Hey everyone,

There’s a new patch which will be going out today around 12 PM US Central Time as per the usual. We’ve got some exciting new content and features for you today, so without further ado, here we go!

Pet Breeding

Pet Breeding is a new mechanic to the game which we are introducing today which adds a new “crafting” class to your Player House. You’ll now find that you have a small dragon terrarium in your home, into which you can place two pets in order to produce a new one! The dragons now have a variety of genetic traits, including primary color, secondary color, spot color, size, and type. By breeding different dragons with different attributes in these traits together, you can create your own combinations over time.

The Pet Breeding system is actually pretty complicated, so you’ll find a new book sitting on the table in your house which goes into the details of how to get started. There’s also a new vendor in the Zoological Gardens area which will sell you a few dragons to get started on your pet breeding adventures.

As with all things we introduce, this is just the “first pass” at this mechanic, and depending on the level of community interest, we will continue expanding it in the future. Right now we are planning on adding in some additional mechanics around the pet itself apart from breeding, such as the ability to have a “happiness” rating on the pet which can be improved by taking it around the world with you and feeding it treats, so look for that in a future update.

Gear Infusions and Affix Rerolling

We’ve heard the lamentations of the higher-level players who are getting all this great new gear in the Shard Dungeons, only to find that the secondary stats are worse than what they already had. We want gear progression in the game to be steady, not take two steps backward every time a new tier of content is released. As such beginning today you can sacrifice your old gear at the Infusionist located in Guild City in order to upgrade your newer gear.

The rules for doing this are simple. You can upgrade armor or weapons. Place the new piece into the top (“Target”) box, and the old piece into the bottom (“Source”) box. When you do so, a calculation will be run to show you what stats will be changed on the target piece. Any secondary stat that the target piece already has, which is lower than the corresponding stat on the source piece, will be upgraded. So for example, if you have a weapon with +100 Strength and +100 Intellect, and another weapon with +110 Strength and +90 Intellect, you can sacrifice the latter to give the former +110 Strength / + 100 Intellect. Note that the source weapon is destroyed as part of this process.

As for affixes, you can now use Glimmering Shards (received from breaking down Epic-level weapons and armor) to re-reoll the affixes on your Epic weapons and rings. Just select the shard in your inventory, then choose the target, and "apply’ the shard to the target. The affix will be re-rolled immediately. For Legendary weapons, you need an Effervescent Shard, which can be gained by breaking down a Legendary weapon. Both affixes will be re-rolled. Note that you are guaranteed for both Epic and Legendary gear not to receive the same affix you currently had in that “slot” with the re-roll.

Pillar Teleporting

Beginning today, when you approach a teleport pillar in-game, you will find a Menu listing all of the other teleport pillars which you have previously unlocked. (As a reminder, to unlock a pillar just get close to it at least once). For the cost of a Runemage Reagent, you can choose any other pillar to be instantly teleported to.

Note that Runemages can still create portals beginning anywhere, whereas to use the new teleport pillar system you must actually go to another pillar first and have unlocked it previously. We have also introduced three additional teleport pillars spread throughout the higher-level zones today as well.

Beta is now Default

The previous Beta branch is now the Default branch for all users on both Oculus and Steam. This brings our chunk-loading system as well as the new Warrior hit detection to everyone in the game. We think we’ve fixed all the reported Beta-specific bugs, but if you come across anything new today, please let us know.

New Sound Design

Today marks the beginning of our new sound design in the game, courtesy of our new team member Jesse! As of this morning’s patch the new sound design is implemented in the Highsteppe area, and you’ll find new ambient sounds throughout the region as well as new attack and death sound effects for each monster in that zone. We’d love to hear what you think of that, so please let us know!

New Armor Designs

We’ve listened to your feedback and re-worked the armor designs for the new Shard Dungeons gear. You’ll find that what was the modeling for the Spiro set is now used as the modeling on the Techno set, and there is a totally new design in place for the Spiro set. We’ve also got an even more epic-looking version of that Spiro design ready to go to use for future content such as Raids.

If you already had that gear, you’ll find the new models are already active after the patch goes live, and all dyes, etc. have been preserved.

Miscellaneous Changes: