It would seem we are no longer alone! Three mysterious individuals of inexplicable affluence have made the long and dangerous pilgrimage to Ignus. Wizards who are interested in earning some precious resources and a little extra experience should make a point of visiting them in the three starter towns. Each of the three quest-givers will have a new quest every day, so there should always be plenty to do!

These new quest givers are coming to Citadel this Wednesday! Let's learn a little more about how they work:



If the exclamation mark above a quest giver’s head is lit up, it means they have a task for you! Interact with them to receive all the details: You’ll be able to see a brief description of their conundrum, the specifics of your quest’s goal and a breakdown of all the rewards you stand to receive upon completion. If you feel up to the challenge, simply hit “Accept” and you’re ready to get on your way!



After you’ve accepted a quest, the details will automatically be pinned to your HUD to allow easy tracking of your progress. You can have a total of three quests active simultaneously. Quests can be conveniently completed at your own pace while exploring the world and fighting enemies naturally. Once you’ve completed your quest the HUD will update and you’re ready to claim your prize! Head back to the quest giver and reap your rewards!



On top of these three new starter town quest givers, there are also three other quest givers positioned outside the boss dungeon mausoleums. These quest givers will only talk to you if you’re level 60, but they also offer some incredibly valuable rewards. Expect precious building resources and a bounty of key shards!

This is an early implementation of our quest system, and we have bigger plans to expand it in the future. We sincerely look forward to hearing your feedback on this new feature for later updates, so definitely share your feelings on our forum after it has launched! Thanks again for all your feedback as we continue to refine Citadel through our Early Access run!



If you'd like an even better demo of this new feature, check us out live tomorrow, Tuesday April 10th! We'll show off the new quest system and answer you questions, so come prepared! Give us a follow over at Twitch to make sure you don't miss out!

It would seem we are no longer alone! Three mysterious individuals of inexplicable affluence have made the long and dangerous pilgrimage to Ignus. Wizards who are interested in earning some precious resources and a little extra experience should make a point of visiting them in the three starter towns. Each of the three quest-givers will have a new quest every day, so there should always be plenty to do!

These new quest givers are coming to Citadel this Wednesday! Let's learn a little more about how they work:



If the exclamation mark above a quest giver’s head is lit up, it means they have a task for you! Interact with them to receive all the details: You’ll be able to see a brief description of their conundrum, the specifics of your quest’s goal and a breakdown of all the rewards you stand to receive upon completion. If you feel up to the challenge, simply hit “Accept” and you’re ready to get on your way!



After you’ve accepted a quest, the details will automatically be pinned to your HUD to allow easy tracking of your progress. You can have a total of three quests active simultaneously. Quests can be conveniently completed at your own pace while exploring the world and fighting enemies naturally. Once you’ve completed your quest the HUD will update and you’re ready to claim your prize! Head back to the quest giver and reap your rewards!



On top of these three new starter town quest givers, there are also three other quest givers positioned outside the boss dungeon mausoleums. These quest givers will only talk to you if you’re level 60, but they also offer some incredibly valuable rewards. Expect precious building resources and a bounty of key shards!

This is an early implementation of our quest system, and we have bigger plans to expand it in the future. We sincerely look forward to hearing your feedback on this new feature for later updates, so definitely share your feelings on our forum after it has launched! Thanks again for all your feedback as we continue to refine Citadel through our Early Access run!



If you'd like an even better demo of this new feature, check us out live tomorrow, Tuesday April 10th! We'll show off the new quest system and answer you questions, so come prepared! Give us a follow over at Twitch to make sure you don't miss out!

For the last few months, we here at Blue Isle Studio have had our heads down working away at a major content update that should be coming in the next month or two (we’ll share a more specific date as soon as we can). This large update will introduce a number of new systems and will almost completely re-balance the flow of game progression.

Previously, we’ve shared some early details of this update’s new Farming System, but with today's preview post we’re putting the spotlight on Spell Crafting. This system is a complete overhaul of our existing spell system, and allows players a ton of room for experimentation and customization in creating their own unique spells. Let’s get right into it!

One of the key ingredients in the upcoming spell crafting system is Magical Essence. These Essences, which can be found in a variety of elemental types, pulse with Ignus’ natural magic energy; with much training, experienced mages can harness this latent energy and use it to craft spells of fantastic and potentially devastating power.

The spell resulting from your concoction will vary depending on which essence type you use. Using Fiery Essence, for example, will create fire-based spells like flame beams and grenades, while using Storm Essence will create electricity-based spells like lightning strikes and static bolts. There will be a total of seven essences to work with, so you should have plenty of room to get creative and experiment!



The type of weapon used in the spell crafting process can also have a significant impact on the nature of the resulting spell. Choosing between a Staff and a Sword can potentially mean the difference between your spell taking the form of a simple bolt or an AOE explosive.

To further encourage experimentation, our Knowledge Tree has also been reformatted to organize weapons into progressions of material quality rather than streams of weapon types. For example, you can learn the recipe for the Wand of the highest quality available to you (based on your level) without spending points on the recipes for all previous Wands. Our hope with this change is to provide further build flexibility and prevent players from feeling forced to focus on just one weapon.

The final pieces of the puzzle are a new set of modifier ingredients that can be acquired through our also forthcoming Farming System (we’ll share even more about this soon). These ingredients, when tossed into the mix, can provide a number of useful enhancements to your resulting spell. Mandrake, for example, will apply a Bleeding modifier to your spell while Snapdragon will increase its range. You can experiment by mixing and matching up to five of these reagents to produce some interesting results!



Once you've gathered your ingredients the last step is to throw it all into the Spell Crafting menu, choose the type of spell you want to create (ex. AOE, Projectile, etc.) and see what comes out! You'll be able to create all kinds of amazing results, so it's worth experimenting with different item combinations and seeing what you get. This entirely new selection of spells will also have a completely new and gorgeous set of VFX, so expect to be dazzled!

We'll be sharing more about this massive update as the weeks leading up to this huge update roll by, so stay tuned! We want to thank you for your patience as we work hard on optimization and developing new content for the game as we continue to work our way through the Early Access process. All information shared today is still subject to change as we continue our work, so feel free to share your thoughts and feedback on the forums and in the comments below!

For the last few months, we here at Blue Isle Studio have had our heads down working away at a major content update that should be coming in the next month or two (we’ll share a more specific date as soon as we can). This large update will introduce a number of new systems and will almost completely re-balance the flow of game progression.

Previously, we’ve shared some early details of this update’s new Farming System, but with today's preview post we’re putting the spotlight on Spell Crafting. This system is a complete overhaul of our existing spell system, and allows players a ton of room for experimentation and customization in creating their own unique spells. Let’s get right into it!

One of the key ingredients in the upcoming spell crafting system is Magical Essence. These Essences, which can be found in a variety of elemental types, pulse with Ignus’ natural magic energy; with much training, experienced mages can harness this latent energy and use it to craft spells of fantastic and potentially devastating power.

The spell resulting from your concoction will vary depending on which essence type you use. Using Fiery Essence, for example, will create fire-based spells like flame beams and grenades, while using Storm Essence will create electricity-based spells like lightning strikes and static bolts. There will be a total of seven essences to work with, so you should have plenty of room to get creative and experiment!



The type of weapon used in the spell crafting process can also have a significant impact on the nature of the resulting spell. Choosing between a Staff and a Sword can potentially mean the difference between your spell taking the form of a simple bolt or an AOE explosive.

To further encourage experimentation, our Knowledge Tree has also been reformatted to organize weapons into progressions of material quality rather than streams of weapon types. For example, you can learn the recipe for the Wand of the highest quality available to you (based on your level) without spending points on the recipes for all previous Wands. Our hope with this change is to provide further build flexibility and prevent players from feeling forced to focus on just one weapon.

The final pieces of the puzzle are a new set of modifier ingredients that can be acquired through our also forthcoming Farming System (we’ll share even more about this soon). These ingredients, when tossed into the mix, can provide a number of useful enhancements to your resulting spell. Mandrake, for example, will apply a Bleeding modifier to your spell while Snapdragon will increase its range. You can experiment by mixing and matching up to five of these reagents to produce some interesting results!



Once you've gathered your ingredients the last step is to throw it all into the Spell Crafting menu, choose the type of spell you want to create (ex. AOE, Projectile, etc.) and see what comes out! You'll be able to create all kinds of amazing results, so it's worth experimenting with different item combinations and seeing what you get. This entirely new selection of spells will also have a completely new and gorgeous set of VFX, so expect to be dazzled!

We'll be sharing more about this massive update as the weeks leading up to this huge update roll by, so stay tuned! We want to thank you for your patience as we work hard on optimization and developing new content for the game as we continue to work our way through the Early Access process. All information shared today is still subject to change as we continue our work, so feel free to share your thoughts and feedback on the forums and in the comments below!

Good afternoon, Wizards! Wednesday is once again upon us, and we’re back at it again with another weekly patch. Today we take another big stab at performance with a significant update to our client optimization and a big upgrade to our core engine. For a complete breakdown of how this big update will help improve the Citadel experience, click here to check out this informative Dev Blog from Citadel’s Lead Programmer.

We’ve made a significant enhancement to Citadel’s back-end with an upgrade from Unreal Engine 4.16 to Unreal Engine 4.19. Since UE 4.16 (thanks to the success of Fortnite) Epic has implemented a number of changes to the engine that will help significantly improve Citadel’s dedicated server and client performance. You can check out this blog post from Epic to see exactly what we’ve inherited from the most recent upgrades made to the engine.

We’ve also made a few additional enhancements in our code to further improve performance. This includes a change to an ‘Event Driven Loader’, which should help reduce load times, and a full client performance pass of environment assets. Terrain, trees, grass, rocks and other foliage props should render much faster, providing an overall smoother gameplay experience.



On top of this big effort to improve Citadel’s performance, we also found time to patch up a few nagging issues that you guys have reported in the last little while. This includes a bug causing projectiles to hit lower than indicated by the reticle, a bug that would create significant lag during population of the server browser, and a few sound related issues. Take a look below for the full details! As always, thanks for your support and on-going feedback as we continue to work hard on Citadel’s development. Please give the servers a moment to come back up with the latest version of the game, and we hope to see you in Ignus soon!

• Fixed fullscreen green flashing for some users with NVIDIA GPUs
  
• Spells should land exactly at the reticle position
  
• Reduced lag during population of the server browser
  
• AI melee accuracy has been improved
  
• Fixed a server crash involving behaviour trees
  
• Fixed a bug where the boss gates would play a sound too many times
  
• Fixed a bug where AI melee would stay active after cast
  
• Fixed perpetual knockback with the Stone Golem
  
• Client performance greatly improved
  
• Server performance greatly improved

Good afternoon, Wizards! Wednesday is once again upon us, and we’re back at it again with another weekly patch. Today we take another big stab at performance with a significant update to our client optimization and a big upgrade to our core engine. For a complete breakdown of how this big update will help improve the Citadel experience, click here to check out this informative Dev Blog from Citadel’s Lead Programmer.

We’ve made a significant enhancement to Citadel’s back-end with an upgrade from Unreal Engine 4.16 to Unreal Engine 4.19. Since UE 4.16 (thanks to the success of Fortnite) Epic has implemented a number of changes to the engine that will help significantly improve Citadel’s dedicated server and client performance. You can check out this blog post from Epic to see exactly what we’ve inherited from the most recent upgrades made to the engine.

We’ve also made a few additional enhancements in our code to further improve performance. This includes a change to an ‘Event Driven Loader’, which should help reduce load times, and a full client performance pass of environment assets. Terrain, trees, grass, rocks and other foliage props should render much faster, providing an overall smoother gameplay experience.



On top of this big effort to improve Citadel’s performance, we also found time to patch up a few nagging issues that you guys have reported in the last little while. This includes a bug causing projectiles to hit lower than indicated by the reticle, a bug that would create significant lag during population of the server browser, and a few sound related issues. Take a look below for the full details! As always, thanks for your support and on-going feedback as we continue to work hard on Citadel’s development. Please give the servers a moment to come back up with the latest version of the game, and we hope to see you in Ignus soon!

• Fixed fullscreen green flashing for some users with NVIDIA GPUs
  
• Spells should land exactly at the reticle position
  
• Reduced lag during population of the server browser
  
• AI melee accuracy has been improved
  
• Fixed a server crash involving behaviour trees
  
• Fixed a bug where the boss gates would play a sound too many times
  
• Fixed a bug where AI melee would stay active after cast
  
• Fixed perpetual knockback with the Stone Golem
  
• Client performance greatly improved
  
• Server performance greatly improved

Weekly patches are returning tomorrow! With Wednesday's patch, we're focused on upgrading the Citadel project from Unreal Engine 4.16 to 4.19. Players of Citadel should notice a number of performance and optimization improvements after the completion of this transition.

To help shed a little light on this upgrade, I’ve enlisted our Lead Programmer Brenden to share some insight into the improvements you can expect with tomorrow’s update. Enjoy!

In this week’s patch, we’ve upgraded Citadel to Unreal Engine 4.19. This iteration of the engine brings a number of dedicated server and client performance improvements from Fortnite into the Citadel experience. Here’s an article listing some of the improvements we’ve inherited with the upgrade: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/unreal-engine-improvements-for-fortnite-battle-royale

In addition to server performance, we’ve also improved load performance by switching our game over to an Event Driven Loader. This makes sure that assets don’t get loaded more than once while referencing dependencies.

With this latest upgrade, we’ll be able to take advantage of the engine’s new rendering features such as volumetric fog and auto group load conversions.

This upgrade was especially challenging for our team because we had previously made a number of source code changes that fixed various engine bugs and enabled some of Citadel’s more ambitious features.

We ended up having to take the new sourcecode upgrade and then re-integrate all of those source edits to create a more updated custom engine. A number of our UI elements relied on logic that has since changed from 4.15 and required refactor and regression. The ‘Event Driven Loader’ upgrade was particularly challenging because a number of our assets were loaded differently from the new system and had to be conformed in order for the game to properly boot up.

We’ve since done full client performance pass of environment assets. This means that terrain, trees, grass, rocks and other foliage props should render much faster than on previous builds of Citadel.

In addition to the above upgrade and improvements, we’ve fixed some other nagging issues:

• Spells should land exactly at the reticle position
  
• Reduced lag during population of the server browser
  
• Using the search bar should not give mismatches when unchecking the toggle
  
• AI melee accuracy has been improved
  
• Fixed a server crash involving behaviour trees
  
• Fixed a bug where the boss gates would play a sound too many times
  
• Fixed a bug where AI melee would stay active after cast
  
• Fixed perpetual knockback with the Stone Golem
  
• Client performance greatly improved
  
• Server performance greatly improved

So there you have it: More performance upgrades will be coming to Citadel with tomorrow's patch! As always, we'll have complete details available tomorrow as the patch is released. Thanks again for your patience as we continue to work through Early Access and bring improvements to the game's performance. Your feedback has been a tremendous help!

Weekly patches are returning tomorrow! With Wednesday's patch, we're focused on upgrading the Citadel project from Unreal Engine 4.16 to 4.19. Players of Citadel should notice a number of performance and optimization improvements after the completion of this transition.

To help shed a little light on this upgrade, I’ve enlisted our Lead Programmer Brenden to share some insight into the improvements you can expect with tomorrow’s update. Enjoy!

In this week’s patch, we’ve upgraded Citadel to Unreal Engine 4.19. This iteration of the engine brings a number of dedicated server and client performance improvements from Fortnite into the Citadel experience. Here’s an article listing some of the improvements we’ve inherited with the upgrade: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/unreal-engine-improvements-for-fortnite-battle-royale

In addition to server performance, we’ve also improved load performance by switching our game over to an Event Driven Loader. This makes sure that assets don’t get loaded more than once while referencing dependencies.

With this latest upgrade, we’ll be able to take advantage of the engine’s new rendering features such as volumetric fog and auto group load conversions.

This upgrade was especially challenging for our team because we had previously made a number of source code changes that fixed various engine bugs and enabled some of Citadel’s more ambitious features.

We ended up having to take the new sourcecode upgrade and then re-integrate all of those source edits to create a more updated custom engine. A number of our UI elements relied on logic that has since changed from 4.15 and required refactor and regression. The ‘Event Driven Loader’ upgrade was particularly challenging because a number of our assets were loaded differently from the new system and had to be conformed in order for the game to properly boot up.

We’ve since done full client performance pass of environment assets. This means that terrain, trees, grass, rocks and other foliage props should render much faster than on previous builds of Citadel.

In addition to the above upgrade and improvements, we’ve fixed some other nagging issues:

• Spells should land exactly at the reticle position
  
• Reduced lag during population of the server browser
  
• Using the search bar should not give mismatches when unchecking the toggle
  
• AI melee accuracy has been improved
  
• Fixed a server crash involving behaviour trees
  
• Fixed a bug where the boss gates would play a sound too many times
  
• Fixed a bug where AI melee would stay active after cast
  
• Fixed perpetual knockback with the Stone Golem
  
• Client performance greatly improved
  
• Server performance greatly improved

So there you have it: More performance upgrades will be coming to Citadel with tomorrow's patch! As always, we'll have complete details available tomorrow as the patch is released. Thanks again for your patience as we continue to work through Early Access and bring improvements to the game's performance. Your feedback has been a tremendous help!

Hello, Wizards of Ignus: It’s Wednesday, and that means it’s time for a weekly patch! We’re back at it patching up some serious bugs, many of which were fixed with the help of your feedback and support. Let’s get right to it!

Some players, especially those running Custom Games, have noticed that the world’s enemy AI would behave oddly in the moments following a server restart. While some encountered situations where it would take a long time for them to begin spawning, others found that the AI would not react at all for a good long while. These issues have been fixed, and you should now find enemy AI spawning and reacting very soon after a server is started! We’ve also made some noteworthy improvements to the way AI navigates the world!



Tame desync has been a bit of a problem for some players, but we’re happy to report that we’ve got a fix in place for the issue with today’s patch. Many players were experiencing issues where their tame would appear for them to be in one place, when the server considered them to be somewhere completely difference. Your game should now much more reliably stay in sync with the server after today’s update!

Additionally, we’ve fixed a few other tame-related issues. For example, attacks launched from tames are now more reliable: a dragon’s fireball, for example, will now go exactly where your reticule is pointed when aimed!

Check out the patch notes below for the full details of what’s changed with today’s update! As always, we’ll be listening for your feedback, so please feel free to share on the forums. Make sure you give the servers a moment to come back up with the newest version of the game, and we hope to see you in Ignus!

• Fixed an issue causing Trap Doors to always remain abandoned
  
• Fixed an issue causing mounted dragon projectiles to not match the player’s reticle
  
• Fixed an issue causing dragon projectile emission points/hitboxes to not rotate correctly
  
• Fixed an issue causing Red Carpet to clip through floors
  
• Fixed an issue preventing AI from spawning and being responsive for a while after a server restarts
  
• Large Dragon idle sounds are now much quieter
  
• Party member can no longer see your throne location on their compass/map
  
• Fixed spell effect locations for dragon large/massive

Hello, Wizards of Ignus: It’s Wednesday, and that means it’s time for a weekly patch! We’re back at it patching up some serious bugs, many of which were fixed with the help of your feedback and support. Let’s get right to it!

Some players, especially those running Custom Games, have noticed that the world’s enemy AI would behave oddly in the moments following a server restart. While some encountered situations where it would take a long time for them to begin spawning, others found that the AI would not react at all for a good long while. These issues have been fixed, and you should now find enemy AI spawning and reacting very soon after a server is started! We’ve also made some noteworthy improvements to the way AI navigates the world!



Tame desync has been a bit of a problem for some players, but we’re happy to report that we’ve got a fix in place for the issue with today’s patch. Many players were experiencing issues where their tame would appear for them to be in one place, when the server considered them to be somewhere completely difference. Your game should now much more reliably stay in sync with the server after today’s update!

Additionally, we’ve fixed a few other tame-related issues. For example, attacks launched from tames are now more reliable: a dragon’s fireball, for example, will now go exactly where your reticule is pointed when aimed!

Check out the patch notes below for the full details of what’s changed with today’s update! As always, we’ll be listening for your feedback, so please feel free to share on the forums. Make sure you give the servers a moment to come back up with the newest version of the game, and we hope to see you in Ignus!

• Fixed an issue causing Trap Doors to always remain abandoned
  
• Fixed an issue causing mounted dragon projectiles to not match the player’s reticle
  
• Fixed an issue causing dragon projectile emission points/hitboxes to not rotate correctly
  
• Fixed an issue causing Red Carpet to clip through floors
  
• Fixed an issue preventing AI from spawning and being responsive for a while after a server restarts
  
• Large Dragon idle sounds are now much quieter
  
• Party member can no longer see your throne location on their compass/map
  
• Fixed spell effect locations for dragon large/massive