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The Wild Hunts are here with some holiday cheer!
Welcome Travellers and Heroes and happy holidays from the team at Northern Forge Studios!
As the year winds down, we’re turning the heat up in the Ornaverse because December is loaded with a wild number of events to partake in. Today, we’ll talk about all of the holiday events we have planned along with the change of structure to the Winter Wild Hunts. Buckle in as we cover a whirlwind of events that might even impress Scruug himself – although he’d still probably complain about the drop rates.
Main Event: The Winter Wild Hunts
It’s time to warm up by the fire and recount stories from throughout the year as the Winter Wild Hunts return! If you need another opportunity to finish up a questline or mass summon an event raid, now’s your chance – and this go around you’ll have more time to do so as we’re changing up how the Wild Hunts will go down.
Instead of each event lasting only a few short days, we’re having multiple events run concurrently for a week at a time. These waves of events will provide more time for players to complete new and improved questlines from throughout the year and allow us to run weekly Other Realms for even more chances at event loot!
Wave 1: Phoenixrise, Beastfelled and the Plight of Apollyon
Wave 1 will see unique challenges, phasing into other dimensions to fight off evil and the fond farewell to a classic with Phoenixrise, Beastfelled and The Plight of Apollyon making a return from December 1st to the 8th.
Wave 2: Thronemakers, Riftfall and Ragnarok
Expect a history lesson, unique dungeons and the original superraid during Wave 2 as it will include Thronemakers, Riftfall and Ragnarok from December 8th to the 15th.
Wave 3: Fallen Heroes of Avalon, Wyrmhunt and The Hallowed
Break out your winter jacket and get out in the cold to chase some riftbreaks, climb grueling towers and relive the spooky season when Wave 3 arrives bringing Heroes of Avalon, Wyrmhunt and the Hallowed into the mix from December 15th to the 22nd.
Wave 4: Crimson Festival, Of Giants and Titans and Stop Scruug
And Wave 4 will close out the festivities with the potential end of the world when the Crimson Festival, Of Giants and Titans and a slightly revamped Stop Scruug return from December 22nd to the 29th.
We hope you enjoy the wild hunts and are able to fulfill any remaining goals for the year before we head into brand new adventures!
Holiday Events
In the spirit of the holidays, we’ve got 3 events to spread cheer, and of course to stop the end of the world.
Stop Scruug will make its return in the final wave of the Wild Hunts with a bit of a twist! We’ll have to band together as a community to defeat Scruug in a quest to stop him from ending the world. If the daily goal is met, rewards from Stranger’s Gifts will be boosted for that day to celebrate!
Winter Solstice brings back the monarchs of the dark and light elves to the game. For the codexers among us, these are rare mobs, so be sure to complete their entries when they return this month!
Our last holiday event is Family and Friends, where you’ll be able to have a chance to collect all of the event followers and summons from through the year’s events! This is your final warning for 2025 to grab Buggane before it’s too late!
For a full list of events, you can visit playorna.com!
In case you missed it:
Last month:
- We fixed some issues with Astraltree! Item rolls are no longer giving broken/poor items and the we fixed an issue with Ornate rewards where they were not giving players Ornates of their own tier.
- We also majorly decreased the requirements for daily and weekly quests, aiming to make them more achievable. Later in the month, we also changed the raid focused daily quest to allow for any raid completion to count rather than listing a specific one, hopefully relieving some of the pain points with that specific quest.
- We also made a lot of changes to the Of Giants and Titans new additions. Most notably, we nerfed the power of T9 Mnemoyse as well as increased the power of the buffs you earn from defeating the titans in Shadows of the Titans. If you struggled with the new content, give it another try when it returns in the Wild Hunts!
- Our beta is now undergoing a massive balance patch – focused mainly on Grand Summoner Hydrus as well as Gilgamesh identity. The proposed changes also affect Deity as their power has recently dominated over other classes, taking away some of their own identities. We’re still a long way out on ensuring everyone leaves happy with these balance changes, but welcome all feedback in the dedicated beta Discord channel!
- And lastly, the Runeshop received a well-needed glow up last month, showing off Covyn’s beautiful art a little better than before!
Happy Holidays!
And with that, another year has flown by and we’re excited to see what 2026 holds for the Ornaverse.
While we work towards our balance patch and also sneak in a bit of a holiday vacation, we’ll also be seeing the Phoenix’s flame extinguished for the final time as we’ll be retiring Phoenixrise as a monthly event in January, instead reigniting as base game content. But what does that mean for next month’s event? Stay tuned to find out!
Here at the studio, we’re hoping you all have a lovely holiday season spent with friends, family and video games, while enjoying the whirlwind of events that the Wild Hunts bring to the games!
Start planning your new year’s resolutions and we’ll see you next month!
- We fixed some issues with Astraltree! Item rolls are no longer giving broken/poor items and the we fixed an issue with Ornate rewards where they were not giving players Ornates of their own tier.
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Fellowship Across Factions – Phase 1 of our Kingdom Evolution Releases Tomorrow!
Hey Travelers and Heroes,
The long awaited kingdom rework has been deep in development and as mentioned in our recent devlog, the rework is going to be delivered in 3 phases.
When setting out to rework kingdoms, we aimed to making kingdoms a core piece of the Orna gameplay loop again, first by removing friction from the kingdom experience and addressing some economy issues, then by adding a true multiplayer feature to kingdoms and finally by turning kingdoms into a social hub filled with shared goals for all members. Above all else, we wanted to inject some fun into the kingdom system!
We’re getting ready to release Phase 1 tomorrow, November 26th. This first phase is primarily focused on getting rid of some of the friction and addressing some quality of life issues with the feature.
The biggest change we’re making with Phase 1 is to remove faction restrictions from kingdoms. Faction locking kingdoms was originally about providing a sense of identity and pride in your faction, and facing off against those who oppose (the mighty Frozenguard). In reality, having kingdoms locked to factions has meant that new players who simply want to play with their friends are penalized for making an early game faction decision.
As such, tomorrow’s patch including Phase 1 of the changes will include the following changes:
- Removal of kingdom faction restrictions.
- Removal of kingdom level cap
- Ascension levels of kingdom members will be factored into matchmaking
- Rebalancing of kingdom gold income, now only awarded from world bosses
Originally, we were aiming to provide a bonus to full, same-faction rosters in Phase 1, however, we’re aiming for a bit more complex of a solution to how factions factor into kingdom gameplay and have moved this change into Phase 2.
We’re already hard at work on Phase 2 of this rework. This Phase will be focused on the fun and is going to add the multiplayer cooperation back into kingdoms with a brand new synchronous gameplay mode called Crusades. After that, we’ll be adding a ton of social features to Kingdoms with Phase 3, but more on that later…
For now, we hope you enjoy rubbing elbows with new kingdom-mates from various factions. Is this our first step to creating world peace?
Till next time.
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Exploring Astraltrees: Our New Daily/Weekly Reward System
Hey Travellers and Heroes!
It’s been awhile, hope things are going well for you all! Here at the studio, we’ve been filled with excitement about a bunch of new things – from revamping events with entirely new content types, finalizing another round of balance changes, and finally releasing our new daily/weekly reward system: the Astraltree!
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What is the Astraltree?
The Astraltree is a new daily/weekly reward system that should integrate better into your normal gameplay while offering up rewards that will feel more impactful and offer up more control to the player than our current system.
When the Astraltree update (3.19.1) hits your device, you’ll notice two places you can access the new feature – the Astraltree button on the left hand side of your screen and as well the Quests button right next to your character menu.
Let’s explore the Astraltree section first! In this section, from the center the tree will branch off into 4 different Constellations (5, for Aethric). These are:
The Constellation of Wealth: a branch focused on Gold, Orns and various Guild Proofs. This one is my personal favourite as I just cashed in on 6 million Orns.
Constellation of Ascension: a branch focused on Ascending and Anguish. This branch includes discovery bonuses, large batches of materials, Demonworking Tools and Anguished Pathspurs!
Constellation of Avarice: a branch with various items, Guild Proofs, gear chests and a chance to roll at Ornate items! Unlike the previous login rewards, these Ornate Item options contain a chance at event items!
Constellation of Power: a branch with many bonuses including the Monument shrines, and various consumables. This branch also includes additional Activity Slots!
(Aethric Exclusive) Constellation of Speed: This will replace the current daily speed bonus, activating a speed buff for a 12 hour window once a seed is used.
To unlock these rewards, you’ll be using two new currencies: Astralseeds and Constellationseeds.
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Astralseeds! How the heck do I get those?
Daily Login Rewards
Astralseeds are required for most basic nodes on the tree, whereas Constellationseeds are used to at the end of a brand to offer up huge rewards like the Power of the Astraltree, Ornate item rolls and Activity Slots!
You’ll earn these currencies by simply logging in every day, with a Constellationseed awarded at the end of each 8 day cycle. However, the main acquisition method of these currencies will be through the reworked daily/weekly quests.
These can be found on the Quests button next to your character menu. Each day, you’ll find 3 daily quests waiting for you on this screen, from left to right these quests increase in difficulty, but will scale in an appropriate manner to your tier. As the difficulty level increases, so too will the amount of Astralseeds awarded!
As for the weeklies, you’ll always have one quest asking you to accomplish 10 dailies, leaving room to forgo quite a few quests you don’t want to tackle throughout the week. You’ll also have a longer form quest that can be completed through various activities – usually surrounding defeating a particular monster or raid type.
New Daily/Weekly Quests
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Planting New Roots
Now that you’ll get to experience the system, we look forward to hearing what you think! We’re excited to have this framework for daily quests that we can build upon and honestly hope that the rewards are more impactful to your Orna/Aethric journey.
To celebrate the release of this new feature, here’s a code for 3 Astralseeds to start exploring your first Astraltree:
Plantingtheastraltree
Happy gaming!
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Flasks – a new vision for the Mage class tree
(Full patch notes included at bottom of blog)
Hey Travelers and Heroes!
Let me Flask you a question – are you ready for the Mage Classline Rework? Well it’s officially out and we’re going to cover what the patch brings to both Orna: the GPS RPG and Hero of Aethric!
This Mage Identity Rework seeks to bring more excitement, combat/utility options and engaging gameplay for the mage classline – while keeping the Omnimancy theme of harnessing all elemental types and exploiting enemy weaknesses intact.
At the core of this rework are Flasks – a new spell type that Mages obtain from Tier 2 onwards. In battle, you’ll need to utilize elemental spells in order to charge Flasks and hitting an enemy’s weakness will charge them even faster. These spells can be used before a Flask is fully charged, however, the strength of that spell will be impacted. This new spell type will be getting a dedicated slot on your battle menu, meaning you won’t have to waste any spell slots on them.
These spells are versatile and range from damage dealing to pure utility. A few examples include Banishment – a Flask unlocked by the Nekromancer that will banish summons from the battle. Mana-Surge offers up area of effect damage and will hit all enemies in battle, offering up the chance to gain an additional turn if multiple enemies are struck. For the blue-liners out there, the Manaseep Flask has the chance to inflict Manaseep on oneself that will burn away a percentage of your mana each turn.
These are just a few examples of the tools that Flasks bring to the table for Mages. We’re excited for you to get your hands on these and experiment to see just how the flow of battle will change for the Mages among us.
There are a few changes to Mage passive abilities throughout the class tree to offer up each mage type a bit more personality and traits that match their identity. This means at each stage of the Mage journey you’ll get to experiment and lean into the identity of your Tier’s class. Due to Flasks being the common thread between all Mage classes now, we’ve removed Weaved Elements from the class tree to offer it to classes that are more in tune with the elements – Spellweaver (weave, it’s in the name and all) and Omnimancer.
In terms of big additions, Efficacious is a new passive near the endgame that offers up mages more defence when casting multi-turn spells as well as the ability to do partial damage to enemies who have elemental immunities to your spell type – ensuring you’re still charging up those Flasks.
Well, enough reading and more spell casting! We hope you enjoy this new vision for Mages and look forward to reading your feedback as you get your hands on the rework.
For those of you looking for a full list of changes – we’ve got you covered with full patch notes below:
Mage classline identity improvements:
* Introduced the “Manaflasks” and “Bloodflasks” passives to the Mage classline, allowing the usage of Flask abilities in battle
— Flask abilities are similar to spells, but require Flask charges opposed to mana
— Each mage class has preset Flasks available to them, which do not need to be equipped to be accessed in battle
— Flasks receive charges by making use of elemental spells in battle
— Flasks receive extra charges by making use of elemental weaknesses in battle
— Heretic Ara and Corvus spells additionally charge flasks
* Introduced the passive “Efficacious”, allowing the Mage classline to bypass elemental immunities and reduces damage taken when casting a multi-turn spell
* Reworked most of the Ara spells to be more useful
* Archmage: Added the passive “Manaflasks”
* Court Mage: Added the passive “Manaflasks II”
* Spellsword: Added the passive “Manaflasks II”
* Druid: Added the passive “Manaflasks II”
* Spellweaver: Added the passive “Manaflasks II”
* Archdruid: Replaced the passive “Mana Saver” with “Manaflasks III”
* Nekromancer: Replaced the passive “Mana Siphon” with “Bloodflasks”
* Omnimancer: Added the passive “Bloodflasks”
* Omnimancer: Replaced passive “Weaved Elements II” with “Efficacious”
* Omnimancer Ara: Added the passive “Efficacious””
* Omnimancer Ara: Added the passive “Manaflasks III”
* Omnimancer Ara: Now learns Ara sigils, Ara Vesta, and Ara Vestala
* Omnimancer Antlia: Added the passive “Bloodflasks”
* Heretic: Replaced passive “The Heretic” with “Efficacious II”
* Heretic: Added the passive “Bloodflasks II”
* Heretic Ara: Replaced passive “Weaved Elements II” with “Efficacious II”
* Heretic Ara: Added the passive “Manaflasks IV”
* Heretic Corvus: Added the passive “Critical Poise”
* Heretic Corvus: Removed the passive “Corvus”
* Heretic Corvus: Adjusted the passive “Steadfast II” to “Steadfast”
* Heretic Corvus: Added the passive “Flasks of Corvus”, increasing Flask charge rates
* Heretic Corvus: Added the passive “Bloodflasks II”
* Paladin: Replaced passive “Weaved Elements” with “Efficacious”
* All Off-hand Scrolls now have the ability to increase the rates at which Manaflasks charge in battle
* All Off-hand Scrolls now have positive Ward stats
* Flask charges are persistent across battles in Towers and Monuments
Other changes:
* Monster weakness review:
— There are now an equal amount of elemental weaknesses in the game for each of the 4 faction elements
— Ensured that at least 30% of each tier is weak to at least one of the 4 faction elements
* Midgame Arcane spells (Arcana, Arcanus, etc) now use either the magic or attack stat, whichever is higher
* Apex charge is persistent across battles in Monuments
* [PvP/PvE] Players can no longer counterattack when afflicted by an immobilizing status effect
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Conqueror’s Guild Beta Begins!
Hey Traveler’s, Heroes and Conqueror’s – Long time no blog eh!
We’re excited to announce that the Conqueror’s Guild beta has been submitted for approval to our platforms and should soon be available for you to play! Read more below about what’s coming with this new patch, how to get playing the new feature early and get to see some video footage created by of our community champions!
How to Gain Access to the Beta
The Orna beta runs within a separate app, server, and environment than what you are used to. Your progress in the Beta version will not affect your progress in the live version of Orna (and vice-versa). Participation in the Beta will require a new character but enabling “Sandbox mode” will start new characters at level 250 with full inventories. You cannot use the “Recover character” option to bring your live character into the beta.
On Android, the beta can be installed from Google Play at:
https://play.google.com/apps/testing/orna.com.ornatest
Please note that the update may take some time to become available to you today as we are awaiting approval from the platform holders.
Be sure to join our Discord and provide us with beta feedback so we can hear your thoughts before launch!
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About the Conqueror’s Guild
The Conqueror’s Guild is reimagining the Territory Control system in Orna, and adding a new competitive mode to Hero of Aethric.
If you’re looking to learn more about the Conqueror’s Guild be sure to check out some of our featured content creator’s videos, where they went head to head and got to test drive the new Guild in Hero of Aethric while competing against one another!
Checkout Konq’s video here where he tests his skills across the lands of Aethric in our Streamer Showdown.
Checkout AceFarmerKevo presenting the new feature here. He’ll go over the details of the feature and provide his regular education on our new content!
Checkout Kendrisite’s stream, where he’ll be showing off the Guild with tremendous energy!
And if you’re a fan of Podcasts, be sure to checkout the Conqueror’s Guild episode of Ornation here, where they chat with Community Manager Modangy about the release of the new feature!
The studio will be sharing some more in-depth guide videos as we approach launch of this feature but for now, show our amazing community creators some love!
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Patch Notes
Here’s what’s you can expect when trying out Orna 3.15 Beta
- Players can now enjoy a new Territory Control system, allowing them to claim and defend Settlements for daily rewards
- To get started, build the Conqueror’s Guild Hall in your Origin Town
- For existing players, both territory control systems can be played in tandem by selecting the “Legacy Conqueror” option in the Conqueror’s Guild Hall
- Added new Leaderboards to every Guild Hall
- Added an “Upgrade again” option to the Blacksmith
- Improved the Achievements menu
- Improved the Notifications/inbox menu
- Removed the Influence screen
- Menu and general user interface updates
- Inventory can now be searched by dismantled material name
- Some optimizations for fishing, memory hunts, and tower puzzles
- Miscellaneous quality of life improvements and bug fixes
What we’re still working on adding to the beta:
- Exploration: our alphas, betas and announcements have shown us that players are interested in keeping the feeling of Exploration alive. We’ll be finding a way to freshen up the Exploration component of the game soon.
- Tutorials
- Othersouls scaling + some balance concerns
- Improvements to the expiration of messages in the new Craving Stone messaging system
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Terra’s Day: Our Earth Week Game Mode
Hey Travelers and Heroes!
Northern Forge Studios has joined the 2024 Green Game Jam alongside 70+ other game studios in an effort to bring awareness to environmental issues and as a community, make a positive impact for the world!
The Green Game Jam is an annual event organized by Playing for the Planet and facilitated with the support of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP).
The goals of this program are to empower players to change the world through the games they know and love, while supporting the betterment of the environment on a global scale.
This year, the Green Game Jam is focused on 3 main environmental issues: Food, Waste and Restoration. Terra’s Day will help shed a light on these through both gameplay and a new storyline.
(The following information is taken from the Playing 4 the Planet website, click here to learn more!)
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Food (Climate)
Our current food system is responsible for 30% of carbon emissions (UN) and is the primary driver of biodiversity collapse (UNEP). By observing our current food consumption patterns and making small changes, we all have the power to drive demand for sustainable food sources.
In the Terra’s Day event, you’ll learn that the planet Terra relied on food sources that emitted Gloom, a poison to the atmosphere upon harvesting. Through the event, you’ll teach the Terrans about a more sustainable food source so that they don’t bring a similar fate to our planet.
Waste (Pollution)
Our consumption patterns lead to billions of tons of municipal waste annually, with only 55% managed by controlled facilities (World Bank). On top of this, around 931 million tons of food is wasted each year (UNEP) and up to 37 million tons of plastic waste is expected to enter the ocean annually by 2040 (UNEP).
The Terrans faced similar problems in their harvesting of Green Grisal. The Gloom emissions became so dense that they discarded the byproduct “Murk” into the seas. In time, this pollution would return to the lands and lead to the demise of their planet.
Restoration (Nature)
Forests that would cover an area the size of India have been cut down (UNEP) and 69% of wild species made extinct (WWF). While this issue may seem too large on a global scale for an individual to tackle, there are ways to promote biodiversity in our own gardens, balconies, parks and town centers! How can we look after the environment around us as a first step towards restoration?
While travelling to Gloomsites across the world, players will be able to plant Light Elm Trees that will grow for players in other parts of the world. It will be your job to show the Terran refugees this sustainable food source with no negative byproducts.
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Studio Participation
As a studio, we’re also participating in Earth Week through action outside of the game as well!
We’ve already got a head start with some of this community action. So far, we’ve been collecting waste (or Rubbish – if you’re Dangy) throughout our individual communities.
We’ve also done some planting of seeds for our own food sources – potatoes, corn and carrots!
In addition to this, we’ve sorted through our closets in order to donate our clothing, reducing waste and allowing the clothing to be used by those in need.
Here are a few photos of our efforts so far!
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We’ll continue with our efforts next week and we hope some of these ideas can inspire you to get involved during Earth Week as well! There are so many community events to get involved with, so be sure to check out what’s happening around you to see how you can take action for the planet!
We’d love to hear from you about what action you might take or activities you may get involved with, so let us know in Discord or on our social channels!
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Terra’s Day Gameplay: What you can expect?
Terra’s Day is part of an ongoing commitment to the Green Game Jam that will evolve throughout the year. When Terra’s Legacy returns later in the year, the game mode will involve community action outside of the game blended with the in-game mode so that players will be able to make environmental change while playing (their favourite) RPG.
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In this premiere version of Terra’s Legacy – titled Terra’s Day, players will be transported to one of 50 Gloomsites -capital cities throughout the world- that have been overtaken by the Great Murk.
Join other players in raid battles against the Great Murk in order to collect Elm Essence. Consuming this Elm Essence will nurture the growth of Light Elm trees in other Gloomsites across the globe. In Aethric, these Gloomsites will spawn across the World Map in our new local event feature!
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As you spend time in the Gloomsites, be on the lookout for blossoming Light Elm trees that other players grew for you. These will provide you with Gaia Apples, a sustainable food source and also the currency for this event.
Gaia’s Apples can be spent on various rewards, including 3 separate sprite packs (a teaser of some of these sprites below) and many other rewards including a brand new shrine! Be sure to do your part in the Great Emerald Restoration!
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We’ve put our hearts into this event, as it’s something we as a studio believe in. We hope that our efforts here can inspire some of our community to make small changes in their life for the betterment of our planet. There are plenty of secrets left uncovered for this event and can’t wait for your to discover them!
Please enjoy Terra’s Day as it launches on April 22 and lasts until the end of the month!
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April 2024: The Crimson Festival, Classline Rework, Terra’s Day and more!
Hey Travelers and Heroes,
Spring is officially here and we’re bringing with it tons of reasons to get outside and play!
In today’s blog update we’ll be covering this month’s events, a brand-new gameplay mode focused on environmental impact (and earnable sprite packs) and more, let’s dive in!
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Crimson Festival
Our full month event this month is the Crimson Festival!
Find and defeat acolytes of Cerus, Aries and Perseus across the world and within dungeons to gain the Essence of their particular leader. These Essences can then be used in the Monumental Guild under the Archcrafting tab to create Summoning Scrolls specific to the Crimson warrior of your choice.
With some of the best adornments in-game, this is a festival you do not want to miss out on!
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Terra’s Day
Terra, a planet from far away, lost centuries ago due to their people’s negligence of the lands. Gi, a traveler from Terra who brings with her a warning – the people of her planet have arrived to our own and their gluttony may lead us to a similar fate.
In this brand new event and game mode, travel across the world to combat this new environmental threat brought forth from those seeking refuge from the Terran calamity. Band together with other players to defeat Great Murk raids, receive Elm Essences and plant Light Elm trees which bear the Gaia Apple fruit for other players to collect across the globe. You can expect earnable sprite packs and loads of fun when this new game mode launches on April 22nd!
We’ll be sharing more details around this event as we get closer to Earth Day! This game mode was developed as our commitment to the 2024 Global Green Game Jam that Northern Forge Studios is participating in. If you’d like to learn more about this initiative visit the Playing4theplanet site!
The Terra storyline will continue throughout the year, and we aim to have our community participate in real world action to protect the environment, but more on that later!
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Classline Reworks
If you haven’t heard, we’re doing a revamp of all classes in the game. The goal of these changes are to provide more class identity from an earlier point in the game. You’ll see passives such as Collateral Damage or Avidity start from the beginning of the game now. You’ll also notice that the Valhallen classline will start much earlier in the game now, allowing the follower fans out there to start their Bestial Bonds earlier.
Some other changes include a sizeable rework to the Deity classline, bringing Apex skills to the game where you will charge up a meter to unleash some deadly damage upon your foes. The early mage classline is also getting Weaved Elemancy, which will allow their power to increase by cycling through different elemental spells in battle, offering more dynamic battles and spell usage. You may have noticed that we have been making larger identity changes to each classline over the last few months. While this update aims to add more identity to The Old Gods classline, we will be prioritizing an identity patch to the mage classline next.
We’ve been testing these changes in open beta for a few weeks now and believe we’re getting close to release, so expect more news on this very soon! As always, we’ll be keeping our eyes on how these changes affect players and will make adjustments as necessary.
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Mini-Events
We’ve got some great mini-events this month, including a double feature of Giant Steps in Orna to celebrate the warmer weather (in Canada at least). The lineup this month is as follows:
- Fool of April: April 1-2
- Giant Steps: April 7-10 (Orna Exclusive)
- Legend of Lyonesse: April 10-14
- Paths of Fomoria: House of Nocturna: April 10-16
- Orn Event: April 18-19
- Earth Week Giant Steps: April 23-26 (Orna Exclusive)
- Terra’s Day: April 22-30
- Sisters of Morrigan: April 25-30
- EXP Event: April 27-30
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Sprite Packs
This month also brings with it some seasonal sprite packs available for purchase. Check out the Crimson Festival Sprite Pack or the Legendary Sprite Pack of the month!
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To the Roadmap and Beyond!
If you didn’t catch it on our Discord announcements, we’ve updated everyone with a Q2 Roadmap. Since things move fast at the studio, we’re trying to create quarterly roadmaps that we can successfully deliver on for you! We’re moving steadily on development of a Territory Control rework called the Conqueror’s Guild. This new guild will allow for more players to engage in Territory Control from an earlier point in the game, while also retaining the highly competitive nature of the top level of territorial competitions.
We’re also working on a lot of quality of life fixes that folks have been asking for. We want to make sure the foundation of the game remains strong (and gets stronger) before building too many brand new systems. We’ve added a lot of features in the past year and want to make them the best they can be before going too far in any direction.
We’re also attempting to make both the worlds of Orna and Hero of Aethric feel more alive with Active Local Events, places where folks can congregate and work together to fight against dynamic events, leaning into the MMO design of the game.
Beyond that, we’re aiming to integrate more directly with your Apple Health dashboards to bring you more data, goals and accuracy with the Traveler’s Guild. We hope this gives users a better experience with the Traveler’s Guild and also gains us some traction on the iOS platform!
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That’s it for our monthly update. We hope you’re enjoying the transition into spring and also hope you enjoy the upcoming content and changes to both games! See you next time (or in Discord!)
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Thronemakers: March 2024 Event Overview
Hey folks! I know some of you prefer to read rather than watch the event videos, so here’s the transcript for the video!
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Intro
Hey Travelers and Heroes,
We’re excited to introduce you to Thronemakers – our newest event that blends the inventive challenges experienced in Beastfelled along with some great rewards that provides your character some brand new skills. This event is packed with content, so let’s cover some of what you can expect to experience this month in both Hero of Aethric and Orna.
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Thronemakers
Meet the Aaru Storyteller, who will be your guide this month as you explore the origin story of the great kingdoms. Chronologically, this historical tale takes place just after the great dragons you experienced in Wyrmhunt created the world you live and fight in today. You’ll first encounter the Aaru Storyteller at Tier 4, so be sure to reach level 75 before seeking out this questline.
Throughout the month, you will face unique challenges such as completing a battle using a brand new Thronemakers spell, collecting potions and learning their origins and codex the new event raids that can be found both in Kingdoms or summoned to the World.
Facing off against these raids will reward players with gear that provides your followers additional skills, much like the gear in last month’s Beastfelled event. If you’re an early Tier 10 Realmshifter seeking Bloodshift – we’ve got you covered.
By completing all of the challenges and hearing a historical tale, your end of questline reward will be the Tail of a Sphinx, an item that will provide you with additional luck as well as an increased chance of Ornates dropping!
For late-game players who crave a challenge, the Great Sphinx is the Super Raid of the month. This Super Raid drops gear that provides YOU with spells and abilities, rather than your follower. This gear even marks the debut of some brand new, and quite powerful spells.
In order to face off against this formidable foe, you’ll have to first defeat the Arisen variants of the 3 new Thronemaker raids: Sekhmet, Ptah and Neith who will each drop a unique Old Seal of the Great Kingdoms.
You’ll have to make a choice with these seals though: will you craft a Scroll of Dynasty to summon the Great Sphinx – or will you visit the Monumental Guild and roll on an event specific gear piece called the Eastern Regalia – a weapon that will remove your follower in order to provide you with boosted power! Choose wisely!
In addition to all of this, you can also expect both new Followers and a Summon to chase this month.
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Mini & Booster Events
On top of a jam packed event debut, we’ve also got some mini events for you to grab some new gear or receive some boosts across our games.
For Mini-Events this month Balor Invades returns from March 10th to the 15th.
We’ve also got the Mischievous Clurichauns arriving to cause mayhem in dungeons between March 20th to 25th.
In addition to mini-events, we’ve also got a lineup of booster events starting with a Spelunking event offering reduced dungeon cooldowns from March 2nd to 3rd, An Orna exclusive event: Giant Steps returns to boost your steps taken and manifest those Monster Aspects faster between March 3rd and march 7th. A lucky event boosts your item acquisition from March 17th to 18th and we’re ending off the month with an Orns event from the 23rd to the 24th.
Sprite Packs
Thronemakers also brings a few sprite packs to the fold. This month, you can get the Thronemakers Pack, which includes some Aaru-themed sprites. We’ve also got a Legendary Sprite Pack this month that has both a Thronemakers themed snake charmer sprite as well as an animated Nagganeen sprite – watch out for the flies.
Later this month, we’ll be launching an Animated Follower Sprite Pack that will reskin one of the obtainable followers from Thronemakers.
Outro
And that concludes our deep-dive on the Thronemakers event. This month, we set out to focus on community feedback from various events in the past and put together one of our richest and most content dense events to date. We really hope you enjoy Thronemakers as it launches on March 1st. See you next month!
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Happy Lantern Festival
Hey Travelers and Heroes!
Today marks the 15th day of the Lunar New Year and we wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a happy Lantern Festival celebration! As celebrations come to a close, we wish that the Year of the Dragon brings with it warmth, love, laughter and all the Ornates you could wish for!
What’s coming next month?
Along with these celebrations we also wanted to share with you the name reveal for next month’s brand new event: Thronemakers. This event will have you exploring the origins of the great Kingdoms throughout a questline that will have you exploring new spells and facing off against unique challenges.
We think this will prove as a refinement to some of the new elements that came along with this month’s Beastfelled event. Excited for you to get your hands on Thronemakers when it debuts next week!
Lunar New Year – Dragon Town Sprites
As the Year of the Dragon kicks off, we launched a new type of in-game cosmetic that brought new building sprites to your Origin Town. We’ve had a few questions on how this works so here’s a quick guide on how to choose individual skins for your buildings.
When initially purchasing the pack, the Lunar New Year sprites will override your entire Origin Town. From there, you can:
- Click on building you’d like to change sprites on
- Click the “Options” tab
- Under “Building Theme” dropdown, choose which skin you would like to use. This allows for more individualized customization of your Origin Town.
We’ve loved to see the beautiful designs you’ve made with this Sprite Pack as well as the Lunar New Year decor items available. Heads up – this new Origin Town sprite pack will remain in the Runeshop beyond this month!
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Patch Notes: Orna: the GPS RPG Patch 3.9/Hero of Aethric Patch 1.4
Hey Travelers and Heroes!Rollout has commenced for both Orna: the GPS RPG Patch 3.9 and Hero of Aethric Patch 1.4!
These updates bring with them a slew of new game features including Deep Dungeons, Monuments and more! Let’s dive into the patch notes!
New Feature: Monuments
Monuments are a new, single-player dungeon type that you can find throughout the world in Orna: the GPS RPG and within the T5 area of Meropis in Hero of Aethric.
There are 4 different types of Monuments, each themed after one of the Fallen Gods – Ithra, Thor, Demeter and Vulcan. If the Monument serves the Fallen God that represents your faction, entry will be free! Otherwise, it will cost 1 Gaunlet (now called Skeleton) key to enter.
You will navigate through these dungeons in the same manner as Towers, but with a larger diversity of mobs to face off against. There is a much larger chance that these battles will include event mobs, so Monuments stand as a great place to focus on your event quest completion.
When it comes to our events, we’re looking to lean further into our mantra of “Play Your Way”. For those who enjoy world farming type events, that is still a completely valid way to play and reach your goals, however, Monuments will offer up another activity that may be better suited for different types of players.
Monuments reward players in unique ways as well. As you travel through these dungeons, you’ll be collecting Proofs of Monument, which can be spent in the Monumental Guild Hall on materials, consumables and even Event Followers! As an End of Dungeon reward, you’ll receive 1 of 4 buffs as you exit that will last you for 2 hours.
As part of the Monumental Guild Hall, you will also now receive Proofs from defeating World Raid Bosses. These Proofs of Felling can be spent on higher end materials in the Guild Shop. In addition to this, event Summoning Scrolls will now be crafted at the Monumental Guild Hall, replacing the previous method of doing so at the Herbalist.
New Feature: Deep Dungeons
Also releasing this patch are Deep Dungeons. A multiplayer-enabled explorable dungeon type that will be replacing Goblin Fortresses and Mystic Caves.
In this new casual activity type, you will battle and mine your way through procedurally-generated dungeons. Each floor will contain a goal to accomplish to dive deeper into the depths of the dungeon (how’s that for alliteration).
This content type is perfect for those who are newer on their journeys, as it will offer up some good experience and end of dungeon rewards for those who partake.
For additional rewards there is also a Spelunking Guild, which will provide materials, Sprite Packs and more for the best miners out there.
We’re excited for you to get your hands on this one!
New Passive Guild: Seers’ Guild
In our goal of offer players additional rewards for playing their way, we have added a Guild that focuses on Memory Hunts. The Seers’ Guild can be found within the Oracle Temple and will offer up materials, consumable and Sprite Packs in exchange for Proofs of Remembrance – you know the drill!
Miscellaneous Changes
- You can now exit towers by using a button on the top left of your screen. The Tower will be re-enterable for a set duration so be sure to check how long you have left in the Resume Overlay.
- Towers will now include event hordes. These will be linked to the current ongoing events allowing for more opportunities to farm event currency (and more diversity to your climbs!)
- Towers and Monuments will now spawn in a more evenly distributed manner, meaning you will find less clusters of these activities and overall find more of them as you move around.
- Hero of Aethric has had a big performance update, moving around the world should be more fluid!
- Fallen God sprites updated.
- Thanks to community feedback, Replica Titan followers have been overhauled.
- Bestial Bond 1 can now be found as an Amity trait offering up non-Valhallen classes access to these follower modifiers.
- In Hero of Aethric, NPCs will now have a fixed location within a tier appropriate town, no longer will you have to search far and wide to turn in a certain quest!
- Your Inventory will now contain a Currency tab which will keep track of the various Proofs you obtain throughout your adventures.
- AI Improvements
- Changed the display of Followers in shops, allowing for easier access to their codex page.
- Balance adjustments:
- Spells the have lowered PvP damage now reduce the damage before defense is applied (opposed to after)
- The change ensures that defense values are correctly applied to the reduced power
- [PvP] Reduced the damage of Fey Cataclysm, Fey Fulmination, Fey Glacier, Fey Inferno
New Event: Winter Wild Hunt
Building off of our 10 Days of Raids event, we’re launching a new December event called the Winter Wild Hunt. This event will celebrate the amazing year we’ve had for events in the Ornaverse by offering up 3 day waves of past events.
The waves are as follows:
Wave 1: The Legends of Lyonesse (December 1-3)
Wave 2: The Crimson Festival (December 4-6)
Wave 3: The Return of Kerberos (December 7-9)
Wave 4: Of Giants and Titans (December 10-12)
Wave 5: Ragnarok (December 13-15)
Wave 6: The Mischievous Clurichauns (December 16-18)
Wave 7: WyrmHunt (December 19-21)
Wave 8: Finesse (December 22-24)
Wave 9: Sisters of Morrigan (December 25-27)
Wave 10: The Fool (December 28-30)
For the duration of the event, the Monumental Guild Hall will have a craftable Festive Scroll which will target raids from the current wave of the Wild Hunt.
For a full list of other events happening in December, be sure to check out playorna.com!
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That’s it for our patch notes. We’ve been working hard on these features and are happy to finally get them into your hands. As always, we’ll be hanging around the Discord (and Reddit, Twitter, Facebook etc.) to hear your feedback on all that’s coming to our titles this month!
To anyone celebrating any holidays this month, we hope you have some great time spent with family and friends. Happy Winter Wild Hunt!
- You can now exit towers by using a button on the top left of your screen. The Tower will be re-enterable for a set duration so be sure to check how long you have left in the Resume Overlay.
