This is a minor update to begin our Thanksgiving-themed event. There were also some fixes and revisions ready to go, so they're included here. (We're still working on the upcoming "major update" that will include Vampirism.)

The changes here ensure that bardic songs can be powered up at high level so that they remain very impressive group and/or solo buffs. In addition we've added new ways to make the horn "blast" abilities more useful, both when used in conjunction with a lute or when used with a melee weapon such as a sword or axe.

Bard ability changes:

• Song of Discord: base damage increased a bit at all tiers
  
• Song of Resurgence: base healing amount increased
  
• Song of Bravery: power-cost reduction increased at all tiers (by roughly double)
  
• Blast of Defiance: "reaps Health and returns it as Health" => "reaps Health and returns it as Health (or Armor if Health is full)"
  
• Moment of Resolve: now restores Health (or Armor if Health is Full). Previously it restored Armor.
  
• Moment of Resolve: physical damage mitigation lasts 8 seconds instead of 5 seconds

Changes to bard treasure:

• "Song of Bravery boosts allies' Basic Attack and Core Attack damage +67" => +151
  
• "Thunderous Note costs -20 Power and range +6 meters" => "Thunderous Note costs -30 Power and damage is +10%". Note: previously this effect was on Necklace and Hands slots. It is now only available on Necklace slot equipment. If you have gloves with this effect on them, they have become Legacy. You can use Transmutation to roll the effect off of your gloves, or you can get a randomly generated replacement. Speak to the Legacy Item Helper golem in Serbule for more information.
  
• "Blast of Defiance reaps +22% of the Health damage to you as health. The reap cap is +100" => "Blast of Defiance reaps +22% of the Health damage to you as health (or armor if health is full). The reap cap is +150"
  
• "Song of Resurgence also restores 10 Power every 4 seconds to each target in range" => 16
  
  • Also, fixed bug that caused this effect to incorrectly add in benefits from Song of Resurgence health-restoration effects
• "Song of Discord deals +X damage and has a 5% chance to stun each target every 2 seconds" => 10% chance to stun
  
• "Song of Discord has a 53% chance to deal +25% damage to each target every 2 seconds" => 33% chance to deal +100% damage
  
• "Song of Discord Damage +20%" => +26.5%
  
• "Song of Discord reduces targets' Rage by -238 every 2 seconds" => "... and deals +55 damage"
  
• New effect: (Chest, OffHand): "Song of Discord deals +100% damage to targets with less than 33% of their Max Rage"
  
• New effect: (Head) "Thunderous Note deals +84 damage and is considered a Bardic Blast ability."
  
• New effect: (Hands) "Every 2 seconds while Song of Discord is active, your Bardic Blast ability damage is boosted +10.5% for 30 seconds"
  
• (Head, MainHand) "Song of Bravery has a 15% chance every 4 seconds to grant listeners a Moment of Bravery: all attacks deal +25% damage for 5 seconds" => 25% chance to boost all attacks by 50%
  
  • Dev note: this was originally coded in an old-school way, where each slot's effect triggers separately. This seems like the most fun approach here, so that hasn't been changed. What this means is that if you have both the Head and Main-Hand versions of this effect, you don't have one 50% chance to get a moment of bravery, but rather two 25% chances. If both effects trigger, damage is boosted twice.
    
  • Also note: there is a new tier of this effect for level 90+ gear, with 30% chance instead of 25% chance
• New effect: (Legs, Ring) "Direct Nature Damage +24% and Indirect Nature Damage +48% while Bard skill active"
  
• New effect: (Legs) "Song of Bravery further reduces ability costs -20 and increases Direct Damage +11.5%"
  
• "Song of Bravery causes allies' Combat Refreshes to restore +92 Armor" => +143
  
• "Moment of Resolve dispels any Stun effects on allies and grants them immunity to Stuns for 8 seconds." => "In addition, Moment of Resolve can be used while Stunned."
  
• "Song Of Resurgence Healing +22" => +30
  
• New effect: (Ring) "Melee abilities boost your Bardic Blast ability damage +15.5% for 30 seconds"
  
• New effect: (Ring) "Blast of Fury Damage +182"
  
• "Blast of Defiance reaps 23% of the Armor damage done (up to a max of 150), returning it to you as armor" => "Blast of Defiance Damage +120 and Reuse Time -2 seconds"
  
• "Blast of Fury deals +52% damage and knocks the target back, but the ability's reuse timer is +2 seconds" => "Blast of Fury deals +28% damage and knocks the target back"
  
• New effect: (Ring, Necklace) "Blast of Fury Damage +120 and Reuse Timer -1 Second"
  
• New effect: (Legs, Chest) "Bard Blast abilities cause target to suffer 280 Nature damage over 8 seconds"
  
• New effect: (Legs) "Melee abilities boost your next attack +62.5% if it is a Bardic Blast ability"
  
• "Whenever you take damage from an enemy, you gain Bard Base Damage +10% for 15 seconds. (Stacks up to 10x)" => "Whenever you take damage from an enemy, your Bardic Blast abilities deal +10% damage for 20 seconds. (Stacks up to 12x)"

Bard item changes:

• Bard horn weapons that boosted "Bard Base Damage %" now instead boost "Bard Damage %". (This is a buff as it is generally a larger bonus for high-level players, and the same bonus as before for low-level players.)
  
• Rakshasa Lute has been revised to reduce Moment of Resolve reuse time
  
• Fairy Lute now also reduces Moment of Resolve reuse time
  
• Starlute now also reduces Virtuoso's Ballad reuse time

This is a snapshot of the Necromancy skill which is still under minor development -- that is, there may be some more changes that coincide with the future launch of the Vampirism skill.

• (OffHand) "Death's Hold causes target to take +10.7% damage from Darkness for 15 seconds" => +11.57%
  
• (MainHand, Ring) "Summoned Skeletons deal +18% direct damage, but take +50% more damage from cold attack" => deal +24% direct damage, but take +50% more damage from cold attacks
  
• (Feet, OffHand) "Summoned Skeletons have +130 armor" => "... and suffer -20% damage from Burst attacks"
  
• (Chest, OffHand) "Summoned Skeletons have +93 health" => "... and suffer -20% damage from Burst attacks"
  
• (Feet, OffHand) "Summoned Skeletal Swordsmen have +149 armor and +10 Crushing/Slashing/Piercing Mitigation" => "+149 armor and -20% Crushing/Slashing/Piercing Vulnerability"
  
• (Hands, Ring) "Summoned Skeletal Archers and Mages deal +50 direct damage" => +70
  
• (Head, MainHand) "Provoke Undead restores 64 Health to you and causes your attacks to taunt +20% for 10 seconds" => "Provoke Undead restores 83 Health to you (or Armor if Health is full) and causes your attacks to taunt +58% for 20 seconds"
  
• (Feet, Ring) "Provoke Undead deals 72 damage to your minions, who then deal +72 damage for 10 seconds" => deal +129 damage for 10 seconds
  
• (Feet, MainHand) "Provoke Undead causes your minions to deal +29% damage for 10 seconds, but also take 175 damage over 10 seconds" => +46% damage
  
• (OffHand, Necklace) "Provoke Undead causes your minions to deal +43 damage for 10 seconds" => "Provoke Undead's Reuse Time is -5 seconds and it boosts your minions' damage +48 for 10 seconds"
  
• (Feet) "Heal Undead restores +22 health/armor and grants target undead +17 Mitigation from all attacks for 8 seconds" => "Heal Undead causes target undead to take -39% damage from Elite attacks for 8 seconds"
  
• (Legs, MainHand) "Heal Undead restores an additional 156 Health/Armor over 12 seconds" => "... and also hastens the current reuse timer of Rebuild Undead -5 seconds"
  
• (Chest, Ring) "Using Raise Zombie on an existing zombie raises its Max Health +195 for 60 seconds (and heals +195)" => for 5 minutes

• To help you adapt to changes in this update, transmutation costs for Necromancy and Bard skills are reduced
  
• Fixed bug with Archery treasure effect: "Blitz Shot Damage +X% and Critical Hit Chance +Y%". The critical-hit chance bonus was not applying.
  
• Fixed bug with Archery treasure effect: "Aimed Shot deals +X damage, has +Y% Critical Hit Chance, and also grants this Critical Hit Chance bonus to your next Archery attack". The critical-hit chance bonus was not applying to Aimed Shot
  
• Added display of buffed critical-hit chance to ability tooltips
  
• Bug fix: Bladesmithing sharpening kits no longer add a Bladesmithing level-requirement to the item. They now apply a Sword, Knife, or Unarmed level requirement, as appropriate. Note that this fix can only apply to newly-used kits; weapons sharpened prior to this update will still have a Bladesmithing prerequisite until they are re-sharpened.
  
• The JSON file `abilitykeywords.json` has a new structure. (Sorry)
  
• Jack o'lanterns and a few other art items can now be "installed" in guild halls
  
• Fixed bug that caused elven judgment student key trunk to give no loot to party members except the one who receives the poison. (All party members should be able to get loot, just not the poison)
  
• Fixed many Effect descriptions to have precise buff amounts in them. (This is shown in a tooltip when you hover over an Effect.)
  
• Changed Weather Witching treasure effect: "Deluge deals +102 damage on contact and increases the target's Poison Vulnerability +15% for 30 seconds (non-stacking)". This effect now debuffs both Poison Vulnerability and Electricity Vulnerability. (It was bugged to debuff Electricity, and when fixing that, we decided it can just debuff both.)
  
• Bugfix: fixed recipe for "Dwarven Stout (1 glass)" so that it better matches ingredient ordering from "Dwarven Stout Keg"
  
• Fix pet skeletons not persisting across Areas. (And btw we can't currently implement spiders persisting, so that's why they don't. But it's on the todo list.)
  
• Horse Apple Bushes no longer have collisions
  
• Norbert no longer treats druids as animals, unless they are in an actual animal form. Previously you would see the countdown and it would get stuck at 0 and not let you progress - now he just directs you to speak with Spot
  
• Field Surgery 4 now requires Field Surgery 3 instead of 2
  
• Brugo the Wise now actually gives a gift at Best Friends favor
  
• Adjust graphics sliders: Shadow Distance & LOD Bias now have max values of 1000 and 10 respectively, and Ultra setting respects these maximums
  
• Lower flash brightness of certain get-hit effects
  
• Fix Gardening uncap icon in Floxie's training menu
  
• Fixed bug that caused game UI to show incorrect ability reset times when certain unrelated buffs or debuffs were applied to them

This is a minor client-only bugfix update to improve stability.

There is one new very minor feature: if you hold down the SHIFT key on your keyboard while pressing the Quit button in-game, the game will open an Explorer window to the folder that contains the game's log file. If you are experiencing problems logging in, we may ask you for your player log, and this is an easier way to find it.

It's Halloween! In Project: Gorgon, that means the traditional annual incursion by Zhia Lian, goddess of Whimsy. Your characters will receive a quest when they log in to help them get started with the holiday. There are lots of activities and some pretty cool rewards! Now let's take a look at everything else in this update:

Originally we wanted to launch a new Skill, Vampirism, along with this Halloween update. Unfortunately that skill needs to cook a little longer, and we didn't want it to delay our Halloween celebration any further. So vampires will make their debut in the next major update. We can't wait for you to play with them!

If you see in-game references to Vampirism, just treat those as teasers for now.

Last update introduced horse genetics, and an entirely different way of looking at your mounts. In this update we continue to iterate on this system with necessary tweaks and bug fixes.

• A floating sphere deep beneath Povus teaches new high-level textile recipes for creating Mare Blankets that accelerate gestation. (These recipes will eventually be learned from an NPC in Statehelm.)
  
• Dozens of genes are now quite rare in wild horses. As a result of increased gene rarity, wild horse stats in general are now lower - by about 10 points per stat.
  
• Several horse breeds were missing some coat-related functionality; it has been added to pre-existing genes. It's very unlikely but this may affect the appearance of some horses. If it does, it will be an obvious change.
  
• One of the Satincoat Scale genes now boosts friendliness when previously it gave nothing
  
• Moved an attribute from horse gene 28E4 to 28F1, so 28E4 doesn't affect multiple attributes.
  
• Wild Horses now display their virility alongside other stats when you Pet them.
  
• Wild horse hitboxes are more accurate.
  
• Wild horses now take small breaks from running every now and again.

This update adds something else new and fun for mounts: mount glamours! This is similar to glamouring your equipment, but there are some big differences. A mount glamour is a new piece of mount equipment that overrides a horse's appearance. In other words, when your mount has a mount glamour item equipped, it will look like a different horse. This lets you show off your quest mounts - like Pantiflax - without giving up the superior stats of the horse you so carefully tamed, bred, or bought. (Note that Inella now gives the glamour version of Pantiflax rather than the mount version.)

If you received a quest mount in the past, you will need to turn it into a glamour item before you can apply it to your regular mount. You can access a Horse Glamourizer near Mythander in Eltibule.

All players receive 4 new inventory slots. These correspond to the equipment slots for horses: saddle, saddlebag, reins, and horseshoes. All items that go in the new equipment slots for banners, horse cosmetics, and horse glamours give +1 Max Inventory when worn.

Background: What's this about?
New players sometimes ask why equipped items take up inventory slots. The answer is that it's just easier to manage your inventory that way! We wanted to give players the best of both worlds, so we simply increased the max-inventory size for each equipment slot. This change just updates our plan to accommodate the new equipment slots.

We didn't do the same thing for the cosmetic-only slots (banners, horse cosmetics, and horse glamours) because of... psychology. We've already heard some players express that they won't be using these slots because they won't "waste" precious inventory. Even if we gave you slots to compensate for them, a fair number of players simply wouldn't spend their equipment slots to making their horse look better. And we want players to be excited for our horse hats and other nonsense.

Instead, we've enchanted all the cosmetic-slot items to give you +1 Max Inventory slot when worn. This way, they effectively don't take up an inventory slot when worn.

This is a new option to unlock 30-day slots in the Serbule Community Chest. Completing certain tasks or events will accumulate points that will be applied toward unlocking slots in the chest. Example: Completing any wave of the Povus nightly will contribute points toward an unlock. There are also other ways available in game to score points and more will be added over time. Slots unlocked by this system will be noted on the Community Chest screen as 'Community Activity'. The options to purchase slots with councils or LECs will remain available.

• Yoy in the Myconian Caves has a new favor which unlocks a new Mentalism ability. (Requires Myconian 17 and Mentalism 20, and may require a friend to complete the quest.) (Higher tiers of this ability can be trained from myconians Sem and Mope, for now.)
  
• Fixed a bug that caused treasure effects not to work. These effects were ones that were triggered by the state of the target (such as "if target is not Elite").
  
• Updated some Povus favors to require proper quantity of items. They previously only required half of the items crafted.
  
• Sped up several humanoid animations.
  
• Anatomy-Based Critical Hit Chance % attributes now display as percentages instead of decimals.
  
• All Bladesmithing weapon recipes now require you to be near a forge.
  
• Added a ladder to the Serbule Hills watchtower and sprinkle some items on its balconies.
  
• Fixed a bug that broke movement completely if you tried to climb a ladder while already climbing it.
  
• Saddlebags are now accessible in guild halls.
  
• Fixed bug preventing moon phase from affecting genetics mutation chance.
  
• Player bats can be clicked on again.
  
• Fixed inverted permission for picking up others' items in guild halls.
  
• You now get a stable slot at Racing 50 instead of 60.
  
• Fixed graphical glitch with horse manes when teleporting within a zone.
  
• Closed ceiling hole in deep Povus Caves.
  
• Update Joeh's store.
  
• Update Marna's Front-of-House.
  
• New JSON file: abilitykeywords.json lists Attributes that apply to any Abilities that have a certain keyword. These have been broken out into separate listings to better reflect that abilities can dynamically add or remove keywords (e.g. when a Melee attack becomes a Burst attack due to an equipped piece of treasure).
  
• VIPs, don't forget to claim your more-or-less-monthly gifts from the Persona panel! The November gift will become available on November 1.

Long promised, and finally here! This is one of the most outlandish features we've added to the game: we've modeled the genetics of ridable horses, using over 1500 genes to create nearly-countless possible horses, including many real-world horse breeds as well as fantasy ones. When these horses mate, we use real-world genetics rules to create offspring that are a realistic mix of both parents. These genes control the horse's appearance, speed, temperament, and more.

Getting horses: there are simple new events in each outdoor area (except Rahu, for now) which run every hour or so. Defeating the Horse Thieves in these events will release a handful of wild horses, and more horses can spawn in the vicinity after the event ends. What can you do with these horses?

• If you don't know the Riding skill, you can attempt to "pet" wild horses which will eventually teach you Riding. (You can also just train Riding the usual way, which is faster, but costs Councils.)
  
• If you have the Riding skill, you can attempt to tame these horses (if you have their favorite food).
  
• If you have the Animal Husbandry skill, you can speak to a stablemaster to breed two tamed horses (a male and female) together.
  
• If you have the Genetics skill, you're a very high-level player and you likely already know who to speak to in order to unlock the new Ungulate Genetics sub-skill. With this skill and the right equipment, you can view the actual genome of horses, both in the wild and in your stables.
  
• Once you have bred a new horse, you can use animal crates to package them for transfer or sale to other players.

If you already purchased a horse from Mythander, you may be wondering what happened to that horse. Nothing has happened to it, but it cannot be used for breeding.

There are more details to discover, but we'll leave them for you to figure out!

Other Horse- and Genetics-Related Changes:

• You now gain an additional stable slot when reaching level 25 and 50 in Racing skill.
  
• Reduced individual gene mutation chance by an order of magnitude, from 0.1% to 0.01%.
  
• Genes mutations are more likely during the full moon.
  
• Backers who purchased a Thoroughbred Breeder or Horse Lord Shop package can now claim the two horses of good genetic stock that are included in those packages. Make sure you have two empty stable slots!
  
• Improved various genetics and breeding-related UIs.

We're hard at work on Statehelm, the last major city that needs to be added to the game before we can officially "launch" (leave Steam Early Access). One of the big features in Statehelm is being able to lease your own instanced apartment, and/or Guild Hall for your guild. That feature requires a ton of new tech, so in this update we're testing that tech by letting guilds lease Guild Halls in the Red Wing Casino.

To get a Guild Hall for your Guild, find the door near Riston in the casino. There is a 100,000-Council fee and your Guild will need to be at least level 1. (There will also be a daily rental fee eventually, but we're waiving those fees during this soft launch.)

When you enter the Guild Hall you'll see a console near the door. This allows you to enter "Edit Mode", which lets you "install" items, moving and placing them as desired. When you leave Edit Mode, the items become locked in place. The Guild Hall available in the casino is very bare-bones, so you will need to provide your own lighting and decorations.

Decorations like torches and tables can be crafted from recipes trained by Leah Bowman and Amutasa. You can also purchase basic decorations (like wall torches) from a Guild Sign if you are willing to spend Guild Credits on them. Many game-world items, such as chairs, paintings, and so on, can be "installed" into the Guild Hall also. You can always Uninstall items to retrieve them back into your inventory.

Other things to know:

• The casino Guild Hall has a limit of 50 installed items at a time.
  
• You can drop items on the floor in a Guild Hall and they will never be auto-destroyed. You can have at most 50 items on the ground before being unable to drop more.
  
• There are several new Guild Permissions related to the Guild Hall; guild leaders may want to review these
  
• There are two new Guild Chests that can be installed and accesses in the Guild Hall. These chests can be purchased from a guild sign. Once set up in the guild hall, you can purchase slots in that chest in the same way as other guild chests.

Note: this is the first time we've ever had instanced areas in Project: Gorgon. Adding this required significant new technology. And while we're 99% sure all of this new code is perfectly debugged, we don't recommend dropping any precious heirloom items on the ground in your Guild Hall during this soft launch.



Archery:
We've made some big improvements to Archery! To help you adjust to these changes the Transmutation costs for Archery will be reduced this month.

• New treasure effect: (Chest) "After using Fire Arrow, your next Archery attack will simultaneously shoot a Fire Arrow 10 at a target within 8 meters of that attack's main target. This extra Fire Arrow consumes ammunition as normal."
  
• New treasure effect: (Legs) "After using Mangling Shot, your next Archery attack will simultaneously shoot a Mangling Shot 9 at a separate target within 8 meters of that attack's main target. This extra Mangling Shot consumes ammunition as normal."
  
• (Hands, Feet) "Fire Arrow deals +26% damage and taunts +1475" => "Fire Arrow deals +160 damage and taunts +1475"
  
• (Head, OffHand) "Archery Base Damage +50%" => "Archery Base Damage +50%, Anatomy Critical-Hit Chance +3%"
  
• (Legs, Feet) "Blitz Shot Damage +46%" => "Blitz Shot Damage +53% and Critical Hit Chance +10%"
  
• (Ring) "Heavy Shot deals +18% damage and reuse timer is -5 seconds" => "Heavy Shot deals +18% damage and reuse timer is -6 seconds"
  
• New treasure effect: (Chest, Necklace) "Heavy Shot Damage +390"
  
• New treasure effect: (Legs) "Aimed Shot deals +88 damage, has +13.5% Critical Hit Chance, and also grants this Critical Hit Chance bonus to your next Archery attack"
  
• New treasure effect: (Hands) "When an Archery attack Critically Hits, you erupt in a burst of acid, dealing 89 Health and 89 Armor Damage to all foes within 8 meters. This effect is increased by treasure that boosts Acid Arrow."
  
• New high level loot-drop treasure augment: (Feet) "Acid Arrow and Poison Arrow hasten the current reuse timer of Fire Arrow by -5 seconds"
  
• (Head, OffHand) "Max Power +42 when skill Archery active" => "Archery attacks that Critically Hit restore 43 Power and boost your Anatomy Critical Hit Chance +1% for 20 seconds"
  
• New treasure effect: (MainHand) "Anatomy-Based Critical Hit Damage +48.5% while skill Archery active"
  
• New treasure effect: (OffHand) "Archery attacks that Critically Hit deal 396 Poison damage over 12 seconds. This amount is further increased by treasure that boosts Poison Arrow's damage-over-time"

This may be a good time to mention that Critical Hits are determined once per attack, based on the primary target. If an area-effect attack is a Critical Hit, it deals bonus damage to ALL targets regardless of their anatomy/phrenology/etc type. (This is kind of weird, and might change, but that's how it works right now.)

Fire Magic:

• "When you are near your Fire Wall, you heal 12 Health per second." => "When you are near your Fire Wall, you heal 15 Health per second. Fire Wall reuse time is -3 seconds."
  
• "Fire Walls deal +65 damage per hit." => "Fire Walls deal +52% damage per hit. Fire Wall reuse time is -3 seconds."
  
• "Fire Walls have +220 Max Health." => "Fire Walls have +220 Max Health. Fire Wall reuse time is -3 seconds."
  
• "Fire Walls' attacks taunt +310%." => "Fire Walls' attacks taunt +310%. Fire Wall reuse time is -3 seconds."
  
• "Frostball, Scintillating Frost, and Defensive Chill boost your Nice Attack Damage +83 for 7 seconds" => for 10 seconds
  
• "Molten Veins restores 145 health to any Fire Walls within 10 meters" => "Molten Veins and Flesh to Fuel restore 145 health to any Fire Walls or other pets within 10 meters"
  
• Fire Mages can train new fire wall variant spell research recipes from a floating sphere in Povus. (These recipes will eventually be obtained from an NPC in Statehelm.)
  
• Scintillating Frost now once again has a frostier ball than Frostball.

Hammer

• (Legs, Necklace) "Rib Shatter deals +210 damage to targets that are knocked down" => "Rib Shatter deals +140 Damage. If target is Knocked Down it deals a further +44% damage"
  
• (Chest, Feet) "Seismic Impact deals +70% damage to targets that are Knocked Down" => "Seismic Impact deals +160 Damage. If target is Knocked Down it deals a further +49% damage"

Unarmed:

• (Chest, Hands) "Cobra Strike and Mamba Strike boost your Nice Attack and Signature Debuff ability damage +67 for 7 seconds" => +105
  
• (Necklace) "Cobra Strike Damage +100" => "Cobra Strike deals +100 damage and boosts your Melee Evasion +14.5 for 7 seconds"
  
• New treasure effect: (Main-Hand) "Mamba Strike deals +67 damage and boosts your Melee Evasion +5.25% for 6 seconds"
  
• (Head, Off-Hand) "Mamba Strike Damage +59 and Reuse Time -1 sec" => "Mamba Strike Reuse Time -2 seconds". This effect is now only available on Off-Hand items. Head items with this treasure effect have become Legacy. You can transmute this effect off of the item to un-Legacy it, or you can get a random replacement item. Visit the Legacy Item Helper golem in Serbule for more assistance.
  
• New treasure effect: (Head) "Mamba Strike boosts your Melee Evasion +10% for 10 seconds"
  
• (Off-Hand, Head) "Slashing Strike boosts your Melee Evasion +5.25% for 5 seconds" => "Slashing Strike deals +64 damage and boosts your Melee Evasion +5.25% for 5 seconds"
  
• New treasure effect: (Ring) "Slashing Strike deals +64 damage and worsens the target's Slashing Vulnerability +16% for 60 seconds (this effect does not stack with itself)"

Weather Witching:

• New treasure effect (Main Hand): "Storm Shield targets all ally pets within 20 meters, but ability reuse time is increased +5 seconds"

Our first Writ Challenge went really well, and we will be adding it to our event rotation to be an annual Summer event. From now until the end of November 17th, you may /redeem your Writ Challenge Rewards Pack. This contains all Non-Community Chest rewards that were unlocked during the challenge: 10 Glamour Credits, Limited Edition Cosmetic Pet, 6x Orran's Super Inventory Expander Potion, Liquid Super Buffs (24 Hours), and a Sparkler Crate. Please note that the Liquid Super Buffs will self destruct 60 days after claiming, so don't forget to use it!

• Sun Vale: Ranalon Guardians are higher level to match the rest of the area (were level 23, now 35).
  
• Fixed bug with the AI configuration for several types of skeletal archers. These archers were supposed to flee if their target got too close, but they didn't.
  
• Some NPCs were supposed to give out higher-level versions of their reward-items at certain times (such as Christmas or when increasing Favor Level), but they were configured incorrectly so those items had the NPC's base level. This is usually lower than the intended level
  
• Slightly improved distribution of stats across the bee genome to increase available virility and intelligence.
  
• Change wording of Recall Heart's Home so that it's accurate: "Sends you to the Teleportation Circle that you have recalled to the highest number of times" -> "recalled from"
  
• New setting: "Cloth Physics": Provides more control over cloth physics simulating, allowing you to enable it only for yourself, for other players, or for everything (or turn it off completely). Found in Settings > Graphics > Advanced > Animation & Physics.
  
• New setting: "Easy-Drop Items": Allows dropping items by dragging them out of the inventory window. Previously this was hidden, it is now accessible from inside the Inventory window's Settings (the gear at the top right).
  
• New setting: "Mute Guild Quest Sounds": Mutes update sounds for guild quests. Found in 2 areas: Settings > Sound > Other, and by right-clicking on the floating "Quests" HUD element.
  
• Contextual keybinds in Settings are now organized a bit better into subcategories: Corpse Actions, Build Mode, & Other
  
• Several new items have been added to Riston in the Red Wing Casino and the guild credit shop.
  
• Sparklers last longer (from 7.5 seconds -> 11 seconds).
  
• Multicolored Sparklers' emitted light now changes color.
  
• Watcher pets now float off the ground a bit more.
  
• Fae Dragon pets no longer continuously divebomb while idling; they only do it every once in a while.
  
• Improved a *lot* of visuals in Serbule Hills
  
• Fixed bug that could cause the server to hang up on players during long loading screens.
  
• Giant bats are slightly cuter. (You may need to re-bat to see this change.)

This update fixes some issues with the update earlier today:

• Fix bug causing the scroll wheel to no longer zoom the camera in and out
  
• Fix bug preventing vegetation and terrain features from appearing in some areas
  
• Fix for horse feathering not appearing
  
• Reduce size of Wall of Coldfire's icon
  
• added missing portal entity for Nightmare Cave Summoning Device
  
• Update the book "Secrets of the Ungulates" so it requires Non-Ruminant Anatomy instead of Ruminant Anatomy
  
• Watcher Pet now hovers slightly higher from the ground
  
• Adjusted mount points for hats on new Giant Bat model
  
• Fixed bug that prevented evasion-reply effects from working

Today we have a very small update with some bug-fixes and tweaks we wanted to get out sooner rather than later. We're clearing the decks - the next update after this looks to be a big one!

In this update:

• Writ Challenge:
  
• Changed "Do Your Part" objectives to be concurrent, not sequential
  
• Adjusted several loot profiles for writ drop chance
• Fixed bug with last update's experimental boost of AoE target counts before penalties. The effect worked on indirect damage but not direct damage
  
• Current VIPs can now actually use /knuckles and /cower.
  
• Guild storage is now included in the "Find" tab of Item Info.
  
• "Hotbar Periphery", aka the UI that surrounds the main hotbar, can now be disabled via the "Show Hotbar Periphery" setting (accessible via right-clicking the hotbar as well).
  
• You can now hold shift while hovering from item to item in your inventory, instead of having to re-hold it on each item.
  
• Forest Gourds are now targetable by clicking on them.
  
• Fixed a minor rendering issue causing the current favor level to show up underneath the favor bar for NPCs.
  
• Fixed a bug allowing recipes to be "used" from the right-click menu.
  
• Improved graphics in the Anagoge Records Facility.
  
• Fixed a bug impacting rock collision in Ilmari.
  
• Updated mini golem textures.
  
• Improved visual quality of assorted props.
  
• The Tapestry Inn in Serbule Hills has received a facelift.
  
• Fixed a bug preventing Bard's Blast of Defiance's Armor Reap from working properly.
  
• Weather Witching treasure effect "All channeled Weather Witching abilities channel -0.5 seconds faster, and Tsunami costs no Power to use." has been changed to: "Channeled Weather Witching abilities are not aborted if you are attacked while channeling."
  
• Rabbit ability Play Dead no longer has a self-stun aspect
  
• Rabbit treasure effect "Play Dead causes all affected enemies to take 410 Psychic damage after a 10-second delay" => ... after a 5-second delay
  
• Rabbit ability Play Dead's earlier tiers have a faster reset time. The reset time for the highest tier, Play Dead 7, is unchanged (at 35 seconds)
  
• New Rabbit treasure effect: (Head) "Play Dead Area of Effect +5 meters, and victims suffer -174 direct mitigation for 30 seconds"

Project: Gorgon is having a special Steam sale this week! From now until August 19th at 1pm US EDT, all PG products will be discounted!

• Base game - 50% off
  
• Extra Character Slots Pack DLC - 25% off

We're even offering discounts to help kickstart your Steam VIP subscription! Discount will only apply to your first installment. All recurring charges will be billed at regular price.

• Monthly - 25% off first installment
  
• All other subscriptions - 10% off first installment

Get the Game
Get the Slots Pack
Get VIP

Still deciding on Project: Gorgon? Try the free demo!

Today we have a nice well-rounded update for you, with a bit of combat mechanic tweaking, some necro love, a bit of horse cosmetics, a new horse race and more.


Some background: when an area-of-effect attack hits more than 3 enemies, its direct damage is reduced. But due to technical limitations, the amount of INDIRECT damage was not reduced. This caused many players to create builds focusing heavily on indirect damage and burst attacks, to the detriment of basically all other attack styles in the game.

This allowed players to fight monsters in much larger groups than intended, so more recently we added monster buffs of various potencies that only kick in when fighting a large group of monsters.

The most potent monster buff, "Burst Reaction", dealt damage to attackers whenever they used Burst attacks. This caused players some consternation, as it could easily lead to sudden player death.

In this update we're experimenting with other approaches to this balancing problem. We've solved the technical issue that prevented indirect damage from being reduced in burst attacks. Burst attacks now deal reduced damage when they hit more than 3 targets, similar to direct damage, although the dropoff is slower and less dramatic than the dropoff for direct damage. (Indirect damage falls to a minimum of 50% damage when hitting 9 or more targets, while direct damage falls to 25% damage when hitting 9 or more targets).

Alongside this change, we've changed monster buffs as follows:

• "Burst Reaction" Monster Buff has been replaced with new damage-resistance buffs
  
• Monster Buffs no longer stack with themselves
  
• Monster Buffs last 30 seconds instead of 60 seconds
  
• Most Monster Buffs are diminished in potency, with the notable exception of the "Angry" buff that boosts non-Rage attack damage -- that buff remains very dangerous!

Since we're exploring changes to area-of-effect logic, we also made a change that benefits players here. For every 10 meters of radius in a Burst attack, you can hit 1 more target without suffering damage penalties. So if you used a Burst attack with a 20 meter range, you can hit 5 enemies without penalty instead of 3.

If an attack's Burst Radius is not divisible by 10, the remainder is used in a random die roll to see if you get +1 more target. For instance, if an attack has a burst radius of 7 meters, there's a 7-in-10 chance that it will target 1 more enemy without suffering damage dropoff.

The drop-off rate for Burst Attack direct damage was also tweaked so that it falls to its minimum damage when hitting 9 targets instead of 8 targets.

A reminder: monsters use the same combat logic as players. Their burst attacks and direct/indirect damage are affected the same way that players' are. A group of players (and their pets) can use this to their advantage.

These are experimental changes that we'll run for a few weeks before iterating again on the design. We may revert these changes entirely or refine them, based on feedback.

Monsters that previously had innate "Damage Reflection", such as Giant Beetles, now have "Damage Reaction". When these monsters are attacked, the attacker suffers damage, the amount of which is based on the monster. But the TYPE of damage is the same as the damage dealt to the monster.

Example: player Bob attacks a Manticore with a Crushing attack. They suffer 100 Crushing damage in response.

This change affects: Giant Beetles, Manticores, Refraction Spiders, Osslars

Monsters that previously had innate "Burst Damage Reflection" now have "Burst Damage Reaction". The damage amount is based on the monster's stats. The TYPE of this damage is always Smiting (unmitigatable damage).

This currently only applies to Aktaari.


This update sees a number of adjustments to treasure effects for necromancers.

• "Raised Zombies deal +28 damage and speed is +10" => +60 damage and speed is +10
  
• "Raised Zombies deal +47 damage and taunt as if they did +200% more damage" => 65 damage
  
• "Summoned Skeletons have +62 health" => +93
  
• "Summoned Skeletons have +92 armor" => +130
  
• "Summoned Skeletal Archers and Mages deal +36 direct damage" => +50
  
• "Summoned Skeletal Archers and Mages deal +24% direct damage, but take +50% damage from any slashing, piercing, or crushing attacks" => "Summoned Skeletal Archers and Mages deal +28% direct damage, but take +50% damage from crushing attacks"
  
• "Summoned Skeletons deal +22% direct damage, but take +150% more damage from any cold attacks" => "Summoned Skeletons deal +18% direct damage, but take +50% more damage from cold attacks"
  
• "Summoned Skeletal Archers and Mages deal +15% direct damage, but are instantly destroyed by ANY Nature Damage" => "Summoned Skeletal Archers and Mages deal +25% direct damage, but take +50% damage from nature attacks"
  
• "Provoke Undead deals 69 damage to your minions, who then deal +62 damage for 10 seconds" => "Provoke Undead deals 72 damage to your minions, who then deal +72 damage for 10 seconds"
  
• "Heal Undead restores +24 and has a 25% chance to boost targets' mitigation +43 for 8 seconds" => "Heal Undead restores an additional 156 Health/Armor over 12 seconds"
  
• "Summoned Skeletal Swordsmen have +140 armor" => "Summoned Skeletal Swordsmen have +149 armor and +10 Crushing/Slashing/Piercing Mitigation"
  
• "Heal Undead restores +28 Health/Armor and boosts your next attack +59 if it is a Darkness attack" => "Heal Undead boosts your next attack +117 if it is a Darkness attack"
  
• "Rebuild Undead restores 67 Health to you" => "Rebuild Undead grants targets +20% Universal Damage Resistance for 6 seconds"

• Heal Undead ability restores a bit more health at each tier.
  
• Pet skeleton archers no longer try to back away from their target until they have less than 50% of their Health remaining.
  
• Skeleton Swordsmen have more innate Max Armor.
  
• Daniel Murderdark in Rahu trains a new recipe to create 10 Necromancy Dust at a time.

Our mounts are getting a little snazzier in this update!

Mounts have two new item slots that they can use to equip different types of cosmetic items. The Banner slot lets you equip a banner or similar item off the mount's flank. The Cosmetic slot is more general and allows you to equip decorative reins, a garland, and more. The mount UI has been slightly rearranged (and polished!) to account for these new slots.

We'll be adding more mount cosmetics in the future, of course, but there are a couple of mount cosmetics you can get your hands on in this update:

• Riston offers a new mount cosmetic item for Live Event Credits.
  
• A mount cosmetic item can also be won in the new Moat Circuit race in Serbule! Check for the start banner on the south side of Serbule Keep.
  
• The August VIP gift also contains a mount cosmetic. (VIP gifts are available to anyone who is/was a VIP during the given month. The August VIP gift will be available starting on Aug 1.)

Other mount changes:

• Pouch reins allow saddlebag access when no saddlebag is equipped (since they have pockets, too!).
  
• The Mount window now shows item levels & rarities.
  
• Auto-Close Mount Window setting now works for all mount actions.

• "Anti-Invincibility Poison" special quest item no longer disappears immediately when you log out. Instead, it lasts up to 75 minutes before self-destructing. Because the self-destruction feature can only be used on non-stacking items, "Anti-Invincibility Poison" items no longer stack in inventory. To offset the combat problems this causes, the poison no longer takes 1 second to cast; it is instant-cast when used.
  
• "Anti-Invincibility Posion" debuff now shows at the top of the debuff list when it's present.
  
• Increased the duration of all Orran Inventory potions to 5 hours (previously 3).
  
• Changed the self-destruct timer of all Liquid Super Buff potions to 60 days (previously 30 days).
  
• Fixed a bug that caused some evil Sun Statues to not count for Sun Vale blood portal event.
  
• Animal forms can now wear Firefly Hats, Orbiting Gems, & Floating Pumpkins.
  
• Fixed a bug that restricted gene mutation when breeding animals.
  
• Fixed a bug causing corpses to sometimes be unlootable when using the new loot window.
  
• Fixed a bug causing undiscovered landmarks to show up on the minimap over top of the fog.
  
• Tuneup kits no longer prevent transmuting.
  
• Tuneup kits now have a warning that they will add a Bladesmithing requirement to any weapon they sharpen. (This is a temporary fix; eventually they will not add a requirement.)
  
• Elven Ceremonial Longswords now count as Elvish for the purposes of gift-giving.
  
• New emote for all players: /wave2
  
• New emotes for current VIPs: /cower & /knuckles
  
• Military Blue Dye can now be found in loot.

• Improved genetics window readability.
  
• Added loot radius to the persona window stats, under "General Stats".
  
• Temporary items now go to the top of the inventory when it's sorted.
  
• Better handling of missing items on hotbars when Show Item Levels is enabled.
  
• Tracked combat skills now update when you gain XP in them.
  
• Change the "High-Quality Anti-Aliasing" setting to "Anti-Aliasing", with a dropdown so you can choose your AA or turn it off completely.

• Fixed mixed-up descriptions of VIP/package titles.
  
• Fixed misplaced snows in Goblin Caves & Anagoge Records Facility.
  
• Fixed misplaced water splashes in Gazluk Keep.
  
• Fix for some elven hair being see-thru.
  
• Fixed a broken texture on Tree in Fae Realm.
  
• Fixed Dark Chapel ceiling with a hole in it.
  
• Fixed a floating mushroom in Kur Caves.
  
• Fixed a hole in mountains of Eltibule.
  
• Reduced server read timeout to 30 seconds to avoid interference with relogging when players violently lose connection.

This bugfix update has the following fixes:

• Fix memory leak in the new loot window, which should hopefully fix the freezes & crashes
  
• Fix various bugs with Inella's rewards in the new dungeon
  
• Fix bug causing inventory pack data to carry over between characters
  
• Fix logic bug with judgment lever that could cause the door to not open
  
• Dance skills can be used again while music volume is muted

This bugfix update has the following fixes:

• Fix Sun Vale blood portal event failure state
  
• Fix bug causing mounted animal forms to appear strangely on the character select screen
  
• Fix incorrect dye colors on some pieces of armor
  
• Fix bug causing some arrow abilities to get dropped when queueing a lot in a row
  
• Quicken Deadly Emission particle effects
  
• Retting bundles now take the proper 30 minutes to treat (instead of 20s)
  
• Fix critical-hit tuneups for dirks
  
• Slight revamp of the training window to better display training options with long names (such as golem abilities)
  
• Add recipe names to self-learning bladesmithing workbooks
  
• Fix for gene window being blank above a certain font size
  
• Make all Peltast Gear dyable

Summer is finally here -- and with it, another big update to the world of Project: Gorgon. This one took us a little longer than expected, but we think the results are worth it. New dungeon? Check! New skills? Multiple checks! Performance improvements? Also check! Ongoing QoL improvements? Major check! Combat balance? Progress made! Visual improvements? Looking good! Bug fixes? So many, many bugs have been fixed! In fact, we have a lot of stuff to talk about today -- so let's get to it!

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of the update, though, we have a happy announcement: Project: Gorgon is now $20 on Steam. That's not a half-off sale - that's a permanent price drop! But there's a small catch: the $20 package only includes one character slot. We've created a new DLC package that adds three more permanent character slots to the basic account. Everyone who bought the game prior to the price drop automatically has this DLC for free, so those players will see no change: you still have four character slots. (Note that since you automatically own this DLC, you can't buy it again to get more.) The intent of this price change and structure is to lower the barrier to entry for new players, while still honoring the investment that earlier players already made.

Looking for more than four character slots? Remember, VIP membership comes with access to another 4 additional slots while you are a VIP member!

The Nightmare expands! Deep under Povus, beyond the frogs, beyond the warren of caves, past the horrific mummies, past even the confused bandits, there sits an elven bureaucrat with a question.

This new adventure is intended for a group of six players with level 90+ combat skills and equipment.

Special Monster Buffs
Sometimes in combat a monster will take a second (well, actually they take precisely 5 seconds) to buff itself before joining the fight, which displays as a green up-arrow bubble effect. We call these Special Monster Buffs, and in this update we have made some changes to how they work:

• Previously, most Special Monster Buffs only affected the monster that was buffing itself. Now it affects all monsters within 20 meters of the caster.
  
• The Special Monster Buff "Reflective" is now "Burst Reply" instead. It no longer reflects a percentage of damage back at attackers; instead, when the buffed target is hit by a Burst attack, they reply with a fixed amount of damage. The buff will react to the next 3 burst attacks (not infinite attacks, as Reflective did).
  
• Several of the Special Monster Buffs have unique particle effects to help quickly differentiate them.

(By the way, did you know that during the 5-second window while a monster is casting a buff, you can stop their casting by stunning, mesmerizing, fearing, or knocking back the monster? This is a game-mechanic that we don't teach very well yet.)

"Thick Armor" replaced with "Resilient"
Previously, some monsters had "Thick Armor", which caused them to take significantly reduced damage while their Armor was high. This effect has been replaced, and now all those monsters are instead "Reslient", which means that they take half damage from Indirect damage sources (such as damage-over-time).

(By the way, did you know that indirect damage sources cancel out regeneration? This is one of the many game systems that we don't do a good job teaching yet. If a monster has Regeneration, any indirect damage you deal will cancel out an equivalent amount of regeneration. If you deal 10 damage, the monster will regenerate 10 less health than it otherwise would.)

Ability Type Fixes
In this update, we fixed a fairly subtle but widespread bug: some abilities weren't correctly marked as Melee, Burst, or Ranged attacks, which affects the buffs and debuffs that apply to them.

For background: every offensive ability has precisely one of the following keywords at any given time: Melee, Ranged, or Burst. If the ability has any area-of-effect radius, it's Burst. If a Melee ability gains an area-of-effect due to treasure, the ability would stop being Melee and start being Burst.

• Some abilities were incorrectly treated as Ranged attacks and are now Burst attacks: Panic Charge, Multishot, Heavy Multishot, Astral Strike.
  
• Some abilities were incorrectly treated as Ranged attacks and are now Melee attacks: Deathgaze, pet bee stinger attacks.
  
• Some abilities were incorrectly treated as Melee attacks and are now Burst attacks: King of the Forest, Deflective Spin, pet bee poison-debuffs.
  
• Some abilities were incorrectly treated as Melee attacks and are now Ranged attacks: Chill.
  
• Some monsters had abilities that incorrectly marked as Ranged or Melee instead of Burst: Hexapuses, high-level undead swordsmen, Electrified Pigs, goblin fire mages, Kuvou, orc fire-archers, watchers, Lamia, ratkin mentalists, spike traps, training golems, (and probably other one-off monsters that reuse the abilities of the above).
  
• Some monsters had Ranged attacks that are now Melee attacks: Vipers, Wasps (stabs).
  
• Some monsters had Melee attacks that are now Ranged attacks: ogres' boulder throws, electric-wizard skeletons, various fae, some spiderwebs, wasps (bullets), giant beetles, tentakillers.
  
• Some monsters had Burst attacks that are now Melee attacks: Minotaurs.
  
• Some bosses were affected similarly: Ratkin King, Lethargy Puck, Eye of Hate, Scion of Discord, Astarion, Sherzat, and probably others.

Bard Treasure Changes

• Bard ability Virtuoso's Ballad: Reset time changed from 60 seconds to 50 seconds; minor treasure number changes as a result.
  
• (Legs, MainHand) "Virtuoso's Ballad restores 200 Armor" => "Virtuoso's Ballad restores 192 Health (or Armor if Health is Full)"
  
• New treasure effect: (Head, Feet): "Virtuoso's Ballad causes target's next attack to deal +376 damage"
  
• (Legs, Hands) "Blast of Fury deals 276 Armor damage and restores 43 Armor to you" => "Blast of Fury deals 440 Armor damage"
  
• (Feet) "Disharmony causes target to deal -10 damage with their next attack" => "Disharmony causes target's next attack to have a 16% chance to automatically Miss. (This effect does not stack with itself.)"
  
• (Ring) "Disharmony causes target to deal -10 damage with their next attack" => "Disharmony causes your next attack to deal +47 damage"
  
• (Head, Legs, OffHand) "Bard Blast-Ability Range +5" => "Bard Blast-Ability Range +5, Bard Blast-Ability Damage +84" (Note: previously there was only one tier of this treasure effect, which could be found starting at level 50 and up. There are now multiple tiers of the ability. If you had this effect on your high-level item already, the item will still have the level 50 version. You can use Transmutation to remove the treasure effect from the item and (eventually) re-roll it with a higher-tier effect.)

Hammer Treasure Changes

• (Head, Chest) "Discharging Strike Power Cost -44" => this effect is now only available on Chest, not Head. Helmets with this treasure effect have now become Legacy. You can use the Transmutation skill to roll this effect off of the helmet and it will stop being Legacy. Alternatively you can speak to the Legacy Item Helper golem in Serbule for a randomized replacement item
  
• (Ring, Off-Hand): "Pound To Slag restores 144 health to you" => "Pound To Slag restores 144 Health (or Armor if Health is full)"
  
• (Chest, Feet) "Leaping Smash restores 64 Armor to you" => "Leaping Smash deals +100 Damage and restores 64 Armor to you after a 6-second delay"
  
• (OffHand, Necklace) "Seismic Impact restores 100 Armor to you" => "Seismic Impact deals +100 Damage and restores 100 Armor after a 6-second delay"
  
• (Feet, MainHand) "Rib Shatter restores 48 Health to you" => "Rib Shatter deals +100 Damage and restores 48 Armor after a 6-second delay"
  
• (Legs, Necklace) "Thunderstrike heals you for 51 health" => "Thunderstrike deals +60 Damage and restores 60 Armor after a 6-second delay"
  
• New treasure effect: (Head, Necklace): "Discharging Strike Damage +140"
  
• New treasure effect: (Chest): "Hammer abilities that restore Armor after a 6-second delay have +100% Armor restoration"
  
• New treasure effect: (Hands, Legs) "Hammer abilities that restore Armor after a 6-second delay also restore 25 Power, increased by 20% of the Armor restored"

To assist Hammer players trying out these changes (along with the changes in the past couple of updates), Transmutation costs for Hammer will be reduced this month.

Warden Treasure Changes

• (Feet): "Controlled Burn costs -33 Power" => "Controlled Burn and Aggression Deterrent cost -37 Power"
  
• (Feet, Ring): "Aggression Deterrent Power Cost -22; Aggression Deterrent Damage +43" => "Aggression Deterrent Range +5; Aggression Deterrent Damage +43"
  
• (Legs, Necklace): "Apprehend costs -47 Power" => this treasure effect is now only available on Necklace. If you had this effect on Leg armor, that item has become Legacy. You can use a Transmutation Table to remove this effect and it will stop being Legacy. Alternatively you can speak with the Legacy Item Replacer golem in Serbule to get a new randomly-generated item.
  
• New treasure effect: (Legs): "Apprehend Damage +98. Non-Elite targets do not call for help."

Knife Treasure Changes

• Fixed bug with knife treasure effect: "Knife abilities with 'Cut' in their name cause all Knife abilities WITHOUT 'Cut' in their name to have a 48% chance to deal +39% damage for 10 seconds". This treasure was applying the buff for a different treasure effect.
  
• Bleeder Shiv now boosts trauma damage instead of poison.
  
• Fix the mod "Backstab deals +X direct damage. You recover X Health (or Armor, if Health is full) over 12 seconds". It now actually heals you.
  
• Surge Cut is now affected by mods that affect Minor Heals.
  
• (Legs): "Marking Cut deals +60 damage and grants +85 Accuracy to your next Knife ability" : No changes to the displayed effect, but this treasure effect also quietly made Marking Cut prevent monster-shouts. A different treasure effect is supposed to do that (and does), so that's been removed from this one.

Other Abilities & Treasure Changes

• Abilities with longer attack times are no longer overridden by queued abilities (most notably, certain archery abilities).
  
• Archery: Fix ammo-related typos for Heavy Shot 8 & Multishot 7.
  
• Battle Chemistry: Fixed bug with golem's Self-Sacrifice ability potentially causing damage to the owner.
  
• Psychology: Soothe's critical damage is now affected by mods.
  
• Psychology: Fixed a bug with the mod "Psychoanalyze causes the target to be worth X% more XP if slain within 60 seconds"
  
• Deer: Deer Bash 8 now does the correct damage (288 -> 400).
  
• Fire Magic: The mod "Fire Breath and Super Fireball deal +X damage over 10 seconds" now does more damage at higher levels.
  
• Mentalism: Power Wave ability: Restores Power every 4 seconds instead of every 6 (effectively increasing Power recovery 50%)
  
• Mentalism: (Head, Hands): "System Shock restores 56 Armor to you" => "System Shock Damage +78, System Shock Critical-Hit Damage +40%"
  
• Mentalism: (MainHand, Ring): "System Shock boosts the damage of your Signature Debuffs by +116 for 6 seconds" => "... for 8 seconds"
  
• Priest: Give Warmth 6 now restores 35 body heat (up from 25).
  
• Spirit Fox: Power Glyph ability: the amount of Power restored by the glyph is increased; this is a display fix (the glyphs gave out this amount of Power before, but it was listed as less.) Also adjusted description to explain that group members can use the Power Glyph

Other Combat Changes

• Based on feedback, we've made the Hardcore Living skill require more XP to level up. (As always when XP tables are changed, your current level in the skill is unchanged. But the amount you need to reach next level will be affected.)
  
• Fixed a bug that caused monsters to behave strangely when hit by Slow effects while already moving at high speed.
  
• Ranalon Guardians' blind attack is now actually a 20 meter Burst as intended.
  
• Yetis with a slowing-ice ranged attack now have a range of 20 meters as intended (instead of a range of 6 meters).
  
• Portal-summoning mantises no longer hurt themselves when they summon portals.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause monsters to get stuck while wandering.
  
• Improved damage of higher-level explosion sigils, electricity sigils, and acid sigils. Electricity Sigil 4 and Acid Sigil 4 are a higher level as a side effect of rebalancing.

There's a new activity for Project Gorgon's most expert riders: horse races! These are checkpoint races through the wilds; to finish the race, you must ride through each glowy domed checkpoint in order. There are other glowing points to look out for as well: if you run through a speed-up pool, your horse will go faster but become more anxious and may suffer other negative effects, while other glowing pools can reduce anxiety and help counter the speed-up's negative effects. Oh, and most importantly: avoid monsters!

You can get started by visiting one of the Race Flags:

• Eltibule Cirtcuit: In Eltibule, near Mythander.
  
• Amulna Grand Tour: In Ilmari, outside the north entrance to Amulna.
  
• Kur Mountain Debry: In Kur Mountains, just outside Syndra's barn.

You can also use the race flags to view the leaderboard for each race.

One of our areas of focus over the past several updates has been on improving quality of life (QoL) and reducing friction: that is, smoothing out some of those small annoyances that make the game less fun. In this update we've done major work improving inventory management, especially as it pertains to corpses, as well as added some useful features like unread quests and notification dots.

Corpse Management

• The corpse-looting window now displays other nearby corpses, and allows switching between them via Tab. This key is configurable in Settings > Keys > Contextual > Corpse: Select Next.
  
• "Take All" on corpses now loots items that you have partial stacks of in your inventory, even if your inventory is otherwise full.
  
• Using Take All on a corpse when other corpses are nearby will now auto-select the next corpse.
  
• Burying a corpse no longer closes the window if other corpses are nearby.
  
• The distance at which you can loot a corpse - your Corpse Loot Radius - can be increased!
  
  • Leveling Foraging increases this distance by a total of +3 meters at level 75.
    
  • Leveling Skinning, Butchering, and Survival Instincts increases this distance by a total of +2 meters each at level 80.
    
  • Gain a total of +1 meter by maxing Werewolf Metabolism to 50 (as that is the level cap atm).

Other Inventory Management

• Guild chests are now included in ctrl-f item searching (or /isearch).
  
• Item Search (ctrl-f or /isearch) now highlights items that it finds in your inventory.
  
• Storage Deposit All and Stow buttons now have hotkeys, configurable under Settings > Keys > Contextual. Defaults are G and Shift-G respectively.
  
• Withdrawing items from storage now deposits them into the currently-open inventory folder.
  
• Abilities that require an item to use now show the current amount of that item in your inventory in the tooltip.
  
• You can now Ability-Lock inventory folders, similar to Vendor-Locking them! This prevents items inside that folder from being used by abilities.
  
• New icons were added to the inventory window to denote when the current folder is Ability- and/or Vendor-Locked.
  
• Abilities with ammunition now pull their ammo from the smallest stack in your inventory.
  
• You can now show the number of free inventory slots you have at all times as a small number on the Inventory button on your right-hand sidebar. Enable "Show HUD Inventory Space" under Settings > GUI > Windows & HUD > Other Windows Settings.
  
• The item info window now has a "SELL" tab that lets you view all NPCs that buy the item in question.
  
• Moved a few inventory settings from buttons in the bottom right of the window to the gear icon at the top right.
  
• Goblin Calling Cards and Orcish books now display their level requirements on the icons.
  
• Equipment icons now show their levels in the persona window.

Other New QoL features

• When a Quest auto-completes (meaning it doesn't have to be turned in to anyone), its outcome now goes into a new section in the Quest Log, rather than being presented right away. Some quests, namely event-specific ones, are exempt from this behavior.
  
• When you have one or more unread auto-completed quest, the Quest sidebar button now shows a notification dot, and clicking on it takes you straight to the unread quests section.
  
• Tracking & untracking quests in the Quest Log is now more responsive.
  
• We now display a notification dot on the Persona button and Redeem button (in the Persona window) when a new redemption is available.

Even more UI bug fixes of a smaller sort can be found below in the UI section.

• New targeting settinng: Auto-Select Attackers. This setting can be found under Settings > GUI > Targeting > Tab Targeting (Experimental). It defaults to enabled.
  
• New targeting hotkey: Select Nearest Enemy. This keybind can be found under Settings > Keys > Targeting > underneath the keybind for "Select Previous Enemy".
  
• "Select Next Interactible" now prioritizes NPCs.
  
• The /target command now prioritizes non-corpses.
  
• Map pin labels now show on the minimap.
  
• Added party members' names above them on the map.
  
• Added Viedesi, Urglemarg, and Puffy Ben to the Sun Vale map.
  
• Willem Fangblade's map info now knows that he has a store, and shows his council count.
  
• NPC map icons will no longer overlap your own after first meeting them.
  
• Fixed a a bug causing party members and pets to sometimes disappear from the map.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused minimap buttons to become unreadable at different GUI zoom levels.
  
• Holding shift while viewing an item with enchantments now shows the enchantment levels.
  
• Extract Augment recipe descriptions are now clearer, and reference the new functionality of holding Shift.
  
• Polished the loading screen a bit, and added several new tips -- many provided by players! A big thank you to everyone who contributed!
  
• Some hotkeys now have explanatory tooltips; those that do are marked with an asterisk (*).
  
• Fixed a bug causing XP values to sometimes wrap to the next line.
  
• Fixed a bug with gear sometimes disappearing in the persona preview window.
  
• Fixed a minor UI bug in Skills Window causing level numbers to sometimes wrap strangely.
  
• Fixed a bug causing UI elements to lose their locked status across multiple play sessions.
  
• Tooltips should no longer appear in their old position before quickly updating to their new position.
  
• Fixed a bug causing the horse window to not remember that it was closed when it closes itself after opening the saddlebag.
  
• Fixed a bug causing some face portraits to not display.
  
• Improved tooltip readability of certain items with long names (notably Crisp Mint Vanilla Cinnamon Coffee).
  
• Right-click options that are simple on/off settings have a new icon, and can be toggled without closing the context menu.
  
• Added some polish to the right-click menu.
  
• Standardize fonts, colors, and spacing across many UI windows with a focus on window titles.
  
• Item durability no longer rounds up, which resulted in the transmutation window sometimes not working.
  
• Update the transmutation window UI to be more in-line with the rest of the game's UI.
  
• Right-clicking an empty hotbar slot now lets you set that slot's ability (for primary and secondary skills).
  
• Item levels & rarities are now shown in the loot window.
  
• Werewolf Altar abilities are now visible en masse when their prerequisite level-uncap is purchased.
  
• Fix visual glitch on many elven hairs.
  
• Fix 'Show Player Stats Pane' GUI setting.

Art

• Bard Armor is now dyeable!
  
• Snail Armor is no longer dyeable since it doesn't dye properly.
  
• Mended Thentree Armor so your legs no longer peek through the skirt.
  
• Visual improvements to all Cloth armors.
  
• Visual improvements to all Leather armors.
  
• Visual improvements to several other armor sets, including: Thentree, Peltast and Steel Platemail.
  
• Improved animation for laying in a bed and subsequently waking up out of one.
  
• Added new animations to all butterfly dances.
  
• Added more particle effects to some pig dance variants.
  
• Added new animations to several spider dance variants.
  
• Sealed holes in spider model.
  
• Fixed a few cases of infini-looping animations.
  
• Swordsman's Elven Longsword offensive topology is now different and less offensive.
  
• Furniture in the Abandoned Sunvale Inn now has textures.
  
• Closed holes in Kur Tower.
  
• The lake bridge in Povus should no longer disappear when seen from certain spots.
  
• Fixed the physics on rocks in Povus.
  
• Added better handling of NPCs in flight that can also swim. Also improved fly-follow logic for flying monsters, to further reduce jitter in the air.
  
• Improved minotaur animations.
  
• Improved animation, VFX, and SFX for summoning cosmetic pets.
  
• Fixed some gear that previously was supposed to glow but wasn't.
  
• A number of off-hand weapons have new more distinct icons.

Gameplay

• The loot from defeating Knight Eggs is improved.
  
• The guardians of the Knight Eggs, Gross Maggots, are no longer worth any XP.
  
• You now gain a synergy level of Civic Pride when reaching level 38 of Compassion. (This allows players to receive the final level-up benefit of Civic Pride which is obtained at level 51: "+1% Favor from Hangouts".)
  
• Many cosmetic pets and player titles are now shared across all the characters on an account. You will need to login the character who originally gained the pet/title once before being able to access it on other characters on the account.
  
• New emote for everyone: /bow. In addition, the emotes /taunt and /thank have new animations.
  
• Current VIP members can also use two new emotes: /accuse and /monkey.
  
• You can no longer promote someone who has recently left your party.- If you misplace a certain key related to a certain skull, you can now get a replacement from the thing that gave you it to begin with.
  
• Fished a missing skull button out of the wall (in a certain trap room that has a lot of skull buttons).
  
• Added missing skill-training unlock for Pathology 90.
  
• The recipes for Crafted Alchemist's Claws are no longer Blacksmithing recipes; they are now under a new skill. They are no longer trained by Kohan
  
• Crafting Caravan: All quest titles have been updated for better sorting in the Quest Log.
  
• Crafting Caravan: Prices for some items bartered by Orran have been reduced.
  
• "Awesome Bard Boots" are no longer erroneously called "Amazing Bard Boots".
  
• Fixed a typo on Birch Pants.
  
• Updated quest text for "Holistic Wellness: Yarn" to clarify the required number of yarns.
  
• Fairy Soul Anchors now bestow 3 seconds of invulnerability to protect against immediately re-dying.
  
• Increased drop rate of orcish wheat grinders.
  
• Fixed a typo in Sie Antry's dialog.
  
• You can no longer try to dance if no nearby music is playing.
  
• Changing equipment while using furniture now continues using the furniture afterward.
  
• You can no longer mount your horse while using furniture (chairs, beds).
  
• Mounts turn a bit slower in water.
  
• Fixed a bug causing horses to not jump if you aren't actively pressing forward. (As long as they still have momentum, they'll jump.)
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause multiple Hissy's to spawn in the desert.
  
• Fixed bugs that caused monsters in the Fae Realm to never spawn in pairs or trios as intended.
  
• Improved performance of monster and pet movement.
  
• Fixed the appearance of dice in Monsters and Mantids when game graphics are set extremely low
  
• baruti BaRuTi BARUTI

We're proud of our VIP program -- we believe we've managed to offer some fun (but not required!) benefits for players who want to offer us additional support. Part of those benefits are monthly VIP gifts: if you logged in as a VIP member during the month, you can redeem a VIP gift for that month. (Note that you don't have to be an active VIP member to redeem the gift; you just need to have logged in as a VIP sometime during the month.) And in a case like this update, the gift may not be immediately ready, but as long as you were a VIP during that month you will be able to redeem it when it becomes available.

The VIP gifts for May, June, and July contain some of our coolest gifts yet, including pets and titles and dyes ... and a rather strange and itchy Firefly Hat. In addition, current VIP members will also get access to two new emotes in this update: /accuse and /monkey.