Upcoming Content: Bracer Slots and Overleveling Perks
We're six weeks into the Explore the Realm event, and while the progress bar toward unlocking the island is slowly but surely ticking up, we have decided to give the community a boost by uncapping the weekly points max. Starting August 4th, you can now turn in endless amounts of resources and kill as many monsters as possible on the list.
Every point will count toward unlocking both personal progress rewards and the new island. We are excited and curious to see how quickly the community can rack up points toward unlocking the island—more details of which are to come in future blog posts!
Today we wanted to cover a couple of other items that will be releasing in the next patch along with the island, including the long-awaited answer to an often-asked question...
Bracers
If you’ve ever wondered what the blank slot below the gloves on the character screen is for, we finally have an answer for you. With the next patch we’ll be introducing bracers—a new piece of gear that provide short-term stat boosts when equipped—to fill that slot.
There will be three different kinds of bracers:
- Bracer of Health: increases out-of-combat health regen
- Bracer of Wisdom: increases super regen
- Bracer of Stamina: increases maximum stamina
Each bracer will be available in three levels. The higher the level, the stronger the effect will be.
Level 1 bracers can be created through Tinkering. Blueprints will be available for sale in the Tinkerer shop in the underground market of Highsteppe.
Level 2 bracers will only be available through overworld treasure chests—a feature currently only available in the DLC, but coming to the main game in the next patch.
Level 3 bracers, the highest available, will drop exclusively from elite monsters on the new island.
Each level of bracer will have either no border (Level 1), a silver border (Level 2) or a gold border (Level 3) on the icon displayed in the inventory. When equipped, the bracers will appear as regular buffs on your weapon and above the heads of other players. As there is only one bracer slot available, only one bracer can be equipped at a time. Note that while there is a 3D model of the bracers for the Tinkering table, there will be no 3D representation on avatars when the bracers are equipped.
Bracer buff icons (left to right) Health, Stamina, Super Regen
As mentioned above, bracers will only provide short-term stat boosts. Bracers begin to downgrade as soon as they are acquired and will eventually expire, with higher-level bracers downgrading to lower levels as time passes. Downgrading will happen in real time, not game time. A Level 3 bracer will downgrade to Level 2 in five days of real time, and from Level 2 to Level 1 in 10 days of real time. Level 1 bracers will expire after another 10 days of real time. If you hover over the item in your inventory, you should be able to see how much time is remaining on the bracer before it downgrades or expires.
Bracers will be tradeable, however, and there’s no limit to how many you can get each day. Meaning you could, for example, farm the island to get a Level 3 bracer for running a Raid, then sell it on the auction house once it downgrades to a Level 2—or farm multiple Level 3 bracers in a day and sell the surplus on the auction house to players who aren’t quite end-game ready.
Overleveling Perks
Another thing we’ll be releasing with the next content patch is new overleveling perks. After reviewing ideas from the community on what they'd like to see, we decided to add the following three perks:
- Dram cap increase: From 5 to 6 million (available in tiers of 200K increments)
- Fishing boost: Up to 15% chance to catch double fish (available in tiers of 3% increments)
- Cauldron speed boost: The cauldron cycles between colors 30% faster (available in tiers of 5% increments)
We'll have details on a few more things coming out in the next patch in upcoming blogs over the following weeks.