HellFreeze Expansion* Expansion Notes:
Also see the Expansion Presentation.
New Terrain: All of Agon features new terrain. This is one of the largest development additions to the game to-date. There was a spotlight on this with more details.
Character default view is now the 3rd person view, rather than the first person view until now. You can use F12 to toggle between first and third person view. This is an addition that will make things less confusing for new players entering the game for the first time, and is also one of our most requested features.
3rd person view is not available when you have your bow, grenades or staff drawn.
Newbie dungeons have been added to all the racial capitals. These are dungeons for new players meant to help them learn the ropes.
Newbie Protection has been reduced to one hour. This is because the previous 24 hour long protection was making new players complacent and was diluting their Darkfall experience. The one hour timer plus the addition of newbie dungeons should be enough for them to get the hang of their character before they’re thrown into the world. If it isn't long enough, we'll make minor changes to the timer, but our preliminary testing shows it should be enough.
Player vendors will now advertise every now and then when you walk by them they may let you know if they have something to sell.
Skinning skill advancement rate has been increased by 15%.
New and revamped dungeons:
17 dungeons have been revamped, themed up, with the majority of them having new spawns added to them. There is a full new layout, chests and monsters.
In 14 of these revamped dungeons, new chaos dungeon vendors have been added.
These vendors will be able to buy items off players, but also sell items from a chosen list at a special price.
The dungeon vendors will also be giving out a unique daily quest to players of all races, for those that wish to take on the challenge.
Chests now have a 10 second unlock timer. These changes affect all chests but they were made so with dungeons in mind.
Runestones can no longer be bound to Dungeons.
New Ships:
The Launch: A single cannon ship that can be crafted wherever rafts can be crafted, without needing a shipyard.
The Junk: It packs quite a punch for its size.
There are 2 new strongboxes that can be placed on ships:One that anyone can use and one that only the clan of the person spawning the strongbox can use. Both strongboxes are craftable by players.They will stay in the world for 2 hours, just like regular strongboxes.
The deployer of Campfires and Strongboxes on land will have their locations show up on his world/minimap
Spell balancing: The ray spells were due some much needed tweaking and this was also a large community request. Far from a simple numbers tweak, these changes had to fit in with the overall rebalancing of the game.
The following ray spells now share a cooldown of 0.5s:
Pungent Mist
Unholy Caress
Dragonbreath
Impale
Frostbite
Lightning Bolt
Insect Swarm
Complimentary to the above ray balancing, Wall of force duration has been reduced from 8 to 6 seconds.
Heal Self, Lay On Hands and Witches’ Brew have been rebalanced to have a greater effect on a shorter duration. Previously one of these spells would heal for e.g. 2 seconds at skill level 1 and then heal for e.g. 6 seconds when surging. Now it heals for e.g. 6 seconds at skill level 1 and e.g. 2 seconds at surging (with greater effect).
New Mounts Added:
The Blue Tail Runner, a lighter and faster mount and
the Tribeland Bear, the Mahirim specific mount.
More information and images on the new mounts can be found in the expansion presentation.
Fun Hulks and Fun Flags have been added to the game as new sandbox elements for use in player run events.
There are 3 variations for you to choose from and they are player craftable.
Fun Hulks can only damage other Fun Hulks but will take damage by anything attacking them.
Using Fun flags, you can now plan your own personal race track in Agon and hold your own destruction derby.
You can craft the fun flags yourselves and place them in the world.
There are different versions of the flags including starting flags, middle flags and end flags. **
The perspective on the Fun Hulk can be changed, like WarHulks, using (default) F12.
You deploy a fun flag track by first placing a starting flag, placing at least one middle flag (you can place many more) and then placing an end flag.
The flags will show up on your mini/world map as you race by them.
The creator of the track can 'Use' on any of your flags to start a race.
The track will stay up for 2 hours (from the time you placed the first flag) and after a race is finished you can start a new one by pressing 'Use' on any of your fun flags.
The race can only be completed on Fun Hulks.
You have to pass each gate in the order it has been set out. (The number of the gate is displayed over the flag).
When the winner has finished, the race will last for 3 more minutes allowing the rest of the competitors to finish the race.
After the time is up, results will be posted in the area and to the organizer of the event.
Player Use Flags added:
These are basic flag poles you can craft. There are 3 variations: Small, medium and large.**
You can place them in the world and it is up to you what to do with them.
The player placing the flags will have them displayed on his mini/worldmap.
When someone uses one of your flags, it’ll be removed from the world you’ll get a notification on who found it.
Use these tournament flags to send people out for quests for you or to create in-game events: hide the flag somewhere and give a reward to whoever finds it. Place it in dangerous areas and test someone before letting them in your clan. Be creative.
The flags will stay in the world for 2 hours before they disintegrate.
Treasure Maps added as per our featured spotlight
When you hunt monsters around agon, every now and then they might drop different varieties of treasure maps for you-
Double click the map to see the location and use your real life recognition skills to try and find out where it is.
You can trade the maps
To dig up treasure you need a shovel. This is craftable.
To use the shovel you need to train the Digging skill. This can be bought.
Find your own treasure or stalk a guy with a shovel.
There is also a chance you might find something by randomly digging around.
Village Control Points: There have been changes to villages in order to make them more rewarding:
The Village Control Points will now stay invulnerable longer after capture: The timer has increased from 6 hours to 12 hours.
The total timeout has increased from 10 hours to 17 hours.
The person capturing a Village Control point will now split the gold generated with his clan.
Clan Journal:
There have been several fixes to the clan journal:
A bug that wouldn't release some old clan names from the system has been fixed: This should also serve to help clear up quite a bit of clan politics.
A bug where some active clans did not show up in the 'browse clans' page has been fixed
Anything which goes in the clan vault or is checked out of the clan vault related to stations/fortresses/wars/challenges/villages is registered and anyone with sufficient rank can see it in the clan vault related pages.
Bug fixes related to the journal quest diary page
Darkfall’s Social Manager: We’ve added some social conveniences in the game and we’re on our way to adding many more:
When a player logs in to the game a message about which of his friends are online.
The player also gets a message about how many pending friend requests from and towards other players.
You get a message whenever a friend comes online or goes offline
You get a message whenever a friend request is sent.
You get a message whenever your friend request is accepted.
You get a message if you’re removed from a friend’s list
You get a message every time your friend request is rejected. We’re not as nice as facebook.
Worldbuilding Changes
DEMON FORTRESS: The Demon Fortress in the Central Area has been expanded.
Beastmen villages: The beastmen villages have all been revamped.
The Dwarven area has been revamped.
Dragon Lairs: Dragon lairs have been updated.
Some Mahirim starting areas have been improved.
Lore
The lore has also received a few updates.
A secret organization called the “Acolytes of the Watcher” has been added to the World Lore section.Through the Acolytes of the Watcher, light will be shed on many of the unclear, dark and mystical aspects of Agon's past, present but also the future.
The Lost Civilizations section of the World Lore has also received some updating.
Nithron and Chal d'Ean lore has been updated, while the Vargash and a study into the The Lost Elven Nations has been added to the section.
Monsters:
Monsters have been redistributed all over Agon and especially in dungeons. This was a major undertaking and should be a substantial improvement in PvE
Many monster families have been re-modeled and re-textured, not to mention having their abilities adjusted. Among these are the Undead Dwarves, Svartdvergir, Beastmen, Sarlids, Gnolls and Matayin. Also, a few new monsters have been added, such as the Gorras and various new dungeon mobs which are variations of known surface monsters
Epic loot drops have been rebalanced.
Several monsters will now level up when they gain experience defeating players
Low level monsters now only produce a grave half the time, but graves produced will have more loot.
Lots of physics tweaks for monsters related to monster behavior.
Monster protection against debuffs has been balanced
A bug that prevented some monsters from drinking potions has been fixed.
Loot has been increased several special monsters.
New Monsters:
You can read more about them and their descriptions in the expansion presentation.
The Demon
The Ice Dragon
Gorra Dar and Gorra Slave
Svartdvergir Doombringer
Shadow Spirit
Gray Ork Executioner
Beastman Devastator
Cave Hag
Cave Spider
Cave Troll
Shade Salamander
Deathless Servant
Monsters Redone:
Several monsters were completely redone (models and animations) and have new skills added:
Sarlids
Matayins
Svartvergirs
Undead Dwarves
Beastmen
Gnolls/Gaunts
Monster Special Abilities:
Some of Darkfall’s monsters have received some epic special abilities which make them unique. This is just the beginning. Our goal is to give all notable Darkfall monsters unique special abilities.
Hags
Shadow Knights
Winterbound/Seidbounds
Elfwraiths/Elfshades/Ghosts
Menhirs
Stone Golems
Monster Animations:
Some monsters have had their animations reworked:
Flesh Golem/Son of Ochran
Mummys
Troll Shaman
Gargantua
Monster Optimizations:
Wildtribes
Okrs
Iklits
Serpentines
Kraken
Devil
Sarnakhs
Dynamic monster encounters and events will take place all over Agon.
Optimizations for large scale battles: These optimizations are expected to have a significant impact on large scale battle playability.
Finally, there have been numerous corrections, bug fixes and tweaks that have not been mentioned in these expansion notes.
*The name of the expansion is not inspired in any way by the time it took to finally launch it.
**The simplicity in the naming of Fun Hulks, Fun Flags, Use Flags, flag types etc. is intentional. That, or we couldn’t find a better name for Middle Flags
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