Design Notes

March 24, 2023

Spring 2023 AdventureCoin Bonus

Get 50% more ACs with any Membership or AC Pack

Your luck is in! To help you celebrate and make the most of all our Spring holiday events, get 50% more FREE bonus AdventureCoins with any AdventureCoin or Membership package you buy through Tuesday, April 4th.

Get 60,000 ACs while our Spring Bonus is on!

During our 2023 Spring AdventureCoin bonus, get 60,000 ACs for $99.95 (that's 20,000 ACs more than normal!) and unlock your choice of upgrade bonus pack, 15x Rep, Gold, Class Points, and XP server boosts, and the Mythic Item of Digital Awesomeness (IoDA). 

Mythic Item of Digital Awesomeness?!

The Mythic Item of Digital Awesomeness (or MIoDA for short) is a miscellaneous item you will get by purchasing the 40k AdventureCoin pakage. Like the other IoDA items, it allows you to choose any item in the game when you redeem it through your Account Manager.

How to Claim your MIoDA Prize

Make sure you have a confirmed email address attached to your game account, and then follow these steps:

1. Decide on the item you want
2. Log into your Account Manager
3. Click on the "Awesome Prizes" link on the sidebar
4. You'll see a list of the IoDA tokens you have available
5. Choose from a list of ALL the eligible item rewards  
6. You'll be taken to a verification page to confirm your choice

Wait...AdventureCoin Bonus?!

That's right! Several times each year, we have bonus AdventureCoin offers, where we'll increase the amount of ACs you get with each AdventureCoin or Membership pack. (example: Summer, Back to School, and during the holidays). Bonus amounts and dates may change from year to year, so keep an eye on the Design Notes and social media for more news of future bonuses.

March 24, 2023

New Featured Rare Sets

Available for a Limited Time!

Axeros, longtime AQWorlds artist, crafted several sets to help you celebrate his birthday and the end of the ShadowFlame Saga! Find the Scarlet Flame Sorcerer, Orochi Bladecaster sets, and more in your Featured Gear Shop in the game menu for AdventureCoins until April 21st. 

Axeros, longtime AQWorlds artist, crafted several sets to help you celebrate his birthday and the end of the ShadowFlame Saga! Find his new sets in the Featured Gear Shop in your game meu now:

• Orochi BladeMaster armor
• Orochi BladeMaster helms
• 4 Serpent Guardian capes
• Sheathed Orochi Wazikashi cape
• 6 Orochi BladeMaster helms
• 9 Orochi BladeMaster weapons
• Scarlet Flame Sorcerer armor
• 6 Scarlet Flame Sorcerer helms
• 3 Scarlet Flame Sorcerer capes
• Scarlet Flame Guardian pet
• 2 Scarlet Flame swords
• 4 Scarlet Flame daggers
• 1 Scarlet Flame wand
• 1 Scarlet Flame staff
• Mage of Time's Rune ground item

March 24, 2023

ShadowFlame Ultra Boss

Battle the First Speaker This Weekend

With the Shadows of War Saga complete, there was only one thing left for the team, and your Hero, to do... take down the ULTRA BOSS! This weekend, login and /join ultraspeaker to battle the enemy you know best: Malgor, your strongest servant, the First Speaker! Defeat the First Speaker each week to gain 5 Insignia*, which can be used to create a variety of strong items, and a new enhancement trait.

Log in tonight for:

• First Speaker Ultra Boss battle in /ultraspeaker
• Malgor Insignia Rewards: Goddess of War set + Dauntless Enhancement
• Talk to Inevitabilis in /timeinn and complete her quests to unlock the four Hero of Time sets
• New Weapon Enhancements: Praxis and Dauntless
• Undead Painsaw set in the Dark Birthday Merge shop
• Undead Legion exclusive gear: Legion Inn house, house guard, and Dage's Devastation Paragon Helm
• Featured Rare Sets + House Items: Scarlet Flame Sorcerer + Orochi BladeMaster
• New functionality for Guild Leaders in the account site: manage your offline guild members
• Pax East 2023 axe available from Valencia in /museum... if you know the secret code!

The First Speaker battle tips

• The First Speaker’s autoattack reduces your damage and defense over time. You can cleanse this by taking the Equalizer attack, but if you and your team get greedy, it could result in your loss!
• Every time The First Speaker uses Equalizer, he heals a large amount. Be prepared to counteract this, or your fight could drag on forever.
• Two of The First Speaker’s abilities are devastatingly powerful or debilitating to your team. Be ready to taunt them to minimize their impact.

The full breakdown and boss abilities can be found on the wiki here. 

First Speaker Merge Shop Rewards

Goddess of War set: Fight the boss to collect Insignia and obtain the Goddess of War set, featuring damage boosted weapons of every race, and an armor that increases your damage to all races by 40%!

Dauntless Enhancement: Create a new enhancement trait in /forge using your new insignia and resources!

Dauntless/ Weapon Enhancement

• 100% chance to activate on second skill
• 3 second cooldown
• Deals 220 - 660% Physical Damage, increasing the lower your health is, always hits and crits
• Heals you based on how much damage you did and applies Dauntless for 12 seconds, increasing your Crit Chance by 15%, Haste by 25%, and decreasing mana cost by 50%. Also applies Decay, Cannot Heal for 6 seconds.

DIFFICULTY WARNING: This is a very difficult fight that requires careful coordination and planning. Come prepared to practice the fight, and you will eventually succeed! 

New Mid-Level Weapon Forge Enhancement Trait

Need a hand on your journey? We've got your back! If you're level 60 or higher, you can join /forge to create Praxis, a weapon enhancement focused around parrying your opponent and dealing increasing damage as the fight goes on. Note: This enhancement trait may change in the future based on player and team feedback.

Praxis / Weapon Enhancement

• 100% chance to activate on second skill
• 12 second cooldown
• Deals 250% Hybrid Damage
• Applies Spinning Dragon to the target for 1 second, reducing the next hit they do to 0, and Praxis for 32 seconds, reducing dodge by 30%. Deals +100% damage on each successive hit to the same target.

The list of all enhancement traits can be found here. 

*Weekly quests reset every Friday at 12:01 AM EST. If you complete a weekly quest on a Thursday, it will be available again on Friday! 

Dage's Dark Birthday Update

Head to Dage's /darkbirthday map this weekend to find even MORE wicked new gear to unlock.

Dage's Dark Birthday Merge:

• Mortal Underworld Painsaw Man armor
• Underworld Painsaw Man armor
• 2 Underworld Painsaw helms
• 1 Underworld Painsaw cape
• 2 Underworld Painsaw Gauntlets
• Dage's Devastation Paragon Helm

The Undead Painsaw set is available for ALL heroes, and Dage's Devastation Paragon helm is an Undead Legion exclusive, requiring Legion Tokens.

Undead Legion Merge Shop:

• Legion Inn House
• Dage the Lich King House Guard
  

New Guild Management Tool

Good news, Guild Leaders! Available now: Captain Rhubarb added added new guild management functionality for you in the Account Manager! You can promote, demote, and kick members that are offline.

Guild leaders, take note: you'll need to log out and back in if you want to see the updated information on a given server. If your guild members are online, on other servers, they will also need to log out and back in to get the most up-to-date information.

Class Changes for March 23, 2023

Read on to stay up to date with the latest news about what we've updated and what's been fixed for AdventureQuest Worlds classes + combat.

Miscellaneous

• Necromancer, Pinkomancer, and Grim Necro second and fifth skill switched
• StoneCrusher and Infinity Titan fourth skill defensive auras duration increased to 8 seconds

Bug Fixes

• Dragon of Time, Mindbreaker, and Psionic Mindbreaker’s healing mechanic fixed
• Several recently broken boss skills fixed
• Elysium damage on the Enhancement Traits page fixed. 
• This was a typo, and there are no changes to the enhancement in-game.

Find the full post (with past updates) here.

April Calendar of Events

It's no joke... I herd you wanted some Good events? We'll stop stallion and get you mare of what you asked for! Check out the April 2023 event calendar to see our upcoming game releases. Daily Login Gift updates to be added soon.

Note: the March calendar previously listed an update to the Wheel of Doom for tonight. The set intended for that release was moved to April 7th, and will be a reward set instead.

March 22, 2023

Midweek Update Medley

Bits, Bites, and Bytes of News for You

Hello all, and happy Wednesday! As we near the end of the month, we've got a melange of things you may be interested in and/or need to know about before we move into April. Read on for news, and then come back tomorrow for the April release calendar!

Upcoming Gear Sneak Peek

We've got some great gear heading your way. Check out previews below:

• New farmable Underworld Painsaw set arrives this week from Lae
• Tagai's very Good Mage and Rogue of Swordhaven
• Hikari's new Necromancer will teach you the meaning of pain
• Lae's dark new Druids will arrive in the near future

AQWorlds Moderator Call Update

Sora to Hoshi, the lead AQWorlds moderator, just sent the final list of candidates she wants for Wave 3. We're hoping to get emails out to that group soon.

She writes: Thanks to everyone who got the Mod Note in their inventory for being so patient with the gap between wave 2 and 3. With the holidays, the new year, and just STUFF it got pushed back farther than I wanted. Thanks for being patient.

AQW:Infinity + Artix On the Way to PAX East

From Artix in the latest AQW:Infinity Design Notes post: Here is your latest progress report. First up... I posted a video with both AdventureQuest Worlds Infinity and the existing web on YouTube for you.

Since the video was posted, we have replaced the backgrounds with the new higher quality one and added leaf particles and sun rays. It looks absolutely beautiful. With all of these characters on the screen, it still scrolls smoothly at 60 FPS on my iPhone.

Special Convention Item... for everyone?

We are building a special convention item. But we do not want anyone to miss out. So we are creating a code that can be shared. Anyone who gets the code from us at the convention can share it online for anyone who could not make it.

Who from the team will be there?

This is our very first PAX experience! Our current roster includes Dage, Zhoom, Jongaar, Despair, & Artix.  If you want anything signed, a selfie, or just want to say hi we are looking forward to meeting you. 

Ramadan Mubarak Wishes+ Player Request

To all our heroes celebrating Ramadan: the entire AE team and I hope the holiday brings you and your family health, happiness, and peace. For this year, and all the years to come, may you find prosperity and joy in all you do. Ramadan Mubarak!

إلى جميع أبطالنا الذين يحتفلون بشهر رمضان: فريق AE بأكمله وآمل أن يجلب لك العيد لك ولعائلتك الصحة والسعادة والسلام. لهذا العام وكل السنوات القادمة ، قد تجد الرخاء والسعادة في كل ما تفعله. رمضان مبارك!

Once again, many thanks to the very talented Yunashimi, an AQWorlds Hero and guest contributor, for creating this beautiful graphic. It captures the mood and feel of the holiday perfectly.

Player Requests + How an Idea Evolves

Over the years, we've received countless requests from players and team members alike to add in more "real world" items, your in-game hero can reflect who you are offline. A player on Twitter today asked if the hijab in the image above was available in-game, we thought: "No, but it could be!" 

Gathering feedback on the idea, I found:

• The leads loved the idea of giving players the option to wear an item that matters so much to them
• One of our Muslim testers really liked the idea, but was concerned because of a real-world situation happening in Iran where women are fighting for the choice not to wear headcoverings
• Several players on Discord expressed concern about releasing religious-based content / focusing on just one religion / making players feel forced to farm for a drop related to a religion they don't practice

In many other games, hairstyle selections include cultural headgear as an option. This feels like the right way for us to go, too.We are already working on adding more diverse hairs to Bev's Battleon Hair Shop in the near future.

Expanding on that plan by adding headcovering options from different cultures and groups makes the most sense, and gives to most flexibility and freedom of choice.

* Today, I was asked why I make an extra effort to post good wishes for Ramadan/Eid on social media. When I was young, I saw some of my Muslim neighbors experience hatred + abuse. The impact it had on them stayed with me ever since. Sending messages like this is a (small) way I can help people feel welcome.

Badger Byte #9846: NPC Friendship Timer Reminder

The NPC Friendship system uses our standard "clock resets at midnight" just like all the daily quests. (Originally, it used a true 24 hour clock, and reset 24 hours after your last interaction. This was very confusing to players, so we changed it.)

March 21, 2023

Now Available: Shadowy Scavenger Hunt

Log in and fight to complete today's new Scavenger Hunt

Recently, we've been making some changes to the daily login gift lineup based on your feedback. This month, we're trying out some different ideas. One of them is a weekly scavenger hunt; the first one ended last night, and our second one will be available until next Tuesday. The third hunt begins NOW as we race towards a new Ultra Boss battle this weekend!

To make sure everyone can easily find the clue itself, it drops off the Frogzard in /battleontown.

• Read + decipher the clue to figure out where the rewards are.
• Head to the monster you THINK has the new 0 AC rare drop and battle for a chance to get it
• The clue + 0 AC rare rewards will drop through April 3rd.

Check out last week's Lucky Scavenger Hunt in this post. Its clue + reward drop will be available until March 27th.

Note: you don't need to have the clue in your inventory or bank in order to get the reward drop from the monster. If you learn where it is from a friend, a video, or the wiki, that's also fine! Getting the clue just adds to the fun of the hunt for those who want the mental challenge.

March 20, 2023

Monday, March 20th Updates

New News and Updates Round-up

With so many players on so many different platforms, the team and I found that our information had become really scattered over the last few years. Last month, we began these "round-up" Design Notes posts make sure everyone has access to all of the same info, no matter which platform you use. Read on to get all the latest news on updates, fixes, and sneak peeks.

Recent Bug Fixes

The following issues should have been resolved with last week's update: 

• The stray red pixel on Dage's Devastation armor was fixed.
• Dage's requested weapon upsizing was released.
• The missing UW3017 Shield armor is now available in the Dage's Dark Birthday Shop.
• If you were unable to continue the /siegefortress map, that was taken care of very early last week.

Upcoming Gear Sneak Peek

We've got some great gear heading your way. Check out previews below:

• Aranx's Good new gear
• Hikari's new Necromancer is gonna school you in the arts of the undead
• Check out Despera's fairy-ly gorgeous Spring set concept art
• Dino's puns are top notch... and so are these joke helms. 
• Kartos si Botax has a lato-lato pain heading your way with these new animated weapons.
• Mariartix! gonna make you /dance: new collab for Cinco de Mayo from Lae & Dino.
• Mihuri's Chancla weapons are a shoe-in for an April release date!

Dark Scavenger Hunt Leaves Tonight

The Frogzard in /battleontown drops the clue to the Dark Scavenger Hunt reward location until 11:59 PM EST tonight. Use the clue to figure out which monster drops a rare 0 AC daily login gift. (The item also goes rare tonight.)

Each Scavenger Hunt runs for 2 weeks. The Lucky Scavenger Hunt ends next week, and a brand-new Scavenger Hunt begins tomorrow.

Missing Pet Added 

The Original Bean Twilly pet now drops from the Treasure Pile in the /yulgarparty map! (h/t to AQW player Darches on Reddit for reminding me this had not been added.) 

Badger Byte #02865: Book of Lore Badges

Your Book of Lore houses MANY badges, but not all of them are under "Other Badges". Please look in your "Achievement Badges" for badges related to completing in-game objectives.

An EGG-cellent Spring Update: Bird Pets

Did you know... May 4th has been a holiday to celebrate our feather-y friends since 1892! Yesterday, a few players on Discord introduced me to the majesty of the Kiwi bird. AQW will add in a flock of new bird pets this Spring. What other birds should we add?

Image courtesy of Smithsonian National Zoo

AQW:Infinity + Artix Goes to PAX East

From Artix: Anyone going to PAX: East this week? Artix and the AE team will be running a booth there. Find all the info here: https://www.artix.com/posts/pax-east-2023/ We will also have a new convention item. 

In case you missed it: Pisces' Song Set

we added the first set in a new reward series based on Western astrology. As the year cycles through the zodiac signs, we'll release a new set matching its theme. This month: Pisces Song! Get more details + lore in the Design Notes.

Not Released, But Not Forgotten...

Last month, I received another request for more inclusive hairs, since we have only a small selection of them. This is still on the schedule! The assigned artist is currently working on a farming set for early April, but then will get cutting on this project.

Good Intention... of DOOM

Over the weekend, I saw a tweet asking about being able not being able to get a Dual Wield version of the NSoD (IoDA) from the /nostalgiaquest map. My normal response for issues like this is that we'll take a look, investigate, and see what we can do. The request sounded like a reasonable one that many players would enjoy. 

After seeing many responses that were pretty upset, I realized that I replied before fully investigating the details of this item. I assumed it was an issue with the removal of the Dual Wield shop from nostalgiaquest, which we may have been able to address. That is not what was being requested, though.

To help clear things up and avoid any more confusion or concern...

• No changes are planned, and a dual-wield version of the NSoD (IoDA) is not on the schedule.
• Our intent from the beginning was that an IoDA variant wouldn't give you access to the badge or other extras the original item unlocked. 
• The dual-wield shop was removed due to several issues with the shop. Though the merge shop glitch is fixed, having AC items in the shop caused additional issues. Also, multiple copies of similiar items caused more frustration. At this time, there are no plans to return it.