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Dragonfire Patch 3 is now live! This patch brings some significant changes to the Ancient Lands, along with further tweaks to Maeve and those friendly Dragons coming to visit the open world. There’s also a nice little seven-day Fame and loot boost in the Dragon Sanctuary and the Ancient Lands too. Plus: new targeting options on mobile. Read on for details…
We’ve heard your feedback, and we’ve acted: Small Ancient Lands Portals in Yellow Zones will now appear much more frequently. We’ve significantly reduced their average spawn time and increased their chance of appearing in each region, while their lock time has been reduced to five minutes and the time you have to enter them has been increased to ten minutes. This should make it much easier to find and enter a portal on the World Map whenever you want, so you can island-hop to your heart's content.
That constant availability comes with a tradeoff: we had to reduce the Fame and loot available through Small Portals in Yellow Zones to prevent inflating the economy. However, this reduction doesn’t apply to Small Portals in Red and Black Zones, where rewards remain unchanged.
Co-Creative Director Michael Schwahn explains the thinking behind this split:
“One of the clearest things we heard from players was that they wanted more opportunities to play in the Ancient Lands. But if we simply made the portals more frequent everywhere, we would also have to reduce the rewards, which is something we know our core players would not be happy about. So instead, we decided to create two different experiences. In non-lethal zones, Small Portals will become much more frequent, with reduced rewards to give players a more accessible way to jump into the Ancient Lands whenever they want. Meanwhile, Small Portals in lethal zones will remain rarer, high-stakes opportunities, with their high rewards intact. This gives players a choice: more frequent and accessible gameplay, or riskier opportunities where the stakes and rewards are much higher.”
And Small Portals in Yellow Zones aren’t the only ones becoming more frequent – we’ve also increased the prevalence of Large Portals, especially during prime times, giving larger groups more opportunities for Drake-slaying while still keeping them as opportunity targets. We’ve also tweaked the loot so that it’s more concentrated in the central Fire Drake chest, with a much higher chance of finding Fire Dragon armor artifacts there. We’ve made the mobs in the Ancient Lands a touch less tough, as well.
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These adjustments build on the changes made in Dragonfire Patch 1 and Patch 2, like the Item Freeze which protects the inventory you take into the Ancient Lands, the increased visibility of portals on the World Map, and increased loot for Medium and Large Portals. Altogether, these changes should make it easier to jump into the content and enjoy a smoother experience, while keeping the more challenging opportunities rewarding – particularly if you manage to slay the final Drake.
As always, your feedback is important to us, so let us know how you feel these changes are playing out! There’s a forum post right here where you can do that.
Oh yeah, and for the next seven days there’s also a 15% extra Fame and loot in the Ancient Lands and Dragon Sanctuary. Even more reason to hop in and get slaying! This boost runs until October 18 at 23 UTC on Albion Asia, and October 19 at 10 UTC on Albion Europe and Americas.
We’re continuing to tweak the other Dragonfire content as well. Maeve was still just a little too tough, so we’ve made her a bit more forgiving, particularly towards the end of the fight where things could get pretty intense.
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We’ve adjusted open-world Dragons so that they don’t fully heal when reset. Instead, they recover to the last 20% health threshold reached, which should reduce some of the frustration if your fight gets broken up. Oh, and they give way more Might now, too.
For our mobile players, we’ve introduced some new targeting options to give you more control over who you select in combat. You can filter by Enemies, Allies, or Party Members when cycling through targets or dragging the attack button, making it easier to focus your efforts where you want. Once enabled in Settings (Controls → Auto-Targeting), these modes can be toggled directly in the HUD. There’s an Automatic option too, which selects a mode for you based on your current abilities and whether you’re in a party.
We’ve also introduced a ‘Double Tap to Self-Cast’ option under Controls → General, giving you the choice to disable double-tap detection if you want to avoid accidental self-casts when tapping repeatedly.
What else? We’ve reduced the size of some of those popup notifications (sorry about that), we’ve fixed some chat issues on Xbox, and there’s a good amount of combat balance changes for you to get your teeth into. Check out all the details in the patchnotes, and we’ll see you in the Ancient Lands!