Darkfall developer Claus has published a state of the game address today that discusses the next patch, which should be ready by the end of the week, and Darkfall's upcoming second free expansion.

According to the post, the new patch will be adding skill-up bonuses for both combat skills and magic schools so new players can catch up with veterans faster. The team also hopes it will lead to more open field PvP by enticing players to fight monsters for skill-ups.

The second free expansion should launch by the end of October and will include changes and additions to ship building, sea combat, local banking, player-owned local vendors, racial skills, a barber shop, archery and melee combat, and more. You can read more about what's coming in the patch and expansion in the full letter after the jump.

Hi everyone,

Right now we are putting the finishing touches on our next patch, which we plan to have ready by the end of this week.

With this patch we are adding a significant skill-up bonus to fighting mobs, essentially tripling the speed of skill-ups compared to hitting other players. At the same time we have doubled the speed of skilling up all magic schools. This means that all skills involving combat are now leveling up three times as fast as before, and leveling magic schools are six times as fast as before when fighting monsters.

This change will help newer players catch up to veterans faster. We also think it will make it even more attractive to go out and fight monsters, which in turn should lead to more open field PvP.

In this patch we have also fixed the underlying problem with battlespikes and damage modifiers. The hotfix we released last week was temporary, and we will adjust the modifiers back to their correct values now that the root of the issue has been fixed.

Other than the upcoming patch, the development team is hard at work with the second free expansion for Darkfall, which is currently scheduled for release by the end of October. This expansion is a lot bigger than the first, and we are extremely excited about it. We will give you more detailed information on the many new features over the coming weeks.

It includes many changes and additions to ship building, sea combat and sea objectives, part two of our character specialization system - this time some much needed love for archery and melee combat, the first step of local banking, player owned local vendors, the first set of racial skills, barber shop, the caravan system, new houses and villages, new housing objects to decorate your house with, wandering mobs, more rare drops added to monsters, new free spawning objects to discover, and much more.

See you ingame.