You may have noticed that we've made several changes to Alchemy throughout the day.
The changes to the crafting times are pretty radical. Because we've made a lot of these changes in a single day, we're being a little cautious with the EXP costs until the dust settles. When that happens, we can made an informed decision on improving the EXP rates and adjusting the times per item (if needed). Think of it like wiping the slate clean so we can create a more balanced system moving forward.
To put it simply: this is not the end of the alchemy changes. More adjustments will be made soon. In particular, the EXP obtained from Alchemy. We're just waiting for the dust to settle before moving forward.
Over the next few days, we’ll be making several adjustments to alchemy recipes - specifically, changing the requirements for certain recipes to better align with items of similar value. Due to the scale of these changes, it’s far more efficient for us to roll them out gradually. Preparing the game to handle a large, all-at-once update would require significantly more development time.
What you can expect:
Update 13/May/25: We failed to mention that these balancing changes will also include adjustments to the EXP obtained via alchemy items.
We’ve made major changes to how alchemy recipe drops work in dungeons.
Instead of receiving a recipe directly from a dungeon run, you’ll now receive a Alchemy Chest tied to that specific dungeon. These chests contain a variety of recipes - some tradable, some untradable. Untradable recipes drop more frequently, but tradable recipes will appear at a higher rate than they did prior to the update.
This change results in a significant buff to recipe drop rates across nearly all high-level dungeons.
For example:
Although these changes may seem significant, much of the increase comes from untradable recipes. That said, the boost affects both tradable and untradable drops - meaning tradable recipes will still be noticeably easier to obtain than before the update.
This update is part of a larger effort to make Alchemy more accessible, as outlined in our roadmap. More balancing changes and improvements will come soon.
Please note: These changes may take up to 12 hours to fully take effect.
Update: Just to clarify - only the recipe itself is untradable. The items you craft from it can still be traded as usual.
We’re currently updating/fixing the underlying effect system, a change that’s been long overdue. This is also part of our preparation for the upcoming season-long rewards that players can earn by winning a Conquest Zone (we will make a separate patch note when this change is ready).
The old effect system was overly complicated and didn’t work as expected. For example, the “Skill” bonus was only meant to apply to primary skills (the ones shown in the sidebar/skills menu). However, it also unintentionally affected some (not all) secondary skills like Bartering. This caused confusion, as players expected the Skill EXP bonus to apply to all skills, which it did not.
Over the next 48 hours, as the update spreads across the server, you might notice some small changes to how effects work. Most importantly, we’re updating the naming system to be more clear and consistent. This change will also fix several bugs related to skill classification. For instance, some non-primary skills that were incorrectly affected by the “Skill” effect will now be excluded, as only Primary Skills will be eligible for these effects.
Once the changes are fully live and stable, we’ll review everything again and make any additional changes if needed.
The maximum usage limit for mythic alchemy recipes has been increased from 10 to 30. This only applies to recipes consumed after this update; previously consumed recipes will remain unchanged in your alchemy list.
All guilds with the above components have been refunded the difference.
Guilds are still a work in progress and not yet where we want them to be. Improving them will take time, as we make small changes and adjustments based on the data we gather and as our overall approach becomes more refined. We're also balancing this with ongoing improvements to other parts of the game (for instance, we are now working on improving the dungeon mechanic which can be seen on our public road map).
In update v0.38.2, we said that if guild requirements change, any difference would be refunded. However, this does not include repair costs - which are determined by the base costs. The main reason is that we don’t keep detailed records of every repair, and it would take too much time to calculate fair refunds for each case.