When playing in Pinks pub, the random NPC's that enter might join you for a game of Yenten if you sit next to them and join the game.

Bunny Ears are still made out of metal, instead of cloth.

With the advent of Evasion, we now have quite a bit of damage reduction effects on the board-- and most of these effects can go along with each other. Given the right setup, this can amount to brutal damage minimizing that'll make anyone who even disregards DEF/RES entirely a pseudo-tank on their own.

That being said, I would like to pitch an idea to curb the reduction stacking:

When a player has one or more damage reductions, only the highest relevant effect will be used.

For instance, if you took magic damage while Rank 5 Evasion kicked in and Voidveil was on, only Evasion would apply. Or if you took physical damage while Wraithguard kicked in and you had BK's full 36% Phys. Reduction going on, only the 36% reduction would apply.

I know this isn't the first mention of Bombs being lackluster but with the recent addition of Grenade Launcher (which presents the same issues), I figure it's a good opportunity to bring it up again.

The big issue with bombs is that they inflict so little damage that they are not worth creating nor using in battle. (The same goes for Grenade Launcher.)

Just to give you an idea of how weak they are:

Quote:Bomb (with R5 Explosive Art) vs Level 1 Jammer:
Jammer takes 28 Fire damage. (0/22 HP)

Grenade Launcher (with R5 Explosive Art) vs Level 1 Jammer:
Jammer takes 21 Fire damage. (1/22 HP)

Pawn's Orders (Passive for Black Knight)
Rank 1: Black Knights are hired as bodyguards often, so some have good experience in getting active to protect people. When your allies are attacked and you are not party leader, and if your party leader is at 1 HP or more, you get Black Wind until the end of the turn.
Rank 2: +1 Duration, acts as innate.
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Special Set of Skills (Innate for Void Assassin)
Rank 1: You will find your enemy, and you will continue to attack them. When you critically hit with a dagger, your sword sub-weapon counts as a dagger for the sake of all Void Assassin skills for the rest of the turn.
Rank 2: Bow is also affected, Gun is also affected.
Rank 3: Polearm is also affected, Fist is also affected.
Rank 4: Axe is also affected, Tome is also affected.
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True Damage (Passive for Evoker)
Rank 1: You know how to deal with those who are prepared to go against ordinary mages- because you're not an ordinary mage. When hitting a resist for the first time in the round when attacking with magical damage, it does not lower momentum.
Rank 2: Acts as innate.
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Mechanize (Utility for Engineer)
Rank 1: 20 FP, 3 M. You suit up by using a device. Target one of your engineer devices within item-use range. The device is reduced to 0 HP, but you gain the skills of the device, and count as an engineer device for 2 rounds.
Rank 2: 15 FP, +1 duration.
Rank 3: 10 FP, +1 duration.
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Studied Opponent (Innate for Tactician, requires Performance Rating)
Rank 1: You have studied how different fighting styles work, and are prepared to deal with opponents who will constantly assault the supportive leader of your party: you! Your tactics rank can only fall 3 ranks per round from the same opponent.
Rank 2: Your tactics rank can only fall 2 ranks per round from the same opponent.
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Sideblade (Passive for Kensei)
Rank 1: If an enemy gets close, you know that your katana might get caught in a clash of blades. Therefore, you have a second weapon prepared, hidden, a wakizashi. After attacking with a katana, for the rest of the round, your dagger sub-weapon counts as a katana.
Rank 2: Acts as innate.
Rank 3: Medium or small swords can now be used as well as daggers.

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We're back after a short break. This week's offering is a bunch of new class skills; every promoted class gets 1 new skill, and Rogue, the base class, also gets 1 new skill. Why Rogue? Well, I always thought that the class lacked a little bit of identity. Sure, it has some nice self-buffs, situational traps, and the powerful Steal skill, but that just didn't feel like enough, mainly because the strength of all of these is very situational. So Rogue now gets a skill that is less situationally useful.

I will describe each skill below and give some context behind why it exists or the thought behind it in spoiler boxes, but in general, a lot of these are meant to help give some options to 'alternate' play-styles for the classes.

1.28
New Skills - All promoted classes, as well as the Rogue base class, have received 1 new skill each.

• Evasion (Rogue) - Do the impossible and evade damage from skills and spells that automatically hit.
  Comments
  You could argue that the autohit's guaranteed damage was a natural counter to evade stacking, preventing it from becoming the strongest stat of the game, and you would be right to an extent. But at the same time it created an issue where dodge based characters were completely useless half of the time.
  
  Evasion doesn't negate the damage, as a heads-up; it reduces it by a percentage, after all other modifiers, up to a maximum of 50% reduction. And it's not guaranteed, either. It's very similar to as if you were attacking that person, so modifiers to hit, penalties to evade, and so on all come into play. And people invoking spells or flat on their back can't dodge anything, so the skill won't be useful if you're knocked down.
• Mighty Wall (Arbalest) - Become a mighty wall, gaining bonus DEF and RES and becoming immune to knockback to a brief time.
  Comments
  This skill is mostly to help the Arbalest synergize with other classes more and make it harder to keep them out of Blowback Cannon range permanently.
• Bright Bishop (Black Knight) - Send a diagonal bolt of light at your enemies, lighting them and spaces along the way up.
  Comments
  Similar to Crescent Rook, Bright Bishop is a projectile attack in a line. It also drops Light Shafts (sometimes) and causes the person hit to start Glowing for a few rounds. This should make skills like Obscure more attractive, since now Glowing can be inflicted by someone other than monsters, and it gives BKs a decent way to buff their (and allies') Hit.
• Two Souls Beyond (Bonder) - A perfectionist version of the classic Install, you and your Bonded Youkai can do it longer, or shorter, if danger presents itself.
  Comments
  Now you can have longer installs and avoid potentially fatal problems that occur... as long as it's with Bonded Youkai. This skill also lets you proc the effects of Fight As One if you only have one Bonded Youkai, so it's more for the Install fighter summoners out there.
• Grenade Launcher (Engineer) - Fire mini-bombs from one of your inventions, causing explosive havoc.
  Comments
  This is another bomb skill for the Engineer. They're slightly weaker than regular bombs, but they don't require you to have special items crafted and equipped to use. That said, I would like to also add more unique bomb crafting recipes in the future.
• Elemental Overtime (Evoker) - Send your mind into overtime, boosting the effects of Elemental Augment by Charge Mind's percentage while both are in effect.
  Comments
  In my eternal struggle to make people play Fist Mages, I decided to give Evokers a skill that not only buffs Elemental Augment, but gives Charge Mind and its duration extension skills a secondary function. This turns the damage on max rank EleAug to 25 each hit (which required another change, more on that later) and it doesn't consume Charge Mind in the process. So even if you're a regular mage type, you might want this skill to deal a bit more with your tome attacks while you wait for the perfect opportunity to cast a spell.
• Afflicted Spectre (Ghost) - Pile on the pain and increase your maximum HP for every negative status you're suffering from.
  Comments
  Can you guess why this skill would be useful? All it does is increase your maximum HP for every negative status you have. If you guessed 'it makes Rising Game easier to proc without reducing your HP', congratulations! Since your current HP never changes, you can retain higher levels of it while getting Rising Game bang for your buck. But only while you suffer from negative status effects. Note that this can be any status effect that appears in a red box, even ones caused by yourself or aren't that negative at all.
• Auto-Summon (Grand Summoner) - Call your first listed contract to your side as soon as trouble rears its ugly head.
  Comments
  An SL1 classic skill, the Auto-Summon has made its way to SL2. Now that you can rearrange your contracts in the Youkai Manager, there was no better time to add this skill, since the technical issues impeding it are no longer there.
• Sadistic Renewal (Hexer) - Get glee and focus from beating on people who are already in pain.
  Comments
  This skill lets you recover FP when you attack someone who is suffering from negative statuses. The FP recovery is a fixed amount based on Rank. This was the patch of giving mages skills that make them want to basic attack enemies, but Hexers are in a good spot already, so I didn't want to give them anything overbearing.
• Absolute Pace (Kensei) - Bait your opponent into attacking you, and then strike them back with the finishing move of a master of battle flow.
  Comments
  The last of the Absolute series, this skill lets you target an enemy. If that enemy attacks you and misses, you gain Battle Flow, which causes your next Kensei offensive skill to gain damage equal to 100% of your STR. Now maybe people will actually use them!
• Skyhigh (Lantern Bearer) - Spear your enemy into the air like a fish.
  Comments
  Lantern Bearers didn't have any Spear skills, so now they do. This one deals damage and puts your enemy into the Airborne status. I'll let you figure out uses for that.
• Lucky Shell (Magic Gunner) - Increase your own good fortune or steal your enemy's.
  Comments
  Magic Gunner already has a variety of offensive shells, so this one is more along the lines of utility or uniqueness. It lets you increase your Luck, on hit. It lets you steal your opponent's Luck if you charge it with a lot of juice. Have fun.
• Kadouha (Monk) - Releases a non-copyrighted energy ball in a line that gets stronger, flies further, and gains unique effects the more Ki it consumes.
  Comments
  No comment.
• Devocation (Priest) - The power of the gods will protect you, letting you reduce the chance for your Mercana invocations to break based on your Faith.
  Comments
  This probably seems useless, but a change later in the patch notes will make you think twice! Remember me.
• Arcane Formation (Tactician) - Tell your mages to line up, letting your spells do more damage and decreasing the chance of Invocations breaking for all in the formation.
  Comments
  The final formation boosts your spell power and protects your Invocations. Not much else to say here.
• Ice Skate (Verglas) - Skate along the ice as graceful as can be.
  Comments
  Lets you skate across ice sheets. If you skate long enough and run into an enemy, they get knocked down. This may seem like a utility skill, but it's actually a defensive one!
• Detogate (Void Assassin) - Explode a void gate to cause Dark damage to all those within a certain range and teleport them to a random square.
  Comments
  Void Assassin Mages will like this one, because it's a spell. Not much else to say about it. I mainly wanted to encourage more WIL based VAs for some reason.

Do tomes enchanted with the vaporal enchant ignore Resistance when the vaporal enchant's effect takes place?


If not, I was suggesting that the vaporal enchant do that. Any reasons why it shouldn't or problems with the idea are welcome.

Thats right, flying bush shenanigans are still happening.

This is dumb.

Can we get some way to check if we're near where a treasure map's treasure is buried, like a hot-cold game? Or a massive increase in the map's size?

Last update claims to have made it so there's always a chance that first place can be overtaken in the fishing contests, yet, no one seems to have reported ever seeing a fish weighing in over 50.

Personally I've participated in only a handful of 50W 1st place contests, so, I can't say if it's just my bad luck or not, but, it's worth making sure thing are working as intended, or if they're working at all.