Sandbox Interactive is rolling out the second Dragonfire patch on September 23 at 10:00 UTC, with extra downtime on Albion Asia. Based on the testserver notes, this isn't a straightforward power pass — it's a pacing fix. The studio says it's happy with the Dragon Sanctuary's overall difficulty, but singled out the Maeve encounter as too swingy in how fights actually play out, on top of players discovering ways to cheese her mechanics outright.
The Maeve rework touches nearly every phase of the fight. Storm Spires now trigger at 60% health instead of 80%, Rock Spike marks land later in the encounter, and Storm Spire health itself drops by 5%. The Realm Rift debuff gets the strangest change: its stack cap rises from 5 to 15, but each stack's duration collapses from 3,000 seconds to just 100 — turning what was effectively a permanent debuff into a short-lived one. Boulder Shockwave and Boulder Charge both lose damage, the Rock Spikes hitbox shrinks slightly, and Maeve's pursuit range drops from 50 to 40 meters. A batch of bug fixes rides along too: she can no longer be crowd-controlled before the fight starts, several of her spells stop being reflectable, and Storm Spires no longer vanish prematurely.
Beyond Maeve, the rest of the raid gets smaller tweaks. Lingering Dragon Spirit — the stacking debuff that punishes repeat Sanctuary runs — has its per-stack damage and defense bonus for enemies cut from 33% to 20%, a real break for guilds that don't one-shot Azaryon. Azaryon himself gets a fix for randomly going idle mid-fight, alongside a new enrage trigger if players get him stuck or spam the same trick too often.
Ancient Lands changes the rules around death and rewards. Items carried into Orange Zone Ancient Lands no longer drop on death — they're marked 'frozen' in the inventory instead. Island chests, aside from the center island, now unlock only after the island quest is completed, closing a loophole where players could grab the chest and leave, abandoning the quest objective — particularly the Fire Drake summon on Drake Islands — for everyone else. The change is already stirring debate on the official forum: some PvE-focused players accused the studio of favoring PvP, while others argued it simply patches an obvious exploit rather than shifting the game's balance.
Loot goes up across several Dragonfire features at once — Medium and Large Ancient Lands, Dragon Sanctuary bosses, and Outlands Dragon Attacks — directly answering complaints that rewards didn't match the difficulty. Combat balance took hits elsewhere too: the Holy Staff's signature Holy Flash heal gets trimmed (117 → 106), and the Dragonslayer Jacket's Wings of Fire now has an energy cost cap, ending near-infinite gliding. Axes and Halberds pick up buffs aimed at large-scale PvP, while the Trinity Spear shifts power out of its area buff and into its jump-attack impact damage.
Over in Conqueror's Hall, statues went up honoring Season 33's winning guilds: Upside, Contingent, and I The Flying Dutchman I. These are still testserver notes, so some numbers could shift before the patch hits live servers.
