2025 Winter Update Announcement
03 December 2025
Roadmap
Date | Content |
|---|---|
December 18th, 2025 |
[Winter Revamp]
|
December 27th, 2025 | 18th Anniversary Events |
December 31st, 2025 | Character Balance Patch |
January 2026 | Elsword Chicken Collaboration & Nexon Link |
January 15th, 2026 January 29th, 2026 |
|
February 12th, 2026 | Henir's Creation - Devil of Chaos |
February 2026 | Balance Patch Test Server - First Period |
Prof. Pho's Growth Guide Revamp
The Growth Guide is getting a major rework. All quests and the UI will be changed to provide far more useful rewards meant for character progression.
The existing quests will be removed. Make sure to complete them before the update.
Skill Build & Equipment Guide
We will collect data from high Combat Power players to assess two systems for newbie players.
Skill build recommendation: check which skills to equip. The recommended setup can be immediately applied.
Equipment recommendation: check top 5 item picks for each Equipment Slot. This aims to help new players who are unsure what they should be wearing.
Weapon and Armor recommendations are not available. Instead, a more elaborate guide is under preparation due to the complexity of said equipment.
Dungeon Improvements
Trosh's Nest improvements
Map structure will be changed to help beginners farm El Resonance EXP.
Monaterra and Serpentium general dungeon, as well as Abyss Solo Mode monster stats will be lowered.
Solo Mode will be expanded to Serpentium Raid.
Stage 1 will be changed to Solo Mode (no change to entry Combat Power).
Some patterns will be altered to suit Solo Mode.
Title Count Adjustments
Title | Obtain condition BEFORE | Obtain condition AFTER |
|---|---|---|
Husk of Shadow | Shadow Earl's Castle 50 times | Shadow Earl's Castle 20 times |
Freed Shadow |
|
|
Sealer of Plegas | Clear Plegas's Labyrinth 200 times | Clear Plegas's Labyrinth 50 times |
Attack of Steel Machines | Clear The Great Steel Wall 300 times | Clear The Great Steel Wall 150 times |
Overture | Clear Serpentium Tower at Difficulty Stage 2 or above 300 times | Clear Serpentium Tower at Difficulty Stage 2 or above 100 times |
Concerto | Clear Orchestra Hall at Difficulty Stage 2 or above 300 times | Clear Orchestra Hall at Difficulty Stage 2 or above 100 times |
Other Adjustments
In Doom Aporia, you can now drop the weapon in Stages 1 and 2 as well. The probability of acquiring a weapon is lower than Stage 3.
Exascale Amplification Circuit low-value options (0.5%, 0.6%) will be removed. With this, the probability of acquiring 0.7%, 0.8% circuits will be increased.
Circuit craft cost will be lowered to 200,000 ED.
Unique Atma Magic Stones will be changed to tradable.
An exchange that allows you to obtain all unique Atma Accessories will be added using new materials.
Hair dyeing pity system will be added. Collect points through dyeing and exchange them for a color of choice.
Batch hair dyeing will be added. When dyeing hair with A/B parts the same color, only 1 color palette will be consumed.
You will be able to retry in Spirit's Lord Temple dungeon.
Basic consumables (when creating a new character) will be improved.
New Region - Mirror Dell
Mirror Dell consists of 6 story-rich solo dungeons. Instead of playing all 6 dungeons, some dungeons are assigned to you automatically each week.
The El Search Party receives a call from a mysterious silhouette and heads to the unknown area of Mirror Dell, a city of mirrors. The search party members scatter across different realms, struggling to leave Mirror Dell.
Through these new dungeons, you can level up your Artifact Pets that have not had an update in a while, and obtain new Artifact Equipment.
You can increase your Artifact Stage through a quest. Your Artifact Pet will change its appearance after the quest is complete.
A new identifiable effect is added to "Hidden Power" (fourth line).
The existing upgrades like Spirit Stones will also be available on the new equipment.
Henir's Creation - Devil of Chaos
A special dungeon that allows you to practice Raid and Giant Boss patterns before entering multiplayer will be added.
Cannot resurrect and only one person can enter.
This mode offers additional rewards that increase as you progress. These include Abyss Mystic Stones, Refined Exikel, Core Data Backup Module etc., as well as an item that increases Doom Aporia Accessory Drop Gauge.
Avatar Dyeing System
Due to structural issues with old items, Avatar Dyeing will only be accessible on newly released avatars.
However, as an exception, we will prepare a package of an older avatar for when the update is first released so that you could experience the new system.
Dyeing pity and batch dyeing will also be applied.
Balance Patch
As said in a previous notice, many adventurers expressed regret over the last balance patch.
A large portion of characters was not included in the previous patch due to issues with controlling balance caused by excessive party synergy impact on endgame.
In the coming year, we plan to reduce the impact of synergy on gameplay while increasing each character's individual performance.
But before committing to big changes, we will review all characters once again in the upcoming balance patch, and instead of focusing on a small group of characters, numerical changes and skill trait adjustments will be implemented on a larger scale.
We are also preparing a test server for balance patches. There will be several test periods, and the first test period is scheduled to be released at the end of February 2026.
We will provide more details through a separate notice at a later date.
Events
This time, the Combat Power boosting event will give away +11 Tenebrous Armor with Lv. 21 Reforge.
+11 Submergence of Abyss - Phantom Weapon (Stage 5) can also be obtained again. Although, the quests that can convert the timed variant to a permanent one have been relaxed, and the event will last longer than it did before.
Free Spirit Challenger as event reward (might be KR only).
A new event that will help acquiring Amplification Circuits for Exascale will be released.
The 18th Korean Anniversary will be celebrated by giving away Bloody Nightmare Ice Burner Full Set (permanent). The anniversary event will be slightly different from previous years, and we are planning to provide various additional rewards.
While you wait for the Winter Update, we have prepared events such as free Mod (E) book cube timer on December 4th, as well as an event where you can receive cute KakaoTalk emojis featuring Hedgehog. There is also a collaboration with a chicken brand planned for January 2026.
Elsword Pop-up Cafe: we are planning to meet with our adventurers at an offline event that will be hosted in the first half of 2026.
There will be an event providing special rewards as a gift of gratitude for long-term players ("senior adventurers") who have helped our new and returning players.
Korean players will be able to connect to Elsword through Nexon Link on mobile devices. However, party play is restricted.
29 Comments
Comment as a guest by providing a nickname.
Just got back from an out of town trip and wasn’t able to comment while I was away. Revamps, adjustments, and system improvements look good, though I don't have enough info on the Prof. Pho revamp to make a fair judgement on it. Events are nice, too. But I wish they'd finally fix the enhancement system instead of constantly giving us +11s.
Sorry, I’m sleepy right now and waiting on laundry stuff that needs to get done before I can sleep.
debating on how much of current phoru to rush grab before the revamp. current thought is: meh, gonna prioritize only some things, like pots, artifact stones with selectable colors, and maybe some of the upgrade mats. maybe.
i haven’t played elsword in a while, and have thought of coming back sooner than later, but the fact that they keep gifting you +11 armor (and/or weapons, too, i’m not sure), leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
the positive is that players can sort of “catch up” to others. but the bad means that after all these years, they still haven’t changed the awful and, honestly, predatory equipment enhancement system.
them giving a guaranteed pity success is their excuse for making the enhancement rates actually worse.
in addition to blacksmiths no longer being able to skip enhancement levels.
oh, and recently it’s a switch up between weapons and armor, with the most recent one being effectively both.
that’s insane. what even is the blacksmith profession even good for now?
this game urgently needs a better enhancement system, or just a rework entirely, because people that don’t p2w or don’t grind like their lives are at stake just won’t be able to play later dungeons / raids, they’ll just get stuck after varnimyr.
at lvl 10 blacksmith you have blacksmith exclusive el’s hammers that each cost 100k ed and 8 hours per hammer, with the ability to save up 20 hammers . also some enhancement functions cost slightly less/no materials before certain enhancement levels are reached.
but besides that… the mithril chunks cost too much economy if you get them from board, and your chances aren’t that much better than npc enhancing (if it’s better at all, i forget because retaining that info isn’t a priority rn).
so for now, aside from all that… it’s not the best investment to learn the anvil.
also for now, in terms of getting stuck, the next normal dungeon after normal berthe raid is 3 mil cp entry req., which is twice the cp req. of normal berthe raid (1.5 cp). iirc it’s possible to get in with the ep ibs and +10 FoJ and all varni raid accs and master road accs and cor. dimension master accs, but even with the permanent +10 FoJ kit and temps of most of the mentioned accs sets and the ep ib being handed out by phoru, the other stuff is still a lot for most normal accounts regardless of the out-of-touch finger wagging of veteran players, because temp sets will only go so far in the long run and their expiration is liable to leave players stranded after being stress rushed. also, phoru currently does not have +10 VoS amulet even though it does have a fully socketted (sage stones and mystics but not imprints) VoS box.
These changes aint bad but, f2p peeps need +12 pity. Like getting your weap to +12 is so painful, either you get it or just play support forever or just quit.
what?? in what world do you need +12 to play as dps? all my friends are +11 and do just fine aporia
A lot of us need to get +12 or +13 on gear from earlier regions to reach later regions because we can’t get the CP for said later regions otherwise. Hell, I was gifted a 6/6 Sacred Knights set on my main and I’m still not able to reach even just 3m with it equipped (though part of that is that I hate using Polarize). And while one of my alts is nearly at 4m, it’s only because of a certain jump event a while back.
while the game is 100% doable with a +11 no problem
the community just doesn’t see it that way and its very evident on any server on how closed off the end game raids are
in NA theirs no chance of you playing anything else than a support if you don’t have a +12
in EU idk i haven’t played that server in a while
in TW pretty much the same but you can buy runs with ED so thats actually somewhat better
in the P.server its the same but much worse since their player piloting skills are so much worse than any other server
i honestly think 12 pity is not the way to go but instead reward people by actually finishing the content with weapons at +11
the real problem is that “piloting” and “actually knowing how to play one’s character” are vastly different things. the later actually requires figuring out their basic controls and having some sense of their systems and gimmicks. the former is skill-spam brainrot guided by bogus stat manipulation that’s barely effective.
but the fact that that term is even a thing that isn’t called into question more often is a big sign that end-game regulars and the later-game community at large are entitled and out-of-touch idiots who are stuck in the same dead-end mindset as the devs: buying into sub-par mmo stat wrangling in a game that at its basic structure and in the long term does not mesh well with that kind of thing.
add to it that much of the late-game playerbase is also not adaptive, but at best complacent in letting the devs get away with genuinely bad decisions regarding mechanics and gimmicks that are plainly ass and irritating by standards that aren’t unreasonable because they actually aren’t learning to do hack-slash/beat-em-up stages better and instead pull crap that makes me think they thought i wanna be the guy wasn’t satire on the things it pulls.
and like a cult, the and-game players see promises of big numbers and chase it without question, with any deeper thoughts only focused on coming up with whatever superstitious routines they can finger-wag at newcomers and returnees so that they’ll be more pliant to being fodder for their own futile grind (that does not progress primarily on effort but instead mainly on luck).
Instead of keep giving the free +11s sporadically, why don’t they just outright rework the damn enhancement system.
The freebies won’t solve the issue of transitioning from mid game to endgame. The newbies/people that benefit the most from the freebies will always struggle to go to the next stage of equipment grinding where enhancements materials cost 200M+ per breaking with shitty success/break rate. That’s 1 week worth of SDs and weekly ED mission.
and the first attempts/the first cycle of every enhance mats will always be two weeks, because you pick between the don’t break and don’t fall back junk. and when you run out of break-preventions, that’s another week of waiting for one.
There’s a lot of things that need to be addressed somehow. Enhancement is a major one, reforging and imprinting are too damn expensive (and on the note of imprinting, just get rid of the Refined stones already), and since Artifacts are actually getting focus, make it easier to get the Artifact equipment (Master Road as a whole really could use a drop rate boost, or at least stop making it exempt from drop rate buffs)
I mean, I appreciate the free +11 equipment, but the way recent events for them have been implemented, I only have one character capable of participating and if it’s something they already have, it’s wasted because they’re always shared bank-locked and I can’t pass them along to another character who could actually make use of them (I have one character with 6 mil~ CP and the rest of my characters aren’t even a tenth of that) They should really just make enhancement more like reforging where there’s no levelling down, no resetting, no breaking. Just rework the Fluorites and the scroll to be useful in some other way, the hammers can still do what they do.
Prof.Pho……honestly, I’m not convinced the revamp is going to be any sort of drastic change. Unless I see otherwise, I’m figuring it’s going to be all the same items that are part of it currently (I’ll still try to at least get everything Void Weapon-related out of them just to be safe….at least, once I get the “For Real!? Yes, For Real.” achievement, which I’m really close to getting (those achievements could use to be redone so it just doesn’t count a run where the weapon drops, not completely resets to 0).
Also I like scaling back some of the title requirements, but I don’t know how they reduce the requirements for the Shadow Earl’s Castle titles and not the entire rest of Tirnog (since the entire region requires clearing the dungeon 50 times for the titles, with Castle basically requiring it twice at current)
Okay, so as nobody is asking the important questions /j
Are the KakaoTalk stickers available only for the korean event? Will they release it on the website as well? I actually do use Kkt quite frequently and I would love Elsword stickers. :{
Afaik they only care about KKT stuff for Koreans, so you might need an account for that.
By an account, you mean a korean Elsword game account, yes? Just checking
Yeah. Possibly. We’ll see next week I guess.
Alright, I see! Thank you, thank you!!
mechanic practice henir the private server will hate this lets just use a 3rd party program to skip it
dyeing costumes is also random? are you insane man
While we have the usual skeptics, I’m honestly calling it a big W for +11 Tenebrous Armor Set, as long as it’s permanent, with enough work here n there on ERP n such you can get enough combat power for doom raid and that couldn’t have been any better for f2p - the only downside being it tied to an Event, one that is known to not repeat so soonish from one to the next one.
Besides that, this finally gives us the confirmation that KoG see’s +11 as the minimum/optional for endgame (while it was obvious, them handing it out like that is the final nail in the coffin).
I’m only worried about the balance patch part but only time until it’s released on paper as well test servers will tell how well they’re executing it.
with enough work here n there on
genuinely superstitious and delusional mindsets like this are what enable the devs to be as predatory and outright dumb in handling progression in the first place, and no amount of appeals to normality (which might not exist) can justify this, because they generally fall below even that very low bar. sunk cost fallacy will always apply when stupid norms are left unquestioned.
but the freebies are always welcome.
phoru total revamp.
oh. i may or might not bother scrambling for my leftover stuff considering where i am in game, but eh, i’ll see where this goes. current phoru is becoming kind of jank with all the add-ons and reward reworks.
endgame player luck charms being used to collar new players to asinine metas
that is a stupid idea, or at least it seems to be about to be utilized in a spectacularly stupid manner.
trash nerf and other stuff nerfs and title count culling
the game becoming more reasonable is always welcome, late as it is, though i think they could have kept at least one geyser per area (as well as making them send ppl up faster).
solo snake raid from stage 1
raid practice henir thing
i— … ok gonna check that out and—
no revives in practice
useless garbage bloat content — aaand see where this goes i guess.
hair dye content still being mostly random only makes it nearly worthless and and any pity system does not have good precedents in this game.
master road successor
that’s… different. glad artifacts are in the spotlight again, but uh… please cull the exp table on those things.
so then. dark lands or nah?
a lot of you are actually stupid enough to call anything you want from this or any other game “hope”, and honestly that’s one of the actual dumbest things anyone has done with this game.
hope is always there and none of it is your petty wants or any of your dimwit ambitions. get over yourselves.
Oh well… It’s going to be a loooong break for me. See you in the summer update ig if that’s even worth checking out
Curious, what did you hope for?
So the usual content phasing; Also love how they need to delay weapon and armor equipment guide because of how obtuse their own upgrade systems have gotten over the years.
As expected it seems there's not even remotely enough stuff to significantly improve the terrible situation of the worst problem which is middle game stopping point (after you finish prof Pho guide and are stuck forever at Tirnog and under 10million CP) and what they will improve will be improved in a half-assed way as always.
Not feeling hopeful