Ethyrial, Echoes of Yore News

NEW QUEST: The Astrological Aristocrat
A new quest, designed by @Chisme has been added to Dawnrock. Head on over and check out the short quest that has a bit of humor, thrill, and an awesome reward for those who are level 17+!

NEW UPGRADE: Platinum Trimmed Cloak of the Alpha
Quendra would be happy to upgrade your cloak to level 40 if you provide her the platinum leyline thread to do so! +Stats, New Trim

SFX & VFX Class Polish Complete
Chisme crushed it on these!

Shadowcaster
Elementalist
Brawler
Assassin
Shadowblade
Hunter
Spellblade
Berserker
Infuser
Crusader
Ranger
Warden
Cultist
Earthguard
Guardian
Priest
Dragon Knight
Enchanter
Demon Knight
Druid

More New Music
3 new music tracks have been added to the Login Screen, Solitary Isles, and Irumesa - enjoy!

What We're Working On
Clebarius is cookin on the new armor! 2/3 sets are done so far.

Guilds are nearly ready thanks to schreeder & bacoustrips! Bardcore is finishing the UI, as we have all of the data. We are finalizing MOTD and Player Notes, and then will release!

The Bank overhaul is almost complete as well. @Sprocket is going hard on this, and we're doing internal testing this week to make sure it's ready for players.

Cubano is working on the "Forsaken Battlefield" map, check out his work in progress!

Miscellaneous:

FOV Check bugs should be fixed. This is what caused players or monsters that were mid-cast to be untargetable
Subtle effects have been added back for weapon imbues in addition to status effects, which should help indicate when weapons are successfully imbued.
Fortified & Strengthened Drakonium Shield recipes have been fixed
Cooked Spider meat XP value reduced slightly
Cleanse Spirit effect updated
Pike now weight 1lb each rather than 3lb
Tutorial Island and Solitary Isles quest / NPC dialogue continues to receive updates to improve the new player experience
Infused Murkhide Leather now stacks to 100
Spider Hunters quest bugs have been fixed
Paladin Holy Wrath proc chance increase slightly
Healing Salve 10 second cooldown reduced to 1 second
Wolf meat and adrenal gland drop rates were doubled, we've corrected this
Rinthisle gathering chance was bugged and is now corrected
Lunarion Shadow Resistance was previously 35% - ideally for open world leveling mobs we will keep resistances at or below 25%. This has been reduced to 25%
Basics of Cooking now awards the new cooking recipes
Infused T8 items have had their attribute values corrected
T1 catch chances have been updated to increase variety of fish and ensure Pike is not too difficult to catch
The forest spirits on SI have been renamed to Wisps so as not to cause confusion with the mobs on Irumesa
The Leyline Lillies within the Alpha Wolf encounter will now heal the player when walked on
Punch and Kick animations have been sped up to flow much better than before

Thanks so much for your support while we continue to build the world of Ethyrial - see you in game!

Steam Patch 3.2.0 is now live! Happy 4th of July for those of you in the US 🎇

New UI Elements
The Conversation Window has been reworked to be higher quality and feature a 3D portrait of the NPC you're conversing with
The Context Menu has been re-skinned and has an improve visual responsiveness
The Chat Menu has been reworked with an updated font, new visuals, a guild tab, and the option to enable timestamps
Damage numbers can be toggled on/off in the settings menu and have been reworked visually. Offensive numbers will now show ALL individual damage numbers rather than grouping them. Incoming numbers are affected by gravity and use an easy to read font
The battle utility has been reskinned and the damage source bars made larger & easier to read
New Font applied to Loading Screens
Bardcore & Chisme have been killing it implementing these new frames so show them some love! ❤️

Class SFX & VFX 🔥
We've added hundreds of new sounds, such as impact/hit effects, start/channel/finish cast, weapon hit sounds, and more to our library so we can substantially increase the audible fidelity of the game. Chisme has been cranking on this and has fully or partially updated quite a few classes already, including:

Crusader, Berserker, Dragon Knight, Demon Knight, Spellblade, Earthguard, Shadowcaster, and Infuser

New Music 🎷
Yes! I'm a huge nerd and love finding new music for the game. So I've added ~ 20 new tracks, most of which are for dungeons since we were lacking ambient noise for them. We have the music tracks linked in our disccord for you to have a listen!

Mires of Woe
Cubano was cookin' last week on a new Swamp-themed map. Check it out!

QoL & Bug Fixes 🐛
3rd Person Cam:
Left-clicking to rotate the camera will no longer rotate the character to face the camera direction
The cursor stays locked in place when rotating the camera
Holding left click while right-click dragging will make the player run forward in the direction of the camera
After releasing the mouse button after a drag, the cursor will no longer interact with objects below it

Guilds 🛡️
Guilds are complete on the backend and we will be working on the UI for this next 🫡

Settings:
"Lock Element Position" Setting added to lock UI elements
"Reset UI" button added so frames can be restored to their original positions
Toggle chat timestamps added
Floating Damage numbers can be toggled on/off
"Target Both Friendly & Hostiles" can be toggled on or off. Enabling this will allow you to have a friendly and hostile target simultaneously

Misc:
Hotbars now properly save and new players will have the default keybindings assigned to their hotbars
Pathfinding has been significantly improved in most cases. We are still working on this, but the zig-zag movement should be gone when clicking-to-move
Corpse Name Tooltips now have a slightly larger font size
Icons will now appear on some enemy frames to signify their category. We need to update the entire database which we will do gradually over the next week or so
Various optimizations implemented to help improve framerates and general performance
Using the search function within the spellbook should be substantially faster
Cloaks have finally been fully updated with physics and wind effects, and now render properly in game
Hotbar slots now have a light background when 'Show Hotbar Background" is disabled
New right hand stab and slash animations added to some skills
Animations have been reworked so that abilities will always take priority over auto-attacks and will blend back into the auto attacks after being used
Continued SI Quest updates
Tutorial Improvements

Thanks for your patience, we appreciate all of your support from the bottom of our hearts. Excited to adventure with everyone in game!

Steam Patch 3.1.9 is live

Changes and fixes:

- Jess continues to make progress on the Explorer's guild area located near Marshdale, which will house content for high level woodcutters/woodworkers, fishermen, and skinners/leatherworkers.

- Pestering SudsMcDuff to get you guys the Warrens of Thought dungeon (levels 10-13) in the Edrivine Sewers!

- Hotbars should now properly save settings and spell slots.

- We've attempted to implement new fixes to address any desync issues. Let me know if you notice any disappearing players or resources after this patch.

- Dragging Items that are in Hotbar slots should no longer drop them on the ground.

- Menu Icons have been recolored to match the rest of the UI.

- Aetherthistle color has been corrected.

- More SI Quests and Conversations have been updated. Let us know if you encounter any bugs.

- The minimap should no longer zoom out far enough to cause crashes when clicking to move.

- Researching a monster should now be possible once per enemy.

- Continued Pathfinding improvements. (Still not perfect, but getting better)

- Crafting should now dismount players properly.

- Spirit Blast and other spells which affect the player's own time should now work correctly.

- Tab Targeting and interacting with monsters that are close to the player tile should be much more reliable.

We've Rolled out a new tutorial, which serves to educate new players on the most basic systems before heading to Solitary Isles. Gather, Craft, and Fight on a serene Island just off the coast of Seaholm. Let us know if you have any feedback on this - we will continue to improve it over time and make sure that new players stick around to try out more of Ethyrial!

Added a highlight around Dorian's Locker when reaching that part of the quest.

Bugfixes for various conversations around SI.

Updated Guardian "Grit" status effect icon.

New Loading Screen added.

Corrected Stewed Crab recipe XP.

Grass color corrected.

Thanks for your patience as we continue to build out the foundation of a great MMO. Let us know if you encounter any bugs or issues in Irumesa!

Steam Patch 3.1.8 is now up for grabs 🙏

Notes:

- Infusers pets have proper Unit Frames now.

- Party & Raid Frames now work correctly.

- Class / Status Effect Resources go above the hotbar.

- You can now toggle the XP bar and HP/MP bar above the hotbar on/off from the settings menu.

- Hotbar keybindings are now always capital letters.

- Player Infobar/Nameplate will always show in combat

- There is now a setting to make the player Infobar stay on permanently.

- Clicking on the player will now untarget your friendly target.

- Infobars/Nameplates no longer disappear if the unit shares a tile with the player

- Castbar on the Infobar/Nameplate no longer shows "Fireball" when doing previously unsupported tasks.

- Your enemy target now has their name colorized red, so you can tell who you have targeted.

- Your Friendly target similarly has a green name.

- We will update these 'active target' designs soon with a more aesthetically pleasing solution, such as a light border.

- Diagonal Movement now works at any camera angle.

- Invert Camera Rotation setting has been fixed.

- Right Click Camera Rotation setting has been added to the settings menu.

- Various bugfixes related to diagonal movement.

-Shadow Knights and Paragons should have a longer aggro radius, so they don't drop combat after casting a spell.

- Minimap is now larger and zooms out further (possibly too much)

We're testing adding some wind effects for cloaks, which should be rolled out soon along with the actual working physics enabled cloaks.

- Players should now properly dismount when performing an action such as gathering.

- Overweight and Well-Fed Icons updated. Let us know if you like these or not.

- Continued work on SI Quest Dialogue.

- More new dungeon maps being cooked up

- Duskbow DPS adjusted upward slightly.

-Brawler uppercut will now properly interrupt casting when used with the right amount of stacks.

- Thanks for your support while we work out the kinks with the latest patch! ❤️

-Team OG

Steam Patch 3.1.7 is now live on Steam, go grab it!

Server update is going live right now as well.

Diagonal Movement

We've successfully enabled diagonal movement! Pathfinding, when clicking to set a destination is still not perfect, as it priorities diagonal movement, but we are going to continue refining the logic to get the smoothest movement possible.

UI (Part 1)

Bardcore & Chisme have implemented a good majority of the in-game HUD, and will be moving to other major frames such as the quest log, character window, and more next week! Oh.. and MOUSEOVER TOOLTIPS!

360 Camera Rotation

We've successfully enabled free camera rotation to pair with the diagonal movement, and it feels really good. The player is still locked to moving in 8 directions, so you may have to get used to rotating the camera to the nearest 45 degree angle, but it feels natural quite quickly. If you dislike free cam, just lock the camera to cardinal directions in settings.

New Maps

Our newest team member, Cubano is extremely excited to bring everyone new zones / mini dungeon maps. I've attached his first design for you to see - let him know what you think! ❤️

@Jess made an absolutely insane wizard tower just West of Edrivine and is working on The Explorer's guild, which will host the Skinning & Leatherworking, Fishing, and Woodcutting & Woodworking NPCs. You'll find it Southeast of Marshdale on the lakefront when it's complete.

🍎SudsMcDuff has begun working on the SW region of Rendez 🙌

Bank Overhaul Update

The Bank Overhaul is in progress by the one and only @Sprocket - he's making great strides in getting substantially more user friendly bank in place for everyone to enjoy.

Quest Improvements

Winterslice is busy working through Solitary Isles and getting the quests polished up.

Settings Cleanup

Players can now select between left or right click to interact with hotbars in settings. Camera rotation sensitivity, cardinal direction camera rotation, and more are now available.

Critical Bugfixes

Party Chat Range has been fixed to message party members globally
Spawn blocking has been removed for resources - this should make respawns of gatherables feel a lot better
Respawns will now force respawn after 5 cycles of failed respawn attempts - this should make mobs on hills such as phoenixes respawn correctly
Mobs should no longer be able to be hit through floors

Miscellaneous

- Acacia tree bugfixes
- Rat model bug fixes
- Xander's Greataxe fixed to not cause infinite spin-to-win
- More silver, gold, and coal placed around Irumesa
- Cotton placed near Thistlebrook
- Brawler's Rush now interrupts after stunning the target.
- Crystallized Hearts now stack to 5
- Arin Winterfang should now exchange 5 crystallized lunarion hearts and 100g for a lunarion mount
- Earth Ripper bug fixes
- Miniature Vampire Tyrant scaled up slightly
- Arcane Brute Taunt now only occurs when the Brute doesn't actively have threat
- Cooked meat and fish XP adjusted
- Pyreheart and Thundercall recipe bug fixes
- Checkboxes in settings bug fixes
- Spear Auto-attack animation updated
- Ctrl + mouse wheel scroll will now zoom in
- Left clicking most objects will trigger the context menu, including on NPCs
- Class Icons added
- Monster Icons added, will be included in a future patch
- Fonts are being overhauled for readability to Asul
- Class Distribution has been added to the daily rankings update
- Tab Target cooldown was reduced significantly, this was a major annoyance in the past

Thanks so much for your support while we continue to build out an amazing MMO for our players. It's been amazing to see the positive engagement on our recent work and we can't wait to see more MMO enjoyers experience the world of Ethyrial!