The first free expansion for Darkfall Online is now live, and it includes a ton of updates to the game. The team has re-balanced monster PvE, weapons and armor, and adjusted crafting prices. Players can now own houses, which is part of the new village system. The first stage of the Character Specialization System lets you choose add-ons for your spells, and there's even new weather and transportation systems.

This is the first in a series of regular free expansions for Darkfall. You can read the full release notes below.

 

Darkfall released on February 25th 2009. Since the launch, Darkfall's development continued even harder than before. Several very large patches were released but these were mainly focused on optimizations, improvements, and fixes. Our entire team and all the resources at our disposal are dedicated to development and we're working to make Darkfall the best game it can possibly be. An early result of our commitment to the game's evolution is the first of a series of regular free expansions. Following are just some of the highlights:

 

Massive PvE Monster Re-balancing

We've been watching the PvE dynamic and taking in player and tester feedback while experimenting with the PvE/Monster balance on our test servers. We've decided to implement a massive re-balancing of monster hit points, stats, and loot tables. We agree that many of the mid and high level monsters were unreasonably difficult to fight and we have taken serious rebalancing measures where those were needed. We've increased the gold and reagent drops for most monsters and added a higher probability for uncommon and rare drops such as steedgrass and runestones. Lower level monsters have seen fewer changes than mid to high level ones. We have been testing the results of this re-balancing and, while we're still working on it, we believe that these changes will be a huge improvement and will solve many of the problems players were experiencing with PvE.

Weapon Re-Balancing

Another much needed change: Lower rank weapons were a little too powerful, and higher rank weapons were not powerful enough. We've made adjustments on both ends to restore the proper balance.

Armor Re-balancing

Most armor has received a small increase in magic resistance. This should give warriors more of a chance against concentrated area of effect spells.

Crafting price Adjustments

Most craftable items have seen a significant reduction in crafting costs and especially in gold costs. Higher rank equipment is now a lot cheaper to produce and this should improve the market for the Darkfall crafters. Combined with the new influx of gold in the economy due to the PvE rebalancing, being a crafter in Darkfall should be more profitable than ever.

*Note on Rebalancing

The adjustments in PvE, Weapons, Armor, and crafting are the results of months of observations, feedback, experimentation and testing. Even so, we'll keep watching very closely and making any further adjustments needed.

Player Housing

This has been one of the most requested features since we announced Darkfall and it's now in the game. You can now own a house on any one of hundreds of hidden locations around Agon, on small secluded islands, in the desert of Rubaiyat, the frozen wastes of Niflheim, the deep jungles of Yssam. You can find house deeds in treasure chests, on monsters, or you can buy them from other players and use them to claim your house.
 

Houses offer house recall and can be upgraded to offer you benefits such as the capability of sharing your house with friends, the option of having a harvestable garden or a private workbench, and much more. Many feature an open window you can use to trade through more safely. You can decorate your house with numerous status symbols that you can find or earn. These range from fine paintings and hunting trophies, to chairs, tables and chandeliers.

This is just the first stage of the Darkfall Player Housing system. Over the coming weeks and months we will expand heavily on this system by adding many new and important features, new rare upgrades like for example more house slots, new decorations, and more house types. Of course this is Darkfall so housing is more than just a player home, its part of a much larger system:

The Village System

Player housing is tied in with the village system. Groups of houses make up a village. The Village System introduces many dynamic small scale PvP hotspots that clans can compete to control. The individual house ownership doesn't actually change but the village itself generates tax for its owner. Holding one or more villages generates direct gold income, potentially earning your clan thousands of gold every hour.
 

Four times a day all villages go vulnerable during which time they can either be reclaimed by their owner or taken over by another clan. Every six hours Darkfall turns into a no-holds barred deathmatch for control over villages and their taxes. This new feature gives every clan the opportunity to score strategic victories and to gain considerable income by protecting their holdings or taking over someone else's.

Character Specialization System

The Character Specialization System gives you the opportunity to enhance and customize your character based on your play-style. It features hundreds of options and thousands of possible combinations that can make your character a true specialist in what he does best.

The first stage of the character specialization system allows you to choose add-ons for many of your spells. Currently there are four customizations you can choose from: You may increase the damage your spell inflicts, its velocity (so it travels faster to the target), the range of the spell, or you can choose to be able to jump while casting it. You can choose one of the four options for each spell.

You can buy these add-ons from Mages in Clan city mage guilds. You may choose to customize your spells to better suit your play-style long-term, or you can make a quick change based on your immediate needs. Buying a new add-on will override the old one and there are no limitations to how often you can change the way your spells are configured.

This is the first stage of the Character Specialization System. Over the coming weeks and months we will keep adding more customizations and options, including specializations for archery and melee combat.

Clan City Crafter Income

Whenever someone uses a crafting station in a city you own, a small gold bonus is added to a pool. Your clan bank will get money from this pool periodically during the course of the day. This adds more incentive to own holdings and perform all crafting operations in your own city or hamlet.

Darkfall's Weather System

The new Darkfall Weather system is extremely sophisticated and it simulates a real world weather system. Some of the weather effects you'll be seeing include rain, wind, variable cloud cover, fog etc. depending on the season and local conditions. Other than enhancing the beauty of the world and player immersion, the weather can affect visibility, making it a tactical ally or an enemy depending on the situation.

Title Quests

Title quests give you huge gold and item rewards and more importantly - a title. Your title gives you a boost in certain attributes depending on the title's type. If you go down the Intelligence line of quests for example, you gain titles that boost your intelligence. You may have several titles and you can switch between them once a day activating different bonuses depending on your needs.

Compass

We've added a compass to Darkfall which should provide to be a great tactical addition to the game. It makes it much easier to navigate or to call out the direction of incoming enemies.

New Mount

The Battlehorn is more than just a sturdy new mount. It's the first in a series of new advanced mounts.
 

Sithra

The sithra is a powerful and awesome looking elemental weapon. It will strike fear in your enemies and will be the envy of your friends and clan-mates. With their long blades of pure elemental energy they can cut through most living things with ease. The sithra is the first of a series of new and advanced weapons providing warriors with more and interesting combat options.
 

Skill & Spell Books

These extremely rare drops may arm even a new character with deadly spells and skills should he be so lucky as to get his hands on one of them. The skill and spell books have no requirement to use so if you're lucky enough to come into possession of the Book of Volcano, you'll instantly learn that spell and can use it immediately provided you have the proper reagents in your backpack. If you already have the spell you can read the book and get a boost in your proficiency.

Skill and Spell books cannot raise your proficiency past a beginner level of the skill and spell in question. If your proficiency level is over the limit, you won't be able to use the book, but you could sell it, or give it to a friend.

Skill & Spell books can help new players get into the game faster and older ones to get a significant boost in their less developed skills and spells.

Special Attribute consumables

Attribute consumables are new rare drops that can help bridge the gap between you and your mortal enemies. These edibles will give you a permanent increase in attributes up to a medium level. They provide an excellent option for newer characters to catch up to everyone else and for adventurers to find new valuable items for sale on the open market.

Random Treasure Chests

Explorers can now find random treasure chests scattered all over Agon. They may hold rare loot like house deeds, spell books, gold, runestones, sithras, rare ores, keys, attribute consumables and much more.
 

The Nexus System

The Nexus System is a dynamic tactical transportation system. You can manually spawn an entrance portal and then you go and spawn the exit to it. There's a limited number of people that can use each one of these portals, they can be destroyed, and they also stay open for a limited time. Only one can be active per person. It can be used by anyone, friend or foe. The owner gets a message about who went through his portal, also when it's attacked and when it's destroyed and by whom.
 
 

Additional Features and Updates

In additions to the aforementioned new features and improvements, this expansion features hundreds of fixes, improvements and optimizations to Darkfall including:

- An expandable hotbar

- You can no longer build new structures while your city is vulnerable during a siege

- New and improved Clan newsreel, featuring news filters

- New Journal Quest page

- New Journal crafting overview page

- Autocrafting is in, one of the most requested features by the Darkfall crafters

- Bulk buying from NPC vendors is now possible. This was one of the most requested features by the Darkfall community.

- Several AI updates and improvements to the Darkfall monsters

- Increased ship speed

- All figurines (mounts, cannons, warhulks, ships) have had their weight considerably increased.