Business discussions which had consumed some of us have concluded very well. They have to do with investment in our projects; other discussions have to do with Darkfall in Asia, others with other local versions, distribution and publishing. These give us the capability to re-invest in Darkfall, and into the company, hiring essential personnel, and finally moderating what we had to do for years: each of us forced to undertake multiple roles for lack of resources.

We see Darkfall 2.0 as a chance to make the best Darkfall possible. The transition between Darkfall 2010- Darkfall Arena – and Darkfall 2.0 had to do with putting our best effort forward for the game within the scope of our capabilities. To put it simply, each version was the best we could possibly hope to achieve at the time. We try to give you our current status and our current thinking as we go along but we understand how the communication surrounding Darkfall 2.0 may have been confusing and left much to be desired.

We are in full development of 2.0 on all levels. Much of the critical development is concluded, we’re already testing a playable version. Videos we could show right now use many placeholders from the current version and the front-end of the GUI has yet to be completed, but we’ll keep showing you what we have each time. As far as ETA goes, early access beta is planned for Q2 2012, right after closed beta.

The armor system is a fundamental change between Darkfall and Darkfall 2.0. Implementation has recently been concluded. On our local server, what a player wears dictates what they can use in terms of melee, archery and magic skills. There are quite a few changes especially regarding magic. Magic schools have changed both in name and in spells. Minor and major incantations, are the only 2 schools a character with heavy armor can use spells from. Characters with medium armor will in addition to those two schools can use spells from witchcraft and spell chanting schools. Magic users, while not limited if they wear light armor, still need to choose their specific role- as opposing schools and attributes will affect their choices. Intelligence based casters will have Fire, Water, Air and Earth to choose from, with fire blocking water, air blocking earth and vice versa. Wisdom based casters will need to make similar choices. From our early testing we are very excited about the improvements this feature brings to gameplay. We will present the magic system in more detail in subsequent updates.

A smaller new feature which was just completed are Resource Monoliths: Resource monoliths are control points scattered across the land. Their purpose is to provide a land based PvP centered objective, available at all times. Their purpose is to serve as a PvP hot spot as well as a more interesting and fun, albeit risky way, to harvest crafting resources.

Any player is able to capture a monolith. If the monolith is not already captured by someone else, the player is marked by visual effects as the holder, and resources are generated in his backpack as well as bank box at certain intervals.

A player can lose the monolith mark if he logs off, moves outside of the monolith control area or if he is killed. If the owner of a monolith is killed, the ownership mark is returned to the monolith and is immediately up for grabs.

In closing, you may have noticed the TED x Youth academy Speech I gave last month. The purpose of this event was to give young people in Greece some inspiration and hope through the financial crisis, which, at the moment, makes any kind of endeavor in the country seem hopeless. They told me I could choose my topic. What I chose to speak about is how what we attempted was against all odds, how critical the Darkfall community support was and on how many levels. Many thanks to those of you who sent a positive message or posted supportive comments. For those interested, here is a link to the video, and another link to a community provided translation.

We won’t have another update before the new year but we expect January to be a very busy month with many changes around the company and a lot more information to share. On behalf of the entire staff at Aventurine I’d like to thank you and to wish all of you Happy Holidays.

Thank you for reading.