Greetings Realmers,

We are happy to release our Snowfest yearly holiday seasonal content patch today.

Snowfest 2020

• Holiday Collectibles have been added to all Open world loot tables.
• The Towns and Villages of The Realm are in full-holiday spirit and have brought out their decorations!
• The Pyromancer has returned to West Leinster!
• Follow the Elves! They can be found in all open world hunting areas. They drop special items on the ground and rarely drop extra special collectibles for the holiday season!
• Hunt a new global world boss 'Grumpus' to get new unique collectibles!
• New silver-based holiday shop for decorations available with fresh new decorations!

 
In addition to all of these changes, we will also be running bonus experience and loot rates for the duration of Snowfest.

Elphame's Arena - Ruleset Changes

Thank you to all of our testers so far. We have collected some fantastic feedback and are back with a fresh set of changes. These changes will be deployed shortly after the Finvarra's Fortress holiday patch later tonight.

 
Key learnings from last weekend's test were:

1. Fixed mana pool works well but the mana pool starts too low and grows too fast.
2. The bell curved experience was good although perhaps a little too fast.
3. Magic items like potions, wands and orbs were underperforming with Theurgism.
4. Melee focused players struggle quite a bit when it comes to fighting more than one NPC.
5. Although PvP is great, instanced dungeons are still the hot spot for players to go to which negates the impact and danger.

 
Summary of Changes:

• Tweaked Maximum Mana calculation to be based on mediation rather than purely intelligence and level.
• Increased frequency of regenerating mana from 30 seconds to 15 seconds.
• Increase effectiveness of Armor Rating and Shields for damage reduction. When a shield blocks damage it has a chance equal to it's armor rating to completely negate damage received.
• Increased default damage of cleave from 10% to 50%.
• When attacking with melee, players will now stay focused on their target until it dies. This means your attacks won't be consumed by "retaliation" hits when fighting more than one creature.
• Tweaked the peak of the bell curved XP from 50 to 35.
• Lowered XP rate.
• Increased impact of theurgism on magic items.
• Increased base duration on many spells.
• Fixed starting skills for wizards to add points in short sword versus dagger. Also grant 1 skill in meditation.
• Lower Wolf and Fenris NPC base acrobatics skill to make them a little less annoying to fight.
• Warrior NPCs are now more likely to have an actual weapon when fighting.
• Lowered amount of gold stolen by NPC thieves.
• Lowered repair and insurance costs.
• Rebalanced NPCs in Targoths to bet a better lower-level dungeon.
• Ogre caves has been added as a playable dungeon. Fuloran's Abode and Tulors have been removed for now.
• All dungeons (with the exception of the newbie 'Unknown' one) are now open world shared zones.
• Hot zone experience moved from all open world zones to all shared dungeon zones.
• Dungeons now have own unique world bosses that may spawn within and carry the rare loot for that dungeon.

 
There are more changes planned in future testing phases. As always we'd love to hear your feedback on the test to ensure that when we formally launch we have a great experience for everyone!

The best place to share feedback is in this thread:
https://realmserver.com/forum/feedback/elphame-s-arena-ruleset-feedback

Elphame's Arena - Ruleset Changes

Here is a quick summary of the changes going in for this weekend's testing phase:

• Mana is now a regenerating resource. Mana pool based on intelligence + level. Mana regen rate dependent on meditation skill. Mana will regenerate out of combat every 30 seconds.
• To compensate for the lack of enchantments, the threshold for encumbrance penalty has changed from 35% to 65%.
• Experience earned is now computed on a bell curve in order to ramp up low levels and slow down progress as you level up.
• The experience penalty for dying has decreased from 2000 to 1000.
• The maximum experience earned in combat has changed from 1000 to 2000.
• Re-Enable Gate Keepers teleporting to homes
• Removed all FF-style magic items (e.g. familiar, proficient armor and magic weapons)
• Restored classic 3.x drops (Plate of Invulnerability, Vulcan's Edge, etc…)
• Removed Mythril armor and weapons from stores - these can only be found via drops now.
• Admantium and Obsidianite armor and weapons added as rare drops.
• Adjusted NPCs in open world to better distribute NPCs based on level.
• To encourage open world hunting, all open world areas are permanently hot zones. Dungeons can no longer be hot zones.
• Decreased default flee chance from 100% to 50%

There are more changes planned in future testing phases. As always we'd love to hear your feedback on the test to ensure that when we formally launch we have a great experience for everyone!

The best place to share feedback is in this thread:
https://realmserver.com/forum/feedback/elphame-s-arena-ruleset-feedback