Alpha Two Update Notes 0.15.0 - Tuesday, August 26, 2025

Roshen

Welcome to the the start of Alpha Two Phase III. As a reminder, if you come across bugs during Alpha Two testing, please report them to us in-game using /bug

---

ALPHA TWO UPDATE NOTES 0.15.0 - TUESDAY, AUGUST 26, 2025

HIGHLIGHTS

• The Anvils is now available! You can now choose to start your adventure at the Divine Gateway of the Dünzenkell, to start at the ancient subterranean capitol of the Dünzenkell kingdom
• Py'Rai and Niküa player races are now available in the character creator!
• Settlements is the new name for the system that was previously called Nodes. Settlements can now level to Towns (Stage 4). When a Settlement levels up, it can make adjacent Settlements vassals
• Economy Rebalance! Gear progression has been smoothed, crafting has been streamlined, gathering has been revamped, and Mining has been improved. Enemy loot drops, quest rewards, commissions, and vendors fully have been realigned to fit with the the new artisanship loop
• Ashes of Creation is now on Unreal Engine 5.6!
• Introducing the new Crate system. Crates are physically transported by characters. When you have a crate, your character’s movement speed will be slower. There are two types of Crates: Construction Crates and Commodity Crates
• Lawless PvP events are now available. These will start every three hours at a random Point of Interest in each biome
• Some mount and costume cosmetic items are now available. If you have these on your account, they’ll be sent to your character’s mailbox to claim
• Using unstuck will kill a character. This is a temporary solution to prevent unstuck abuse
• Freeholds have been removed from the world. This is being done in preparation for future work to improve Freehold functionality

NEW ZONE: THE ANVILS

• The Anvils is now available! This is the ancestral home of the Dünzenkell
• New Starter Experience in the Anvils Zone - A fresh onboarding experience designed for new characters has been introduced in the Anvils. You can now choose to start your adventure adventure at the Divine Gateway of the Dünzenkell, to start at the ancient subterranean capitol of the Dünzenkell kingdom
• New Starter Quests! These guide characters from the Anvils gateway, to the Dünir’s Hammer Rest starter village and the Niküa’s Bonfire starter village
• Seven New Pocket Dungeons - Discover and conquer seven new pocket dungeons scattered throughout The Anvils. Each offers unique challenges, rewards. These are Gallowsgate Exchange, Hollowhearth, Legacy Vaults, Nexus Regulator, Surge Conduit, Varnok’s Forge, Veinbreaker Mines
• New Settlements are available! These are Dhurgrum, Dunnhold, Kal Torhum, Vexhelm, and Vhalgadim
• New Commissions are available! Find Adventure, Artisan, and Mayoral commissions in all Settlements in the Anvils

CHARACTER, ARCHETYPES & COMBAT

• Py'Rai and Niküa player races are now available in the character creator!
• Leveling curves have been adjusted, to be balanced with the economy rebalance
• New weapons have been added to the game! These weapons are rapier (one-handed pierce sword), one-handed axe, two-handed spear, two-handed mace, and two-handed axe
• There have been various stat changes for characters and equipment. Base health for characters, various stat formulas, and attribute waterfalls have been rebalanced
• Character stat sections have been reorganized. They are now arranged in two columns with offensive stats on the left and defensive stats on the right. Some stats have been renamed (for example “Mitigation” stat has been changed to “Defense”)
• Character movement momentum has changed. Momentum Carryover allows skilled use of movement abilities and timing to extend jump distance and horizontal motion
• Lateral deceleration while a character is airborne has been increased, resulting in less distance traveled when using Momentum Carryover
• Fall damage calculations have been updated. Fall damage now scales based on impact velocity and fall distance. It deals a % of your health, so it stays relevant at all levels
• The breathing and drowning system has been updated. In addition, Potion of Extended Breath has been added to Alchemy Stations
• Healing power has been fixed, so healing scales normally
• Multiple charges of an ability will no longer be consumed if an ability is interrupted
• Fixed a bug that prevented characters from being knocked back
• Added an option to show stats that are zero for a character, in the character window. This option is under Interface → General

Rogue

• Exposed Status Effect will no longer allow their targets to have a large increase in their outgoing damage
• Death’s Mark - Fixed some bugs that could cause this ability to not heal a character or have the cooldown reset properly
• Soothing Shadows - Fixed a bug that could prevent this ability from healing
• Fixed a bug with poisons, that would cause poisons to have no effect after the first time they were used
• Trading and Gathering will require a character to exit stealth
• Rogues will no longer drop stealth when using Guard or Dodge
• Fixed a bug that could prevent people from seeing the health bar of a character when their stealth timed out

Mage

• Enchant Weapon buffs are removed from a character, if the person that cast the buff logs out or moves far away from who they buffed
• Mage Magma Field ability will no longer get a character stuck in their casting animation if the cast was interrupted with an incapacitating status effect

Tank

• Protect will no longer transfer debuffs and crowd control effects from your ally target to the Tank using this ability

Cleric

• Bless Weapon buffs are removed from a character, if the person that cast the buff logs out or moves far away from who they buffed

PVP

• Lawless PvP events are now available! These will start every three hours at a random Point of Interest in each biome
  • Characters in a lawless PvP event area will be flagged as PvP combatants and will receive bonus experience and luck
  • Enemy NPCs in a lawless PvP event area have a chance to drop Lawless Trophies and Lawless Packages
• Attacking combatants and corrupted characters has been changed to be more intuitive
  • Harming and helping combatants and corrupted characters no longer requires use of the PvP force flag. This should make it easier to respond to an aggressor in open world PvP situations
  • Removed PvP Forced Flag Alt+F toggle option. People will need to hold Alt now for their attacks to hit non-combatants
  • “Include Untargeted Combatants with Area of Effect Abilities” has been added as an option, to allow your AOE's to hit combatants without needing to target them first
  • “Require Force PvP To Affect Combatants” has been added as an option, for people who would like more safety before attacking other characters
• Some Crowd Control (CC) effects will no longer work against non-combatants. Examples of CC effects that will no longer work against non-combatants include Stunned, Silenced, Rooted, Frozen, and Tripped
• Killing a non-combatant that is more than five levels below you grants additional corruption at a rate of 0.2 corruption per level difference
• Killing a non-combatant that is more than five levels below you grants additional blight at a rate of 0.1 blight per level difference
• Blight is no longer gained from slaying non-combatant mounts, pets, and vehicles. Note: corruption still applies
• Killing mounts, pets, and vehicles will now always give a character 1 corruption when slain, instead of giving corruption based on level difference

CARAVANS, SHIPS & MOUNTS

• Mounts now feature improved animations, controls, and refined summoning and dismounting. This is intended to create a more seamless and polished riding experience
• Caravan functionality has been moved into the nameplates of Caravans. Join and Leave Caravan events now works through the Caravan nameplate and not the Event System. Caravan Recovery currently still happens inside the Events panel
• Mounts now take fall damage. If you’re riding a mount when it takes fall damage, only the mount will take the fall damage
• Mount appearances that are intended to be cosmetic items are no longer available as mounts. Mounts that look like cosmetic items have been replaced, removed, or had their appearances adjusted
• Ram mount has had its speed adjusted to be aligned with starter horse mounts
• Storage space on Caravans and Caravel ships has been updated to match the new crate size
• Character ash loot piles will stay on vehicles, and should no longer go through ships and fall on the sea floor
• Harbor Masters now have a dialogue option to let people delete a Caravel ship, which works the same way Caravan Masters delete Caravans
• Caravans will no longer become bugged and show no owner name, if their deployment finishes far away from the character that owns it
• Characters should be able to join a Caravan event at any point during its journey. Fixed a bug that prevented Caravan event options to work from a distance
• Fixed a bug that prevented Caravan Rafts from being usable if a character was killed in a lawless zone while driving them, and then respawned at an Emberspring
• Characters can no longer enter a Caravel ship deployment area with vehicles, while a Caravel is preparing to launch
• Fixed an issue where mount movement animations could briefly get stuck in a strafing pose when transitioning to forward movement
• Wyrmling Mayoral Flying Mount will no longer fly downward at a very high speed
• Dismount button will be on your action bar
• Fixed a visual bug, that could make a character look like it was floating off of a mount when they were near a server worker boundary
• Fixed a bug that would allow characters to spawn ships inside the terrain
• Characters will no longer be able to launch themselves into the air by getting off of their mount when crossing a server worker boundary
• Mounted characters should no longer get into a weird state where they are not in the saddle correctly and can’t dismount, after crossing multiple server boundaries

ENEMIES & NPCs

• In order to increase the danger and challenge level in the world, adjustments have been made to the damage and mitigation of enemies that are higher level than characters fighting them
  • NPC enemies will deal more damage to lower level characters and take less damage from them. The increase to damage dealt and reduction in damage taken will ramp up the higher level an enemy is compared to you
  • The damage and health bonus of elite enemies has been adjusted. The relative bonuses to the damage and health of elite enemies gradually increases based on enemy level
  • These changes will not affect fighting enemies at or below your level
  • These changes will not affect PvP in any way
• Enemy loot drops now match the pace of crafting for gear acquisition. Mobs can drop gear from all tiers within a Grade, with base tier being most common
• Firebrand's fly-in spawn animation has been temporarily disabled due to a bug impacting how it receives ranged damage. Because of this, Firebrand will spawn in like other NPCs until we have a fix for this
• Guards are back on duty! They’ll properly attack hostile NPCs instead of just standing around
• Xirevthis and Zhultaresh in Apothecarium Dreadmire pocket dungeon have had their elite rating reduced from 3 star to 2 star
• Fixed several issues with NPC enemy pathing
• Crystal Golems at the Wreckage and Tower of Carphin now have a sinister blood red color

ECONOMY & ARTISANSHIP

• Economy Rebalance! Gear progression has been smoothed, crafting has been streamlined, gathering has been revamped, and Mining has been improved. Enemy loot drops, quest rewards, commissions, and vendors fully have been realigned to fit with the the new artisanship loop
• Crafting and processing recipes have been rebuilt to better reflect the time it takes to gather and refine materials. Each artisan level now correlates with a gear grade, and within each gear grade there are different tiers
• Enhanced gear progression. Higher-performing equipment within each Grade now requires rarer ingredients and engagement with multiple systems
• Power curve rebuilt. Equipment is now divided into Grades (Initiate, Adept, Radiant), each with multiple tiers
• Achievement gear. The most powerful gear in each Grade is now a significant achievement, requiring substantial investment and collaboration
• Set bonuses. Upper-tier armor sets now grant set bonuses, including stat buffs, active effects, and procs, scaling from 2-piece to full 8-piece sets
• The amount of each gatherable in the world and respawn times have been reworked. Common gatherables should be much easier to find. Resource spawns are influenced by geography and other conditions
• Mining has changed, so now gems and metals are received from procs when mining, instead of finding gems and metals as gatherables in the world. Exceptions to this are Obsidian, Halcyonite, Lumadon, and Rividium, which are rare spawns
• Vendors now play a more central role in the crafting loop as they are the exclusive providers of certain reagents required for advanced crafting
• Novice tools can now be crafted with a timber of your choice
• Pickaxes, Lumberjacking axes, and sickles can now be crafted with a weaponmold of your choice
• Weeping Willows have learned to branch out. They’ll still seek water first, but now have a small chance to spawn elsewhere when near-water spots aren’t available
• Tempering and Enchanting will now have grade requirement text, to better explain what can and can’t be tempered and enchanted
• Individual Artisanship tool benches that only crafted one type of tool have been removed. Artisanship tools can be crafted at Carpentry and Weapon Smithing stations
• Processing - Fixed issues with batch size limits for recipes in the station UI
• Cooking - Meat and Filet recipes will now correctly yield the animal fat byproduct material
• Lumbermilling - Timber recipes will now correctly yield the woodchips byproduct material
• Lumbermilling - Board recipes will now correctly yield the sawdust byproduct material
• Metalworking - Ingot recipes will now correctly yield the slag byproduct material
• Stonemasonry - Stone Fragment recipes for Sandstone, Limestone, Slate and Mourning Slate will now correctly yield the gypsum powder byproduct material
• Emberwake armor is easier to craft. Hawk skin requirements have been swapped for daffodil thread
• Magic Powder is now processable
• Reduced the price of selling processing materials to vendors
• Buying consumables should no longer be cheaper than the cost of crafting them
• Carpentry vendors no longer sells weapons such as longbows, shortbows, spellbows.
• Fixed issues with zone specific recipes sometimes not showing up on the recipe list at stations
• Huntable Mountain Lions no longer have elite nameplates
• Gathering visuals for Copper have been updated, so the destruction visual better fits the size of what is being gathered

SETTLEMENTS (Previously Known As Nodes)

• Settlements is the new name for the system that was previously called Nodes
• The Settlement level cap has been increased to Town (Stage 4)! Leveling a Settlement to a Town unlocks additional Service Building plots, for expanded settlement development
• Vassalship is now available! When a Settlement levels up, it can make adjacent Settlements their vassals
  • Settlements that are vassals of another Settlement can not level up to be equal or above their sovereign parent
  • Vassal Settlements pay a percentage of tax earnings to their sovereign parent Settlement
  • Hovering over a Settlement on the map will now highlight the area of the world that’s connected to that Settlement through vassalship
  • Settlement icon banner color will change, to be the same color for Settlements connected through vassalship
• Citizenship is now account-bound. Each account has one mayoral vote and one vote towards service building expansion
  • Citizenship is tied to the first character that becomes a citizen of a Settlement
  • Rewards for Settlement Wars are only sent to the character which citizenship is tied to, regardless of how many characters on your account participate in Settlement Wars
  • Any character may be used to renounce and reregister for citizenship at Settlements
  • Characters will now be directed to apply for citizenship, when they hit level 10, and there’s a Village (or higher stage Settlement) on the realm
• Settlement Reputation - Citizens can now earn Settlement reputation by participating in activities such as construction projects, mayoral commissions, and fulfilling buy orders
  • As characters accumulate reputation, they advance through citizenship ranks. Each rank unlocking new titles, reduced tax rates, expanded voting rights, and additional buffs or rewards from service buildings, commissions, and buy orders
• Service buildings now require character-crafted construction crates for upgrades, making character contributions essential for Settlement growth and unlocking new services. Each service building features an upgrade tree with expansion slots, and as Settlements level up, more slots become available, allowing for greater customization and functionality
• Renounce Citizenship should show the correct time of 36 hours in the UI
• Improved the quests for registering and voting in elections for mayor
• Settlement buff structure has been updated on buff tooltips. Settlement buffs will show the buff duration timer in the tooltip. When there are multiple buffs for a single stat, the shortest duration will be displayed here
• Fixed a bug that would cause a Settlement buff to fade on a character if they logged out and back in. You should no longer need to leave and enter the zone to get the Settlement buff again
• Tax Rate and Citizen Tax Rate is now displayed at the top of the vendor menu for Settlement vendors
• Settlement Service Buildings now have more information on their map icon tooltips
• Settlement Service Building icons on the map can be clicked on, to bring up the menu with details
• Contributing a Crate to a construction project will show progress on the construction progress menu
• Service Building skill tree icons have been updated in Settlement building management
• Generic Settlement buildings will no longer show a Warehouse building icon on the minimap
• Settlement Notification icons have been updated
• Clicking on the Settlement icon on the map will now bring up the Settlement menu for citizens, and Bulletin Board for non-citizens
• Clicking on a Settlement crafting station or plot on the map will now open the appropriate menu
• Additional Jundark Gathering Mayoral Commissions have been added
• New cloaks have been added to Settlement Citizenship vendors
• Construction and Maintenance costs for Service Buildings and other support buildings have been adjusted
• Laboratory Service Building - Fixed several bugs with maintenance costs, contribution costs, and the Skill Tree for this building

CRATES

• Introducing the new Crate System! Crates are physically transported by characters. When you have a crate, your character’s movement speed will be slower
  • There are two types of Crates:
    • Construction Crates - Used for building and upgrading service structures, rewarding characters with Settlement currency and experience
    • Commodity Crates - crafted in various locations and sold for gold and other rewards
    • Crates can be crafted at various locations in Settlements, Harbors, and lawless outposts
  • If a character carrying a crate is killed or if they go offline, they’ll drop the crate they have. Crates on the ground can either be picked up by another character, or opened with a crowbar. Breaking open a crate will flag you as a PvP combatant
  • Characters can choose to drop a crate. Equipping a crate will add the “Drop Crate” ability to your hotbar
  • Characters will be directed in regards to how crates work, the first time they’re near a packed crate that is dropped on the ground
• Commodity vendors have new dialogue options where they explain what they sell

GUILDS & WARS

• Guild progression has been updated! We revamped the skill tree to allow guilds to earn specialization and utility skill points with each level, enhancing customization from the beginning
  • Guild Experience required for leveling has been adjusted, so lower levels are faster and later levels are slower
• Guild Storage is now available! Guilds can share items and materials using storage accessible at any Settlement that is Village (stage 3) or higher
  • Item storage is global and expandable
  • Material storage is Settlement specific and can be unlocked or upgraded by guild leaders
  • Permissions control which guild ranks can view, deposit, or withdraw things from storage
  • Storage activity is tracked in the transaction ledger
• Opening guild menu will no longer change the victory points UI to show as 0 for both teams
• Territory Wars have been fixed so both teams have the same requirements of 1,000 Blood and 750 Materials
• War notifications should no longer show placeholder text
• Added more Guild Commodity Icons

QUESTS, EVENTS & COMMISSIONS

• Items in your quest inventory can now be organized and removed from that inventory
• Quest rewards now offer “choose your item” options, including weapons, equipment, mounts, and crafting materials
• Commission bonus reward lootboxes are now available. These reward boxes are region and task specific, and give an additional random reward when completing Commissions
• Ardent Anvil - You can now complete the delivery of the Ardent Anvil package for this quest
• Eye of Seafury - The Grave Stone needed for this quest is no longer under the world
• Horns of the Betrayers - Fixed a bug with using “The Oubliette” to progress this quest
• Raiders of the Lost Archives Quest - Characters will no longer lose their book if they abandon this quest
• Set to Motion Quest - The Graveyard Golem step for this quest has been removed. Characters can now acquire the Stone Brick for this quest from an interact in the area
• Shellshock Shore Event - Objective text has been updated to make this more clear
• The Megalithic Mage Quest - A new "Dig Site" has been added to complete the quest
• The Stones of Tura'Madu - Characters can now interact with the stone circle to spawn the ghost of Sir Vhael to complete the quest
• When in Bloom Quest - Characters that fail to complete the quest after the final objective can now return to complete it
• X Marks the Spot Quest - Characters that miss the option to complete this quest can now return to Zorrin Fenn to complete the quest

USER INTERFACE

• Item tooltips have been changed! The bottom of items will now show instructions, and holding shift while right clicking items from your inventory will bring up their menu
  • Equipment set bonuses tooltip popups have been updated, and you can get more information about bonus effects by hovering over them
  • Tooltips can now be locked to keep them on the screen. You can have a maximum of eight locked tooltips on your screen
  • Clicking on Grade on the top right of an item tooltip will show information on equipment grades
• Currency has been added to the item feed user interface. When getting currency from selling items at a vendor or in other ways, currency received will be in the feed pop up on the screen
• Vendor items that are not available to you can now be hovered over to show why they’re unavailable. Unavailable items will be sorted to the bottom of each vendor’s list
• Right clicking on targets to bring up the menu is now an option you can turn on or off. This defaults to off, and this can be changed in Options under Gameplay -> Targeting -> "Open RMB Menu on targets when"
• Damage Vignette has been added as an option. This is the red border on your screen to let you know you’re taking damage. This is turned off by default
• Pressing the slash key will now always start by typing in your chat window
• Fixed issues with pings staying on the map for too long
• Fixed a bug with the character lobby that could result in no characters displaying
• Fixed a bug related to zooming in on the character lobby on a wide monitor
• Fixed a bug with zooming in on the map, that would only change the size of icons on the map
• Cycle Targets Backwards - Fixed a bug that prevented people from changing the keybind for this
• “<“ and “>” symbols are now displayed correctly in chat
• If an attack was a crit will now still be shown as a crit in chat, even when attacks are lethal
• Fixed a bug that would prevent party or raid members from displaying properly on the minimap and world map
• Changed keybind abbreviations
• Several map icons have been updated

WORLD

• Updated Mountain Ranges along the Riverlands Border - The mountainous terrain bordering the Riverlands has been reworked with enhanced visuals
• Fixed several gaps in the terrain around the world
• Fixed a bug with water visuals east of Wildport
• The Jundark waterfall has been improved visually
• Additional improvements to the visuals for how rain makes things look wet in the world
• Fixed some landscape visuals north of Arisalon
• Mailboxes and Commission Boards have been visually improved
• Pocket Dungeons have map markers
• Fixed an issue with barriers having a grayscale filter. Approaching or looking in their direction will no longer wash your world into black and white. Verra is colorful again
• Waterfalls and rivers will sound like waterfalls and rivers again

GENERAL

• Dynamic Gridding is now available. This provides real-time load balancing to improve server performance
• Using unstuck will kill a character. This is a temporary solution to prevent unstuck abuse
• Freeholds have been removed from the world. This is being done in preparation for future work to improve Freehold functionality
• Pressing shift while typing will no longer trigger Sprint
• Accounts can have a maximum of five characters on each realm
• Ashes of Creation is now on Unreal Engine 5.6
• Some mount and costume cosmetic items are now available! If you have these on your account, they’ll be sent to your character’s mailbox to claim. Mount cosmetics can only be added to a mount while it’s not summoned
• The Warehouse button will no longer appear if a vendor cannot accept sales from a Warehouse
• Fixed a bug that could cause the hair of some characters to look stretched when looking at them from a distance
• Fixed issues with stretched visual effects and poor performance on AMD graphics cards
• Vendors will no longer accept commodities if a character does not have inventory space to receive payment
• Updated several icons for things in the Tropics