Blades:Patch/1.4

Released on October 9, 2019.

It's time to celebrate the Witches Festival! With Update 1.4, you'll find brand new additions to the game to fright and delight: Four new frightful quests only for the bravest among you, creepy decorations to show off your holiday spirit, and your Town is now an eerie nighttime dwelling with new music to match.

Update 1.4 also includes many bug fixes, new features, and improvements—such as fixing the bug causing Saashi to have a quest marker above her head, and an entire spell overhaul. The full patch notes are below!

Patch Highlights
:New Quests: Beware of hostile spiders, creatures lurking in dark caves, mysteriously abandoned villages, and more in these four new bloodcurdling quests!
:Spell Overhaul: Several permanent changes to spells are afoot! Casting can no longer be interrupted, the Willpower perk now provides damage resistance when casting, spells are now more powerful, and much more.
:New Nighttime Town: Everyone knows the best time to celebrate the Witches Festival is at night! Now you can enjoy your Town at nighttime, with spooky new details to celebrate the season and eerie new music.
:New Decorations: You'll find brand new spooky decorations in honor of the Witches Festival in quest rewards and craftable in your Workshop.

New Features and Improvements
Armor, Weapons, and Items
Potions: Greatly increased the power of elemental resistance potions.
Enchantments: Doubled the power of elemental resistance enchantments.
Enchantments: Added unique sound effects for combat enchantments on light and heavy weapons.
Decorations: Added spooky decorations to craft at the Workshop:
::*Dev note: The Pumpkin Patch and Pumpkin King are available from the start, while the King's Sentry becomes available in level 5 Workshops.
::*Dev note: The new Apprentice's Orrery can also be made in level 3 Workshops

Combat
Spells: Player and enemy spells are no longer interrupted when the caster takes damage.
Spells: Revised the Willpower perk to provide damage resistance while casting a spell.
Spells: Revised most spells:
::*Fireball deals more damage, and no longer hurts the caster when interrupted by a stunning or paralyzing effect.
::*Wall of Fire deals more damage to enemies, and much less to the caster.
::*Frostbite deals more damage, but its maximum duration has been reduced.
::*Poison Cloud deals more damage, and its casting time has been reduced.
::*Blind deals more damage, and its casting time has been reduced.
::*Paralyze deals more damage, and its casting has been reduced, but the length of its effect has been lowered.
::*Resist Elements is more powerful, but its casting time has been increased.
::*Ward can now be cast instantly and at any time. It provides slightly more Armor Rating at higher ranks, but negates less elemental damage. Its maximum duration has been reduced.
::*Echo Weapon provides more damage with light or heavy weapons at certain ranks due to fixing a rounding error.
::*Blizzard Armor and Absorb are slightly more powerful at higher ranks.
::*Consuming Inferno, Lightning Bolt, Delayed Lightning Bolt, Thunderstorm, and Ice Spike deal more damage.
Conditions: Elemental conditions are easier to inflict.
Conditions: Standardized the duration of all elemental conditions to 5 seconds.
Conditions: The On Fire condition now prevents Health regeneration.
Conditions: Doubled the damage and maximum Health reduction caused by the Poisoned condition.
Enemies: Reduced the maximum Magicka of most enemies, as well as the ranks at which they cast spells.
Potions: The buttons to quickly drink Magicka and Stamina restoration potions now appear whenever you can't pay the cost of a useable skill that isn't on cooldown.
Enemies: Increased how weak certain enemies are to their elemental weaknesses: Bandits, Mercenaries, Necromancers, Thalmor Agents, Warmasters, Nether Liches, Liches, arena battle job opponents, and all Dragons.
Enemies: Greatly increased the power of Dragon breath attacks.
Jobs: Reduced the Health and slightly increased the damage of arena battle job opponents.
Power: Revised how player and enemy power are calculated.
::*Dev Note: This may lead to a sudden change in your recommended starting Abyss floor, as well as in the skull ratings given to your current quests.
Skills: Skills can now be upgraded while in combat.

Design and Gameplay
Equipment: Raised the height of equipped war axes to make them more visible while walking around and in combat.
Town: Changed the Town from day to night to celebrate the Witches Festival.

Quests, Events, and Challenges
Level: Added a recommended player level to all quests.
Quests: Added 4 frightening, bloodcurdling quests!
::*Dev note: One becomes available after completing each one of these main quests: The Bloodfall Queen, The Missing Scroll, Facing the Dragon, and The Five Stones.
::*Dev note: Each one rewards you with a new decoration.

User Interface (UI)
Perk: Added a Matching Set icon to the Character Menu to let players with Matching Set know when the perk is currently applied.

Bug Fixes
Armor, Weapons, and Items
Enchantment: Fixed a rounding bug that displayed the effect of Fortify Primary Enchantment as 16% instead of 15%. The actual effect remains unchanged at 15%.

Design and Gameplay
Quest: Fixed a bug that made a quest icon appear above Saashi while she had no new quest to give.

Combat
Enemies: Fixed a bug that made high-level enemies more likely to block low, sometimes indefinitely, while low on Health.
Enemies: Fixed a bug that prevented enemies from transitioning directly from blocking to casting.
Training: Fixed a bug that let you kill Staki during training by reducing her maximum Health to 0.

Spells, Abilities, and Enchantments
Enemies: Fixed a bug that prevented enemies from acting differently while Blinded by the Blind spell.
Perk: Fixed a bug that made the Combat Focus perk slightly less powerful than intended.
Potion: Fixed a bug that let players drink restorations potions to restore an attribute at maximum if that maximum had been reduced.