September 15th Release Part 1: Balance and Adjustments!

Hey there, heroes!

This week, we're splitting the release into two parts. Since it's a main story release, we've once again bitten off a bit more than we can chew, and the quest release will unfortunately be delayed until tomorrow. We apologize for the delay, and we're trying to prevent more in the future, but as we near the end of Book 3, quests are only going to get more involved as we want to make the best final arc that we can.

That said, here are some previews of this week's Book 3 main story release: For the Fallen!

For today, however, we have a bunch of balance adjustments and bug fixes, along with a new cosmetic item!

First up, the DeltaStar Saber is now available from the cosmetic item shop in Bk3 Cysero's Superstore of Savings! This ancient relic was once locked away in the vaults of The Shapeless Empire, but now it's found its way into your hands...

The DeltaStar Saber will change color based on your element and is available for 350 Dragon Coins!

Next, the balance adjustments! (yay!) Don't forget to clear your cache!

For all following classes, tooltips and effect descriptions have been adjusted for clarity. Please note that at some point in time, I am planning to completely rework the way DragonFable's tooltips work, as well as standardize effect descriptions more. However, these changes will suffice in the meantime.

Riftwalker:

Reality Pierce
- Cooldown increased to 3 turns, up from 2.
- No longer locked to Pierce damage.
- Damage reduced from 150% base damage to 100% base damage.
- Now applies -20 All, +20 Health resists to target for 4 turns.

Cryptic:

Mind Crush
- DoT effect increased to 60% weapon element damage, up from 30% Poison damage.
- DoT effect now includes -20 All, +20 Health.

Ascendant:

The Scythe
- Effect increased to -25 weapon element resist, up from -15 weapon element resist
The Staff
- Effect changed to +75 Crit, from +30 Boost.
The Hammer
- Effect increased to +30 Boost, up from +25 Boost.

Ranger:

Bonus damage when STR/DEX are both higher than INT and within Level/10 of each other has been increased to +25% base damage per hit, up from +15% base damage per hit.
- Bonus from STR or DEX highest stat alone is unchanged at +5% damage per hit.
Sky Assault
- Now always deals two hits of 90% Pierce damage to each foe.
Spotter's Shot
- Innate Crit penalty on use reduced to -200 Crit, down from -400 Crit.
- This means this skill can now naturally critically hit!
Viper's Arrow
- Now tracks the number of Venom stacks per individual target, instead of as a single value.
- Now requires a successful hit to increase the Venom stack count on the target.
Cripple
- Focus penalty on use reduced to -2 Focus, down from -4 Focus.
- Effect increased to -120 Bonus, up from -100 Bonus.
Weaken
- Focus penalty reduced to -2 Focus, down from -4 Focus.
Recover
- MP cost reduced to 0 MP, down from 80 MP.
- Now recovers 25% MP on use.
Armorslash
- Effect now additionaly applies +20 Health resist.

Chaosweaver:

Vengeance
- Effect increased to -25 All, +25 Health resist, up from -20 All, +20 Health resist.
- Empowered Vengeance still adds an additional +30 Health resist to the total.

Pyromancer:

Bonus damage when INT/DEX are both higher than STR and within Level/10 of each other has been increased to +25% total base damage, up from +15% total base damage.
Penalty when toggling from Fire damage to weapon element damage has been increased to -10% multiplicative total damage, up from -10% additive total base damage.
- For example, a skill that did 200% base damage before would have done 190% (200% + -10%), but will now do 180% (200% * .9).
Bonus damage given by 5 stacks of Healing or Consuming Magefire has been increased to +100% base damage, up from +75% base damage.
- Devouring Magefire is unchanged at +150% base damage.
Pyromancer's Flames
- Now tracks the number of Flames stacks per indiviudal target, instead of as a single value.
- Now requires a successful hit to increase the Flames stack count on the target.
- Effect is now properly removed when a target is defeated.
Conflagration
- Now only purges Pyromancer's Flames from the selected target.
- Target is now required to have 5 stacks of Pyromancer's Flames to be targetable by Conflagration.
To Ashes
- Damage scaling reduced to +75% base damage per effect, down from +120% base damage per effect.
- Maximum number of effects to scale reduced to 5 max effects, down from 10.
- Damage scaling now only counts effects that are purged.
- Damage scaling now works with Devouring Magefire's Crit and Boost bonuses.
Breath of Fire
- Cooldown increased to 5 turns, up from 4.
- Was effectively 5 turns before, as it always was unusable for 1 turn after coming off of cooldown.
- Damage scaling now starts at 1 stack instead of 0 following its first use, matching its scaling when first used in battle.

Specials:

An icon will now display on the special button when you have an on-hit special slotted.
Fixed a bug where loading a build with an on-hit special would reset the cooldown of any subsequent on-demand specials to max.
Double turns no longer reduce the cooldown of specials or trinkets.

Other Fixes and Adjustments:

Atrea's Spire (and the Atealan base class upgrades) is now locked behind completion of the quest "Book One Epilogue".
Willowshire Part 2 (The Earth Orb Saga, specifically quests starting with "A Dark Place") is now locked behind completion of the quest "Memory-Demons" (the Darkness Orb finale).
Keybind Diagram in the options menu has been updated!
Fixed an issue where the titan dragon customization screen in Sunbreeze Grove would not disable keybinds.
Fixed a crash when attempting to load saved outfits on classes that cannot equip certain items.
Fixed an issue where classes that were not intended to, could equip slotted specials.
Classic SFX option is now available in the Options screen! Nostalgia!
Fixed an issue on the Character Select screen where character names would be oddly low resolution.
Fixed an issue with Male Eternal Ranger Arm customization where its arrow was missing.
The Stat Trainer UI now includes a stat reset button!
- Existing external reset buttons have been removed from Clyde the Stats Moglin and the Falconreach mayors' offices.
And anything else I may have forgotten!

While I don't want to promise anything, these SHOULD be the final major balance adjustments for a while. STR/LUK changes are still coming, as are other class reworks, but things should be given a bit of time to settle, for now. That said, other QoL and fixes are still on the way in the future!

September 15th Release Part 1: Balance and Adjustments!

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