Greetings adventurers!

I wanted to take a moment to give you all an update on the progress our development team has been making and where we are heading with the project.

Our team has several priorities right now and I’ll spend a little time talking about each one.

Ongoing bug fixes and quality of life changes

While the volume of critical bug fixes are winding down, bug fixing will be an ongoing priority of ours. This gives us an opportunity to knock out some of those lesser priority bugs which constantly pop up during the game.

We are currently doing some final testing on an update to Crafting Orders which includes a boost to essence drops for orders and, most importantly, rebalances reward tiers to be far more considerate of the inherent value of a given reward with respect to quantity and quality. This will mean more essences for crafters to work with and much more rewarding orders.

We also have another great addition to the game that we are putting the finishing touches on and will be a great tool for our players. This is an in-game “macro system” which allows you to string together hotbar actions to perform sequences of simple or complex macros.

Clustering Azure Sky and Verdant Earth

Azure Sky and Verdant Earth have rich histories and we want to make sure that those worlds have a bright future. One way we can do this is by taking advantage of our cluster technology to connect them together, effectively creating one server. This new server will be called Ethereal Mountain (AS/VE Cluster).

We were pushing hard to get this cluster done before the holiday weekend, but unfortunately we ran out of time. Rather than rushing it with the risk of creating some nasty bugs, we are going to use the weekend to perform some additional testing before we bring it online next week.

Making Premium Subscription and Premium Currency Available

Now that the excitement of launch is winding down, it’s absolutely imperative that we get our ongoing revenue sources up and running to allow us to fund the ongoing development of the project.

In addition to finalizing our in-game commerce system, we are working on some exciting incentives for the Premium Subscription option. We are also working on some additional cosmetics we can offer in our in-game store that will allow people to further customize their characters’ appearance.

This system is also scheduled to go online next week. We will send out an email to everyone as soon as the option to purchase a premium subscription becomes available.

Point Release 8

This is the most exciting part of our development effort and also the main focus of our design team right now. This point release will be adding a new ‘Martial’ ability set and book for warriors, introducing new and dynamic PvE content, and giving some much needed attention to the allegiance war system, addressing incentives and ensuring more 24/7 action is possible.

We are finalizing the designs for the new features and content that will be hitting the servers with Point Release 8. As soon as that process is complete, we will be releasing a blog that will give you a preview of everything that’s coming in addition to a test server to test and provide feedback on upcoming changes.

We are unable to give you a timeframe for this release right now. Again, once we’ve finalized the designs we will have a better idea of the timing of it. We are being extra careful to manage the scope of this release to make sure we get it to you on live servers ASAP.

Looking Ahead

On the Community side of things, we want to remind all of our players of the Community tab on the website where there is a second news feed dedicated to the community. From events to server highlights, from fan fiction to competitions, send us your write-up and we’ll see that it’s posted! In addition, we are working to expand the Ambassador Program by adding new active streamers! We received a ton of applications, and while we’ve made the decision to grow the program slowly and can’t immediately add everyone who applied, we will be watching and supporting all streamers who submitted their applications and will continue to grow the program on a regular basis.

With the upcoming addition of Premium Subscriptions and the Premium Currency store, we feel that the time is right for a permanent price reduction to $19.99 for the base game. This will be our set price, and we have no plans to participate in any sales for the foreseeable future. We will also be removing the “New” tag from the Amber Moon Server.

We will also be moving ahead with more community streams outside of our Developer Q&A. We loved getting in-game and playing with you, showing off cool things, and just hanging out during our Launch Weekend, which included Catacombs skull farming, a Catacombs run, and a fun housing showcase where we visited some player-created houses and shops. We’ll be continuing that in September, starting with a Community Server Spotlight! Keep an eye on our social media, forums, Discord, and Twitch for updates on community events like this so you don’t miss a thing.

We are continuing to have conversations with members of the community, read all feedback in email and across all of our platforms, and are looking at ways to work your feedback into our plans, both immediate in the form of fixes and on a larger scale as part of our overall game development and design efforts. Please remember that we are a small team, and are still in Early Access. Some of your best suggestions take time, work, and planning, including ensuring that they will work with the existing plans for features and systems. We value your feedback, and we want to hear it. If you aren’t comfortable posting it publicly in one of our channels, you can share it directly with us by emailing community@citadelstudios.net.

Until next time – see you in Celador!

Discover a world forged by players, where your choices write the story. What role will you play?

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