Design Notes

February 05, 2016

February 2016 Rare Gear

Don't Miss These Rare Holiday Event Items!

It’s double the festival fun and twice the number holiday exclusive items as we celebrate Carnaval AND Yokai New Year this week!

Filled with member-only items and gear for AdventureCoins, the shop includes:

Fiery Fenix Armor
2 Fiery Fenix Helms
Fiery Fenix Armblades
Fiery Fenix Plumes Cape
Oni to Kijo Armor
5 Oni Helms
4 different Oni weapons
2 capes: Oni Rune Cape and Floating Oni Cape
the Lucky Red Monkey Babies pet

Next week, the February Rare Gear shop will get all new 2016 Hero's Heart Day Rare items, too! Find the shop in your game menu until Monday, February 29th!

Tags: Alina, February Rares Shop, Carnaval, Yokai New Year,

February 05, 2016

Carnaval and Yokai New Year are some of my most favorite events of the year -- I love the colors and how the story releases center around wicked /parties... and THIS year we've got a heaping helping of parties AND problems that only YOU can solve!*

Starting tonight, log in and /join terradefesta to begin the War of the Festivals! Talk to Samba to begin your quests, then get ready to untangle a knot of misdirection, mayhem, and SUPER-DEADLY yokai as Fausto and Lenjing fight to have you help THEIR events reign supreme!

You can also replay our previous Carnaval and Yokai New Year events starting tonight, too, plus get the returning seasonal rare gear from Frevo's shop in /terradefesta or Cysero in /carnaval.

* including a 2-stage boss with fight member-only and free player armor set drops!

Carnaval and Yokai Rewards

And you know who likes to /party? WE DO! Head to the /parades map to see this year's new reward gear, available from the merge shop or as boss drops!

Gong Xi Fa Cai -- happy Year of the Monkey! If you celebrate Chinese New Year, we hope your red envelopes are filled with happiness and luck (and some sweet loot, too)!

And don't miss the gear from our February Rares Shop! Get all the details and item previews in this Design Notes post: "February Rares Shop"!

Also Happening This Weekend: Server Boost and Superbowl!

Like the sub-title said, this weekend we've got a Class Points server boost happening to help you CRUSH the enemy with your new StoneCrusher Class! (And if there's any other classes you've wanted to rank up, now's the time to get in and battle on!)

Starting tonight, the member-only Sir Ver server will have a DOUBLE Class Points Boost! All other servers will get a 15% boost to class points, ending Monday, February 8th.

Make sure you log on this Sunday for the Superbowl Half-time Show, the Punt Twilly Challenge, and all-new rare gear!

Gear Leaving Soon!

Friday, February 12: Assassin's Commander Limited Time Shop
Friday, February 19: Knight Commander gear from AdventureCoin and Membership packages!

Tags: Alina, Carnaval, Yokai New Year, Class Points Boost, Superbowl Starts SUNDAY,

Preview Maker

January 26, 2016

2.5.15: Carnaval + Yokai New Year DOUBLE Release

When two festivals collide, it'll be up to you to save the /party!

Laken - one of AQW's most wickedly-Good artists - just sent me the concept art for next week's boss monster!* The Oni is floating up from behind the host (man, I would NOT want to have him looking over my shoulder!), and will attack with infernal ferociousness NEXT Friday as we launch the first-ever DOUBLE Carnaval / Yokai New Year holiday release**!

* All in favor of making the floating Oni an equippable cape, /cheer!

** Almost the entire art team will be working on this release! Written by the combo-team of Memet and Ergotth with art from J6, Blade, Tana, and Neihi... this will be TWO festivals to remember!

Tags: Alina, Carnaval, Yokai New Year,

February 01, 2016

TRIPLE Event Weekend + Server Boost

This weekend: Carnaval, Yokai New Year, AND the Superbowl!

Log in this weekend at www.AQ.com for our TRIPLE holiday release! Carnval vs Yokai Festival war on Friday, the Superbowl Half-Time Punt Twilly show on Sunday, and a Class Points boost ALL weekend long to help you rank up the new StoneCrusher Class that released last Friday!

Gear Leaving Soon!

This Friday: Nulgath 2016 birthday shop! This week is your LAST chance to get rare gear from this wickedly-awesome tribute shop celebrating Lore's favorite archfiend!
Friday, February 12: Assassin's Commander Limited Time Shop
Friday, February 19: Knight Commander gear from AdventureCoin and Membership packages!

Tags: Carnaval, Yokai New Year, Superbowl 2016, Alina,

Year of the Moglin

January 30, 2014

Happy New Year!

...Yokai New Year, that is!

Not a whole lot happened for the Year of the Snake in 2013, so for this Yokai New Year we decided to give you guys a new NPC, a new set of quests, and even a new expansion to the seasonal Akiba map! 2014 is the year of the horse, and it's also the year of the element wood, and Akiba's ancestral spirit Senlin-Ma embodies both...

Friendlier than he looks.

Senlin-Ma is the guardian spirit of Akiba's Jingshen Forest. If you've never heard of Jingshen Forest, that's because it's usually kept hidden from the eyes of mortals. But now, something has started to taint the various nature spirits that live within it, and Senlin-Ma needs your help to find the source of the corruption and eradicate it.

New High Level Mid-Week Content!

The Yokai New Year release that goes live on Friday will feature medium-level content that should be easy for most players to complete. Most of our releases are like this because we want all of our players, even the new ones, to be able to enjoy our weekly content. But we also know that this can be frustrating for higher-level players who are tired of being able to one-shot all of the new monsters.

Your new vacation destination.

So on Tuesday, we're going to release an expansion to this story. If you are level 50 or higher, you'll be able to unlock some new quests, along with a new part of the map populated with high level monsters! This seemed like the best way to give our high level players more to do while still remaining accessible to the newer ones.

Yokai New Year Gear

We're also releasing a slew of brand new Yokai New Year gear, including the gorgeous Kirin Avatar set shown below (created by Zoshi)! These, along with the old seasonal items, will be available in game from Senlin-Ma and Panlong.

We heard you like horns.