The Artix 2023 "BattleOn Forever" Calendar Preorders are LIVE!!

Preorder your 2023 Artix BattleOn Forever Calendar or Collector's Edition of the 2023 Artix Calendar and unlock the bonus Paladin Chronomancer collector's print + exclusive in-game rewards in Classic AQ as well as our other games.

• The Regular Edition of the calendar includes the exclusive Paladin Chronomancer Rewards.
• The Collector's Edition includes all of the prizes from the regular edition of the calendar + the exclusive Dark Paladin Chronomancer gear and an awesome bonus Paladin Chronomancer print!

THIS PRE-ORDER ITEM SHIPS IN LATE DECEMBER & WE CAN NOT GUARANTEE CHRISTMAS DELIVERY.

Frostval 2022 Season of Gifting Contests:
Kibbles and his cousin Tibbles have returned to spread holiday cheer with new Season of Gifting contests! This merry elf duo collects gifts and randomly gives them to your fellow players - meaning you could receive gifts up to 5000 Z-Tokens or 100 million Gold just for playing!

• This year Tibbles is rewarding charitable players with powerful Devored Earth items.
• Not to be outdone, Kibbles has brought his own Shadowstalker gear.
• That means for crazy generous players there are 14 possible prizes to win!
• 10 Frostval Crown Misc items are being given away DAILY for everyone that gifts either gold or Z-Tokens (5 daily for gold, 5 daily for Z-Token). You can double your chances of winning if you gift both gold and Z-Tokens in a single day!
• 2 versions of the Frostval Crown are available - Ferocious Frostval Crown for +LSDmg and -LSRate, and Precise Frostval Crown for +LSRate and -LSDmg. Winners will receive the Ferocious crown by default, and it can be swapped for the Precise version via the Item Upgrader. This daily giveaway will end with the contests on January 31st!

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2022 Z-Token Holiday Madness:
The weather may be getting colder... but AdventureQuest is heating up with blazing hot Z-Token bonuses and discounts!

Get more Z-Tokens with each Z-Token package, and the larger the Z-Token package you buy, the more bonus Z-Tokens you'll have to spend! Get up to 35% more Z-Tokens and also unlock tons of bonus items with select packages until February 2nd.

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Platinum Guardian Dragon Jr Pet:
We kick off our massive 20th Anniversary celebration by giving away a special Platinum Edition of the Guardian Dragon Jr. Pet! Redeem this exclusive, timed code in-game directly through Ballyhoo!

AQ-PLAT-DRAGON-PET

This code can be redeemed once per character, expiring at 11:59PM EST on October 31st. So come celebrate 20 amazing years of BattlingOn and pick up your pet dragon today!

Summer 2022 Z-Token Bonus:
AdventureQuest is heating up with a blazing hot Z-Token bonus event!

Get more Z-Tokens with each Z-Token package, and the larger the Z-Token package you buy, the more bonus Z-Tokens you'll have to spend! Get up to 30% more Z-Tokens and also unlock tons of bonus items with select packages for a limited time.

20K Z-Token Package - Squee Booster Pet:
You may remember this sad little blue Moglin, spending his days discussing philosophy in Boog's Tavern. Now ready to seek out adventure, this little fella will boost the damage of all your Water attacks!

6K Z-Token Package - Spirit of Rejuvenation Misc:
This ethereal charm gives you resistance to Earth attacks and the fortitude to last until Spring (+END)!  It also normally gives +10% gold from battles when in your active inventory, and a +25% boost during May!

Z-Token Bonus
Z-Token packages give up to 30% more bonus Z-Tokens - Ends April 5th!

50K Z-Token Package - Doomlight Emberheart Set:
As Champions of Doom, the Doomlight are able to return incoming damage back to their enemies! This wicked Fire package features:

• Armor
• Shield
• 3-in-1 Weapon
• 6 player faces
• 2 Titles

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Spring 2022 Z-Token Bonus:
It is time to thaw out as AdventureQuest is heating up with blazing hot Z-Token bonuses!

Get more Z-Tokens with each Z-Token package, and the larger the Z-Token package you buy, the more bonus Z-Tokens you'll have to spend! Get up to 30% more Z-Tokens and also unlock tons of bonus items with select packages for a limited time.

As 2022 rolls along there are some exciting changes and updates planned for Adventure Quest! Some you have already seen with the huge shop system overhaul. Today we are going to discuss the future of classes, and more specifically plans for Archmage. But first I want to give a big Thank you! to Cray for his indefatigable wordsmithing helping to get this statement ready!

With the Paladin and Necromancer revamp releases out, these classes are largely complete. There are still fixes and balance changes that can always happen, but having a closed design process to look back and reflect upon gives us an opportunity to reflect on lessons learned, and how to proceed going forward.

In terms of the design process, while classes are essentially in their own separate set of rules within the game's balance, we've now established a solid place for the overall power of a Tier 3 class. We have a good progression from concept to theory and then implementation, although revisions still inevitably overlap with other releases.

We've also iterated on the quests and improved on the leveling process in a way that provides a solid structure to reuse for the future. However, as helpful as it is to have established the power ceiling early in terms of individual balance, populating this tier early has raised some major red flags in terms of design space and room for improvement of earlier tiers. It became clear that the order in which we were set to proceed was making it easier to design a class, but kicking the ball down the field on complications for future class plans and even early game/Quality of Life fixes.

This leads to some unfortunate bad news, but a lot of good news as we reveal the plans that make them necessary!

Unfortunately, it turns out that we're not quite ready to end the meme, and Archmage needs to be delayed one more time. However, rather than a nebulous delay, we have a concrete set of conditions to fulfill before we release it.

The project scope is set. The story is already worked out, and training in this class will involve both the guidance of familiar faces and a central class character whom you've known for a very long time, but may be surprised to see in this role.

Paladin and Necromancer had to be handled first in order to fulfill developer promises about the order in which Tier 3 classes would be revamped. Why change course, then, when we've been waiting for Archmage for such a long time? To make absolutely sure Archmage is good without throwing anything else under the bus to be good.

Archmage is now part of a wider project to revamp every class. This project has Archmage later in its order than planned to account for player feedback and the aforementioned concerns.

For starters, we were on the verge of releasing a third mage-adjacent class and leaving warriors waiting a total two or three years for a class of any tier that was dedicated or adjacent to their builds. All while rangers still effectively have no build identity, let alone an updated class. In addition, waiting for Archmage to revamp everything else was about to result in this T3 class cutting off design space for T1 and T2 ones, while the reverse was already happening due to the inconvenience of possibly addressing the problems with Imbue Lore without a full revamp. The cart was wedged in front of the horse in every possible way.

As part of said project, we have to make sure that each class is good by itself without excessive overlap - And a 20+ skill class makes for some mighty big toes to avoid stepping on.

Which leads us to the big questions, and the good news: Why are we considering design space overlap between class tiers with different level ranges, and just what are we up to that makes delaying Archmage (Again! GAH) not only worthwhile but necessary?

However, most of our players would miss out on them, having already reached the level cap. The idea of fully scaling classes has been suggested, but has some major issues. While understandable in the sense of not wanting to miss out on new content by the unintentionally punishing notion of outleveling it, would be extremely bad for the game. Any single fully scaling class would dominate its respective element, making it virtually pointless to release non-class armors for it, and cut off design space for Tier 3 class skills. We'd have dozens of skills to avoid overlapping with when designing Archmage.

Going forward, the amount of skills per class will be set to 5 for Tier 1, 10 for Tier 2, and 20 for Tier 3. In addition, we still want the experience of mastering a class to give our high level players something to carry on to their level 130 and 150 adventures. Therefore, as part of a wider effort to renew the game's progression in a way that gives lower level characters an updated experience, we're incorporating a different proposal: Master class armors.

As each lower tier class is revamped, completing the new quests will unlock an exclusive high level shop. There you will find top level armors with a few skills at the appropriate power level, representing your status as a paragon of that class. For example, Dragonspine would have a Master Dracomancer armor with the capstone ability to permanently transform into a Half-Dragon.

We will begin this project this year, with the introduction of the tier 1 Archer* class and its corresponding Master armor. This will only be one step in fleshing out Ranger builds, as coverage for further tiers is also planned. That will allow us to proceed with Wizard and Archmage unburdened in the future, working our way up to the class without worrying about any excessive overlap between Archmage, Master Wizard, Master Mage, and Necromancer. Any other Tier 2 revamps that happen in the future will also benefit from the example of a clear progression from the first tier, to the final tier that Archmage will establish. This way, we're not only ensuring that Archmage can release in its best possible shape, but applying that to all classes, for players of all levels.


While the Archmage Class is planned for a later date, an untrained Archmage Armor will be added as one of the new rewards to the updated Squires of Order quest coming in early March! Once Mage and Wizard are revamped, we will finally put the wait to rest with the ultimate arcane expert class.







*At one time in early development, an Archer class was being worked on. This ancient relic from January 2005 was unearthed, but unfortunately it does not appear the class made it beyond a slight edit of the original Vampire Slayer.

Update Week:
What better way to start the new year than with massive updates and improvements to AQ!

Shop Updates:

General:

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