The gear ladder, ten new creatures, and a world to dress
Nothing was wiped. Everyone needs this version: older ones are asked to update. Anything you were wearing or carrying from the old gear catalogue is still yours: it has become the matching piece on the new ladder.
The gear ladder
- The thousand-odd look-alike pieces of gear are gone. In their place is a ladder of six metals — copper, bronze, iron, steel, and now cobalt and starmetal — and on each rung the same thirteen designs: a helm and a cap, a chestplate and chainmail, greaves, a kite shield and a round shield, a sword, an axe, a mace, a spear, a bow and arrows. Every piece is one shape in one metal, named for both, so a bag reads at a glance.
- The forge makes each piece by name: no more rolling the dice on "any design". Cobalt gear opens at Smithing 70, starmetal at 83, from the bars those veins give.
- Cobalt and starmetal sets, two more rungs on the path, and creatures drop gear of their own rung all the way to the top.
- Ore veins are painted in their own metal now, so a gold vein is gold and a copper vein matches a copper helm, and the copper and tin ore in your bag match their veins.
Ten new creatures
- Harder cousins of the creatures you know, one every few levels so every rung of the ladder has something its own size to fight: the bog slime, the giant crab, the skeleton warrior, the wraith, the tusker, the frost wolf, the iron golem, the widow, the elder vampire and the crystal golem. They drop what their kin drop, more of it, and the golems drop ore.
For builders: set dressing
- Sixty-six new loose props in the Decor palette, by region: cave, desert, snow, swamp, coast, highland, volcano, dungeon, forest, town and camp — and six buildings to stand as scenery: a watchtower, a barn, a smithy, a chapel, a guard hut and a bakery.