Realmers!
S18 is finally here bringing loads of QoL and an Eternal Frost with it With a brand new battle pass filled with holiday goodies and 2 new class reworks!
But that’s not all throughout the season we will have the return of some fan-favorite events such as Sub Zero, Oryxmas, and the Oryxmania Rumble all with brand-new twists! Continue reading below to find out what’s available RIGHT NOW:
Season 18 – The Eternal Frost
Millennia ago, an unforgiving ice age nearly consumed the realm, erasing countless ancient tribes and leaving only a few to endure the frozen desolation. Though the frost mysteriously receded, its shadow looms again with the return of the Harbinger of Frost, his hollow, icy heart untouched by mercy. Flanked by his devious advisor and chilling allies like the Permafrost Lord and Jack Frost, the Harbinger seeks to plunge the world into an Eternal Frost, commanding a relentless legion of cold.
Now, only the players can rise as the realm’s final hope, battling through frostbitten legions and unyielding commanders to shatter the Harbinger’s icy grip and prevent the world from succumbing to a frozen eternity.
These patch notes are very long so we’ve summarized everything into a quick overview below:
- Class reworks: Both the Huntress and the Samurai received overhauls to their abilities to improve their game feel and have them feel as powerful as our other more modern classes.
- QoL: More quality of life improvements than can be counted! But to name a few; Greater Potions now only count as 1 slot in the potion rack, a new button has been added to the potion rack to auto consume all potions of a stat type until maxed, improvements to the visibility of locked doors and keys in Davy Jones’ Locker.
- New Realms: We say goodbye to the old realms and now all realms that spawn will be new realms! Additionally, a new feature to have some control over which encounters spawn has been introduced.
- Holiday Cheer: Oryxmas Nexus and a Frozen Castle have made their return.
- Splash: New holiday-themed splash art has been added to the game.
Battle Pass
As always, a new season means a new Battle Pass. Start your journey on a fresh new seasonal character, finish Missions, and gain some tasty Battle Pass EXP.
Missions
New Season means new Missions! It’s time for you to collect all those rewards and finish your Battle Pass on the way.
Additionally, we have added a new tab for you to more easily see your active missions as well as which missions you’re able to claim!
Mission Tree Update
New aspects and features have been added to the missions and the mission tree to provide more variety, decision-making, and a higher number of available missions. Here is what you can look forward to in future seasons.
Multiple Mission Trees
Players can now access multiple active mission trees simultaneously, including new ones and others from past seasons, some are free while others are paid. The progress of active missions across all trees will increase at the same time, increasing the number of available missions, and consequently, the amount of rewards.
A board view has been added, apart from the tree, to clearly see the active missions from all available trees. Additionally, the in-game “Current Missions” menu has been modified to show which mission tree each mission belongs to.
Pool Missions
A new type of mission that is defined independently for each player. Its content is determined randomly at the start of the mission tree and remains the same all the way through. However, if it is a mission with a refresh timer, a new random mission will appear once its condition is met!
AND – OR
New cases are introduced in some parts of the tree. To unlock a mission and continue, there are different options related to the connected branches:
- OR: Requires that one of the missions connected to the node be completed. This is visually represented in the same way as the current in-game design.
- AND: Requires that all missions connected to the node be completed. This is visually represented using the same outline as the OR representation, but rotated 45º to form a diamond.
- Both: In some cases, a mix of AND – OR is used to create interesting situations.
Lock System
A new system has been introduced within the mission tree, affecting different branches. The player must choose one branch to continue and claim rewards, while the others will be deactivated. The player can select the branch that best suits their preferences in terms of rewards or mission type, and cannot progress in other missions of the same mission tree if they don’t make a choice! The affected missions are represented with an icon of a golden padlock, and at any time, the player can reactivate a branch using either gold or fame.
Updated In-Game Screens
Small changes have been made to various screens, while others have received more significant updates to improve the user experience. The behavior of the system remains the same.
Quest Room (The Tinkerer) Visual Rework
- The player’s fame and gold currencies are now visible on the screen.
- A button has been added to explain the functionality of the screen, placed next to the title.
- The re-roll quest button has been updated, so the cost information is now displayed without needing to hover.
- In the re-roll quest purchase screen confirmation, the number of available re-rolls per day is now shown.
Wardrobe
- The player’s fame and gold currencies are now visible on the screen.
- A purchase confirmation has been added.
- A purchase information popup has been created, indicating which item was unlocked.
Customize Character
- The player’s fame and gold currencies are now visible on the screen.
- Each type of item is organized similarly to other shops, with separate tabs.
- The search feature is accessible in all tabs.
- It shows which item is selected and which is equipped on the character.
- Updated the layout of the items selected in the player. Now, it is displayed on the left side of the screen, where the name, price, and icon of each item are shown below user preview.
Crucible
A new Crucible appears with this Season. Like last season, this crucible can not be removed once active, so choose wisely!
- Reduced healing by 25% from pets, potions, and external sources.
- Reduced defense by 5
- 10% BXP boost
- 10% EXP boost
- 20% loot boost
Additionally, Crucible Rings have made a return and can be acquired every 18 hours by completing the last mission on the crucible branch of the mission tree!
Nexus
While Christmas is still a bit away, the Nexus is already overflowing with holiday cheer!
The Realms
When we released the Realm Rework to open beta in April of this year, we continued to keep the old realms open for the players who wanted to stick with the more polished and less buggy realms (at the time). From all the feedback the players have given us over the past 8 months, we were able to continually improve upon the Beta Realms to the point where we now feel comfortable with the Beta Realms being the definitive Realm of the Mad God experience. Starting in Season 18: The Eternal Frost, we will be sunsetting the Old Realms and have a minimum of 2 of the Reworked Realms.
While we are taking the Realm Rework out of beta, we are not done making improvements either! Here are a few of them that are available with this release:
- Reworked Encounter Spawning Mechanism
- Encounters will now have a 25% chance of spawning when reaching a certain amount of score within a biome.
- If players are looking to fight Cube Gods, for example, they should go to the Sprite Forest to guarantee that a Sprite Forest encounter will spawn.
- Only 1 Encounter of a given type can be active at once, see what strategies you can make!
- New Fame bonuses have been added for killing enemies within a given biome.
- The “Cavalry Lance” biome UT has had its effect activated..
Additionally, for the Eternal Frost Season beacon guardians have received some festive reskins! If you’re lucky, you may find yourself looting an Oryxmas Ornament from the Veteran beacon encounters 👀.
Class Reworks
Next up are our class reworks of the Huntress and Samurai! When it comes to the Huntress we wanted to make its AoE / Trapping capabilities feel more impactful in the current era. To do this we have made two major changes to the way her abilities work:
- Like all of our previous class reworks, we have added StatMod scaling to the Trap ability, allowing it to scale any part of its effects with a chosen stat.
- Secondly, when an enemy activates a trap, it will cause an AoE explosion like it currently does on prod. Additionally, a number of enemies (dependent on the trap type and player stats) closest to the epicenter of the explosion will have a “Sticky Bomb” attached to them. This sticky bomb will grow in size and then shortly deal damage in an AoE around the enemy.
- Finally, we have buffed a handful of bows that we felt were underperforming
- Warmonger: 10Dex while in-combat→ -5 Dex while in-combat
- Warmonger (Rehearsal): 10Dex while in-combat→ -5 Dex while in-combat
- Thousand Shot: Now ignores enemies defense.
- Bow of the Void: 5.6 range, wiggly → 6 range, less wiggly
- Resplendent Bow: No longer removes 10 dex from player when hit + 50 min damage
- Coral Bow: Increased min and max damage by 5.
For the Samurai, while we did feel that this class left a little to be desired, we also did not feel that it needed a complete overhaul of the Wakizashi ability. For this reason, the Samurai class ability received what we will now be called a Class Modernization.
A class Modernization aims to improve classes that we feel need just a small bump in order to increase their enjoyability. In the case of the Samurai, we have added statMod scaling to its ability which will allow the player to increase the abilities strength and the number of projectiles that the Wakizashi will fire.
Lastly, for all tiered Wakizashi’s we have changed the angle at which the projectiles fire in order to improve the game feel when using this ability
Quality of Life
For this holiday season, one of our core aims is to give ourselves the proper time to add a lot of well-needed Quality of Life to improve different areas of the game.
- The maximum number of equipable emotes has been increased to 8.
- In the potion vault, a new button has been added to consume all pots of a given type until the character is maxed.
- Greater potions now only take up 1 inventory slot instead of two.
- The “Favorite” feature has been expanded to titles and entrance effects.
- When favoriting a title or an entrance effect, all newly created characters will automatically have these cosmetics equipped.
- A new “Blank” prefix and suffix titles have been added for players who don’t want to use both kinds of titles when customizing their characters.
- A new “The” prefix title has been added for a similar reason.
- In Davy Jones’s locker, locked doors that have been found will have an icon on the Mini Map until the door gets unlocked.
- Each Key in Davy Jones’ Locker has been given a unique shape that matches its associated lock icon to assist colorblind users.
- Davy Jones’ can now have Curse applied by Mystic orbs.
- You can now gift friends skins when purchasing in the shop.
- Portals of Cowardice will now spawn after the first or second boss of the Secluded Thicket is completed for cases where the player would like to leave early.
- Dazed Effect has been removed from El Dorado’s grenade attacks.
- All tiered armors have had their tiers reduced by one to make Weapon and Armor tiers consistent.
- For instance, previously the Tier 1 “Robe of the Neophyte” is now Tier 0.
- All items will continue to drop from where they previously dropped.
- All newly created characters will start with a T0 armor.
- Seasonal Spoils Chest sprite has been revamped.
- Seasonal Character Converter has been given a unique sprite.
- High Tech Terror:
- In High Tech Terror when there is only 1 switch left, F.E.R.A.L. will no longer move to that pool and prevent players from progressing.
- A.E.G.I.S. Shields are now prevented from targetting the southwest switch on initial spawn.
- M.E.R.V. now fires an indicator on his path before moving.
- Fungal / Crystal Caerns:
- Dwarf Miner Encounter now properly always shows a minimap icon.
- Crystal Cavern Crystals have had their projectile speeds reduced by 40 to match those of the ones in Fungal Caverns.
- Reduced the Stun Duration of Large Red Mushrooms.
- Reduced the Weak Duration of Large Purple Mushrooms.
- Fixed stacked shots when fighting against the Crystalized Fish.
- Increased the size of the Crystallized Scorpion while in his clone phase.
- When getting teleported to the Crystallized Entity, all players are Invulnerable.
- Reduced the length of Ocean Trench, Sulfurous Wetlands Third Dimension, and Abyss of Demons.
- Reduce enemy density and damage of Stinky tiles in Wetlands.
- Reduced invulnerability times of both bosses in Wetlands.
- Lowered the number of phases per fight of Heart of the Wetlands to 6 from 7.
- Increased the chance for a treasure room spawn in Abyss of Demons.
- Readded Shadow Cube Serpent bite animation.
- Stasising Anti-Spectors just before Oryx Dies should no longer cause them to stay alive longer.
- Key Fairies drop a random key instead of a Mystery Key item.
- Key Fairy key drops are now guaranteed, there is also an additional chance for 2 more players to receive a key.
- Key fairies now grant players dust, amount, and kind depending on tier.
- Completing Advance Nest or Advanced Steamworks grants players an additional Exaltation.
- A class bias has been added to Oryx 3 to make it more likely you receive an ability for your class.
Known Issues
- When gifting a cosmetic, the receiving player won’t be notified immediately. The item will be available in the receiving player’s wardrobe after restarting the game.