The Real Economy Begins

The open beta ran on borrowed wealth: a hundred-times experience rate and an NPC in Twin City handing out silver, Conquer Points and DragonBalls to anyone who asked. That era ends today. From now on, what your character owns is what your character earned.

Experience: 2x

The rate drops from the beta's 100x to 2x classic Conquer -- for character experience, skill experience and weapon proficiency alike.

Why 2x and not 1x? Because we did the arithmetic. At the classic rate, levelling alone eats nearly a whole year of ordinary play, leaving almost nothing for gear. At 2x the year splits roughly in half: a few hundred hours to climb the levels, and a few hundred more to build the equipment -- which is where the real game lives.

PlusStones can now fall in the field

The +N ladder gains a new source: any monster in the world can drop a +3Stone or a +4Stone, the way Meteors and DragonBalls fall -- the stronger the monster, the better the odds. It is deliberately a windfall, not a farm: a +3Stone is rarer than a Meteor, and a +4Stone rarer than a DragonBall. The mall remains the dependable source.

A stone you pick up composes immediately -- two +3Stones raise a +3 item to +4 at the Wuxing Oven, no shopping required. The updated +N ladder guide has the full table.

The ladder is meant to be slow: a +10 item is a long-term achievement, +11 a feat of years or of trade -- and a +12 something the whole server hears about.

The Welcomer retires from philanthropy

The Twin City gift NPC no longer hands out anything. He goes back to what he did before the beta: welcoming people. Conquer Points are earned the standing ways -- the CPAdmin on the Market converts DragonBalls, and the Guild War pays its weekly prize.

Nothing else changes: mall prices stay where they were, the lottery still costs 150 CPs a draw, and everything you earned during the beta is yours to keep.