PATCH Nov 2: Stack & Sort, personal dungeon loot, dungeon scaling, new graphics, weekly events

Adventurers, this is a big one. Your bag is easier to manage, dungeon loot is now yours, dungeons fit your group, the game looks sharper, and the week gets a fixed rhythm of events. Update with the launcher and read on for the details.

Inventory and loot

Your bag has new Stack and Sort buttons. Stack merges split stacks; Sort merges first and then orders the bag by type. Sort has a 3 second cooldown and does not work while trading or casting. Both are also chat commands, /stack and /sort. On top of that, auto-stack merges picked-up items, rewards, trades and storage withdrawals into your existing stacks, and with a full bag, picking up fills partial stacks. /autostone uses your HP/SP stones automatically; type /help to see how.

Boss loot in dungeons is now personal: it is rolled per player. Your drop is yours alone for 90 seconds, then it is free for all, and it disappears after 180 seconds. Loot is also smarter: drop chances scale with your group, gear fits your class and level, and every run without a drop raises your chance a little. Pickup reach has doubled, so you collect drops from about twice as far. Pickup pets reach 300, pick up nearby drops on their own about once a second and take the best item first (money and stackables still go in with a full bag).

Dungeons and events

Dungeons now adapt to your party size, so you can run them solo or with a small group. At the end of a dungeon the ranking window shows each player's damage, and Dungeon Times and Dungeon Damage rankings appear on the website after the first ranked clear.

The week now has three fixed events, every week (UTC): on Wednesday from 18:00 to 20:00 the Midweek EXP Rush gives 1.5x EXP; on Friday from 18:00 to 20:00 KQ Night gives 1.5x EXP and drops, with an extra Emperor Slime quest at 19:00; and on Sunday from 18:00 to 20:00 Double Drops gives 2x drops. You get a notice 1 hour and 5 minutes before each. Dropped items on the ground, monster respawns and running dungeons now survive a game server restart. You also see players and monsters from twice as far.

Just starting out? Low-level characters get bonus EXP from monsters, and every account gets a one-time starter pack of bound items. The Halloween event has ended: Roumen and the Halloween NPCs, quests and maps are back to normal.

Wedding works from proposal to ceremony, with married skills and divorce. A booked wedding hall survives game server restarts, and a refused divorce refunds your money at once.

Graphics and interface

The FPS limit now follows your monitor's refresh rate (it was 100); VSync is still available, and fullscreen uses your desktop refresh rate. The Options > Graphic Settings window has been reworked, with an FPS counter (Off, Compact or Detailed; Ctrl+Alt+F cycles it) and a new View Distance setting. Models and names now reach the full View Distance, so far-away players, monsters and NPCs show up with their names.

Graphics quality has four presets: Low, Medium, High and Ultra. High adds anti-aliasing and Ultra adds supersampling for the smoothest edges. The default is Low, which adds no extra graphics work. If the game fails to start twice in a row, the new graphics features switch off by themselves so you can still play (Graphics Enabled=1 in FSD9.ini turns them back on).

Interface size set to Auto picks a readable size for your screen, and Ctrl+Alt+Plus and Ctrl+Alt+Minus change the scale on the fly. Text is sharp at any size, level numbers are centred, and names and chat balloons above heads are smooth. HUD art is cleaner: no seam on the portrait, clean HP/SP orbs, fixed ghost equipment icons, no stray line in window title bars, and thinner item outlines. Camera zoom goes out twice as far. Sound is no longer muted on a fresh install and starts at volume 50. The mouse pointer no longer stutters with high-polling mice, and the game no longer crashes on first start. There is also a new server select screen: the Elderine waterfall grotto replaces the old town square.

Improved and fixed

The skill shop now sells every learnable skill; the skills you do not need to buy are learned automatically when you level up, change class or log in. Scroll level requirements of some skills now follow their rank order, and Blade of the Sky, Heat of Fury and Thunder Bolt get higher ranks. Guardian Master in Burning Rock comes 3 per group instead of 2 and respawns in about 35 seconds instead of 60. Enchant bonuses on several helms and boots are now correct, and also fixed on some pants, armors, claws and dual swords. Gathering boosters now have names and tooltips that describe what they really do. You can also accept quests straight from the Quest window.

The Sand Hill portal (Burning Hill, east of the tent) works: quest items drop there and the camp revives you. It also opens from Sea of Greed and Moonlight Tomb, and mobs there give the right EXP. Leaving Arkroute puts you beside its gate instead of in the middle of Kahal Snow Fields. Wiz Summon [2] and Flame Walker [2] summon again, and so do Holy Knight's God's Benevolence [2]/[3] and Guardian's Saint's Protection [2]/[3]. SlowShot upper ranks can be learned and work. Mounts that cannot be ridden are refused instead of crashing the game. Stuck? /follow lets you follow another player, and the Unstuck button on the website Account page moves any character, online or offline, to a safe town (once per hour).

Website and launcher

The Account page now lists your characters first, with their online state and an Unstuck button for each. In the launcher, Settings > Graphics (shown when your game has the new graphics files) offers Quality, VSync, Interface size (Auto, or 100% to 400% up to what your screen allows) and the FPS counter. Optional Enhanced graphics (ReShade) stays a separate download. News headlines and banners open the right news page, and the in-game Help window (F10) has the new commands, keys and weekly events.

Found a problem? Tell us what happened and the time in UTC. Thank you, and see you in the dungeons - the CORE Team.