Design Notes

January 18, 2019

Nulgath the ArchFiend's Birthday

Twisted Trials and Terror are headed your way

Nulgath the ArchFiend, Lord of the Oversoul and ruler of the Nation, has not been seen on Lore or in the Oversoul for several years now.* In his absence, his minions are growing ambitious. Even... giddy with all the opportunities for profit and plunder they see. Log in this weekend for two new adventures - for fans and members of his Nation, Nulgath’s Twisted Court Jester will send you on a torturous scavenger hunt for wicked rewards. Then, battle the Fangs of Flame in an all-out war for control of the Dragon's Lair!

For all of you dedicated to defending Lore, your battle awaits!  Vasumar, the Flame Dragon Lord, has secured a route into our world... and his sights are set on Vasalkar's Lair. Fight draconic creatures flooding in from the Oversoul and keep the red dragon's lair free of invaders!

Heroes vs OverSoul Flame Dragons: This Means WAR!

You face a 300,000 wave army of alien-invading flame dragons... to save the Lair, you'll need to raise the war meter to 100%! If you're only just joining us, here's how you fight in a war alongside your fellow heroes:

1. Log in and click the button on your game menu to go straight to the event in /lairwar
2. Talk to Galanoth to accept the war quests to DEFEND the Lair
3. Talk to Raask to accept the war quests to ATTACK the Lair
4. Slay your opponents to complete your quest
5. Click on the war meter to turn your quest in and raise the war meter

If you are fighting to defend the Lair, each time you complete a quest, you'll have a chance to get one of the pieces of the DragonLord GrandMaster armor set.

If you are fighting to attack the Lair, each time you complete a quest, you'll have a chance to get one of the pieces of the Void BattleMage armor set. Both sets were created by AQW Community artist, L A E.

The winner takes control of the Dragon's Lair... and the losing side will need to fall back, tucking their tails (or capes) between their legs in defeat.

Whether you're a fan of Nulgath the ArchFiend or just love pounding on draconic monsters from another world, the adventures begin this Friday!

Along with the scavenger hunt and micro-war, we'll have an all-new birthday shop with seasonal and perma-rares (including the Void Awakening sets from Oversoul) plus an update to the Enchanted Nulgath Nation House.

Casparilla's Fiendish Reward Quests

If you're a fan of Nulgath's Nation, you're no stranger to hard work... or almost-tortuous quests. This weekend, log in and /join citadel. Find Casparilla... because she's got some games for you to play while Nulgath's away. And if you know ANYTHING about Nulgath, you know that the only Court Jester he'd keep is a crazy-loyal and just plain INSANE trickster.

Complete Casparilla's quests to unlock the pieces of the 0 AC Elite Void armor set from AQW Community Artist, Reki Roland. Hardcore Nation fans can also complete Casparailla's SUPER evil bonus quests to get two exclusive swords and a floating sword pet.

MORE UPDATES!

If you helped test the AQWorlds Server PTR back in 2016 and saved your Quest Mission Sprockets, at long last your reward is here! Find the Sir Ver Bank pet in Vinara's Odds and Ends shop in /battleontown for 125 sprockets. If you did not farm enough to get the free bank pet, we have a Sir Ver cape in her shop, too, for 25 sprockets.

If you were a 1st Upholder in OverSoul, head to the Portal Site to make sure your Oversoul and AQWorlds accounts are linked. You'll get a code and, once you redeem it, you'll unlock a Book of Lore badge to get ALL of the Void Rebirth and Void Awakening gear (including the Enchanted Void Awakening set) for free. This is one more way we can show our appreciation for your early support of the game. 

AQ2D / Mobile Q&A date moved - I will be on vacation next week. Once I return, we'll announce the date and time of the "AQW plans for 2019" Q&A on Discord.

If you are an OverSoul Founder -- if/when we import the OS Founder armor set into AQWorlds, you would get the same deal. Free gear, even if we sell it for AdventureCoins.

The Enchanted Nulgath Nation house has been updated! Starting tonight, find:

1. Nulgath's NPC right there in your house!
2. Character customization screen
3. 2 new exclusive farming quests, which reward the pieces of the Void Warlock set
4. the house has been made 0 AC

The Nulgath Nation House (which is required to unlock the Enchanted Nulgath Nation house) is also now 0 AC.

* Nulgath the ArchFiend is the in-game persona for Nulgath-the-team-member, one of AQWorlds' original artists. Though he no longer works regularly for Artix Entertainment, his art style (prevalent in early AQW and featured in Oversoul) and the character itself remain hugely popular with many of our long-time heroes. To recognize their dedication and enjoyment, we hold an event in-game each year to celebrate the character and give them a hefty dose of the gear they love.

January 18, 2019

Nulgath's Birthday Gear

Color-custom set available for a limited time 

Nulgath the ArchFiend’s birthday celebration is this weekend, and we want everyone to get in on the /party! Join us as we bring his Void Rebirth and Void Awakening sets from OverSoul into AQWorlds, in honor of the Flame Dragon Invasion event! These sets will return every year for his birthday, but the color-custom variant will ONLY be available in 2019.

Nulgath's Birthday Shop features:

• Void Rebirth armor set
• Void Awakening armor set
• Shielded variants of both armors
• Enchanted Void Awakening armor set (fully color-custom)*
• Nulgath's Bounty Hunter Drone Pet (with two quests)
• Nulgath's Birthday Gift Pet (with one quest)

Next week, even more gear will be added to celebrate Nulgath's birthday, including the Primal Hanzo Void armor set by AQW Community artist Saiacosta will be added to the shop, Bido's homage to the terrors of the Nation, and the Infernal Fiend set by Theon!

Nulgath's Birthday Gift and Bounty Hunter's Drone Pet*

The Bounty Hunter's Drone pet has two quests - one to farm Nulgath reagents, and the other for an armor customizer pet. Nulgath's Birthday Gift pet has the same Nulgath reagent farming quest, but does not include the armor customizer pet quest. The Fiendish Caladbolg** has been added as a reward item to the reagent farming quest on both quests.

• Bounty Hunter's Drone pet: 2,000 ACs
• Nulgath's Birthday Gift pet: 1,500 ACs

* The Enchanted Void Skulls Cape will be added next week.
*Dage the Evil has given this blade to Nulgath the ArchFiend to strengthen the bond they have -- as Masters of Evil, they should ally, sending their armies against common enemies. In the spirit of maintaining control over their respective demensnes, it is better to fight back to back than blade to blade. (Note: Dage will be crafting a Legion version of one of the Nation's most iconic weapons, which will arrive in March to further the peace).

January 11, 2019

Unlock the Flame Dragon Warrior

Get the exclusive Class and Armor Set

Vasumar the Flame Dragon Warrior, leader of the Fang of Flames, is a deadly opponent. Once a fierce dragon-gang leader in OverSoul, he's come to attack the dragons of Vasalkar's Lair. You can unlock his armor set, the Flame Dragon Warrior Class, and a character page badge for $9.95 USD on our upgrade page.

The Flame Dragon Warrior's History

We released our first idle game, AQ:Dragons in December 2014. Back in 2017, we needed to update the game to Unity 5. We also had to remove the AQW account linking feature which awarded the Flame Dragon Warrior gear in AQWorlds. Because we did NOT want this set to go perma-rare, we made it available directly on our upgrade page for the same price as the original AQ:Dragons upgrade package ($9.95 USD).

One of the biggest challenges about creating and maintaining mobile games is the way the app stores and software developers are also required to update and maintain their products. That can lead to version conflicts which require updating different components of a game or, like with the 2017 changes to AQ:Dragons, significantly overhauling parts of it.

BUT on the plus side, if you didn't have a device which could run AQ:Dragons, or if you weren't aware of the Flame Dragon Warrior Class before, you'll be able to unlock the full Flame Dragon Warrior set in AQW! 

Flame Dragon Warrior set + Class

Buying the Flame Dragon Warrior set unlocks the full armor set PLUS the Flame Dragon Warrior CLASS!  After purchase, check your Book of Lore for the link to the shop to get the gear.

The Flame Dragon Warrior is a VERY powerful class with a skillset that's extremely useful for either boss fights (like taking down dragons), pvp (slaying DragonSlayers) or just everyday use farming (in the Dragon's Lair) .

Flame Dragon Warrior Class Skills

Auto Attack: Pretty basic. 2 second cooldown.
You need to be able to swing around your weapon somehow.

Fire Dragon's Roar: 10 Mana, 4 second cooldown
Blast 3 targets with flame to deal fire damage.
Builds stacks of Dragon's Roar which affects other abilities.

This is the ability you want to keep stacked. Stacking this ability will allow you other skills (Which we will go over) an extra kick to them

Burn Of Akriloth: 25 Mana, 15 second cooldown
Akriloth grants you the power to do a 400% DoT for 10 seconds, with a 25% chance to stun your opponents for 6 seconds with Smothering Smoke, Stacks of Dragon's Roar increase damage.

Yes, all those words and numbers are correct. You can get an extremely high DoT AND do a pretty nifty amount of damage too and even a good chance for stuns. This skill is really good for beating down something (or someone) really quick without hassle. 
Note: The DoT CAN be applied even without stacks of Dragon's Roar, BUT YOU WILL NEED THE STACKS if you wish to do damage as well.

Dragon Strength: 20 Mana, 12 second cooldown
A Moderate Damage Skill.  Applies Ablaze which increases Strength by 25% for 8 seconds. If stacks of Dragon's Roar are present, removes all stacks of Dragon's Roar and applies Extra Defense which reduces all damage taken by 40% for 15 seconds.

Feeling a tad too squishy? Want to buff yourself up like a (small) tank? With stacks of Dragon's Roar, your defense power grows AS WELL as your strength! It's a GREAT thing if you want to survive a few more hits and make sure you can take your opponant down. Goes great with a healer.

Fire Dragon's Scales & Dragon's BloodRank 4 Passives

The magic of dragon scales gives you 30% spell resistance.
The power of dragons blood gives you 30% endurance increase

Neat little passives. Helps you survive more. Not much to say about it.

Burning Rage: 30 Mana, 15 second cooldown

DESTROY with the power of your rage and damage! Also applies a 350% DoT over 8 seconds.
Double the DoTs, double the fun! The fun WILL be doubled with this skill! This is your boomshot, the skill you *wisely* use as you don't wanna waste your mana compltely (I'm bad with mana at times...) Anyways, as well as getting a decent strike off, you also get another DoT just to be more of a bother. Works quite nicely with Dragon's Strength. 

Rank 10 Passive: Dragon's Burn
Increases your DoTs by 30%

Do you like your DoTs? Of course you do. Do you want to make them even better? OF COURSE YOU DO! Similar to Dragon Shinobi's Rank 10 passive, Dragon's Burn will give your DoTs even BIGGER damage ranges! it's a PERMANENT increase!

Overall, you can survive pretty well with the class. Your power can be used for high damage and DoT or tank it out, taking hits from everything that decides to come your way. 

January 11, 2019

New Item Set:Alpha Winter Defender

Available in the Wheel of Doom and Merge shop!

The Wheel of Doom spins round and round... and this week, as the Northern hemisphere continues battling ice, snow, and other wintery dangers, we've got an all-new, super-cool set for you -- the Alpha Winter Defender! 

New Gear from the Wheel of Doom!

We know a lot of you are raring to redeem your free spins... so we're adding a full new Epic rarity set for you, crafted by AQW Community Artist, Rare! Each of the Alpha Winter Defender set pieces will be available from the Wheel of Doom and from the Doom merge shop. The bright blue fabric parts of the set shown below are color customizable.

Pieces of the set include:

• Winter Defender Alpha armor
• Winter Defense Scarf Helm + Locks
• Snow Owl Helm + Locks
• Winter Defense Beret + Locks
• Winter Defense Rifle Alpha
• Defender's Snow Owl Pet
• Snow Owl on your Shoulder cape
• Winter Defense Backrifle

All our seasonal Winter Wheel of Doom gear - including the Winter Defender set - will leave leave Wednesday, March 20th, the first day of Spring.  This gear will return next year during the Winter months.

Get your Free Spins

Everyone loves to get prizes... and that's why we brought back back free spins for the Wheel of Doom!

• Members get one free spin a day while their upgrade is active
• All players get one free spin a week. 

See the Free Spins Design Notes for more details.

Platinum Item of Donated Awesomeness

We've gotten a lot of really positive feedback after introducing the free spins... but also a lot of you who wanted 1) a way to make sure you got an Item of Donated Awesomeness and 2) kept spinning in a quest to get the Epic Item of Donated Awesomeness to drop from the Wheel... and then not didn't get it.

That's why, earlier this month, we introduced the Platinum Item of Donated Awesomeness. This item is available from the Doom Merge Shop, so even if you don't receive the EIoDA as a bonus prize, you can save up your Treasure Potions and get the PIoDA.

Important Points

• The PIoDA will be a Wheel of Doom merge shop exclusive. 
• Cost: 1,000 Treasure Potions. 
• You can get both the EIoDA (from the Wheel) and the PIoDA (from the merge shop)
• The PIoDA currently stacks up to x5.

At a cost of 1,000 Treasure Potions, that means a member who ONLY uses their one free spin per day/week will need to log in every day for about 2.5 years to get it... but they WILL get it eventually. 

* Exceptions include staff personal items, custom weapon contest prizes, HeroMart items, etc

January 11, 2019

This Weekend: Memet's Nightmare

A Nightmare's Nightmare: Rainbows and Sparkles

When a super-happy, over-sparkly calico cartoon character* takes over the Dream Network, Memet and the creatures of the Nightmare Realm are declared illegal. Writers, artists, and heroes who depend on darkness, destruction, and monstrous mayhem for inspiration are struggling to survive. Help her restore the Dream Network so that heroes who revel in gloom and doom can stop hiding from the kawaii-cuteness plaguing their home!

This weekend, log in and /join spookeasy to begin Memet's nightmarish adventure! And if you've got a Twitter account, wish her "Happy Belated Birthday!" 

Battle the monsters in this week's event for a chance to get:

• Super kawaii flamethrowers**
• A very cheery pink Alpacacorn pet
• Happy Balloons!!!
• And more

Then talk to Memet in /spookeasy to find her "Nightmare Novelties" shop with the Spookeasy Nightmare and Memet Animatronic armor sets.

* Who is clearly a fan of Lisa Frank's rainbows, unicorns, and glitterbomb overload
** The armor and helm used by the SparkleGuards are available in Vesper's birthday shop in your Game Menu.

Memet's Belated Birthday 

Memet the Nightmare Moglin*** is the staff persona for Memet, AQWorlds' lead writer. She is the one who writes and designs the weekly releases you battle through. She is a huge fan of dark, offbeat, Lovecraftian/Geiger style art and fantasy... which is why she's a nightmare creature.

We usually celebrate her birthday in November, but because of a very joyous-but-time-intensive) special release for J6 and his wife (aka, they had little J6 2.0!), we had to push it back to give J time to do all the awesome new BG art.

*** Technically, she is really a nightmare creature masquerading as a moglin.

January: Celebrate ALL the Birthday! 

Ok, maybe not ALL. But many! Our month-long celebration of team member birthdays continues this weekend with Memet's belated birthday. Last week, we celebrated Vesper and Crulon's birthdays with Vesper's Pink, Purple, and Prismatic Shop and Crulon's Djinn riddle quests.

Still to come:

• Friday, January 18: Nulgath's birthday scavenger hunt + birthday shop
• Friday, January 25: Stryche's Werebear story, Part 1 + Captain Rhubarb's V-ARRRRRy happy birthday shop
• Wednesday, January 30: Axeros' birthday merge shop

January 11, 2019

AQWorlds' 2019 Game Plan

Mobile Port, Queen of Monsters' finale, and more!

Welcome to the new year! AdventureQuest Worlds is officially, for real, over a decade old. That's 10 years of adventures, epic boss battles, crazy banana suit-wearing, pancake-flipping... and CHAOS! Thanks to you and your fellow heroes, we are still updating the game every week with new stories, challenge fights, and rewards... our game grows each and every week.

But growing is not the same as evolving, and that's what we're here to talk about today - our plans to grow and evolve AdventureQuest Worlds in 2019. 

What are the plans for AQWorlds in 2019? 

This is the easiest question, and the most exciting answer:

• AQW 2 / Go / Mobile / (insert new working title here) blasts into OVERDRIVE
• Queen of Monsters finale (it will take about a year to tell the entire story)
• Quality of Life improvements on the web version
• All our weekly updates and seasonal holiday events

AQW 2: the Expansioning

What are our plans for AQW Mobile?

AQWorlds Mobile is a misnomer -- the next version of AQWorlds will play on your PC, mobile devices, and maybe Steam or consoles! 

Plans for the next evolution of AQW include:

• Letting you log in with your existing character 
• Keeping your current character's items
• Increased performance and less lag 
• Scrolling backgrounds (like HeroSmash)
• Port over 99.99% of the existing items
• A more robust PVP system 
• Leaderboards + rewards
• Better botting detection and prevention
• Trading is on the wishlist. It is possible in AQW: Mobile (not AQW:web), but we'll need a lot more time spent on figuring out the logistics before we say it will 100% be included.

The first, biggest push at the moment is to make sure we have solid character, load, login, and chat systems in place. Also in current development - the map system. 

We have a team wishlist for AQW:Mobile, but just as importantly… we want to know what YOU want to see added in for AQW:Mobile. Next week, we'll hold an online, real-time Q&A in our official Artix Entertainment Discord server. Keep an eye on the Design Notes for a date and time.

Tweet your wishlist to #AQWMobileWishes

so the team can keep a running tally.

Who will work on AQW Mobile?

Warlic (the AQW:Mobile project lead) got the ball rolling earlier last year. Then he was joined by AQWorlds’ lead coder, Yorumi, along with a few new programmers. They’ve been making steady progress, and at the end of this month, the group will be joined by Artix and Zhoom. 

Zhoom (who is being borrowed from the AQ3D for a bit) will focus on making sure the game’s infrastructure and architecture can support everything (ALL THE THINGS!!!) we want AQW:Mobile to do. 

Artix is coming on board to make sure the game plays as well as the current game does, and then will work with the team to make it even BETTER.

When will work begin on AQW Mobile?

Artix’s goal is to have something you guys can log into this year. It's going to be a challenge to meet that goal, but I believe we are up to it! Although we are automating the majority of the item ports, with tens of thousands of items, this will be an on-going process. We will start out porting the most popular and widely-used items (based on how many active accounts have them), and go from there. Like all our main games, AQW:Mobile’s development will be an active, ongoing project.

“But… didn’t Artix show a picture of AQW:Mobile like 2 years ago?” Well… kind of.  But not the way you’re thinking. The first try at making AQW: Mobile began in 2016, when we began working with an offsite company (so the current in-house team could stay focused on weekly updates).  That team of highly-talented coders put together a great prototype*… but one that ultimately wouldn’t scale up to what we needed, performance-wise. 

What we want for the next version of AQWorlds -- what we need -- is something most mobile games don't really have to do.  The level of customization, the type and amount of gear we want to bring over... we're always so frakkin' SPECIAL! And that's what makes us awesome, but also really tricky to port.

* Pictured in the image at the top of this post.

Where and Why are we doing this?

This new version of AQWorlds will let you keep your current character and items, but will let us open the game up to many, many more players who currently play games on other devices. 

This is hands-down our highest priority, because even more than the downloadable Artix Games Launcher (which lets us bypass concerns about Adobe FlashPlayer dying), bringing AQW to more platforms will let us keep its development going strong… and getting even bigger.

Queen of Monsters’ Saga Finale

When the rest of the devs at the Secret Underground Lab began their week-long Game Jam, Memet (the lead writer for AQWorlds) began a 3-4 week long WRITING JAM. She, Artix, and I met late last year to review and finalize plans for the year-long Queen of Monsters’ Saga finale.

She is spending the next month outlining the next year of main saga updates. This is not the end of AQWorlds’ main story… it is just the beginning, and an entry into whole new (aq)worlds. 

This story will take about a year to tell, and releases will begin after the early-year holiday events (like Carnival, Hero’s Heart Day, Lucky Day etc)

Spider-witches… Feral Troll Druids… Illusion-Controlling Infernals… ancient artifacts… and more? This is going to be an adventure to DIE for (but it is really, really important that you live!)!

Quality of Life Improvements on the Web

Over the last few months, Yorumi’s been able to add in a number of updates. So far, we’ve added in… 

• Increasing bank, inventory and friend spaces
• Adding searching and item previews to the bank
• Adding the ability to hide other players’ capes and pets (releasing tonight!)

Originally, we did not think changes like this would be possible until the launch of the new server and client on the web. But working together, last year Warlic and Yorumi got a version of the live / current client working and able to be updated. 

The inability to update the existing game client was one of the main reasons we began rewriting the server and client -- we had reached the limits of the game, and it had grown too big to publish.  Now that we ARE able to make changes and improvements again, we have re-focused our plans, and the new server and client will be exclusively for AQW:Mobile. 

The new server Yorumi built for AQW (the web version) is the foundation that AQW: Mobile is built on. Without needing to accommodate a decade’s worth of functionality and features that had been built by many hands over many years, he was able to strip the server down to something clean, polished, and perfectly-poised to serve as the backbone of our NEW AQWorlds.

If you were one of the heroes who helped us test on the PTR servers, and have saved up your Quest Mission Sprocket, a quest to redeem them for your Sir Ver Bank pet will be added next week.

And as Yorumi has time, he’ll be free to investigate more changes to the web version of AQW.

Wait... HOW will all these things happen?!

There is a lot to do to make all of this happen, which is why we are segmenting the team intelligently. The team members responsible for the weekly releases and updates will continue working on those as AQW:Mobile programmers focus on its development.

We plan to leave the current web version of AdventureQuest Worlds up forever... or as long as the internet lets us. But no matter what Adobe does (or doesn't) do, we plan to have a version of AdventureQuest Worlds available for you to play.

We've learned a lot from the last decade of game development. That is what looking to the past should be for -- learning so that as you look to the future, you can do/build/be better, without making the same mistakes. It's always better to look to the future than dwell on the past, once you’ve learned from it.

With the new server, a team of highly-talented programmers, Artix for creativity and design direction, your feedback and requests from the last decade, and the game we have to serve as a road-map… our journey is really, finally underway.