Hi everyone,

Today’s Saturday patch contains a lot of improvements to some existing systems in-game as well as a few fixes we have been working on. We are still currently testing our new persistence system and have it saving on the live server and both saving and loading on our test. Things have been running smoothly but we still want to take our due time to ensure everything is working well before officially making the switch over to this new system.

The following are the patch notes for today's patch, along with our reasoning behind some of these changes. As always your feedback will be critical to us perfecting these new systems and changes and we are eager to hear your thoughts!

Initial Mount Changes - We our excited to introduce our first changes to mounts which includes our new mount sprinting functionality and some initial balancing. Bluetail Runners have been the go-to mount for a long time and in order to start our balancing of this system there will no longer be a variance in how fast you can go on a mount. Instead the variance between mounts will be on how long that mount can sprint without running out of stamina, making the Bluetail Runner the preferred mount for long distance travel and providing more usefulness for the rest. All mounts now have the same “run” speed which is 13% faster than the previous speed of racial mounts All mounts now have a new sprinting mechanic which is a little over 10% faster than previous Bluetail Runner speed and is used the same way sprinting is used while running around Agon Turning causes the mount to run at the new regular run speed All mounts now have their own independent stamina and they use this stamina while sprinting: Bluetail Runners can sprint for 4 minutes on a full stamina bar Racial mounts can sprint for 2 minutes on a full stamina bar Battlehorns can sprint for 1 minute on a full stamina bar Bluetail Runners have had their health decreased Active/Moving regen (non-sprinting) time for all mounts is 2 minutes Non-active (stopped) regen time for all mounts is 1 minute When you get on a mount, a new GUI indicator will include both mount stamina and health: As a result, targeting your own mount while mounted has been removed due to the annoyances that occurred while riding on Battlehorns

Graded Mob Drop Loot System - This patch implements the seedling of a full blown gear grading system for a much more dynamic and interesting mob dropped loot system. Even though our goal is to drive a player driven economy and enhance the value of crafting, we decided to go with this new system instead of simply removing mob dropped gear. It provides a variance of value to the items you receive from farming, with the chance of receiving items with stats better than player crafted gear, but the chances of this occurring are low. This means that if you want the best stats possible for a certain item, your best bet it still to craft the item yourself or buy from someone else who did it for you. All mob-dropped equipment (Weapons, Armor and Shields) will now drop in a variety of “grades”: Ruined Crude Worn Fine Superior Exceptional Peerless Immaculate Affected attributes depending on grade include: Basic Damage Modifier Speed Modifier Critical Hit Modifier (this was always there but is now shown on the item tooltip) Durability Modifier Encumbrance Modifier Physical Protections Modifiers Magical Protections Modifiers Grade name will be prepended onto the item name for easy identification. Some Peerless and Immaculate equipment may very well be better than their player crafted counterparts, but are not common.

Initial Mob Spawn Revamp - One of our main goals for PvE is to provide options for all group sizes to be able to farm and fight over that are rewarding for those who participate. We have gone through and altered mob spawns themselves, adding variance between their respawn times, total mobs that spawn and in some cases even what mobs spawn. This was done to provide players with spawns that will become known to be good for groups and others that will be known to be good for solo and small groups of players. These changes will make some spawns more profitable than others, driving PvP hotspots, instead of normalizing all spawn types where the only difference is how many people are present. This is only our first pass of doing these changes with more planned, but we would like to ask all of you to provide your feedback and experiences when farming at these locations. Over 100 Mob spawns have been initially changed: Decreased respawn timers Increased mobs per spawn Added/removed/adjusted mob types and spawn percentages While some spawns have more mobs, others have quicker respawn timers, and many even have both: I.E. there may be a spawn with 10+ mobs that respawn @ 50% of the time they used to, and may even include a new mob as well previously not seen at the spawn (ideal for groups) I.E. there may be a spawn with 2 mobs that respawn @ 25% of the time they used to (ideal for solo/duo players) Locations vary greatly, all across Agon!

Enchanting Gains - Prior to this patch, no matter what quality enchanting materials you used or how many enchants you did at once, the skill gain was the same. This meant the best way to level enchanting was to grind single enchants at a time with Q1 materials. The following changes are geared to make the enchanting grind more customizable by the player. Now quality of materials used acts as a direct multiplier on the experience received: A pure Q5 enchant will now give 5x experience Multiple enchantments done at the same time will also be calculated and award proper experience: If you do 3 pure Q5 enchantments at once on the same item (transmute with keen and human slayer, for instance) you will get 15x experience. System messages tell you exactly what your multiplier on base experience is after each enchant.

Sounds: Added New UI sound. New pick up sound for items and Papyrus. New drop sound for items.

Fixed Scribing gains so that they scale properly across all levels (feedback requested!)

Fixed R70/R80 weapons (Greatswords, Greataxes, Greatclubs, and Polearms) so that max roll crafted ones can benefit from a max roll Q5 enchant.

Fixed Clan bank bug and re-enabled the Clan bank in-game.

Added cost of Capital Recall to tool tip.

Thank you for reading today's patch notes and join us in the discussion.

Stay tuned for our announcement next week which will outline the transition from Closed Beta to Early Access and as always thank you all for your support!

Sincerely,

- The Team at Big Picture Games