Greetings,

I'm glad Gameforge offered us once again the chance to directly test the new contents, rather than just implementing them!
It's still early to provide you with an useful feedback, but I'd like to outline my impressions about some of these novelties.

1. Graphic options: this is actually one of my favourite add-ons, my community has been requesting for something like this from a long time!

2. Mythical alchemy: this is really interesting, I'm sure that in every community there are tons of unused legendary excellent stones. This will be a nice way to make them useful once again. However, I guess it would be fair to make upgrading easier with excellent stones rather than with matt ones.

3. Sash projection: this is a nice aesthetic feature. At first I was thinking that the "same percentage" rule actually made it too difficult. However, you can evade this limit just by upgrading both of them up to 25%, so I guess it's fine.
(Note: it'd be nice to introduce projection to hairstyles as well, maybe on helmets... )

4. Pet re-rolling: it sounds good to me, however I fear that this will impact on the will of players to farm and search for new pet eggs, especially if you keep giving off razador/nemere eggs with special events.

5. Elementary resistances: I'm not entirely sure about this. It's true that according to some players, the current settings for elementary resistances may be somehow exaggerated. However, with the current settings some unused items (such as Silver and Copper Necklaces, for instance) have actually become useful. I fear that this change of settings will impact on their retrieved usefulness, and this would be a real pity.
There's another problem as well: while lightning/wind/fire resistance are relatively widespread, you can't say the same for ice/earth/darkness resistances. Making the latters less useful than they are now, is definitely risky.
However, it's still early to draw conclusions.

I'll add some more detailed feedback in the following days. Thanks again for the chance you gave us all!

First impression: I definitely believe that elementary resistances have been nerfed too much.

We faced a group Meley (which is supposed to be way easier than the guild one).

The party was made up of 5 players, consisting of all >lv.100 players, two of them being >lv.115 and with a really good PvM gear.

The overall fire damages were definitely stronger than the regular ones observed in 18.3 version and we got the general impression that it was too difficult, even if we managed to complete it.

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Also, the same applies to wind resistance, especially to regular En-Tai mobs. We faced and killed a Jotun, but we noticed that most of the damages were coming from the En-Tai mobs, even if some of us were equipped with about 45-50% wind resistance (combined with full skill resistance and 25% earth resistance).

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Another feedback: Hydra is not available. Please fix this issue, we'd like to test ice resistance as well.

Ok, I tried my best to collect some more detailed informations, but the general impression is just the same I've been having since the beginning of this beta: the damages are way too high and elemental resistances do no longer properly work.

I've considered two examples: En-Tai Soldier and En-Tai Druid.

My character is a lv.100 Ninja, equipped with 55% wind resistance. The defense value is about 750, equipping mostly legendary matt DSS.

(A)

With 55% wind resistance, the En-Tai soldier deals a range of 1002-1402 damages, with some peaks (which are probably piercing hits) of avout 2000-2100).

(A1)

When removing Wind Resistance, the damages increase to a range of about 1205-1611.

The only way to stop this kind of damage is maxing out "chance to block attack": the problem is that we're talking of a SINGLE MOB here, guys. Imagine the amount of damage that a group of 12-18 mobs could be capable of dealing to a character...!

The other way would be relying on avg damage reduction: only garnet earrings and DSS Ruby provide that bonus (consider that a 95-105 will level up in Enchanted Forest, so we're ignoring 115 armors, here!), so there's no other way to limit damage.

Dragon Shamans buffs are helpful but are definitely not enough to make a difference: and keep in mind that after v17.5 they've been reduced, so it's even worse than before!


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(B)

The En-Tai druid deals about 735-864 damage points while wearing 55% wind resistance and 20% magical resistance.

The range increases somewhat when removing wind res., of about 954-1037. It's almost negligible.

By adding just 15% magical resistance, the range drops again to 755-840, similar to the first range.

15% magical resistance is equal to all of the wind resistance.

We returned to pre-Zodiac settings and all of the importance given to elementals defenses is going to be blown away.

By the way: magical attacks cannot be missed nor avoided, so there's no other way to reduce them. You'd need costumes just to max out magical resistance, and since costumes aren't always available in item shop, you cannot level up when you want to. A big mess!

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I'd like to point out that a friend of mine was testing with me, with a Weapon Sura: thanks to her Fear and Magical Armor skills, she managed to withstand damages better than me - but she still noticed a considerable difference.

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Overall: the damages are too high.

I know that it'd be nice to give more importance to chance of block/avoiding arrows, but as it is now, only Weapon Sura and Body Warriors can truly enjoy PvM.

My feedback about pets re-rolling system is positive.

The new skills (strong against mobs, in particular) gave a renewed usefulness to pets such as Meley, which were kinda uncool until now. I hope this system will "rescue" Hydra and Spider pets as well, I didn't get a chance to test them.

I know that probably someone will be complaining that he had to open a lot of Razador eggs before finding the perfect pet, but let's admit it, it was incredibly annoying. By the way, we are not obliged to re-roll our pets' attributes, we may also stick to the old way of finding a good pet - just by opening eggs over and over.

However, this item should be really rare (if it could be found in game, which I doubt) or rather expensive, otherwise it would create too much difference between those who can afford it and those who cannot.

As for mythical alchemy, most of you will probably hate me but I'm not entirely against it. Actually I like the fact that they came up with another "step" to improve characters, it means that the game is not end yet.

While I can understand your disappointment, remember that every new implementation involves older itemS to become outdated.

Do you all remember what happened when Webzen implemented Zodiac Temple and weapons? Everyone was crying because lv.75 weapons would have lost their value. Many of us tried asking for lv.75 weapons transformation into Zodiac Weapons, but they didn't accept this propoposal.

However, a year has passed and nowadays many people managed to finally get a good Zodiac Weapon. No more need for complaints.

I'm pretty positive that the same will happen to mythical alchemy.

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As for non-tradeable shards, I'm kinda feeling positive about it as well. You see, I've never liked the fact that someone else has to do the "though" work of farming shards and selling them to other people.

While this may seem to be a nice way to help new players, it's actually a legit way to exploit their ignorance of game mechanisms.

Besides, if you really want to craft alchemy rapidly SO BADLY, you should actually buy extra cor draconises in itemshop, that's the way it should work.

However, leaving the 3 cors per day formula won't do any good, because players must have a certain possibility to do it on their own, even if it requires some more time.

That's why I think that if you want to implement untradeable shards, you'll have to raise the maximum number of obtainable cor draconises PER DAY, per single player.

That way, if you want to craft new DSS pieces, you'll have to rely on YOUR STRENGHTS (by facing actively dungeons, for instance) until a reasonable result (that may be equal to about 10-15 cors).

THEN, if you're still not happy with it, you can buy cor from itemshop.

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You may not like it, but that's my personal opinion.

The only thing I really have to complain about is the elemental resistances nerf - but everyone is complaining, so they'll hopefully change it. Or at least, I hope so.

This nerf actually hinders the usefulness of mythical alchemy, since you could max out elemental resistance but would still suffer too many damages from mobs.

It's fair that a certain percentage of elemental resistance is supposed to be difficult to achieve (and that would be the percentage given by a mythical excellent stone).

However, I'd expect a character with a full percentage to actually be FULLY PROTECTED from elemental damages.

Let's talk about wind resistance, for example.

You may get:

14 on necklaces
10 on shoes
15 on bracelets
15 on helmets
15 on armors

...that's 69 just by mere equipment, plus 4 when using a crystal, plus 3 from mythical DSS bonus = 76

Then you can also add +16 from the mythical alchemy Jade: that means a total of 92%.

As you can see, we're pretty close to 100%.

I believe that elemental resistances on costumes should be removed in order to make them more difficult to find (and in order to actually force players to be interested to this new alchemy, regardless of the offensive power they may give).

Moreover, it's pointless maxing out wind resistance if it turned to be so useless. Why should I change my alchemy if the resistance effectiveness got worse?

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That's all for now, these are my full impressions about the new contents. I hope you'll read them.

@badidol @Salsie @Rocket