Lineage ][ - Gracia, The 2nd Throne.

[DSFARGEG]

For those who didn't knew it already, there is a new L2 chronicle coming soon in Korea (September for Us/Eu) named "Gracia".

**** YEAH! The map was already made in Prelude, and they're finally adding it: Gracia, the third human kingdom and second continent of Lineage ][. The capital city (also named Gracia) will be a floating one ! There will be new features, such as aerial PVP in zepellins, new epic bosses, teambased olympiad events and enhancment of endgame content. A friend also told me that the whole grinding thingy would be totally upgraded to be more casual friendly, but i couldn't find sauce of this info.

If Aion does not show up for the end of this year, I might want to give it a try ^_^

Here's a vid introducing the new chronicle, and the website link [In Korean]

YouTube - L2 Gracia The 2nd Throne interview...

plaync - LineageII : The Chaotic Throne

Here's also a pic of the new map, a nice wallpaper

[Calindor]

Oh wow, i always remembered reading about gracia in the lore, team based olympiad sounds ****ing awesome, the clan based 9v9 matches are about as intense as I've ever seen. 99% chance i will give this a try assuming there is a new server launched at the same time, and Aion isnt out.


Also the only problem i can see, is it will probably be an acheivement to meet another player/party on retail, let alone find some war tags

more info, if only l2 was like this when it was released, all the awesome aspects of the game are staying, but the bad ones are getting removed...which is another reason i cant wait for aion...or l3 even though its years away.

Ctrl + C , Ctrl + V
This is though not to be 100% trusted as its being tested and a free translator was used.
[Vitality system]

* A system that adds bonus experience was added depending on the vitality level of the character.
* Vitality points are collected under the following conditions: A player has not logged in for a peroid of time, a player is sitting in a peace zone for ane xtended peroid, a player is participating in siege or raid.
* Vitality points are transferred to subclasses when a character change occurs.

[General Combat System]

* Song and Dance buffs now have their own buff bar.
* Player and Monster melee range increased slightly.
* Target location and the relationship with the attacker now affects damage bonus.
* Long range physical attacks now have a distance differential to damage.
* The poison and the bleedind damage has been increased.
* Duration of debuff is modified by the targets defense rating against that debuff type.
* The rate at which players hit or evade attacks has been changed to make a gap between accuracy and evasion more significant.

[Changes to Existing Skills]

Effect has been added for skills

* Deflect Arrow: Now reduces damage from cross bows.
* Real Target: Range increased to 900, bow/cross bow damage increase reduced.
* Bleed: Movement speeed reduction has been added.

Queen of Kat, Unicorn Seraphim, Shadow Knight has been added.

* Queen of Kat: Blessed Body Effect, Blessed Soul Effect, Haste Effect
* Unicorn Seraphim: Acumen Effect, Clarity Effect,, Empower Effect, Wild Magic effect
* Shadow Knight: Death Whisper Effect, Focus Effect, Guidance Effect

Other skill changes

* Shield mastery: Further increase the effectiveness of shield defense and if wearing heavy armor also increases main pdef while using a shield.
* Armor Mastery (Warrior & Kamael): MP regeneration increased.
* Soul collection: Kamaels now can hold 40 souls.
* Protection of Rune,Alignment,Elements: increased defensive properties for both passive and active effects.
* Fighters/Archers Will: normal effect increased and increased the rate the rate at which skills critical for double damage while the buff is active.
* Cleanse: Raid curse can no longer be removed.
* Wild Magic (Buff): Magic critical rate has been reduced.
* Wild Magic (Items): Magic critical rate has been reduced
* Dance of Siren: Magic critical rate has been reduced.
* Force Barrier, Sonic Barrier, Celestial Shield, Flames of Invincibility, Sublime Sacrifice, Lesser Celestial Shield, Talisman of Invincibility: Beneficial effects can now be applied to one self.
* Summon Soullless: The caster MP DoT is now removed.
* Furious Soul: The evasion penalty is removed.

Changes to casting time.

* Escape Shackle, Cure Poison and Cure bleeding cast faster now.

Changes to skill duration.

* Dodge Attack: Increased to 10 seconds instead of 5.
* Counter Attack: Increased to 10 seconds instead of 5.

Changes to skill power

* Proximity to the target now affects the overall power of a physical skill and its MP consumption.
* Physical attack skills have overall increased skill power.
* Physical attack skills have an overall decrease in MP consumption.
* All physical attack skills now have over-hit capability.

MP Consumption of the following toggles are increased:

* Soul Cry
* Accuracy
* Silent Move
* Guard Stance
* Soul Guard
* Vicious Stance
* Shield Fortress
* Fortitude
* Parry Stance
* War Frenzy
* True Berserker
* Strike Back
* Hard March

Changes to magic damage

* Magic damage now applies a random variance between minimum and maximum damage.
* Depending on the type of weapon the damage variance of spells changes.

Changes to Kamael Spirit Consumption

* Skills that use charged souls to enhance the skill have been changed.

Magic Critical Hits

* The ratio at which a magic critical hit occures unbuffed has been increased more then 10 times.
* Magic Critical hit damage is reduced from 4x to 3x.
* Magic Critical hit chance capped at 20%.

[New skills]
DA,Paladin,SK,TK

* Vanguard combat stance (transformation effect with no appearence change) (L43)

This skill allows the player to effectively equip dual swords or 2h weapons.
The following skills become available:

* Full Swing - Attack the area around a target with a 2h Sword, bypassing shield defense.
* Tornado Double Chop - Attack the areana around a target with a dual sword, bypassing shield defense.
* Power Chop - Powerful single target attack with a 2h weapon, bypassing shield defense.
* Power Double Slash - Powerfil single target attack with a dual sword, bypassing shield defense.

SE,EE,Bishop

* Inquisitor combat stance (transformation effect with no appearence change) (L44)

The following skills become available:

* Divine Punishment - Single target low mp cost fast reset holy attribute nuke. Power 57.
* Surrender to Divine - Strips resist holy and reduces holy defense by -20, strengthens targets darkness by +20.
* Divine Curse - Prevents the target from receiving healing and applies a DoT effect to the target.
* Divine Turmoil - Powerful area holy attack. Power 90.

Abyss Walker

* Evade ??(L74) - During a successfull evade, at a certain probability the AW's critical power will increase.

Plains Walker

* Evade ?? (L74) - During a successfull evade, at a certain probability the PW's critical chance will increase.

Treasure Hunter

* Evade ?? (L74) - During a successful evade, at a certain probability the TH's attack speed will increase.

All dagger classes:

* Shadow step (L72) - Teleport to a target within 900 range.

All Kamael

* Fast Recovery (L43) - +HP/CP/MP regeneration.

Berserker

* Health Reconstruction (L52) - Recover 100% HP, consumes 5 souls long cooldown.
* Health Reinforcement (L55) - Heal and Increase a % of the parties HP, consumes 10 souls.

Soul Breaker

* Soul Web (L62) - Reduce the targets movement speed, consumes 5 souls.

Arbalester

* Forgotten Trap (L64) - ???
* Implant Doom Seed (L68) - upon growth target is unable to use magic or physical skills.

Soul Breaker/Inspector

* Forget Pain (L58) - Prevent damage for a peroid of time, when the effect wears off the target is weakened.
* Master of Magic (L40) - Increase casting speed, reduce cooldown time of skills.

Warsmith

* Repair Golem (L40) - Powerful Heal for constructs
* Power Golem (L43) - Increase construct attack power and attack speed.
* Golem Armor Plating (L40) - Increase construct pdef and max hp.

The following Warsmith skills have a 10 minute duration and can only be used on up to 3 items at a time

* Sharpen Edges (L49) - Enhance the effectiveness of bladed weapons.
* Spike Thorns (L49) - Enhance the attack effectiveness of blunt weapons.
* Strengthen Bow String (L49) - Enhance the effectiveness of bow/cross bow weapons.
* Scaled Armor (L46) - Enhance the effectiveness of heavy armor.
* Hard Tanning (L46) - Enhance the effectiveness of light armor.
* Imbroider Garments (L46) - Enhance the effectiveness of Robes
* Summon Merchant Golem (L52) - Costs 5 D crystals, sets up a stationry shop for the war smith.

Prophet

* Mana Steal (this is a buff that cuases damage done from melee attacks to steal MP from the target and give it to the attacker)

New skills given to the following classes:

* Bounty Hunter and Maestro: Fatal Strike
* Abyss Walker: Lure
* Phantom Summoner: Death Spike (Max Power 65), Summon Cursed Bone, Curse: Poison

[Pets]

* New Weapons and Armor for Pets
* Jewelery for pets has been added to increase mdef.
* When a Pet dies the time it takes for the pet to disappear was increased to 24 hours (real time).

[PVP]

PvP Reputation Points

Nobless characters who participate in fortress or castle sieges, Underground Colloseum (Fantasy Isle), Olympiad, Festival of Darkness will gain PvP Reputation points, this value can be exchanged for items and effects:

* PvP Weapon and Armor modifications.
* Siege Items
* Clan reputation
* Removing PK count.

Siegefield changes

* Registered attackers/defenders do not lose XP on death anymore due to PvP point system.
* Repeated dying does not give death penalty but their combat ability will decline for the siege.
* Using a scroll of courage on a siege field will now perform a ressurection effect upon death.

PVP - Flagged Time

* Flagged time will be increased to 120 seconds, at which the last 20 seconds they will beign to flash.

[Attribute stones]

* Defensive attribute applied to armor now gives +6 points per enchant and has a new max of L4 and 60 points.
* Attribute stone success rate on armor was increased.
* Different attribute can be used to increase defense of certin debuffs.
* Previously enchanted armor will have its attribute corrected to the new system.

[Items & Equipment]

Crafting Adjustments

* Crafted items now have a chance to making more then one item, they also have a chance of making a rare version of that item (altered stats and properties).
* Rare items can be damaged through use but that damage can be repaired at the blacksmith.

Misc Stores and Smiths

* Shadow A-Grade equipment can be bought from stores in town but cannot be augmented, strengthened or SA'd.
* Items in all stores have had their prices reduced.
* Stores that sell Normal C grade equipment now have Normal B grade items available for purchase.
* B grade equipment and lower that is bought will be exchangeable via the blacksmith in town.
* Some shops started selling Mirage headdress

Jewelry Augmentation

* Earrings, necklaces, rings can now have special augmentations applied to them.

New herbs

* New buff herbs drop in hunting zones and the duration has been increased to 5 minutes.
* The new buffs from herbs eg. Vampire Herbs, Deadly herbs, Haste Herb.


[Monsters]

* Monsters below level 75 (Excluding Festial of Darkness and Seven Sign Dungeons) will now use soul shots and spirit shots to power their skills. They will also use new ranged defense skills at a certain probability to help avoid being kited around by players.
* Item/XP/SP rewards from monsters using SS/SpS and ranged defense skills were increased.
* All raid boss rewards were significantly increased.
* Raid bosses once again drop many normal items in addition to life crystals.
* Spell books that are normally buyable in NPC shops wont drop from monsters any more.
* The loot table of all old monsters has been adjusted to include new items and item parts.

SE: Bless of Blood (LV 40)
PTS Testing Result
At level 56, skill level 3, MP usage 52, Range 600, effect lasts for 15 seconds, cool down time 20 seconds
Continuously regen party HP, when under attack probability of regening HP. During a test in PTS, when under an attack healed with 712 HP, high probability of activation of this skill. Most likely to be getting hit 2 times with a 50% of activating this skill. Some other players calculated it to be 30%)

Existing Skills added to Existing Classes

* WS: Fatal Strike
* BH: Fatal Strike
* AW: ??
* Phanton Summoner: Death Spike, Summon Cursed Bone, Poisonous Curse
* EE: Party Greater Heal
* BH: Crystalization
Quests

* (lvl 40): rewards -> hair accessory
* (level 39): New 2nd class change quest, spend 1.5mil to finish the quest in 6 minutes (oh yay)
* (lvl 15): repeatable orc village quest
* (lvl 1: repeatable drwaf village quest
* To Hellbound Quest: Once HellBound has been activated, players will not need to do the original quest (the one you need to do in CT1 in order to access HellBound), instead there is a new quest


Changes to Existing Quests

* 1st Class Change: Increased rewards
* 2nd Class Change: increased rewards & increased quest item drop rate
* Toma will always stay at one point from now on, quest NPC will show which area Toma will be at (NE coast)
* Beast Farm: adjustments to the quest


Changes to Overall Settings

* Increased reward to most of the non-repeatable quests
* Increased the quest item receive rate to repeatable quests
* New Player quests allowing players to level up faster



Interface

* Added a chat window, when certain set words appear in the window, there will be sound notification
* Players will be able to change their titles in different colors
* Buffs can be cancelled manually by Alt+left clicking according to self


Other

* New players buffs are now accessible to all players under level 62, (other than healing crystal? is usable between 16-34, all the rest is usable by everyone under level 62)
* New players are given a new kind of wrap scroll
* Raid points will be given rewards accordingly
* Players under level 40 are given free teleports by gatekeepers
* Added new social actions (finally..........)
* Cancelled resets of the shotcut keys

[DSFARGEG]

Thanks for the copypasta, seems i'll definitely give it a try in September !

[Livvy]

The problem with lineage is the extreme grind ( I don't see anything to suggest this might change ) and especially how this grind is designed : you still have repeatable "collect 50 wolf fangs " quests to simply level . There is far too little variety and imagination in those quests . You actually know you're grinding ...in most other MMO's this is somewhat disguised.

It's therefore extremely "new player-unfriendly " and no amount of extra XP will change that unless they work on the number and variety of quests for the 1-60 level bracket .

[Calindor]

meh, i dont think anyone plays L2 for enjoyment of pve...its just a time sink you have to do so you can really play the game (yes i know you can have fun while lvling up too).

I've always found most of L2's newbie quests that dont really give benefitial rewards to be rather fun...I also like the quests for raid bosses like antharas or valakas..they are pretty fun quests, just get boring when you have to repeat them every week or two. The only quests that really suck in l2 are the class change ones, that take days or weeks to do...but atleast in the 3rd prof quests you get close to the best exp you can get at that lvl while doing them.

Free buffs to lvl 60 is pretty good, but lvl 60 isnt even the problem...even right now it takes a week to hit 40, and 3-4 weeks to hit lvl 60, its the increasing rate in 7x that is the problem.

[Amanda Hugnkiss]

Lineage 2 is a dead game, all the good people left anyways. Nothing but botters/scammers/@$$holes left.

[Calindor]

actually its all the best people left, cause they wouldnt leave when they own castles and S80 gear, etc...but most of the best clans are playing on some private servers to avoid the botting and stuff...look at luna, 2/3 of the forces right now are from private servers.

man im thinking l2 is actually going to be an awesome game with that stuff, minus the botting

key points
Buffs can be cancelled manually by Alt+left clicking according to self

New players buffs are now accessible to all players under level 62, (other than healing crystal? is usable between 16-34, all the rest is usable by everyone under level 62)

PvP Reputation Points

Nobless characters who participate in fortress or castle sieges, Underground Colloseum (Fantasy Isle), Olympiad, Festival of Darkness will gain PvP Reputation points, this value can be exchanged for items and effects:

* PvP Weapon and Armor modifications.
* Siege Items
* Clan reputation
* Removing PK count.

* Increased reward to most of the non-repeatable quests
* Increased the quest item receive rate to repeatable quests
* New Player quests allowing players to level up faster

and teambased olympiad...

all this is stuff l2 should have already had (along with all the changes made since c5)

1st Class Change: Increased rewards
2nd Class Change: increased rewards & increased quest item drop rat

* Shadow A-Grade equipment can be bought from stores in town but cannot be augmented, strengthened or SA'd.
* Items in all stores have had their prices reduced.
* Stores that sell Normal C grade equipment now have Normal B grade items available for purchase.
* B grade equipment and lower that is bought will be exchangeable via the blacksmith in town.

[Darkboi]

does anyone have a friend trial i could try ? i've been thinking of getting back into L2 ;O

[Aggelos]

L2 is definitely improving with this patch, I waited for the dance independent bar my whole life xD, and the WS looks awesome.

But everyone is right, L2 is kind of dead despite any patch they can make. Botters and ebay, and the infinite grind... it can be fun.. I had a great fun to get to 78, but it took me 1 year to get there in a x2 p.server. And then the subclass, I just gave up. The kill 24893248 mob quests? the buff dependence?

I don't think L2 can be fixed. Let's wait for L3.

[Terpsichore]

All dagger classes:

* Shadow step (L72) - Teleport to a target within 900 range.

._.

[lightwolf65]

Originally Posted by Amanda Hugnkiss

Lineage 2 is a dead game, all the good people left anyways. Nothing but botters/scammers/@$ left.

Not really. Reaching End of Life - probably. And as for the 'botters/scammers/@$$holes' - You find those in pretty much every on-line game. MMO, MMORPG, FPS, etc... It is not like L2 has a monopoly on those.

If you don't like the game, Cool. Just don't dis people who do, and still play it.
I do not like Wow. However I do not go around trashing it.

[Calindor]

I trash both games, but L2 is actually a good game, its just run horibbly by a bad company (NCSoft Austin)

[Sabbina]

Might have to re activate for this :/

[YamiVegeta]

Nice, I think they are starting to go in the right direction ... hopefully :P.