Hi, Asheron's Call fans. I've been working on a custom ACE server like everyone else and their mother. That said, hopefully it's a unique take. The server philosophy is to add as many quality of life changes as I can to make the game enjoyable to play without plugins and automation. Our target audience is players who want to play at keys. There are plenty of servers out there which support high-automation play, and this is not that. The secondary goal is to tweak existing skills to try to open up new build paths. You'll hopefully see the influence of these goals in some of the features listed below.
What do I want? I'm looking for players to test out my changes and give feedback. Basically, closed alpha testers. There's only so much I can do on my own. Functional testing is one thing, but proper balance testing takes creativity and reps.
If you are interested in playing and sharing feedback, especially if you like the goals I laid out, shoot me a message and I'll get you connection details. Everything has been tested exclusively on ACUnreal, but should work with the retail client as well. The roadmap includes Enlightenment changes, Tier 9 content, team-based Unstable Portals, and eventually expanding the lore involving REDACTED. As of now, the game scales to retail limits.
AI disclaimer: I use coding agents. The design concepts and goals are my own (for better or worse...). I hand-rewrite all names, descriptions, dialog, etc. over time as well. You may see some placeholders I've missed, but the goal is to have all the flavor be hand-crafted in the finished product. I also review all changes, and revise them frequently, so we're not just full-send. That said, if you don't want to touch anything that has been graced by the Hand of Slop, I understand.
Universal Portal Magic
All adventurers possess innate mastery of essential portal magics from arrival, completely decoupled from Item Enchantment skill requirements and component costs.
Core recall, tie, and summon spells cost zero mana and may be cast in Peace mode without holding a wand or focus. Convenient chat shortcuts are available for all travelers, such as /ppr (Primary Portal Recall), /lr (Lifestone Recall), /1pt (Primary Portal Tie), and /sp1 (Summon Primary Portal). You can also just cast them normally, I think? Note that, because /pr is already used by the base game, Portal Recall is actually /dsk. If you know what that refers to, you are a true AC nerd!
Starting Core Spells
To remove the early grind of hunting basic spell scrolls, all characters begin their journey already knowing Tier 1 through 7 core spells taught by the five magic professors (Creature, Item, Life, War, and Void Magic). Standard casting requirements, components, and mana costs still apply when casting these spells. Basic spell scrolls have been removed from general loot tables to ensure drops focus on equipment, salvage, and treasures.
Unstable Portals
Explorers can discover consumable Unstable Portal Gems across Dereth. Using a gem opens a private, instanced dungeon populated by unusual combinations of foes and a boss, along with some difficulty modifiers. Enemies in these dungeons will not drop items, but do reward experience
Vanquishing the dungeon boss unlocks an exit portal and reveals a triad of reward chests. Choosing from one chest claims its riches and removes the remaining two. Leaving an Unstable Portal for any reason causes it to collapse. They cannot be re-entered. Dying in one of these alternate timelines will not cost you any items, but the other normal death penalties still apply.
Permanent Self-Buffs
To eliminate the constant tedium of repetitive buff routines, eligible self-cast attribute, skill, and protection enchantments last indefinitely until dispelled. Temporary buffs received from other players, items, or external sources still supersede weaker permanent buffs while active, smoothly reverting to your permanent enchantments upon expiration. The Archmage's Endurance augmentation has been redesigned to enhance spell potency rather than duration. Also...
Enduring Enchantment
All characters are granted the Enduring Enchantment augmentation at creation, preventing the loss of spell effects on death.
Alchemy Improvements
Alchemy has been expanded into a fully realized combat and support discipline. Skilled alchemists can craft and throw three distinct families of phials:
* Volatile Phials: Explosive projectiles that detonate upon impact, delivering direct elemental damage and outward splash damage.
* Solvent Phials: Corrosive compounds that inflict stacking damage-over-time on tough adversaries.
* Stimulant Phials: Friendly infusions providing physical shields, magic absorption, life protection, or DoT cleansing.
New alchemists are given a recipe guide on arrival. If you spec into alchemy later in your journey, I dunno, see if you can copy their homework or something.
Mageblade Conjuration
Item Enchantment casters can manifest and wield ethereal Mageblades. Every caster carries a permanent focus item capable of conjuring blades suited to their base Item Enchantment skill. Mageblade attack accuracy and melee damage scale from the caster's Focus and Coordination attributes, and casters may conjure up to two blades simultaneously for dual-wielding. Masters of the craft can seek out ancient incantations to unlock devastating Tier 8 manifestations. Your foci is hard to replace--it's really a piece of you--so I strongly recommend you don't show it to a Garbage Barrel.
Summoning Revamp
Summoning now accommodates a dedicated summoner archetype while balancing hybrid summon play: Players may now control up to two combat summons simultaneously. While two combat summons are active, the player deals no personal damage, relying entirely on their minions (which I guess technically includes eager vassals...). Controlling a single combat summon carries a 35% penalty to personal damage output to balance the overwhelming supremacy of hybrid summoners at end of retail. Since summons were OP, double summons are probably going to be turbo-OP, so expect changes here over time.
Life Magic & Blood Well
Specialized Life Magic practitioners unlock the Blood Well, a vital reserve that captures excess vitality drained from foes, overflowing full health. This well acts as a shield, absorbing incoming damage before health is lost. Absorbing damage through your Blood Well temporarily empowers subsequent Harm and Martyr spells. In addition, Harm spells deal bonus damage against critically wounded adversaries. Life Magic is really hard to balance as a damage mechanic, so expect changes here over time.
Thorned Shields
Shield bearers can imbue their shields with Obsidian salvage to forge Thorned Shields. When a melee attacker successfully strikes a thorned defender, the shield lashes out, reflecting piercing damage back at the assailant. The reflected damage scales with the shield's effective Armor Level and the defender's Shield skill, offering a formidable counter-offensive option for sturdy frontline combatants. Of course, if you just dodge everything, well, you're not gonna be thorning much.
Leadership & Loyalty
Passive experience passup through allegiance hierarchies is disabled in favor of active fellowship cooperation between patrons and vassals:
* Patron Guidance: fellowshipped (is that a word?) Vassals adventuring within radar range of their patron enjoy accelerated Stamina and Mana regeneration, plus bonus kill experience when lower level than their patron.
* Vassal Devotion: Patrons adventuring alongside their loyal shipped... I mean... fellowshipped (?) vassals gain increased Damage Resist Rating based on their highest-loyalty meat shield.
These are intended to be either used on dedicated characters that you co-play with friends/family or learned/unlearned conditionally, rather than fire-and-forget ways to juice mules or whatever.
Assess Creature & Lenses
Assess Creature lenses serve as powerful offensive tools for coordinated hunting parties. Casting Expose Weakness with an equipped lens cascades all seven vulnerability curses (Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, Bludgeon, Pierce, and Slash) upon the target simultaneously. Expose Weakness strips enemy armor significantly more effectively than standard Imperil spells, and master evaluators can craft formidable high-tier lenses with higher defense stats than retail.
Assess Person & Aetheria
Investing in the Assess Person skill harmonizes the wielder with equipped Aetheria. As your Assess Person skill meets higher tier thresholds, you gain increased surge proc rates and elevated surge potency across all equipped Aetheria. This synergy rewards dedicated investment in Assess Person with more frequent and impactful surge effects during battle. This does not affect set bonuses from Aetheria.
Looting & Crafting Overhaul
Crafting and inventory management have been overhauled for a cleaner, more rewarding loop:
* Expanded Tinkering: Items now support up to 20 total tinkers and Workmanship. Failed tinkering attempts no longer destroy the target item, only consuming salvage and 1 point of Workmanship.
* Streamlined Loot: Unenchanted filler gear and loose junk have been pruned from drops, replaced by filled full salvage bags found directly on defeated foes.
In short, you don't have to salvage, and manually looting has less to wade through. Tinkering is also less punishing, so you should have less incentive to hoard materials and rely on tinker mules and more incentive to throw stuff on items as you go for a smoother progression (especially on your first character).
Account Bank System
Pyreal stacks and trade notes can be securely managed through an account-wide banking system shared across all your characters. Use /bank to view your current balance, /deposit to instantly sweep inventory coins and trade notes into your vault, and /withdraw to pull out currency. Vendor purchases and sales automatically transact against your account bank.
Loot Highlighting
Defeated monster corpses containing notable treasures emit a visual effect, allowing adventurers to spot valuable drops at a glance without opening every corpse. Corpse highlighting triggers for valuable items such as salvage bags, epic/legendary cantrips, suit sets, high gear ratings, and high-tier Aetheria or cloaks. Players can customize or toggle these notifications at any time using the /lh command. These are nowhere near as detailed as plugin-based item filters, so this is less a complete replacement and more an optional partial-time-saver for people who like looting. Plus, we'll probably add more server-side filter rules based on feedback.
Account Quest Bonus
Every unique quest flag stamped on any of your characters permanently enriches your entire account. Each new quest stamp contributes an incremental, permanent bonus to quest experience, trophy turn-in experience, and quest Luminance. Enemy kill xp is not affected by this, so it rewards questing, but not 24 hours in Egg Orchard. All current and future characters on your account share this cumulative bonus. Use /qb to check your total account stamps and active bonus percentage.
Dungeon Kill Fatigue
Dungeons feature a dynamic kill fatigue system designed to encourage world exploration and deter relentless, static camping in a single location. Defeating sustained waves of monsters inside the same indoor dungeon gradually scales down monster kill experience and Luminance after extensive fighting. Fatigue naturally decays over time when resting or venturing elsewhere, and outdoor areas are entirely exempt. Use /fatigue to check dungeon status at any time, or keep an eye on messages noting when fatigue sets in. There's also a way to instantly clear your fatigue, but at a cost.
Town Founder Quest
In keeping with our streamlined crafting and salvage systems, the Candeth Keep stronghold founder quest in Wai Jhou has been simplified. Adventurers looking to assist the settlement need only deliver a single filled salvage bag of the appropriate material family to each of the three collectors (Human, Lugian, and Tumerok) to complete their tasks. You're going to want to get to the treetop, too.
New Imbues
Rare and previously neglected salvage materials unlock powerful crafting avenues:
* Nether Rending: Onyx salvage imbues weapons and casters with Nether Rending, amplifying the devastating damage-over-time effects of Void Magic. This rend has no effect on bolts, rings, etc., so you don't get to just be a better War Mage at lower cost and gear complexity.
* Chaotic Reforging: Rare gem salvages allow adventurers to re-roll implicit weapon or armor attributes, or risk corrupting equipment for unpredictable, potent augmentations (if you're a Path of Exile fan, we basically have Vaal and Blessed Orbs).
Universal Tinkering
All characters receive all four tinkering skills (Armor, Item, Magic Item, and Weapon Tinkering) trained for free upon creation. Every adventurer can modify, reinforce, and personalize their own equipment throughout their journey without maintaining secondary crafting characters or transferring gear between mules. If you didn't know this when you made your character and you chose that Tinker Lyfe (tm), you got refunded those credits. So you don't have to reroll. Yet. For that reason. It's coming though, right? The urge is always there, in the back of your mind, waiting for a moment of weakness. Do it, the urge says. You know you want to try Light Weapons!
Eldritch Weapons & Shields
Light weapons and shields can harbor the mystical Eldritch property, weaving mana into martial combat:
* Eldritch Weapons: Successful strikes have a chance to deal additional attack damage based on your current mana.
* Eldritch Shields: When absorbing incoming attacks, an Eldritch shield can convert incoming damage into mana drain, protecting your health pool.
* Crafting: Turquoise salvage allows artisans to imbue weapons and shields with this property.
Marketplace Vaults & Bag of Holding
Every account has access to storage vaults located in the universal Marketplace, organized into dedicated chests for Weapons, Armor, Magic, Salvage, and General items. All characters receive a Bag of Holding. Using this magical pouch on items in your inventory instantly deposits them directly into your account's Marketplace vaults from anywhere in Dereth, making inventory management and gear sharing seamless. Check the SE room of Marketplace for access to the vaults. Also, don't give away your Bag of Holding. Seriously. And don't try to Bag of Holding one of your Bags of Not-Holding. We thought of that.
Life Magic Casters
Blood Batons are dedicated Life Magic casting weapons appearing in loot starting at Tier 4. Wielding a Blood Baton requires Life Magic skill and amplifies the power of all offensive Life Magic spells, including Harm, direct projectiles such as Martyr's Hecatomb, and Health, Stamina, and Mana drains. Only blood turns the wheels of history.
Item Mana & Gear Maintenance
The whole thing with recharging mana on your items was quite tedious, wasn't it? Equipped items no longer consume mana passively over time, and therefore no longer needs recharging. As such, Mana Stones no longer spawn in loot. Because the innate spells on casters still consume mana, you can still purchase Mana Charges from vendors, or find them in their respective loot. You're welcome.
Offline Catchup Reward
If your account is offline for 6 or more hours, you will receive a Writ of Respite on the character you next log in. This rewards XP and Luminance based on the time you were offline (up to 14 days) and scales from the highest level character on your account. It cannot be transferred between characters, so log in with the character you prefer to receive it. Luminance awarded this way on characters who haven't completed Nalicana's test will be retained and accessible once the test is completed. In other words: it's okay to go to bed, work, or a combination of both.
Custom Currency & Vendor
Elderglass Fragments are a reward currency earned through server events and quests. Seek out Its Emissary at Candeth Keep (yep, you'll need to get up there) to exchange your fragments for useful rewards, as you ponder what Elderglass is and where it may have come from.
Bounty Board
Looking for purposeful adventure or daily goals? Visit the Bounty Board in Town Network's South Wing lower-level bar area. Adventurers of all levels can claim a daily bounty tailored to their experience tier, including Kill Tasks, Assassinations, and Item Deliveries. Completing a bounty rewards scaled XP, Luminance (level 200+), and an Elderglass Token for use at Its Emissary in Candeth Keep. Only one bounty may be active at a time, resetting on a 20-hour cooldown from assignment. Use the /bounty command to check your active objective, tracked progress, or remaining cooldown.
Defense Events
The following event may occur periodically: defend an Elderglass Spire appearing in a town against waves of the Nameless' attackers and defeat the final boss to secure rewards including scaled XP, Luminance, and Elderglass Fragments. Events will occur simultaneously in Medium, High, and Uber difficulty tiers, so players of many level ranges can meaningfully participate. Participating in an event below your level (aka, showing off for the noobs) will lower your rewards. Curios, though. Where are the Spires coming from? What does Grael have against them?
These are manually triggered at the moment for testing purposes. If and when the server is opened up, these events will probably be automatically fired off based on timers and server population.
Nemesis Encounters
When clearing groups of seasoned overworld monsters (level 50+), the defeat of the final creature has a rare chance to provoke the emergence of an imposing Nemesis. Nemeses manifest in a dormant state, providing an opportunity to prepare for the encounter. Only the adventurer who struck the triggering blow may activate the Nemesis. Once awoken, a Nemesis towers over its normal kin, shrouded in blood-red hues, and boasts substantially increased health, damage, and combat ratings. Overcoming this challenge rewards percent level XP, multiplied Luminance (if applicable), upgraded loot, and a chance for an Elderglass Token.
This one is mechanically operational, but the enemies are not very difficult yet.
