Festival of the Brave

Festival of the Brave
Release Type:	Content Update
Rollout Live:	2024/12/16

Today is the day! After a painfully long period of server downtime, the Live servers have finally returned with the Festival of the Brave and double experience up and running. We appreciate your patience as we worked through the downtime. The actual maintenance period took the normal amount of time, but we spent the rest of the multiple hours rigorously testing and checking everything to ensure the changes went Live as expected.

In this half-blog, half-patch notes, we'll dig into the formula issue and what we believe caused it and the Festival itself!

Live Operations Update[edit]

After the release of the 24.2 Fixer on Thursday, we experienced a large amount of problems on the Live shards primarily surrounding combat and crafting. We’ve since released multiple fixes to address some of the problems, including a Live server restart to hopefully kick them into gear. You can read about how this happened and how we will avoid it in the future here ( https://community.istaria.com/news/?id=1121 ), but in short, an in-development version of the server code was mistakenly released to Live, resulting in issues due to early development code being deployed.

While we have rolled back the early release code, we were still finding issues - most importantly, formulas being scattered and corrupted. The issue related to broken formula displays was unique on each shard, with Chaos, Order and Blight all having different broken formulae with some overlap. Furthermore the issue is rather dynamic: formulas confirmed fixed have shown up as broken, broken have shown up as fixed, and it seems to differ from day to day. A change that was pushed to our internal server and Blight appeared to have fixed all the formula display issues among other things, but some days later they once again appeared as broken.

After intense scrutiny, we knew it had to do with our encyclopedia - essentially, the server's memory of everything that exists. To steal Michelenthesis' explanation to the non-tech side of the team, formulas can be cached to the encyclopedia in two ways - as a regular item and as a formula. Yet, they were going into the same cache. When you first loaded a formula, it would cache as a regular item. When you retrieved it later from the cache, it would try to load the extra formula information and blank - there was no information to load!

This caused different items to be broken at different times and, as the server would recycle cached items over time when it reached the cap, would sometimes fix previously broken formulas or break new ones. The cache size, spawn methods of formulas, and the randomness of the bug is what made it virtually impossible to reproduce on our internal testing server.

A fix has been deployed on Live and we are confident this will correct the issue, but please let us know if something comes about. Thank you all for your patience, as always, and we hope this explanation is sufficient on how such a gamebreaking bug came to be.

Festival of the Brave[edit]

Onto the lighter news - our first world-changing live event since 2017’s Hour of Frost is now live! Scour the world for Stolen Imperial Caches scattered across the Aradoths, pick Recovered Imperial Supplies off of the corpses of the Aegis, and compete to be the most prolific Aegis slayer in Istaria. The event will last until January 7th.

For a more in-depth look at the contest part of the event, as well as a more paragraph-style explanation of the event, you can read our earlier announcement post on the festival here: https://community.istaria.com/news/?id=1116

Between now and the end of the festival, we will also be running a smattering of scheduled live events. You can find a post with the event timetable here: https://community.istaria.com/news/?id=1092

Below, you will find the patch notes of the update - all changes were brought live with the original 24.2 Tempered by Battle patch, but were ‘turned off’ until now.

World[edit]

New characters have appeared in every major city, directing players to New Trismus to partake in the Festival of the Brave.

Taranae the Master of Ceremonies has been posted in New Trismus near the landing pad and the merchants’ building. Speaking to him allows you to learn about the Festival and obtain the unique festival buff.

- Acquiring the Festival of the Brave buff is required for participating in any adventure content and acquiring loot.

- When you first acquire the Festival buff, you will also be rewarded with the Festival’s participation title.

A new changing room, the Imperial Changing Room, has been built to showcase the Festival’s unique cosmetics. Teleports are available from Taranae.

Double experience is now active! Global double experience affects everything from quests to kills to trophies. Please remember that experience modifiers do not stack and any potions used during this time will be wasted.

Content[edit]

Recovered Imperial Supplies, a new item, may be looted from Aegis (while under the festival buff) or gathered from Imperial Caches during the duration of the event.

The items within supplies have a consistent distribution in all tiers - so lower tier supplies will, for instance, reward Imperial Platinum Coins at the same rate as high tiers.

Supplies may not be traded and require the minimum level of their tier to be opened. All items contained within may be traded.

Their contents may be any of the following, matching the tier of enemy it was received from:

- Common: Blighted armor, jewelry, claws, scales, weapons, or formulas

- Common: 1 - 3 Imperial Platinum Coins (Rare: 100)

- Uncommon: Small to large bags of coin

- Uncommon: Hoard

- Rare: 2 - 6 of a trophy

- Rare: 2 - 4 of a component

- Very Rare: 1 Greater Event Token

- Very Rare: 1 Silver Anniversary Token

Crafting[edit]

New resource nodes, Minor through Superior Stolen Imperial Caches, now have a chance to spawn in many regions across Istaria.

They may be gathered using the Ingenuity skill at the baseline of their relevant tier.

Caches have a chance of giving Recovered Imperial Supplies or Broken Supplies, with the chance of the latter increasing with tier. Broken Supplies can be sold to Oddity Brokers for coin.

Spawns may be found in the below regions.

- Minor Stolen Imperial Cache: Genevia, New Trismus, Lesser Aradoth

- Lesser Stolen Imperial Cache: Dalimond Peninsula, Abandoned Island, Scorpion Island

- Stolen Imperial Cache: Barasavian Desert, Feladan Forest, Aughundell Mines, Mahagra Tundra

- Major Stolen Imperial Cache: Feladan Forest, Aughundell Mines, Kirasanct Tundra, Char, Western Deadlands, The Long Walk

- Greater Stolen Imperial Cache: Aradoth (Outskirts of Harro, Delgarath, and Mithril’s Anvil), Spiritous Swamp, Satyr Isles, Frozen Wastes

- Superior Stolen Imperial Cache: Eastern Deadlands, Dralnok’s Doom, Eastern Frontline (edge of the Eastern Deadlands)

Adventure[edit]

While under the effect of the Festival of the Brave buff given by Taranae, you may loot Recovered Imperial Supplies and Imperial Marks from Withered Aegis Construct, Withered Aegis Animate, or Undead enemies. Tier of the items depends on the tier of enemy killed.

Supplies drop more commonly from higher tiered enemies and are themselves tiered.

Epic enemies drop supplies at a slightly higher rate than tier six enemies and drop additional special Epic Recovered Supplies that guarantee either Imperial Platinum Coins, or, much more rarely, a Silver Anniversary or Greater Event Token.

Minor through Superior Imperial Marks are guaranteed on kill and are considered currency to not clutter your inventory. Epics count as Tier 6 for the purpose of Imperial Marks.

Rewards and Items[edit]

In exchange for Imperial Platinum Coins, you will find a myriad of items available on Taranae. This includes items both new and returning from previous events for the first time!

We will be carefully monitoring the acquisition rates of Imperial Platinum Coins and make adjustments if needed to the price of items or drop rates of coins. (No, we will not be making them rarer or the items more expensive!)

New Rewards[edit]

Adornments: Full-body visual wearables that can be used by both bipeds and dragons alike

- Gold Filigree Jewelry Adornment

- Platinum Filigree Jewelry Adornment

Masks and Head Scales

- Gold-Edged Ivory Dragon Head Scale and Mask

- Platinum Dragon Head Scale and Mask of the Brave

Auras: A new cosmetic that allows you to ‘wear’ an effect at will.

- Gold Sparkle Aura

- Platinum Sparkle Aura

Pets

- Platinum Wisp

- Brilliant and Lustrous Platinum Wyverns

- Brilliant and Lustrous Platinum Wolves

Plot and Lair Structures

- Plot and Lair Structure “Monument of the Brave”

- Plot structure “20th Imperial Anniversary Celebratory Cake” Floating and Stand versions

- 20th Anniversary Banners, including four variants - two posts (Crossbar, Aside) and two patterns (Chevron, Stripe)

- 20th Anniversary Murals (Chevron, Stripe)

Rare Dessert: Anniversary Cake - A food item similar to Draconic Celebration Cake, but giving a new aura and usable by all races.

Temporary Exchanges[edit]

These items will be removed from the vendor in the next content update after the event.

Event Token Exchange

Experience Vials: Similar to the vials available on pawnbrokers, these vials do not stack with ongoing experience events and do not apply to trophy quests. The contents are attuned, but the packs themselves are not.

- Pack of Superior Trade and Adventure Experience Vials

- Pack of Greater Trade and Adventure Experience Vials

Returning Rewards[edit]

Rewards returning prior to the 15th Anniversary are copies of prior items to keep ones earned during the event “authentic” . However, they are visually identical, with the exception of titles. This is experimental and we would enjoy your feedback.