I think it's about time I made this post, so here goes. I've hidden away my personal life from the internet for quite a while but it's probably about time I did an official update. This is my last day in the office until June 9th. So all updates and ticket responses will be on hold until then.

This week-end I'll be getting married followed by a week long honeymoon. Hoofmaster is my best man for the wedding and a few other guys from the office will be involved as well. I've been with my future wife for nearly 2 years and I'm excited to embark on the next stage of my life as I become a husband and a step father.

We've all grown up with this game, none more so than myself. It's been my honor and my privilege to be part of this community and it has shaped my life in ways I never imagined when I began. Thank you all for your continued time investment and your patience. It was direct payments from Legacy that allowed me to sneak away money to buy an engagement ring and without you guys I'd never be where I am today.

To give you an update on what I've been doing, in March I completely scrapped our Guide system - it wasn't working and new players where waiting days to get anything from a guide. This system was originally set up in 2007/08 and hasn't been changed, I figured I could do better and each guide now has access to live signups and minor access to our staff channel and a better budget to better deal with newbies with a live database that is changed and updated by guides, with a newbie having an entry on it when they sign up.

After 2 months I'm proud to say its a success, we seem to be holding new players around for longer and we've sent out over 3k of meds to new players to help them level. I suggest that gangs revamp their newbie systems and stop relying on lists to be posted or newbies assigned to a personal rank 11.

Another thing upcoming is 2 forums being coded into Legacy, I can only speak about a public one for now as the other hasn't been 100% finalised but we're going to add a trading forum to legacy - the one thing we don't have, meaning you can advertise your market - Hold offers or sell in bulk to the game community.

Last thing is the new filter, we have a long list of words to go through and I will sometime next week and clear things up, my best advice is to just not avoid the filter or test it...

With a Bank Holiday for us in the UK Tomorrow I suspect if you're waiting for anything from HCS it wont be until Tuesday, tickets will be unlocked to us on Tuesday so we can't do anything until then!

I've been playing about with the combat simulator all morning and have finally settled on initial stats for crystals. The system is going to be coded in a way that it can be changed at a later date if it is found to be unbalanced or leads to a lack of variety in crystal usage.

I'll leave it to players to work out the best crystals for the best items as it's incredibly complicated and situational. I imagine it will be possible to tailor make your item set-up to defeat certain players, for example... the exact usefulness of damage is based on your opponents armor and hit points. Having more speed or damage than required renders any excess useless and so on.

Fragments and Shards will not be socketable and can only be used to make larger crystals.

Null (Speed), Pink (Def), Orange (Melee), Green (Gun) and Yellow (Proj) Crystals:
Small +4%, Medium +8%, Large +12%, Giant +16%, Perfect +20%

Void (Armor) and Fire (Damage) Crystals:
Small +2%, Medium +4%, Large +6%, Giant +8%, Perfect +10%

Air (Accuracy) and Water (Dodge) Crystals:
Small +1%, Medium +2%, Large +3%, Giant +4%, Perfect +5%

I'm going to release with these values and no diminishing returns for stacking crystals on one items. Any changes to the system will come with free unsocketing of items.

The percentages of all socketed crystals will be added up before being applied. So 4 perfect fire crystals will grant +40% min and max damage on a weapon. Still lots to code and test, feedback is welcome and things will be tested on the Dev server before being implemented here.

Back in the office finally, although it's technically a bank holiday. More information about the crystal stats will be coming soon. For now I've added the gift boxes for this year, bit of new art work for you guys instead of the usual change of colours.

I've created a one off crystal crown to celebrate our move towards crystal socketed items along with a new gift box design (spared every expense)... Have fun!