The Elysium expansion has arrived!
Here's a list of all the changes.
HomesteadYou can now build your own home! There are hundreds of different objects and buildings to choose from. You can also do quests in the Homestead which will give you Perfect Elements and Elysian Seals which you can use to craft new items.
New skills for all classesEvery class can now upgrade some of their skills for more powerful effects. Each class also gets one ultimate skill which has a 5 minute cooldown and requires a Subsiding Dirt to use. Ultimate skill has two levels with each level bringing new power to your class!
Uncharted ParadiseThe Uncharted Paradise is now available! Each of the bosses has complicated mechanics that you need to deal with to defeat them. There are Trials you need to complete before you reach the Final boss.
New armors and weapons!You can now craft new rank 8 armors and weapons with 4 stats! The armors also have fixed stat version of them which you can craft with Damascene Ores, Elysian Seals and Dull Ether Jades. Honing them requires gathering materials from bosses across Perfect World.
Detailed info-You can craft the new skill books at Archosaur West at Vyn Ren, the Trainer. You will need materials from Homestead to craft them.
-Accessories can now have 4 sockets.
-Accessory shard prices reduced by 25% (400>300 for Perfect Shards).
-Damascene Ores can now be crafted into Perfect Elements with a rate of 7 Dama = 2 PE.
-Damascene Ores can no longer be used for rerolling - only for fixed armor stats and crafting into PE.
-You can still hone your old Rank 8 gears with PE and Dragon blood stones.
-You can no longer switch tome in combat.
-New tomes have been added to the Tomes forge. These tomes have mixed stats of Vit+Dex, Vit+Str, Vit+Mag.
-The VIP System has been added. Voting will now add VIP Points to your account boutique. With enough points you can unlock features like Pick-Up All, Quick-Teleport and Tracking certain players. VIP Points get reduced every day and your VIP level will decrease if the points go below the required limit. For using the Quick-Teleport and Foe Tracking, you also need to buy tools from the boutique's VIP tab.
-Ping will now refresh more often when hovering over the menu button.
-Functions like "Disable Auto-attack after skill", "Auto finish charging", "Chat timestamps" have been moved from Menu>UI to the Optimization window (3rd tab at the window where you choose Simple Models).
-Added a function for canceling skills to the Optimization list. With this enabled, you will always cancel the skill instead of closing the selected target window. You can use shift+esc to cancel target windows with this function enabled.
-Fixed rubberbanding.
-You can now cast self-buff skills while stuck frozen in air. Self-buff is things like heal, wings of grace, marrows on warrior.
-You can now see the number of people around you in the Squad menu (T).
-Gender swap will no longer give the Perfect Match / Matches System error.
-Improvements have been made to the automated Capture the Flag:
*You now need to dig a chest when delivering the flag.
*Taking the reward is now with NPCs, same as Heroic Battle.
*Improved flag carrier debuffs.
*Logging off will now also teleport you out of CTF. You can re-enter, but you won't be able to take the reward then.
*Blue team flag carrier will get a light-blue name and red team flag carrier will get a yellow name.
-Improvements have been made to Heroic Battle and Capture the Flag team system:
*You will now see teams have red and blue name colors. These colors will overwrite your custom name color or safe blue name color.
*AOE skills will no longer hit the same team and you can't heal or buff the enemy team.
*Blue team will now also receive an effect above head and a blue sword icon.
-New title quests have been added for Sundown and Dragon's end. You can also craft the Elysium Title Stone at God's Giving for 5 epic points.
-Increased the drops of all world bosses on the main map and respawn time has been reduced to 20 minutes.
-Increased the drops of all custom world bosses in Heaven and Hell.
-Added 25 Damascene Ores to the Fight For Love quest in GV.
-Duskblade ultimate skill Strength of the Reapers Lv2 will heal max health instead of resetting all skill cooldowns.
-Cleric ultimate skill Blessing of Immortality duration has been reduced from 20/40 to 10/20.
-Stormbringers can now only stack 3 Thundersnow charges.
-Assassin Chill of the Deep attack level reduced by 10.
So to start; no, your current armors and weapons are not useless now. The new weapons have around 25% higher chance to gain the 4-line stats that you could get on the old R8 weapons. For example, 4 def sword on WR was around 1 in 13800 chance, on the new weapon its around 1 in 11300 chance. 5 def sword chance is around 1 in 500,000, so you don't need to try for them. The damages, defenses, HPs on all armors and weapons are the same as old R8. The armors have around 20% higher chance for 3x line stats and around the same chance for 2x line stats.
I only put gear stats for fixed armor crafting which seemed reasonable. The prices of them depend on the stat rarity at rerolling and usefulness of the stat for that class. There are no "insane" stats like 3 int armors, 3 int EA boots or 3 channeling arcane armors. The rarest fixed stat is 2x ct+2x magic on arcane classes, but the price of that is 45k Damascene Ores. However, you can now reroll for 4x int wrist on heavy and light classes to become 3.33. The 4x int wrist has a 1 in 15000 chance, which is around the same as 2x ct wrist on arcanes and easier than 4atk/4def weapon, so it is a viable goal to go for. Also you can now craft 4x channeling armors on EA, but each piece also has 1 in 15000 chance, so it is quite hard to get all 4 armors with 4x ct.
Another thing with new fixed armors: the ct/aps EA build is again viable. You can craft 3x channeling + 1x int boots, 2x int + 2x channeling top, 3x int + 1x channeling wrist and reroll 4x channeling pants. You will then be 1.43 and have only 6% less channeling than current full -9 EAs.
The honing materials for these armors are tradeable, so you can buy them from other players. The bosses which drops the materials are written in the item descriptions. The prices for these items are meant like this: 31 EC per Lv.1 Hone item, 250 EC per Lv.2 Hone Item, 17 EC per Lv.3 Hone Item.
Homestead will give you a decent amount of PE for completing the quests. The higher your prosperity in Homestead is, the higher level quests you can take. At max, you can make around 60 PE in around 1 hour, depending on your luck with the quest objective. Leveling the homestead, gaining homestead materials and questing was made around 2.5x faster than it is on PWI.
Entering the homestead will require you to complete the questline "The Legend of Elysium" which you will get automatically. The requirements for it is lv150.
Accessories were made 4 sockets by PWI. I didn't want to leave out this feature so I added it, but I didn't intend Forest Ruins to require that many runs, so I decreased the shards price to compensate.
The new instance, Uncharted Paradise is very hard to clear. I don't know if it will become possible with a random squad, so the reward of that instance are pretty high; 35 Perfect Elements and homestead materials. If you have a proper squad, you can probably clear it in less than 30 minutes, so the reward is very good. The quest can be done once per day only.
Custom items, guild icons and fashion were not added with this patch because I didn't want to delay it any longer. There will be patch for them within a week (xD) and some more 'less-important' things will be added that I skipped this time.
And btw, the new title quests take max 20 minutes to complete, I suggest you do them instead of buying the stone at God's Giving. Here's the guide for them copied from PWI gamepedia:
Tome: Sundown Highland
Pick up the first quest in Sundown Town (125 590) to get Tome: Sundown Highland. Talk to the Sundown Town Elder at (127 589). [Outlander]
Pick up the next quest at the same location or at (125 590). Kill 3 Rams inside the town. [Fresh Blood]
Go to (153 577) to pick up the next quest. Dig 5 Arbor Branches at (159 572). [The Perch]
Go to (168 546) to pick up the next quest. Speak to the Jade Flutist near the same location. [End Tune] (+3 mag-def)
Go to (144 504) to pick up the next quest. Dig the Dribbling Spring Feather at (147 513) on the surface of the water. [Creature of the Lake] (+8 accuracy)
Go back to Sundown Town (125 590) to pick up the next quest. Talk to the Sundown Town Elder at (127 589). [Daybreak's Light]
Go to (131 609 ↑74) to pick up the next quest. Dig the Seal: Sundown Highland in the same location on top of the tower. [Sundown Highland Star] (+3 phy-att)
Tome: Dragon's End
Pick up the first quest at (285 568) to get Tome: Dragon's End. Talk to Talon Member Yu near the same location. [Lore Detective]
Go to (305 582) to pick up the next quest. Kill 10 'Feligar Berserker'. [Bringer of Silence] (+8 accuracy)
Go to (330 583) to pick up the next quest. Dig the 'River Dream' at (332 578). [Staggering Drunk]
Go to (313 584) to pick up the next quest. Kill 'Commander Fugma' at (316 581). [Prepped and Ready] (+3 phy-def)
Go to (304 577 ↑54) to pick up the next quest. Talk to 'Chin Shang' at (284 568). [The Ever-busy]
Go to (293 569) to pick up the next quest. Kill a 'Hexocelot Chief Archer'. [Lamp of Souls] (+2 mag-att)
Go to (318 576 ↑54) to pick up the next quest. Dig Seal: Dragon's End at (322 573) to break the seal. [Star of Dragon's End] (+4 mag-def)
I hope you enjoy the Elysium update, have fun!