The main additions of Interlude compared with C5: weapon augmentation and life stones, new skills, Primeval Isle, the best A-grade weapons, shadow weapons, Akamanah, the command channel rules, duels and changes at sieges and the Olympiad.
We continue our excursion into the past. We began with the changes in the C5 chronicle (What changed in Chronicle 5: Oath of Blood); let's go on to Interlude.
Augmentation
One of the most important changes in Interlude is considered to be weapon augmentation, and rightly so: the balance at the Olympiad shifted sharply, and it became much more interesting. Life stones of various grades and levels started dropping from mobs 40+.
- Grades: Life Stone, Mid-Grade Life Stone, High-Grade Life Stone, Top-Grade Life Stone. Levels of the stones: 46, 49, 52, 55, 58, 61, 64, 67, 70 and 76.
All the augmentation actions are performed at the blacksmiths in all towns except the starting villages and Gludin. To augment a weapon you need the weapon itself, a life stone and a certain number of D or C gemstones. And a piece of advice at once: do not insert life stones in Aden, C gemstones are not sold there. Any weapon from C to S grade can be augmented. In the reverse process, that is, when removing the life stone from the weapon, neither the life stone nor the gemstones are returned.
What can you get from augmentation? First, a rise of the basic stats, STR, CON, INT, MEN: only by 1, and only one stat. Second, a rise of such parameters as P. Atk., P. Def., M. Atk., Accuracy, and also an addition to mana, CP and so on. And most important, an additional skill: passive, active or chance. If the weapon with the augmented skill is in your hands, an active skill is shown in the list of your active skills, a passive or chance one in the list of passive skills.
The PKers were the happiest about the introduction of augmentation: now it became possible to PK with an S-grade weapon, since an augmented weapon does not drop even when a PK drops items.
The augmentation system is described in detail in the article Weapon augmentation: Life Stones, gemstones and possible bonuses; here I will only add that on the European official server you could catch a skill from a life stone of any kind, whereas the developers of free servers tied the catching of skills rigidly to a certain grade of life stones, so on most free servers the ordinary and mid ones were thrown away at once, and all the skills were caught only from tops and highs. Although lately the trend has changed, and some developers have begun returning the catching of skills to mid and ordinary life stones, they do it like a bull in a china shop.
Skills
- New skills were introduced in Interlude; the most important, in my view, were Invocation, Celestial Shield, Gate Chant, Cleanse, Salvation, the third-profession summons, Magnus' Chant, and all the so-called fusion skills (domes), which are given at level 80 and which the admins of many free servers still cannot set up correctly.
- All the books for learning the new skills were stuffed into the drop of the dinosaurs, a few small ones were scattered among mobs 50+, and at the same time they were added to three traders in different towns; in detail: Trading spellbooks and amulets on Interlude servers. Crafters were given a new golem, the Swoop Cannon, but somehow it did not take root at sieges.
- Two accessories appeared in castles: the Castle Circlet, which all members of the clan owning the castle can wear, and The Lord's Crown, which is given to the leader of the clan owning the castle. With the lord's crown the whole clan can be summoned through the Clan Gate: for that all the clan members gather in the castle, in the throne room next to the castle magician, the clan leader uses the skill from the crown and opens a portal, all the clan members get a message that the portal is open, and through the magician they can be summoned to the leader. The most interesting thing is that many "advanced" clan leaders did not know about this possibility at all until I told them.
- Some important changes in already existing skills. Mana Burn and Mana Storm now wake the opponent from sleep when they act on them; earlier you could put a character to sleep and burn all the mana without problems.
- The skills Death Whisper, Dance of Fire, Eye of Pa'agrio and Chant of Rage were cut, in connection with which there is an opinion that if you buff Death Whisper from a scroll, it will be stronger than the same one from a prophet or warcryer, since the scroll skill was not cut on all servers.
- Elven elders and shillien elders can no longer pour mana into themselves and each other with Recharge, only into those who do not have this skill, that is, everybody else. The bishop can now enchant the skill Major Heal. The buff of healing potions was moved to a separate slot and no longer takes an extra buff slot.
- The effect of using fighter soulshots was raised (not on all servers upgraded from the C4 chronicle to Interlude was this corrected). The same goes for the skills Whirlwind, Thunder Storm, Hammer Crush, Soul Breaker, Tribunal, Judgment, Armor Crush and Shock Blast, whose effect was raised. The protection from arrows at levels 2 and 3 of the skill Deflect Arrow was raised.
Locations, weapons and items
- A new location was added, which is described in detail in its own article: Primeval Isle. New A-grade weapons were added, the so-called best A weapons, which exceed the old top A in parameters, and into many of which it became possible to put a Focus special ability. Several new accessories were added, of which one hairpin can be crafted, and two were added to the drop of raid bosses: Angel Halo and Demon Circlet.
- The cooldown of the HP and mana potions was cut from 10 to 5 minutes, and after that everybody started calling them five-minuters. But for some reason they were given a common cooldown, that is, if you used a five-minuter for mana, during the next 5 minutes you cannot use not only another one for mana but one for HP either.
- Items that could not be sold or thrown away can now be put into the personal warehouse.
- The notion of Shadow Weapons was introduced. To make levelling at low levels easier, shadow weapons are now offered for sale and exchange. They cannot be sold, enchanted or traded, and they have a lifetime after which the weapon disappears. On getting the first or second profession all characters are given exchange coupons, for which shadow weapons of D and C grade are obtained from an NPC. Shadow Weapons can also be bought for adena; a bought weapon lives twice as long, and you can also buy a B-grade shadow weapon.
- A new cursed weapon was introduced, the duals Blood Sword Akamanah. All the rules that Zariche has apply to Akamanah as well. If these two weapons meet on one territory, a skull and crossbones sign is shown on the map. When both swords meet in a fight, the CP of both characters owning the swords becomes zero. If a character owning one sword picks up the second, the power of the sword the character already owned rises by one (levelling), and the second sword disappears.
Quests and monsters
- Quests on the dinosaur island were added, including ones for recipes and key materials of the new weapons. The quests for enchant scrolls A Game of Cards and Seductive Whispers appeared as well. With the addition of the new location, a soul crystal can now be levelled from 10 to 11 and from 11 to 12 in the quest Enhance Your Weapon on the Tyrannosaurus mobs and on the raid boss Sailren.
- Characters of level 80 can no longer take the quest Repent Your Sins, which in principle is right, since the imp would be level 80 too and could not be levelled; but you can take this quest and do it on a subclass of a lower level.
- A new raid boss wandering about the locations was brought into the game, Knight of Destruction Gordon, who hunts players with cursed weapons and attacks at once as soon as he sees one. Otherwise he is a peaceful fellow; you can have a chat with him about the hard life of a raider.
- In the locations Pagan Temple, Monastery of Silence, Imperial Tomb, Forge of the Gods, Dimensional Rift, Ketra Orc Outpost and Varka Silenos Stronghold all the mobs that were above level 80 became level 80. Their stats did not change, only the level. As I understand it, this was done so that the penalty would be smaller, for spoil for example; you will agree that a level 80 mob is much more convenient to spoil than a level 85 one. But servers where high-level mobs still run about in these locations are not rare. A minus to the admins. And this occurs both on servers remade from C4, where such mobs still existed, and on servers remade from Gracia, where the level of these mobs was raised again.
Command channel, duels, sieges and the Olympiad
- Changes in the command channel. Now the leader of the command channel can write messages: only for party leaders, using the apostrophe symbol (yellow in the chat), and for all members of the command channel, using two apostrophe symbols (pink in the chat).
- When a raid boss is attacked, the alliance that dealt the first blow gets the right to pick up the loot, provided the following rule is met: when attacking ordinary raid bosses, at least 18 members in the command channel; when attacking small epics, at least 36 characters in the command channel; when attacking Antharas, at least 225 members of the command channel must be in the lair. Five minutes after you bring the raid boss down, the right to pick up the loot is annulled.
- The Dueling System was introduced.
- When a player is attacked, their target now moves automatically to the attacker. As I understand it, this happens if the target was free, and if it was on some mob, it will not happen. This still has to be checked.
- Changes at sieges: the defenders now cannot break the castle gate; with the victory of the Seal of Strife the purchased elite castle defenders rise greatly in stats (I saw it myself, they become like mini raid bosses). With the victory of the same seal for the Dawn, the Dusk cannot summon golems during a siege. Fortresses were added, so far only as details of the landscape; the functionality will come in the following chronicles. Although some mod builders manage to launch them on Interlude too.
- An important change at the Olympiad: after the countdown on the stadium is over, CP, HP and MP are restored again. If a character relogs before being teleported to the stadium during the countdown, a certain number of points is taken off.
- The warlock's cat was renamed: instead of Queen the Cat it is now called Feline Queen. The death penalty for characters of level 76 and above was lowered: now much less experience is taken off.