Illarion: Update May 2026

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Hello Illarionites!

Here comes the first update of the year, and it's a big one.

As usual, details are listed below.

Larger Changes

• Nature magic. Fianna in Troll's Haven now offers a tutorial to guide you through learning about the five weaves of nature magic. To start off, druid's are being given 10 spells - 2 of each weave. There is also an alchemy tutorial. This also introduces nature resistance, used to defend against nature magic and poisons. Poisoned weapons, a second magic nature craft and more planned for the future. Some spells and their effects use placeholder graphics for now.
• Herblore received a rework. All herbs now have distinct sources on the map in their own hubs, having received the same treatment as previously reworked gathering skills. Different herbs now unlock at different levels of herblore.
• Cooking has received a major overhaul. You now have the freedom to create your own recipes using your choice of ingredients, reminiscent of alchemy but quite a lot simpler. The cooking tutorial in Runewick is now open for residents of all realms and has been updated to reflect the changes. It was also decided to make cooking available in all realms and the housing catalogues now reflect this; However Cadomyr will have to build their own public kitchen through player effort. This does not include brewing, which remains exclusive to Runewick and Galmair. Food can still be sold to the old food vendors, but the coin will not appear on each item due to system limitations with such a large amount of custom items.
• Four new magic runes have been added to arcane magic and DUN has been reactivated.
• You now accumulate toxins when drinking potions, decreasing the effects upon over consumption. These toxins decrease naturally over time, even faster if you engage in active RP. There are also plans to have a druid spell to help reduce them in the future. Low quality potions add more toxins than high quality ones.
• Brewing has been reworked to reflect changes in ingredients available and their prices/levels. A large amount of new drinks have been added to the game, including a rare schematic Fairy Wine only found via treasure hunting.
• You can now play double notes in music using /, EG: A3/D4,1
  

Minor Changes

• Carpenters can now craft blank sigils and Cor Staff's for nature magic. These use placeholder graphics.
• Tailors can now create weaver's pouches. This uses a placeholder graphic.
• Alchemy now uses alchemy bomb bottles instead of potion bottles for bombs. Old bombs are retroactively converted when you hover over them.
• Grapes, Tangerines and Nuts have been replaced by stinkhorns, elfcaps and fairy ring mushrooms in alchemy.
• Alchemy skill no longer impact potion quality but instead determine which herbs you are proficient enough to brew with and how fast you brew.
• The end step of producing a potion now costs mana.
• Language potions now function; presently only used for specific puzzles.
• Alchemy recipes can now be retroactively edited.
• Alchemy recipes can now be added to books for convenient storage, with up to 40 recipes per book.
• You can now craft rare lights (torches, candles etc) that last longer than their common counterparts.
• The music system has received an overhaul when it comes to how it determines failure, with a much less punishing system in place that now more accurately reflects real life learning curves.
• Dungeon treasure rewards were adjusted to more accurately reflect the difficulty of the dungeon, making the high difficulty ones more worth visiting. Also no more empty chests; those aren't fun for anyone.
• A bunch of new housing catalogue items have been added to the game.
• References to Troll's Haven are now correctly referred to as such instead of Hemp Necktie Inn.
• Raban's quest has been updated to use herbs in his vicinity according to the new herblore distribution of herbs
• Various crafts using herbs as ingredients have been adjusted according to the new herblore distribution of herbs
• Handbells, made by finesmiths, now make a sound instead of an autoemote
• Item recipe drop-rates were adjusted to make the processing ones(Cuprite and Duskcloth) necessary for other recipes a little more common

Bugfixes

• A bug where some hanging lanterns would turn into the wrong kind of lantern once the light burned out has been fixed.
• A bug that prevented the prismatic lens from inspecting essence brews was fixed.
• A bug that in extreme cases made targets speed up before slowing down has been fixed for magic slowing spells.
• The max range of wands for free-casting was adjusted to accommodate the actual max range possible
• Magic targeting has been changed so that secondary targets are now chosen after the spell is cast, not before.
• As usual some minor typos and text corrections were made.
• Some blocked torch holders in the malachite mine were relocated
• Some question mark tiles in the deephole mine were fixed
• Unnamed lizardmen now distinguish between genders
• Selected items in a list is now a slightly different tint to be more easily visible
• A potential cause for server crashes has been fixed

Hotfixes

• The size of music sheets was increased to allow for writing of larger pieces, while the music book max size was reduced to accommodate that.
• A bug that allowed you to overdraft mana in casting large spells was hotfixed.
• Minor bugs to do with the new foragable trees were hotfixed.
• DUN was temporarily disabled due to a server crashing issue, this has hopefully been resolved now that it is reactivated but additional logging has been added just in case.
• Clavichords were hotfixed to count as static tools in housing, but do not count towards the total limit of static tools. This only means they can not be used if there is no tenant paying rent to maintain them.
• A plant that was impossible to build got hotfixed in housing
• A bug that prevented old messages from being delivered via the messenger under very specific circumstances was fixed. This only impacted one character and they were notified.
• Some missing housing catalogue items were hotfixed into the game.
• A bug that prevented essence brews from working was fixed.
• Parchments no longer punish new line breaks. Players are trusted to not go overboard in making the parchments go off peoples monitors in length. Should it still happen, then a relog will allow you to close the parchment.
• A bug that stopped stairs with custom warp points from working was hotfixed.
• Instrument failure rate was temporarily hotfixed to be less punishing while waiting for the proper fix that is now in place.
• You were for a while able to keep enchanting even if your wand broke. This was hotfixed.
• Some inaccessible map areas were added to the exclusion list for treasure maps. Any maps impacted have been retroactively fixed.
• Razors can now be gemmed.

Have fun.

~Brightrim