Project: Gorgon News

It's here! After a rather longer wait than we intended, we are proud to share this new update with you. It's got everything -- dungeons, skills, puzzles, and a scary holiday party.


Alharth is not the real world, and Zhia Lian isn't the goddess of Halloween. Nevertheless it's always been our tradition to hold our scary holiday event at the end of October. But this year we ran into a long series of bugs, leading to a long delay in the update, and the scary holiday had to wait as well.

But never fear! Zhia Lian has finally poked her way into our world with her whimsical demands. The event begins now, and we'll be scheduling the Zhia Lian parties for later this month. Keep an eye on the event calendar or check our Discord #events channel for the latest dates and times.


You can now enter Errruka the Benefactor's home in Povus. This is a very large dungeon with a great many things to discover. It's also probably tuned to be more difficult than we really want -- it hasn't been playtested too much. But we know you've got this. Good luck!

• Crossbow: Knockback Bolts 9 was using ammo one tier lower than intended; this is fixed.
  
• Floxie in the Fae Realm can now train Fletching to 70.
  
• Orcish Battle Cry: fixed bug that prevented this from working.
  
• Priest: Healing amounts for various abilities fluctuated by a few health points due to formula changes.
  
• Priest: Castigate 7 and 8 deal more damage to undead.
  
• Psychology: (OffHand, Necklace) "Mock and Ridicule deal +65 damage and taunt +200" => "Mock and Ridicule deal +43% damage and taunt +200"
  
• Psychology: new treasure effect: (Chest) "Ridicule damage +93 and range +10 meters"
  
• Psychology: new treasure effect: (Ring) "Ridicule damage +93 and target does not call for help"
  
• Psychology: (Chest, Legs) "Psychoanalyze restores 212 Armor to you" => "Psychoanalyze deals +100% damage and restores 130 Armor to you"
  
• Psychology: (Head, Legs) "Strike a Nerve generates no Rage and instead reduces Rage by 610." => "... It also deals +200 Armor damage"
  
• Psychology: (Feet, OffHand) "Strike a Nerve deals +236 armor damage" => "Strike a Nerve deals +100 damage and hastens the reuse timer of But I Love You -1.5 seconds"
  
• Psychology: (Chest, Hands) "Strike a Nerve deals between 60 and 200 extra damage" => "Strike a Nerve deals +80 damage, and has a 33% chance to deal double damage"
  
• Rabbit: "Play Dead boosts your Psychic attack damage +100 for 20 seconds" => +320
  

• Abilities that require specific animal forms now say so in their tooltips.
  
• Clicking a notepad tab now scrolls the text all the way to the top.
  
• Remaining hangout time should no longer show absurd amounts of seconds remaining.
  
• Updated map player indicators once again, to further clarify which direction you are facing.
  
• The old map player indicator styles are available via Settings > GUI > Windows & HUD > Map Player Indicator Styles.
  
• Fixed a bug causing the Performance Appreciation explanation effect to appear when it shouldn't.
  
• Skill Tracker should no longer move around the screen.
  
• Fixed item previews when opening the More Info screen and not clicking around.
  
• Pain Bubble will now show up in debuff lists on current target & party members.
  
• Freezing Mist tooltip now includes Bomb-related mods.
  
• Fixed a bug causing Shocking Grasp to show Spirit Bolt mods.
  
• Updated tooltip for music boxes to reflect the effective level of music supplied.
  

• New items! There are new high level items to discover in loot. Some of these are based on designs created by our early backers. Others are named after important community members as gifts to those players. (And others are just entirely made up by us.)
  
• Eternal Greens and Chalice of Life both now cause Resurrection Sickness. Resurrection Sickness prevents you from consuming more greens or a Chalice of Life for 15 minutes.
  
• Chalice of Life can now only be consumed by druids.
  
• Chalice of Life now stacks to 3.
  
• Many crafted items have significantly boosted innate stats.
  
• Added missing behavior titles for career-long Foxes, Rabbits, and Butterflies. (Earned after staying in that form quite a long time, and lost if you leave the form.)
  
• For players who want to get their friends into the game faster, or players who just hate tutorials, you can use the chat command /leavetut to skip the tutorial island and appear in Serbule. (You can always go back to the island later.)
  
• Gain bonus levels in Brewing when you reach Alcohol Tolerance 80, Alchemy 49, Battle Chemistry 70, Cooking 70.
  
• Completing nightly Povus event quests earns a bit more Xogrite at each reward tier.
  
• When you Miraculously Avoid Death, you also instantly recover 10% of your Max Health. This amount can be changed through treasure and buffs.
  
• Purchasing items from Drima now costs 2 Sir Johnson Bucks instead of 3.
  
• Crafting Caravan: Added an option to purchase a legendary version of the Enhanced Windstep Shoes and Amulet of the Rugged Traveler for 2x the token cost.
  
• Adjusted leather armor so it blends into the world more.
  
• Moved Serbule Hills spawn point closer to the portal to Serbule.
  
• Adjusted raven-form attack speeds for some archery attacks.
  
• Mummies are a little more dangerous.
  
• Polar bears now have Health Regeneration.
  
• Hook beasts attack faster.
  
• Donkeys and cattle now have an innate buff that knocks back any Burst attacker that hits it.
  
• Fixed a bug causing monsters to stop attacking their current targets when a subserver restarts.
  

This minor update includes some neat new stuff, as well as a horde of tweaks and fixes.


This update, we've added an interesting new community feature - the Serbule Community Storage Chest. This is a way for rich players to give back to the community, donating some of their wealth to lease an extra storage slot that anyone can use.

You can find this chest in Serbule in the 'golem house' - the room near the central well that also houses the Account Package Manager and the Legacy Item Helper golems. Players can donate 1 million councils or 20 Live Event Credits to lease a slot in this chest for a month, and all players can take advantage of that slot during that time.

Note that these slots are leased, not purchased, so wealthy players will need to break out their wallet once a month to keep the slots accessible. When the lease expires after a month, the total number of slots available to players in the chest will go down by one. If that means that you now have too many items in the chest, you will only be able to pull items out, not put any more in -- until either you don't have too many items, or someone chips in another cool million (or 20 LECs).

Players can donate as much and as often as they like, up to a maximum of 150 inventory slots total. The Community Chest lists top contributors (by guild and by player) as an incentive to donate, along with 500 Civic Pride XP, a world broadcast, and a mention in the highlight log. (That's the scroll on the login screen, which also gets posted to Discord.)

Remember, these storage slots can be used by *all* players -- so convince your rich friends to donate today!


One of the weird things about Project: Gorgon is that it sometimes expects you to write things down. We do offer an in-game notepad, at least -- and now we've made that notepad more useful by adding tabs.

• You can now organize your notes in up to 5 tabs!
  
• All of your existing notes will be in the first tab.
  
• You can rename the tabs by right-clicking on them.
  
• The hotkey to open the notepad defaults to 'n' and can be changed in System > Keys.

• To help make animal loot stack up better against the loot of bipedal monsters, most types of animals now have a high chance to drop phlogiston. (Look, I don't know. Maybe they ate it?)
  
• Povus: Being in combat no longer stops you from using the Povus quest sign.
  
• Povus: Giving gear to Ishiko the boatwoman in the morning now earns double town XP.
  
• Povus: Ishiko the boatwoman now gives Civic Pride XP for each donation, rather than waiting until you've donated 100 times.
  
• Battle Chemistry: Fixed a bug with the new treasure effects that boosted minigolem damage +25% (along with some other buffs). This boost did not apply correctly. After it worked correctly it was clearly overpowered, though, so it's been reduced to a +15% damage boost.
  
• Increased the chance for monsters in a group to perform self-buffs before engaging in combat.
  
• Priest: Fixed the treasure effect "Triage restores X Health over 15 seconds" -- the highest-tier levels of this effect were weaker than intended.
  
• Fixed a bug from the last major update that caused delayed-healing effects to trigger twice (once when added, and again after the delay).
  
• Added Glamour Berries to the very-rare consumables loot table (the same table that drops Eternal Greens and Minor Panaceas).
  
• Reduced the cost of some LEC items on Cinnamon in Sun Vale.
  
• Reduced pricing on Riston in the Red Wing Casino for multiple items.
  
• New item added to Riston: Liquid Super Buffs! (24 hours) for 150 LEC.
  
• Slightly increased the chance to loot Pixie Dust on appropriate mobs.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused Chitterface to not drop its quest item if you had killed it in the past 3 hours.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented necromancer pets from being targeted by burst attacks, group buffs, and area heals
  - Dev comment: the bug was that they couldn't be burst-attacked. In fixing that bug, they became targetable by beneficial spells as well. This wasn't part of the original design of the skill (in particular they were supposed to be immune to most types of healing), but we want to see how this change feels in play.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented some creatures from tracking aggro properly.
  
• Young Krakens for the Serbule Druid quest will now stick around for the entire duration of the event.

• Main storyline quests are now marked in the Quest Log.
  
• Your current hangout is now viewable from inside the Quest Log, at the top of the list of quests
  
• An item's associated quests are now shown in the "More Info" window. (Only the quests you are currently on, not ALL quests!)
  
• When viewing a work order at the board, you can now view its associated recipe (if you have it unlocked) by right-clicking on the work order icon.
  
• Docile enemies (those that don't attack-on-sight) now have their own nameplate color. It defaults to white; you can change that in Settings > GUI > Colors.
  
• Made "deliver" quests more obvious by adding the number of items to deliver to the text.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the XP Tracker to reset its position on launch.
  
• The current number of free inventory slots is now always visible in the window, even at the smallest size.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused nameplates to not sort properly, so closer ones would appear behind further ones.
  
• Updated the map UI with new icons for characters and pins.
  
• Fixed a bug that made certain ambient sound FX lower than intended.
  
• Performance & Dance Appreciation effects are now more obvious.
  
• The current Appreciation level is visible on the buffs themselves.
  
• A new icon will appear when you are actively appreciating a performance. It shows the level of the current performance and explains how your current buff levels change over time.

• Failed network calls on the login screen should no longer cause the Loading screen to hang after picking your character.
  
• Your character should no longer get "stuck" and keep moving with your mouse even when you aren't holding in right-click.
  
• Updated to Unity version 2021.3.29. This should fix several bugs in Linux, including:
  - Some parts of the screen are inaccessible to the mouse when in full-screen mode.
  - Clicking and dragging the mouse doesn't lock the cursor.

This is just a quick bug-fix update, with some added chemistry!


Small change to the "Healing Mist hastens X" treasure effects to allow them to apply to all targets of the mist, not just the caster:

• (Hands): "Healing Mist hastens the remaining reset timer of Pep Talk by 10 seconds (if Pep Talk is not already ready to use)" => "Healing Mist accelerates the current reuse time of Pep Talk (for any targets that use Pep Talk)"
  
• (Head): "Healing Mist hastens the remaining reset timer of Reconstruct by 10 seconds (if Reconstruct is not already ready to use)" => "Healing Mist accelerates the current reuse time of Reconstruct (for any targets that use Reconstruct)"
  
• (Ring): "Healing Mist hastens the remaining reset timer of Regrowth by 10 seconds (if Regrowth is not already ready to use)" => "Healing Mist accelerates the current reuse time of Regrowth (for any targets that use Regrowth)"
  

And a few more new treasure effects for battle chemistry healing:

• New: (Legs): "Healing Mist accelerates the current reuse time of Mend Flesh (for any targets that use Mend Flesh)"
  
• New: (OffHand, Necklace): "Bomb attacks deal +50 damage and cause your next Healing Mist to restore +50 Health over 30 seconds"
  
• New: (Head, Chest): "Bomb attacks deal +61 damage and cause your next Healing Mist to restore +70 Armor over 15 seconds"
  
• New: (Hands): "Acid Bomb deals +61 damage and causes your next Minor Heal ability to restore +41 Health"
  

• Fixed a bug preventing BC golems from using their new abilities.
  
• The Battle Chemistry trainer in Rahu is no longer afraid of scary animals.
  
• Lowered the cost of training new golem abilities a fair amount.
  
• Animal forms are treated as always having an "unarmed weapon" equipped.
  
• Werewolves are treated as always having an "unarmed claw weapon" equipped.
  
• Combined Extra Toes & Knee Spikes effect descriptions into a single effect.
  
• Fixed bug with treasure effect "Toxic Irritant deals +N damage. If target has 5 or more Damage-over-Time effects, it also stuns them". This effect incorrectly always stunned the target.
  
• Fixed a bug with the Battle Chemistry treasure effects that boost flat acid and poison mitigation: the acid one was buffing poison and vice versa. They've been swapped to match their descriptions.
  
• Fixed a bug with the effects "You heal N health/armor/power every other second while under the effect of Haste Concoction". These effects incorrectly applied their healing every second instead of every other second.
  
• The minigolem's abilities no longer display buff info about minigolem-summoning abilities.
  
• Tweaked audio falloff settings of nightmare creatures.
  
• Fixed a bug causing your own avatar to not respect the "Avatar Portraits" setting.
  
• Sped up recipe sorting.
  
• Fixed assorted typos.
  

This update sees some serious upgrades for Battle Chemists, improvements to pet and enemy AI, an XP system tweak, and - as always - a lot of bug fixes large and small.


We've heavily revised Battle Chemistry in this update. This will seem like an especially large change, because it is! Battle Chemistry was "skipped over" during the last round of skill rebalancing because we were considering splitting the skill into two separate skills. But after prototyping that split, it doesn't seem more fun than what we already had. So instead we're embracing the skill's quirky nature and refining the ways you can take advantage of its many tools.

While most of these changes should be good news to battle chemists, note that there's an effective nerf, too: we've fixed a bug that allowed you to take off your Mutation-buffing equipment but still keep the benefits of that equipment. The intended behavior is that taking off equipment disables all the buffs it provided. (This should be true for all skills, btw! If you find places where that isn't the case, please report it.)

Battle Chemistry has three key features: the programmable golem pet (also called a "minigolem"), Mutations, and chemical attacks and buffs. We'll give the details for each. To help you adjust your character to these changes, Battle Chemistry Transmutation costs will be much lower for the rest of August.

[h2]Mini-Golem[/h2]
Battle Chemistry features a programmable golem which is given a list of rules to follow in combat. Previously, it checked its rules once every 5 seconds, meaning that it only used an ability once every 5 seconds. To improve responsiveness, the golem now chooses an ability every 3 seconds. Golem abilities that previously had a 5-second reuse time now have a 3-second reuse time: Poison Bomb Toss, Taunting Punch, and Healing Injection. These abilities were revised based on this new reset time.

The "Trigger Golem" side-bar ability is no longer a toggled ability. It now has a 15-second reuse time. Using the ability will instruct the golem to immediately check its ruleset and choose an ability, rather than waiting until its regular 3-second timer is up. (You can use the golem conditional "Owner has triggered golem" to program a specific response to this ability.)

The golem was already a pretty good healing-bot, so it has comparatively minor buffs in that area. Its combat abilities, on the other hand, have been improved dramatically as there was much room for improvement. For historic reasons Battle Chemistry has a bunch of three-slot treasure effects for the golem -- meaning that the same power can show up on Chest, Legs, and Head gear, for instance -- and that seems interesting because it allows you to really hone in on a few specific golem abilities. But since "programmability" is the point of the golem, we don't want your gear to lock you out of using other abilities too much. So all those three-slot effects also boost the golem's overall damage or health.

Next is a list of all the changes. Before we begin, a note on syntax. Here's how we document a change to a treasure effect:

• (SlotsThisPowerCanShowUpOn): "This effect does blah blah blah at level 100" => changed behavior of the effect at level 100
  

With that out of the way, here's the golem-related changes:

• UI: fixed blank ability labels in golem programming UI window
  
• Fixed the ability icons of some of the mini-golem's abilities
  
• New golem conditional group: "Any group member is below X% Health"
  
• Minigolem abilities: all damaging abilities deal more damage
  
• Minigolem abilities: all abilities now scale to level 80. You can purchase the new ability tiers from the usual dude in Rahu
  
• Minigolem ability Rage Acid Toss: now aoe-splashes to hit all enemies within 20m of its target. (Primary target can still be up to 35m away)
  
• Minigolem Rage Mist abilities: reset time is now 5 seconds instead of 15. (But ability still requires a full Rage bar)
  
• Minigolem Rage Acid Toss abilities: reset time is now 5 seconds instead of 30. (But ability still requires a full Rage bar)
  
• Minigolem Self Destruct abilities: aoe range increased from 10m to 20m
  
• Minigolem Taunting Punch abilities: increased innate temp-taunt so that golem can briefly pull aggro more reliably
  
• (Head, Necklace): "Your golem minion's Taunting Punch deals +100 damage" => "Your golem minion has +25% Max Health and its attacks taunt +600"
  
• (Chest, Legs, Head): "Your golem minion's Poison Bomb deals +82 damage" => "Your golem minion's attacks deal +120 damage"
  
• (Hands, Feet, Ring): "Your golem minion's Self Destruct deals +360 damage" => "Your golem minion's attacks deal +25% Damage, and its Self Destruct deals +777 damage"
  
• (Head, OffHand, Necklace): "Your golem minion's Rage Acid Toss deals +243 damage" => "Your golem minion's attacks deal +25% Damage, and its Rage Acid Toss deals +357 damage"
  
• (Ring, MainHand, Feet): "Your golem minion's Doom Admixture deals +340 damage" => "Your golem minion's attacks deal +25% Damage, and its Doom Admixture deals +340 damage"
  
• (Legs, MainHand): "Your golem minion's Invigorating Mist heals 58 health" => "Your golem minion's Invigorating Mist restores +58 Power"
  
• New treasure effect: (OffHand): "Your golem minion's Fire Balm absorbs the first 198 Fire damage you suffer in the next 15 seconds"
  

[h2]Mutations[/h2]
Mutations are the Battle Chemist's signature buff. Mutation abilities go on your sidebar. You use these abilities on yourself and your allies, and they provide potent buffs that last an hour. There's only one small catch: you can only have one Mutation on you at a time. For that reason, all available Mutations need to be pretty good, or else you'd use a better one instead! We've whittled down the previous five Mutations into three: Extra Toes grants nimbleness and speed and makes your Kicks dramatically better. Extra Skin protects you from damage, and Extra Heart helps you regenerate Power and, to a lesser extent, Health.

Here's the details:

• The abilities "Mutation: Knee Spikes" and "Mutation: Extra Toes" have been combined, giving the benefits of both in one. For fiction reasons, the name Extra Toes makes more sense than Knee Spikes. But the old Knee Spikes ability had more tiers, which makes for smoother leveling. So we've dropped the old Extra Toes ability and renamed the old Knee Spikes ability to Extra Toes. If you're confused, we don't blame you, but long story short: if you were using Knee Spikes OR Extra Toes, you'll want to make sure that Extra Toes is on your ability bar.
  
• The ability "Mutation: Stretchy Spine" has been retired as being too niche. Its treasure effects were revised to apply to other mutations instead.
  
• Extra Heart abilities: instead of boosting Power Regeneration, now boosts Combat Refresh Power Restoration
  
• Treasure Effects that previously boosted Knee Spikes now boost Extra Toes
  
• Mutations: fixed bugs that caused treasure buffs to remain on targets even if the caster unequipped the treasure responsible for the buff
  
• (Chest): "Your Stretchy Spine mutation randomly repairs broken bones twice as often" => "Your Extra Heart mutation grants you -50% Indirect Poison Vulnerability and randomly repairs broken bones over time"
  
• (Head, Chest): "Your Knee Spikes mutation also causes kicks to restore 22 Health to the kicker" => "Your Extra Toes mutation also causes kicks to restore 44 Health to the kicker"
  
• (Legs): "Your Knee Spikes mutation causes kicks to deal an additional +24% damage" => Your Extra Toes mutation causes kicks to deal an additional +30% damage
  
• (Hands, MainHand): "Your Extra Skin mutation causes the target to heal 67 Health every 20 seconds" => 78 every 15 seconds
  
• (Necklace, OffHand): "Your Extra Skin mutation provides +22 mitigation from Slashing attacks" => +27 mitigation from Slashing and direct Acid damage
  
• (Legs, MainHand): "Your Extra Skin mutation provides +22 mitigation from Piercing attacks" => +27 mitigation from Piercing and direct Poison damage
  
• (Hands, OffHand): "Your Extra Heart and Stretchy Spine mutations grant the target +67 Max Health" => "Your Extra Heart and Extra Skin mutations grant the target +71 Max Health"
  
• (Necklace): "Your Extra Heart mutation causes the target to regain +74 Power every 6 seconds" => every 8 seconds
  
• New treasure effect: (Feet): "Your Extra Toes mutation grants the target +100% Knockback Resistance"
  
• New treasure effect: (Legs): "Your Extra Toes mutation grants the target +58% Slow/Root Resistance"
  
• New treasure effect: (Chest): "Your Extra Heart and Extra Toes mutations grant the target +67 Max Power"
  
• New treasure effect: (Head): "Your Extra Heart mutation grants the target +23% Max Power"
  
• New treasure effect: (Hands): "Your Extra Toes mutation grants the target +15.5% Ranged Evasion"
  

[h2]Splashin' Chemicals[/h2]
While Battle Chemistry isn't intended to be a damage powerhouse, it still had room for improvement in terms of synergizing with other combat skills. Each of the skill's three main bomb abilities now has a treasure effect that adds a corresponding damage-over-time (DoT) effect. Note that these DoTs are a little special: unlike most DoTs which tick every 2 or 3 seconds, these DoTs tick every second. As a result, flat indirect damage boosts are more potent for these specific DoTs.

Since Extra Toes is all about kicking, it seemed a shame that the Unarmed skill couldn't take full advantage of it for themselves (because they'd need to hold a beaker). So we've added new Alchemist's Claw craftable weapons specifically to enable this skill combination. (They're kind of a pain to craft, though -- not intended for beginners.) We've also added craftable staff-beakers so you aren't as reliant on the handful of random loot items that enabled that combination before.

There are also new crafted items that allow spiders, giant bats, and pigs to use Battle Chemistry! These recipes are rather difficult, though, and may require the assistance of an expert crafter (with hands).

Here's the change list:

• Kohan in Rahu now teaches recipes for Alchemist's Claw weapons, which are complex unarmed/battle chemistry hybrid weapons. Crafting requires Gadgeteering 50 and a high level of Toolcrafting.
  
• Ufkar in Rahu now teaches recipes for Chemistry Staff weapons, which allow all manner of staff-based skills as well as Battle Chemistry. Crafting requires Gadgeteerig 50 and a high level of Carpentry.
  
• Staff-Beaker combo weapons (such as the Beaker-Stick and the new Chemistry Staff) are now elligible to have Staff treasure effects on them. (And Fire Magic effects for fire-staff-beakers.)
  
• Yogzi in Sun Vale teaches recipes for Arachnid Mechaharnesses, which allow spiders to use Battle Chemistry. Crafting these intricate belts requires high levels of Toolcrafting skill.
  
• Yogzi in Sun Vale teaches recipes for Aerosolizing Bat Harnesses, which allow giant bats to use Battle Chemistry. Crafting these exotic belts requires high levels of Toolcrafting skill.
  
• Backfat in the Fae Realm teaches recipes for Porcine Blast Dispersers, which allow pigs to use Battle Chemistry. Crafting these bizarre bracelets requires high levels of JewelryCrafting skill.
  
• Toxin Bomb abilities: base damage increased
  
• Toxic Irritant abilities: no longer a melee attack; now a ranged projectile attack with a 10m range
  
• Mycotoxin Formula abilities: base damage increased
  
• Acid Bomb ability: ability now does both direct Health and direct Armor damage. Power cost and base damage increased
  
• Freezing Mist ability: reset time changed from 45s to 30s. Ability fully functions as a Bomb. (The fire DoT treasure effect previously didn't work on it). Damage revised upwards.
  
• (Chest, Feet): "Acid Bomb Damage +53%" => +59%
  
• (Feet, Ring): "You heal 26 health every other second while under the effect of Haste Concoction" => 36
  
• (Hands, Chest): "You regain 18 Power every other second while under the effect of Haste Concoction" => 34
  
• (Necklace, Legs): "Freezing Mist restores 165 Armor to you" => "Freezing Mist restores 165 Health (or Armor if Health is full) to you"
  
• New: (Head, Off-Hand): "Acid Bomb deals 198 Acid Damage to Health and Armor over 6 seconds"
  
• New: (Hands, Necklace): "Mycotoxin Formula deals 392 Nature Damage to Health over 8 seconds"
  
• New: (Chest, MainHand): "Toxin Bomb deals 385 Poison Damage to Health over 7 seconds"
  
• New: (Hands, Ring): "Freezing Mist Damage +195 and Reuse Time -7 seconds"
  
• New: (Hands): "Toxic Irritant deals +61 damage. If target has 5 or more Damage-over-Time effects, it also stuns them"
  
• New: (OffHand): "Toxic Irritant Damage +52 and Range +20"
  
• New: (Ring): "Toxic Irritant causes the target to suffer +15.5% from Acid Damage (including Toxic Irritant) for 15 seconds."
  

[h2]Pet Logic[/h2]

• Pets can now target Feared monsters. (They still cannot attack Mesmerized monsters.) This is an experiment; let us know if you like this change.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause pets to stop responding to Sic 'Em and/or Clever Trick instructions.
  
• Potential fix for pets returning home too quickly. We'll monitor this to see if more needs to be done.
  
• When an Animal Handling pet tries to determine a target for Sic 'Em or Clever Trick, it can now check its owner's target's target. This means that if you have the group tank selected and use Sic 'Em, the pet can lock on the group tank's target.
  
• Fixed several subtle bugs where monsters and pets wouldn't use the right ability at the right time.
  

[h2]New Experimental Gameplay System: Monster Gang Buffs[/h2]
Many monsters can now notice when they're ganging up on a target. When these monsters notice they're fighting alongside others, they will sometimes choose to stop fighting and buff themselves. This buff takes 5 seconds to cast, leaving them helpless during that time. Different types of monsters have different buffs; some are mild while others are pretty strong. The intention of this system is to add some variance to larger battles.

These buffs all have the same visual cue: the monster will be surrounded briefly in a green bubble with an up-arrow floating over it.


[h2]XP Dropoff Change[/h2]
A few months ago, we made some changes to how much XP you earn from enemies above and below your level. we asked for your feedback on how this affected you, and based on that feedback we've revised how killing higher-level monsters works. Previously if your combat skill was more than 25 levels above the monster's level, you earned 0 XP. Now the monster's XP will downscale up to 100 levels of difference, effectively letting players kill any monster in the game and get a level-appropriate amount of XP for doing so. Note that after downscaling, higher-level monsters will earn roughly the same amount of XP as same-level monsters. So there's no big incentive to hunt monsters that are dramatically higher-level than you... there's just no punishment for doing so.




[h2]VIP Challenge[/h2]
The VIP Challenge that ran during the Summer Sales didn't do as well as we had hoped. We really wanted to give you more stuff! But we understand that money is tight for a lot of us. As a consolation prize ... err, participation prize, anyone who was a VIP member during the VIP Challenge has a new redemption available. You can find your special redemptions by clicking on the Persona tab on the right-hand sidebar, and then clicking on the icon of a present on the bottom right of that panel.


[h2]Combat[/h2]

• Basic Attacks: many Basic Attacks deal slightly more damage at high level.
  
• Pig Frenzy ability: changes to the damage boost amount at each ability tier; highest tier changed from 60 to 118.
  
• Pig: (Legs, Ring) "Frenzy restores 30 power to all targets" => 76
  
• Pig: (Main Hand, Necklace) "Grunt of Abeyance restores 28 Power to all targets" => 52
  
• Pig: fixed some treasure effects that did not yet scale past level 80.
  
• Survival Instincts' Lend Grace ability: significantly increased Power regeneration. The stated +10% evasion buff is now actually applied.
  
• Rattail-Ring of Screeching: Nature Damage bonus reduced from +20% to +10%.
  
• The Sonic Burst Combo mod for bats will now do the correct damage on the final step.
  
• Toxic Flesh abilities: deal more damage to melee attackers.
  
• Hammer treasure effect: (Feet): "Rib Shatter dispels any roots or slows you are currently suffering. Power cost to sprint in combat is reduced -3 for 9 seconds" => "Rib Shatter dispels any roots or slows you are currently suffering. Sprint Speed is increased +3 and Power cost to sprint in combat is reduced -3 for 9 seconds"
  
• Droaches: high level Droach monsters deal more damage when their armor is depleted.
  
• Fixed a bug where monsters with special opening moves wouldn't always use them.
  
• Fixed an issue that might be the cause of reported "DoT persists for way too long" bugs. We'll monitor this to see if more needs to be done.
  
• Fixed bug that prevented earning auxiliary-combat-skill XP if you didn't earn XP in both of your main combat skills.
  

[h2]Other[/h2]

• Added work orders for all new angling fish. These can be found randomly at the work order sign in Sun Vale and the Red Wing Casino.
  
• Added new "bulk" work orders for fish. These bulk orders require 99 fish and have a higher payout rate than normal. These work orders can be found as Angling junk loot.
  
• Reverted changes to fish fillet icons that unintentionally broke match-3.
  
• Elite Training Dummies have been renamed to Healthy Training Dummies, and no longer give combat wisdom.
  
• Fixed a bug where learning teleportation from Elmetaph would break future crafting animations.
  
• "Prioritize Unlooted Corpses" setting will no longer cause tab-targeting to stick to unlooted corpses.
  
• Fixed a bug causing some ability tooltips to show the wrong damage type when the type is changed via an item mod.
  
• Fixed a bug causing Skill XP Tracker to change its position.
  
• Fixed a bug causing tooltips to blink in the wrong spot when Use Tooltip Animation is disabled.
  
• Fixed a bug causing the minimap to be invisible until you toggle its visibility in settings.
  
• Search golem item results will no longer have a "1" in the icon.
  
• The crafting error message for being in the wrong area is now more accurate. (It tells you you must be IN the required area instead of NEAR it.)
  
• The Create New Character UI now scales with the screen size properly.
  
• Fixed a couple instances in the UI where the waving flag is invisible at certain resolutions.
  
• Default enemy nameplate color is now red.
  
• Fixed a bug preventing you from turning left/right after crafting certain recipes.
  
• Replaced the animations of several crafting recipes to be more accurate, rather than just sitting.
  
• Fixed some graphical problems with elven faces and hair.
  
• Lowered volume of some sounds, including eating and drinking sound effects and the water-ball particle effect used by some monsters.
  
• Revised audio settings on fireworks.
  
• Reduced horse selection hitbox size.
  

This is a relatively small update with some relatively large changes. In brief: based on player feedback, we're reverting some of the recent balance changes we made to Power generation and consumption. In addition, we've also taken some time to optimize performance in some areas to improve framerate. And, of course, there are bug fixes.


We agree with the general feedback that the recent Power changes were too much too fast. We've reverted the Power costs to levels from before the June 28 update, with a few minor deviations. We'll continue to work on Power accessibility tools and may increase Power costs more slowly in the future.


There are some new Hammer effects related to Power consumption, as well as a tweak to a new Sword effect.

• Hammer: Slight changes to cost and potency of Reckless Slam and its treasure effects.
  
• New treasure effect: (Off-Hand, Necklace) "Core Attacks cause the next Look At My Hammer to restore +50 Power"
  
• New treasure effect: (Feet) "Rib Shatter dispels any roots or slows you are currently suffering, and Power cost to sprint in combat is reduced -3 for 9 seconds"
  
• Sword treasure effect tweak: (Hands, Feet) "All Sword abilities deal +13% damage to targets with less than 33% of their Max Rage." => +18%
  
• Known bug: the Fire Magic ability Flesh to Fuel currently costs Power (it should be free). This will be fixed in the next game update
  

This update includes a number of optimizations in specific problem areas that should improve graphics performance and framerate. Optimization is an ongoing process; it hasn't been a high priority while we are in Early Access, but as we move closer to launching it becomes more important. We made a start on some of the more notorious spots for bad performance in this update and we'll continue with other problem areas as time permits.

• Optimized lighting in Povus city to improve framerate, particularly at night.
  
• Fixed some LODs in Povus to reduce pop-in.
  
• Optimized Gazluk terrain, which should fix most framerate issues in that zone.
  
• Fixed framerate issues in Kur at one of the orc camps.
  
• Optimized UI updates of nameplates. This should have a significant performance boost when using the new UI in areas with a lot of entities.
  
• Persona and Mount cameras now turn off when those windows are not open; previously they were always on and wasting time being rendered.
  

As you may know, you can visit the Gorgon Shop to purchase an optional 'backer package' to help support Project: Gorgon. These packages have some nice benefits, from a free horse to spontaneous snack cakes. They also include VIP time, which comes with some of its own nice benefits, like extra inventory. (You can read more about the VIP program here.)

One of the problems with all of our old backer packages (what we now call Primary Packages) is that you can only apply one package to your account. Players who wanted to purchase another backer package to show their continued support couldn't do that -- until now.

We're now introducing our first Gorgon Shop Add-On Backer Package - the Summer 2023 Add-On! As the name implies, you can purchase an Add-On package in addition to a Primary package and get the benefits of both. But you don't have to use the Add-On as an add-on: you can purchase it even if you don't have to have a Primary Package yet, and you'll be able to add a Primary later if you wish. But note that you can only purchase one of each Add-On package! So the new rule is: You may have one Primary Package and one of each Add-On package per account.

The Summer 2023 Add-On package is very much intended as a way for players to support the game, with a planned price of $75 USD. Here are the planned benefits:

• Auto-unlock the advanced Orc character race for your account when they become available. (Orcs have not yet been implemented! Normally you would need to complete in-game quests to unlock the Orc race.)
  
• Receive a unique cosmetic mini-pet for all characters on your account.
  
• Be granted the special title "Summer's Fairest".
  
• Receive a unique new food to help level your Gourmand.
  
• 9 months VIP membership.
  

PLEASE NOTE: The Summer 2023 Add-On package will be available in a few days, and the details are still subject to change until then. In addition, please keep in mind that the Orc player race is not yet available; you won't actually be able to make an Orc until we finish developing them. You can claim the other rewards immediately.

If the new package is popular, we'll explore adding more of them in the future.

• Items can now be summoned from the Warden chest when in Kur.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused dropped items to appear above the character instead of on the ground; this was notably bad in the Red Wing Casino, where items would seemingly disappear into thin air (but were actually stuck in the walls).
  
• The events on the login page now auto-scroll.
  
• Some light polishing of the login screen.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the waving flag on the login screen to disappear at certain resolutions.
  
• Fixed a formatting error in the score in the golf UI.
  
• Fixed a bug with spring fairy gear that caused elves to have purple skin.
  
• Animal players should no longer "ping-pong" (rotate back and forth very quickly) when standing still in certain scenarios.
  
• Pigs & deer no longer rotate when strafing left & right.
  
• Polished "On Fire" particles.