Hi folks, it's me again!

Today, we're adding a pretty big new core mechanic into Aetolia to fill a somewhat lacking void - the wisdom stat!


THE WISDOM STAT
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The wisdom stat brings with it the power of knowledge, deduction, and application - street smarts, if you will. It will be responsible for scaling the damage used by tech and gadgets for new classes to come and will also affect some currently existing skills. Anyone up for some Bombcrafting?

Like the dexterity stat, wisdom will also offer some benefits, kind of like dodging, should you choose to maximise this stat. Wisdom will help you resist being stunned, reducing its effectiveness, and will help you recover from blackout sooner. Be warned that having a low wisdom stat will do the opposite - you will be stunned and left in blackout for longer.

For these two scenarios, each point over 14 wisdom will reduce stun by 2% and blackout by 3%. The opposite applies for each point below 14 wisdom.

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As I'm relatively sure it will come up, here is a loose guide to the differences of intelligence and wisdom in Aetolia:

Intelligence governs your ability to learn and comprehend something, including magical casting, which requires some amount of natural talent and affinity. A high intelligence score means you will have an easier time reading a book on math and understanding its concepts.

Wisdom governs your ability to apply what you know to the best of your ability, to gain advantages only understood by those who have taken what they learned and used it in real scenarios. To build upon the book of math metaphor, this is your ability to take what you learned from the book and figure out the most effective time and place to use it - something the book wouldn't necessarily tell you.

You can also consider it as book smarts (intelligence) vs. street smarts (wisdom).


STATPACKS
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Along with the new wisdom stat, we are also going to have brand new statpacks to choose from. Yes, each statpack has been reviewed and considered and should offer many more varied choices in which areas you might want to excel.

I've had these up and open to our Combat Council to nitpick at for a while, and almost everyone I've shown the initial draft to has been excited to see how it plays out once it goes live. Hopefully, you will also feel like there's more variety on offer now.

On top of these, we've also relaxed some rules regarding enhancement (HELP ENHANCEMENT). You can now invest into a stat of choice twice, providing the base stat value of that stat via your statpack is 10 or less, and you can now stack resistance-based enhancements on top of statpack bonuses.

To give everyone time to find what they genuinely like, reincarnations will be free for a while, allowing you to swap around as you want. As I'm not specifying a timeline for now when the free reincarnations will end, I'll give you some advance notice before we decide to end them. You will be initiatially be set to whichever statpack is roughly close to what you had before.


NPC DAMAGE
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The new statpacks offer a little bit less constitution then the previous versions did. So for these changes, we're going to be reducing NPC damage across the board by 8% while we evaluate how they play out. This shouldn't affect class-based loyal creatures, for the record.


ARTIFACTS
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Yes, we're tackling artifacts in this series of changes too!

We all know how important the equilibrium recovery artifact (otherwise known as the crown) is to our equilibrium classes and how it provides a somewhat frustrating gate to get the most out of them. So, with this change, we are going to reduce the price of the crown in the shop to 100 credits, and eventually, we plan to remove it altogether.

Those of you who have bought the crown will receive the wisdom artifact level 2 in its place as the choice of refund. This turns an 850 credit artifact into 1250 credits, pretty nice! However, if you just want the credits, feel free to trade in the wisdom artifact, and you'll get 832 credits for doing so to use how you like. Note after this, any existing crowns will no longer have any trade-in value.

In addition, we are removing the 'clarity' artifact levels 2 and 3 and refunding credits, and we will reduce the 'resolve' artifact stun resistance to 15%, down from 35%.


CHANGE LOG
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That sums up all our changes (for now!). Below, you'll find a change log to show off the details of things we're tweaking, along with the introduction of the wisdom stat. Feel free to read through, and if you have any questions, send them my way!


Artifacts
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- The 'equilibrium_recovery' artifact cost price reduced to 100cr.
- The 'resolve' artifact reduced to 15% stun reduction, down from 35%.
- The 'clarity' artifact has had level 2 and 3 removed.

Avoidance
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- Dexterity ceases to provide a dodge / divert chance bonus past a stat value of 21.
- Strength ceases to provide a divert block bonus past a stat value of 21.

Bombcrafting
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- Bombcrafting damage is now knowledge sourced, changed from no source.

Cities
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- Siege engine damage is now knowledge sourced, changed from no source.

Hunting
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- All NPC damage globally reduced by 8%.
* This shouldn't affect class-based loyal creatures.
- You now gain an additional enhancement point at level 100.
- It is now possible to enhance your stats one extra time for a total of three.
- You can now enhance a stat twice if that base stat value is less than 11.
- Protection, resistance, and resilience enhancements can now stack with your statpack bonuses.

Miscellaneous
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- New Stat: Wisdom.
* Adds the new damage source, knowledge.
* Each point over/under 14 reduces/increases stun duration by 2%.
* Each point over/under 14 reduces/increases blackout duration by 3%.
- Stat cap raised to 25, up from 21.
- Maximum health gained past 21 constitution is only a third of normal.
- Maximum mana gained past 21 intelligence is only a third of normal.
- Removed the bonus constitution point added to endgame races.
- Removed the diminishing returns on magical sourced damage, it now gains the full benefit from your intelligence stat.
* This will let intelligence based classes fulfill their role as damage dealers a bit better.
* It will also affect PvE for those with a high intelligence stat.

Tracking / Subversion
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- Spike, Catapult, and Noose damage is now knowledge sourced, changed from no source.

Penned by my hand on Kinsday, the 25th of Slyphian, in the year 2 AC.