Minor Patch 1.2.1 - Winter Festival

For the full version of patch notes, visit: https://zenithmmo.com/blogs/news/minor-patch-1-2-1-winter-festival

Patch Type: Minor
Patch Number: 1.2.1
Patch Name: Winter Festival
PTR Date: 12/15/2022
Release Window: 12/21/2022 - 12/22/2022

We're excited to announce our very first Winter Festival patch that comes with winter themed content like quests, food, toys, snowballs (!), presents, a chained Public Event against icy mobs and a boss. The Winter Festival will only be in Zenith for a limited time -- *three weeks from launch! -- so get out there, Agent! *Edit 1/5: the Winter Festival is extended until January 25th. Enjoy!

New Content

• Winter Festival World Event
• Winter Festival Agent Rank Challenges: earn Winter Coins, toys, and valuable rewards
• Winter Festival Public Event in Fractured Plains: summon and defeat Faminus, the Hunger
• Speak to Wynty near the Nexus District entrance to cash in Winter Coins for new toys, improved recipes, cosmetic pandowl-themed winter headwear, and a Frosted Stripetail pet
• Toys: give out "mystery" Presents with random rewards, throw Snowballs, build Snowfriends
• New Creatures & Pets:
  • Royal Scarab
  • Stripetail Cub 🐯
  • Dazzling Stripetail
  • Frosted Stripetail (Winter Festival)

• When fast traveling around the map you'll now find Winter Festival themed decorations in familiar places and Winter Spirits roaming the zones.

Feature/System Updates

• New Player Experience:
  • Reduced overall difficulty of Blossom Village area
  • Updated Academy gliding tutorial to mention stamina use
  • Adjusted first Fractured Plains quest to not require gliding
  • Fractured Plains respawn point moved closer to the bridge
  • Removed enemies from outsides mines area to make it safer
  • Increased size of mines boss quest location and moved to center of room
  • Minor quest text typo fixes

• Slightly re-increased Arborial Serpent HP
• Added ability to swap stick inputs for left-handed users
• Added controller-oriented locomotion option which uses the direction of the hand rather than the head for smooth locomotion
• Updated model for the Dazzling Pandowl
• Inventory icon for Transponder quest item
• Added a new pulsing material for all spires and updated location marker visuals

Resolved Issues

• Fixes for various interactions that you can mistakenly do while dead
• Fixed being unable to upgrade Lich’s Bane (blaster from Twilight Athenaeum dungeon) at synth stations [Player Top Issue]
• Fixed icon behavior when dragging items in inventory
• Fix cleaning up of quest drops, also a flag to make items placed by users despawn on logout
• Fix for Agent Rank rewards showing up as empty and cannot be redeemed [Player Top Issue]
• Fix for fireseeds and firestarters not working to activate triggers in public events
• Improved waterfall materials and VFX

Edit (12/21):

• Set boss doors in Infernal Core to not close during the fight so players do not get locked out upon death anymore [Player Top Issue] Updated Vulkane Boss room respawn point to be on boss platform and set gates to close during combat again
• Reduced chance of waypoints not appearing in the new player experience
• Fixed spells not working when joining an instance with Agent Rank menu open
• Fixed Agent Rank menu staying open when joining an instance
• Fixed confirmation prompts rendering behind the main menu UI
• Fixed laser pointer cursor rendering behind section icons
• Fixes to Agent Rank UI
• Fixed bugs with networked VFX

Hotfix 1

• Fixed winter cookies, nog, and noodles recipe quests bug that took coins instead of the required items
• Fixed Tome Keeper raid occasionally not granting rewards
• Improved stability of public events, we are continuing to monitor shard performance
• Fixed weekly Winter banshee quest not completing
• Fixed hearing other players Blade Master sword SFX
• Fixed Amara's Tears reappearing for some players who have already collected them
• Adjusted Winter Festival Agent Rank duration to run approximately ~21 days from launch instead of ~20 days
• Updated icon for Gemcrusher creature

Hotfix 2

Hotfix 2 focuses on reducing crashes and improving stability. We are continuing to monitor stability and looking into bug reports

• Optimized performance when there are lots of entities nearby
• Optimized performance when there are lots of other players nearby
• Optimized memory usage during shard connection process
• Fixed an issue which would cause memory usage to slowly increase (and so decrease stability) over time as more and more status effects were used
• Changed the order in which things load to prevent freezing and reduce memory spikes during shard connection
• Reduced the memory usage of certain textures (including Skyboxes) on Quest devices
• Made abandoned items despawn when their owner logs out
• Fixed entities with lots of status effects on them causing framerate drops
• Fixed enhancement stations to show the correct 3D model for what is being enhanced
• Added a safety check to prevent the rare case where a player's inventory got wiped when losing internet