New character look picker
Character creation now includes a real look picker: cycle gender, skin tone, and hair style with left/right arrows and see a live preview before you commit, on top of your class choice. Characters made before this update will be prompted to pick their look the next time they log in. Want to change your look later? Your first change is free. After that, further changes require Premium.
Added a helmet visibility toggle (default key: H) so you can show or hide your class's helmet/hat at any time, for free, without affecting anyone else's view of your gear.
New bonus modes: Gem Find and Magic Find
Two new server-wide bonus modes admins can run, alongside the existing Bonus XP/Spawn Rate/Skill Gain/Loot:
Bonus Gem Find: increases drop chance specifically for blue agates, shadow crystal shards, quality gems, and sapphires.
Bonus Magic Find: gives everyone a flat magic find bonus on top of their own gear, raising the odds of tainted/forsaken drops server-wide.
New backpack tiers: Soulweave and Runebound Packs
Two new death-protection backpacks join the lineup above Hexwoven:
Soulweave Pack — reduces XP loss on death to 2%, protects equipped items below level 200, and now shields 33% of your remaining inventory from being dropped on death.
Runebound Pack — reduces XP loss on death to 2%, protects equipped items below level 250, and shields 50% of your remaining inventory from being dropped on death.
This also introduces inventory protection as a new mechanic: previously backpacks only protected equipped gear, and everything in your bag was always lost on death. Soulweave and Runebound now randomly spare a portion of your bag items too — stacks keep a proportional share, and other items are randomly chosen to survive.
Fixes
Fixed agility being weighted twice (once for gear) when calculating hit and block chance in combat, giving a small, unintended edge to heavily agility-geared characters.
Fixed animated overhead tiles (like wall-mounted torches) not appearing when viewing a z-level below the one they're on, matching how regular overhead tiles already worked.
Fixed Strength/Agility/Vitality/Intelligence buffs (e.g. Dark Pact) stacking extra copies of their bonus every time gear was re-equipped or another buff expired, instead of applying once.
Fixed spell targeting crosshairs (the click-to-confirm cursor for ground/ally-targeted spells and gathering tools) having no way to cancel. Right-click, Esc, and switching to a different spell now all cancel the pending crosshair.
Fixed equipping an item you don't meet the level/Strength/Agility/armor-type requirements for silently unequipping your currently worn item instead of just rejecting the swap. You'll now get a clear message explaining why the item can't be equipped, and your gear stays on.
Fixed equipped items losing their affix name segments (e.g. showing as just "[Forsaken] Spirit Sash" instead of the full rolled name) after being reloaded from equip/unequip or dying and dropping gear — the stat bonuses and rarity were always intact, only the displayed title was affected.
Locked ferry crossings (Cormac, Sam, etc.) now say whose favor you need and at what standing, e.g. "Cormac will only sail people with Friendly standing in City of Nightfall," instead of just "There's no crossing available yet."
Rebalanced Ghost, Wraith, and Banshee (the ghost line): their HP had drifted well above other mobs of the same level while their damage and XP stayed normal, making them a much tougher fight than their level suggested for no extra reward. HP and XP reward are both down to match.
The bot detector now warns players in-game when botting/macros are detected for more than just fishing. Warning only, no automatic kick yet.
Fixed a bug where casting Decrepify (or any resist-all debuff) on a mob and letting it expire would permanently raise that mob's elemental resistances instead of the debuff having any effect, making repeatedly-cursed mobs increasingly tanky against spell damage over time.
Fixed quest items showing up as sellable at NPC shops and getting silently dropped from the cart on sell (no copper was ever paid out for them, but the fail was confusing); they no longer appear in the sell list at all.
Fixed a bug where certain buffs (Arcane Surge, Dark Pact, and similar Strength/Agility/Vitality/Intelligence buffs) could permanently drain your base stat points if the game saved your character while the buff was still active. Affected characters will self-correct the next time they log in.
Fixed auto-attacks and spells occasionally dealing 0 damage on a successful hit (most noticeable at low level) instead of the guaranteed minimum of 1.