Black Rose Keep opens in Pantheon with dungeon and patch notes

Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen opened the Black Rose Keep dungeon to players in a September 10 post that also carried the update's full change list. The studio said the fortress is built for groups of adventurers between levels 15 and 40, and that it contains two major boss encounters along with more than 20 rare NPCs to hunt down.

Below the keep lies a chasm labyrinth. The team said players who descend may come across the camp of the nomadic Aridola, but also warned that Zakaat goblins and other dangerous creatures have made the maze their home. The keep itself is presented through in-world rumor rather than an official account: merchants, nobles and Thronefast Regulars are reported to have been attacked across the southern lands, and mercenary soldiers have been sighted on the walls. Adventurers who go looking, the studio said, should expect a hostile reception.

The release also leans on the game's Perception system. According to the post, players can chase rumors and overhear conversations that fill in recent chapters of Thronefast's history, including the disaster in the Veil of Azeris and the organizations maneuvering for power afterward, as well as the intrigue surrounding E'mani Karos and his Black Rose.

World and NPC changes

Alongside the new zone, merchants and trainers in the village of Demith now consider themselves residents there and have largely cut ties with their former hometowns, and an alchemist trainer has taken up residence. Goblin junk stashes in Thronefast are less likely to respawn immediately after being looted. The team said it has begun raising the strength of many named NPCs, describing that as an ongoing process with further tuning planned across the next several content releases. Two specific behavior fixes landed as well: Ash Breathers should be less likely to attack the beetles infesting their home, and Zaruk the Sightweaver's Life Drain can no longer pull additional life from players who have already died and released.

Items, quests and class tuning

• The proc on Scepter of Smoldering Symbols now lasts nine seconds instead of six.
• Twisted Dragonbone Ring's usable classes were corrected, adding wizards and removing shamans.
• Rarer entries in Tel'Daedras' loot table now drop more often.
• Necromancer lifetap healing rose from 33 percent to 50 percent.
• Rogue Toxic Elixir now runs 30 seconds rather than 20.
• Tooltip and appearance corrections covered Myrmidon's Battlegrips, Draconic Adept's Headband, Soldier's Kite Shield, Reinforced Tower Shield and Ruddy Mushrooms.

On the quest side, the studio said a bug had stopped the final quest item from being awarded to players who defeated Tel'Daedras. Those affected will need to kill her again, with at least one open inventory slot and while present in the room. Players carrying The Secret of the Stones must abandon and retake it from the quest giver before it can be completed with that item. The Molten Sentinel drops its associated key again, and a quest that used the wrong NPC's name has been retitled, although active journals may still display the old title.

The remaining fixes are smaller. Zone names with multiple words now display with spaces beneath the compass, chat channel colors can be changed reliably, and a post-zoning bug that told a player they were not in a group while the rest of the group still saw them has been resolved. Apple trees were also updated so they are easier to identify from a distance.