We would like to share a compiled update to answer some of the questions people have had about cycle 4 over the last couple of weeks. Please keep in mind there's still areas to work on over time especially after more feedback is collected, but some of these areas are not on the immediate to do list until the final expansion god has been released in the coming weeks. We understand why players want some of this information asap, but planning some of these changes can take time while reviewing data and therefore it is worked on between already scheduled updates. Areas we are still evaluating over time and/or are looking for feedback on include an increase to spear/wand drops from mobs (a significant increase is very likely) and the cycle 4 mob power changes for Paragon mobs. For now, we want to take more time to explain why changes are made between cycles.

As the game progresses, characters naturally become more powerful and more characters are able to complete higher content due to increases in item stats, new enhancements, new levels, new slots and other general factors. For event purposes a simple example to think of is comparing a recent v1 geared multi to a main account with best available event gear from 10-15 years ago. Because of progression to the game over time the power gap between these 2 vastly different types of characters narrows significantly to the point mass multi characters can complete what only main accounts once could, which is why over time changes are necessary to prevent mass item flooding.

Over Outwar's history there has been around a 15% increase in the overall item creation capability between events, in more recent years this has been lowered to around 10% due to changes such as gear equip limits and more. To easily understand the effect this can have if changes weren't made to compensate for this increase, we can use an example of 10,000 of X item created during an event, then increase this by 10% every 4 months for each event. Over the span of 1 year, this results in that base figure of 10,000 increasing to 13,310, then 17,715 after year 2, 41,772 after year 5 and 174,494 after year 10. Needless to say these increases are unsustainable over time due to a number of factors such as power creep, economy, server performance and more, especially considering the newest created items in these examples are much higher powered items than the items created during the base 10,000 example.

This leads us to why changes have once again been made to events for Cycle 4. As explained above these changes have been and will continue to be necessary for sustainability. Drop rates are lowered between events (roughly 5-10%) to compensate for the overall increase in account power / rage as mentioned above, quest requirements are increased over time to account for characters being able to achieve higher steps with increased power / rage. Because of these increases, quest requirement changes and mob power increases to tier 1 and 2 mobs are necessary will not be changed, however as mentioned previously we are still looking for feedback on the difficulty changes to tier 3 mobs. Event changes are also not negatively affected by an increase in item creations from spending increases as we have outlined in the past (in particular Fury usage on main quests during events as this is the most common gain from spending). Increases in spending are factored and simply increase the overall goals / expected number of created items and therefore have no negative bearing on other factors such as drop rate or requirement changes.

While we have no plans to publicly share spending amounts or drop rates as some people have asked for, we can share that spending has lead to an increase of created items during cycle 3, which will thus lead to an increase in the item goal and items created during cycle 4, although these exact increases won't be fully understood until a later date once more event data has been analyzed. As mentioned earlier, there will likely be a significant increase to spear / wand drops directly from mobs due to factors such as mob power increases and the large difference in the amount of spears gained via the quest compared to mob drops, however further changes beyond this to other items will not be known until a later date. While an increase in spending has resulted in an increase to items created via the main quest, requirement increases were still required regardless before this increase due to the above mentioned inflation.

Another area people have asked for information on is the impact and changes caused by people suspended for activation glitches during cycle 3. As we have previously shared, the overall gains from mob drops during events when the glitch was abused were just under 20%. This then lead to an equal increase in drop rates for the following event and therefore all future events to compensate for this difference. As we also outlined previously, we decided to postpone quest requirement changes until cycle 4 began, which lead to a large increase in items created during the Trial of Power.

Over the coming days we plan to finish all of the Captcha God conversions, while preparing for the release of the final Animation raid in the coming weeks. Once this work has been completed we then shift our focus to more general feedback updates (including events and some of the above mentioned areas) as we do later in every expansion after the main expansion content has been completed. We plan to spend time adding many general QoL updates to the game, along with adding some new competitive endgame content.

The goblin masters of the Triworld Sanctuary have patched together some impressively powerful gear from the resources shared between new alliances. A new quest has been released to obtain a piece of Stormforged Conqueror gear. Exchange 500 Tokens with the Stormforged Challenge Master in the Triworld Sanctuary to receive this item. A new piece of Stormforged Conqueror gear will be available each week.



We have also reduced the cost of some older content. These changes are:

Primeval - reduced to 300 tokens (was 500).
Blazing - reduced to 250 tokens (was 375).
Ghostly - reduced to 200 tokens (was 250).
Exalted - reduced to 75 tokens (was 100).
Perfection - reduced to 75 tokens (was 100).
Noble - reduced to 65 tokens (was 75).
Spiral - reduced to 50 tokens (was 65).

Windstrike has now been converted to a daily non-god raid as an initial trial to ensure the conversion process works as intended before converting the remainder of the Captcha Gods. Drop rates for Windstrike and future converted gods will be balanced according to their previous respawn rate.

We have now completed previously mentioned rebalancing of Amulet rewards for god raids in preparation for upcoming changes to Captcha Gods, including the addition of the 100 Amulet Chest. Amulet of Achievement rewards have been removed from all Captcha Gods and have been added to Prime Gods and rebalanced resulting in a slight overall increase to the average Amulets awarded from god raids over time. A table with this information and more has been pinned in the help-questions channel of our discord server.



Due to the overall updates with Prime Gods in general, we will not be removing points from older god raids to balance for new expansion gods as we have done in the past when the final god of an expansion is released, therefore if these usual balance changes happen in the future they won't happen until the end of the next expansion at the earliest. This change results in an average increase of 15% to overall point rewards from god raids over time.

The following gods have now been converted to Prime Gods with an increase in strength:

- Akkel the Enflamed Warrior
- Nayark the Mummified Sorcerer
- Amalgamated Apparition
- Archdevil Yirkon
- Keeper of Nature
- Zikkir the Dark Archer
- Sarcrina the Astral Priestess
- Ancient Magus Tarkin
- Volgan the Living Ironbark
- Jorun the Blazing Swordsman

In addition to this update we have rearranged drop sources for the Nexus of Conform and Nexus of Fortitude. The Nexus of Conform now drops from the 5 Phoenix gods, Q-SEC Commander, Kretok, Felroc and Karvaz. The Nexus of Fortitude now drops from the 5 Elemental Masters and the 10 above mentioned Astral Rift gods.

We would like to share an early update on some previously mentioned event changes planned for Cycle 4. Tier Trainer mobs in the Farmers Market have now been updated to Cycle 4 strength. In addition to this, the following collecting shard / insignia quest requirements will change as follows:

250 > 300
350 > 400
500 > 550
750 > 800
1250 > 1350
2000 > 2100

Over the coming days we will begin the captcha god conversion process by converting the 10 remaining Astral Rift gods to Prime Gods. We will then begin weekly releases of new challenge gear at the end of the month, along with price reductions to old gear challenges.

We have lowered the rarity of some King, Brutal and Godly quality items. Some of these changes include:

- Blazing, Voidmaker and Shadehunter have been reduced to Brutal rarity.
- Valorous, Cosmic and Exalted Perfection have been reduced to Godly rarity.
- Profound, 8-Bit, Platinum, Blackhand and Brawler have been reduced to Elite rarity.

The Trial of Power has concluded. Arkron, God of Trials is now ready to test your strength. Defeat him to prove yourself worthy of his rewards!

Congratulations to the Trial Insignia Contest winners, please submit a support ticket to claim your prizes.

The Trial Merchant and Tier Traders will remain in Rallis with all quests for 1 week, at which point ToP quest items will also be removed.

We would like to share an update on our current plans with the remaining Captcha God raids. We now have a multiple step plan created involving converting some Captcha Gods to Prime Gods, while most remaining Captcha Gods will be converted to timed spawn non-god raids. We plan to begin this process in the weeks following the Trial of Power once we have completed the Cycle 4 rarity updates.

Step 1 will involve converting the 10 remaining Astral Rift gods to Prime Gods and increasing their power to be slightly weaker than Elemental Masters. These will be the final Captcha Gods converted to the Prime God system.

Step 2 will be a rebalance of amulet rewards, rage requirements and adjustments to some quest rewards and god loot rewards. We plan to move all Amulet of Achievement rewards to Prime God raids and balance accordingly, along with creating a new 100 Amulet Chest to help with crew vault space. Rage requirements for all gods will be rebalanced (in most cases increased) partly due to the current rage costs of Prime Gods being the same value as their pre-conversion cost which was not designed for the Prime God system. As previously mentioned one of our goals is to avoid creating any circumstances of mass abusable content when making the step 3 changes, therefore step 2 will involve some preparation changes to quest rewards and god loot to prevent any mass abuse scenarios.

Step 3 is converting all remaining Captcha Gods to daily spawn non-god raids (similar to ethereal raids etc) and adjusting loot rates as required. This step may be done in multiple waves.