This update brings a balance to the meta talismans, brings the underperformers up to par, reworks the shapeshifter so it’s a single-target threat instead of a group-fight monster, and fixes the alchemy achievements.

Please Note:
This major patch is based off multiple sub-patches.

Thank you to our amazing community and all of your suggestions, work and more on test center over the last while.
We appreciate you!

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Meta Talisman Rebalance

We dug into the encounter data and found several talismans lagging well behind the pack while one dominated crowded fights. This pass lifts the lagg[add slards and reins in the outlier – the goal is for every talisman to feel like a real choice. The Shadow of the Rogue (already the top single-target performer), the Lute of Lost Harmonies (support bard) and the Phylactery of Resilience (tank) are unchanged.

• Artifact of the Marksman. Hits noticeably harder – its damage was the weakest of the bunch and its active shots did almost nothing. Both have been brought up to a real DPS level.
• Idol of the Magi. More spell damage, and its Focus empowerment hits harder and comes up more often.
• Totem of the Berserker. Hits harder in melee, and – the big one – it finally has damage mitigation, so it stops dying halfway through long fights. Its rallying cry can now be used mid-combat, and its strikes were buffed.
• Idol of Forbidden Magic. The summoner’s undead were far too weak on bosses; their damage and durability are up substantially (the summoned lich in particular now survives a boss fight), while staying a notch below the pure-damage classes.
• Idol of Endless Forms. Reworked: its single-target damage is up significantly, while its area attacks now fall off against large crowds instead of hitting everyone at full power. It’s now a strong boss-killer rather than a champion-fight steamroller.

These are a first tuning pass, we’ll keep watching the data and adjust accordingly.

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Alchemy Achievements Fixed

The alchemy achievements were showing blank or broken names and descriptions, including two poison entries that looked like duplicates. They now read correctly, and the trade-skill achievement titles (Brewer, Alchemist, and the other craft titles) now actually grant when you earn them instead of reporting that the title doesn’t exist.

Follow-up to the talisman rebalance: the Marksman never misses, the shapeshifter can finally sustain mana for casting, and the Broodmother is herself again.

Artifact of the Marksman: Never Miss

The Marksman no longer rolls to hit: Every shot lands. Instead, your accuracy is turned into damage: the higher your chance to hit, the harder you hit. At a 50% chance to hit you deal 75% damage; at 100% you deal full; and stacking accuracy beyond 100% turns into bonus damage. Accuracy is now the Marksman’s damage stat and the old frustration of whiffing is gone.

Idol of Endless Forms: Mana for Casters

The biggest reason the shapeshifter couldn’t be played as a caster was mana as it simply couldn’t keep up. While you’re in a form, the talisman now:

• Regenerates mana faster (and it stacks with meditation), so you can actually sustain a casting rotation.
• Leeches a bit of mana from your spell damage – A small, capped amount on a short cooldown. Because of that cooldown, spamming cheap fast spells won’t out-earn it; it rewards landing bigger, longer-cast spells.

Both only apply while you’re actually polymorphed.

Broodmother Fixed

The Broodmother wasn’t changing phases or was spawning incorrectly. This has been worked out and corrected.
She’s back as the dungeon’s boss, her phase transitions fire reliably again, and she’s hardened so a hiccup during a transition can’t leave her stuck or kill her early.

See more here.

Bard Fixes (Lute of Lost Harmonies)

• Harmonic Melody and Soul Chorus now only affect your allies as a whole meaning yourself, party members, and your pets. They were accidentally healing and restoring mana to enemy monsters; that’s fixed.
• Ember Echoes now scales with your relic level: Its fire damage used to stay tiny no matter how high you leveled it.

Bard support abilities stop helping the enemy, a new hammer splits perfect relics, boosts gain sensible stacking caps, and you can finally silence those combat hit-location messages.

New: Relic Splitting Hammer

A new smith’s hammer lets you break down a Perfect relic into two Flawless relics of the same type, both talisman relics and meta-pet relics.

How to use:
Stand next to an anvil, use the hammer, and target the perfect relic, it’s set on the anvil and you hammer it through a short forging animation (hold still; moving cancels it and returns the relic). On the final strike it cracks into the two flawless relics, dropped straight into your pack, and the hammer is used up (one split per hammer; cancelling before it finishes keeps it). If the server happens to restart mid-swing, the relic is safely returned to your pack, therefor it can’t be lost.

Boost Stacking & Caps

Boosts (Gold / Luck / XP / Skill-gain multipliers) now stack more predictably:

• Same-kind boosts stack additively: two ×2 boosts give ×3, not ×4.
• Each boost has a maximum it will stack up to. If you’re already at a boost’s cap, using another of it won’t be allowed (so you don’t waste it); if a boost would only partly help, you’ll get a heads-up that you won’t get its full effect.
• There’s also an overall ceiling so stacking can never run away to absurd numbers.

Guild Mapping

You should once again be able to see your guild mates on your client map.

New: Customize My Loot

There’s a new “Customize My Loot” (bottom left) option in your Player Profile Options (Central Gump, found by clicking the pentagram on your paper-doll), and it’s on by default.

When it’s on, a relic that drops for you is chosen from the relics you actually need rather than being completely random.

• Talisman relics (from RDA bosses, the dungeon altar, booty-island bosses, and similar) roll a relic skill that your equipped meta talisman supports and that you haven’t maxed (level 15) yet.
• Meta-pet relics (from champions) roll a skill your active meta pet can use that isn’t already maxed.
• It matches the relic’s quality to what you can actually use. A Crumbling relic prefers a skill whose maximum level is still under 6, a Flawed relic a skill under 10, and a Flawless relic a skill you’ve already taken to level 10 (to push its cap toward 15). So you won’t get a Crumbling relic for a skill you’ve already pushed past its reach. If none of your skills fit that tier, it still rolls from your whole “needed” list.
• Only relics that can normally drop at random are ever chosen… event, holiday, and spider/Broodmother relics still come only from their own content.
• A relic chosen this way is bound to you: it shows “Bound to: your name”, only you can apply it, and it can’t be traded or given to anyone else. Because it can’t be stolen or lost:
  • Relic drops from Monster of the Week and graveyard raids go straight into your pack instead of onto the corpse.
  • Relic diversions (the relic/meta-relic decoys) won’t activate while the option is on, there’s nothing to hide.
• Soulbinding sticks through crafting: the Relic Splitting Hammer keeps both halves bound to you, and the Transmutation Cube keeps its result bound if any relic you fed in was bound.
• Already maxed everything, or not wearing a talisman / not running a pet? You just get a normal random relic like before (not bound). Prefer the old behavior? Turn the option off and drops go back to fully random and tradeable.

Hit-Location Messages Now Off by Default

The “Show Hit-Location Messages” option (the “You hit the dragon in the groin!” flavor lines) now starts off. If you liked them, switch them back on any time in your Player Profile Options. Nothing else about combat changes.

A balance pass on high-level necromancer summons, the ability to reforge soulbound relics to release them, relic active abilities reverted to the default OSI line-of-sight calculation, an anti-exploit fix for monster contracts, and a batch of behind-the-scenes boost improvements.

Necromancer Talisman Rebalance

With relics now able to reach level 15, the Idol of Forbidden Magic (necro talisman) had gotten out of hand. Essence Reanimation summons such as the skeletal dragon were hitting for absurd numbers, especially when raised from a powerful corpse. We’ve reined that in:

• Relic levels past 10 now give diminishing returns, so levels 11–15 no longer balloon your summons.
• The strength a summon inherits from the corpse it’s raised from now has diminishing returns. A boss corpse still makes a stronger summon than a weak one, it just doesn’t scale up into a god-dragon anymore.
• Summons no longer double-dip the talisman’s damage multiplier: they already scale through their own stats, so their hits were effectively being multiplied twice.
• Essentia Tap no longer runs away at high level: its proc chance is capped at 100% and its cooldown won’t drop below 8 seconds.

Level 10 builds are essentially unchanged: This mainly tames the level 11–15 outliers.

Reforge Soulbound Relics

The soulbound relics when Customize My Loot is enabled can be reforged, and reforging releases them from being soulbound. If you end up with a relic bound to you that you can’t actually use (for example, the skill it’s for is already maxed), right-click it and choose “Reforge Item”. It’s consumed and reforged into a fresh random relic of the same quality that is no longer bound, normal, or a tradeable relic again. This gives you a way to turn a dead-weight soulbound relic back into something useful or sellable.

Relic Active Abilities: Line of Sight

Relic active abilities used a custom line-of-sight calculation where obstacles blocked your view based on whether you could walk through them. We’ve reverted them to the standard OSI line-of-sight calculation, so they now behave like every other targeted ability and spell in the game. This affects the Artifact of the Marksman shots, the Heart of the Beast forms, the necromancer’s Carrion Rupture and Decrepify, every Lute of Lost Harmonies song, and Smoke Bomb. Phase Shift is unchanged, it still uses the stricter calculation, so you can’t blink through walls.

Monster Contracts

You can no longer complete a monster contract by killing bonded pets and claiming their corpse. Due to bonded creatures being able to be resurrected, that was an endless loophole. Contract kills from bonded creatures are now ignored.

Boosts (behind the scenes)

Several improvements to how event boosts are configured and behave. While mostly invisible to you, boosts can now be set to never expire, can be properly bound to a single player, can carry a particle effect and custom size, and a rare server hiccup when boost data updated has been fixed.

If there are any issues or problems you face, please don’t hesitate to DM us in our DISCORD.
Thank you!