8/25 (Tue) Developer Live Stream Summary Notice

📢8/25 (Tue) Developer Live Stream Summary
※ Details regarding the 8/27 (Thu) update, in addition to the content covered in the live stream, will be provided through the update notice.
 

※ You can watch the video with subtitles in your preferred language by enabling the YouTube subtitle feature > Settings > Subtitles > Auto-translate, and then selecting the language.

[Dev Live Redeem Code]

📌Developer Live Stream Key Highlights

▶ New Hunter - Light Buster 'Lee Joohee, Pilgrim of the Labyrinth'
- Following 'Pure Sword Princess Cha Hae-In', the original 'Lee Joohee' arrives as a Memorial Hunter, presenting her appearance from another world.
 

- She is a Light Buster Hunter who scales with Attack. Using a prism as her weapon, her battle style features flashy action, including firing beam magic. Her combat mechanism works by inflicting extra hits and debuffs on enemies when Basic Skill 1 and Core Attack hit, while stacking buffs on herself to enhance Basic Skill 1 into a boosted skill for even greater damage.

- She synergizes well when paired with Shimizu Akari—whose balance is being buffed in this update—and Antoine Martinez, who fills the Stacker role among Light Hunters.

- Lee Joohee, Pilgrim of the Labyrinth also retains the "Team MP Recovery Effect" possessed by her original SR counterpart, Lee Joohee.


▶ New Challenge Content - ‘Hall of Monarchs’
- A new challenge content for Hunters who have cleared the highest stage of the Workshop of Brilliant Light is added.
Unlike the Workshop of Brilliant Light, this challenge content allows Hunters to set their own difficulty by directly selecting constraints applied within the stage, combining various strategy styles.
 

Constraints & Difficulty
- Constraint categories are divided into Common Constraints, Boss-specific Constraints, and Season-specific Constraints. Utilizing these requires different strategic approaches even when facing the same boss, depending on the selected constraints.
For example, you can attempt a speed clear by selecting constraints such as "Increased Enemy ATK" or "Time Limit," or focus on dodging enemy attacks using the "Reduced Healing" constraint to build diverse clearing strategies.

-The default difficulty of Hall of Monarchs is set to the level of Stage 10 of the Workshop of Brilliant Light (renewed in the July 30 update), but the difficulty adjusts based on your constraint settings.
The existing Workshop of Brilliant Light difficulty is lowered in this update, allowing for easier gameplay.

- Applying fewer constraints adjusts the difficulty to a manageable level for players who've previously cleared the Workshop of Brilliant Light. Conversely, selecting more constraints increases your clear score, but significantly raises the difficulty.
The balance is not designed around selecting every single constraint. We recommend choosing constraints that fit your combat style to defeat bosses and achieve a suitable score.

Rewards & Season Schedule
- Your total score across all 3 stages determines your rank on the leaderboards, with special honor rewards like frames and titles awarded based on your ranking tier.

- Hall of Monarchs Season 1 kicks off on September 3 and runs for 2 weeks, featuring Water and Light as the first weak elements.
Please note that you must clear the highest stage of the Workshop of Brilliant Light to enter. Whenever higher stages are added to the Workshop in future updates, you'll need to clear the new highest stage to refresh your entry eligibility.


▶ New Sung Jinwoo Weapon - 'Spirit Blade: Snowstorm'
- A new Water weapon with a Water stacking effect for Sung Jinwoo.
 

- Using its scabbard and blade, it applies a Freeze effect to a wide area in front of you, and its core mechanics center on synergy that boosts the damage of Freeze-inflicting skills.
Even if enemies are immune to Freeze, skills that inflict Freeze will still benefit from the damage boost, allowing you to deal heavy damage even against bosses with Freeze Immunity.

- Unlike other attribute-infusing weapons, its weapon skill changes to an enhanced version during Overload, enabling even more powerful strikes and offering a distinct playstyle, such as utilizing weapon skills while in Overload.

- It pairs exceptionally well with Skadi, which is being rebalanced in the August update, making it a strong new choice for Water weapon builds.


▶ Hunter & Weapon Balance Adjustments

Hunters
- Shimizu Akari's main buffs, Divine Flame and Ring of Fire, have been reworked for better clarity. Unhealable and Overload Stacking effects have also been added, solidifying her role as a Light Buster-Supporter when paired with Lee Joohee, Pilgrim of the Labyrinth.
- Additionally, Light Hunters: Antoine Martinez and Laura Walker are getting buffed.

Weapons
- Skadi gets the biggest overhaul, updated to synergize with Sung Jinwoo Weapon, Spirit Blade: Snowstorm:
 1. Last Hunt now counts as a Basic Skill instead of a Special Skill, allowing it to benefit from Basic Skill damage boosts.
 2. Skadi's Blessing now stacks up to 4 times when equipping two Water weapons.
 3. Skadi's Curse, which previously had no additional effect, now increases Water Overload damage.
- Additionally, Winterfang, Transfiguration Key, Winchester Roke, and Moonlit Gale are all getting buffed.

Artifacts
- Equipping 5 core artifact types for a specific class on a matching Hunter will grant additional enhanced effects in Team Fight Mode.


▶ Other Improvements & New Costume
Successor Auto-Battle Improvements
- Auto-battle for Successors has been updated to mirror the optimized skill rotations commonly used by Hunters, ensuring skills are executed in the recommended sequence.
 

New Laura Walker Costume
- Laura Walker's new costume, "Sweet Night," has been added. This costume is available with the Hunter Pass Deluxe.
 

▶ Future Update Direction
- Feedback like "I still care about the game, but I no longer have a reason to play hard" was a heavy wake-up call for us.

The fact that long-time players feel this way highlights a core issue: a lack of engaging content. We firmly believe that your effort should yield clear rewards, that the variety of challenging content should expand, and that growing stronger should feel genuinely meaningful.

To address these concerns, we plan to take the following direction.
 

1. Total Power Centered Rework & Restoring the Joy of Farming

Combat Power Advantage Rework
- Combat Power will no longer be a meaningless metric where clearing remains difficult even after exceeding the recommended requirements. We are fully reworking it to make TP a truly impactful stat.

Reaching or exceeding recommended TP will grant clear combat advantages, while under-geared attempts will feel noticeably challenging. We will also refine the TP difference display so players can clearly gauge their advantage or disadvantage in combat.

Ranking System Rework
- The current Trophy Ranking will transition into a TP and content-focused ranking system, giving Hunters a prestigious way to showcase their strength, supported by exclusive honor-based ranking rewards.

While Trophy Rankings are being retired, the Essence Stone rewards previously tied to them will still be distributed based on your total accumulated trophies as before. .

Farming Content Improvements
- We agree with your feedback that routine daily and weekly dungeons currently lack a sense of meaningful progression. We are restructuring these systems so that farmed materials directly contribute to your growth.

We will continue our efforts to reduce tedious grinding, while ensuring that end-game challenge content retains its thrilling, engaging nature.

Additionally, we are developing new growth systems to ensure both Sung Jinwoo and Hunters feel a continuous sense of progression. By providing more avenues to boost Combat Power, we aim to make the farming experience genuinely rewarding again.


2. Diverse Action Experiences
- Since most current content centers on solo clears with either Sung Jinwoo or a single Hunter focusing on raw damage, we are preparing new regular and event modes for our 2.5 Anniversary update, including 4-Hunter Team Fights and Infinite Relay Boss Challenges.

4-Hunter Team Fight - Deep Isolation Zone
- Similar to the 3-Hunter Team Fight introduced during the April Fools event, this mode features 4 Hunters fighting simultaneously on the field.
It introduces new combat mechanics, such as swapping Hunters dynamically to adjust to fight conditions, or triggering a joint combo attack once a specific gauge fills to temporarily neutralize enemies.

- Meeting certain conditions triggers special mechanics like mutant monsters or anomalous events that shift your tactical priorities. Designed so various party roles carry weight, this mode will offer rich strategic variety based on your team composition.

Infinite Relay Boss Challenge - Infinite Battlefield
- A challenge stage where players face waves of past elite monsters and bosses in sequence. Built to make you strongly feel the impact of your Combat Power, this mode serves as a benchmark for your growth while offering rewards to match your progress.


3. Guild Rework & QoL Improvements

Guild Rework
- Since current guild activities are limited to Guild Bosses, daily Check-Ins, and shop purchases, we are planning a comprehensive rework of the guild system following the 2.5 Anniversary update:

1. Joining a guild will directly increase your Total Power.
2. Guild buffs will be updated so individual members can select the specific buffs they want.
3. Discord integration will be added to facilitate better communication among guild members.
4  New cooperative content will be introduced alongside Guild Bosses.

- We are designing this so simply playing regular in-game content will naturally contribute to Guild Co-op progress.

QoL Improvements
- To streamline long story cutscenes, a cutscene speed-up option will be added (scheduled for September).
Simulation Gate auto-play features will be further refined to reduce required playtimes.
Detailed updates on these improvements will be shared in upcoming Developer Notes and future live streams.


📌 Q&A
Q. When will Diana Lopez, who appeared in the Story Hidden Chapter, be released?
 - We are currently preparing to release Diana Lopez through the upcoming September update.

Q. The difficulty of the newly reworked Workshop of Brilliant Light is too high.
 - As we prepare the new Hall of Monarchs content introduced in this update, we are lowering the difficulty of the Workshop of Brilliant Light, which serves as an entry requirement, so more Hunters can participate.
First, to ensure more Hunters can enjoy the Hall of Monarchs, we are adjusting the baseline difficulty of Workshop Stage 10, which was previously tuned around the top 1,000 to 3,000 players from the Hard Difficulty Clear event.
Second, we are adding bonus stats for Hunters who exceed the recommended Combat Power, making your growth feel more impactful. We also plan to further refine this bonus Combat Power system in the September update.

 Q. Please add Blessing Stones that synergize with specific artifacts so Sung Jinwoo can adapt to different roles.
 - We are actively discussing this internally and are currently brainstorming ideas.
First, we are preparing a Blessing Stone designed to synergize with the Architect Set, along with several other Blessing Stones offering various effects.
At the moment, we are prioritizing around 5 empowerment-type and 2 survival-type Blessing Stones. We will share more details through Developer Notes or a future live stream once development is complete.

 Q. Closing so many popup windows every time I log in is frustrating.
 - We completely agree that the popups upon logging in can be inconvenient.
To improve this, we are looking to tailor these popups to each Hunter's individual progress so that only essential information is displayed. We also plan to optimize the event tab to make checking key information much easier and more intuitive.

Q. What is the update cycle for main story chapters?
- We are doing our absolute best with schedule management to ensure new story content is updated approximately every 3 months.

Q. Some players feel that daily tasks are too short and there isn't enough content to play after logging in.
- For farming-focused dungeons, our goal is to maintain a manageable gameplay burden while providing challenging content for you to enjoy. We will work to regularly introduce engaging difficulty levels alongside suitable rewards to spark your drive for challenge.

Q. The renewal period for Battlefield of Time is taking too long.
- Improvement work is currently in progress. For content that is not functioning as intended, we are taking necessary time to revamp it so we can offer a fully refined version. We kindly ask for your patience a little longer.

Q. Please revert the changes that slowed down Rage buildup during Raids.
- The previous Rage system had a structure where values skyrocketed exponentially past a certain threshold. While our initial goal was to smooth out this sudden spike, we confirmed that Rage is currently building up lower than intended during the Ant Queen boss fight. We will adjust it back so it scales closely to previous levels.
Additionally, we are actively working on a fix to balance out the overall variance in Rage buildup across different bosses.

Q. When will artifact swapping convenience be improved? Equipping and unequipping piece by piece is tedious.
- While we generally recommend utilizing Artifact Presets, please note that the dev team is working to streamline the process as much as possible so Hunters won't have to swap Artifact sets as frequently.

Q. There isn't enough challenging content or meaningful rewards to motivate top-tier and paying players.
- We fully recognize that our diverse player base has different preferences. We are committed to developing a balanced mix of accessible content optimized for mobile devices and high-end endgame challenges that demand high Total Power. Our goal is to establish a solid core gameplay loop where your efforts yield worthy rewards and tangible progression.

- We take the frustration of our endgame Hunters very seriously. To address this, we are preparing high-difficulty content with meaningful rewards for upcoming major beats, such as the 2.5-Year Anniversary update.

Q. Are there any plans to adjust legacy Hunters so they can return to the current meta?
- We are actively exploring ways to bring older Hunters back into the current combat meta, and we will continue fine-tuning balance on a regular basis so a wider variety of Hunters can shine.
Since introducing entirely new classes can place a heavy burden on players, we are currently designing content where existing classes—like Strikers and Breakers—can be utilized effectively.

Q. When will Sung Jinwoo Mode be added to Simulation Gate?
- Although we experienced some delays during development, work is actively ongoing. As previously mentioned, we are preparing to release it within this year.

Q. When will "Kamish's Wrath" be released?
- We are aiming to launch it in November.

Q. Please add Hunters mentioned in the original work (like Jonas and Siddharth Bachchan) and Monarchs who appear as bosses as playable characters.
- If there are specific Hunters from the original work you’d like to see, please keep sharing your suggestions, and we’ll do our best to add them.
- Regarding plans for male Hunters from the original series, we are preparing stylish male characters for future updates. Characters like Siddharth Bachchan are indeed on our roadmap, and their development and release schedules will align with our internal timeline.
- As for making Monarch bosses playable, this is something we are thoroughly evaluating internally. However, building playable characters requires implementing entirely new skill sets and assets, which takes a fair amount of time. We will do our best to consider all possibilities.

Q. There’s a serious imbalance between how resources and Gold are earned vs. spent.
- While we boosted Gold gains to help newer players progress, we recognize this has created a surplus for endgame players and an overall imbalance across resources. We’re currently working on proper resource sinks and adjustments to get the economy back on track.

Q. Can we bring back 3 elements for Guild Bosses?
- We’re open to this and are looking into expanding the elemental line-up for Guild Bosses again.

Q. Sung Jinwoo's Ultimate feels pretty weak right now. Any buffs planned?
- We're working on an upgrade path for it through a new Rune Skill system.

Q. Edge of Illusion and Dreams difficulty is still tuned to combat power standards from launch. Please adjust it to fit the current meta.
- We are planning to retune the difficulty of Edge of Illusion and Dreams. However, if we bump up the difficulty too abruptly, it could lead to frustration for players who might suddenly find content they used to clear impossible. We're carefully finding the right middle ground to make the overall overhaul feel right.

Q. There are too many players abusing game systems. Can you take stricter action?
- Our team is constantly detecting and penalizing accounts showing suspicious behavior, but since abusers keep finding new ways around it, it's an issue we are constantly fighting to address. We will keep tightening our anti-abuse measures to ensure a fair environment.

Q. Any plans for new collaborations?
- Not for this year.

Q. You mentioned a Guild update is coming. Are there any plans to raise or uncapping the Guild EXP limit?
- We are planning to raise the Guild level cap as part of our 2.5-Year Anniversary Guild revamp. To help lower-level Guilds catch up, we'll also make it much faster for them to reach Level 30.

Q. Are there any new Alt (variant) characters in development?
- We're currently working on a new Alt version of a character who showcased incredible action in the original series, aiming for a release around the 2.5-Year Anniversary.

Q. Are there any plans to add dubbing in other languages, like Portuguese, alongside Korean, Japanese, and English?
- Unfortunately, adding more voice-over languages presents significant logistical challenges, so we don't have immediate plans for it. However, we'll make sure to discuss the possibility with our business team.


📌 Closing Remarks
Planning Team Lead Ryong-ku Kim: It's a great opportunity to connect with all of you again directly. We are working hard behind the scenes to deliver exciting new challenges, including the Hall of Monarchs. We hope you look forward to and take on the challenge when Hall of Monarchs Season 1 kicks off on September 3. As outlined today, we will make sure to deliver on these plans step by step through our upcoming updates.

Balance Lead Dong-Hyun Shin: We have shared a lot today, from Pilgrim of the Labyrinth Lee Joohee to the new weapon Spirit Blade: Snowstorm, as well as various Hunter and weapon balance adjustments. After the update, we hope you jump in to try the new Hunter and weapon, and experiment with various team compositions including the updated Shimizu Akari and Skadi for a fresh experience. As you try different playstyles, please feel free to leave us your feedback on any areas for improvement, and we will continuously review them to keep refining the game.

Executive Producer Seong-Keun Jin: Our team is working with a core principle to keep the game healthy over the long term. We deeply recognize where we fell short for our long-time Hunters and sincerely apologize. Moving forward, we will ensure that both long-time players and new Hunters feel supported and valued. We kindly ask for your continued interest and feedback, and we will do our best to reflect your thoughts in future updates.

Thank you.