Welcome back to SWL! In light of the long-awaited release of Season 2 (April 4th, 2018) and the new zone of South Africa, I wrote this guide for returning players to help get back into the game. Whether you played for a month in June 2017 and never came back, or just took a break after the last seasonal event, this guide will get you caught up on major changes in SWL since you last played.
Note if you have not played SWL at all and are a brand new player please see TSWDB or ahem my guide for new players. Thanks to Tipsu for suggesting I host here.
Haven’t played since relaunch (Jun. 2017)
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The NY raid was added. 10 people square off vs. Chuthulu’s step-child in Times Square. If you’ve never been, queue up for Story mode and take a look. It has a week-long lockout timer and high-level distillate rewards, even at Story mode level. You can queue for the available modes from the activity finder window, however for anything of the Elite modes, it is recommended to try to form a group in Agartha instead of trying to blind queue.
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Tokyo was released in 3 steps. Because the AEGIS system was scrapped, some of the main missions have been reworked; a semi-new mission called Bustin’ was added for Kurt (same cutscene, different content). Some side area missions were also moved from previous locations. At the time of release contained keys were a guarantee drop from side missions, and Tokyo containers dropped a lot of shards, so container farming was a big endgame activity for a while. Orochi Tower was also revamped, and the random floor mechanics of TSW were changed to a linear climb up the tower.
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Kantoku Temple, the Tokyo lair, was released. It has new enemy models with new mechanics. A guide to the temple is here
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Wrist signets were added. While they mainly drop from the Tokyo lair chests, apparently they can also drop from any signet-giving activity (thanks /u/Aralicia). These signets improve the ultimate ability and are Signet of Condensed Anima (increases rate of ultimate ability recharge) and Overwhelming Power (increases damage and healing of ultimate ability). A new wrist signet also drops from Occult Defense, which is mentioned later.
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The much-requested QoL feature of the Mission Inventory was added. Mission items, scenario items, and some random things like ofuda go into a separate inventory from the main inventory, freeing up bag space.
Haven’t played since Tokyo release (Nov. 2017):
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Anima allocation was added to allow players to adjust their heal, damage and tank stats on the fly. At level 15 you can change your allocation to, say, have 70% damage, 23% mitigation and 7% healing for a solo build, and switch to 100% damage for a dungeon do build. Basically tanks and healers can do solo content without having to level multiple sets, and players in general can fine tune their health and damage to their build and situation.
Note only base talisman stats are affected, so glyphs, signets and extraordinary gear benefits stay the same. This means that if you want the best possible endgame healer or tank or damage set you still need to level up those other pieces of gear. If you don’t know what to do with it, just set your damage to 100%, play for a bit, and then add in some mitigation until you feel comfortable.
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As a result of anima allocation, base talismans were standardized. This means three types of talismans no longer drop for each slot, just one. In other words, there are no more [Faded Amulet] or [Faded Charm], just [Faded Medallion]. When you upgrade a talisman you only need to match the slot to get +250 xp. Again, extraordinary gear effects, signets and glyphs are unaffected by the change, so you still need to level seperate gear if you are going for the best stats possible in a role. Note that extraordinary gear still is +250 xp as long as the slot matches, even if its effect is a healing, tanking or dps effect.
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Extraordinary waist talismans drop instead of caches sometimes now. See the Weapon Talismans sheet on this file for details.
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New generalist signets added for weapon-agnostic damage boosts. They are Signet of the Neophyte (finger slot, boosts all basic attacks), Journeyman (neck, boosts all power attacks), Paragon (head, boosts all elite attacks) and Ascendant (head, reduces all elite cooldowns).
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Tokyo container rewards were nerfed. Using a corrupted key no longer provides a guaranteed container key, instead it sometimes turns into 750 shards. Also shard rewards from container bosses were reduced, and instead spread out to the other endgame activities. Tron from the dev team explains the reasoning here.
Haven’t played since around Christmas 2017:
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The Agent system was added. At faction rank 3 (level 15) players can “recruit” agents and send them on agent-only missions. Agents can be acquired from action and sabotage mission rewards, scenario chests, and last boss dungeon chests. The drop rate is estimated to be 1-2% from these activities. Players can buy and sell dropped agents on the AH. Finally, agents can come from agent bags purchased with Aurum, though the drop rate is not guaranteed, and the agents from bags cannot be sold on the AH. Essentially the agent system is like class hall missions in WoW or companion missions in SWTOR. You can see a spreadsheet filled with Agent information here. Also as always TSWDB has a stellar rundown, detailing the system.
Agents level up, and at level 25 and 50 can add a boost to your character. Note which agent you have “equipped” can be saved in the gear manager along with your gear, loadout and anima allocation. At first all players got 1 free agent, the Faction Recruit. After player feedback about the agent system, Funcom added a second Agent, Lydia Darling, which you receive after completing your first mission with the Faction Recruit.
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The barber (changes hairstyle and makeup) and surgeon (changes body and face properties) became available. Visit London for the barber and New York for the surgeon. Barber costs 7,000 MoF per use, while the surgeon is 110,000 MoF (thanks /u/tftm11). Sadly, the surgeon’s old missions have not been added.
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SWL started having “bonus” weekends roughly once per month, with events like free PvE activity keys, bonus AP, and bonus Agent XP for a whole weekend.
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For people who love forums and forum byproducts, the official Funcom forums were created.
Dawn of Morninglight release (Apr. 2018):
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The long-awaited “season 2” content of SWL arrived! The agents finally stop laying low in the limelight and go to South Africa to infiltrate the Morninglight. Patch 2.2.1 was a content update, adding the new area, mission chain, new cache and various other cosmetics. If you want to know how to beat a mission or where a certain lore is, visit the general disccusion section of the official forum and look around.
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Game director Tilty left Funcom, and Nirvelle stepped up as the new game director.
Haven’t played since Dawn of Morninglight release (Apr. 2018):
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The first anniversary of the game event happened! Game-wise there was a special anniversary cache, related lore, bosses, the Hatekeeper, even new sitting emotes. The true fun though was in the companion player-run Megaversary event. The Megaversary had a song contest, megaboss summon marathons, story nights, the first-ever bike race through London, a yearbook retrospective, a 24-hour pvp battle, special edition of The Buzzing fashion magazine and more–all dreamed up and run by SWL players. Truly a highlight of the game.
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Daily login rewards for events became claimable on all characters on an account. Previously, only 1 character per account could claim rewards during events, which made it hard to players with alts to chose which character got the goodies.
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Refer a friend was added.
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The Agartha Cache was re-introduced, making it the first time a cache was re-introduced into the game, indicating that perhaps all previous caches and limited-time weapons and cosmetics might someday see rerelease. Previously Agartha Caches had commanded the highest prices on the AH due to the power of their weapon drops as well as their rarity.
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Faction missions were introduced. These are 3 faction-themed, IP gated, scalable solo missions. First time clears reward unique clothing, a faction specific agent dossier, and an extra slot for agents. Repeated clears give rewards comparable to like-level Search and Protect scenarios, which makes the missions a great way to level glyphs. These missions were seen before in TSW, though they have been reworked for SWL.
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A mission was added to South Africa, allowing players to complete all achievements in the SA zone.
Haven’t played since faction missions were introduced (Aug. 2018):
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A new scenario, Occult Defense, was released, along with a bi-annual related event. Players defend a central point against waves of enemies in a tight, face-paced battle. Each wave lasts roughly 4 minutes (depending on gear level and skill loadout) and each 2 waves represent an increase in elite level (ie. wave 10 is equal to E5).
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Various long-requested tweaks were done. For example: raising enrage timer on Machine Tyrant to 5 minutes, agent mission rewards being improved, and agent bags bought with hexcoins no longer give duplicates.
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Samhaim event returned, along with the return of the Broadcast seasonal mission.
Haven’t played since Occult Defense was introduced (Oct. 2018):
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Dark Agartha was introduced. There is no jump pad to the zone as it represents a crazy rift into an alternate dark future where Gaia and all the Bees are dead. Mechanically, DA is a timed, randomized boss rush that takes AP and SP to open, has the usual scalable elite mechanics, and rewards an item to make 3 pip glyphs into 4 pip glyphs. The bosses require the use of a few different skills and very strong situational awareness to survive, and feel noticeably harder than the equivalent elite level according to many players.
Fun fact: Dark Agartha was hinted at in the initial roadmap for the SWL relaunch, but the game director had previously mentioned that DA was scrapped, so its release here was a surprise.
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The winter event Krampusnacht came again, with a twist: a new investigation mission!
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Whenever Patrons receive an AH, one of the AH drones flies out to them no matter where they are–now that’s service!
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A limited-time reduced price 12 month patron bundle was introduced.
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Leaderboards were (re)introduced. Good news for people who remember the old TSW Chronicle–these new leaderboards are not run by a third party but by Funcom directly, so the rankings should actually stay updated regularly.
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Regular SWL streams were reinstated.
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Group Occult Defense was released with patch 2.3.1. Up to five players can now queue for OD. Group OD has some different enemies and challenges suited for group play, as well as numerous new achievements. Perhaps most importantly a new AoE damage boosting wrist signet, the Signet of Nemain, now drops from OD.
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There was a Valentine’s Day contest which featured player-created cards sent to NPCs in game. If nothing else check the 3 category winners for their incredible work. Kirsten Geary looks to be the most loved NPC, receiving 5 out of 53 entries.
Haven’t played since the Dark Agartha and Group Occult Defense release (Dec 2018):
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Patch 2.3.2 brought with it some interesting things: the Rosenbrawl, the Once More into the Tower mission, and changes to Shambala. The patchnotes were somewhat controversial at the time, as they were part of an April Fools day joke.
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The Rosenbrawl was released. It is an underground boxing club with some fleshing-out of the hand-to-hand mechanics we’ve already seen in missions. When it was released, the Brawl had a special mechanic where players had to invite one another to the brawl, so at first only a few people could join. After getting 10 kills of other players, a special NPC boss, based on one of the community’s big contributors, will spawn. There is also a special mission item that drops from one of these bosses!
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The mission Once More Into the Tower was released, which provides some closure to the Tokyo zone. The long-awaited [Depleted Battery] and [Tank Commander Blade] items were also included as rewards, so we can finally complete the Museum. In order to do the mission you need to 1. get a hold of a item called a [Peculiar Box] and 2. complete all the meta-achievements for each zone–basically, you have to clear all the missions in the game up until Tokyo. Actually getting a [Peculiar Box] is easier said than done, as it is an extremely low change drop from any and all activity rewards and bag openings. Once you have gotten a [Peculiar Box] and gotten your meta achievements done, you can revisit the Orochi Tower and take on the hardest bosses in the game. The bosses scale to your IP level and require some specific tactics to beat, so they are not for the faint of heart.
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Shambala was changed to have some better rewards and also to start sooner by lowering the number of needed players from 10v10 to 5v5.
Haven’t played since the Shenanigans release (April 2019):
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2nd anniversary event happened, to great success!
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Paid agent booster packs with unique agent dossiers were introduced. Note that these agents aren’t best in slot or have unique abilities, but if you are one of those people who’s gotta catch 'em all you’ll need to pony up some aurum for these boosters.
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Moons of Madness, a game set in the same world as SWL, was released.
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With patch 2.3.3 saw some big updates to Dark Agartha. Talisman imbuer pieces were added to rewards so now players can make 4 pip talismans. Post-e10 difficulties were added to scale the difficulty higher. Also you can now purchase a special challenge item to increase both the rewards and the difficulty of DA, see some discussion about the challenge mode here.
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Dr. Caligari now sells two items related to the Once Again Into the Tower mission. You can now buy a [Peculiar Box] instead of waiting for it to drop; just be sure to bring your platinum card, because it costs a cool 2 million MoF. You can also buy a [Lucky Pachinko Ball] item which allows you to set the difficulty of the mission, letting you beat the mission and get the achievements for it, at the cost of getting no reward at the end of the mission.
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An “arsenal” cache was released alongside the regular cache. The Dark Agartha Cache, despite its name, drops from anywhere in the world, and contains nothing but gear. Theorycrafters are still crunching the numbers but it looks like many of the weapons and the talismans are best-in-slot items.
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New agent dossiers were created based off player suggestions. These dossiers can only be bought by Hexcoin.
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Agent dossiers no longer drop from dungeon chests that you ran if you did a dungeon 3 elevels below your max level. So if your max is e5, you need to run e3 or better to get dossier rewards.
Haven’t played since Winter 2019:
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A new mission was release for Valentine’s Day! It was a pretty unique triathlon-style mission: defeat players in Rosenbrawl, solve an investigation puzzle, run through the backstreets of London dodging attacks, and fight a difficult boss at the end.
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The boss for Valentine’s day was repeatable, and scaled with difficulty. Some videos and discussion about the fight here! Perhaps the most important and lasting part of this event: players got cakes which can be placed on the ground and shared with others for a damage buff! If you see cake out in the world now, it’s leftovers from the event. Run up and have a bite!
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Wistful Flame was added to Dark Agartha, so people could finally complete the achievements for the zone. Also Toxic Spores was adjusted a bit to avoid some of the hilariously unfair AoE abilities that sometimes overlapped it.
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The Spring Equinox returned, with some related achievements for OD, a free Agent dossier, and a new outfit to collect. In the early days of the worldwide coronavirus outbreak, many SWL players stared their work from home with 100 runs of OD.
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Some QoL improvements: you can see defeated champions on the minimap now, agent missions can be expedited for MoF instead of aurum, and you can purchase more bag space.
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Balance adjustments to the Rosenbrawl minigame to make heavy and balance gloves more competitive to light gloves.
Haven’t played since Spring Equinox event of 2020:
This patch is probably the biggest change to SWL since the relaunch (over 9000 words!), and greatly upsets the “sustain tank can do everything” and “Healer? What’s a healer?” meta. The main point is to rework tanking, healing and DPS so that all 3 roles are needed for group content. Additionally it’s an effort to extend the endgame, do some quality of life features, change up the loot system and do away with the key restriction for loot, and rebalance all weapons. The Penthouse dungeon was also finally added from TSW.
I highly recommend you read the patch notes for the complete rundown. If you’re more of a visual/audio/twitchial learner, JimmyTheRabbit has a stream talking about the changes for a good 2 hours.
Rebalance
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The weapons section is like a small novel in and of itself, for details about your specific weapon please read it over. Overall, high threat modifiers were removed from all DPS abilities (fellow shotgun users, you can now spam Rocket Pod to your heart’s content). Self-healing mechanics like Cruel Delight and tank abilities have been changed to heal less or heal for % of damage taken instead of % max health. A lot of items like gadgets, talismans and signets have been tweaked as well.
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To gain the benefits and activate a lot of tanking and healing mechanics, you need to set you Anima Allocation to 51% or more mitigation (for tanks) and 51% or more healing (for healers).
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For tanks, big damage mitigation abilities were heavily reworked and given huge cooldowns. All tank weapons now have a “signature” ability.
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For healers, overhealing now automatically targets an injured 2nd member of your group and heals them, so it’s easier to keep your group up. The 3 healer weapons gained an ability that heals themselves for 300% to make soloing (and mid-boss panic healing) easier.
Activities
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Elite levels up to 17 were added to all dungeons. The threshold for “nightmare” tier mechanics was previously E5, now it’s E8. Additional mechanics have been added past E14. To avoid fragmenting the dungeon finder groups even more, dungeon queues have been changed to be in clumps of 3 or so (again, see patch notes for more). In order to get agent dossiers onto the loot table you need to queue for your highest available level (used to be within 3 E-levels). Loot has been reworked to add higher level distillates than before.
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The Penthouse dungeon was added from TSW! Note that you a) have to queue for it from Group Finder and b) have to be E11 or higher.
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Some changes in Manhattan: the melee damage circle is now closer to the boss, so melee can use it reliably. E17 difficulty was added. Targeting for the Lurker was improved so you can more easily attack adds when near the overwhelming bulk of the octogaterthulu. Not included in the patch notes, a weapon imbuer was added to NYR! Clearing NYR SM and elite modes now provide a weapon imbuer to boost 3 pip weapons to 4 pip!
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Seek and Preserve was changed to only need 5 survivors to win past E5, and loot scales based on how many survivors are alive. Achievements now increment for lower level runs when completing S&P at a higher level.
QoL
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Rejoice, for dungeon, scenario and lair keys are gone! Run Polaris until your eyes and fingers bleed! Wait, what’s the point of being a Patron then, wasn’t it about all those extra keys (and extra MoF and free teleports and remote AH and…)? Fear not, Patrons now get a special Patron chest in dungeons, scenarios and lairs, 1 per day per activity.
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Recovering glyphs and signets cost for Red items has been reduced to 4,000 MoF.
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The ultimate ability now scales with players overall power, up to a max of 400k(!) damage.
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You can now bring your dog to work! Or your ak’ab hatchling to the raid! Or your wisp to dungeons!
As always, if I got something wrong or if I missed something please let me know and I will update the guide.
Thanks to the following players for helping with the guide:
/u/Aralicia, /u/tftm11, @Tipsu, @DumbOx, and @Trichelieu