Lineage 2 Fafurion Update

Lineage 2 Fafurion update recently went live on official NCWest servers and the changes are huge. In this article, we’re going to break down and explain all the important ones of them and talk about the impact they’ll have on the game in general. Let’s dive in!

Table of Contents

Item Changes
New Equipment
Fafurion - The Water Dragon
Raid Boss Changes
Hunting Zones
PK
Clans
Progression
Balance

Item changes

Fafurion update brings not only new powerful gear to get but also some major adjustments to the whole item system in Lineage II. Let's learn about them, because some of them will for sure significantly modify the state of the game.

No more level restrictions on items

It’s definitely one of the biggest systemic changes in the game. Since the beginning of Lineage 2, the different level thresholds for subsequent grades of items were a core mechanic in the game’s identity. The weapon, armor and jewelry grades remain in the game, but now you can use R-grade and even stronger equipment as a level 1 character, with no penalty whatsoever.

The way it will affect the game is really simple. Players will no longer have any incentive to get any items weaker than the most powerful weapons and armor sets in Lineage 2. At the same time there usually is a possibility to upgrade “the old best items” to “the new best items”, which makes it even more obvious. If you’re interested in playing a new character or getting a new subclass, just get the most powerful equipment as you can, you will be able to use even during the lowest levels.

Moreover, monsters will not drop any weapon, armor or jewelry piece that’s below R-grade, because they turned pretty much into junk items with those changes. You’re also not able to get this lower grade gear from quest rewards anymore and they can’t be bought from NPCs. Getting R-grade gear is not that difficult anyway. Arcana Mace and Draconic Bow are now just relics of the old times. There were also some minor changes to fishing. At least you won't have to worry about getting a weapon that will only serve you for a few hours or days anymore. You can simply equip your shadow weapon, or even a higher tier one, as soon as you want.

New equipment - krishna weapons and leviathan armors

Fafurion update added plenty of new R110-grade equipment to Lineage 2. There’s a Krishna weapon line that includes weapons for all the classes. To get a Krishna weapon you can either loot it from one of the powerful dragons or upgrade it from an R99-grade Amaranthine weapon. You can do that at Head Blacksmith Ferris in Aden, but it will cost you some R-grade Gemstones, Elcyum and Adena. You can also craft them with the 60% recipes.

You can then upgrade your Krishna weapon at the Blacksmith of Mammon. The first upgrade makes the item Enchanted, the second is either Bloody or Dark and the third and final upgrade makes it a Limited Krishna weapon. At the same time, the Leviathan armor sets have been introduced. Of course, all three options are available: heavy, light and robe.

Ways of obtaining Leviathan armors are similar, again either loot them from the three dragons or upgrade your R99-grade armor. You have to bring your Blessed Eternal Armor set to Ferris alongside some S-grade crystals and Gemstones, a Crystal of Protection and a hefty amount of Adena. They can also be crafted. Similarly to the weapons, you can upgrade your armor at the Blacksmith of Mammon to Enchanted, Bloody/Dark and finally Limited. The R110-grade weapons can be empowered with newly introduced Super Advance Spirit Stones and some new Attribute Jewels.

The update added also new Fafurion-themed dragon claw weapons that can be obtained only for killing the water dragon himself. Similarly to other dragon claw weapons they are divided into four tiers: Fragment, Standard, High Grade and Top Grade. Even the weakest ones are extremely strong and more powerful than R110-grade weapons. They can be created and upgraded by Lionel Hunter in Heine.

They also added the dragon’s jewelry that can be looted from any of the three level 118 dragons. These accessories gain stronger special effects as they’re enchanted, but the process can fail at any point after +1.

Other item changes

Selling prices of some advanced materials have been lowered. Players can now extract Soul Crystals from their weapons removing the special ability at the same time. Visual effects on weapons enchanted to +21 or higher have been changed – this only applies to R-grade and stronger items.

New PvE content

The new patch brings some new locations for PvE and of course more bosses to kill. There also are some changes to already existing ones.

Fafurion – the water dragon

First and foremost, we have Fafurion, the new dragon World Boss who’s eponymous to this update. To fight him you’re going to need a command channel consisting of 49-200 characters who are level 105 or higher.

To access Fafurion’s Nest you’ll require an item called Pontus Stone. The only way to get it is killing the Raid Boss Fafurion’s High Priest Cyrax in Fafurion’s Temple a completely new location added to the game.

The whole walkthrough after you gather a big enough crew of well-geared people with 105 or higher level goes like this. First, you have to go to Heine and talk to the local Gatekeeper to teleport you to Fafurion’s Temple. Then you have to find and kill Cyrax to get the Pontus Stone (it will only stay in your inventory for 1 hour). When you have it, talk to the NPC Heart of Tsunami in Fafurion’s Temple to get teleported to the Fafurion’s Nest – obviously another new zone.

When you get to the dragon you’ll also only have 1 hour to defeat him. If you run out of time, you will return to the temple and Cyrax will respawn. Cyrax can only reappear if Fafurion is alive and the dragon respawn cycle lasts two weeks.

Fafurion has seven difficulty levels, the higher the level the harder it is to kill him, but the rewards get more valuable. Every successful raid increases the level of his next spawn by 1, every failed one decreases it (with the lowest level being 1 and the highest being 7).

As you might have already guessed, Fafurion will drop some of the most powerful items available in the game, including armor pieces and weapons introduced in this update. The only other bosses with comparable loot are Antharas and Valakas.

Changes to Raid Bosses

Antharas and Valakas levels have been increased to 118 and their base stats got significantly increased, while the third dragon Raid Boss – Lindvior has been temporarily disabled. Their loot has also been buffed to compensate for the level increase.

Anakim and Lilith have been upgraded to level 105 Raid Bosses who require at least 49 characters Command Channel. The rewards for killing them have been upped accordingly which is a good sign.

115 Raid Bosses that were level 85 or lower have been indefinitely removed from the game since the item changes made them obsolete.  

The six Raid Bosses in Fields of Silence and fields of Whispers have been upgraded to level 107. They are: Evil Magikus, Kerfaus, Milinaus, Sarkaus, Shimeus and Evil Knigos.

Etina Great Temple raid has been slightly changed. It’s now available for Command Channels of 35-120 characters (instead of 70-120 that was the earlier requirement). It doesn’t require the Blackbird Faction members anymore. Etis van Etina and Paragon received some balance changes, the same goes for the rewards.

Another minor change regarding Raid Bosses is the way Limit Barrier works. It’s a mechanic that allows the bosses to recover back to full hp if they don’t get hit with 500 attacks during 15 seconds window. Earlier it activated upon getting the boss down to 90%, 60%, and 30%. Now it also activates at the beginning at 100% HP. In most cases, it’s just a minor impediment.

New hunting zones

Fafurion’s Temple not only has its role to play in the raid, but it’s also a great hunting zone for parties with monster levels ranging from 111 to 115. A new instance called Krofin’s Nest has also been added to the game – to enter it you have to talk to Lionel Hunter in Heine. If you enjoy some of the single player content, there’s also something for you – a solo instance called Fall of Etina.

Hunting Zone changes

A few of lower level hunting zones have been changed to higher levels. These are some of the major changes to make these locations viable for the Lineage2 late game.

Alligator Island has been upgraded to be substantially more difficult. The monster levels now are 107-108 and the loot has been improved accordingly. The same goes for Tanor Canyon.

Sel Mahum Training Grounds now have levels 102-103 and are vulnerable to polearms. This makes it a great spot for melee fighters who can use this type of weapon. Plains of Lizardmen underwent similar changes, but here bows and crossbows deal amplified damage instead of the spears.

Also numerous hunting zones got experience rewards increased and/or monsters respawn timers decreased. This applies to: Altar of Evil, Blazing Swamp, Bloody Swampland, Atelia Refinery, Cemetery, Enchanted Valley, Giant’s Cave, Beleth’s Magic Circle, Desert Quarry, Fairy Settlement, Sea of Shillien and Silent Valley.

PK changes

There are some significant quality-of-life upgrades for PKs. The players with the chaotic state will not drop items on their death anymore, even if they exceeded the number of four playable characters killed. Moreover, they will be able to use Novice Helpers, Adventurer’s Guides, Gatekeepers, traders and warehouses.

This might seem like an incentive to bully weaker players who can't keep up in the open world PvP, but in fact, it’s something completely different. NCWest anti-bot solutions clearly don’t work as well as they should and a lot of players resorted to killing the botters on sight. This will make this practice even safer and hopefully help to fight botting.

Clan changes

There are quite a few minor clan system changes, but we’re going to focus on one that we believe is huge and it’s going to impact the server state the most. The maximum number of clan members and elite clan members has been significantly decreased for higher level clans. This change only applies to clans with level 6-15.

For level 6 clans it decreased the number of members from 80 to 55 and elite members from 12 to 8, but it gets more meaningful at higher levels. For the 15 level clans (which is the maximum) the total members number has been decreased to 76 from 200 and from 29 to 11 for elite clan members!

The change is supposed to make it more difficult for a single clan or alliance to dominate the whole server. It’s going to lead to a decentralization of power and it may stir thing up a little bit. There are no compensation buffs that would allow for example to invite more clans into an alliance. The exact influence this change is going to have on different servers remains to be seen, but things might get a little more interesting.

Moreover, there were some changes to sieges, rewards for controlling castles, taxes, clan advent buffs and clan quests, but we’re not going to overanalyze them, since they shouldn’t be that impactful.

Progression changes

The item rework and taking away all meaning of lower grade items had to be combined with some changes to character progression.

First of all, every newly created character will automatically spawn in the Town of Gludio now. There will also be a new NPC called Tarti who’ll help the new characters with grasping the game and getting first levels. Players will be able to complete a new chain of novice quests that will allow new characters to hit level 85 in a day or two, subclasses also get some quests for power leveling till 85. This is the only suggested viable activity for low level expinng right now, since everything else is much slower. 

Now at level 40, after finishing your second class transfer, you’re going to be rewarded with R-grade Paulina weapon and armor and the pack of R-grade soulshots/blessed spiritshots. The awakening rewards have been changed too.

A lot of low-level quests have been deleted and some higher level ones had their rewards changed. Some new post-level 90 Adventurer’s Guide quests have been added to the game.

Class balance

All the 1st 2nd and 3rd class skills have been replaced with novice skills, all pre-85 skill books have been removed. This places even more emphasis on the post-awakening gameplay. The game is pretty clear that levels 1-85 are basically practice-time and newbie territory. With levels 85-99 being a little more of a midgame.

Some of the summoners’ servitors have been removed (Cute Bear, Sabre Tooth Cougar, and Gream Reaper), but to compensate all the summoner classes gained some significant buffs, with some of their skills being made stronger and the pets’ defenses getting increased. Other classes that got some minor buffs are polearm users (self buffs allowing them to hit enemies surrounding them from every direction), enchanters and tanks (physical attack increase).

Other changes worth mentioning

Some other important things that Fafurion patch brings are quality of life changes, including the new and improved UI and easier to use macros. The gatekeeper teleport system also has been significantly changed to be more convenient. The max level at which characters can get free buffs and free buffs and fast travel has been increased to 99.

Lineage 2 Fafurion update

That would be it for our rundown of the Lineage 2 Fafurion patch. The new content seems really great and getting another dragon raid is always awesome. As you can see some of the game changes are really significant, Lineage 2 is continuing to evolve at a really quick pace. The best thing to do is experience the changes by yourself, log into the game and see what the game state actually looks like!

It’s difficult to predict the exact impact some of these changes will have on the game in the long run, but hopefully, we explained some of the most important changes in this text. Which of those changes do you think will turn out to be the most groundbreaking? Share your thoughts and let us know in the comments section below!

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