Sword 171: Christmas v8.5

This week saw a lot of changes in the New World. There were 3 main additions - v8.5 Update, Christmas Event, and EXP Event. Personally, we would prefer the 3 additions not to come together at the same time. It would be better to spread them apart, so you can just do one thing at a time (e.g. leveling) without bothering with the other two.

In any case, v8.5 Update opened up a series of new quests. We would prefer to do them slow over the next few months, but the problem was that the quests were all required to open up new maps, raids, or repeatable quests. So in the end, we still rushed through them like most other families. We will submit a more detailed report of each storyline later.

Lourdes (Grace) had been waiting for the reduction of Great Stones required for expert stances, so she finally received [Superior Blaster] as a gift. She collected more Ancient Runes and reached Master Lv.7, while Brisingamen (Karjalain) reached Veteran Lv.8. The update revised family level calculations, so our family jumped up to Lv.50+0. We are still undecided about the secret societies, but no matter. There are still plenty to do for the next week in any case.

Santa Arsene III decided to drop another Elite Schvarlier Armor Recipe on Christmas Day. We also got Symbol of Sagittarius, Symbol of Capricorn, and Symbol of Libra from various missions this week.

According to v8.1.1, the roulette rewards for Castilla and Bounty Hunt missions were supposedly improved. But our first post-update Basilisk kill in Castilla Mine dropped a roulette which gave us a L80 Leather Boots... That was something unheard of before the update. Isn't that a loot downgrade? "Improvement" indeed. Occulta Bounty Hunts gave Tokens and Honor Cards as usual.

Previously, we were trying to buy Gold from a few other families so as to get the free Santa Costumes for Calyce and Emilia, but those sellers kept delaying the sales. We finally bought some Gold from another family this week, but too bad, it was too late to qualify for the free costumes. For now, we were also doing the Christmas Event missions to save up some Christmas Coins for buying Expert Promotion Recipes and maybe a few Winter Season Boxes.
Wishing All Blog Readers Happy Holidays!

The Devourers have also introduced 2 new boxes in the Bazaar (250 Gold each) - Quinzel's Penderie & Raiden's Angel VII. Featured items include Belle De Jour Hair (Catherine Torsche), Le Sagittaire Optimiste Costume (Grace), Ixia Costume (Grace), Blae Rastere Costume (m/mus), Angel Uriel's Bracelet (AR33 LOE Bracelet), and Dragon's Fury Sword (AR32 Great Sword).

There were 2 emergency maintenance this week - see forum topics for 1st emergency maintenance and 2nd emergency maintenance. Despite this, we should say that G1 is getting more efficient, compared to last year. Previously, we were under the impression that G1 simply couldn't manage to do both Christmas event and version patch at the same time.