Dubbed Secrets of the Stratus, it goes live on April 12th with the seventh act of the storyline, an overhauled skill system, a new solo/casual open-world area called Celestial Basin, floors 16 through 20 of Mushin’s Tower, and Naryu Sanctum, “the most difficult 6-member heroic dungeon to date.”
“Moving forward, NCSOFT will offer larger and more ambitious expansions on a slightly slower release schedule,” the press release says this morning. “This means players will have more time to experience and master content without having to feel rushed by the next update.”
Producer Nico Coutant explained the new cadence to players in a producer’s letter this morning:
“We’re also looking at our content release cadence and what we can do to ensure the updates are more impactful. Our goal over the past year has been to catch up to the other regions while maintaining a good balance between accessible and challenging content. Having more impactful and feature-rich updates will mean they’re less frequent than they were when we were playing catchup, but will generally have more grand content and features packed into each one.”
Coutant says that past this update, NCsoft is working on “Act 8 of the story, a new class, level cap increase, new ultimate skills, new dungeons and raids, and new Legendary items” for the rest of 2017.
