1.7.0 Client Release: Cavalry 3.0

In this update, we have heavily focused on making Cavalry mode much more enjoyable and functional than it was before. This includes brand new horses, horse armours, and lances; stat and wave balancing; and more. We have also included a few new features to improve day-to-day gameplay and added an interesting challenge to a few Ragnarok bosses.

To start with, there are four tiers of cavalry classes and items instead of five. This flattens the field and makes balancing more manageable. The new requirement for the highest tier cavalry class, Knight, is now 500,000 mounted xp instead of 3,000,000 which should be a much more obtainable goal. Anyone with more mounted xp than is required has been refunded three quarters of the extra xp as assist xp. For anyone curious, the formula was assist xp refunded = (mounted xp - 500000) / 0.4. Also, since the old horses and lances are obsolete, they have been updated to sell for the full value they were purchased for.

The new horses follow a more linear approach to stats with only one set of stats per tier which should help eliminate some of the metas that had formed around certain horses and their functionality. This may change in the future to allow for more personal preference and choice. We have also added horse armour as a separate purchase for your horse. Each tier has different stats that could apply to whatever you want your horse to be - a very light horse without much protection or a slower tank of a horse to ensure its safety. You can put any armour on any horse leaving it completely up to you how you want to equip your horse. We believe this should make for a much more personalized experience with a ton of horse and armour combinations possible. Customize to your hearts content!

Along with the new horses and armours, we have added shiny new lances! They are much prettier and more effective on the field as you can now stab with them once again. Along with this change, most of the pikeman weapons should be usable on horseback except for the longest weapons like Sarissa or Jormungandr. To make lances more usable for non-pikemen, we have also added a new Mounted Polearm skill which only applies to Cavalry mode. Marauder gets the most at 225 followed by 185 for other pikemen classes and 150 for all the other tier four classes.

There are also a few features in the rest of the game worth a special highlight. By pressing V, you can empty the bolts in your crossbow back into your quiver so that you can reload before leaving cover. To help deal with arrows and bolts getting in the way of building barricades and using refills, a new script clears missiles close to interactive props when prep time starts and the area around a barricade when you deploy it. Odin, Thor, and Loke have learned some new tricks which might cause a bit of mayhem if you aren't careful.

For a full list of changes, check out the next post.

Happy New Year!

1.6.6 Client Release

This is a very minor patch to update the tournament gear in preparation for the Swadian New Year Tournament.  The deathmatch servers have been converted to tournament practice servers for anyone wanting to try out the stats and gear.  The practice servers will not load any gear other than the tournament gear which you can equip on the tournament loadout page located under the Extras menu on the website.  The gear does not need to be purchased and only loads on the tournament servers.

Australia

The Australian servers moved again this past month and for a slightly higher monthly fee, 21 EUR (32 AUD), we are running one server of each mode: NI_Beginner_AU1, NI_Normal_AU1, NI_Hard_AU1, NI_Ragnarok_AU1, and NI_Cavalry_AU1.  With this service, the number of servers running does not affect the fee so we just have to keep an eye on how the performance holds up with that many servers running at once.  I have not heard of any issues with the servers so far so let us know if you find any.

Funding for the Australian servers is running a bit low again, though.  We are just short of the amount to pay for the next month so if you've been meaning to donate to the AU fund, now would be a great time.

More news coming soon...
- The NI Team

Hello everyone,

We've been hard at work getting things ready for the Swadian New Year Tournament and the next patch so this comes a couple days later than I first intended, but the annual Christmas event is starting once again. We have the return of the always-up Christmas themed servers and 2.5x xp which will run through New Year's Day.

Merry Christmas!
- The NI Team

Happy Halloween!

Preparations for Halloween were a bit delayed this year but not entirely forgotten.  Double xp started on Sunday with the first Halloween Challenge event and will continue at least through Sunday, November 5th.

With this patch, we gain a new Halloween themed mode aimed as being a fun mixture of normal and hard difficulty.  This new mode will be available on open Halloween servers which will remain up as long as the double xp lasts.  There might even be another running of the scheduled Halloween servers - keep an eye on the Official Events board.

1.6.5 Client Release
Halloween Invasion renamed to Halloween Challenge
Halloween Invasion re-introduced with different bots

Hello everyone,

As you may have already noticed, we once again have Australian servers.  We have changed to a hosting company which is offering servers at a substantially lower cost than our previous host.  The current cost of the two AU servers is roughly 18 EUR (27 AUD) per month.  The NordInvasion donation page has been updated with a new link for supporting the AU servers.  As before, please donate using the Australian donation link if you want to keep the AU servers around!

There have been a few hiccups shifting to the new host, however, and the most noticeable is probably that your gear loads a bit slower than before - that is where the 1.6.4 update comes in.  With this update, a "gear loading" message will block you from spawning until your character has loaded.  On EU and NA, you might never spot the message unless there is some delay in loading gear.  Over time, we will try to smooth out any other rough edges caused by the slower connection to our database.

1.6.4 Client Release

• Prevent spawning before the character has finished loading.
  
• Map Updates.
  • Ancient Bastion [barriers]
    
  • Hidden Farm [player access]
    
  • Hypers Castle [AI pathing]
    
  • Swadian City [barriers]
    
  • Swadian Folly [barriers]
    
  • Swadian Great Hall [barriers]
    
  • Swadian Keep [barriers]
    
  • Unuzdaq Castle [AI pathing]
    

1.6.3 Client Release

This time around, we have some small but important map updates.

• Lake Town [removed a misplaced AI mesh and raised a wooden wall near the player camp]
  
• Swadian Folly [blocked ledge out of bot's reach]
  
• Swadian Mine [bot spawn in now player accessible]
  

Hello, fellow Swadians!

This patch brings new model and texture replacements for otherwise lacking items, some balance changes to a select few items, map updates and fixes, and other various (although important) changes.  Probably the most notable one is the Wall Barricade hit point change.

Wall Barricades have had so many hit points, they have gradually been replacing shielders entirely in runs instead of assisting them. By dropping the hp of Wall Barricades, we hope to encourage the use of shielders once again. To compensate for the lower hp, Thor's Mjolnir AoE against barricades has also been dropped.  This means Thor should not really pose a bigger threat than before but normal Nords will. This might be tuned further once we see how the changes effect real runs.

1.6.2 Client Release

• New Items
  • Iron Helmet: added to the marketplace for tier 1 archers.
    
  • Helmet with Coif: added to the marketplace for tier 2 archers.
    
  • Nasal Helmet with Coif: added to the marketplace for tier 3 archers.
    
• Item Stats
  • Dwarf Axe: +2 cut, +3 weight, -4 speed.
    
  • Eastern Greaves: +2 leg armor to match boots of same value.
    
  • Eastern Full Scale: +1 body, +1 leg, -1 weight.
    
  • Steel Estoc: -2 speed. Alternate mode: +1 speed.
    
  • Elegant Estoc: -2 speed. Alternate mode: -2 speed.
    
  • Mjolnir: -3 speed in one-handed mode.
    
  • Wall Barricade: 3,200 hit points (was 4,200).
    
  • Thor's Mjolnir: Dropped the max AoE damage against barricades a bit to compensate for the lower HP.
    
  • Added 15% damage reduction to Juggernaut body armor. This only applies to the body armor, and not the class Juggernaut.
    
• Item Models, Textures, etc.
  • Zephyr: new model and texture.
    
  • Ailadrodd: new model and texture.
    
  • Leviathan's Guard: new model and renamed to "Gilded Bear Armor".
    
  • Leviathan's Hide: renamed to "Levianthan's Guard" and takes the old model.
    
  • Griffon Bascinet: texture edits.
    
  • Phoenix Shield: texture edits.
    
  • Visored Sallet: changed back to its old model with a few minor texture edits.
    
  • Heavy Sallet: model replaced with the Visored Sallet's model to match the armor set.
    
  • Sarranid Veiled Helm: new model.
    
  • Spiked Cap: new model.
    
  • Spiked Helmet: new model and renamed to "Nasal Helmet with Facemask".
    
  • Guard Helmet: new model.
    
  • Fiendish Bow: fixed a minor bug the bowstring - it should now be properly held in the hand.
    
  • Eastern Repeater Crossbow: renamed to "Heavy Repeater Crossbow".
    
• Map Updates
  • Caravan Ambush [more modifications to the bot spawn]
    
  • Fortress Under Siege [prevent escaping from the player area]
    
  • Hande's Retreat [adjustments to the AI mesh around some stairs]
    
  • Hidden Farm [prevent players from spawning stuck]
    
  • Keancuop Forest [prevent Nords from falling off stairs]
    
  • Kings Castleyard [prevent jumping into the water]
    
  • King of the Hill [made stairs easier to climb]
    
  • Swadian Folly [prevent players from getting stuck]
    
  • Swadian Town [prevent Nords from falling off stairs]
    
• Added a chat filter to prevent images from appearing.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevents support items from dropping correctly on death if you were interrupted while deploying them and died without them in your hand.
  
• Removed broken translator files which were actually copies of Turkish.
  

Hi all, 

Another day and another Teamspeak server change. Hopefully this one will go unnoticed however! 

We have updated our Teamspeak server to the latest version, as we regularly do, but have made a few other changes behind the scenes at the same time. 

We don't expect to see any issues as a result of these changes but if you notice anything unusual then please let us know in the usual way. 

Otherwise, happy gaming! 

/Nao & the NI Team