Update notes: September 23 – October 2

This one is big: a full crafting overhaul, a living world calendar with elemental days, weather and moon phases, a teleport network, eleven new spells, and a combat-feel pass on every hit.

Highlights

• Crafting overhaul: craft skill, success rolls, High Quality (+1) results, crystals, and guild ranks.
• A living world calendar: the clock runs all the time now, with an 8-day elemental week, elemental weather and moon phases.
• Warp: teleport between any shrines you have attuned to.
• 11 new spells, including status cures, Raise, Blink, Sneak and Invisible.
• Combat feel: hitstop, critical-hit camera shake, hit reactions, impact effects, an input buffer, and faster weapon skills.
• Weapon Skills remember your loadout for each weapon type.
• New first-run settings screen, and quest markers are now on by default.

Combat Feel

• Physical blows that connect now land with a brief hitstop, and critical hits shake the camera.
• Targets react when hit, and new impact effects play at the body instead of the feet.
• Misses, evades, parries and blocks now have their own sounds. The swing whoosh no longer plays a moment too early.
• Ability presses are buffered for 250 ms, so a press made just before an action ends still goes through. The ability bar and the item bar both show a visual response when pressed.
• Floating damage numbers no longer appear at the character's feet.
• Player melee swings have been re-timed so damage lands when the weapon actually connects.
• 65 melee weapon skills re-timed to cut slow wind-ups and long follow-throughs. For example, Raging Axe is much quicker.
• Fixed attack timing on several enemy families. Rabbits and other creatures now strike in sync with their animation, and walk and run speeds now match their gaits.
• Auto-attacks and instant abilities now re-check range when they land, with a small grace margin.
• Fixed range checks against large enemies.
• Fixed a bug that could leave a character permanently unable to cast.
• Fixed a bug where defeated characters would not enter their death pose.

Weapon Skills

• The ability bar now remembers your Weapon Skills for each weapon type. Swap from Sword to Axe and back, and your Sword skills return to their slots on their own.
• Weapon Skills you can't use right now are greyed out and tagged with the weapon type they need. Their tooltip explains why.
• The first time you equip a new weapon type, its best available Weapon Skills fill the free slots automatically.
• When the weapon type changes, a notice and a chat message tell you which Weapon Skills are now available.
• Weapon tooltips list that weapon type's Weapon Skills and say when equipping it will change your Weapon Skills.
• The Abilities menu shows which weapon your Weapon Skills come from and the next skill you will unlock.
• Fixed the spelling of Hexa Strike, Phoenix Throw and Crescent Slash.
• Fixed the cooldown radial freezing after a weapon swap.

New Spells & Traits

• White Mage: Poisona (1), Paralyna (3), Blindna (6), Silena (9), Sneak (12), Invisible (12), Raise (15), Erase (18).
• White Mage / Red Mage: Blink (12).
• Red Mage: Dispel (18). Removes a beneficial effect from an enemy.
• Black Mage: Warp (18). See Travel below.
• Blink creates shadow images that absorb incoming attacks.
• Thief: new trait, Treasure Hunter I, at level 12.
• Scrolls for the new spells are sold by merchants.

Skills: Any Job Can Try Anything

• Weapon and magic skills your job has no rating for now use a G-rank floor. Before, they counted as zero.
• A G-rank skill is about a third weaker than a dedicated user's, so odd pairings now work. A Warrior can use Bio, and a Thief can use Red Mage buffs. A job's own specialty still comes out on top.
• Weapon tooltips show which jobs are trained in that weapon, but any Job can equip any weapon and still be at least mostly useful with it.
• The Equipment screen now lists only your job's trained skills.

The World Calendar: Elemental Days, Weather & the Moon

• The in-game clock now runs all the time. Before, it only moved forward when you entered a zone. Fixed a bug where closing a menu advanced the world by four hours.
• An 8-day elemental week: Fire, Earth, Water, Wind, Ice, Lightning, Light and Dark.
• The day and the weather each change elemental damage and magic accuracy. Matching the element gives +10%, and the element it is weak to gives −10%. Severe weather raises both to ±25%. These apply to enemies too. Physical damage is not affected.
• The moon now has phases.

Travel: The Warp Network

• Black Mage's Warp opens a list of every shrine home point you have attuned to, and teleports you there. This also works between two shrines in the same zone.

Stealth & Aggro

• Enemies now detect you by sight, by sound, or both. Sound detection has half the range of sight.
• Sneak hides you from enemies that detect by sound, and Invisible from enemies that detect by sight. Both wear off when you enter combat. Invisible also wears off when you cast a spell or use an item.
• Enemy vision cones narrowed from 270°–360° to 120°, so you can sneak up behind them.
• Bestiary entries in the Journal now show how each enemy detects you.

Crafting Overhaul

• Craft skill for each discipline. Every recipe has a level, and each synthesis rolls for success against your skill.
• Crystals and clusters are now part of synthesis (crystals cost 250 g). There is a crafting fee of 10% of the result's value, with a minimum of 10 g and a maximum of 500 g.
• The elemental day, weather and moon affect your synthesis.
• High Quality results: 83 crafted gear pieces have a stronger "+1" version, and 33 stackable recipes can produce a High Quality stack.
• Guild ranks: Unregistered, Registered, Licensed, Certified and Chartered. Higher-level recipes need a higher rank. You can buy the next rank once your skill is within 2 levels of your current rank's cap. The crafting log shows the rank each recipe needs.
• New Guildmaster Support status effect, available from the guilds.
• New Crafts tab in the Journal.
• New Steam achievements for crafting.
• New Alchemy and Cooking recipes.
• Named enemies can now drop recipes.
• New recipes: Traveler's Mantle and Galewind Mantle. Copper Earring is a new Goldsmithing recipe for leveling. A number of other new recipes have been introduced.
• Rare Ring recipes can turn up in merchant stock.
• New crafting stations in Misthaven.
• Bigger yields on 39 inexpensive stackable recipes.
• Crafting materials are worth 20% more.
• 138 pieces of found gear have been re-priced to match their power.
• The chat now explains when a craft is refused for missing materials or a full bag.
• Gathering: new nodes for timber, fish and plants. The minimap shows a separate icon for each gathering type (Mining, Herbalism, Fishing and Logging).

Items & Loot

• New: Magpie Locket, a level 12 neck piece (AGI +2, Evasion +2, Treasure Hunter +1).
• Cutpurse's Cap and Hollow Gloves now grant Treasure Hunter +1. Hollow Gloves' Steal bonus has been lowered from 3 to 2.
• Fixed stat bonuses from gear and buffs piling up or disappearing after equipment swaps, job changes or loading a save.
• Fixed some damage, accuracy and critical-hit bonuses from gear and effects not being applied.

Quests & Story

• Silkfallen Cavern: new Silk Bats and the Silkstone Spirit, plus a rebalanced "Clear the Cave" quest. The Dwarven quests in the cavern have also been revised.
• Dwarven path dialogue updated to reflect the new female Dwarf protagonist.
• Updated the Monk Job unlock location.
• Fixed two quest steps in Blackgrim Wetlands that could never be completed.
• Fixed Seline Evenglow's opening dialogue on the Elf path.
• Fixed Elf path quest objectives not triggering after loading a save.
• Updates to the Human path.
• The dialogue Back button now returns to the line you actually came from.
• Fixed an issue where the intro cutscene could leave you able to move during it.

Characters

• The Dwarf player character has been rebuilt as a short, stocky woman.
• The Elf player character now has sharper elven features: head, ears, eyes and face.
• The Decaying Witch has a new look.
• The Skeleton family of enemies has received a much-needed visual upgrade.

UI, Controls & Settings

• New "Before You Begin" screen after character creation. Set quest markers, volume, video quality, and on-screen controls or gamepad look sensitivity before you start.
• Quest markers are now on by default. If you turned them off before, they stay off.
• New Options: Display Mode and Resolution.
• Saved volume levels now apply as soon as the game starts.
• On a gamepad, Left/Right now changes the value of the selected Options row.
• Gamepad camera look speed halved, with a new Camera Sensitivity option.
• Fixed gamepad directional input lagging and dropping presses in menus.
• Ability bar tooltips no longer disappear while you walk. Slots can't be pressed while on cooldown.
• Item bar: drag a shortcut to move it to another slot.
• A "Game saved." message now appears in chat. The save indicator now also shows while loading and stays up for at least two seconds.
• Clicks now pass through your own character. New friendly-target cursor art.

Graphics & Other Fixes

• Fixed missing shadows in the Windows build. A fresh install now starts on the High Fidelity preset. If you chose a different preset in Options, your choice is kept.
• Lighting updates in Silvercrest Enclave and Highland Plateau.
• Restored a missing terrain section in Blackgrim Wetlands, and fixed terrain seams in Highland Plateau.
• Loading a save now restores the world state before the zone appears. This fixes first-visit events and quest states being wrong after a load.

Thanks for playing, and keep the feedback coming. Much of this update came straight from playtester reports.