NEWSFEED

Patch Notes – Week of May 25th, 2026

RESOLVED ISSUES AND NEW ADDITIONS

  •   Many changes were made in preparation for real weather events. Most of these are related to making these settings not depend on happening at a particular time of day so that weather events could be described that could happen randomly. Doing this work exposed a lot of bugs that were being worked around by custom scripting of the settings in the past, so they were fixed as part of the process.
    • The most noticeable part of this work will be massive improvements to how sunsets look and lighting consistency between different times of day.
  • Fixed Specular Values to several environmental assets that may have been showing as black.
  • Ground Targeting and other projected effects can now be displayed on architectural models when needed.
  • Sky Improvements
    • Added a new dynamically evaluated sky rendering model with support for non-earth type skies and suns.
    • Added realistic modeling for atmospheric haze.
    • Real sunsets and sunrises.
    • Added a fantasy horizon glow effect that can be used at night.
    • Bug Fix: Stars no longer show in daytime.
    • Bug Fix: Fog properly shows against sky and backdrop (in addition to fixing a bunch of minor issues in sky related to how effects show against it)
    • Bug Fix: Fixed a performance and flickering issue related to sky and reflection buffers.
  • Lighting
    • Sun light attenuation is simulated by time of day, haze and weather. This allows weather effects to smoothly transition without having to add special overrides for every time of day in each area.
    • Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where shadows would come from the wrong direction at certain times of day.
    • Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where light would flicker at sunset and sunrise.
    • Bug Fix: Fixes a bug where mountains in the background were lit incorrectly.
    • Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where light rays meant to come from the sun would come from a completely different direction at certain times of day.
  • Atmosphere
    • Fog can be dramatically lit by rays of the sun and scattering from haze in the sky.
    • Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where mountains in the background were fogged incorrectly.
  • Improvements to auto exposure
    • Fixed a bug in scene histogram calculation that made auto exposure brightness unstable and ignore parts of the screen on certain hardware
    • Changed exposure calculations to be more film-like
    • Modified the auto exposure math to increase precision and align better with perceptual brightness.
    • Changed the speed of eye adaption to be more natural and adapt at different speeds depending on daytime, nighttime and current adaption level. It should seem much more natural, perhaps unnoticeable now.
    • Linked exposure controls to the current lights in the scene so that art does not need to adjust them independently.
  • Keep Lord models have been updated to utilize unique equipment.
  • New cliff structures have been added around the northern mining sites in Silvermine Mountains.
  • Added durability to equipment. Equipment has a chance to take damage whenever you are in combat. When your equipment is damaged, it will reduce its stats. Damaged equipment can be repaired with repair kits.
    • Repair kits have been added to the following crafting stations: Blacksmithing, Textiles, Woodcraft, Jewelry, and Artificing.
  • New characters start with enough materials to craft a basic piece of equipment for their chosen class.
  • When players begin to take water damage, their animation will change to better reflect they are in a water hazard.
  • Audio combat triggering and music update.
    • Moving toward distinct combat music for each faction.
    • Prolonged combat greater than 30 seconds invokes heightened musical tension and motifs.
  • Updated SFX and audio for various birds.
  • Updated Party UI to reduce clutter.
  • Updated Warband UI and size to 40 to reduce clutter.
  • Added an option for horizontal Party UI in UI settings.
  • Added a highlight to selected party members.
  • Added an option to display fancy vs simple health bars for self, enemy, and friendly health bars.
  • Fixed a bug that caused bad ground geometry near the edge of zones.
  • Fixed a crash bug related to the terrain heightmap.
  • Fixed a bug causing the self-Snare on Chase to be much stronger than intended; also reduced the duration of the Snare.
  • Fixed a bug causing Living Stone to not have its intended cooldown.
  • Fixed a bug causing Panicked to not be removed when a Control Status is applied.
  • Fixed a bug causing several abilities to not start their CDs correctly in some situations.
    • Dedicated Pursuit
    • Submit
    • Stealth
    • Siege Stance
    • Forbidden Pact
  • Fixed a bug where water SFX would play in incorrect locations.
  • Fixed a crash bug related to characters transitioning between areas or dying.

BALANCE CHANGES

  • The stats for starting gear has been increased across the board.
  • Reduced the aggression range of hostile NPCs at resource control points.
  • Increased the spawn count and radius of hostile NPCs at resource control points.
  • Removed backup spawns when beginning to capture a control point.
  • Added ranged defensive units to Keep structures.
  • Added additional keep gates to outer buildings for defense.
  • Added attrition count for keep guards to reduce after a set number has been defeated.
  • Increased number of spawn locations for resources and fixed broken placements.
  • Updated existing abilities to either cost a class resource or have a cool down. We believe this will add clarity to when your abilities can be used and emphasize each class’s resource mechanic.
  • Greatly reduced out of combat Judgement degen delay
  • Increased base stats of starting armor.
  • Added additional starting materials for crafting upgraded armor for new characters.
  • Improvements to equipment layouts to support tier 4 armors.
  • Adjusted Mana regeneration scaling for Warlocks.
    • Overall, regeneration will be lower in combat and much higher out of combat.
  • Updated many abilities for the Archer archetype, especially Focus costs and cooldowns.
  • Adjusted Focus recovery scaling for Archers.
    • With these changes, we’re leaning into the “burst” nature of Focus recovery, with some abilities having Focus costs and little or no CD, and standard attacks having no cost or CD, giving Archers constant moderate DPS, with periodic burst windows.
  • Blackguard
    • Removed Arcane Torrent and Arrow of Light abilities.
    • Added Marksman’s Ritual and Barbed Head abilities.
    • Updated Arcane Shield and Sign of the Wizard to count as Arcane Spells, so that they can create and upgrade Arcane Sigils.
    • Moved Sign of the Wizard to the Mystic tree.
  • Adjusted the Red Cap’s Caress of Death and Flare of Corruption to count stacks of poison statuses rather than just unique poison statuses.
  • Reworked Veilstalker’s Opportunistic Blow.
  • Reworked Shadow Walker’s Shadow Form.
  • Updated many Performer abilities, especially Focus costs and cooldowns.
  • Performer spells are no longer interrupted by movement.
  • Updated many Devout abilities, especially Faith/Judgement costs and cooldowns.
  • Blessed Crow
    • Increased Cauldron duration to 60 seconds
    • Reworked Bran’s Aid.
  • Updated Ability SFX for the Helbound’s Close Wounds, Meat On The Fire.
  • Updated Ability SFX for the Abbot’s Fearless Charge.

KNOWN ISSUES

  • Occasionally, the Keep’s capture point becomes uncapturable.
  • Tab targeting will currently also select harvesting nodes and harvestable corpses, instead of just enemies.
  • Party and Warband UI may not update until relog or zone transition.
  • There are currently no gold requirements for crafting, which will be changed in the future.
  • If your faction controls the Keep, occasionally the ‘Respawn at Keep’ option on respawn will be grayed out.
  • Gathering when your inventory is full may fail silently with no notification.
  • Empath links may persist when logging in and out – this is a strictly visual effect.
  • Boars killed before PoI capture may not be harvestable.
  • Black Knight’s ability Blackened Blade will not conform to all weapons. Currently it only matches swords.
  • Client performance issues may be encountered when running in fullscreen mode (toggling to windowed mode and back to fullscreen appears to serve as a workaround).
  • Enemy NPCs may stand in place under certain circumstances.
  • Players may fall through the world during zone changes.
  • Expanding your bank currently does not work.
  • Some players may have missing Ability Cast bars.
  • Terrain flickering is present with ‘triangles’ appearing intermittently.
  • Several intrazone teleporters are labeled incorrectly (e.g. ‘Isle of Discordia) – they will teleport you as normal to areas within your current zone.
  • Targeting indicators are visible on terrain, but are not visible on assets.
  • Terrain Level of Detail suffers from pop-in.
  • The game client will often take a while to first draw a window on the screen after hitting ‘Play’.
  • When a new weapon is equipped to your character, and you have an old weapon equipped, the tooltip will incorrectly show the old weapon’s tooltip.
  • Gates are missing their ‘Interact’ prompt.