Hello Illarionites!

As an early Christmas present, it's time for the sixth and final update of the year!

As usual, the changes are listed below.

Larger Changes

• Four new runes for arcane magic have been added to the game with accompanying puzzles.
• Materials can now be rare, increasing the chance of crafting higher quality or rare items (where it was already possible to make rare items) when used. This gives more impact to gathering profession related attributes as well as quality of and magic gems in tools, including intermediary ones such as saws.
• Foraging was reworked, with fruit sources being redistributed and new fruits added to the game, including more visible sources for resources like nuts. Each realm has 4 primary and 4 secondary fruit, for a total of 8 each and a total of 12 in total. Some berries that are not part of these 12 fruits still remain part of foraging but will be moved to herblore in a future update. These new fruits will in the future be part of new cooking and brewing recipes.
• Magic crafts are now in line with regular crafts, requiring two attributes instead of just one. Alchemy is now essence and perception. Enchanting is now intelligence and essence. Spatial magic is now intelligence and willpower.
• Bard music now also has the accidental notes (A#, C# etc).
  

Minor Changes

• The effect of the rune FHEN for spirit magic spells has been changed.
• Bard music was rewritten to allow easier writing of music.
• Bard music now has updated sound files (the lute now sounds more like a lute. The clavichord, while an inaccurate representation of real life, sounds like a piano).
• Creator tags can now be (un)hidden using the rasp tool if you are the creator of the item.
• A bunch of new tailoring recipes for new cloaks along with a new tailoring material has been added to treasure hunt loot.
• You can now make custom paintings in housing.
• Parchments can now have multiple signatures.
• You can now donate the entire contents of a bag by placing the bag on a donation platform.
• You now get a choice whether to stare or not when nicknaming people.
• Galmair's bridge ambush protection is now accessible to non-citizen by paying a fee at the notary.
• A red carpet option has been added to housing.
• History books previously only found on the website have been added to the in game bookshelves. Other parts of the website lore such as the racial pages still await a review and rewrite.
• Now that housing has depots for storage, the size of stacks you can make static has been limited. Making items static was always intended for display purposes, not for storage.
• GMs can now copy and paste custom item names and descriptions, to make it easier to move such items on the map elsewhere.
• Baskets can now be crafted by tailors.
• Resources that are partially harvested will now reset to being full after the usual duration it takes for them to respawn. No more being disappointed to find an iron vein with only 1 ore left in it.
• The duration of lights have been tripled, from one hour to 3 hours as the new default duration.
• Bard music in the German client now has B showing as H to match regional octave naming.
• The viewing of notes for bard music has been improved.
• A music sheet can now fit far more notes.
• Notes are now ordered to visually represent lowest to highest instead of being ordered alphabetically.
• Seeds now show their levels in the menu lookat for merchants when you hover over them.
• Parchments are a little more forgiving in how much space a line-skip takes up.
  

Bugfixes

• You can no longer ruin a music sheet or book by adding too many notes or sheets to them.
• Some areas where mobs could get stuck out of reach of players were fixed.
• Mobs will no longer spawn on housing properties.
• Throwing weapons no longer last infinitely.
• Static potions can no longer be consumed.
• Becoming a citizen now has a verification prompt to prevent accidentally leaving your realm when talking about it near a notary.
• Using notes meant for a different instrument will no longer wrongly take account for your skill with the intended instrument instead of the one you are actually using.
• Lost Knowledge pells can no longer be used when static.
• Obsidimine quest that requires finding and using a certain lute now works as intended.
• Static flames will now do damage beyond the first when walking through multiple quickly.
• Wands will now lose durability when casting rune magic.
• The combination SUL LEV FHEN will no longer allow multiple procs of damage on the same target when no target is selected (it already did not allow it when a target was selected).
• Fishing nets can now be repaired as intended.
• The Ronagan dungeon thief trap will now have a maximum amount it can steal from you, a cooldown and now has an improved inform.
• Repairs will no longer occasionally get stuck one point away from brand new status.
  

Hotfixes

• You can no longer infinitely repeat the Akaltut kill quest at the end of that quest-line.
• Town leaders will no longer unintentionally have their town funds taxed as if they were private funds.
• Clavichords that were broken were fixed to still be playable, as clavichords as static tools do not break (they did for a while, patched in the previous update).
• Some backend errors not impacting gameplay were fixed.
• Enchanting will no longer under specific circumstances delete your wand by accident.
• Spirit spells will no longer under specific circumstances crash the game server.
• Xiao Dongzou has retired from gambling and left Illarion, as he lost too much money to sustain his business.
• Wrestling with a piece of armour in your hand will no longer unintentionally count as a wrestling weapon.

That's all.

Merry Christmas and Happy New year!

I hope you all have a great time playing Illarion.

~Brightrim

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14.12.2025 02:30 by Brightrim

Hello Illarionites!

It's time for another update to the game!
Below you will find a list of the changes as usual:

Larger Changes

• Two new runes have been added to the arcane magic system, with accompanying puzzles added to the map for learning them. As usual a hint for the whereabouts of these runes can be found in the book next to Terry Ogg in Troll's Haven.
• You can now skip the menu in spatial magic entirely by adding the name of your destination to your incantation, e.g. 'Locus Ianua Cadomyr' to open a portal to Cadomyr.
• Spatial magic now includes a spell to close portals. The tutorial has been adjusted accordingly.
• Constitution has long been an outlier in how heavily it impacts the game compared to other attributes. While previously we removed its impact on health regeneration that was still far from bringing it in line. A fix has now been applied to bring it more in line with the impact of other attributes, where in the past a low constitution character could take as much as 2000% more damage than a high constitution character, this difference has now been drastically reduced without breaking the game balance. This has no impact on monster health bars and no impact on high constitution characters. It is not perfect but should serve as a much better temporary measure until we can get a fighting rework in down the line, allowing for more varied play-styles.
  

Minor Changes

• The failure rate for playing musical notes is no longer quite as harsh, allowing for shorter tunes to be played without failure without having to reach level 100. e.g. at level 99 you can play a 66 note tune without any failures so long as the duration is 3 or higher.
• The max damage a spell can deal in PvE is no longer as restrictive, though this is only relevant in extreme scenarios e.g. a maxed out mage attacking a pig and makes no difference for high-end scenarios.
• SOLH will no longer spam you with informs if cast on you multiple times.
• Similar to player books, official books now also have a page-skip option that allows you to skip ahead to your desired page.
• Some new variants for gates/doors have been added to the game and can be found in the housing catalogue for estate buildings.
• Doors are less loud upon opening/closing them.
• Instrumental notes in the new music system now have a higher volume. No more being jump-scared by someone casting a fireball while you have your volume up to listen to someone's harp play.
• Some material costs in housing were adjusted to be more reasonable compared to similar items.
• Cherga's wrath has lessened and is now one fifth of what it has been since the last update. It may have been a little over-tuned.

Bugfixes

• Another out of bounds area, this time the Shadowlands section of the Cadomyr desert, was removed from the possible pool of treasure map locations. This is fixed retroactively as usual for any maps you may have had in that area.
• Clavichords can no longer be broken.
• Mirrors can now be repaired.
• The 'Black Dress' item has had its colour corrected to actually be a black dress and not grey.
• The F notes on the harp have been corrected to the correct pitch.
• The Tanora's temple weight check now also checks the weight of items in your belt slots.
• Spells that slowly move to their target over tiles will now more accurately hit their target, or any target that walk into their path. e.g. JUS MES or RA SUL.
• NPCs should no longer display the incorrect beard graphics.

Hotfixes

• LEV no longer causes accidental friendly fire if you target a monster and there are other available monster targets nearby for it to target.
• CUN no longer double-dips in teaching others magic resistance
• JUS IRA now recovers a set amount of mana that is no longer based on amount of targets
• CUN can once again no longer kill you again after death.
• The offering plate for the CUN rune puzzle now properly displays its intended look-at text.
• The damage dealt by poison clouds is now the same as magical flames.
• Farmers will no longer randomly harvest multiple crops at once on occasion.
• Seeking new spatial nodes now always correctly show the nearest node you can learn if one is available, as was intended.
• Some back-end errors not impacting gameplay were fixed.

That's it. I hope you're all having a good time playing Illarion!

~Brightrim

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26.9.2025 06:55 by Brightrim

Hello Illarionites!

Today we've released another update to the game. You'll find a list of changes below.

Larger changes

• Four new runes have been added to rune magic, with accompanying puzzles.
• Bard music. It's clunky, it's tedious, it's far from perfect. But yes, you will now be able to play actual music sounds with instruments to make your own tunes and use parchments with a quill to write your own music sheets. We will as always be listening to feedback for potential ways to improve upon it in future updates, however the framework we have to work with is limited and a lot of improvements are sadly not feasible to implement.
• Farming has been reworked. This includes five new vegetables to grow which will be part of new recipes for cooking in the future, level requirements to grow each crop, as well as price, growth time and yield adjustments of the crops, along with temporary adjustments to cooking recipes to compensate and reflect these changes.
• Cherga has finally had enough. There will now be harsher penalties upon death leading to a longer recovery timer, more durability loss and more item loss on death, if you die too frequently.
• Item recipes have been added as a new feature for treasure maps. Different recipes are available from different sizes of maps, with more to come in the future. Currently available recipes: Prismatic lenses for alchemy, drow equipment, tea set trays, cuprite ingots, a new halberd and a new mace.
• Magic gems for physical defense now only go in the chest slot, reducing all incoming physical damage the same way the gems in your cloak reduce all incoming magical damage. Magic gems can still be removed from other pieces via the NPC, but no longer put into them.
• Spatial magic part 2 is here, with new locations available to attune to that are exclusive for mages; the portal book vendor will not sell them, so if you want to have portal books that lead to these new locations you will need to buy them from player mages. Some locations are also exclusive to mages with higher attribute totals of intelligence, willpower and essence.
  

Minor Changes

• Magical flames have been reworked and will now be more threatening, so watch out.
• While it will still take the same amount of time in total to reach level 100 in a skill, it will now feel faster when only skilling one or two combat skills instead of three at the same time, for example, only learning how to use a dagger and not also learning an armour type and parrying at the same time.
• There can now be more than one tenant for a housing property, with equal rights to the other. No longer will you have to choose which roommate is just a guest and which is the tenant. It is still up to a player leader or GM to assign tenancy status.
• Training weapons of higher quality will now deal less damage when used on other players. You will no longer want to use those of poor quality for sparring.
• Constitution no longer double dips on health pool size and health regeneration. Everyone will now regenerate the same % of their health pool, but constitution still artificially increases the actual size of the health bar in physical combat the same way willpower artificially increases it in magical combat. Constitution still has a larger impact than other attributes do however, and will be adjusted more in the future during a fighting rework.
• Treasure maps no longer drop perfect or excellent gear. To compensate, aside from the new item recipes and cuprite ores only available from them, the amount of coin you gain from each treasure has been increased. Perfect and excellent gear is now exclusive to player crafters, with very good being the best you can gain from treasures.
• You will now receive an inform upon death detailing the items you lost.
• The clavichord makes itself known to the peninsula. As part of the new bard music system, you will now be able to play the ancestor of the piano. It is also the only static instrument you can not carry with you. Available through housing, though you can always petition your realm leaders to have a public one built for your realm.
• A bunch of flipped versions of item graphics were added to the housing catalogue.
• The inform preventing you from drinking during combat was removed, to be the same as eating food or drinking potions.
• Some typos were fixed.

Bugfixes

• Some client compatibility issues were fixed for our Macbook and unix users
• The need to have root rights to install the client on unix based systems was removed
• Learning magic resistance from monsters now works as intended.
• Treasure maps can no longer have the spot be in Troll's Haven where the guards will instantly kill the guardians. Any such maps will be retroactively fixed the next time you look at them.
• Wine sold by Rose now works for Zaida's quest.
• Support(emerald) potions in alchemy were fixed.
• The step in alchemy to add a stock in a recipe was fixed.
• A bug that allowed you to infinitely use the same candlesticks for enchanting rituals was fixed.
• A bug where some dungeon treasure chest timers weren't being set properly was fixed.
  

Hotfixes

• Portal book creation was briefly buggy and got fixed.
• Drinks had their base duration extended.
• Cooking spoons were fixed to detect the new ovens.
• Old bottles with a creator tag were fixed to remove the tag upon being fully emptied.
• The server time was fixed to correctly match the homepage during daylight savings. You will no longer log on to find the time in game is three in-game hours behind what the homepage says.
• A backend error that does not impact gameplay was fixed.
• Ilyn was fixed for alchemy.
• Milo no longer gives out less quest rewards for English client users.
• Magic spells can no longer kill you when you are already dead.
• It was fixed so bottles that had rarity can now be reused for brewing after being emptied.
• The citizen ledgers were fixed to show more than one page of citizens.
  

That's all for this one. I hope you're all ready to jump back into the game and have some fun!
~Brightrim

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19.7.2025 10:27 by Brightrim

Hello Illarionites!

It's time for yet another May-gical update.

Larger changes

• Four new runes have been added to rune magic, with accompanying puzzles.
• Some houses had their restrictions loosened, becoming estates, where feasible.
• Rooms at the Hemp Necktie Inn in Troll's Haven have been added to the housing system.
• The attribute trainer's prices now lower over time if you spend enough time roleplaying, to a minimum of 1 gold per attribute change.
• You can now use a quill to copy the contents of a parchment or book.
• Drinks now increase the amount of RP points you get while interacting with others. The level of the drink impacts the duration but not the effect, so feel free to have your character drink whatever they prefer. Only water has a reduced effect since it is not brewed or gathered via skill.
• Drinks and drinking vessels now have rarities. The rarities of drinks increase both effect and duration, while the rarities of vessels increase the duration but can be used multiple times. The rarity of the bottles used to craft drinks increase the chance of the drink being rare, but is a one-time use rarity.
• You can now have fields for farming on your estate, with the exception of Cadomyr as it does not support farming.
• You can now build static tools and depots on an estate, but be warned it is expensive and requires multiple people to build. There is also a limit to how many unique static tools you can build. Available static tools also depend on your realm and what tools it supports.
• Each craft and gathering skill now has two attributes instead of just one. Always dexterity for crafts and constitution for gathering, but the second one varies from skill to skill. What attribute for which skill has been updated in the character creation attribute tips, and new start packages have been included to reflect the changes. You can still play a jack of all trades, but someone who focuses in on attributes for a specific few skills will have better odds of having better results for those than one who tries to do it all.
• The quest creator on the homepage now allows you to select a character name to be displayed instead of your account name, as the quest creator.
  

Minor Changes

• Some new arcs were added to housing.
• Some writeable wall signs were added to housing.
• Some decorative rocks were moved from estate to regular housing.
• Some housing recipes were corrected.
• Some more permanently lit items were added to housing.
• The open treasure chest graphic was added to housing.
• Log walls cost were adjusted for housing.
• Signing a player-made book now removes the craftedBy tag, to avoid confusion as to who wrote the book.
• You can now check how long is left on the biweekly cooldown to learn runes by accessing the rune location hint book in Troll's haven.
• You can now view your list of known runes in a grimoire.
• You can now elevate wall decorations in housing so they are higher up on the wall and do not clash with other housing objects.
• You can now roast/grill at campfires.
• Player made books now have a skip-to-page function.
• The chance of accidental fires in the Runewick and Galmair kitchens have gone down by 90% as the previously dangerous inside campfires have been replaced with a proper oven for cooking.
• Books can now be stacked.
• A temporary inform was added for when you craft a rare version of a product.
• The light intensity of some items have been adjusted to be a bit brighter.
• The differentiation between PRIMARY and Secondary runes using capitalization has now been foregone in favour of consistency and will now both be in ALL CAPS.
• If a created by tag is longer than 17 characters, it will jump down a line to be able to fit inside the item lookAt window. Looking at you, characters with ridiculously long names.
• The ability to press E to use the item in your hands, prioritising the right hand slot if not empty, has been added to the client. Toggled off by default.
• Two new buttons were added to the in game interface, that allow you to mute/unmute sounds and music without having to relog.
• You can now auto cast all primary runes to avoid spam when training
• You can now disable the limit on background FPS (it will default to our normal limit of 60 fps instead), however it requires a restart of the client after the setting is changed and you still have to check your own OS settings for whether it also reduces fps of programs ran in the background to save power.
• When using a novice wand to attack a player, if the player falls back due to your attack auto-casting will now be cancelled. However if they fall back due to the attack of someone else, they may still fall to yours. DoT effects like CUN also remain dangerous to train with if not careful.
  
  

Bugfixes

• The translator function was fixed, enabled in the options on the log in screen.
• Building on an empty tile will no longer result in question marks.
• The cooldown to learn runes was fixed to properly be biweekly.
• Fixed an issue where the puzzle for PEN could bug out and not light up the sphere.
• You will now no longer be able to accidentally cast spells on your previous target if you swap your wand for a weapon and then cast.
• Seafaring should no longer bug out and leave you stranded on the ship if you choose to flee and fail to.
• NPC town leaders will no longer show up with the wrong rank in the citizen ledger, though this will only take effect after the first time they are logged onto after the update.
• Books that have had all their pages removed should now revert to a basic book that can be re-used for other purposes.
• A bug that disallowed building housing items when not equipped with a bag was fixed.
• Fixed what might have been a cause behind one of the reasons our server can crash.
• Fixed it so horns (instrument) can be repaired as intended by wood waxing kits.
• A bug that caused gathering/alchemy/teleporting and other similar actions to be interrupted when speaking has been fixed.
  

Hotfixes

• A lost German translation was restored.
• A rank up inform was fixed.
• The German name of forest ground was corrected for the rune PEN.
• Some texts were improved upon.
• A bug where a magical DoT could kill you again after being sent to the cross has been fixed.
• Pouring milk into jugs no longer results in the initial bottle randomly becoming a jug too.
• The !gm function to send the GM team a message now works again.
• The Illarion Character Database now links the profiles of characters if they have one, as it used to in the past.
  
  

That's all. May the odds be forever in your favour with this month's update, and have fun!
~Brightrim

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12.5.2025 05:54 by Brightrim

Hello Illarionites!

This month we are marching onwards with yet another update to the game.

New features

• Rune Magic is here bringing the first five runes, one for each element of magic, with more runes to come in the future. You can find Terry Ogg in Troll's Haven for a basic rune magic tutorial.
  
• Magic resistance is back as a skill you can learn.
  
• The rank system has been revamped. You now earn it by being social and roleplaying with your fellow citizens. Gone are the days of encountering knights in Cadomyr whom no one has ever met because they grinded their rank points at an NPC without ever roleplaying with their fellow citizens. There are still some new player friendly quests in each realm that reward rank points, enough to get you to rank 2 where you start paying taxes and earning gems, but gone are the rank rewards for difficult quests and repeatable quests. Now you have to roleplay with your fellow citizens instead to earn your realm's favour. It will also take more time for the average player to reach rank 7 now, giving them time to get properly known by others in their realm and making the higher ranks more prestigious as you know these people have been around for a while and are active roleplayers in the community.
  
• A citizen ledger is present at each town notary office detailing all citizens who have logged in after this update.
  
• The above changes means that the ranks of your characters will be changed. However have no fear, as long as you have been active you will not be demoted back to rank 1. Since the start of January 2024 we've been tracking your activity, where how much you have roleplayed since then will automatically determine your new rank upon login. You can as always check your rank at the notary of your realm.
  
• Magical diamonds. That's it. No really, I will leave the how and where to get them as a pleasant surprise.
  
• Magic gem distribution has also been revamped. Tired of leeches that log in every month to gain gems, without ever donating and lowering your own gem returns as a result? Well, those days are also gone! Earning gems will now require a minimal amount of roleplay activity, and the more you roleplay beyond that limit the more gems you receive at the start of the next month. On top of that, additional citizens being active in your realm is rewarded with even more gems being distributed instead of less. Your town rank will also as before impact how many gems you receive.

Minor changes

• A novice wand was added to the game and to the mage starter packages, to allow new mages to get right into it, though it is weaker than the regular wand and elemental wands.
  
• Fire magic replaces wand magic due to overlapping functionality with the base fire rune RA. Skill levels transferred accordingly.
  
• Mages from pre-VBU will have had their skills transferred over as promised by Devs in the past.
  
• In the most extreme PvP scenarios, players on the losing end will now have a little more time to react instead of being instantly 3-shot.

Bugfixes

• Housing blueprints requiring non-stackable items that get the "craftedBy" tag if crafted by a player now function as intended.
  
• Morri and Advari now sell the items they should and not a mix of each others.
  
• Some merchant display items were corrected to display what they actually have to offer
  
• Parchments now show their signature as intended when removed from a book if they were signed when added in. This is retroactive but you will have to re-add and re-remove the parchment from a book to fix any parchments lacking the signature in their lookat.
  
• You can no longer 3-shot a level 100 mob when at level 0 yourself if you get lucky enough with Dwyfol.

Hotfixes

• Wand breaking in wand magic was fixed and this fix was carried into rune magic that replaces wand magic.
  
• Fixed an issue where dye-making did not work as intended.

Have fun!
~Brightrim

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19.3.2025 07:33 by Brightrim