Month: December 2020

Hello,
this is Lee Jae Hwang.

Last around this time of the year we vividly remember being busy while introducing the Garden servers. A year has already passed by, and we are introducing Mount Ipnysh. Unfortunately we will first announce all of you that this month’s planned update – originally planned for 1/7 – will get delayed a week and release in 1/14 Thursday.

The lack of time was caused by prepping 2 large updates consecutively during the winter, but also because of working remotely during the pandemic. We hope all of you to stay patient, and they will do their best to repay you guys with a good update.

Mt. Ipnysh

The main objective they’ve thought while prepping the Mount Ipnysh update was to provide content that could be enjoyed by every player regardless of their gear progression.

Currently Korean Archeage has a wide specturm of servers from the oldest Legacy servers, 2 Unchained servers, to the most recently opened Morpheus server. That being last year around this time, opening the garden zone and opening higher tier gear only provided content to end game players who play in the Legacy servers and the Garden 1 server.

As a result, while it can be a bit ambitious, this Mount Ipnysh update contains a level scaling system that determines the zone’s difficulty based on your gear progression, and, while mileages may vary, rewards and benefits everyone.

From this, they hope new NEW PLAYERS MY ASS and returning players can enjoy this new update and skip some of the long processes of gearing up.

1. The Fateful Return

The guardians that sensed a threat in Mysthrane Gorge realized that they needed other protector’s help to prepare for the coming chaos. Freyjan and Loreal, who remembers their past life, heads to Mount Ipnysh, home of the guardians, in hopes to find other guardians like themselves.

However Mount Ipnysh looked a lot different than how it looked like in the guardian’s memory. The Akasch structures and aura spread across Mount Ipnysh shows that Akach’s invasion has already begun.

The story of Mount Ipnysh that will be introduced on January will start with the guardians trying to defend from the already started Akasch’s Invasions. Through this update, you will be able to learn about how the Akasch were able to endure through such long time to come over to the Hirnor dimension players all live in, whether there were any other awaken guardians.

2. Queen’s Altar

The Adventurers that did all they can do to stop Akasch’s invasion with the Guardians chased Raven’s whereabouts and felt they were getting closer to Akasch. Eventually Raven’s traces led the Adventurer and the Guardians to the Queen’s Altar which lies truth of another story.

The Queen’s Altar was a place used by Akasch to serve their Queen ‘Kina’. Though not necessary, providing sacrifice was an act of obediance meant a lot in Akasch’s culture. The appearance of the Queen’s Altar in Mt. Ipnysh meant that Akasch’s invasion is imminent.

The Queen’s Altar is an Episodic Dungeon and can be entered depending on your quest progression. With your friends that show up in the main quest, you will fight back against the Akasch’s invasion that gets stronger over time.

3. Potential

We’re introducing a new system that only applies within the Mt. Ipnysh zone.

Buffs the following:

• Increases Max HP
• Increases PvE Damage
• Reduces Received PvE damage
• Increases Ally targeted Healing Power

This buff get reduced the stronger your actual character is.

Inside Mt. Ipnysh, you get the Potential buff that gives you combat buffs against NPCs. This buff helps lesser geared Adventurers to also enjoy content within Mt. Ipnysh, and gets reduced the more the character gets stronger.

Over time, MMORPGs tend to have a higher entry barrier for new/returning players to enjoy the game as they face difficulties progressing in the game. As a result, XL is trying out features like this Potential system to help those to enjoy new content even if they are not as geared as the high gear score players.

This will also help newly starting players to not only enjoy Mt. Ipnysh, but also progress faster through the given rewards.

4. Akasch’s Badge Merchant

You can earn Akasch’s Badges by killing mobs, completing quests, and participating in the Akasch’s invasion in Mt. Ipnysh. This item can be exchanged with several useful items via a merchant. A normal merchant is available in Mt. Ipnysh and also in each faction’s bases within, but a special merchant that sells special items is only available for a short period of time when you defend Akasch’s Invasion.

The special merchant only sells some items out of a pool of items, and these items can only be purchased once. This purchase limit resets every midnight, and if you’re lucky, you might be able to buy those items with a discount.

Akasch’s Invasion

Through advanced knowledge from the ancient race Akasch made a dimension laboratory and collected knowledge about dimensions. From Raven, who discovered the border of dimensions, Akasch learned that Ipnysh’s Seal spell was encrypted. Ipnysh’s Seal spell’s password kept on changing with an unknown interval, and it took Akaschs hundreds of years to understand it.

Finally, Akasch designed ‘Hapash’ to decode the Seal spell. With Raven weakening the Akasch Sealstone, Ipnysh’s Seal spell malfunctioned and stopped changing its password. ‘Hapash’ never stopped and kept trying to decode the password, and finally comes the moment where borders between the two dimensions are gone. The portal is very close from from opening.

Kina, the ruler of the Akasch, remembers even the very last moment when the Ipnysh stopped them before, and chooses the fortress Mt. Ipnysh as their recall portal.

1. Akasch’s Invasion Process

Akasch’s Invasion happens up to 3 times a week, and continuously changes the visuals of the world during the start of the invasion till the end.

• Omen of the Crack: Mt. Ipnysh starts having changes, and players group up to prepare for the invasion.
• Crack in the Dimension: Cracks around Mt. Ipnysh starts causing abnormal phenomenons, and players have to investigate and fix them.
• Akasch’s Invasion: Akasch starts appearing in Mt. Ipnysh, and the players have to stop them.

When Akasch’s Invasion starts the whole world is in danger, so players have to cooperate with each other regardless of their factions. As a result, Mt. Ipnysh goes into peace, and factions will not be able to fight each other.

2. Results of Akasch’s Invasion

Once the invasion starts, all players have to fight against Akasch. Regardless of the faction, points from every player’s activities counts as ally’s points, while Akasch earns points by taking over Mt. Ipnysh and killing players. To stop the invasion, the players have to earn points faster than Akasch by destroying the dimension cracks and defeating Akasch mobs.

If the invasion is stopped, Akasch will retreat until the next invasion and players will be able to gain a variety of rewards. The rewards mentioned here are core materials necessary for ‘Ipnysh’s Relic‘ which will be discussed below.

On the other hand, failing to prevent the invasion still makes Akasch to retreat, but raid bosses throughout the world (like Kraken, and Charybdis) will become even more powerful than they usually are.

Ipnysh’s Relic

Ipnysh’s Relic lets you use powers passed by Ipnysh to extremely enhance your equipped gear. This is a slightly different concept than improving your gear, as this system improves the character’s body that equips the gear.

For example, if you improve your right hand with Ipnysh’s Relic (depending on how much you improved the right hand), the weapon on your right hand will become more and more stronger. This improvement can be done on every part of your body. Not only that, once you reach a certain rank, you may receive special effects and can also receive set effects, so you can strategize how you would like to improve your body.

Ipnysh’s Relic improves the character’s body part that equips gear, so you can only receive the effects when you actually equip a gear on that body part. But that also means, you can receive that effect regardless of what type of armor you wear, so it is a viable progression method for any player regardless of whether the player is fully geared or not.

This update isn’t only tailored for high gear score players who are done gearing up, so all sorts of players can try out this content and find the rewards useful, and XL hopes players will find this content enjoyable.

Miscellaneous

1. Increasing Max Ancestral Levels

As much as the new update provides new zones and new ways to progress further, the update also increases the max Ancestral level. The effects you get by getting higher level is about the same as previous levels, so you won’t gain a significant edge from levels, but XL hopes EXP gained from a variety of activities won’t just go to waste.

2. Manastorm Crystal Merchant

Like the Special merchant that appears in Mt. Ipnysh, this merchant also lets players to exchange items via Manastorm Crystals. Some of the items available in the Manastorm fountain (the thing in Mirage Isles) will be available via RNG, and will be sold on a discount, so when you find the item you want, hurry and go grab it!

• Shop can be opened via Ctrl + N
• You can get a free reroll item every day, and you can buy a paid reroll with 2 Manastorm Crystals up to 100 times.
• The purchase limitations and reroll limit resets every midnight.

You might be able to also get some exclusive cosmetic items from this shop, so keep an eye on it.

3. Cosmetic Item Achievement

An achievement by gathering a variety of Cosmetic items, that are available in Archeage, has been added. Once you get this achievement, you can get an awakening scroll that can be used on your Costume to get special effects. Once you get the achievement, you can always remake this awakening scroll, but awakened costumes will always become bound regardless of whether you wore it or not.

Awakening Effect Description:

• Gain 100 Labor
• Heals your HP and MP over 10s (They wrote this wrong as “Heals your Max HP and MP over 10s”)
• Cannot be used while in combat. Effect gets removed if hit.
• Can be used while on mount, and also can be used while invisible.
• Cooldown of 1 hour.

4. 8 Year Anniversary Arena

To commemorate the 8th year of Archeage, XL is introducing a new event Arena. This has similar rules to “Among Us”. Now I won’t see my guildmates playing Among Us after content lul

This Arena has 8 players. There will be 6 “Adventurers” and 2 “Guardians” assigned randomly. You need to find Anniversary cakes that are spread throughout the ancient monument and light them up. The guardians can also light up the cake, but will amplify the “Curse”, so you need to be careful.

6 Adventurers can vote to find the Imposter Guardian, but the Guardians can instantly kill the adventurers. The Guardians have to not get caught by the Adventurers and kill the Adventurers while amplifying the Curse by lighting up cakes. Adventurers basically just have to find the Guardians and light up the cakes to reduce the Curse to leave the place.

Conclusion

It’s already been 3 years since they uploaded Amigo posts every month. There’s been a ton of happenings and changes throughout the years and XL is very thankful that yall are sticking with them all this time. They felt this year was even more chaotic, because of Covid 19. They’ve been writing this while working from home, and really realized so much has happened during the past few years.

After this January update, XL plans to release major updates during March, Summer, September, and Winter. So about 4~5 big updates they claim. During months that don’t have big updates, they will work on balance patches and QoL improvements, as well as adding live services. They’ll prioritize those changes based of off player feedback, so they encourage players to send tons of ideas and opinions.

Finally 2020 has come to an end and 2021 is starting. They hope yall have a good end of the year, and hope 2021 will be full of hope and joy.

Happy New Years, you filthy animals.