Design Notes

July 21, 2017

This Weekend: Return to Battleunder

We lava new Battleunder zones!

Battleon hasn’t always been the most peaceful place, but this weekend your home is on red (hot) alert! With dragons circling in the sky and earthquakes ripping up the ground, there’s only one thing for a Hero like you to do -- descend to the deepest reaches of Battleunder and destroy whatever threat you find! (Spoilers: Is it fire dragons? It is probably dragons!)

But beware, Hero! Where there's lava, there's heat... and sulfur. The sulfuric gases leaking through the caverns WILL make navigating the tunnels treacherous and disorienting.* You might even feel like the map is completely random. ** Keep your wits about you and a cool handkerchief, because the closer you get to the source of the quakes... the hotter it will be!

And as you adventure through the tunnels, keep an eye out for the following:

• A super-powerful and wise Dragon creature who can tell you more about yourself
• A mysterious 7-sided box
• Hapless adventurers who need rescuing
• Caverns of treasure to loot
• A cave full of dragon-goat hybrid creatures?!?!?! 

* If you're worried about not having a map for this dungeon, you can always flash back to what the DragonFable team suggested its players do.

** Spoiler: this week's map is partially a random dungeon. It's been a looooong time since we've done one of these. We hope you enjoy it!

Hot Rewards On Their Way

Several new sets are headed your way this weekend. Collect Lava Gems to forge new permanent gear (like the Lava Guardian Warrior set below), grab loot from the Treasure Pile (IF you can find it), and find the Draconic Oracle armor in the July Featured Gear shop (only available until August 4th).

Battleunder: the Basics

If you've never been to Battleunder before, you're in luck! You've got 3 or 4 new zones to play through before this week's release! Battleunder is a vast system of caverns and tunnels that lies directly under the town of Battleon. Paladin Yara is your guide, sending you on quests to take out monsters and recover sweet loot.

• Battleunder: explore the new cavern system with Yara and recover a powerful blade.
• BattleunderB: Yara is back with new quests... and a mysterious magic chest she needs you to open! 
• BattleunderC: Your mission here is crystal clear - the undead have penetrated into crystal caverns, and we need to clear them out.
• BattleunderD: An ancient water spirit is trapped inside this icy region. Free her and reap the rewards (Legend-only)
• BattleunderE: Explore the hottest new area in Battleunder to discover the cause of earthquakes rocking the town above. (New this week for all heroes!)

June 25, 2012

Pyromancer Class

Friday the Non-member Pyromancer Class Arrives!

For a long time we have been getting requests for the Pyromancer Class. So... here it is!

This Friday you will get your chance at mastering the elemental magic of Fire!

How Will I Get It?

There will be two ways to get the class.

1. If you want it immediately you will be able to take the shortcut and buy the class from Itzachi the Class Dealer in Battleon for her standard fee of 2000 ACs.
2. If you want to earn the class, you will need to first complete the Xan storyline which starts in the Volcano map. Once you have completed the story, you can speak to Warlic in the Shurpu Library. He will have a Merge shop and two Daily Quests.

The Pyromancer Class will cost 84 Shurpu Blaze Tokens. If you are a non-member you can only get 14 per week, but Members can get 21 per week. This means thart it will take non-members six full weeks of doing the simple daily quest to earn the class while Members will earn it in only four!

NOTE: You will NOT need to have completed or even begun the Xan quest line to purchase the AC version of the class.

NOTE: You will only be able to do one of the dailies per day. If you are a Member make SURE you are doing the clearly marked MEMBER Daily quest!

What Else Can I Get?

The Class art is shown above but the Pyromancer's Mask displayed above is Member Only and will be sold for more Shurpu Blaze Tokens.

You will also be able to purchase this Emblazoned Pyromancer Armor Set for Adventurecoins...

...And if you are a fan of the classic Xan armor, you will also but able to purchase THAT for AdventureCoins but the Xan Head Helm will be for Members Only for Shurpu Blaze Tokens.

If you are curious, the flames on Xan's Head and the hands of the armor are animated. The flames on the Pyromancer Masks are NOT animated.

Will The Class Have New Animations?

Yup!

When Do We Get To See The Skill Breakdown?

We are in testing now. If the skills work as intended we will have the class balanced for power and mana usage by Thursday. If I don't get interrupted very much then maybe Wednesday.

What Else Is Coming Friday?

Friday we will also be releasing the next level of BattleUnder, the undead filled dungeon beneath the town of BattleOn, but this floor is restricted to Members Only. If you don't have a Membership, you will have to stay topside while the Members continue delving to unknown depths.

Why Am I Not A Member?!

I can't answer that one for you. But if you feel like supporting AQW by upgrading to Member or extending your current Membership, now is a GREAT time. For a limited time, our ONE YEAR MEMBERSHIP package comes with 1000 bonus AdventureCoins, the VIP Armor and Badge AND the Golden Plate Set!

178 days until Just Another Day

January 21, 2011

Battle under Crystal Release is Live!

Well technically, it’s Undead.

The battle continues under Battleon! Two levels of BattleUnder have already been uncovered, home to some of the most vicious Undead that Lore has ever seen. The deeper the tunnels travel, the meaner (and higher level) the baddies get.

Warlic the Mage has finally figured out how to activate the Portal in the second level of BattleUnder! (Geesh, that only took him like, what, 6 months?) The only way to pass through the portal to get to the third level is by solving the door’s magic rune puzzle in the form of a minigame!

Awe… I guess the power of love won’t open the portal =(

Here’s the proper way of opening the portal: you have to trace the magical rune symbol with your mouse! Just like in BladeHaven when casting magic spells, you hold the left mouse button and carefully trace the pattern you see. Release the button when you finish tracing the pattern. If the rune glows green, you get to trace the next one! If it turns red, then the Load Balancer will crash again and will make AQWorlds unplayable.

HAHA I’m kidding, I’m kidding—if you mess up, you can just keep trying over and over again. There is no time limit, but these magical runes require a VERY accurate mouse path trace thing. Don’t give up! It took me a bunch of times before I finished the minigame and ended up in…

The Crystal Caverns!

The Crystal Caverns (also known as Battleunderc) is a beautiful change of scenery from the rocky formations of the upper Battleunder cave systems. Huge colorful crystals jut out from the walls and ceilings, allowing you to move freely all over them.

But be careful; these caverns are home to vicious Crystallized Undead and Jellyfish. Yes, jellyfish. These jellies are SO POWERFUL that they don’t even need water to survive. Woah. Be careful out there.

Yara the Pally also has a new Merge Shop loaded with 11 brand-new weapons. You will have to collect enough Undead Essences and Cavern Celestites in order to purchase her wares… and some of her items even require merging one weapon with even more items to get an upgraded version of that weapon!

And the best part: 9 out of her 11 items are NON-MEMBER =D But don’t expect getting them to be easy—you’re going to have to farm your helms off for the coolest gear! Wahahha!

Player Suggestion Shop!

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! More items have been added to the Player Suggestion Shop in Yulgar’s Inn!  All of the items in this shop were inspired by our fellow players. This week’s newest additions are:

Xusha’s Curse Armor, The Infector, Flamed Aura Blade, and Keeper of Darkness Blade

Wanna submit your weapon or armor ideas, too? Head to the forums with your masterpieces because you never know if–or when–your idea will make it in game and used by thousands!

Stratos is Leveling Up next week!

Stratos, captain of the Skyguard, is leveling up IRL on Tuesday! For his birthday, he wishes to share some of his favorite personal items with you. Make sure to wish him a Happy Birthday because on Tuesday, January 25^th, you will be able to get his awesome birthday presents!  

Bank and Inventory Expansion Update

Artix, Zhoom, Minimal, and Cysero have been working sooooo hard on the Bank and Inventory space issue. It is still being worked on and we are HOPING to have it out next week, just in time for the CAD event! We are all keeping our fingers and toes crossed that everything goes according to plan!

Uh-oh… did I just jinx us? Every time we say that… things go terribly horribly wrong, the servers asplode, and mushrooms get thrown at my face. But maybe… just maybe… everything will go perfectly fine and we can all get bunches of new inventory space omgomgyesyesyesYES!!!!

Buuuut I’m ganna equip my anti-fungi protective goggles just in case ^___^  

Enjoy the release folks! Battleon in BattleUnder!

January 20, 2011

Ctrl + Alt + Del and Inventory News

Winter-een-mas Is Coming To AQW!

You may have already seen on the AQ.COM homepage, or maybe you heard over Twitter but the popular web comic all about gaming is joining forces with AQW in a special event NEXT FRIDAY (Jan 28th).

This Special Event was co-authored by Tim Buckley (Writer/Artist/Creator of CAD) and me, with voice acting by some of the BattleOn Games staff and original music from Warlic!

The last week of January is a very special time of year for CAD fans... it's Winter-een-mas, a holiday just for gamers! But this Winter-een-mas something has is not quite right (Well, ok... the whole holiday isn't quite right). The Winter-een-mas Crown has been stolen and Ethan, Lucas, Lilah and Zeke need your help to get it back!

There will be Winter-een-mas rare items pulled directly from the pages (web pages) of Ctrl + Alt + Del plus some stuff you've never seen before!

Where: In-game at www.AQ.com

When: Friday, January 28^th, 2011, starting at Sundown-ish EST

Who: Ethan, Lucas, Lilah and Zeke from Ctrl + Alt + Del, the AE Team, you, and 22 Million of our closest friends

Why: To celebrate Winter-een-mas, score some uber Event Rare items, and play the FIRST special in-game event of the New Year!

WARNING: Some of the content in the webcomic is NOT family friendly, and BattleOn Games assumes no responsibility for the content in the comic but we PROMISE that this IN-GAME EVENt will be acceptable for all audiences.

For the fans of the comic, you'll get to adventure with the Ctrl + Alt + Del cast of characters. For people who hate the comic, you get to beat up at least one of the main characters. If you're just a fan of AQW then this will be another great AQW event with an Event Rare Shop which will vanish after the event and lots of items in the event itself (which will go MEMBER ONLY after the close of the event), and if you hate AQW... then why are you reading this?

Inventory Update Update

Which is to say, this is an update regarding the inventory update which Artix talked about a little while ago. You see there where Artix says "We cannot make any promises yet -- but if things go as planned..."?

 Well, things did not run according to plan. 

If you do the math you will see that infinite storage space would cause you terrible lag when you were logging into the game, eventually crash your game, eventually crash the game and eventually destroy our servers. It's just not possible.

Minimal and Zhoom HAVE been able to make some pretty vast improvememnts to the inventory system. Again, no promises but here's what we're working on now.

• Increasing the Inventory to 100 Max purchasable space (no price change).
• Increasing the Bank to 300 Max purchasable space (no price change).
• Continuing FREE UNLIMITED AC ITEM STORAGE.

That's 400 total items plus unlimited AC storage (which will, in time, do all of those horrible things I mentioned earlier but it will take much MUCH longer). It's a pretty huge increase from the total 135 current spaces but still Artix is pretty broken up about not being able to provide you with infinite storage. It's a dream we were all shooting for. He wanted to do something nice for everyone to make up for not being able to make that impossible dream a reality. I suggested giving everyone 5 free inventory spaces.

He said no.

Instead he has decided that we are going to give everyone (member and non-member alike) 10 FREE INVENTORY SPACES as soon as these inventory changes go live. It doesn't matter if you are a Founder or just started playing yesterday... if you have an AQW character then they are getting 10 FREE SPACES to store things in their backpack.

So... as of right now, we will be giving away 248,031,430 backpack inventory spaces, in total. See why storage space on our servers is an issue?

We will keep you posted on how testing is going and when to expect the inventory expansion and your free storate spots. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Tomorrow's Release!

Once more, deep beneath the floors of Battleon, Yara has uncovered the hidden path to a new deeper layer of the BattleUnder Dungeon!

You will need to solve an interesting puzzle just to access this new area, but once there you will see some new interesting monsters and Yara will have brand new items to offer brave adventurers who can survive the depths!

We also have another Plaayer Suggestion Update with several new weapons and a new Armor, pulled directly from the pages of our Forums.

January 19, 2011

Battle On…..der!

Heh, get it, 'cuz ‘Battle Onder’ sounds like Battle Under… It’s a… uhhhhgg…..

Third week of the year. Yes, it’s hard to believe. Just 19 days into 2011 and already I am losing my mind.

And that’s a good thing for YOU!

The AQWorlds team has soooo many new things in store for you that a few lost minds is a necessary sacrifice to achieve our totally epic plans. Wanna see what we’re doing this week? You’ve come to the right place.  

Third Level of BattleUnder

It wasn’t too long ago that a series of deep underground tunnels was discovered beneath our hometown of Battleon. A few secret passageways can be found around Battleon that will take you into these dangerous caverns flooded with Undead minions.

Two levels of BattleUnder have already been uncovered. Warlic in the Battleon Magic Shoppe is hard at work figuring out how to activate the Portal in the 2^nd level of BattleUnder. From his reports, he should figure out a way come Friday evening. A way that involves a minigame of sorts.

That mage really knows his stuff!

Head to Warlic’s Shop and read some of the books on his shelves. *hint hint wink wink* Maybe you’ll uncover where a path to BattleUnder resides!

Yara the Paladin has informed us that the next level of BattleUnder is unlike any place we’ve ever seen. If you wish to journey there during this week’s release, you had better help her complete all her quests first!

Even though no one has seen what lies beyond the 2^nd level of BattleUnder, Yara found this screenshot after it dropped off the Undead Berserker:

Is this what lies beyond BattleUnder’s portal? …Oooohhh, I dunno… I guess we’ll just have to wait until Friday to find out! ^_____^

Say CHEESE…day!

Yes. Yes. I am serious. Tomorrow, January 20^th, is Cheese Day. No, I didn’t make it up. I heard about Cheese Day from a very reliable source: the interwebs!  

And the internet never lies. So tomorrow, the Black Market Dealer in Battleon will receive a shipment of Cheese Day items to celebrate this delicious holiday!

Uhhmm… what kind of items can you make out of cheese, anyway?   

Color Custom Cyber Hunter Armor

Some of you guys who relentlessly stalk my Character Page have been wondering what the Cyber Hunter armor is. Cyber Hunters of Delta V are highly skilled and trained warriors that live for the thrill of battle. Their color-custom robotic armor strikes more than just fear into the eyes of their opponent.

Delta V, huh? As in… the Delta V from EpicDuel?

Yuppers! The Cyber Hunter armor was forged specifically for the soon-to-be-released EpicDuel Tshirt!

In a couple of days, the EpicDuel Tshirts will go on sale at HeroMart. The only way to get the Cyber Hunter armor in AQWorlds is by equipping these epic threads IRL!

Once we receive word from Faith… and receive the shipment of Tshirts… we will announce it on the Design Notes, Homepage, and probably flood our Twitters with OMGOMGOMG EpicDuel Tshirts are IN! Or you can keep checking the HeroMart homepage and see if you can beat us to the punch =D     

Fixed Stacking Bug

Zhoom is much more than just a Sandsea Ranger… he’s also an amazing programmer capable of squashing all sorts of bugs. For some strange reason, stackable items (aka items you collect more than 1 of) stopped working today. I had no idea why, and still have no idea why, but this is why I am not a programmer =p

Zhoom has since fixed the issue so you can continue to farm those stackable items… like from Miltonius’ and Dage’s crazy insane quests. That are hidden somewhere in game. If you haven’t found them yet… try asking your fellow players!    

Update on Unlimited Item Collections!?!

Zhoom and Minimal have been working nonstop on the unlimited Inventory/Bank Space mission. Nothing is yet set in stone… but I can tell you that things are looking MIGHTY GOOD!

Here is the recap of it in Artix’s DN post.

If (and hopefully when!) we are able to offer a massive increase in Inventory slots and Bank Space, we can begin implementing something known as a Limited Quantity Shop.

(Uh oh… am I allowed to be saying this? Or am I supposed to keep this a secret…?)

Oh well—no use going back now! Like the name suggests, a Limited Quantity Shop only has a limited number of a certain item. So let’s say there are only 50 of an item available. When 50 players get that item… it will vanish from the shop and NEVER be offered again!

This is going to make for some VERY interesting rare-item collections.

…Okeeeey, I’ve said waaaay too much. I better go now before Artix equips his Anti-Pink glasses and reads what I have just said and revokes my coffee privileges!  

Toodles! =D