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Water Essence (0.29)

The Water Essence update brings a massive new aquatic expansion to Etherscape. Dive into the Coral Depths, battle the fearsome Tidal Drakonid faction, face off against the Hydro Dragon, and earn Multiverse Water Essence to claim elemental treasures. This update also introduces underwater gameplay mechanics, new weapon skins, new crafting recipes, and significant item rebalancing.

New Region: The Coral Depths

  • Added 4 new underwater cave maps and an underwater arena — a fully new region called the Coral Depths
  • Underwater maps feature a breathing mechanic — characters have a limited air supply that depletes over time. Find Bubble Sources scattered throughout the caves to replenish air
  • Running out of air causes drowning damage until air is restored
  • A new Bubble Meter UI shows your remaining air supply with a warning pulse when air is critically low

New Enemy Faction: Tidal Drakonid

A new aquatic dragon-kin faction with 6 new enemy types, each with unique abilities:

Enemy Role Signature Ability
Tidal Drakonid Mariner Melee tank Anchor Toss — hurls a heavy anchor dealing 3× weapon damage, stunning the target and dashing to their location
Tidal Drakonid Guardian Heavy tank Whirlpool — summons whirlpools that deal ice damage and pull enemies toward the center
Tidal Drakonid Siren Healer Chain Heal — channels healing through a chain of up to 4 allies for 5 seconds
Tidal Drakonid Sage Support Tidal Melody — cycles through three arias granting move speed, healing, or damage to nearby allies
Wave Serpent Standard Ranged attacker
Coral Golem Heavy melee Melee bruiser

Additional enemy types:

  • Volatile Coral — explosive creatures that detonate on death, firing 8 ice projectiles in a radius pattern with randomized cast times between 1–3 seconds
  • Coral Wall — summoned barriers that block movement

New Boss: Hydro Dragon

  • The Hydro Dragon is the boss of the Coral Depths, fought in the underwater arena
  • Features a multi-phase attack schedule cycling through:
    • Tidal Nova — large area burst attack dealing 1.5× base damage with ice damage
    • Maelstrom — spawns 6 massive whirlpools that pull characters in and deal ice damage
    • Deploy Volatile Coral — places explosive coral that detonates after a delay
    • Uprising of the Depths — summons waves of 8 Tidal Drakonid reinforcements
  • The Hydro Dragon uses Triple Invulnerable — becoming invulnerable for 20 seconds each time its health drops below 75%, 50%, and 25%
  • Uses a new Flyby movement pattern allowing it to move while casting, with head rotation tracking

New Multiverse Water Event

  • Multiverse Water Essence can now be earned by battling Tidal Drakonid enemies
  • The top 25 players on the Water leaderboard will share a reward of 2,500 ENJ
  • New Water Multiverse Achievements unlock Tidal Essence for claiming Enjin multiverse items:
    • Daily login rewards (up to 10 levels)
    • Collect Water Essence milestones (100 → 6,400)
    • Kill Tidal Drakonid milestones (100 → 20,000)
    • Complete Water Drakonid quests at levels 10–17
  • Leaderboard now supports all four elements with a grace period after each season ends
  • Multiverse season logic has been made generic to work across all current and future seasons

New Level Events

  • Tidal Ambush — Tidal Drakonid groups spawn via portals with guardian-class enemies. Drops Water Essence and has a chance to drop a Tidal Drakonid Key
  • Whirlpool Burst — Whirlpools spawn across the map alongside Tidal Drakonid invasion groups. Whirlpools now persist for the full duration of the event. Drops Water Essence and has a chance to drop a Tidal Drakonid Key

New Items

Pets

Pet Rarity Magic Find Ice Resist
Coral Blob Rare +10% +200
Epic Coral Blob Epic +20% +400
Legendary Coral Blob Legendary +30% +600

Essence

  • Tidal Essence — Account upgrade granting +1% Gold Drops and +1% Magic Find per unit

Crafting Materials

  • Hydro Scales — Dropped by Tidal Drakonid enemies, used to craft the Tidal Drakonid Key and Tidal weapon skins

Keys

  • Tidal Drakonid Key — Epic quality Etherbound key for unlocking special quest features
  • Terra Drakonid Key and Zephyr Drakonid Key — Etherbound keys added in preparation for future elemental seasons

Multiverse Items

  • Seafoam Amulet — A legendary multiverse item earned through the Water Season. Utility TBA.

New Weapon Skins

Six new tidal-themed weapon skins have been added with a two-tier crafting progression:

Base Skin Upgraded Skin Base Cost Upgrade Cost
Water Sword Tidal Sword 250 Hydro Scales + 250 Gems 2,500 Hydro Scales + 500 Gems
Water Bow Tidal Bow 250 Hydro Scales + 250 Gems 2,500 Hydro Scales + 500 Gems
Water Staff Tidal Staff 250 Hydro Scales + 250 Gems 2,500 Hydro Scales + 500 Gems
  • Water weapon parts can be crafted from 10 Hydro Scales + 20 Legendary Infusions
  • Base skins are crafted via Mint FT recipes; upgrades use Burn and Mint
  • New visual FX added for all tidal weapon skins

Item Changes

Eternal Embers (Buffed)

  • Rarity upgraded from Epic → Legendary
  • New stats: +50% Magic Find, +2 Class Abilities, +3 Class Attack Skills, +800 Fire Resist
  • Now grants the Ember Shield ability — when hit, fires a homing pyro fireball back at the attacker dealing 3× weapon damage with fire damage

Magma Blobs (Buffed)

Pet Added Magic Find Added Fire Resist
Magma Blob +10% +200
Epic Magma Blob +20% +400
Legendary Magma Blob +30% +600

Sell Value Restoration for Low-Tier Items

  • Items below Epic rarity now sell at 6.5% of their buy value, up from 4% — a roughly 62% increase in sell value for common, uncommon, and rare items
  • Epic and above items remain at 4% sell ratio

New Recipes

  • Tidal Drakonid Key — Requires Tinker Mastery 35, costs 100,000 Gold + 50 Key Fragments + 5 Hydro Scales (limit 3/day)
  • Water Sword/Bow/Staff Parts — 10 Hydro Scales + 20 Legendary Infusions each

Merchant Updates

When the Water Event is active:

  • Tidal Drakonid Key available for purchase (daily stock)
  • Multiverse Water Essence available in various quantities (weekly stock)

New Gathering

  • Seaweed nodes appear in underwater maps in Small, Medium, and Large sizes
  • Gathering seaweed awards Multiverse Water Essence (when the event is active)

NPC & Lore Updates

  • Town NPCs now have dialogue about the water event — including the Town Crier, Dex Kane, Garrick Stout (Bartender), Barnaby Saltwind (Dockhand), and Captain Voss
  • New conversation topics covering the Tidal Drakonid attacks, the water element surge, the Coral Depths, and Multiverse Water Essence
  • The Tidal Drakonid have been added to world lore as a new hostile faction with full background
  • The Coral Depths has been added as a new region in the world lore
  • World event lore updated: the fire surge has been moved to the recent past, and the water surge is now the current event
  • The multiverse portal in Merricrest now glows oceanic blue reflecting the current water alignment

Combat & Ability Improvements

  • 14 new action types added to the game including ChainHeal, Whirlpool, TidalMelody, AnchorToss, CoralReef, CoralDetonate, CoralDeathSpawn, DeployVolatileCoral, Maelstrom, TidalNova, TidalSurge, EmberShield, TripleInvulnerable, and UprisingOfTheDepths
  • Whirlpool pull mechanic — Whirlpools now physically pull characters toward their center using rigidbody force-based movement
  • Boss attack schedules have been migrated to a data-driven JSON format, enabling more varied and tunable boss encounters
  • New Flyby movement pattern for flying bosses allowing movement while casting
  • Blast Detonate action system generalized from Snowballstorm, now used for multiple explosion-style abilities

Balance Changes

  • Health reduced on Big Drakonids, Frost Boulders, and Obsidian Golems
  • Health reduced on Healing Pillar and Binding Pillar

Monuments

  • New monuments added to town for all multiverse events and the alchemist project
  • Monument data and export commands updated for the new water content

Technical & Quality of Life

  • Lighting reworked in adventures to make levels more bright
  • Sprite Bank auto-population — Sprites are now automatically populated from resources, reducing manual setup
  • Chest system refactored — Removed legacy ChestController and migrated to a common LevelAction-based system
  • Stash system refactored — Stashes no longer require custom prefabs
  • Server action graph update refactor for cleaner server-side action processing
  • Config-driven timer checks — Server now periodically checks for timer-based configuration changes
  • Fixed missing sprite handling — unknown items now show a fallback "Unknown" sprite instead of errors
  • Improved armor tooltip handling for edge cases where inventory window is not available

Minor Releases

Minor patches for this major version will be appended here.