times in a row, now each mode will play at least once before being randomized again.
  • Lazy Merchant can now buy back items from the Secret Shop.
  • Big code optimizations for Erundek NPC and Eye of the Storm. Please let us know if anything broke due to this.
  • Fixed an issue where players would not respawn in the BG Rush waiting room (already hotfixed a few days ago).
  • Berserk/Frenzy now gets dispelled in the Return Room.
  • When not enough players are queued up for an existing mode, but there are enough for the next one, the next match should now properly start rather than waiting for another player to join.
  • Lowered Green Potions given from 10 to 6, which also automatically applies to the return room restock.
• Added a Master Storage for Talon Cash. You can use this to deposit Talon Cash from your game accounts into a master storage account where you can withdraw it again on other game accounts. Simply click the Talon Cash option at the Reward Guru and hit Master Cash Storage.
• Layla’s Emporium returns once again after a short powernap. Check it out to see her latest offerings~
• Mining Pickaxes are now treated as Bare Fist rather than Two-Handed Axes, which should resolve very slow attack speeds while wearing it.
• Updated Snake Encyclopedia to support Medusa, Hode and future Worm-type monsters.
• Changed coordinates of Warp Girl on Beacon Island to not be blocked by other NPCs.
• Changed coordinates of Warp Girl in Rachel so that it lines up better with other NPCs.
• Fixed Lucky Day enchant not giving Crit ATK% bonus to skills that can Crit, such as Sharp Shooting and Shadow Slash, similar to the Temporal LUK enchants that we fixed last time around.
• Fixed Tiyanak Card illustration throwing an error.
• Fixed headgear King Ernst von Wolff giving a bonus to Medium-sized mobs rather than Small-sized mobs.
• Updated a client file that should return some missing skill animations to monsters, such as High Orcs. Many thanks to Trouble for supplying this file!

Finally – a little note regarding potential bugs and reporting such issues. It has come to our attention that certain issues that players are experiencing are expected to be known by the GM team as they have apparently been discussed within certain Discord channels. As the GM team is very occupied, we hope you understand that we cannot and do not read every conversation that happens in-game or on our Discord channels. If you experience a bug or issue, or even something you think is questionable, please go through the proper channels to report this. We have a special bug reports channel on our Discord server. Please utilize this. Thank you.

P.S. We will update the ItemDB soon to reflect all these changes.