• Fixed incorrect mana costs on: Duach's Vengeance, Mass Heal, Multiblade
• Re-added key for heroic imp haven chest
• Fixed prestige flags in some area in avalon that was preventing non-prestiged players from exploring it
• Added more basic loot to Crystal Cave NPCs

Greetings Realmers!

We are happy to release our content patch Avalon Awoken. This patch brings prestige 2, a new open world area, a new dungeon, adventurer tweaks and some much needed quality of life improvements. Read further below for all the details:

Prestige Level 2

With this major content patch, we are happy to release Prestige 2. If you are level 1000 and have already prestiged once, you may do it again to unlock the ability to learn skill rank 7 as well as prestige abilities rank 4.

• Prestige trinket to progress to Level 2 is available for purchase
• Skillbooks for rank 7 are also available for purchase
• Ability books for rank 4 are drop-only!

Crystal Caverns

Crystal Caverns is a brand new underworld area beneath Avalon. Explore the winding caverns and discover new challenges and collect unique rewards. There are rumors that recent Archaeological activity in this area has disturbed ancient beasts from their slumber. This is the Realm Online's first open world shared dungeon with unique world bosses and special collectible loot. This zone is targeted for players level 700 and above.

The Dig

Archaeologists have discovered an ancient tomb within the Crystal Caverns. In their quest to discover new artifacts from an extinct civilization, they have awoken an ancient evil. Descend through four levels of increasingly difficult encounters. Discover relics with magical properties long thought lost. This dungeon is targeted for players level 700 and above and for group sizes of 1-3.

Collectibles

A new global loot table has been added to dungeon bosses that will drop special collectible items. These items are extremely rare and are cosmetic-only. Heroic dungeons have a much higher drop chance than non-heroics.

Collectible items include: Glowie robes and skirts, Glowie mundane helmets, Items that change your skin color, Mundane Thurisaz Cowl, Backpack of Holding, Glowie low boots.

Avalon Access

Avalon access to all open world and dungeons is now open to all Noble Citizens. Prestige is no longer a requirement.

Threat System

We've added a new Threat system to the game which will control which enemies NPCs will attack. This new targeting logic will affect most NPCs except for those with alternate targeting mechanics (e.g. dragons, tunnels of death NPCs).

Threat is computed based on raw damage against an NPC. The predictability of threat should help players understand who will be attacked next round instead of relying on RNG. Additionally, having this new system opens up new possibilities for us to add more strategic combat by introducing things such as shifting threat to allies or have threat-wipe abilities.

Adventurers

The results of our most recent player feedback survey clearly outlined Adventurers are the weakest class. Adventurers are meant to be the jack of all trades and masters of none. However, in practice they are lackluster in both caster and melee roles.

In an effort to balance adventurers to be effective casters or melee, we are introducing a new game mechanic unique to them: Stances

These stances are Adventurer-only familiar-level spells in the Sorcery spell circle. They cost 0 mana to cast and have an infinite duration. Additionally, you may only have one stance active at a time.

For now, we are introducing two types of stances:

1. Combat Stance
   • Increase MDM at the cost of SDM
   • The strength of the MDM increase is based on your character's base intelligence (wearing intelligence items has no impact)
   • The theme here is you sacrifice intelligence and SDM in order to focus on combat damage
2. Caster Stance
   • Increase SDM at the cost of MDM
   • The strength of the SDM increase is based on the higher of your character's base strength or dexterity
   • The theme here is you sacrifice character combat strength to hone in on spell power

We hope these stances help Adventurers' effectiveness both solo and in groups.

Spell Damage

We have done a pass over spell damage to reduce the dependence on untargeted AoE spells and instead reward players for taking risks by using touch-based or area-targeted spells. Existing staples like cold snap have had their damage decreased while the majority of other spells have had a significant increase.

Our intended damage tiers are, from highest to lowest damage:

1. Touch based spells (e.g. Death Touch), as they require significant risk to cast
2. Area-targeted spells (e.g. Fireball), as they require some risk in terms of missing and damaging allies
3. Single target spells (e.g. Flame Orb)
4. Untargeted AoE spells (e.g. Earthquake, Mass Drain) which require the least amount of risk but are still effective at damaging all enemies on screen

We realize this change may be jarring but hope the players try the changes and then provide us feedback.

Coppers

Coppers are now rewarded at the end of most dungeons. The amount of coppers are proportional to the difficulty and length of the dungeon. Also as noted below, we plan on disabling the ability to sell-back items for coppers in the near future in preparation of bigger plans we have for that currency:
https://realmserver.com/forum/announcements/in-preparation-of-upcoming-changes

Quality of Life

• Heroic Dungeons no longer require keys to enter them
• A new button to teleport players back to the start of a dungeon has been added to most dungeons
• Animation speed is now saved per character

Miscellaneous

• In order to differentiate fist weapons better from daggers, max damage has been decreased by 10% but minimum damage has been increased by 10%
• Updated existing underperforming loot tables
• Diversified some drops between dungeons to allow highly sought after items available in multiple dungeons
• Added four new world bosses to the Crystal Caverns area
• Group experience bonus has been reduced to 5% per member (up to 25%)
• Hot zone bonus experience increased from 50% to 75%
• Rich presence updates have been implemented for players using the desktop Discord client
• The Pyromancer has vacated Leinster in search of some new ingredients, he shall return in the fall

Greetings Realmers,

We hope you're as excited as we are to launch our big content patch August 25th at 8PM EST. If you want a sneak peek on what to expect, check out the video below!