Today’s patch is the culmination of our efforts to create the first VR MMO. Raids are one of the most fun and engaging pieces of content that define the MMO genre, and we’re incredibly excited to bring that experience to room-scale virtual reality.
The Waystation Crypt Raid is a 10-person raid featuring 5 bosses, increasing in difficulty from “pretty easy” to “hard” from a mechanics perspective. These bosses will challenge your group coordination in new and interesting ways that we’ve never done before, and we hope you have a blast working together to overcome them.
To enter the Raid, head to the Necropolar. If you have never been to the Necropolar before, there is a secret entrance in the Zoological Gardens Redtail Enclosure. Once in the Necropolar, follow the frozen river, staying left at the fork, and the entrance will be a portal on your right.
Raid Parties
The maximum number of players you can add to a Party has now increased to 10. If your party size increases above 5, you will receive a notice that you have joined a Raid Party. Raid Parties cannot receive loot or XP outside of raid dungeons. In addition to that, all the original dungeons in the game have been modified such that you cannot have more than 5 people in them at any given point.
Raid Lockouts
Today we’re introducing a new system for saving your progress in the Raid. Whenever you kill a boss, that boss as well as its associated trash pulls will not respawn the next time you enter the raid. The lockout is based on the leader of your party, so if you want to save your progress you’ll have to use the same Party Leader for each attempt.
Regarding loot, you will be eligible to receive 1 “chance” at a drop from each boss in the raid per week. Non-gear drops including dyes and the Windup toy can be received even if you have already used up your gear drop, however note that the Windup toy only drops on Boss 4 and 5.
The lockouts for both progress saving and loot will reset at 12:01 AM Server Time (US Central Time) on Tuesday mornings.
Raid Tokens
In addition to your base chance to get loot from Raid bosses, you will receive one Crypt Token from each boss per week. These tokens can be exchanged at the Raid Shop vendor in Highsteppe to get gear. You can choose to purchase gear for any class, regardless of your current class or the class you were playing when the token was earned. Please pay close attention to what gear you are buying, as there are no refunds.
When you buy a piece of gear from the vendor, it will roll just like you had gotten a drop from the Raid boss directly.
Tagger Tool
To aid in your strategies, a new tool has been added to the game which allows the Party Leader to mark symbols above monsters when in a Dungeon or Raid. You can acquire this handy new tool for 1 Dram (practically free) from the Dragon Shop vendor in the Zoological Gardens.
Windup Necro Boss
New to this patch we are introducing a new Pet called the Windup Necro Boss. This is a cute, fun pet that is a miniature version of the 4th boss from the Raid. Note that this is a very rare drop and it is soulbound.
A Note on Difficulty
While these fights do end up being fairly mechanically challenging, if your group has been doing T6+ shard dungeons for a while you will outgear them, which may make them a little easier than for freshly-geared 20’s. As such my expectation is that as groups learn the mechanics throughout the day, we’ll see the first clear at some point. (Of course who knows I could be wrong, haha). We will be releasing hard-mode Raids in a few weeks with some added mechanics as well as a more difficult tuning to challenge groups that are geared to the teeth but want to see how much they can overcome.
So if you’re new to the game or just hit 20, please find a group and check out this content, as it should be very doable (if difficult) for you, and a lot of fun!
And if you’re already in T10+ Shard Gear, enjoy the new sights, sounds, and mechanics and get some fun new drops, and then get your strategies down for the Hard Mode Raid which is coming soon.
Miscellaneous Other Changes
- Fixed a series of stuck in combat bugs.
- Fixed a bug which was leading to crashes when loading into new zones or dungeons (hopefully).
- Fixed an issue causing large amounts of lag when it was snowing in the Necropolar on Rift headsets.
- The “party in combat resurrection lock” mechanic now applies to the entire dungeon instance, regardless of how far away your party members are.
- Fixed a bug which may have been affecting the Soulkeeper AoE attack.
- Attempting to loot an item will now reset your logout timer.
- Tentacles from Tentacle Elites will no longer count toward Shard mob completion.
- The public character API has been updated to include records of your fastest kill on each boss in the raid, as well as the last 10 bosses you have killed (similar to how it works for Shard Dungeons). We’re also now showing your total number of boss kills for each of the World Bosses.
- Fixed an issue which could sometimes incorrectly kick you from a dungeon because you weren’t in the correct party.