Double Gains is live! It will be live till Sunday 11:59PM EST.

Also, the Shadow Facility is back... and so am I! Did you miss me?

Okay got fair ground to cover here (and this isn't even all of it lol):

1. Shadow Facility's back. It comes with 3 new interesting "operations". Unfortunately you need to power up the Forge to get those operations running smoothly again. I'll post more soon once 'Alpha Prime' has gotten one of them going.

2. Contributor Rewards for the Phoenix Key parts have been finally handed out. Enjoy your sacks! NOTE: Those who received the Double Pay and Double Energy books - these do not stack during double gains weekend. If you have already used it, do not worry - I will recompensate the days lost for you after the double gains weekend.

3. New mid-70s NPC - X-Corp Droids. They seem pretty chill no? Don't worry.. more to come. Sentries have been found occasionally invading in the WL. Beware of them!

4. Joe's Merchandise now offers Phoenix Key exchange! Bye bye Path Key parts (and good riddance)!

5. Boons are now being awarded. These are special points you get for being an active player. You can work towards getting boons by participating in nearly every single part of the game. More on this sometime next week when the Boon Shop is finalized

6. Equippable items now have a new quality level - level 6! What is it called? Level up to find out. Does it have any use? Level up the Forge to find out!

Enjoy this weekend and don't worry, y'all ain't rid of me yet!

Balancing is happening on dev right now. These are not final numbers, but pretty close to what may end up going live eventually. The following changes have been made:

3. Orphic Amulet to drop to 0 D.Skill, not -25.
4. Void Axe - +5 min damage to 65.
5. Nerve Gauntlet, +2 points to accuracy and dodge.
6. Recon Drone - Increase accuracy to 0 from -2, weapon skills to -20 instead of -30.
7. Droid drone - Increase dodge to 0 from -2, D.SKill to -20 instead of -40.
8. Void Sword - +3 accuracy, +15 M.skill, -10 max damage.
11. Rift guns decrease G.Skill by -15, accuracy -5.
18. Scout Drones - Accuracy to drop to 30 instead of 32.

Please test on dev if you have access to it and these items. All feedback is appreciated. Let us know after testing them yourselves if the balance has been too much in one direction or the other or they affect combat in a way other than what was intended. I'm particularly keen on hearing about the Rift/Void changes.

~Aldo

The Void Bow has a new mod slot Currently, the only upgrades compatible with that slot are Laser Sight and Poisoned Tip. Will there be more upgrades for it? Potentially, yes But I intend to let you upgrade the Void Bow in a slightly different way soon. More news on that front coming soon.

Speaking of Void Bow, transmissions between Aida and her supposed brother, Aiden, recently revealed that she's harboring a Giant Void Crystal. Earlier today, she claimed to be in possession of a limited number of Abyss Crystals as well. She said to only have a week's supply with her as of today so who knows if there's going to be anymore with her after a week?

Hope you all are enjoying the new set of minor updates (re: last blog post). For those sad that post office or exploration didn't get any kind of advanced job, you can safely hold your breath Expect to hear more on that front as well very soon.

And last but not least, the key contributors for the Phoenix Key event. Your rewards are the next thing I'm working on and they should be up early next week for you to either claim or pick up from your inventory (or void ). I've waited this long because I needed the Status Effects system and the new jobs to go up before I gave you those rewards so that you could really make good use of them.

~Aldo

A bunch of new little and big things are in today..
1. New Jobs:
a) Crystal Mining
b) X-Corp Research Lab

Each of these jobs pay more than the previous one and also drop some cool items. I hear OG Mining also drops something. With a fair number of dangerous jobs, I wonder if there's an item that can make things.. less dangerous?

2. 3 New Status Effects - these are higher tiers of the existing ones as some of you may have seen on dev. You get them by consuming a Large Power Cell, which you can get.. I wonder where?

3. Cow Bell (decreases training time for currently-training ability by 1 hour) sold for 160 wfps.

4. New item in Casino Shop for all you 1337 hackers out there.

5. 110 Badge and Banner

6. The Honing Combat Log messages have been abridged ever so slightly. If you still have a broken combat log history from it later on, PM me and I'll take care of it.

7. New Medic ability category. Medic Study has been unlocked for you if your level is greater than or equal to 20. Go to Information > Abilities to train it and then go ahead and buy/train the (currently sole) ability, Healing Touch, within the Medic category from the Hall of Knowledge. You can read the description of Healing Touch to learn more but it let's you heal a fellow gang member on the same square at the cost of focus (so avs only can unlock it for now - lowbies, don't worry we haven't forgotten about your potential to be medics!). Using /heal will also generate a new type of Combat Log message for the which can be toggled on/off under Template Control (last option - Incoming Targeting Ability).