Announcement Community Letter Release 213/14

*DISCLAIMER*
Most of the following changes and features are still WORK-IN-PROGRESS and NOT FINAL! Some features like e.g. the new ELEMENTAL DUNGEONS (or Secret Lairs) are not complete and their current state is adjusted for testing purposes only.​

Dear Heroes of Dracania,

This letter is an overview of the upcoming features and changes for the next release. Please understand that most of these features and changes are still a work-in-progress and they might change during the test phase according to your feedback.​

We are looking forward to your opinions and hope to see you on the test server. And now have fun with the rest of the letter!​

Your Drakensang Online Team


Main Topics

Economy Rebalancing

We are currently going through all the offers in the game and updating all of the prices.​

Why are we doing this?

The pricing of the game has been major deterrent for years and many players always have argued that the game is too expensive. To finally address this issue, we are looking at the pricing of all of the items in the game – but that is not all. We will also rearrange some of the offers so that some items might be available for gold or other currencies that are currently only available for Andermant right now.​

Will this affect discount events?

Of course, it will. After adjusting all the prices in game, we are also planning to completely get rid of the currently known discount event setup. That doesn’t mean that we won’t have discount events in the future at all, but we will have more specified ones (for example instead of having a 25% discount sale event for all gems we will have discount events for just rubies and with a greater variety of discounts).​

What about Gold?

We are also planning to update the coin income and outgoing for the players. This means that every item in the game will have a proper coin selling price that will increase the coin income for players a lot. We will also adjust the general coin drops. But this comes with a tradeoff – we will also rework all of the coin prices in the game. This includes crafting costs, travel costs and so on. This does not mean that everything will get more expensive. When it comes to crafting, for example, we are planning to scale the coin price for crafting according to the Andermant value of the resulting item. Our plan is to make coins more valuable and more important for all players and not just those who dive deep into the inherited enchentmant crafting.​

Gems

The Gem system has been more complex since the release of the Sands of Malice content expansion and we want to clean that up again.​

What are we going to do?

We will be removing the “old” versions of the gems and just keep the Qaizah versions (but we will most likely renaming them). That means we will exchange all of the existing non-Qaizah gems with the Qaizah ones. But there is more – we also want to expand the system to give older players new goals within the gem system and new possibilities for their characters to grow.​

How will we expand the system?

We are not just going to add new normal gem tiers as this would lead to even higher gem costs for the tiers prior “royal”. What we are planning are rarity levels for the royal gem tier. This means that the players will be able to craft a royal gem into an improved royal gem, a magic royal gem and later also into an extraordinary and legendary version.​

What makes this approach different?

First, the crafting - the player will not craft a royal gem into the improved version by combining 3 royal ones, which always leads to 3 times higher Andermant costs for gems per tier. The player has to use the upcoming crafting ingredients instead and one royal gem to get the improved version. But that’s not all – we will also add a larger power increase to these gem rarity levels. Our target right now is that a legendary version of a royal gem will be twice as powerful as the normal version of that royal gem.​

Runes

Like our plans for the gem system, we would like to simplify parts of the rune system as well. This means that we are planning to combine the two-handed and one-handed weapon runes of each type into one new rune that will grant a bonus based on the slot it is added to.

These changes will affect the following runes:​

• Runes of Celerity (Attack speed)
• Runes of Devastation (Critical damage)
• Runes of Persistence (Block strength)

We will also increase the power level of the new Runes of Celerity to compensate for a part of the power which will be lost by the removal of sapphires (see below).​

Rune	2h Weapon	1h Weapon	Weapon Adornment
New Lesser Rune of Celerity	6%	6%	4%
New Rune of Celerity	10%	10%	6%
New Mighty Rune of Celerity	16%	16%	8%
New Supreme Rune of Celerity	20%	20%	10%

Old Sapphires

There are still many of the old sapphires in the game which give a huge advantage to all players without there being any chance for newer players to keep up with this kind of attack speed level – thus we are planning on exchanging all the sapphires that are still in the game with the new Runes of Celerity.​

The exchange will be done as described in the following table:​

Sapphires	Exchanged to
Flawed Sapphire	New Lesser Rune of Celerity
Splintered Sapphire	New Lesser Rune of Celerity
Simple Sapphire	New Lesser Rune of Celerity
Sapphire	New Lesser Rune of Celerity
Polished Sapphire	New Lesser Rune of Celerity
Radiant Sapphire	New Rune of Celerity
Flawless Sapphire	New Rune of Celerity
Sacred Sapphire	New Mighty Rune of Celerity
Royal Sapphire	New Mighty Rune of Celerity
Old 1h Rune	Exchanged to
Old Lesser Rune of Celerity	New Lesser Rune of Celerity
Old Rune of Celerity	New Lesser Rune of Celerity
Old Mighty Rune of Celerity	New Lesser Rune of Celerity
Old Supreme Rune of Celerity	New Rune of Celerity
Old 2h Rune	Exchanged to
Old Lesser Rune of Grand Celerity	New Lesser Rune of Celerity
Old Rune of Grand Celerity	New Rune of Celerity
Old Mighty Rune of Grand Celerity	New Mighty Rune of Celerity
Old Supreme Rune of Grand Celerity	New Mighty Rune of Celerity

Two-Handed Weapons

We are also planning on increasing the base damage of all two-handed weapons within the game. Our goal is to make two-handed weapons be the weapons of choice for any player wanting to create a damage-focused character build.​

Jesters

With this release, we are also planning to remove the Jesters feature from the game.​

Why are we doing this?

There are three reasons that played a major role in the decision to remove the gambler feature. First – staying in urban areas and throwing money into the jesters to receive rewards is not a very engaging activity in Drakensang Online and we think that players should get their best rewards from defeating monsters in dungeons instead.
And last, you might have heard of the major discussion about gambling mechanics in games. As the Jesters feature could also count as such a mechanic, we have decided that it's best not to wait until legal decisions are made and we are forced to remove this mechanic. As a side note – this will also apply to the lucky spheres and we will also be taking a look at these items in this release.​

What about the Gilded Clovers and Zumpe?

Both of these will be staying in the game. We are planning to implement a totally new way to earn Gilded Clovers. We are also planning to expand Zumpe's shop with new items.​

Secret Lairs

The Secret Lairs will be a completely new set of dungeons that can be reached through every boss room. Whenever a player defeats a boss, a path to a Secret Lair will open up.
There are six different types of lairs:​

• Andermagic
• Fire
• Ice
• Lightning
• Poison
• Physical

The player will be able to enter the Secret Lair by using a special key item. The main element and size of the lair will depend on the element and the difficulty level of the boss the player has defeated.​

Examples​

1. If a player defeats Sigrismarr on normal mode, the player can activate the entrance to the smallest ice lair afterward, with only four platforms
2. If a player defeats Sigrismarr in the Parallel Worlds, the player has a chance of activating either the entrance to the ice lair or the lightning lair, with twelve platforms.

There are four different sizes for each lair that the players can enter depending on where they are coming from. Please see the table below for more information.​

Size	How to enter
4 Platforms	Defeat any boss (except for Grimmag in the tutorial) to enter the smallest Secret Lair type
6 Platforms	Defeat any boss in the additional dungeon difficulty modes (no events or Parallel Worlds!) to enter this version of the Secret Lairs
8 Platforms	Defeat any boss in events (e.g. Karabossa, Dragan or Sewer Worms) to enter the Secret Lairs with 8 platforms
12 Platforms	To enter the largest variants, defeat any boss in the Parallel Worlds!

Each Secret Lair will have a specific loot purpose – this means that if the player wants to farm a specific item type (essences, gems etc.) there will be a lair that fits your needs. During each run, the player will also have several chances to get Gilded Clovers.
One of our design goals for these dungeons is to deliver a high replay-ability. We are using a system we have introduced with the Deeps of Demise dungeon already but with a more refined gameplay experience and a larger variety of random events.
Therefore, we've implemented different platform types to the lairs, which will provide different kinds of challenges.​

Examples​

• The player will still have the typical wave fights like those from events, the Deeps of Demise or the Parallel Worlds
• The player will also encounter Secret Lairs completely swarmed by monsters, guaranteeing the very immersive combat experience DSO is known for
• In addition to that, we will prepare unique challenges that require a very precise fighting styles or exceptionally quick reactions

We're looking forward to your test server feedback and are open to any suggestions to improve or increase the challenges in the Secret Lairs!​

Where will I get the key to the Secret Lairs?

The number of keys that a player will be able to earn will be limited per day. We have not decided on a final choice yet where the player will be able to get these keys, but we are considering adding them to the Daily Login Rewards and Daily Challenges.​

Infernal Difficulties for all Dungeons

With this release, we will also be adding the Infernal difficulties to all normal content dungeons in the game but with a small difference: players will not have access to all Infernal modes.
This means that while Infernal III is the highest available difficulty for Parallel World Dungeons and Event Dungeons, the highest available difficulty for the normal content dungeons will be Infernal II.​

Crafting

It’s finally coming. Some of you already saw a first version of the new crafting features during the testing of release . And since then we have added a lot more to it.​

Stack crafting

We are finally implementing the ability to craft in stacks. This will allow players to craft several items at once, including gems and runes.​

Inherit Crafting

We are aware of the community opinions regarding Inherited Enchantment Crafting – especially when it comes to legendary items. We are still in the process of finding a way to make this type of crafting less frustrating.​

Ingredient Bag

We are implementing an Ingredient Bag, allowing players to collect all of the new ingredients without blocking any general inventory space. The ingredients listed in the bag will be sorted by type and rarity.​

Ingredients

Players will now be able to collect special ingredients from all of the dungeons across Dracania (on difficulty Painful or higher). These are needed to craft a raft of completely new potions and buffs. Ingredients will exist in several rarities which can only be found on specific difficulties (the higher the rarity the higher the difficulty).​

Reduced Crafting Core Types

We are also reducing the variety of crafting cores to make the whole system a bit less complex and the hunt for cores easier. To do this we will be introducing two new crafting cores.
The first one will replace all of the elemental cores (Dark, Blazing, Solid, Shock, Frost, Venom) from the Parallel Worlds and will drop instead of them from Parallel World bosses. All existing elemental cores will be exchanged for the new ones. This means players will not need to farm specific dungeons for specific cores anymore.
The second new core type will be available in all normal dungeons in ALL difficulties. Players will need it to craft the items that you can find in these dungeons. This new core also enables us to introduce the first type of core crafting (Augment) earlier at level 35.
In the end, there will only be just six cores in total – the already known Soul, Pristine, Augment and Draken cores and the two new cores described above. We will also be changing where players can find these different cores.​

Potions, Elixirs, Tonics and Physics

We will be introducing a number of new items to make the player's lives a little easier. Here is a brief overview of the new item types:​

Potions
Potions will restore health and resources. In addition to the common restore potions, we will also be introducing potions which regenerate health or resource over time. There will also be more advanced potions which have a combined effect. For example these would restore a specific amount of health instantly and some more over time.

Elixirs
Elixirs will be a great way of increasing a single stat by a very high absolute value for a short time. Elixirs will be active for 20 seconds and have a cooldown time of two minutes.

Tonics
Tonics will increase a single stat by an absolute value. Tonics will have an active duration two hours.​

Physics
Physics will increase a single stat by a certain percentage. They will come in two variants: simple and advanced. The simple versions will last for 30 minutes while the advanced versions will last for two hours.​

Quests

We will also be implementing a new crafting quest row which will guide players through the new and different crafting mechanics. With these new quests players will be able to unlock most of the crafting possibilities – this means that players can start using these specific crafting methods only after completing the related quest for it.
The new quest row will follow along with the normal game's progression, this means that the crafting quests will only be available at certain levels and in certain regions. In general, crafting quest tasks will send players to Dracania’s dungeons, except for the Parallel World and event dungeons, and only on difficulty Painful and higher. This means that players will need to unlock these difficulties before being able to complete the new quests.
There will be two quests, one normal and one repeatable, in every region. The normal quests will usually teach the player new crafting methods while the repeatable ones will offer players the chance to receive rare crafting recipes for elixirs, tonics and physics, each bound to a specific region.​

Recipes

With the introduction of the new quest row, we have also reworked the way some recipes work. For example: In the current version of the game the players need to buy or find a recipe for any item or set to enable the core crafting methods for it. In the future, there will just be one recipe per core crafting method (Augment, Pristine and Soul) which will unlock the crafting for all items – including future ones!​

Please see the list below for instructions on how and when the different crafting methods will be unlocked:​

Level	Method	How to get?	From where?
12	Rarity Upgrade (Magic)	Quest Reward	Useless Rubbish (3/3)
12	Gem Crafting (Splintered Gem and Simple Gem)	Quest Reward	Useless Rubbish (3/3)
12	Rune Crafting (Lesser Rune -> Rune)	Quest Reward	Useless Rubbish (3/3)
15	Inherit Crafting (Improved)	Quest Reward	Crafting Quest 1 (Kingshill)
20	Inherit Crafting (Magic)	Buy Recipe	Shop: Crafting NPC Kingshill / Resistance Command Center
20	Rarity Upgrade (Extraordinary)	Buy Recipe	Shop: Crafting NPC Kingshill / Resistance Command Center
24	Potion Crafting (All Common Basic Potions)	Quest Reward	Crafting Quest 2 (Kingshill)
24	All Common Duria Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Buy Recipe	Shop: Crafting NPC Kingshill
25	Inherit Crafting (Extraordinary)	Buy Recipe	Shop: Crafting NPC Kingshill / Resistance Command Center
25	Rarity Upgrade (Legendary)	Buy Recipe	Shop: Crafting NPC Kingshill / Resistance Command Center
30	Inherit Crafting (Legendary)	Buy Recipe	Shop: Crafting NPC Kingshill / Resistance Command Center
30	Gem Crafting (Gem, Polished Gem and Radiant Gem)	Quest Reward	Crafting Quest 3 (Resistance Command Center)
30	Rune Crafting (Rune -> Mighty Rune)	Quest Reward	Crafting Quest 3 (Resistance Command Center)
30	All Improved Duria Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Quest Reward	Repeatable Crafting Quest Kingshill - Reward Box
30	All Common Teganswall Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Buy Recipe	Shop: Crafting NPC Resistance Command Center
35	Augment Core Crafting	Quest Reward	Crafting Quest 4 (Jarlshofn)
35	All Improved Teganswall Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Quest Reward	Repeatable Crafting Quest Resistance Command Center - Reward Box
35	All Common Norselands Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Buy Recipe	Shop: Crafting NPC Jarlshofn
35	All Improved Basic Potions	Buy Recipe	Shop: Crafting NPC Jarlshofn
35	All Common Combined Potions	Buy Recipe	Shop: Crafting NPC Jarlshofn
40	Pristine Core Crafting	Quest Reward	Crafting Quest 5 (Ashraya)
40	All Improved Norselands Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Quest Reward	Repeatable Crafting Quest Jarlshofn - Reward Box
40	All Common Atlantis Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Buy Recipe	Shop: Crafting NPC Ashraya
45	All Improved Atlantis Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Quest Reward	Repeatable Crafting Quest Ashraya - Reward Box
45	All Common Myrdosch Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Buy Recipe	Shop: Crafting NPC Andrakasch
45	All Improved Combined Potions	Buy Recipe	Shop: Crafting NPC Andrakasch
50	Gem Crafting (Flawless Gem, Sacred Gem and Royal Gem)	Quest Reward	Crafting Quest 7 (Yaltepetl)
50	Rune Crafting (Mighty Rune -> Supreme Rune)	Quest Reward	Crafting Quest 7 (Yaltepetl)
50	Soul Core Crafting	Quest Reward	Crafting Quest 7 (Hiraja)
50	All Improved Myrdosch Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Quest Reward	Repeatable Crafting Quest Andrakasch - Reward Box
50	All Common Lor’Tac Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Buy Recipe	Shop: Crafting NPC Yaltepetl
50	All Common Qaizah Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Buy Recipe	Shop: Crafting NPC Hiraja
53	All Improved Lor’Tac Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Quest Reward	Repeatable Crafting Quest Yaltepetl - Reward Box
53	All Improved Qaizah Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Quest Reward	Repeatable Crafting Quest Hiraja - Reward Box
55	All Magic Basic + Combined Potions	Buy Recipe	Shop: Crafting NPC Hiraja
55	All Magic Duria Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Quest Reward	Repeatable Crafting Quest Kingshill - Reward Box
55	All Magic Teganswall Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Quest Reward	Repeatable Crafting Quest Resistance Command Center - Reward Box
55	All Magic Norselands Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Quest Reward	Repeatable Crafting Quest Jarlshofn - Reward Box
55	All Magic Atlantis Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Quest Reward	Repeatable Crafting Quest Ashraya - Reward Box
55	All Magic Myrdosch Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Quest Reward	Repeatable Crafting Quest Andrakasch - Reward Box
55	All Magic Lor’Tac Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Quest Reward	Repeatable Crafting Quest Yaltepetl - Reward Box
55	All Magic Qaizah Elixirs, Tonics and Physics	Quest Reward	Repeatable Crafting Quest Hiraja - Reward Box

New Workbenches

As it is sometimes rather crowded around a workbench, especially in Kingshill, we will be introducing new themed workbenches. Players can find these next to their related NPCs – for example, the gem trader. When opening one of the themed workbenches it will automatically select the tab of the theme it is assigned to, gems & runes for example. Players can, however, switch to another tab to use any workbench for any type of crafting they desire.​

Achievements / Titles

With all the new changes within the crafting system, we will also be adding many new achievements and titles for crafting enthusiasts.​

PvP Update

General updates

With this release, we are going to apply a few changes for the PvP battleground in Drakensang. Our goal with these changes is to shift our PvP to a more “based-on-your-action” experience and eliminating the "one-hit-kill" issue.​

Following changes:
- Base values are also named PVP enabled in the item tooltip
o Only these values will be available in PvP battles, except for open arenas
- The following value increases will be deactivated:
o Gems
o Enchantments
o Runes
o Unique values, including set bonuses
o Skill group effects

- Legacy Equipment will have no effect in PvP battles, except for open arenas
- To achieve a better experience a general buff will be active in PvP battles, except for open arenas
- 40% faster movement speed, 200% increased block rate, +3225 (on level 55) to all resistances (level dependent)
- Player summons’ health points will be reduced by 90% in PvP battles (compared to PvE maps and open arenas)

- This applies to the following player summons:
o Mechanical Turret (Steam Mechanicus)
o Machine Gun Turret (Steam Mechanicus)
o Tactical Turret (Steam Mechanicus)
o Guardian / Guardian of Flames (Spellweaver)
o Wild Pack / Wood Wraith (Ranger)

To achieve a better matchmaking with this release, we decided to reset the ELO-System. This means that all current internal player scores will be reset, which will result in quicker matchmaking but the PvP statistics will stay untouched.

Capture the Flag – 5v5
- The movement speed reduction when picking up a flag has been changed to 30%

Storm of the Fortress – 6v6
- Health points and damage values of towers, structures, the Steamdriver, and the Marching Bombs have been adjusted
- To be able to attack the last Protective Tower in the fortress, the attacking team needs to destroy all three Heavy Defensive Towers first
- Healing auras of the defending team have been increased from 4% to 5%
- Healing auras of the attacking team have been decreased from 10% to 5%
- Player summons will no longer target towers, structures, the Steamdriver or the Marching Bombs
- Towers and structures are now immune to damage from the Steam Mechanicus’ Tesla Turret

Sub Topics

Loot

Along with updating all the item values in the game, we will also update all of the existing loot tables.​

Durability

We will be completely removing the durability from the game. This means that players will no longer need to care about if their items may break during a longer farming runs and repair kits are no longer necessary.​

Mounts

We will be removing the differentiation between mounts and epic mounts.​

Pets

We will be introducing rarity levels for pets as well as the possibility to upgrade the pets. Besides that, we have improved the tooltip for pets so that the players can now distinguish between the bonus granted by the pet itself and the collector's bag bonus.​

Shop Updates

We have reworked all of the in-game shops - this means we have reduced the overall amount of different shops and changed their offerings completely. Some of the shops will now offer items that the players have not been able to get for a long time.​

Minimap update

We will be updating the mini-map to be less overcrowded.​

Essences

We will be reworking some of the existing essences as well as introducing new ones.​

Collector’s Bag

There were several items missing from the collector’s bag. These will be added to it in this version.​

Daily Login Bonus

We will be updating the daily login bonus as many of the item values have or will have changed.​

Travel items

We will be introducing several new travel items that allow players to directly teleport to all of the different bosses in Dracania. Thabo will be the one offering these new travel items too (for both Andermant & Realm Fragments)​

Leaderboard Rewards

We will also be updating the leaderboard reward chests and adding to them the possibility of getting pets, mounts, costumes and emotes.​