EPW Update v99

[inf]

Hello everyone!

Update v99 is finally here. With this update we bring you a new seasonal PvE event, lots of balance changes and adjustments, as well as many requested features and fixes. We also take this chance to announce the new PvP ranking system that will go live on the 1st of August. As always, all of the details can be read below.

> Patch Notes
> Manual Patch (Mirror)

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- Upcoming PvP Rank system -

• Starting from the 1st of August, a new PvP Ranking system will be introduced into the game.
• The Ranking system is individual, with each character being able to earn points and progress up on the ranking ladder and earn special ranks.
• All characters on the same account will share the amount of points and the rank.
• You will be able to check the ranking using the current ranking page, as well as a detailed log of the points/kills obtained by each character on the ranking.

• There will be two rankings:
• All-Time Ranking - The rank/points that you earn will never decrease or reset.
• Monthly Ranking - The ranking will reset at the beginning of each month, and there will be a limited amount of players that can have a specific rank/subrank.
• We have not decided on the amount of ranks that will be available, but you can expect 3-5 ranks, with 3-5 "subranks" within each of these ranks.
• The current rank (both all-time and monthly) of your account/character will be visible in-game, with special icons appearing above your head. (work-in-progress)
• The points you earn will be counted towards both of these rankings in the same manner.

• Each character will be able to choose whether their role in PvP is 'Damage' or 'Support'. By choosing the role, you influence how your character will earn points. You will be able to change your PvP role every 1 hour.
• Characters with the 'Damage' role will earn points depending on the amount of damage they've dealt to a player that's been killed in PvP.
• Characters with the 'Support' role will earn points depending on the amount of damage that their squad or guild members with the 'Damage' role have dealt to players that have been killed in mass PvP. They will not earn points by dealing damage to killed players.
• Example:
• Player1 and Player2 have 'Damage' roles, while Player3 has a 'Support' role. All of these players are in a squad together.
• Together, they kill a player, dealing 50000 damage to the player in the last 10 seconds before death. Player1 dealt 30000 damage, while Player2 dealt 20000 damage in these 10 seconds. Player3 dealt no damage.
• The total amount of points given by this kill is 100. Player1 will receive 60 points, Player2 will receive 40 points. Player3, as a support player, will receive 100 points divided by the amount of members in the squad, that's 33 points.

• The points can be earned in controlled environments. This includes:
• Mass PvP
• Nation Wars
• Territory Wars
• Dragon Temple
• Events - Heroic Battle, Capture the Flag, Nightscream Island
• GM-hosted PvP events
• Thursday Tournament
• *** There might be a way to earn points from small-scale open world PK, but due to a high probability of low-effort alt farming for points, we've decided against this for now.
• The amount of points that's earned will depend on the type of the environment. For example, points earned by PvP kills in territory wars will be higher than the points earned through Heroic Battle or other events.
• The points will be scaled based on your current monthly ranking. The points you earn from killed players that are lower-ranked than you will be lower than the points that you obtain from killed players with higher ranks.
• You can boost the amount of points you're earning by leveling up your star level. Each level gives you an additional 2% higher ratio of the points you earn. (at Level 6, you will earn 12% more points)

• The all-time ranking will be connected to a panel shop, where you will be able to spend the PvP points you've earned. This will not impact your rank or "experience points" when leveling towards the next rank.
• The items that you're able to buy will depend on your current all-time rank.
• The monthly ranking of your account will provide you certain benefits in the pvp shop, such as reduced prices and special offers.
• Additionally, each player will receive special rewards based on their monthly ranking at the end of each month.
• The rewards have already been added to the game, but will become available once the rankings are live. These include:
• Special utility items, such as longer-lasting runes, signets and charms.
• Longer-lasting/Permanent blessings.
• New Sacred Stones.
• Special skill items that will give you additional skills to equip to your character (Buffs and additional existing genie skills).
• Champion Fortune Token (see Patch Notes - under Gear)
• More to come in the future.

You can expect a detailed guide with full information on Saturday, one day before the rankings go live. We have already implemented the ranking system on the server side, which we'll use in the following 5 days to monitor the amount of points that can be earned with the current setup, and adjust accordingly for the real system.

- Custom Models -

• Custom Model submission will now go through a form, where you can fill in all of the information through different fields.
• Custom Models can now be imported into the game without a patch. The requirement for this to happen is for your model files to take up less than 2MB (when unpacked, not when archived).
• You can now choose whether your custom model should display rune effects from the runes equipped to the weapon. To apply this effect on the old custom models, make a topic on helpdesk and give us the model key. The model needs to be unique and you need to be the owner of the model.
• Custom Model Guide has been updated with all of the relevant information.
• The Custom Model Board has been reopened.

- Summer Marathon -

• Summer Marathon is a seasonal event that will start being active with this patch and last until the end of summer. There's no set date yet, but you can expect the event to last until early October at least.
• Summer Marathon consists of multiple different quests based on the same principle: run through an instance (or multiple instances), doing your best to survive, and kill the boss(es) at the end. The instances used for this purpose are the FB instances (FB19-FB89, with the exception of FB29).
• Each day, you can take a quest from God's Giving, instructing you which bosses need to be killed. The timer starts as soon as you take the quest.
• Once you kill the bosses and turn in the quest, the timer stops. Your official finishing time is logged and ranked against other players.
• The rank can be viewed at https://epicpw.com/marathon.
• The rank resets each day, with different rewards being given based on your position on the general or all-class ranking.

• Each instance contains three types of mobs, all of them immune to damage. The boss that you need to kill is located at a certain place that can be found by checking the instance map.
• The types of mobs are:
• Violet Wretch - This mob explodes every 2 seconds, dealing fatal damage if you're close by. If you're far enough, it gives you a speed/antistun buff which lasts for a long time.
• Olive Wretch - This mob moves at a high speed, dealing fatal melee damage if it manages to catch you.
• Ruby Wrench - This mob debuffs you with high-damage poison/bleed (not fatal), purge, and bunny transformations.
• The bosses all have 1 HP, and can be killed with a simple auto attack.
• You cannot re-take the quest once you've already taken it, so make sure that you're ready to start when you take the quest.
• Original mechanics have been kept in certain instances (e.g. - to spawn a boss in Valley of Disaster, you need to kill the gatekeeper of that valley).
• Feel free to use any means at your disposal to speed up your marathon time. The only thing that's not tolerated is wall-hacking and abusing game glitches to move outside of the bounds of the map.
• None of the instances support being entered by squads.

• Each player to successfully complete the marathon quest will obtain the quest reward (preview in-game).
• Based on the ranking within your class, you will obtain an item that grants you a skill when equipped. The skill given by the item will be picked randomly between the three:
• Morning Breeze - Increases your movement speed by 200% for 6 seconds.
• Wandering Wings - Increases your flight speed by 60% for 16 seconds.
• Shattering Ripple - Increases your swimming speed by 60% for 16 seconds.

All of the skills share the same 3 minute cooldown. Based on the rank, the items will expire after some time:
• #1 - 30 days
• #2 - 14 days
• #3 - 7 days
• #4 - 10 - 3 days
• #11 - 20 - 2 days
• #20 - 800 - 1 day
• The first, second and third player from the global ranking will receive 3, 2 or 1 x Event Chest respectively.

- Live Patching -

• The game can now update most of the game files live, while you're connected and playing.
• This will allow us to deploy patch fixes, guild icons and certain custom models without having to deploy a real patch.
• The total data to be downloaded will be kept to less than 100MB between two patches. If you're on a limited data plan, keep in mind that the network bandwidth usage might increase as a result of this.
• Faction icons will now be updated more frequently (each week or even more often).

- Trade Logs -

• You can now access your character's trade logs at the panel:
• https://panel.epicpw.com/items1.php - Here you will be able to check all of the items that have been traded away from your character to other characters, one way or another. (Trade/Drop-Pick/Mail/Comission Shop/Cat shop)
• https://panel.epicpw.com/items2.php - Here you will be able to check all of the items that have been traded to your character by other characters, by the same methods listed above.
• There are no logs that date further than 10th of June. Logs update every day 10 minutes after midnight, so you won't be able to see today's trade logs until tomorrow.

- PvP Balance -

• Quid Pro Quo is now an AoE skill. The skill applies to all targets within 10 meters of the target that it's casted on.
• Seeker's Saber Rattle and Krav Maga will now stack with the rune addons that expire in more than 30 minutes. (e.g. if your rune stats are disappearing in 15 minutes, they will be overwritten, but if they're expiring in 45 minutes - they won't)

Explanation:

• These changes should make seeker a little more viable in Mass PvP. Other than that, the additional 5 defense or 3 attack levels they obtain from these skills will help balance them in 1v1 situations where they've been pretty bad since the defense level nerf.

• White Voodoo will now last 10 seconds and give 20 defense levels less.
• Tradewinds cooldown has been reduced to 45 seconds.
• Sandball clash has a 100% probability to seal the target now.

Explanation:

• The white voodoo change addresses the situation where psychics reach very high defense levels for long periods of time and become barely possible to kill. While they will still be able to use white voodoo for long periods of time, there will now be a chance to lock the psychic through white voodoo after they've exhausted their genie and other defensive skills.
• Tradewinds cooldown has been reduced to help psychic's mobility in mass pvp. The previous cooldown of 90 seconds meant that they could very rarely use the speed boosts provided by this skill. Along with very low survivability in their attacking setup, they were very easy targets in mass pvp unless they were camping white voodoo.
• Sandball clash has been changed to be more reliable, as most other classes don't have to rely on 50% chance skills as one of the main forms of CC.

• Archer's blessing has been removed.
• Set bonus for having two Rank 8 pieces equipped has been changed to 30 defense levels. Reverted (for now).
• Sage Quickshot will now give archers a channeling buff (-20%) that lasts for 10 minutes.
• Demon Quickshot now has a 100% chance to increase the attack rate.
• Bow Mastery (Sage/Demon/Lv10) now decreases skill damage by 15%.

Explanation:

• The blessing has been removed because we want to make it viable for all classes to use the general attack/defense blessings.
• Demon Quickshot has had a 100% chance to increase the attack rate for a good period of time (my bad, as I forgot to revert something I was testing). This change makes demon archer's damage more reliable and prevents them from having to wait for multiple 'procs' in a row to deal significant damage.
• The defense level from the Rank 8 set bonus has been increased to compensate for removal of the blessing. Archer's defense hasn't been that great for quite some time, and with this change we boost their defense against physical damage, while defense against magic damage should remain nearly the same.
• The other two changes have been done to reduce the attacking output of archers, namely when paired with an EP/Cleric that keeps buffing them with channeling during mass pvp. Their channeling will now be reduced by 20% with quickshot (instead of 14% with the blessing), which gives:
• ~10% DPS increase when going from -92 channeling to -98
• ~8.5% DPS increase when going from -80 channeling to -86
• something in between in case your channeling is between these values
• To combat this, we reduce the skill damage by 15%, which leaves a nerf of ~5%-8% in damage that can be compensated by using the all-class blessings.

• Cleric's blessing has been removed.
• Plume shell will now take 0.8x MP points from each point of damage you take, instead of 1.0x.

Explanation:

• Pretty straightforward, as mentioned above, this is to get rid of the need for clerics to wear a class-specific blessing.

• Physical defense obtained by Tiger Form has been reduced by 30%.
• You won't be able to use Berserker's Wrath and Berserker's Rage for 5 seconds after changing your flying mode.

Explanation:

• Physical defense nerf comes because of the fact that physical damage can not hurt barbarians in tiger form whatsoever. Their physical defense was insanely high like this, which made them unkillable by certain classes. They should now take more damage, not enough to suffer from physical classes in mass pvp, but enough for other physical classes to have a chance of killing them in 1v1.
• The other change is done to combat the abuse of these skills in the air, disrupting air pvp.

• Attack Level set bonus from wearing 4 Rank 8 pieces has been reduced to 10 attack levels.
• Celestial Eruption will now give a boost of 350% weapon damage instead of 500%. Additional 200% of weapon damage is now given through a wood-damage buff (not a big boost, about 2x of the damage that the elemental pill gives).
• Chill of the Deep has been boosted to give 10 more attack levels.

Explanation:

• These changes nerf the aps assassin and the imbalanced play of 3 spark/aps/gof against LA/AA classes, which there are few defenses against. DPH assassin will suffer from this change as well, as their spike damage has been decreased with the nerf of 3 spark, but their general attack should improve quite a bit, which means that they will rely less on gof/crit AoE damage. Demon spark still remains with 500% weapon damage, so full damage builds are still possible, but with less benefits that sage assassin gets. Additional elemental damage should make it possible to deal significant damage to HA classes.

• Attack Level set bonus from wearing 4 Rank 8 pieces has been reduced to 10 attack levels.
• Saber Mastery now increases skill damage by 6%.

Explanation:

• These changes nerf the APS duskblade build, which has been problematic for some time, and make DPH builds still viable.

• Sage Lunar Guidance now has a 25% chance to generate 40 chi instead of 1 spark.

Explanation:

• We're nerfing the overpowered 3 spark spam that stormbringers could use prior to this.

• Absorb soul's damage on players is now capped by one half of the player's Max HP.

Explanation:

• This change should make it easier to avoid 'random' charm bypasses by absorb soul, and enormous damage on SB/PSY.

• Reduce Physical/Magic Damage Taken have been nerfed in a way that they won't contribute as much as they do to the general damage formula. You can now assume that the actual RPDT/RMDT that your character has is 0.8x 0.9x of the value that it has.
• To combat this, defense level calculations have been adjusted:
• Each defense level will now count as 1.125x defense levels. Reverted
• The formula for calculating the damage used to multiply the difference between DEF/ATK levels by 1.2, if defense levels of the defender were higher than attack levels of the attacker. This has been removed, so there will be no huge gap in damage once defense level becomes higher than attack level.

As always, all of these changes can be reverted if they prove to mess up the balance, but they have been observed and tested in detail, and should impact the balance in the positive way. If anything breaks with any of these changes, it will be fixed shortly.

- Gear -

• Heaven Ravager Helm and Golden Blast Helm can no longer be worn by LA classes (Archer/Assassin/Duskblade).
• Ascended Supreme Robe is now tradeable.
• A new free weapon is available for Assassins: Misericorde. You can craft it at the Weapons forge. The weapon gives an additonal 14 attack level and 25 vitality.
• A new item has been added: Champion Fortune Token.
• You can use this item at the Champion's Forge (located in West Archosaur and the City of Thousand Streams) to:
• Engrave your Rank 8 ring with 4 attack levels or 4 defense levels,
• Hone your Rank 8 items to the maximum stats.
• You can craft the item at the Champion's Forge for:
• 50 x 5,000 Epic Coin Bar
• 20000 x Supply Tokens
• 15000 x Misfortune Particle
• 15000 x Fortune Particle
• 1000 x Perfect Element
• 180 x Champion's Pearl
• Champion's Pearl is a new untradeable item that can be obtained in the following way:
• Uncharted Paradise - x1
• Challenge: Forest Ruins - x1 (twice a day)
• Summer Marathon - x1
• The item will also be obtainable in the future through the rewards of PvP ranking/points, with no additional cost of materials.
• The item is untradeable.

- Misc -

• Added teleport quests to all FB instances from Level 19 to Level 89 to Illusion Stone NPC.
• Reduced the spawning area of the Dragon Hunt dragons to make sure they're further away from the safe zone.
• You can no longer perform guild operations on characters logged in via guest mode. (e.g. leaving the faction, promoting/demoting members etc.)
• Added additional chat spam prevention.
• Maximum coins that you can carry in your inventory has been increased to 1 billion.
• Replaced the speed buff given by Blinking Poultice to the same buff that's obtained by Wings of Protection.
• Added a new option to Custom EPW Settings: 'Always show player names'. When this option is selected, you will be able to see the names of all players, regardless of the distance between them and your character.
• Lothranis is now a Full PvP area.
• You can no longer attack the same monster with two different characters in the Main World, Lothranis and Momagonon. The cooldown resets after 5 minutes.
• You can no longer enter territory wars on multiple characters.
• You will now see your original flight's model when using simple elements. Fixed some bugs with weapon models not being updated properly when using simple elements.
• Changed the spawning scheme of Mistwalker Magina and Demonic Dialectic. They will now respawn each hour - Magina will spawn 15 minutes after the full hour, while Demonic will spawn 45 minutes after the full hour.
• Random boss card pillars have been added to the Lunar Glade.

- Rules -

• The rules regarding the trades of in-game properties have been updated.
• We will no longer consider smaller punishments for first-time offenses.
• The first and only punishment for buying or selling in-game items for out-of-game currencies will now be the permanent lock of all of the buyer & seller's accounts to guest mode.

[Frost]

Ty for patch!

[SHAMWow]

nice patch sir 

[ʍɪηᴅʏ]

Good patch

[damikim]

laughing on all psy that camps white voodoo AHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

[Consternated♥SugY♥]

Thank you very much, sir, but I hope you add the Arabic language for us because there are many Arabs playing the game

[Mugwump]

Wow nice patch , forcing ea player to play other class.

[HELLA EPIC]

GOOD CHANGE MOST EA'S WONT NEED FULL 4X CT GEAR ANYMORE 

[lumen]

Wow nice patch , forcing ea player to play other class.

lmao are you dumb?)

can't wait for pve chipmunks to complain they ain't getting any pve content :pray:

[Luis]

Thanks for the seeker mini boost 

[Mugwump]

lmao are you dumb?)

Stop quoting me u sux, 

[lumen]

Stop quoting me u sux,

let me guess this is how you read patchnotes:

[......]

thanks for patch inf 

[Kasper Kasper]

Thank you for patch❤️❤️