Castilla Completed & Patch Delay

A few more characters advanced since last journal post. Vairocana (Ralph) and Lolita (Claire) reached Master Lv.3. Alustriel (ETS) also gained a level to reach Master Lv.2 inside Tower of Chaos. Running through Castilla Mine brought Shotaro (Viki) up to Veteran Lv.7.

Brain of Argus dropped us Recipe - The Will of Argus, and we purchased Recipe - The Hope of Argus as well. But it is going to be a long while before the pioneering merchants add the enhanced versions in their shops though. We will need a Jormungand Belt before then, but the materials needed for the raid is rather stupid...

We finally completed Castilla Episode 3 quests a year after we first started on it, and the set of Vespanola Navy costumes were given as rewards. Despite quite a few other pioneers have already finished it, there was never any quest guide readily available, so here is the fully updated guide.

During maintenance, the client was updated with the models and textures of Arcana Weapons in patches 165255-165667. This should be the next weapon series released via cash shop boxes once G1 has finished releasing all the existing Jewel Weapons. For more on Arcana Weapons, see the previous posts on Imperial Wheel V under Web Games labelled posts. (Taiwan Granado Espada has already released their first Arcana Weapons here, along with Cadet Elisa character card.)

More cash shop boxes were added as usual. Raiden's Dominion IX and Quinzel's Legacy IX featured Jewel Cannon, Angel Polearm, Dragon Rifle, and The Secret of Aquichtus (dagger costume). And there was a situation report by G1-Raiden in The State of Affairs forum topic:

To clarify the statement put out by the FE team, there is no mention of S2 being closed. [...] If the game is closing, I am confident that I will get to know about it first rather than some game review site. And if I get to know about such a thing, the community will hear about it from me. We threw the plans to update the client to 9.5 and we are now gunning for version 10.6 instead. The flip side is that there are still many factors that I need to take in account for and I do not have a release date for you. Not even a wild guess to be completely honest.  This jump will result in a faster globalization process that IMC has been working on. Once that comes to life, the content delivery system will change unlike anything and updates will not have to wait for months and years at a time. [...] In other news, we are also in discussion with IMC and HBS regarding the S2 contract. It is one of the factors that is affecting the blackout on the release plans. Apart from revealing this piece of info, I cannot talk anything else about it.

So it seems we are stuck with v8.5 for quite a while more. Expect a long wait, since G1 couldn't even estimate a release date. We have been saving up some +4 weapons for upgrades next patch since the maximum amount of Upgrade Accelerators will be reduced then... but now it seems like it might take too long with the patch delay. The increase in Devil's Dreams and Devil Weapon materials will also have to wait now... Version 10.6 is fine and good, but if it comes only at the end of the year or next year, some already bored players will probably die off by then.