Design Notes

December 10, 2018

AQWorlds Patch Notes

Check the list of bug fixes to see what the team has addressed

Reens, Cemaros and the AQW Bug Hunter team are busy squashing the bugs you submit each week to the Bug Tracker at www.Artix.com/bugs.

Please do not send non-release bugs on Twitter. They will get lost. Make sure you send bug report forms!

Check back weekly to see if the bug you reported has been addressed. Please remember that not all bugs are "easy fixes" so some reported and confirmed bugs from each week may not be on the fixed list as they will require more time or a different person to fix them.

If you would like to know how the reports go from you to fixed, check this page:
http://www.aq.com/lore/guides/BugReportFAQ

Bug Fixes:

Icestorm map reopened. It was originally supposed to be part of Frostval In July, not December.
Candy Cane Rippers have been moved from the Rescue Blizzy quest to a drop from Frosty.
A Rock Inanitas Is Making You Keep has been made sellable.
Ultimate Flame Katana is now Ultimate Flame Blade.
Chaos Witness badge will light up now.

Art Fixes:

Tainted Destruction Blade has been upsized.
Black J5 female neck has been touched up some. This armour is actually non-standard so this is the best it can get.
Claws Of Darkon have been moved a bit for less groping. Due to layering, this is the best it will get though.
Obsidian Grovebreaker Armor has had brown/yellow lines removed.
Titanium Northern Queen's Crown and Titanium Queen's Battle Crown will now stop trying to turn into each other.
Same for Fiend of Nulgath (Rare) and Evolved Fiend Of Nulgath.
Copper Bullet and J6's Birthday Guns have had the grip adjusted.
Armed Celestial Commander Wings have been untilted.

Not Fixed & Why:

Pets with quests being unsellable - This is not a bug. There was a two fold reason for this one. One is we have noticed that when accounts become compromised, these pets seem to be the first things sold off, so this is for the pet owner's protection. The other is to prevent players from obtaining the pet, getting a reward and immediately selling the pet. This is not how they were ever intended to work.

Tags: Patch Notes, Cemaros,

December 07, 2018

Frostval Returns for 2018

Battle through our returning seasonal events!

Frostval is a time of joy, hope, and... defending Lore from all the insane ice monsters that cannot stop attacking it?!?! Log in this weekend to battle through all our winter holiday events and unlock seasonal rewards!

/join Frostvale to begin battling through all the previous years of Frostval releases, then test your mettle (and metal!) against the biggest gift of them all: Giefury!*

This year, in additional to his seasonal presents, Giefury has NEW gifts for you:

Frostval Nutcracker armor (red variant)**
Giefury armor, helm, house guard, and pet
Frostvale Healer and Mage armors
Dark Frostdrake Ruler
Santy Hats and Holiday Flails
Frostval Doge helms

FrostScythe also drops an all-new version of his armor set, crafted by the incomparable Aranx just to help you celebrate Frostval!

* Giefury's name comes from the Old English noun "giefu" for "a giving, gift", which is related to the Old Norse word "gift, gipt" meaning "gift; good luck."

** Created just for you by AQW Community artist, Dominik! The blue variant will arrive in the Featured Gear shop this weekend.

ALL of the seasonal events from previous years will also return - that means you'll get to battle Kezeroth, Quetzal, and more... PLUS get all the holiday seasonal goodies that come with them!

Journey to Frostvale

Once again the Frost Moglins of Frostvale are opening the snow-covered gates of their town to all of Lore as they prepare for the merriest of all of Lore's holidays... Frostval! If this is your first year with AQW then you get to play through all of the previous adventures:

Save Frostvale,
Stop the Ice Symbiote infection
Watch a young Empress Gravelyn experience her first Frostval
Fight to survive as Kezeroth and Karok, ice giant brothers from another world, battle to take OURS
Somebody PLEASE think of the children! An icy ancient horror has kidnapped them, and they need your help.
and get SO MANY presents with the return of Tinsel's Seasonal Frostval Shop

Join us Next Week for...

A bounty of battles and XP!

IceStorm Arena + Level Cap raise to 90
Double server boosts
Quibble Coinbiter's Frostval rares shop
Frostval 2018 Collection Chest (unlock ALL of Quibble's rare + seasonal gear for one price)

Later this month...

That's all leading up to an ALL NEW FROSTVAL ADVENTURE, where we'll battle through the past with Cysero, Lim, and Sora as they teach their bestest friend EVER, Warlic, the true meaning of Christmas. (PSA: things go very, very badly BUT you'll meet some of your oldest, coolest monster-buds from DragonFable.) You are welcome to all of the great Frostval seasonal rares and the heart-warming Frostval stories.

Tags: Alina,

December 07, 2018

Unlock the Northern Royalty Sets

Upgrade to unlock the December exclusive gear sets!

Unlock the all-new Northern Royallty upgrade bonus gear starting Friday, December 7th at 6 PM EST! Buy any AC or membership package worth $10 USD or more to unlock the color-custom Northland Royalty set or get the bonus color-custom Titanium Royalty armor and accessories with the 12,000 AC or 12 month membership packs!
December 2018 upgrade exclusive: Midnight Royalty armor and accessories.

Pack Details

The Northlands Royalty gear* will be available as an upgrade bonus set every December when you buy membership or AdventureCoins.
All packages will also come with the Northern Royalty character page badge and, this year only, the 2018 exclusive character page badge.
This upgrade bonus gear will be available until 6 PM EST on January 4th, 2019.

*not including the 2018 exclusive gear.

12000 AC or 12 month membership packages: ALL 40+ Northern Royalty Set items

Get more gear and save more of your real-world gold with our largest upgrade packages! Unlock the Titanium, Golden, and Midnight Plates of the North armor sets with our 12000 AdventureCoin or 12 month membership packages, plus all the accessories:

Titanium and Golden Plates of the North armors (fabric is color-customizable)
24 helms
8 capes
6 swords
2 pets
7 Rep/XP/Gold/Class Points boosts added straight to your inventory
Plus the Midnight Northlands Royalty exclusive gear

2000 and 5000 AC or 3 and 6 month membership package: Golden Northlands Royalty

Unlock the Golden and Midnight Plates of the North armor sets with the above packages, plus their accessories:

Golden Plate of the North armor (fabric is color-customizable)
12 helms
4 capes
3 swords
1 pet
5 Rep/XP/Gold/Class Points boosts added straight to your inventory
Plus the Midnight Northlands Royalty exclusive gear

December 2018 upgrade exclusive: Midnight Northlands Royalty

Midnight Northern Royalty armor (fabric is color-customizable)
Guardian of the North cape
Guardian's Frozen Great Sword
Exclusive 2018 Northlands Royalty character page badge

2018 Holiday AC Bonus: Get up to 50% More Free ACs

Get up to 50% more FREE bonus AdventureCoins when you buy any Adventure package until January 2nd! If you're excited about all our 2018 holiday items, new gear in the Wheel of Doom, or our 2019 New Year's rare gear, now's the time to top up your ACs and get even more for free.

The bigger the AC package you buy, the more free AdventureCoins you'll get!

12000 AC pack: 6000 extra ACs (50% more ACs)

5000 AC pack: 2000 extra ACs (40% more ACs)

2000 AC pack: 500 extra ACs (25% more ACs)

900 AC pack: 100 extra ACs (11% more ACs)

* Note: bonus AdventureCoins are only available with AdventureCoin packages. The special bonus offer does not apply to membership packages.

Tags: Alina,

December 06, 2018

Gears of Doom & Why Treasure Potions Cannot Be Banked

Gears of Doom & Wheel of Doom

We’re getting a lot of reports on the Gears of Doom and the Wheel of Doom which are not bugs. The most common two are “not getting gears” and “can’t spin the wheel”.

The most common one is the player banked the first gear and seems to have forgotten it. Once you place one in your bank, the next one (or two) will go there as well. Look in your bank. I’m sorry folks, but there just isn’t time to send each of you an email saying “They’re in your bank”.

This is also one of the two causes of “can’t spin the Wheel”. The Gears simply will not work until you take them out of your bank. So, look in your bank and then remove them to use your spin!

The other cause of being unable to spin the Wheel is you do have to be level 10 for the free spins. Why? Because we want to encourage players to play the game! That is what games are made for, after all.

The next most common result when checking those reports is many people seem to have a misconception on when they will be awarded Gears. Please look at the following chart.

The week for awarding Gears is personal to you. It begins the day you pick up your first Gear, and will not reset again until 7 days after that. You cannot collect more than 3 Gears in your “personal week”. (See Player A)

If for some reason, you do not manage to log in and collect all 3 Gears in the 7 day period, you will collect the next one the next time you log in, and your restart day will be the day after you use them to spin the Wheel. (See Player B)

We are also investigating options to make this much easier from a player perspective as well! Keep an eye here on the Design Notes for updates on that!

Why Treasure Potions Cannot Be Banked

Yorumi had to do some new magic and make Treasure Potions unable to be banked to prevent loss of them when players would bank them, and then get more, and try to force the stacks to merge. While the TPs did not vanish every time you tried this, thanks to some backend magic, if you moved them enough times, eventually one stack would vanish.

This ONLY happens when it is stacking items which are triggered by player actions and are forced into your inventory, and you have a stack in the bank as well. So 3 items - Treasure Potions, Daily XP Boost! (1 hr) and Power Gems. So please don't try to force any other stacks to merge! They will do it on their own if you just let them.

We explored many ways to stop the Treasure Potions from vanishing, and none of the options which previously existed were fool-proof. This is when Yorumi got his magic bag out and completely rewrote Treasure Potions so that they could not be banked. At all.

This is not a “quick and easy” fix by any means, which is why it was only applied to Treasure Potions, as they have taken on the role of a form of micro currency with the Doom Merge shop, and especially the Platinum Item of Donated Awesomeness.

For all other items: There are two types of reactions stacking items have when you already have a stack in your bank.

For items that you have to pick up manually, it will not allow you to pick it up. In that case, you may be able to retrieve your stack from your bank and then pick up the item.

For items that are automatically added to your inventory, it will go into your inventory, and into your bank when you relog if you do not try to force it to stack with the others. Trying to force it to stack with the others in this case could cause the item to vanish.

In both cases, it is always best to remove your stack from the bank before collecting more items.

We are still looking at better solutions, but we did need to do this to prevent any more loss. So please, don't try to force any other stacks to merge! They will do it on their own if you just let them.

Tags: Cemaros, Wheel of Doom, Treasure Potion, Gear of Doom,

December 05, 2018

Final Weekend: Black Friday Gear

Black Friday Gear Leaves Monday, December 10th

There are only 4 days left to get all our 2018 Harvest Eventt, Black Friday and Cyber Monday rare items! Once the event leaves, these items will never return.

Black Friday 2018 Rare Gear includes:

Shadow OathKeeper armor set
Austere ShadowSlayer set
Shadow BeastMaster of Nulgath set
Obsidian GroveBreaker set
Black Sun Ninja set
Obsidian Peasant armor
Dark SkyGuard Uniform armor
Obsidian Pirate Mage armor
Dark and Shadowed Infernal Companion Cape
Dark Void Paladin Katana (dual and single wield)
Shadow SoulSeeker (single and dual wield)
Dark Derp Fish pet

the HollowBorn Evoker Black Friday collection chest (and all our other Black Friday gear)! The chest will return next November with even more items. Find it now at www.AQ.com

Correction: the Obsidian No Class was listed as a rare item. It will return each year for Black Friday.

Tags: Alina,

December 05, 2018

December 2018 Event Calendar

This Month: Tis the Season for FROSTVAL!

Winter is coming (for many of you, it's already here!), and so are all our snow-covered, ice-laden, gift-bearing holiday events! To help everyone celebrate, we've got a list of all our holiday events so you don't miss a single moment of cheer.