@Site_Users,

It is with great pleasure that I can finally give you details on the release of the third region, Astryl's Vale! As many of you already know, Astryl's Vale will be Sylestia's first region coded with the new Exploration System. For those of you who had the chance to participate in the Demo Zone or the Summer Festival, you should already know what the system will be like. For the rest, here is a brief summary:


New Exploration System
-Explore via wandering a map (Like in Pokemon). No more just clicking the "Explore the Area" button. This gives you the freedom to go wherever you want. You won't be limited to a set-in-stone linear path anymore. This also gives you the ability to grind in zones rather than being "stuck" at a certain point in the story.

-Find treasure chests, sylesti nests, named, and so much more while exploring. Everything you've found in the old system will still be present in the new system in some shape or form. In addition to that, you will be introduced to named. There will be special places in every zone where named can spawn. Named are rare, semi-challenging NPCs that drop quality equipment and possibly unique avatar items.

-No more Quest Boards and Quest Logs. Enter a zone and follow the general tasks laid out before you. NPCs will reward you on the spot for your efforts. This will hopefully make exploring feel more immersive and efficient.

*Coming Soon* -Group up with other players to battle challenging and powerful world bosses. Every so often, a world boss will spawn and will be visible to all players in that zone. Players can then join battle to defeat the boss for high quality equipment and possibly even greater rewards. The mechanical details of this feature are still to be determined.

*Coming Soon* -New format for dynamic events (or raids as they are commonly called). While we are still working out the mechanical details, dynamic events will ultimately be implemented into the new system. All players site wide will work independently towards a common goal and those who participate will earn valuable rewards.


Astryl's Vale
Astryl's Vale is the third region in Sylestia. We will be releasing the region in multiple pieces, beginning with the first zone, Sweet Blossom Orchard. We will be unlocking Sweet Blossom Orchard on Friday, August 16th at 12:00pm server time. In order to gain access to the region, you must have completed the last zone (Aryth's Spire) of Umbra Forest. So if you have not progressed that far yet in the storyline, I highly suggest you do so before next Friday!

In total, Astryl's Vale will house five new species with the possibility of more being added later on. One species will be obtained via Ethernia only and will not be available in the wild. We are actually planning on releasing this species this Friday, August 9th, at 12:00pm server time. This species will be purchasable with Ethernian Badges, which will be available by completing tasks in Astryl's Vale. The shop will be set up similarly to the Ny'venes in the Arena.

In addition to the release of the first zone on next Friday, we will also be releasing two more species that will be available in Sweet Blossom Orchard. The remaining two species will be available in the remaining zones of the region.

After the first zone is released, we will continue the development of the remaining zones. At this time, we are planning on releasing an additional zone every two weeks for the remainder of the region. This will give us ample time to polish out each zone and also begin working on some other features and additional content.

The Level Cap (which is Level 60 right now), will not increase until we release the third zone of Astryl's Vale at which point it will increase to Level 65. The Level Cap will then be increased to Level 75 when we release the dungeon.


Overall, we are extremely excited for the release of this region. It has been a ton of hard work in the making (new exploration system, tons of new artwork, five new species, lots of new avatar items, etc) and it is the first of many major projects we are working on for the remainder of 2013. We can't wait to let everyone have a chance at using the new system and providing feedback on how we can improve it.

If you have any questions regarding Astryl's Vale, please feel free to post a reply.


New Information

New Rarity and Trap system
In order to have a more dynamic spawn system for random battles, we are in the process of completely recoding how Sylesti rarities and how Traps work. Currently, the rarity part of the system is now live. The Trap portion will be coming soon.

In each zone, we set each species to their own spawn chance. This ranges from common to very rare (or not at all). An example would be that in Sweet Blossom Orchard, a Qitari is set to rare. However, if you were in Esior's Fields, a Qitari would probably be common.

Once a species has been chosen, the code then chooses the amount of genopoints it has. This ranges from 0 all the way to 8. Once it knows the genopoints, it then randomly assigns them as carried or visible. This means that a wild sylesti with 4 genotype points could be a double visible, quad carry, or 1 vis 2 carry.

For now, the color of the stars indicate the amount of genopoints. This will be removed when we revamp the Trap system!

In order to address a few problems we are concerned with and the changes to the rarity system, we are changing how Traps work. Traps will become level based instead of rarity based. In Esior's Haven, you will be able to buy varying Level 25 Traps. These work on Sylesties level 25 and under. The goal here is to provide an adequate gold sink throughout all regions. Additionally, there will be some type of trap resistance attached to each pet based on its genopoints. Beyond this point hasn't been figured out yet, so I can't really give anymore details.

*Does a happy dance!* ^_^
Yay, new areas!

/shakes with excitement/
OuO CAN'T WAIT

Yay! Thanks for all the hard work! <3

I have a question. If the quest boards are going away, what does that mean for Saerielle's City Badges? Will we still be able to collect them somehow?

Somehow I don't get where a new freedom comes in with this ...

I was in the Test Zone three times, but I couldn't move anywhere from a single given path. Clicking on the "explore (or search) area" button didn't do a thing. So how do we move/explore freely in such a zone?

... I wonder what the new species will be like

Yeah, I'm eagerly awaiting the new species as well

This.. is AWSOME :Q

@Zelly,



Badges will remain. For the first 2 regions, nothing is changing for now.

For Astryl's Vale, there will be new methods of earning badges. When we eventually revamp the first 2 regions, we will also add in those new methods of earning the old badges.

But badges will still be used as a special currency for cities.