Blades:Patch/1.5

Released on December 9, 2019.

With our biggest update to Blades yet, you'll find significant (and community-requested!) changes and additions to the game. Update 1.5 completely removes Chest timers, majorly overhauls the loot, opens the Arena for PvP combat, and enables you to join guilds alongside your fellow Blades.

Update 1.5 also fixes bugs and balancing issues, includes new features, and incorporates new improvements—such as limiting all elemental-enhanced attacks, so enemies no longer cause multiple types of elemental damage. The full patch notes are below!

Patch Highlights
:No More Chest Timers: That's right—all Chest timers have been completely removed. You'll no longer wait to find out what treats await you in every Chest. Plus, you'll receive a full Gem refund for Gems you spent upgrading your Chest capacity.
:Major Loot Overhaul: You'll see more loot from more enemies, every job now has a Boss at the end who may drop Legendary equipment when you defeat them, more breakable objects with more loot, and so much more!
:PvP Combat: The Arena is open! After unlocking the Arena automatically at level 5, you can combat other players in best-of-3 matches and fight for glory.
:Guilds: Create or join a guild of up to 20 fellow Blades, where you can engage in private chat and visit your guildmates' Towns to buy from their merchants.

New Features and Improvements
Loot Overhaul
Chests: Open Chests immediately now that Chest timers have been removed!
Chests: Claim back all the Gems you spent upgrading your Chest capacity.
Chests: Find more Gold in Chests and a guaranteed Gem in every Wooden Chest.
Loot: Collect much more loot from enemies.
Loot: Defeat a boss in every job to get even better loot, including Legendary equipment. Boss rewards replace the mystery chests and materials given out previously for completing jobs.
Chests: Look for Silver, Golden, and Elder Chests in jobs' secret rooms.
Enemies: Beware the tougher, optional bosses guarding some of those secret rooms!
Loot: Smash open new breakable objects and discover more loot inside. The bigger the object, the better the reward.
Materials: Discover which materials are more likely to drop from which breakable objects. There's more Lumber in forests and more Crystals in caves and Ayleid ruins, for example.
Equipment: Equip yourself with a wider variety of items, now that Chests and enemies can provide lower-tier, higher-rarity gear.
Jewelry: Craft more brass and gold jewelry thanks to more Brass and Gold Ingot rewards.
Loot: Carry all this new loot with 20 more free inventory spaces.

PVP
Arena: Unlock the Arena automatically at level 5.
Arena: Fight other players in best-of-3 matches.
Arena: Change your equipment, spells and abilities between rounds.
Arena: Equip a potion or poison and use up to one per round.
Rewards: Earn XP and Gold whether you win or lose.
Rewards: Win matches to earn trophies and climb the ranks from arena to arena, culminating with the Imperial Arena!
Rewards: Win rounds over multiple matches to earn Chests.
Rewards: Reach new arenas and arena levels to earn rewards, including the new Blades Sword, Shield, and Armor set.
Leaderboards: Fight for glory on the global leaderboards.
Arena: Enjoy Arena-only combat enhancements: tripled Health and improved blocking. In the Arena, high blocks can be held longer, refresh faster, and stun opponents for 2.5 seconds. All blocks are also more effective against elemental damage and much more effective against physical damage.
Emotes: Show your opponent what you think of them, or just express yourself, before an Arena match and between rounds.
Emotes: Celebrate Arena victories in style. Only the winner can emote after the match!
Emotes: Show off with the free Flourish and Victory emotes. New players start with them, while existing players can claim them in the Store.
Emotes: Keep an eye on the Store, where new emotes for sale will appear regularly!

Play With Friends
Guilds: Create or join a guild of up to 20 players.
Guilds: Chat and discuss game strategy.
Guilds: Ask for and give away materials.
Guilds: Visit guildmates' towns and buy from their merchants, who have a separate inventory for each player that visits them.
Leaderboards: View players' guilds on the global leaderboards.

New Life Festival
Town: Stroll through a snowy wonderland version of your Town.
Decorations: Stay tuned all month long for frosty new decorations and special offers in the Store.
Town: Listen to the new Town music and sounds.

Spell Balance
Blind: Reduced damage, increased cooldowns.
Blizzard Armor: No longer deals damage. Increased armor Health, reduced cooldowns.
Consuming Inferno: Reduced damage, reduced Stamina drain, increased cooldowns.
Delayed Lightning Bolt: Increased damage, increased casting time, reduced delay, increased cooldowns.
Fireball: Reduced damage, reduced cost, reduced cooldowns.
Frostbite: Reduced damage, increased resistance bonus, increased cooldowns.
Ice Spike: Stun time now increases with rank. Reduced damage, reduced cost, decreased initial cooldown, increased post-use cooldown.
Lightning Bolt: Reduced damage, reduced cost, reduced casting time, reduced cooldowns.
Magicka Surge: Increased bonus to cooldown speeds.
Paralyze: Paralysis time now increases with rank. Reduced damage, increased cooldowns.
Poison Cloud: Reduced damage, increased cooldowns.
Resist Elements: Reduced resistance bonus, reduced initial cooldown, increased post-use cooldown.
Thunderstorm: Reduced initial cooldown.
Wall of Fire: Reduced initial cooldown.
Ward: Reduced initial cooldown.

Perk Balance
Armsman: Increase damage bonus at rank 1. Reduced damage bonus at other ranks.
Combat Focus: Reduced resistance bonus.
Enchantment Synergy: Increased bonus.
Maximum Power: Increased bonus.
Mettle: Increased bonus.
Scout: Reduced damage bonus.

Ability Balance
Cooldowns: Standardized all cooldowns within the same ability tree branch. For example, all Power Attacks now have the same initial and post-used cooldowns.
Adrenaline Dodge: Increased damage dodged, reduced maximum Health restored.
Dodging Strike: Increased damage dodged.
Focusing Dodge: Increased damage dodged, reduced maximum cooldown reduction at ranks 1 and 2.
Guardbreaker: Stun time now increases with rank. Increased damage bonus.
Harrying Bash: Increased damage bonus, reduced maximum cooldown penalty at ranks 1 and 2, but increased it at ranks 4 and up.
Indomitable Smash: Increased resistance bonus.
Piercing Strikes: Reduced damage bonus up to rank 3 but increased it above that. Increased block and resistance piercing, reduced cost.
Power Attack: Increased damage bonus.
Quick Strikes: Reduced damage bonus, reduced cost.
Reckless Fury: Reduced damage bonus.
Recovery Strikes: Reduced damage bonus, reduced cost.
Reflecting Bash: Increased maximum reflected damage.
Renewing Dodge: Increased damage dodged, increased maximum Magicka restored at ranks above 1.
Shield Bash: Increased damage bonus.
Skullcrusher: Increased damage bonus, increased armor piercing, reduced block piercing at ranks 1 and 2 but increased it at ranks 4 and up.
Staggering Bash: Stun time now increases with rank. Increased damage bonus.
Venom Strikes: Reduced damage bonus up to rank 7 but increased it at ranks 10 and up. Reduced poison enhancement at rank 1 but increased it above that. Reduced cost.

Enchantment Balance
Haste (combat enchantment on versatile weapons): Increased attack speed bonus.
Fortify Combo Damage (combat enchantment on light weapons): Reduced damage bonus.
Fortify Fire/Frost/Shock/Poison Damage (elemental enchantments on gauntlets and rings): Increased damage bonus.
Fortify Health (Health enchantment on armor, helmets, and boots): Reduced Health bonus.
Fortify Health Regeneration (Health enchantment on necklaces): Reduced regeneration bonus.
Shorten Stunned Time (secondary enchantment on necklaces): Reduced stun time bonus.
Fire/Frost/Shock/Poison Revenge (elemental enchantments on necklaces): These are no longer triggered by damage over time effects like Poison Cloud and Consuming Inferno.

Enemy Balance
Block: Increase how long Bandits and Necromancers can maintain a high block.
Stamina: Reduced the maximum Stamina of most enemies.
Spells/Abilities: Revised the ranks at which enemies use spells and abilities. In general, almost all modified enemy ranks were reduced, though some very high-level enemies gained ranks.
Elemental Damage: Limited all elemental-enhanced attacks to a single elemental damage type. For example, Goblin casters now only include fire damage with their attacks instead of both fire and shock damage.
Elemental Damage: Reduced the number of spells known by most casters to give each one a primary elemental damage type and, at most, a single secondary elemental damage type. For example, Outcasts now focus on shock spells, with a single frost spell in their repertoire.
Spells: Revised caster AI to diversify their spell selection.
::*Dev note: Siphon Life is an enemy-only necromancy spell. It isn't new, but its use rate was so low that you may be seeing it for the first time thanks to this change.

Additional Changes
Messaging: Added additional combat messaging: names of used skills, notifications for blocks, stuns and late blocks, and a stun time countdown.
Messaging: Added a visual indication when a portion of an attribute bar is inaccessible because its maximum has been reduced.
Levels: Revised how player power is calculated above level 50. Affected players will be given easier jobs and have a lower recommended starting Abyss floor.
Jobs: Removed all jobs asking players to defeat an enemy to collect a single specific item.
Jobs: Removed the option to spend Gems to instantly complete a job.
Jobs: Ensured a more even distribution of jobs per environment, resulting in more forest jobs.
Quest: Reduced the difficulty of the quest sequence from Picking up the Pieces to Cutting Off the Snake's Head.
Quest: Added Atronachs to The Fives Stones quest.
Music: Added new combat music for boss battles.
Sound FX: Added new sound effects to the Delayed Lightning Bolt spell.
Sound FX: Added new sound effects for Epic and Legendary loot drops.
Artifact: When blocking with Spellbreaker, added a slight delay before it casts Ward.
Character: Named and alphabetized all hairstyles during character creation.

Bug Fixes
Crash: Fixed a crash that could occur when going to Town or the Main Menu while the Ring of Namira Artifact was equipped.
Abyss: Fixed rooms in the Abyss that contained an obstacle fully blocking your path.
Elemental Damage: Fixed a bug that in most cases prevented elemental resistance piercing from making a difference. Pierced resistance now results in a guaranteed amount of elemental damage.
Weapon: Fixed a bug that let Echo Weapon's echo, when blocked, trigger damaging shield enchantments.
UI: Fixed a bug that made the Stats Menu display an incorrect value for spell resistance.
Animation: Fixed a bug that made enemies play the wrong reaction animation when hit by Quick Strikes or Dodging Strike abilities.
Audio: Fixed a variety of overlapping audio bugs.