COMMUNITY

[Developer's Note] December Update Preview

10 hours ago

Hello, this is DEV Allanon.

The mornings have turned noticeably chilly, and it's time to bring out the heavy coats.

In today's Developer's Note, I'd like to give you an early look at what we're preparing for the December update.

This update will introduce the fifth Space Time Distortion, along with major overhauls to the Gold system and item Tradability. We'll also continue our Character Utility Improvements.

Let me walk you through each change.

(* All English terminology is not final and can change in the update.)

Fifth Space Time Distortion – Garvan, War God of the Void

Garvan, the War God of the Void, is a martial artist who cast aside even his life and emotions to reach the pinnacle of martial arts, then stepped into the abyss of space and time of his own accord. He awaits you in the fifth Space Time Distortion, Forsaken Isle of the War God.

■ Battle Concept – Overwhelming Pure Might

Our top priority in creating Garvan wasn't just to make a boss that hits hard and is difficult to beat. We wanted a boss that fully showcases the hard-hitting combat action of Vindictus. Garvan is a martial artist who fights with his entire body instead of a weapon. Instead of relying on environmental mechanics or long cinematics, the battle comes down entirely to how precisely you respond to his attacks.

Words can only convey so much about how this battle feels, so we hope you'll face Garvan yourself when the update arrives and share your thoughts with us.

■ New Insignia Slot and Progression

The fifth Space Time Distortion adds a new Accessory slot: the Insignia.

You can obtain the War God's Insignia from the Garvan battle. As with previous Space Time Distortions, you can grow it into the top grade, the War God's Complete Insignia, with Magic Power Infusion.
Insignias come with their own exclusive Enchants. Alongside Prefix Enchants that raise your stats, new Suffix Enchants that reduce Artifact cooldowns will be added.
A new Transcendent grade will take the existing Fallen One's Complete Rhod Compass and The Watcher's Complete Artifact one step further. Advancement keeps your Enchants and equipped status, and requires materials from the fifth Space Time Distortion.

■ Insignia-Exclusive Enchants

Enchant	Required Level	Stats / Effect
Rank 3 Prefix	Level 115+	ATT +700, M. ATT +700, ATT SPD +1, Critical +3, BAL +2, ADD DMG +100
Rank 4 Prefix	Level 110+	ATT +450, M. ATT +450, Critical +1, BAL +1
Rank 3 Suffix	Level 115+	Reduces Artifact cooldown by 20 seconds
Rank 4 Suffix	Level 110+	Reduces Artifact cooldown by 10 seconds

Insignia-exclusive Enchants can only be applied to Insignias, and existing Rhod Compass Enchants cannot be used on Insignias.

(*The actual English names of each enchantment has not been finalized.)

■ Transcendent Rhod Compass and Artifact Advancement

To give the first players to take on Forsaken Isle of the War God a reward worth the challenge, Garvan's Loot will include the key materials needed to advance Complete Rhod Compasses and Artifacts to the Transcendent grade. The Transcendent grade has 1,000 more ATT and M. ATT and 200 more Destruction than the Complete grade, and advancement keeps your Enchants and equipped status.

Material	Fallen One's Complete Rhod Compass → Transcendent Rhod Compass	The Watcher's Complete Artifact → Transcendent Artifact	Source
War God's Essence	2	3	Garvan's Loot (Space Time Box), Space Time Fragment Exchange Shop, Marketplace
War God's Remnant	20	30	Garvan's Loot (Space Time Box), Space Time Fragment Exchange Shop, Marketplace
Tarian Steel	40	60	Garvan's Loot, Space Time Fragment Exchange Shop, Marketplace
Uaithne Crystal	2	3	Garvan's Loot (Core Boost), Space Time Fragment Exchange Shop, Marketplace
Mysterious Shard Grade 3	20	30	Space Time Fragment Exchange Shop, Marketplace
Abyssal Shard Grade 3	20	30	Space Time Fragment Exchange Shop, Marketplace
Gold	100,000,000	150,000,000	-

War God's Essence and War God's Remnant are tradable materials. You can find them under Materials > Other on the Marketplace.

■ Departure and Changes to Existing Space Time Distortions

Forsaken Isle of the War God shares the weekly Departure limit (twice per week) with the other Space Time Distortion battles. Core Boost and Battle Circuit are also available.
If you own the Lord's Complete Obsidian Bracelet, you'll get one extra Departure to the Usurper's Throne that doesn't count toward your weekly limit.
The number of Revivals available in the Usurper's Throne will increase from one to three.

Gold System Overhaul

Currently, Gold drops in greater amounts the higher you climb through battles, so its value keeps falling. Meanwhile, new and returning players are struggling because they don't have enough Gold for character growth. The same Gold is too plentiful in one place and too scarce in another.

To address this, we're splitting Gold into two types: Normal Gold, which can be traded, and Bound Gold, which can't be traded but can be used for character growth. Our goal is to give players who are growing their characters plenty of Gold while keeping the amount of Gold flowing into the market stable.

■ Normal Gold and Bound Gold

Normal Gold: Works the same as Gold does today. You can use it anywhere, including the Marketplace and the Gold Trading Post.
Bound Gold: Can't be traded, but can be used for growth-related features such as enhancement, Tuning, Advancement, Repair, NPC shops, and Crafting.
- Where both types can be used, Bound Gold will be spent first, and your Gold will be shown as a combined total. You can check how much of each type you have by hovering your mouse over your Gold.
- Raid battles will reward both types of Gold, while progression content such as the story and Hero's Path will provide generous amounts of Bound Gold.

■ Account-Wide Normal Gold

Gold held separately by each character will be merged into account-wide Normal Gold. You'll no longer need to move Gold between characters.
During the merge, any Gold exceeding the maximum limit (2.1 billion) will be stored in your Wallet, and the Wallet's maximum capacity will be increased to make room for it.
To carry out the merge, all listings on the Marketplace and the Gold Trading Post will be canceled at the time of the update. Since the Gold system is changing, this lets you set new prices and relist your items under the new system.

■ Item Transfer Between Equipment Share Characters

To keep Bound Gold from piling up on just one character, we're adding an Item Transfer feature. It lets you move Bound Gold earned in battle and certain Seals (Seal of Bravery, Extreme Seal, and Seal of the Journey) between two characters that share equipment. You can use it from the Inventory or the Equipment Share window.

Please note that if you delete a character, that character's Bound Gold will be deleted along with it.

Item Tradability Overhaul

Currently, the same item can have different Tradability depending on how you obtained it, such as Bound to Character, Account Shareable, Tradable, or Account Shareable x1. This made it hard to tell at a glance which items could be moved and how far. In particular, materials purchased from the Marketplace become bound to your character right away, which has been a major inconvenience for players raising multiple characters.

With this overhaul, we focused on simplifying Tradability and making it easier to move items freely within a single account.

■ Key Changes

Simplified Tradability: Tradability will be streamlined into Bound to Character, Account Shareable, and Tradable, and the Tradability information in item tooltips will be simplified to match. Variant attributes such as 'Account Shareable x1' will be removed.
Account Sharing for Marketplace Purchases: Some items purchased from the Marketplace will become shareable within your account instead of being bound to your character. However, equipment items will keep the current binding policy.
Expanded Shared Storage: We're lifting some of the restrictions that kept certain items out of Shared Storage, so you'll be able to move more items into it. Also, the Mail feature for sending items to characters on the same account will be merged into Shared Storage.
Merging Identical Items: Items with the same name but different Tradability, such as Tarian Steel and Tarian Steel [AS], will merge into one in your Inventory once their Tradability becomes identical.

If anything still feels inconvenient after the overhaul, please let us know. We'll continue to improve and refining it for better play experience.

Character Utility Improvements

With this update, we're improving utility for Kael, Letty, Sanyaa, and Belle. Looking at both your feedback and actual skill usage, we focused on making each character's core playstyle flow more smoothly.

■ Kael – Swordstaff

Many of you told us that multi-hit attacks often fail to land fully on small or highly mobile enemies, making it hard to build the Brilliance needed for counters.

You'll start each battle with Brilliance at its maximum of 15 stages.
Smash attacks that build Brilliance will have a higher minimum hit count, and Active: Resistance Unchained will now also grant Brilliance.
Guardian's Blade: Counter damage will increase by 10%, and the invulnerability window between the counterattack and your next action will be slightly longer.

■ Letty – Heavy Cannon

Her projectiles sometimes missed when a boss was close or slightly airborne, and there were only limited ways to use her main skill, Kradie Blast.

Kradie Blast, Kradie Burst, and Letty Bomba will have larger hitboxes so they land more reliably.
You'll be able to use Kradie Blast after Standing Flip and after the follow-up attack of Active: Beautiful Blaze.
Hitting an enemy with the first hit of Active: Beautiful Blaze grants one stage of Thrill.
The cooldown reduced by a successful Just Dodge will change from Swift Recoil to Active: Firecracker.

■ Sanyaa – Dual Knives

We're addressing unintended activations and low usage of Stiletto Shank (the 0-hit Smash), as well as the limited ways to chain into her main attack, the 3-hit Smash.

Stiletto Shank's controls will be simplified: holding the right mouse button for 1 second or longer performs the maximum charge attack, while releasing it sooner performs the basic attack. This will also reduce unintended activations.
The 3-hit Smashes (Acrobatic Flourish and Reflecting Flourish) will deal 10% more damage.
Dance Partner will now create a clone on a successful Just Dodge instead of a regular Dodge. In return, clone damage will increase by 50%, and you'll recover Stamina when the clone explodes and hits an enemy.

■ Belle – Battle Axe

We're addressing how cumbersome it was to set up her powerful Rushing River, and how hard it was to get back to attacking after recovering Stamina.

Rushing River's maximum charge time will be shorter, and you'll be able to go straight into charging Rushing River after a Dodge.
Hitting an enemy with the second hit of Deforestation reduces Rushing River's cooldown.
You'll be able to follow up Flare-up with a normal attack more quickly.
When used without pressing the Directional Keys, Deforestation, Active: Landslide, and Active: Extinction will move you forward a shorter distance. This reduces cases where you miss nearby enemies or accidentally move past them.

■ Balance Adjustments

Along with these utility improvements, we're also adjusting damage for some characters.

Buffs: Hurk (Teide), Lynn (Battleshade), Achel, Miri, Eira, Charon
Nerfs: Lann (Twin Swords), Evie (Staff), Lumielle

Going forward, we'll continue to focus our balance adjustments on buffs that bring up underperforming characters. However, a few characters had pulled too far ahead of the rest, so we had no choice but to tone them down to maintain overall power balance. We ask for the understanding of those who play these characters, and we've kept the nerfs as small as possible. The characters being adjusted and the specific values are still subject to change.

That wraps up our preview of the December update.

The Gold and Tradability overhauls in particular are major changes that will affect every player, so we'll provide detailed guidance before and after the update and keep a close eye on your feedback. Please note that some details may change before the update goes live.

With the weather getting colder, please take care not to catch a cold and stay healthy.

Thank you.