Halloween: The Headless Horseman

Something rides the Lamp Road after dark. From noon Mountain Time on Friday, October 16, until the end of November 3, Halloween comes to the realm.

By night

• Cursed Jack-o'-Lanterns fill the fields around Hearthmoor and all along the Lamp Road, and gather outside every other town. About one in ten drops a Harvest Token, and one in 300 drops the Jack-o'-Lantern Headpiece, a carved pumpkin head with glowing eyes. You can find up to three headpieces a day.
• The Headless Horseman rides out of the mist at dusk on a burning skeletal warhorse, carrying its own head as a lantern. It hunts the Lamp Road between Hearthmoor, Silverford, Wickhaven and Fallowmere, and it will ride down anyone it sees. When it starts a fight, everyone hears where it was sighted.
• It is a real group fight: four players at level 10 should need about ten minutes, and fighting it alone is not realistic. It keeps moving and circling between attacks, its attacks reach far, and it has three phases, getting faster and fiercer at two thirds and one third health.
• Watch for the scythe, the hurled head, the spin and the trample, and its new Reaper's Ride: it gallops back and forth through the fight, dragging its scythe along a marked lane. The trample, the spin and the ride can't be blocked, so dodge them. It has its own fight music, and only players in the fight see its health bar.
• Bring it down before dawn and everyone who fought it gets the Headless Horseman mount and the title Horseman's Bane. You need to land a real share of the damage for your level and be close by when it falls. Your share starts over if you die, or if you stay more than 30 m away or offline for over 2 minutes. Its halter drops where it fell. Ride off at dawn and it is gone until the next night.

By day

• The Harvest Fair: Hollow Scarecrows have climbed down from their posts, and the fields around Hearthmoor and along the Lamp Road are full of them, with more on farms across the realm. About one in ten drops a Harvest Token, and you can earn up to 40 tokens a day. One in 300 drops the Straw Scarecrow Hat, up to three a day.
• Marigold Thatch keeps the Fair stall in Exchange Square, and it opens straight to her token exchange. Trade your tokens for the Harvest Scarf (3), the Harvest Mantle (10), the Harvest Hood (25) or the Harvest Cloak (200). Tokens can only be spent while Halloween runs.

For everyone

• Take part in any of it and you earn the title Hollow Harvester.
• Jacks and Hollow Scarecrows fight alone: hitting one never brings its neighbours running.
• Mobs that chase you no longer line up in single file. A pack spreads out and comes at you from several sides, and mobs stop walking into each other.
• Every town is dressed for Halloween: carved pumpkins on doorsteps and lamp posts, corn stalks, straw bales and bunting over the streets.
• Nights are darker. Lamps and torches matter more now.
• The Halloween welcome card shows each time you log in, with what to look for and when the event ends in your own time. It frees your cursor so you can click Got it. New characters see it as soon as the opening scene is over.
• When every world gets busy, a new one opens by itself. Pick it from the world list, even with a brand-new character. Quiet extra worlds close again once everyone has left.
• Friends who are online have a Join World button that takes you to their world.
• The camera sits higher when you ride a tall mount.

Mounts

• Mounts are now items: each one is a halter you wear in the new mount slot in your equipment. Halters can be traded, banked and shown off, and the bank has a Mounts filter. Any mount you already had is waiting for you as a halter.
• Halter icons now show the mount itself.
• If your bank is holding items past its space, you are told when you log in.

Quests and travel

• Lamp-stone travel: standing beside a lit stone, you can travel again after 30 seconds. Calling the lamplight from anywhere else costs ten times the fare and locks travel for 30 minutes.
• The Keeper's Light: while you climb the Gullstone Light, the quest arrow points at the top of the tower. Once you are up, it points to the Lamp-stone in Wickhaven square, then back to Ida.
• Hoofbeats on the Lamp Road: talk to Odile at the Reedlight Inn first, then find Bramble in the reed beds. She follows you home to Odile, and only you can see her. If you lose her along the way, she catches up and appears beside you again.
• A Letter for the Warden: Brother Ansel now sends you to Tam Oxley at the Carters' Line in Silverford, who owes Ansel a favour and gives you a free cart ride to the Wagon Yard just outside Hearthmoor.
• Bold words in quest text now show as bold instead of with asterisks.
• Agility courses pay xp on every clear, and each checkpoint pays every time you reach it in order. No more waiting between runs.
• Every finished course run now goes on the leaderboards. Fast runs are no longer refused.
• Tools of the Trade and the fletching quest now say exactly how to whittle: right-click the knife, choose Use on, then click your logs.
• Quest text, toasts, the tracker, map labels and item tooltips now always show your own key bindings, so a rebound key is never wrong and no raw text slips through. Reward lines show proper names, like Chart: Wickstrand Coast.
• Brother Ansel now sends you to Tobin at the bank before Hallie, and Ink and Runes points to the jeweler's bench beside Hearthmoor's smithy.
• Bramble's dialogue uses the same scroll portrait on every page.
• Cutscenes only skip when you press Esc (or Menu on a controller). Moving or clicking no longer cuts them short.
• Talking to Steward Lisbet Thrum no longer plays the Lamp Tower view early. It now plays when you reach the lantern deck.

Looks

• Faces: the line between the lips is now a soft shade of the lip colour instead of a dark bar. Moustaches sit between the lip and the nose, and goatees and full beards join up with them.
• Distance fog and the atmospheric haze now work together: far hills and forests fade into the sky colour at day, dusk and night, without showing where the detail stops.
• Shadows fade out gently at the edge of their range instead of stopping at a hard line.
• Fishing spots have a new look: ripples spread across the water, bubbles rise, the water glints, and now and then a fish leaps out. The blue fins sticking out of the water are gone, and spots are easier to see at night.
• The Headless Horseman's horse shows only its fire, with no glow inside, and its halter icon fills the frame.

Interface

• The pack slot now sits under the feet slot in your equipment, with the bottom row centred.
• The minimap starts with north up. If you already changed this setting, yours is kept.
• Level-up fanfares wait until quest and zone banners have gone, and play lower on the screen.
• The weapon tab above the hotbar no longer sits on the stamina bar.
• Removed a stray market awning in Hearthmoor.
• Crafting: highlighted recipes are easy to read, and hovering a recipe's icon shows the item.
• Every tracked quest now has its own direction arrow in the quest tracker.
• Keys named in dialogue, quest text and system messages show as key buttons, like on the controls card.
• Titles read as short names above your nameplate: Thawbringer, Swiftfoot, Linekeeper, Lamplighter, Lamp-Sleuth, Asker and Titan-Stiller.
• Wickhaven's harbour and smithy are rearranged, there are new dock cranes, and a few crafting stations have moved to better spots.

Polish

• The website has a new look and new wording, with a new tagline: "Aim every block, arrow, spell, and strike."
• Ability and status tooltips now show exact numbers. Arcane Up's heal bonus now correctly reads 5%, and Defiant Stance says it doubles threat.
• Clearer hints, loading tips and messages throughout the game, consistent Bank and Satchel naming, and tidier lines from a few trainers and codex entries.
• Fixed a slow memory leak from character heads and far-away scenery on long sessions.
• Bug reports now say what caused a freeze, for example a graphics driver stall.