Trion Worlds Unveils New Details About ArcheAge 3.0: Revelation

With only two days left until ArcheAge 3.0: Revelation goes live, Trion Worlds has opted to unveil some new details about the expansion. The company sent out a press release earlier today, but I also had the chance to sit down with the Trion's ArcheAge team and take a tour of some of the expansion's new content, so I will be adding in additional details that I was given during that tour.

Revelation will be introducing two new races: the Dwarves of Nuia and the Warborn of Haranya. Both races will be able to transform into alternate forms that give them access to a different set of abilities. These forms scale in power based on your level and do not account for gear. They are limited in the amount of time that they can be used for, which I'm told is around five minutes per half an hour. Due to the fact that they don't account for gear, I was skeptical about whether or not players will use these alternate forms, but the team at Trion tells me that they are certain that the forms will be useful, as they allow classes to access a set of alternate form-exclusive abilities that may be outside of the scope of their class.

Players of all classes and races will be given a chance to unlock new Abyssal Skills through "a series of quests." These new skills are an additional set of skills that can only be active on one of a character's three skill trees at a time and said skill tree has to be level 55. Once unlocked, players must level the Abyssal Skill tree to 55 separately from their other skill trees. Over the course of leveling their Abyssal Skill trees, players will be required to do quests at certain milestones in order to continue progressing. The skills exist outside of the skill point system and players will automatically be granted all actives and passives in their Abyssal Skill tree simply by leveling it.

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To use Abyssal Skills, players must build Abyssal Charges by using skills that generate them. Differing amounts of Abyssal Charges are required for each Abyssal Skill. An example of an Abyssal Skill is the Vitalism tree's immediate area-of-effect resurrection skill, which consumes all available Abyssal Charges.

Perhaps the most oft-discussed part of Revelation's launch, Fresh Start servers will be going live with the Revelation update. These servers will offer an environment that is closely monitored for fairness in terms of progression. They will be launching without many of the progression-enhancing cash shop items, such as Majestic Trees and Farm Hauler upgrades, the latter of which would allow you to purchase an eight-slot hauler, double the standard size. As my tour guide put it, "anything that dramatically expedites progression or is designed for a server that has existed for six months plus has been removed from the Marketplace." Additionally, labor potions will not be purchasable as a single item and will instead be obtainable exclusively through a Labor Stipend, which grants the buyer a Labor Potion for every day that they log in. According to the tour guide, it was "really important for [them] to put a hard cap on the amount of Labor that could be acquired on Fresh Start servers because what it does is it really manages progression and allows everybody to progress at an even pace instead of having some people that can progress more rapidly than others due to their Marketplace involvement with things like Labor." That being said, the Labor bonuses provided by Patron status will remain.

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The most common question that I've seen in regards to the Fresh Start servers is "this is great and all, but when are the items coming back?" The answer is simply that they don't know. The tour guide stated that they "don't have a timeline for when these items will come back." He elaborated as follows.

We review the status of the server, seeing what the progression is like, and, if it is appropriate for that item to be added back, we will at that point. So there's no schedule and all items may not come back. It could be so that Rumbling Archeum Saplings, one of the main points of contention because they provide a Thunderstruck tree and that can be used to greatly expedite the crafting of fishing boats, items like that may never come back through the Marketplace.

It's easier for me to convey my mentality about this than exactly a schedule of what items will be added back, but, as you can see, we've gone through pretty direct lengths to remove these items from the Marketplace and do right by the notion of a Fresh Start server and the "rush era." We're committed to that when it comes to bringing these items back to the Marketplace, as well. I can say with confidence that we have control over this and we're not going to add these items back until it's appropriate for the server and does not damage the early stages of gameplay.

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Two new housing zones will be added in Revelation: Ahnimar, which can support upwards of 1200 houses, and Rokhala Mountains, which can support upwards of 1400 houses. New Community Centers add new ways for residents of a housing zone to progress. There are five types of Community Center in all, each of which is said to have its own personality and provide different benefits. Some Community Centers provide saplings, seeds, and trees that can only be grown in that area while others provide trade packs that can only be obtained at that type of Community Center. As players contribute to their local Community Center, it will rank up, as a guild would. Moreover, the more players contribute, the more they will get back at the end of each week.

ArcheAge 3.0: Revelation will also include five new zones, "new items, new gear, new styles of mounts, new crafting recipes, combat pets," and more. You can find more information on the official website.