Dev log

Warrior: a standing strike is Thrusting

For a Warrior who knows Thrusting, every standing strike (Shift + left click on desktop) is Thrusting: the Thrusting motion and slash play whether or not there's a monster, and anyone on the second tile takes the hit. Flaming Sword, Slaying and Half Moon no longer pop out of it; they're kept for the swing at a monster you click. A Thrusting hit that deals damage now raises its training, same for players and monsters, and anyone caught by Half Moon or Thrusting beyond your target plays the hit reaction along with the one in front of you.

On phones, Warriors now get two main buttons like Wizards and Taoists: Attack at the bottom left and Thrusting at the top right. Tap for one thrust, hold to keep thrusting, and there's no more relying on lucky lock-on spacing.

Taoist: poison can kill, Soul Fire trimmed

Each tick of Poisoning can now take a monster down to 0, even if the poisoner has logged off or left the map, so it no longer stops at 1 HP. Soul Fire's power is trimmed by another third, now 22–27.

Daily grinding time can be banked

Before, grinding at full rate started to fade after a few hours a day and reset the next day. Now every account banks a pool of full-rate grinding time: 6 hours are added each day, up to 42 hours, and days you miss are added too. Once the pool runs out, the next 2 hours that day pay 40%, then 10%, and that resets the next day. Bosses aren't affected.

Clearer to read, more exact to tap

• Desktop gets a minimap in the top right. Tab now cycles: off → close view → full view → minimap → off; while the minimap is on, the map name is followed by your coordinates
• On phones, a slip off a button or a swipe no longer drops your lock on a monster; only a real tap on empty ground does
• Attack mode still cycles to the next setting with one click, as you're used to
• In chat, type "/name" followed by a space and you switch straight to whispering them
• Your own sword skills and spells now show as soon as you swing, without waiting for the server, so attacks feel snappier
• Buttons that spend money show three bouncing dots while waiting for a reply, so you know the tap went through
• Market shelf cells hold short text only, a unit price under 0.01 reads "under", and trade and storage mistakes scroll in as red text
• The guild list and member table are now two lines per row so they read less cramped
• The portal home page has a new "What is 降龍" block, and the FAQ no longer says the game is desktop-only

Coral Ring and Moon in the Well now drop like ordinary gear, and the blacksmith doesn't sell them.

Skill looks, pet looks and shop looks are still being polished.

No more trial play

The play-first entry is gone from desktop, phone and the portal. To get in, register an account or log in with Telegram. Once you're in there's no level cap, and no limits on trading or gifting.

Warriors start at level 25

Warriors now start at level 25 and already know Thrusting, so there's no skill book to hunt for; that book has also been removed from the level 22–34 skill book drops. Starting levels are now set per class, and any skill within a class's starting level is known from the start. Existing characters are brought up to their class's starting level when they log in.

On phones: full screen, keyboard out of the way

• Before login you now see a "Play full screen" card: on iPhone Safari it shows three illustrated steps for adding the game to your home screen, and on Android you can tap "Add to home screen" directly. Playing full screen gives you a much bigger picture on a phone, and we recommend it
• When the keyboard comes up, the login, new user and change password cards fold into a single strip right above the keyboard, with the field and button where you can reach them, so there's no scrolling back and forth; the field you're typing in inside a dialog also scrolls back into view
• The phone login card now shows only the 降龍 logo on the left, with the explanation and any errors moved to the right
• Version updates no longer flash "Refreshing…" over and over: if several refreshes in a row still don't match, it now says "The server is updating" and tries again every so often

Look before you buy, look before you tap

• In shops, gear whose level, stats or weight requirement you don't meet yet is now compared with what you're wearing too, and the requirement line is still marked red to show you can't wear it yet; the tooltip also says "Shift to see what you're wearing"
• The party menu now follows your role: Remove from party and Disband party are only shown to the leader, and members just see Leave party

Taming Light

Taming Light can once again tame monsters regardless of skill level, up to 2 levels above you.

Skill looks, pet looks and shop looks are still being polished.

Blacksmith stock: one batch per account per day

The Blacksmith's daily stock is now per account: every character on the same account sees the same batch, and once one item is bought, it's gone for all of them. Before, you could delete and recreate characters over and over to roll fresh stock; that road is now closed.

Also, creating new accounts is now rate-limited by device and network range, so mass-creating alts isn't so easy anymore.

Keep fighting while you type

With the chat box open, your character no longer stops: chasing a target and holding the mouse to keep attacking both carry on, so chatting mid-fight doesn't interrupt you.

Overhead health bars now move along with health as it slowly regenerates, and resting pets no longer look like they're healing.

Smoother on phones

• In the joystick area: tap an item on the ground and it's picked up when you lift your finger; press and push and it's the joystick, so you can run normally even when the ground is covered in loot
• A tap without a push won't move the joystick over; when you tap a monster or long-press a player, the joystick and arc buttons stay at the bottom left
• Tapping empty ground releases a locked monster, and pressing attack locks onto the nearest one again; locked players and pets aren't released
• With the skill page open, every skill button can be removed or moved to an empty button, and the small plus on empty buttons is gone
• The Warrior attack button now uses the round Fencing icon
• Storage tabs scroll sideways in a single row, and the two columns of slots line up at the top
• Notice board text no longer runs into the frame and buttons, and Safari no longer zooms in on text automatically
• Menus are always complete and tappable; for things you can't do, tapping explains why at the top of the interface

Skill looks, pet looks and shop looks are still being polished.

Denser monsters, faster health and mana regen

Woma Temple Hall and Zuma Taurus's Lair have more regular monsters, as dense as the other floors, so you no longer have to search the whole screen for something to hit.

Mana regen in the wild, and health and mana regen in safe zones, now all take about 30 seconds to fill: fight for a while, catch your breath, and keep going.

Soul Fire nerfed

Soul Fire's own power was cut by a third, so one talisman no longer buries every other source of damage. The flask affix "Faster mana regen" was also replaced with "Shorter cooldown".

Smoother on phones

• Hold a skill button to keep casting; while repeat-casting, killing a monster switches to the nearest monster in range, and if there's none it stops casting instead of dropping lightning on yourself
• Phones can compare gear and flasks too, with ▲▼ marked in the stats area; rings and bracelets have an "Other one" option, and special rings are no longer treated as the worse one
• The phone character page and trade house now scroll as a whole column instead of snapping back a long way
• When the chat keyboard is up, the channel bar keeps only the current channel, and tapping outside closes the keyboard first
• Font sizes and buttons on phones were cleaned up: text you need to read is bigger and buttons are easier to tap

Fixed issues

• In a trade, if the other side takes something back and puts it in again, or changes a quantity, one more look lets you confirm again, instead of getting stuck on "Look at everything the other side put in first"
• The sword icon on the Warrior attack button no longer gets inverted in browsers with dark mode on
• Character names can no longer be "System" or a channel name

Skill looks, pet looks and shop looks are still being polished.

Tankier bosses, harder-won gear

Evil Pincer Bug, Evil Centipede, Tomb King, Woma Taurus and Zuma Taurus all have a lot more health, so soloing them is harder and it's worth calling a few friends to fight over them. Woma and Zuma weapons now only drop from the bosses themselves, not from regular monsters or chieftains; Zuma Taurus's chance of dropping two or more at once was brought down to about the same as Woma Taurus.

Skill books were sorted out too: mid-level monsters and Woma and Zuma drop books more often, skills you start with (like Soul Shield and Explosive Flame) no longer drop as books you can't read, and level 35 skill books are no longer guaranteed; you need luck and a fight for them. Gear sold by the Blacksmith can now occasionally have bonus stats and affixes.

Warrior feel

• Flaming Sword is now a toggle like Half Moon: while it's on, it lights itself as soon as the cooldown is up, the same against monsters and players; the "Auto-light Flaming Sword on monsters" setting is gone
• Warriors start with Fencing at level 3, Thrusting is a passive skill and no longer takes a skill slot, and Shoulder Dash moved to slot 1
• Rooted pets really stay put, in All attack mode you can hit your own pets to wake them, and Taming Light always roots your own pets

Smoother on phones

The phone joystick direction is now worked out by map cells, the same as the mouse. Before, your thumb could point one way while your character walked to the next cell over, and picking things up was often off by a cell. That's fixed.

The phone skill page shows passive skills and descriptions, and tapping or dragging swaps skills. The three-part ring around a skill button shows proficiency and training progress, and the whole ring flashes on level up. Skill slots on computer and phone now look the same. The phone trade house now has items to pick on the left and quantity and ordering on the right. On small phones with a boss around, the party on the left collapses into one row instead of piling up.

Fixed issues

• Logging out, refreshing or getting caught by an update while dead no longer has you stand back up at full health when you return: you're still dead, and you return to town as usual when the revive timer is up
• Getting hit the instant a map loads popped "Something went wrong"; fixed
• Hair no longer flickers while running
• GMs don't drop their gear when they die
• Text over monsters' heads only follows its own monster and no longer shuffles aside for others

Skill looks, pet looks and shop looks are still being polished.

Traditional Chinese, English and Japanese

The first group on the settings page now has "Language", where you can choose Traditional Chinese, English or Japanese. Interface text, item names (those that drop and those sold in the shop) and server messages are all translated, and the portal footer has a row of language names at the bottom right; on your first visit it follows your browser's language. The game's name is "降龍" in every language. My target players are overseas, so the first step is talking in words they understand. Skill and monster names are still being filled in; untranslated ones show in Chinese for now.

Log in with an account and password

The login tablet now has username, password, new user and change password, the portal has a login panel, and you can manage it on the account page too. Trial accounts can set an account and password to keep their progress. People without Telegram are no longer locked out.

Only one account per device can be in the game at a time: press "Start" with another account in the same browser, and the one already online is pulled out and told "Another account on this device entered the game". I don't want one person running multiple accounts. I also fixed a sign-up limit loophole where simultaneous requests from the same network could register several accounts at once.

Leveling three times faster, smoother mana

• Experience needed to level is now a third of the original, so the early game is less of a grind
• Mana from empty to full is now 3 minutes for all three classes
• In safe zones, health and mana refill in exactly 1 minute: the safe-zone rate replaces normal regen instead of stacking with it, so it's never faster than 1 minute
• The White Boars at Tideborn Isle's Zuma Pass have doubled, to about 14

Shoulder Dash with the original motion

Shoulder Dash used to look like a blink plus a swing. Now you charge forward cell by cell in half steps, the target is pushed back one step, and takes the hit after the push. If you can't push them, you dash into thin air in place and get a hint that your dash power isn't enough; the skill description now also explains what it takes to push at max level.

Phones and browsers

• Holding your phone upright, from the moment you open /play you're prompted to "Turn your phone sideways", and on Android there's an extra line: if that doesn't work, open it in Edge or Chrome
• On phones, amount fields bring up our own number pad, and text fields sit right above the keyboard instead of being covered
• The phone Q&A box is slimmer, character select is rearranged, and the top-right row gets out of the way while you drag to aim a skill
• After more than 5 seconds in the background, the server stops sending what's around you, and it all catches up when you return, saving battery; 60 seconds in the background counts as a disconnect
• Fixed older browsers popping "Something went wrong" on entering the game; iPhone 16.2, Chrome or Edge 111, and Firefox 121 and up can play, and older ones are told the browser is too old
• The positions of the tame and summon pet buttons and the skill cancel button on phones were adjusted too

Server move

The game servers moved as a whole to a data center in Northeast Asia, closer to players in Asia, so latency should be lower. Characters, storage and items on the ground all came across exactly as they were; nothing was lost. After the update, the page asks you to refresh once.

Skill looks, pet looks and shop looks are still being polished.

You can play 降龍 on your phone now

Phone and computer are the same game: the same URL, the same account, the same server, just a different grip. On a computer you use mouse and keyboard; on a phone, a joystick and big buttons. I've spent the last few days smoothing it out on a phone, and it now works when you open /play.

• Your left hand gets the joystick, with small run and walk buttons beside it; potions and scrolls sit on an arc above and to the right of the joystick and only trigger when you lift your finger, so sliding off turns it into the joystick and you won't drink by accident
• Your right hand gets skill buttons in rings by class: Warrior 1+3, Wizard 2+4, Taoist 2+4+6. Hold a skill button and drag to aim, long-press to enter arrange mode, and swapping skills is easy
• Tap a monster or player to lock on; in the joystick area you can also tap NPCs, tap items on the ground, and get back to a dialog
• Menu tabs moved to a column on the left, each page has a header, and the character, storage, Blacksmith, trade house, guild and shop pages are all laid out for holding the phone upright, with a description shown below whatever you tap
• Chat normally shows just 3 lines and opens to a full page with a tap; level, coordinates, battery and latency were rearranged too, and since phones have no bottom bar, there's no more readout box for the health orb and experience

I want people on phones and people on computers to fight over the same bosses in the same world, so instead of making a separate simplified version, I moved the same game's controls onto your fingers. Lots of little things are still being tuned; if something feels awkward, tell me on the notice board.

Fixed issues

• Skill buttons on phones occasionally getting stuck: if your finger is lost, the button releases automatically
• On iPhone, opening from the home screen left the view a bit short; it now fills the screen
• Guild and trade house responses no longer switch pages on their own, and tapping tabs quickly no longer switches to the wrong one

Skill looks, pet looks and shop looks are still being polished.

Play before you log in

The login tablet and the portal now have "Try first, no login". You can jump straight into the fight, and when you're hooked, click "Link Telegram" at any time to keep your progress; nothing you've earned is lost. Trial accounts have a few limits: max level 28 (with a reminder at 25), no trading, no trade house, no shop or top-ups, and items they drop can only be picked up by themselves; at most 3 per network per day, and they're deleted after 30 days offline. I want people to get a taste first, then decide whether to stay.

See what others are wearing

Open another player's menu and you can see the 8 gear slots they're wearing; their gear can also be linked in chat, and clicking the link shows it. Gear links in chat lost their underline, light up on mouse-over, and get a space between them automatically when two sit side by side. Weapon art is now centered on the blade instead of looking off to the left.

Luck and curses

• Luck only comes from weapons: each strike has a chance to deal maximum damage, and luck counts up to 7 at most
• Blessing Oil drops from the Woma jewelry pool and isn't sold in shops. Right-click to use it on the weapon in your hand; each weapon can take it at most 7 times, each with only a 10% chance of luck +1. A miss just does nothing; it never takes luck away
• Killing a player has a chance to curse you for 30 minutes, during which luck does nothing; repeat kills stack, and the timer only runs while you're online. Right-click a Blessing Oil to take 30 minutes off a curse
• The status bar now has a curse icon, and luck also shows in the all stats tooltip

I want PK to have a cost without one bad roll ruining someone forever, so the curse sits on the person, not the weapon. The Memory Helmet and Memory Ring also joined the Woma jewelry pool.

Darker nights, caves darker the deeper you go

Nights on the mainland are a bit darker, and Tideborn Isle, which wasn't following the day-night cycle before, now does. Caves also get darker the deeper you go: the deep floors of Zuma Temple, Zuma Taurus's Lair and Woma Temple Hall are all dimmer. The glow around lamps and people now fades softly out to black instead of showing square edges.

Monsters and combat

• Three new kinds of zombies that revive, getting back up on their own after dying; the old "Zombie" is renamed Lightning Zombie; the Corpse Demon Cave area now has packs of skeletons and chieftains
• Hiding only keeps monsters from finding you; area attacks still hit hidden players
• Self-cast skills like Hiding no longer target the monster under the mouse
• Healing on pets: even a full-health pet shows the heal visual, and casting it at a monster or NPC still counts as a cast
• Daily hunting returns now diminish harder: 40% after 4 hours, 10% after 6 hours, and bosses are still never reduced

Other

• New Wizards no longer start with a Magic Helmet they can't wear
• The Blacksmith says a line when opening shop, rotating through three lines per person per day
• Skill looks, pet looks and shop looks are still being polished

Notice board: post feedback right in the game

There's a notice board on Tideborn Isle now; click it to open. You can write feedback or like other people's posts. Posts with more likes rank higher, and only the last seven days are listed. I read every one, and useful ones get rewarded with 降龍 coins directly; out-of-line posts get hidden, and repeat offenders get muted. Each account has a daily limit on posts and likes, so there's no need to post the same issue ten times: just like it.

Botting no longer pays

I can't ban every bot script, so first I'm making them not worth it. Once an account has spent 4 hours a day hunting with rewards, experience, gold and drops are halved; after 6 hours, only 20% is left. Standing in town chatting or running a stall doesn't count, and bosses are never reduced, so people fighting over bosses don't lose out. Each time you hit a new tier, chat tells you plainly; nothing is cut behind your back. If you play two or three hours a day, you'll basically never hit this line.

Also, free accounts without this season's pass can no longer trade face to face or use the trade house, items they drop on the ground can only be picked up by themselves, and they can hold at most 50,000 gold between character and storage. Buying the pass lifts all of this. And nobody can drop items in safe zones anymore.

Tougher chieftains, bigger drops

The four kinds of chieftains got clearly stronger health, attack and defense, so fighting them no longer feels like fighting a large regular monster. They always drop one or two pieces of regular gear on death, and there are a lot more regular monsters around Zuma. Evil Centipede and Evil Pincer Bug attack went up too.

Drops and gear

• Regular gear is merged into one big pool that every kind of monster can drop from, so new players can get decent gear too
• The Silver Bracelet and Warding Bracelet are back, dropped by every kind of monster
• Level 22 to 34 skill books drop more easily
• Affix and bonus stat odds were adjusted, and bonus stats add at most 2 points per stat
• Gear with bonus stats or affixes sells to NPCs for more
• Monsters like Big Rats, Dung Beetles and Scorpion Snakes are back in the beast and insect families, so the "damage to beasts" and "damage to insects" affixes are finally useful
• The Blacksmith no longer sells Yama Gloves, belts or boots, and the skill book chance is slightly higher

Other

• On the Tab map, monsters you're fighting show as red dots and your own pets as blue dots; some necklace and helmet affixes let you see farther. You can turn this off in settings
• Teleport works the original way: it sends you to a random spot on this side's mainland, and casting it in a cave takes you straight out
• Removed the unused "Trade" chat channel
• Turn Undead · Deliverance only plays its full soul-pulling visual when it actually kills the monster

Skill looks, pet looks and shop looks are still being polished.

Gear now rolls affixes

A small share of gear dropped by monsters comes with one extra affix, spelled out in the item tooltip. Some add a twist to a skill: Half Moon can chain into Slaying, Slaying occasionally strikes an extra time, Thunderbolt jumps to a nearby monster, Soul Fire flies from a dead monster on to the next one, and Healing can heal pets; Wizards get things like a Turn Undead chance and longer Magic Shield. Others hit a type of monster harder, give more experience, drop a bit more gold and so on.

Each piece of gear has at most one. If you wear the same affix more than once, only the highest counts; the others turn gray in the tooltip and tell you which item is overriding them.

Bonus stats

Gear dropped by monsters now has a chance to roll extra stat points, at the original odds. Boosted numbers show in bright gold, and holding Alt shows the base values. The character page has a new "All stats" tooltip that shows your total bonuses at a glance.

Drop pillars and big drops

• Good items on the ground get gold or purple pillars of light, each in small and large, so you can tell at a glance whether it's worth running over; Normal quality no longer gets a pillar
• The Teleport Ring, Invisibility Ring, Paralysis Ring, Revival Ring, Protection Ring and Skill Necklace are fixed Unique items: they never roll bonus stats or affixes and drop with a crimson pillar; the Locating Necklace too
• When bosses and chieftains die, their gold drops in several piles of different sizes, finders keepers; bosses also drop extra starter and regular gear, and Zuma's drop pillar is split into small and large
• Regular monster flask drop chance went from 3% down to 1%

Interface

• The character page shows your gear, play time and learned skills: hover or click a gear slot and its stats appear in the white card below; skills are split into active and passive, with level, proficiency and how much is left to the next level
• Gear slots whose requirements you don't meet show a grayed-out icon with red diagonal stripes, so you know right away you can't wear it
• Fixed the right-click player menu not closing
• Went over wording, colors and spacing across the whole interface again, about twenty fixes

Still polishing

Skill looks, pet looks and shop looks are still being polished.

More chieftains, and they're awake

Woma Temple Hall used to have no chieftains at all; now it has a batch, and there are plenty more around Zuma, spawning in waves every so often. Zuma Guardian Chieftains and Zuma Statue Chieftains spawn awake, no longer stuck gray and unhittable. Regular Zuma statues still wake when you get close.

Chieftain levels were also reworked, low to high by map: Woma Fighter Chieftain 40, Woma Guardian Chieftain in the low 40s, and the Zuma ones around 42–43. Taming Light can't tame chieftains: cast it on one and you'll see "Taming Light cannot tame a chieftain", and the skill description says so too.

Regen, the Blacksmith and drops

• Health and mana regen is faster in safe zones: about 60 seconds from empty to full; it stops when you leave the safe zone, and health doesn't regen while poisoned
• Flask healing went up a tier
• The Blacksmith no longer sells shop looks or shop items, the low-level stock is narrower, and a few specific items were added on top
• Giant Bugbats give very little experience now, no longer free big experience
• Items dropped on the ground are laid out the classic way: starting at the top left, row by row, left to right
• Mana cost, power and interval for the later skills were checked against the standard

Feel and hints

• Casting turns you toward the mouse first, and summons appear on the mouse's side
• Shop looks you buy are put on the character who bought them automatically
• When you die, chat lists everything you dropped: equipped and bag items separately, each one clickable to inspect
• When your pet is killed, you're told who, where, and by whom
• Fixed the game occasionally freezing completely; if the server side drops and the screen stops moving, you now reconnect automatically
• The portal's account page now has a pick-on-the-left, view-on-the-right layout, and kills on the character page are laid out more clearly

Still polishing

Fixed a few spots in the Hiding, Magic Shield and other skill looks: the first cast no longer plays empty, and recasting still draws on your character. Looks are still being polished.

Chieftains are here

The temples and Tideborn Isle have a new batch of "chieftains": Scorpion Snake Chieftain, Evil Snake Chieftain, Woma Guardian Chieftain, Zuma Guardian Chieftain, Zuma Statue Chieftain… They're beefed-up versions of regular monsters, with their own kin's sounds. Each map spawns a wave every so often, and they hit much harder than the rest of their kind. Zuma Taurus also has a chance to call Zuma chieftains to its aid.

Zuma statues look more like statues

Zuma Guardians, Zuma Statues and their chieftains are just gray stone while asleep. When someone comes close, the stone cracks and the monster wakes, and nearby statues wake with it. Once awake, they never turn back.

Maps and monsters

• Tideborn Isle, Woma Temple and Zuma Temple are fully populated; outside Tideborn Isle there are now Red Boars, Black Boars and Bone Elites
• Woma Taurus, Zuma Taurus, Tomb King, Evil Centipede and Evil Pincer Bug all have boss spawns, each with its own drops
• The Bull Demon King has a new fighting style: cleaving strikes, blinking away when surrounded, and staged berserk at low health; Fang Spiders now back off
• Most bosses no longer announce their spawns; only world bosses do
• Skill books start dropping from mid-level monsters, and level 35 books can show up around Woma too
• Town Scrolls and Random Teleport Scrolls no longer drop from monsters

Feel and interface

• Experience from kills is shown right on the exp bar: the filled stretch lights up, "+N exp" appears at the right end, and hovering shows the exact numbers
• Death messages now include coordinates, so you know exactly where you died
• Pets follow you through portals and when you use a Town Scroll to another scene
• Taming Light's description now lists which monsters it can tame, and ones that are too strong tell you "It is too strong to tame"; pet kinds can't be tamed
• Fixed the bag page not showing weight right after logging in
• Character pages are live on the portal: click a character on the account page to see this season's kills, with bosses and elites listed first

Numbers

Monster and gear stats were checked against the standard across the board, with small tweaks to many monsters' health and experience and to gear stats. Skill looks are still being polished.

Rings and gear

• The Teleport Ring and Invisibility Ring are back: the Teleport Ring uses @移动 x y to move you to those coordinates on the current map, with a 10-second cooldown; wear the Invisibility Ring and monsters can't see you, while other players see you as translucent
• The Gold Ring, Sturdy Gloves and Mana Bracelet are back, with the old 1.76 stats
• Requirement cells you don't meet turn red at the bottom: level, attack, magic or spirit, you can tell at a glance; when you level up or your stats change, open windows update their colors on the spot

Combat and rules

• Pets scale with spirit: for Summon Skeleton and Summon Shinsu, each extra point of the master's spirit adds a bit of attack and health, and pets update the moment your spirit changes
• Poison evasion is now a percentage like magic evasion, 10% per point, capped at 90%, covering Poisoning, the Paralysis Ring and monster poison
• PK points on the character page now count kills: each kill adds 1, at 2 you turn red, and every 200 minutes online clears 1; PK points color your name accordingly
• Killers only get 10% of the victim's carried gold, and bosses no longer have personal drops
• Stay in a safe zone for 10 seconds after returning to town and your flask refills; quick slot refills keep ticking while you're logged out
• Odds are now all percentages; drops, Turn Undead and the remaining dice rolls have all been converted. Turn Undead no longer draws aggro from monsters that aren't undead

Interface

• You can link gear in chat, and chat history survives teleports and reconnects
• Chat takes up at most a third of the screen; item and skill tooltips no longer cover the health orb, chat or windows, and shift step by step toward the edge when they don't fit
• Comparison tooltips spell out which ring is upper or lower and which bracelet is left or right, and the "Worn" tab moved outside the frame
• Clicking an NPC whose window is already open no longer closes and reopens it, and the open sound only plays once
• When buying from an NPC, if the gold in your bag isn't enough, the rest comes out of storage
• Your guild is loaded as soon as you log in, and with "Always show guild and title" on, your own 〈Guild〉 shows over your head too

Maps and monsters

• Tideborn Isle's two cave entrances now lead to Woma Temple and Zuma Temple, and both temples are now public maps
• The Millennium Tree Demon got its collapsing death animation; the Blood Zombie and Blood Giant Fiend now behave like themselves again: reviving and walking around Fire Wall belong to the Blood Zombie, and the Blood Giant Fiend no longer counts as undead
• The Blood Giant Fiend uses the Blood Giant's sounds
• Caves are always dark, lit only by lamps, torches and the glow around people

The Twin Aura visuals are still being polished.

Feel

• Auto loot: anything you can pick up on cells you walk or run over goes straight into your bag, no more clicking cell by cell. Items still protected for someone else aren't picked up, and the middle of the screen tells you how many seconds are left
• Faster mana regen: empty to full went from 5 minutes to 3; no regen for 9 seconds after casting still applies
• Cast range went from 8 cells to 10: if you can see a target, you can pretty much hit it
• Healing casts on whatever you point at: pets, monsters and NPCs can all be targeted, and the server decides whether it heals based on your attack mode
• NPC talk range widened to 15 cells

Combat

• Shinsu fire breath and monster spells now only deal damage once the visual actually reaches you, instead of losing health before you see the fire. Monster weapon sounds now play at the moment of the hit too
• Magic evasion now covers every harmful skill, capped at 90%, with its own line on the character page
• Town archers now behave like Guards: they only shoot red names and whoever strikes first, not monsters or pets; hit one of them and every archer nearby shoots you
• Poisoned monsters no longer turn around to chase whoever poisoned them
• Pets are visible again after you reconnect
• Bloodred Demon Sword and Fury Blade stats were re-checked against the references

Blacksmith and interface

• The Blacksmith no longer sells the original potions: one flask a day (with a chance to roll affixes), and sometimes an extra skill book for levels 22–34. The day's stock is kept on your character, so updates and pushes won't swap it out mid-day
• Buying checks your gold first and says exactly how much you're short; the shop asks before you spend 降龍 coins
• Items you just sold aren't lost to a disconnect, an update or a portal; they only clear when you log out yourself
• Gold sounds as in the original: a sound plays whenever your gold changes, but not for gold from monsters; putting gold into storage or a trade makes a sound too. Window buttons now make sounds as well
• The map name stays in a fixed spot and windows simply cover it; NPCs on the Tab map are just triangles, with names on mouse-over
• Player overheads now show the name on top with the health bar right above the head, the same as monsters
• Names and health bars over large monsters no longer bounce up and down when they attack or get hit
• The settings and looks pages are now web pages, and a bug with buying with 降龍 coins on the trade house is fixed

Monsters

• Filled in death and hit animations for a batch of monsters, swapped a few monsters to more accurate looks, and went over the sounds once more

Skill looks and shop looks are still being polished.

Skill books and casting rhythm

• Skills below level 22 are learned automatically when you reach their level; skills from 22 up come from dropped skill books: right-click one in your bag to read it, and the skill is learned and added to your skill bar; if you can't read it, the reason shows in the middle of the screen. The Wizard's Explosive Flame is still learned at 22
• The minimum gap between casts is a bit longer, so casting isn't quite as fast
• No mana regen for 9 seconds after casting: keep casting and it never comes back; stop for 9 seconds and it starts slowly returning. Wizards have to budget their mana
• Vampirism now steals life: on a hit it heals you for 30% of the damage you actually dealt. Its skill book isn't in yet, so it can't be learned for now

A batch of changes for all three classes

Checked against the original source code, a batch of skill details were corrected: Soul Shield and Blessed Armor durations, Shoulder Dash no longer leaving people halfway, Thrusting only counting the second cell if someone is there, Fire Wall no longer making monsters pause, and sword skills only gaining proficiency when they deal damage. Ultimate Enhancer used to be uncastable; now it works, and it boosts your own spirit.

Skill proficiency is harder now too: training points come in three tiers, small for ordinary skills, more for core ones, and the most for skills that gain on every hit, so no skill maxes out in a couple of casts. Trap Hexagon lost the pillar of light on hit: nothing flashes if it fails to trap, and only a successful trap shows the fence.

Monsters

• Shinsu and Bone Familiar health and attack now use the original numbers; Shinsu's attack counts as magic, so it has to roll to hit and is reduced by magic defense
• Poison Spider and Sand Worm spit now deals magic damage too
• Guard attack and defense are back to private-server numbers, and Tideborn Isle has a few more Guards
• Monster levels no longer show over their heads or in the target frame

Interface

• Press Tab for the map: the whole map shows at once in faint gray lines, you're a dot, and NPCs and exits have their own marks; the minimap in the top right uses the same lines
• The shop has a new "Items" section with the Rename Card: right-click it in your bag to rename
• Wanted status is gone: a red name is the outlaw, with no more server-wide announcement or red dot on the map
• Things you can't do no longer spam chat; they show in the middle of the screen instead, and guild page and trade house results are written on the page
• The four corners of an item tooltip change with quality: Magic, Rare and Unique each have their own style; flask, Town Scroll and Random Teleport Scroll tooltips sit above the stone panel instead of covering the health and mana orb
• Party cards now show the class as a short mark before the name (Wa / Wi / Ta)
• Arrows now fly from the hand instead of the feet

Skill looks and shop looks are still being polished.

More impact in combat

• Getting hit makes you flinch for a moment, and during that instant you can't walk, attack or cast; the higher your level, the shorter the flinch
• Monsters stagger when hit too, and pause for a moment when struck by a spell or knocked back
• Left-click a monster once and you keep attacking, even after letting go, and you'll run over to chase it from a few cells away
• Swing and hit sounds are sorted by weapon, and getting hit and dying have separate male and female cries
• Items on the ground flash every few seconds, and corpses are drawn beneath living characters
• Doors built into maps now open and close: walk up and the door opens first, then shuts by itself a few seconds later

Monster ownership and death

• A monster's experience and loot go to whoever hits it first, and only pass to someone else after 6 seconds without a hit from them, so kill stealing is less of a mess
• Death drops were reworked: each equipped item has a small chance to drop, doubled at high PK points; items in your bag drop more often; red names drop everything
• PK points drop by 1 every 2 minutes, and corpses stay on the ground for 3 minutes
• Hiding breaks on any step you walk or run, but not when you attack or cast
• Fighting monsters more than ten levels below you gives less and less experience
• Yellow names are gone; names are now only white, gray or red

Guild wars and free PK zones

Guild leaders can declare war on another guild from the guild page or the right-click menu. The other side doesn't have to agree, and the war lasts for a while. During the war, both sides see each other in the "enemy" color, and kills between them add no PK points, though deaths still drop items as usual.

Maps now have "free PK zones": killing inside adds no PK points, attacking someone doesn't turn you gray, and dying drops nothing.

Monsters act more like themselves

Statues, monsters buried underground, monsters that revive, monsters that self-destruct, monsters that go berserk at low health, and monsters that blink away when surrounded now each have their own temperament. Their hits may paralyze or poison you, or knock you out of hiding. Later I also added spawning minions, summoning a wave when health drops, life steal, running from players, pulling you to them, and jumping onto you. Each monster gets its own set, and it can all be tuned in the editor at any time.

Pets changed too: they no longer go looking for monsters on their own, they die when their master dies, and summoned pets get faster with skill level. Wild monsters can see pets within 3 cells. Summon Skeleton and Summon Shinsu now appear in the cell right in front of you.

Gear, levels and weight

• The level cap is 45, and the experience per level is based on how long each level should take to play
• Added wrist strength and weight limits: gear you can't carry shows the missing stat in red in its tooltip
• The Paralysis Ring, Revival Ring and Protection Ring are back in the item list
• Removed the few remaining armors above level 40
• Amounts always use thousands separators, and durations show at most two units, like 2 h 41 min

Shop gifts, top-ups and character names

Every pass and look in the shop now has a "Gift" button next to it, and you can pick the recipient from your party, your guild or nearby players. You can gift someone who's offline; if nobody sees it, they get a Telegram notification, and the account page has a "Gifts" section too. Top-ups are now open.

Character names may only use common Chinese characters, letters and digits, and look-alike letters (like capital I and lowercase l) count as duplicates, so nobody can impersonate anyone.

Rebuilding the foundations behind the scenes

Each public scene now has its own server, so a crowded mainland won't drag down other maps. Saving now records each event as it happens instead of saving the whole character at once, so unexpected disconnects and server updates are less likely to lose anything.

Looks are still being polished

The Wizard skill looks went through a few more rounds. They're still in review, and each one goes on sale as soon as it passes.

Server updates no longer kick you offline all the time

It used to be that every time I pushed code, everyone online got disconnected for a moment. Now the game server is split out on its own: updates that only touch art, the portal or the editor go completely unnoticed. Only real changes to the game rules disconnect you once, with "The server updated, back in a moment…" on screen and an automatic reconnect. A real network drop and a server update are now told apart, too. When the game page has a new version, a line at the top says "Update available, click here to refresh".

Elites are back to simple

The 17 elite affixes are gone entirely. An elite is now just the monster itself: a blue name, a mark in the target frame, and a flask drop when it dies. Its strength comes only from its own stats and skills, with no hidden bonuses. The "Elite monsters" box on the portal became "All-new monsters".

Wizard skills and Fire Wall

• Wizards no longer learn Fireball, Hellfire, Great Fireball or Explosive Flame, making room for skills more worth training
• A newer Fire Wall overrides an older one: the new wall takes over the old wall's cells, that old fire slowly dies out, and the old wall's other cells keep burning
• The Dragon Crystal and Golden-Wing Butterfly are back in the monster list

A press that does nothing now tells you why

Skill slots, the flask slot and scroll slots share one kind of hint: when a press can't go through, the icon tilts and rights itself, and the reason pops at that spot, like seconds left, not enough mana, full health, or not allowed on this map. No more relying on a line in chat.

Sound and interface details

• Equipping and removing gear, and picking up or putting down items in the bag, storage and face-to-face trade, all have their own item sounds, different for weapons, armor, rings and potions
• Empty gear slots on the character page no longer show text, just the slot
• Panel tab hotkeys now always show to the left of the tab
• Cooldowns and remaining time on skill slots, the flask slot and the status bar are now drawn the same way, flashing briefly as they run out instead of turning red
• Poison spreads more slowly while you're poisoned, taking about 2 seconds to cover your whole body

Gear data

Zuma and Red Moon jewelry and weapons now have stats: where the official Korean site's encyclopedia matches, they follow it, and the rest is our own call.

Looks are still being polished

The Wizard and Warrior skill looks and the Summon Skeleton and Summon Shinsu looks went through a few more rounds. They're still in review, and each one goes on sale as soon as it passes.

Steadier mana regen

Mana now comes back in a small sip every 2 seconds. Whatever your level, empty to full takes 5 minutes, the same for all three classes. It used to come back in big chunks far apart: halfway through a fight the bar would suddenly jump, which made the pacing hard to manage. Now you can work out how long you'll last.

Fire Wall really burns on the ground now

Fire Wall now sets 5 cells alight: the target cell plus the ones above, below, left and right. Standing on it hits you every 3 seconds until it burns out. It used to be a one-off area hit; now you can use it to block a path or pin someone down.

Smoother casting

• Attack skills can be cast on empty ground: they still cost mana, single-target ones fly on, and Thunderbolt strikes that cell
• Shift + left click: swing in place toward the mouse, for any class; Thrusting, Half Moon and Flaming Sword still trigger on a miss
• Magic Shield, Hiding and Mass Hiding can be extended by recasting in their last 5 seconds; when one is about to run out, its skill slot gets a slowly breathing gold edge
• Recasting while a shield or hiding is still up is no longer refused or freezes your character; it just costs mana as usual
• Casting Soul Shield, Blessed Armor or Healing on yourself with the mouse on your character now lands at your feet instead of flying over your head
• Area skills like Mass Hiding land on the cell under the mouse instead of only hiding you; casting again never makes the effect worse, it keeps the longer duration
• Skill slot cooldown numbers now show the real seconds left; before, every skill counted down from 10
• An idle Shinsu lies back down on its own

Teleport, scrolls, potions, footsteps

Teleport now has its missing teleport moment: a sound when you leave and a ring of blue light where you land. Random Teleport Scroll, Town Scroll and potion visuals and sounds were all matched to the official client: scrolls raise a pillar of light where you stand and a ring of light where you land, and potions share one sound that only you hear. Footsteps follow the official client too, with left and right feet by ground type and separate walking and running sounds.

Day, night and darkness

Maps now have day and night. Daytime is a little darker than before, the mainland has dusk, night and dawn, and after dark lamps light up the ground around them. Skill visuals, glowing outfits and weapons, and drop pillars aren't dimmed by the night: they keep their true colors after dark.

Interface

• Every panel uses the same header and the same fonts: brush-script page titles, consistent top and side margins, and a two-column settings page
• Disbanding a party, removing a member, disbanding a guild, buying in the shop with 降龍 coins and the like now ask in a small confirm box first: Enter confirms, Esc cancels
• Settings has two new toggles, "Monster names and health bars" and "Player health bars", and "Restore defaults" now resets the whole page, not just hotkeys
• Coordinates are no longer always on screen; you can see them in the Tab map, where party members on the same map show as dots in the party color with their names
• The welcome message only shows on a new character's first login, and it's shorter
• Fixed settings toggles not updating when clicked; asset requests now retry automatically on a shaky network, so one dropout no longer leaves missing art

Data checked against the Korean official site

Requirements, weight and stats for 56 pieces of gear, and experience for 40 monsters, were filled in from the official Korean site's encyclopedia.

Skill looks are still being polished

The Wizard and Warrior looks were redone several more times these past two days. They're still in review, and each one ships as soon as it passes.

Death is quieter now

Dying no longer pops a big box over the screen. In the center there's just "You died" in large brush-script letters, who killed you, and the countdown to town, now 5 seconds instead of 3, so you can see how you went down. Where you died, what you dropped and how much gold you lost become one system line in chat; click "[Death review]" for details. The red at the screen edges when you're nearly dead also slowly fades to gray.

Flasks are no longer an invincible safety net

Flasks are nerfed: fewer charges and a bit less healing per use, and the instant heal restores noticeably less than before. Flask refill now depends on the map, and Healing and Mass Healing now heal over time instead of topping you off at once. In the Legend loop, your health is the stake you put on the line to fight for a boss. If it's too easy to refill, the fighting loses its bite.

Trap Hexagon as in the original

Only when a monster is actually trapped do 8 pillars of light rise into an octagonal fence, and it stays up until the monster breaks free; a trapped monster's name changes color. Poison and burn damage no longer free it; only a real hit does. That last part follows private-server behavior.

When a press does nothing

When a skill is on cooldown or you're out of mana, the skill slot shakes instead of spamming chat. "Too far" now fades in and out above the status bar. The system messages for attacking and casting are gone too, and chat is much cleaner.

Login and character select

Character select is back to the original early small character art. The login and character select screens now fill the window at any size, with the original background music that fades out as you enter the game. The account page was reorganized: login is a single button that opens Telegram directly, with a QR code on computers without Telegram.

Other small things

• Monster names and overhead health bars sit on top of each monster's own head instead of over its body
• Fixed large monster art breaking the screen
• Renamed Young Dragon God and Dragon God

Skill looks are still being polished

The Warrior and Wizard skill looks went through several more rounds these past few days. They're still in review, and each one ships as soon as it passes.

Monsters cast skills now

The original client has 252 monsters with their own effects, and I went through them frame by frame: 127 were worth giving skills, 149 skills in total. Zuma Taurus, Woma Taurus, the Demon Dragon Armorbreaker and the Fire Dragon Spider each have their own moves, and dragons like the Azure Dragon King and the Gold-Scaled Coiled Dragon get two each. Every visual comes from that monster's own original effects in its own art library; none are borrowed from another monster. Monster sounds are now the original audio too, each monster with its own set.

While at it I removed 8 monsters whose names started with "Noma": those were private-server names on recolored art from other monsters. 降龍 only keeps what actually exists in the client.

Storage

One storage per account, shared by all your characters. Click the storage NPC and the chest opens right away, with no dialogue to page through: deposit on the left, withdraw on the right.

Party bar

The party leader has a crown, and you can leave or disband right from the bar. Gold dropped in a party is split evenly and automatically, no more picking it up and shouting. Area buffs and group heals now pick their targets by your attack mode: Peace buffs everyone, Guild only your guild, Good/Evil skips gray and red names, Party only your party.

Try it on in the shop first

Shop outfits, weapons and hats are no longer a flat item icon. They're drawn on your own character standing there wearing them, glow effects included. For the Dragon God and Dragon Bones pet looks, each proficiency level has its own form, so you can see at a glance what it grows into at each level.

Skill looks are still being polished

Soul Shield · Soul Wall was redone as a translucent soul veil that rises over everyone it shields. Healing, Poisoning and Soul Fire looks now sit at the same height as in the original instead of floating at your feet or above your head. These looks are in review, and each one ships as soon as it passes.

Start at level 22

Everyone has killed the chickens and deer in the starter village countless times. Now new characters start right at level 22 and head out in a full set of starter gear: Warriors get Asura, Wizards get Crescent Moon, Taoists get Demon Subduer. Skills below level 30 are learned automatically when you reach their level. Starter gear sells to shops for just 1 gold and can't be traded.

Flasks

No more potion shops. There's a flask slot at the top left of the health orb. A flask has charges and a cooldown, and used charges refill on their own after a while. In PK, what matters is when you drink, not who hoarded the most potions.

Flasks only drop from monsters, in five tiers, each healing more than the last. Good flasks roll affixes: faster refill, an extra charge, a full heal in one gulp… Bosses occasionally drop Dragon Dew, which has unlimited charges and only a cooldown.

Pets

Ctrl+A switches your pets between "Attack" and "Rest", just like the original. Once a Taoist has the maximum number of pets, casting the summon again pulls them back to your side.

Automatic reconnect

A web page drops its connection more easily than a client: switching Wi-Fi or putting your computer to sleep will do it. Now you don't need to refresh. A "Reconnecting" notice shows at the top of the screen, and once it's back you're dropped right into your character. If you disconnect in the wild, your character stays put and only logs out once out of combat, so don't count on disconnecting to dodge damage.

Log in with Telegram

No sign-up, no password. Click "Log in with Telegram", confirm in Telegram, and you're in. If your computer doesn't have Telegram, scan the QR code on screen with your phone. The login screen is still the original temple gate, and character select and creation are still the original stone tablets.

Parties and guilds

Right-click a player to invite them to a party. Nearby party members split experience evenly, with a bonus for bigger parties, and whoever in the party kills a monster, the whole party can loot it. You can found a guild in the main town for 100,000 gold.

Trade house

Good gear can be listed on the trade house on consignment. The system holds the item, the gold goes to your storage when it sells, and the seller doesn't need to be online.

PK

When you die you may drop gear, and red names drop more. Kills aren't spammed to the whole server, but each side's guild channel gets one line: who killed whom, on which map and floor, and what dropped. Your guildmates in town see it and know where to run.

The red name with the most kills and the highest PK points is wanted server-wide, with their position marked on the map. The system pays no bounty: the reward is whatever drops off them.

The Legend I want to play is the one from internet cafés over a decade ago: Warrior, Wizard, Taoist, hacking at monsters, gear drops, fighting over bosses, PK. But when you go back to it now, the first thing that drives you away is that bottom bar. It takes up a quarter of the screen.

降龍 still uses the original art, but the engine is written from scratch. The controls are tucked into a small block at the bottom center: a health and mana orb on the left, two rows of skill slots on the right, and the rest of the screen goes to the game.

Press and it happens

Walking, attacking, casting: you can press before the previous action ends, and it fires the moment it's ready, with no stutter when you chain inputs. The choppy feel of the original is gone, but how fast you can act is still up to the server. Editing the client won't speed you up.

Elite monsters

Out in the wild you'll run into elites with affixes: fire, cold, life steal, poison, paralysis, blink, explode on death… 17 in all, and one monster can stack several. They're tougher, and they drop better loot.

Open a web page and play

No download, no launcher. Windows or Mac, it's the same: just open it in your computer's browser.