Hello everyone,

Here are today's updates:

1. Fixed a bug where the Soul Link effect from the Yellow Turban symbol was not working.
2. Added keyboard controls (WS and arrow keys) to the General Roster during battles, allowing players to navigate through the roster using the keyboard instead of dragging with the mouse.
3. Added keyboard inputs (AD and arrow keys) to the Recruitment Scroll and Map, allowing players to navigate through the interface using the keyboard.
4. Several options in the Reward screen no longer trigger reordering, resulting in a smoother experience.
5. Added some debug prints to help monitor bugs.
6. The Card Collection in the menu now displays all cards, even those that the player hasn't obtained.
7. Moved the icon for General's Buff to the left side of the health bar.
8. Fixed a bug where Guan Yu was not triggering the Unparalleled General effect.
9. Among the soldiers summoned by Zhang Yan, only 2 of them now have a dying effect that boosts morale.
10. Fixed a bug where using Zhang Fei's rage ability and wiping out all enemy soldiers at once would cause an error.

I have received all suggestions and feedback, and will continue to work on updates and optimizations in the coming days.

Heroes of Arkesia,

The May “Slay Your Way to Elgacia” Update arrives in Arkesia tomorrow. Downtime will begin on May 10 at 12AM PDT (8AM UTC) and is expected to last 4 hours. Slay your way to Elgacia with the Slayer Advanced Class and new story quests. The Slayer isn’t the only content arriving in Arkesia— with new progression events, the Ebony Cube, Event Guardians, Legion Raid balance changes, Quality of Life (QoL) updates, and new cosmetics, this update should make everyone’s life better in Arkesia. Find the full list of content, events, skins, and other updates below!



The Slayer is the fifth Warrior Advanced Class— a female remix of the Berserker class. A melee warrior who stirs up the battlefield with her greatsword and Burst Mode, this powerful class has the potential to overwhelm anything in her path.

Successful attacks with the Slayer fill the Fury Specialty Meter, which, when full, can trigger Burst Mode. During Burst Mode, the Slayer's damage and movement speed greatly increase, and a Specialty skill called Bloodlust (unique to the Slayer) can be used to unleash powerful slashes and stabs. In Burst Mode, Atk. Speed, Move Speed, and Crit Rate are greatly increased. (Atk. Speed +20%, Move Speed +20%, Crit Rate +30%). Bloodlust allows you to quickly slash at foes in front of you to inflict Damage, then perform a powerful stab, knocking them away for more Damage. This skill is only available while in Burst Mode, and can be used with [Z] key.



What is hidden beyond the seal the cube? Why did they make this cube? The Cube is a secretive ruin made by the Haals, an ancient race that were endowed with powers by the gods. After the disappearance of the Haals, the Cube was filled with demons and monsters. The cube's seal lifted, and its true name has been released - Ebony Cube. Adventures are gathering to break the Forbiddance of the cube— will you join them?

Clear waves of enemies in a new activity that consolidates Boss Rush and Cube. With all the original rewards of both activities rolled into one, completing should feel more impactful while also cutting down on the grind. Four clear ranks exist: Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond. Silver, Gems, Leap Stones, XP Cards, Combat Engraving, Honing Support Materials can all be earned, and both Lucky & Mega Lucky stages can be encountered randomly with bonus rewards. The Ebony Cube will arrive with three levels:

• 1st Forbiddance - Item Level 1302+
  
• 2nd Forbiddance - Item Level 1490+
  
• 3rd Forbiddance - Item Level 1540+

Event Guardians return to Arkesia! Enjoy a fun twist on Guardian Raids, where you’ll hunt down Guardians (alone or with a group) in an arena with the Scale of Balance applied. To enter, you will need to be Combat Level 50 or above and Item Level 250 or above. Your goal is to attack the Event Guardian to cause it to drop buffs, which stack up to three times. The buffs will increase your damage output by a colossal amount. After defeating all the Guardians, tokens will drop in a rewards chest, which can be claimed once per day per character. Tokens from Event Guardians can be spent at an event vendor, who has a variety of valuable rewards that can be earned each week.



A backend change arrives which allows for multiple progression events to run simultaneously. Thanks to this update, an event Punika Powerpass and Hyper Express Plus (II), will accompany the launch of the Slayer on May 10 and run until August 9. While there won’t be a new Story Express, the existing event can be used with the Slayer if you haven’t designated a character already, and is active until June 14. The other events that launched with the Artist in March will continue until their planned end date of June 14.

With this version of the Punika Powerpass you'll receive Item Level 1340 gear, and unlike previous Punika Powerpass events, Berver's Friend does not need to be completed to receive this pass. To prevent bots from reaching endgame areas, only players with Trusted status or with a Lost Ark account created before December 14, 2022 will be granted a Powerpass. While many players have met the requirements or have been granted legacy Trusted status, new adventurers arriving in Arkesia can earn their trusted status in multiple ways, and can choose the path that’s right for them. The first option is for new players to enable the Steam Guard mobile authenticator, have a Steam profile that’s no longer a ‘Limited User’ account, and be Steam Trusted on the platform. This path won’t require making any Lost Ark purchases. Alternatively, new players can also receive trusted status by making any purchase in Lost Ark through either Steam or Amazon.

Pairing well with the Punika Powerpass, players will be able to designate one character between item Level 1340 and 1460 on their roster to participate in the Hyper Express Plus II Event, where they’ll earn honing materials to quickly level up to Item Level 1460 and beyond. The designated character will earn rewards every 15 Item Levels up to 1460 (while having a static +20% honing chance success rate), including Silver, honing materials, Gems, Engravings, and more!

As a new feature available with the Hyper Express Plus, the Engraving Support system lets players choose 4 engravings to be in effect at level 3 during the event. Here’s how to get started:

• After selecting a Hyper Express Plus character, the Engraving Support button will light up.
  
• Click the Engraving Support button to open the Engraving Support page and select your 4 desired Engravings.
  
• Press the Activate Engraving Support button to start using their effects.

The effects of Engraving Support will also be shown in your Character Profile.

• The amount of “Courage Coins” earned last season has been reset to 0.
  
• You can once again earn PvP tier points.
  
• Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, and Master players will receive special rewards at the end of the Season.
  
• Honor rewards purchased in Season 3 will be available until the next season starts.
  
• With the start of Season 3, the Proving Grounds Store has been renewed. The higher the rank you achieve, the more items you can exchange.
  
• Master Rank requirement was previously rank 200 - 31, and has been updated to rank 100 - 11.
  
• Grand Master Rank requirement was previously rank 30 - 1, and has been updated to rank 10 - 1

• Removed the transfer requirement based on the number of characters who completed a continent.
  
• Transfer amount limit removed.
  
• Knowledge Transfer duration decreased to 10 seconds.
  
• Added the Rowen Continent to the Knowledge Transfer.
  
• Upon completing Knowledge Transfer, rewards are now obtained without needing to enter the Chamber of Mind
  
• Transfer fee adjusted.
  
• Removed Stronghold Lv. 15 as a requirement for using Knowledge Transfer.
  
• Added a Knowledge Transfer Quest Journal and Mini Info Tab for alternate characters.

In level 1 - 5 Guardian Raids, players will receive free battle items relevant to the guardian, automatically applied as a preset, with in-game guide messages on when to use within the raid. When the player leaves the raid, the battle items will be removed. This helps ensure that newer players won’t have difficulty attaining critical battle items while progressing, and better prepares them for later raids.

• The current basic honing growth boost (1415 - 1445) will be expanded to Item Level 1460. The current honing exp 40% reduction between 1445 and 1460 will be overwritten by this boost.
  
• Increased T3 Lv. 1340 Gear Level 16 - 17 basic success rate by 10%.
  
• Increased T3 Lv. 1340 Gear Level 18 basic success rate by 5%
  
• Decreased T3 Lv. 1340 Gear Level 16 - 18 Gear XP requirements by 50%.
  
• Decreased T3 Lv. 1340 Gear Level 16 - 18 Honing material and price required by 30%.
  
• Removed the T3 Lv. 1340 Gear Level 16 - 18 Gold price honing cost.

Silver and Leapstone loot increased for T1 - T2 Chaos Dungeons.

The first Western Exclusive Skins arrive alongside special launch skins for the Slayer Advanced Class. Learn more about the new Arthetine Nightrider skins tomorrow in a special behind the scenes blog, but find them showcased in the meantime below. Along with the new cosmetics, more items can now be previewed, such as, pet tricks, and stronghold structures.





































Find the full release notes filled with extensive QoL updates, general changes, Legion Raid balance changes, and notable bug fixes here, on our website.

- Feature added: Unlocked tiles overview (a requested feature). You can now click the hexagon icon in the top left to show an overview of all currently unlocked tiles.



- Localization: Achievements translated into languages which are also available in-game (English, French, Czech, German [AI], Chinese [AI]).
- Optimization: The "Limit maximum FPS" setting now defaults to 144 to help new players with GPU overstressing (you can still turn this off of course).
- Optimization: Minor GPU usage/framerate optimization.

-> If you experience any technical issues with the game after an update, try restarting or reinstalling the game. If this doesn't fix the problem, or if you find any other bugs, please let me know in the community discussions (you can use the link in the Credits menu). Thanks & enjoy!

Hello Mercenaries!

Firstly I need to thank you all for participating in our latest Free Weekend event, we had a blast seeing everyone enjoy the amazing mods created by the community. A lot of new players were able to check out the game and participate in the Free Weekend.Those who participated in the event should keep an eye out for Curseforge's announcement of the winners on Twitter. ( https://twitter.com/CurseForge )


(amazing movement clip by TH_Mrow)

Now, why don't we get back to our Wednesday event? We're going back to our weekly schedule of Wild Warfare Wednesdays, so that means incoming instructions:

• (May 10ths) event will run from 3:30pm EST until 4:30pm EST
  
• This game mode will be a rotation of Stomping Grounds, Control, Asset Assassination, and Team Annihilation played through our various game matches
  
• Please join the server "Devs + Community Jam"
  
• Everyone is welcome to join - this is crossplatform

• 2500C// sweet sweet credits to buy yourself some luxury guns, decals, and skins in the Black Market

As a reminder, we run our in-game chats over Discord so if you’d like to join the action feel free to enter the voice chat with our dev team and community!

Hi,

We have made the following changes:

• You will see "quick start" tips when entering a map. This is for beginners and can be disabled.
  
• Beefed up the health regeneration on a character when entering a map.
  
• Enemy health bars become visible only after they've taken 10% damage, except for mini bosses.
  
• Prevent players joining a game that's already ended.
  
• Prevent players joining a game that's already running for 25 minutes, else the portal is disabled past the 30 minute mark.
  
• Some maps unlocked when you used the portal to escape. This has been fixed.
  
• The Refund button stayed visible when leaving and re-entering the Upgrade screen.

Till later,
André

Hello friends! Due to the fact that many people had to stay at home in isolation due to COVID-19, we decided to add another Let's Play Together competition in the middle of the week, just for fun-with different crazy levels and (alas!) no prizes. We think it is clear by now this extra LPT is a permanent addition too :)

The rules are the same: log in to our Discord server, keep it running, play a competitive level, complete it with 5 stars and have fun!
Visit our Discord server (#lets-play-together channel) to learn more.

This week's level is

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2970989916

Just open the game - there's a link right on the main menu screen.

Good luck everyone!

Here's the changelog for the latest test build available right now on the test branch (check out the next chapter to try it).

• Improved room layouts
  
• Tweaked the perk prices

• Fixed the map layout sometimes changing when retrying a mission
  
• Fixed mission scores not always being submitted to the leaderboards
  
• Fixed some rooms missing doors
  
• Fixed VIP/HVT/Hostage objective not spawning any agent

In the Steam client, right-click on the game from your library and select "Properties".
Select the "BETAS" tab.
Select the "test" branch listed in the dropdown menu under "Select the beta you would like to opt into".



The game then should automatically update to the test version.

To switch back to the public branch, just select "None" in the betas dropdown.

Hello again gamers. Welcome to Micropatch 2.0.3, the micro-est of micropatches. There's only a few things to go over today - like X nerfs, Juno Nerfs, Spark buffs, and more - so I suggest you read and absorb EVERY SINGLE CHANGE!!!!!

This patch will be rolling out live to all servers soon!

Ok let's get started. <3

While it's good to have Strikers who are behind to have some options of getting back into the game, the catch-up experience for knockouts provided too much of an XP Swing.

• 
  Catch-up experience for KOs and assists :: 60% of the difference between KO'ed and KO'er (30% for Assisters) → 40% of the difference (20% for Assisters)

It's been raining Cats and Blobs out there. Juno is excelling, so we're hampering her ability to clog the alleys a bit.
Make it Rain [SPECIAL]

• 
  Cooldown :: 30s → 35s

Last time, Rune got the knockback buffs. We're now giving him the damage to match.

• 
  Unstable Anomaly [PRIMARY]
  
  • 
    Fully formed Damage :: 220 (+110% Power) → 250 (+125% Power)
    
  • 
    Fully formed Core Knockback :: 1390 (+205% Power) → 1405 (+212.5% Power)
    
    • 
      Unformed damage and knockback unchanged
      
    • 
      Also applies to the Unstable Anomaly left by Shadow Walk [SECONDARY]

X has been nonchalantly kicking in goals after bashing heads. He can still do that, it just won't be as X-cessive.

• 
  Bell Ringer
  
  • 
    PvP Damage and Knockback :: 200 (+100% Power) → 185 (+92.5% Power)
    
  • 
    Core Knockback :: 1380 (+200% Power) → 1350 (+185% Power)
• 
  X Maximus!
  
  • 
    Size gain :: 50% → 40%
    
  • 
    Cooldown :: 30s → 35s
    
  • 
    No longer has a minimum knockback duration per hit

Mastering the blade is no easy task, but we think Zentaro could use a little help from our end. Now, when he's dashing, he might bring an enemy with him.

• 
  Iai Rush (SECONDARY)
  
  • 
    PvP Damage and Knockback :: 170 (+85% Power) → 180 (+90% Power)
    
  • 
    Core Knockback :: 1320 (+170% Power) → 1340 (+180% Power)

Sparkington City needs to boost its tourism revenue. Stop by sometime!

• 
  2 Cooldown Rate, plus 8 per Spark → 2 Cooldown Rate, plus 10 per Spark

• 
  4 Power, plus 16 per Spark → 4 Power, plus 20 per Spark

Since we launched, you all have given us a lot of feedback on Omega Strikers. Like. A lot. We’d like to take a minute to address some of the most frequent feedback we received.
First, AFKs. We’re working on ways to improve our system to detect AFKers and punish those who decide to bail mid-game. And, of course, for those games you think are truly unwinnable, we’ve got a surrender function in the works! We admit, we probably should’ve had that at launch, but we’re hoping to implement it soon. Please look forward to it!

Another popular request is practice mode. We know the Co-op v AI games aren’t ideal practice ranges, so we’ll be releasing a mode that’ll allow you to work on your combos and practice new strikers in peace. We won’t be able to equip it with all the bells and whistles we’d like, but we’ll release the barebones functionality early and roll out more features as we go.

For players that promote out of high challenger, we’re also going to be adding a new tier to the ranked ladder: Pro Leagues. Once you’re in the Pro Leagues, the LP cap is removed and only the top players of each region will enter Omega.

We are also painfully aware that spectator mode and custom games could use an improvement. Though we don’t have details to share at the moment, rest assured we want to create features that are useful for those of you in the competitive scene. We just need a little more time to cook those.

Speaking of the competitive scene, we’re also looking into a central US server for competitive events. OS is a ping reliant game, and we want to make competition the best it can be. There are some costs to opening a central server, engineering and otherwise, but it’s something that is also on the radar for us.

Alright, that’s it for today! We really appreciate all your support through our launch so far. We promise we’re going to keep working hard to continue to make Omega Strikers the best experience it can be!! SO. Thank you for supporting us and thanks for watching. See you in the arena!

Local Yucatán photographer Joe Santana loves shooting his region’s architecture, and he chooses each location for its color and history. In Mexico’s Yucatán, buildings and structures can be found in single shades of pinks, yellows, reds, blues, greens and oranges… bold colors are everywhere. He finds inspiration in these vibrant palettes that connect back to the past, and the Yucatán Peninsula has a long history.

Sul sul Simmers! A spark of inspiration courtesy of the real world, through the lens of its local photographers. Like so many of you, we see inspiration all around, both inside and outside of our games. Welcome to Simspiration.


El Pinar mansion in Mérida

The capital of the Mexican state of Yucatán, Mérida, might be known as “The White City” — a moniker that’s attributed to its white limestone and level of cleanliness — but the colorful hues found on buildings are ubiquitous. El Pinar, a cotton candy pink colonial mansion that dates back to 1915, is one of the most famous. It represents Mérida’s golden era, when a natural fiber called henequen made a fortune for many in the industry.


The combination of lemon yellow and ocean blue on a colorful street of Mérida

Additional color inspiration can be found by simply walking around the capital’s historic downtown. Architects in Mexico commonly use bright, cheerful colors that stand out on the facades of stucco buildings. Pastel lavender, blue and green structures border those painted in vivid yellow, orange and red tones, but there are no rules, such as this lemon yellow house with an ocean blue door.

The Stuccowork technique dates back to the ancient Mayans, who built their impressive structures with limestone and decorated with lime stucco. Today, many of these contemporary buildings made with smooth stucco are painted over in saturated, traditional colors that contrast the sky, evoking a picturesque scene.


Ramp up of colorful buildings of Mérida in yellow, blue and lavender

Magical Town (Pueblo Magico) Izamal Yucatán, also known as the “Yellow City”

About 45 miles east of Mérida is Izamal, a Magical Town known for its sunny yellow architecture. Almost every single building in Izamal is painted yellow!
In the Maya era, nearly 2,000 years ago, religious pilgrims worshiped the Sun god Kinich Ahau here; later on, the Spanish erected the Convent of San Antonio de Padua, a Franciscan monastery, where a Maya temple once stood. In a chicken or egg quandary, it’s unknown whether the convent or town were the first to be painted yellow, or even why. Some speculate the color is a nod to the Mayan deity, while others believe the color honored Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1993.


Convent of San Bernardino - Valladolid,Yucatán

The Calzada de los Frailes – Valladolid Yucatán

A little further on is Valladolid, Yucatán’s third-largest city, also considered a Magical Town, known for its fabulous restaurants and cafes. The beautiful Calzada de los Frailes dates back to the 16th century, features pastel-colored buildings and is one of the best streets to experience boutique shops, restaurants, sidewalk bars and cafes along a cobbled road.
"The colors of Yucatan inspire, because it is the land of pink lagoons, of waters that shine at night, of the emerald sea, of green jungles, of blue cenotes, of yellow towns and terracotta houses, of multicolored art and food,” said Joe. “Yucatan inspires with each of its sunrises and sunsets, with its streets, old houses and beautiful churches. As a photographer, it is magical to be able to capture each scene, convey the emotion that is felt when you ‘click' the camera, in order to show that emotion to people from the photographer’s gaze."
Dag dag and happy Simming!