Hello NI community,

For a long time now, quests have typically felt underwhelming or overly rewarding.  The Developer team has taken all of the quests into careful consideration and has redone the rewards, cleaned up grammar mistakes in the text, added missing bots/removed old bots, rebalanced quest requirements, and in many cases drastically changed the rewards offered.  The goal was to move away from quests that focus on sniping different bosses for huge rewards and towards quests that require larger numbers of various other enemies.  Quest refresh timers are also now based on when you accept the quest rather than when you finish it, so if it takes you 30 days to complete Angriff! Angriff! you won't have to wait any additional time to accept it again.  This keeps quests limited in how often they can be accepted without making characters that have already completed these quests have an additional long cooldown period on quests that already take a long time to complete.

Legacy of a Hero and Prime Slayer in particular had large decreases in the amount of gold rewarded.  Do not worry, however, as characters who are already working on Legacy of a Hero will receive the old reward and characters currently working on Prime Slayer will receive 250k and 2 Scales of Fafnir.  Any subsequent completions of Prime Slayer will have the new reward.

Along with changes to the old quests, 12 new quests have been added: Gotcha, Bloody Bastards!, Can't Hit a Moving Target II, Collecting Heads II, Collecting Heads III, In it for the Long Haul III, Prince Slayer, King Slayer, God Slayer, Defender of Swadia, Defender of Calradia, Defender of Midgard, and Rise From the Ashes.

Hello NI community,

This patch introduces some small fixes and adjustments, as well as properly updating all of the maps that were supposed to change last patch.

Item Changes:

• Tiger Scale -2 armor properly
  
• Blessed Penetrator +5p, +2spd, +2 missile spd
  

• Added the option to abbreviate xp messages to the website.  (Extras > Settings > XP Message Length)
  

• 1.8.2
  
• 1.8.1
  
• 1.8.0
  

Hello NI community,

This patch adds some small errors in item stat continuity and prepared for the rest of the future rotations.  Many throwing spears that previously used 1h animations have been adjusted to be used as small polearms instead.  In addition, the tank type hero classes are slightly stronger: Halberdier and Ranger +2 Ironflesh, Royal Guard +1 Ironflesh.

Model Changes:

• Dragon Axe positioning edited
  

• Dragon Breath, Twigs of Yggdrasil, and Rupturers now have polearm animations and stats when in melee mode
  
• Volundr Greatsword -1spd, -1c
  
• Ancient Greatsword +4spd, -1c
  
• Eastern Full Scale -3 armor, -2 leg
  
• Tiger Scale -2 armor, -2 leg
  
• Brigadine Black/Red/Heraldic -2 armor
  
• Black Armour +1 weight
  
• Checkered Heavy Lamellar -2 armor, -1 leg
  
• Mangler -5p
  
• Ailadrodd -2spd, -5 accuracy
  
• Swadian Heater Shield +50hp, recipe adjusted to match Royal Shield
  
• Dead Shot +5 accuracy
  
• Tempest +10 accuracy
  
• Typhoon +10 accuracy
  
• Very Heavy Throwing Axe now draws correctly from the left hip when in melee mode
  
• Tiger Scale Armour and Gold Lamellar Armour now useable by both Master Peltast and Marauder
  
• Dragon Axe and Battle Honed Dragon Axe +6 length
  
• Battle Honed Aurora Blade changed to Blessed Aurora Blade
  
• Blessed Aurora Blade +1spd, +1c, +4p
  
• Blessed Aurora Blade Secondary Mode +5spd, -3c
  
• Battle Honed Sun Pike changed to Cursed Sun Pike
  
• Blessed Twigs of Yggdrasil +1p
  
• Blessed Penetrator -10p, +2spd
  
• Blessed Mjolnir Secondary Mode +3spd, -2b
  
• Battle Hardened Studded Gauntlets changed to Cursed Studded Gauntlets
  
• Cursed Studded Gauntlets -.25 weight
  
• Battle Hardened Valsgarde -.5 weight
  
• Battle Hardened Gothic Plate changed to Blessed Gothic Plate
  
• Battle Honed Dragon Axe -2c, +2spd
  

• Beach Assault (stable adjustments)
  
• Kattegat (fixed aesthetic bugs)
  
• Nordic Fortress (removed horse troughs and added a surgeon table)
  
• River's Conflict (added a surgeon table)
  
• Royal Observatory (fixed aesthetic bugs)
  
• Senuzgda Cavern (shifted a player spawn)
  
• Swadian Citadel (fixed aesthetic bugs)
  
• Swadian Temple (adjusted AI mesh)
  
• Unuzdaq Castle (the snow has melted)
  

Hello NI community,

This patch we have fixed a few bugs, changed some item stats, adjusted some of the Awakened Legendary items, and prepared for future rotations.  In addition, Juggernauts were made a bit more tanky: +5 Ironflesh and -2 Athletics.

Model Changes:

• Jormungandr length edited to better represent weapon reach
  
• Edited Noble Steel Gauntlets texture
  
• Edited Defender set textures
  

• Valsgarde -.25 weight
  
• Black Arrows +1p
  
• Zephyr +2p
  
• Battle Hardened Gothic -12 weight
  
• Battle Hardened Valsgarde -1 weight
  
• Raging Tempest -3p, +2spd, +1 missile spd
  
• Blessed Mjolnir -2b, +3spd
  
• Blessed Penetrator +5p
  

• Offshore (removed unreachable restoration props)
  
• Swadian Citadel (fixed a visual rug glitch + fixed a player spawn bug)
  

• The surgeon table can no longer launch you across the map.
  
• Using a surgeon table during spawn wave prep no longer prevents you from respawning items.
  
• Fixed a bug allowing the empty repeater clip button to refund too many bolts in certain situations.
  
• Warborn Shieldmaidens are able to stab with their lances.
  
• Updated the house banners.
  

1.8.0 client release

Hello NI community,

In this update we are taking massive steps to improve the NI economy and trading experience, adding many quality of life features, and preparing for future updates.

First off, the loot system has been completely remade.  The new system has a significantly more even distribution and does not nerf the experience or loot chance of smaller teams; having fewer bots already does this sufficiently.  In the new system, your individual loot rate will be the same for every bot of each type you kill: the size of your team, number of people alive, and other factors will not change the chance of you looting.  Having more people on your team will only increase your chance of getting loot by increasing the number of bots per wave.  This new system will also give you far more loot per run, balanced out towards demand.  You will (hopefully) not be looting 5 Wood of Glasir for every 1 Small Lump of Lead anymore.  Although the new loot system is implemented on all servers, only Normal, Hard, and Ragnarok have had their drop tables significantly altered.

The drop table itself has also seen a significant overhaul, separating the materials out between the modes based on tier.  For example, plants will be best found on Normal mode and will never be seen on Ragnarok, whereas Hardened Metal will be plentiful on Hard mode, but will have a low chance of dropping on Ragnarok.  This is to encourage players to play different modes and trade materials between each other to get everything they need to craft new items.  In addition to this, legendary items have been spread out so that each one drops from only one Nord (other than the Valsgarde... its special ) and many more mixed and challenge wave Nords are capable of dropping legendary items.  The legendary items have also been organized by mode, so you won't be finding a Tempest from Prince or a Dragon Axe from Odin.

Next, a new item tier has been added - Awakened Legendary items.  Recipes used to upgrade your legendary items are now available at the highest levels of House Crafting.  These recipes allow you to salvage or sacrifice old items to the gods in order to upgrade your legendary to reach its full potential.  These recipes will only be available for a month at a time before the supplies run short and the gods change their desires.  It is possible that future iterations of the same item may have different recipes.  These items are not meant for everyone to be able to obtain, nor are they something people are supposed to amass.  They are for the few people that want to upgrade specific legendary items they have grown attached to.

1.7.2 Client Release

We have a few more bugs to take care of from the 1.7.0 release.

• Fixed a problem which had Wraiths spawning on the Swadian team like Trickster assassins.
  
• Added Explosive Bolts to the list of missiles to prune around interactive props.
  
• Round two at fixing certain boss abilities.
  

1.7.1 Client Release

We have a few bugs to take care of from the 1.7.0 release.

• Horse health bars work again.
  
• Fixes have been made to some of the Ragnarok boss abilities.
  
• The Ornate Hopelite Shield shows up on your back.
  
• The Sunpike displays correctly in its alternate mode.
  
• Warborn Shieldmaidens all carry maces now in case they are dismounted.
  
• All the cavalry maps have been updated with barriers on top of the stables.
  
• Novice Rider gained 1 Horse Archery.
  
• Knight gained 1 Riding.
  
• Kaasovic has gained a Developer tag.
  

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!