Blade & Soul: Fire and Blood arrives March 21, and along with Koldrak’s Lair, the Emperor’s Tomb, Lyn Gunslingers, and Legend Mode, there are a number of adjustments and changes to existing systems.

As always you’ll want to check out the full patch notes when they’re posted here on March 20.

Hard Difficulty Dungeons

We’ve been looking at the dungeon rewards in Hard difficulty for a while, as we’ve received pretty consistent feedback from players feeling they could use a boost to account for the added challenge. To that end we’re making a number of changes in Fire & Blood:

Forgotten Raven King’s Soul Shield Chest contains a random piece of Raven Soul Shield, and can be obtained from the following dungeons in Hard difficulty: Naryu Sanctum, Irontech Forge, Ebondrake Lair, Starstone Mines, and Hollow’s Heart.

New tradable item Roughhewn Ring is now available from Hard difficulty of Starstone Mines and Hollow’s Heart.

New tradable item Roughhewn Earring is now available from Hard difficulty of Irontech Forge and Ebondrake Lair.

Elemental Prisms are now available from Shadowless Exchanger NPC Wei Ido at Khanda Vihar for 600 Hellion Core and 30 Blackstone. Right-click Roughhewn Ring or Roughhewn Earring and choose the desired Elemental Prism to receive the Skybreak Spire Legendary Accessory of the corresponding element. For example, the Flame Prism can be combined with the Roughhewn Earring to receive Igneous Earring – Stage 1.



The big focus for these reward changes was setting Hard difficulty apart from Normal by offering new items, as well as raid gear, ensuring that when you’re done running a Hard difficulty dungeon you feel it was worth the effort—versus just running it multiple times on Normal. And just for clarity: this is in addition to the already existing rewards.

New rewards are coming in, and we’re making some adjustments to existing dungeons.

Hard difficulty rewards for Ebondrake Citadel, Desolate Tomb, and Naryu Foundry have been merged into Normal.

Hard difficulty for Ebondrake Citadel, Desolate Tomb, and Naryu Foundry is no longer available via Cross-Server Dungeon (F8), but can still be accessed via the dungeon entrance.

The above dungeons are getting phased out of Hard difficulty, as we’ve done with other dungeons when they get a little long in the tooth. In this case though you can still enter and do the dungeon in Hard difficulty if you want to check it out and challenge yourself, but it’s not going to offer any different rewards from Normal.

Skill and Stat Changes

The Fire and Blood update does bring along a number of skill-related changes, including a (oft-asked about) skill patch.

Training Certificate, Whirlwind Token, and Pugilist’s Token are no longer used and can be exchanged via Antiques for Bravery Coin.

Purchasing Hongmoon Skills from both the Zen Bean Trader NPC and Battlefield NPC now cost Bravery Coin.

Crafting Recipes that used Training Certificate now use Bravery Coin.

The overall cost of Hongmoon Skills has been reduced by approximately 50%.

This is all for a direct reduction in Hongmoon Skill costs. The currencies needed are being simplified, and the overall cost is being cut in half. Easy, straight forward, and an overall nice quality of life improvement.

Skill balance update.

The full list will be in the patch notes we’re looking to post on March 20, but these are the ones commonly referred to as the “December update” from the Korean version of Blade & Soul, if you want to read ahead. Just be aware that there may be minor changes made whenever we bring skill patches to our version.

You can now enhance Threat, Health Regen, Movement Speed, Hongmoon Focus, and Debuff Defense with 10 Hongmoon Points each. These points can be assigned and removed at any time while out of combat.

115 point and 125 point Offense and Defense bonus effects are now available.

You’ll also see additional customization options, letting you get more specific with how you’re designing your character and their role.

You can now disable and enable skills in the Martial Tome by using the toggle button next to each skill.

Again, you can customize your play experience a little more specifically, and with some added control over which skills you want to (or really don’t want to!) have available.

Weapon Upgrade Cost Reduction

As the game and content progresses we pretty regularly re-align gearing costs to help players catch up, or make adjustments where some of the balance might need some tweaking. Here’s what you can expect in Fire and Blood:

Slightly adjusted the cost to upgrade Raven Weapon to Aransu Weapon.

Raven -> Aransu Blackstone Fragments Raven Weapon

Stage 7 → Aransu Weapon

Stage 1 Before 24 After 24 Raven Weapon

Stage 8 → Aransu Weapon

Stage 2 Before 12 After 14 Raven Weapon

Stage 9 → Aransu Weapon

Stage 3 Before 0 After 4

This is just a small adjustment to the number of Blackstone needed when going from Raven Stage 7–9 to Aransu Stage 1–3.

Aransu Weapon Stages 7-9 are now available.

The cost to upgrade Aransu Weapon Stages 1-6 has been adjusted.

Aransu Weapon Stages 1-6 Hive Queen's Heart Gold Cost Aransu Orb Stage 1 → Stage 2 Before 20 50 28 After 12 50 25 Stage 2 → Stage 3 Before 20 50 28 After 12 50 25 Stage 3 → Stage 4 Before 25 50 35 After 25 100 30 Stage 4 → Stage 5 Before 25 50 35 After 25 100 30 Stage 5 → Stage 6 Before 25 50 35 After 25 100 30

With the addition of Stages 7–9, there are some material cost reductions, which are offset a bit with slightly higher gold cost.

Dungeons

There are a few dungeon-related changes coming in the update we wanted to highlight for you.

Hellion Core is now available from Irontech Forge.

Dragonblood You can now use Dragonblood and Golden Dragonblood in the following Normal Mode dungeons: Sogun’s Lament (increased to 2 Dragonblood) Ebondrake Citadel Desolate Tomb Naryu Foundry Naryu Sanctum Irontech Forge Ebondrake Lair Starstone Mines Hollow’s Heart Drowning Deeps You can now use Golden Dragonblood in the following Hard Mode dungeons: Ebondrake Citadel Naryu Sanctum Irontech Forge Ebondrake Lair Starstone Mines Hollow’s Heart Drowning Deeps

Reduced NPC Attack Power in Tower of Infinity and Trial Arena.

Slightly increased the floor you start on when finishing the previous run at floors 4-57 in Tower of Infinity.

Additional difficulty adjustments have been made to several Heroic dungeons, please see the patch notes for details.

Dungeon Reward Chests for Heroic dungeons have been unified to a single reward chest per region: Viridian Coast, Cinderlands, Moonwater Plains, Silverfrost Mountains, Khanda Vihar, Gunwon City, and Solak.

These are all pretty self-explanatory, and are all just nice changes to make life a little easier, adjust some difficulty down, or provide additional resources and options. The dungeon difficulty tuning will be laid out in the final patch notes, but as a quick preview, we’re overall looking to remove some of the more tedious or outdated mechanics in the older dungeons, while smoothing out the difficulty curve; hopefully making each run more consistent.

Items

Last but not least we have some item related changes coming in the update. Again, all of these are pretty self-explanatory, and all are bonuses or improvements to current systems.

Reduced the cost of Legendary Element and Legendary Jewel from 30 Soulstone Crystal, 15 Sacred Crystal, and 10 Gold to 15 Soulstone Crystal, 7 Sacred Crystal, and 10 Gold.

Received Items Unpacked items in Received Items now stack together with other similar items. You can split the stack of items when claiming on a specific character.

Bonus Attributes New Bonus Attribute tiers and accompanying achievements have been added.

You can now transmute Octagonal Obsidian Gems.

Thanks for checking out this Blade & Soul: Fire and Blood systems change preview! Keep an eye on the front page for the full patch notes coming March 20, and the release of the update on March 21.