Details on the next patch

We anticipate that the next major build will go up on the PTS sometime in early February and we've got a bunch of new stuff that we're excited about. Also, because it's winter, you might see a bit of a frosty-cold theme to this next patch. Here are the preliminary details:

New Quests
51 new quests have been added to the Embercore. Also, a special event has been added to Townston. Help Shivery the Incorrigible Snowman get his dungeon back.

New Dungeon
A new dungeon named “Balzack’s Burrow” has been added to the game. You will find this dungeon off of Shadow’s Embrace. It is designed for levels 55 and up. This dungeon has a bunch of new creatures and a sweet new boss fight. Can you show Balzack that you’re the master of his domain?

New Skills
We’ve added a bunch of internal support for summoning skills. This build has the first pass of summoning skills for the game! We will continue to roll out new summoning skills in future builds.

The new summoning skills are:

• Build a Snowman: Summons a melee snowman named Chill Bill to fight for you.
• On the Rocks: Activate this skill when Chill Bill is nearby to instantly freeze him in a solid block of ice. The air surrounding the ice cube is so cold that it causes all enemies within 6 meters to move and attack more slowly while they remain within that proximity.
• Snow Globe: With all the Dungeon Warming going on these days, it's best to give Chill Bill a fighting chance. If Chill Bill is not too far away, your snow globe can be activated to provide a sudden Max Health increase of 50% that will last for 60 seconds.
• Nippy Twigs: Activate this skill when Chill Bill is nearby to boost his feeble little twig hands with Ice Magic! Every time he strikes an enemy his attacks will dish out additional ice damage and reduce the enemy's speed.

Skill Changes
As the title suggests we're making some skill changes, including having Righteous Stomp do a bit more (with a longer recharge time), and a lot of skill sounds have some brand new sounds.

PvP Changes
We're always tweakin' PvP and this chilly patch is no different. Just so you're not standing around the PvP world waiting for a match to start, all PvE content will now be available so you can kill something while you wait. We've also adjusting the matchmaking tolerance system to make it much fairer (by re-implementing the attribute totals system with some leeway), though it may take a wee bit longer to get into a match, depending on the situation.

New Items
Rangers are getting some two-handed rifles, two new fighter armor sets have been added, class-specific King's Coin vendors now give out trinkets and amulets, and even more Mythic items are now available, quite a few with a wintery theme. We've even added our first marketing-related weapon. Oh, the horror.

Permanent Waypoints
Similar to the Waypoint Scroll, you can now mark a particular dungeon level for saving so you can revisit it at any time through the use of a Waypoint Compass. Only one can be active at at time.

And of course we have the usual assortment of UI changes, bug fixes, and some in-game banner ad changes. You can read Stephen's slightly different summary of semi-near-complete patch notes that I may or may not have plagiarized from here.