Diamond Shores, the resting place of the legendary Ayanad Library, is no stranger to suffering and war. During the fall of Auroria, a magical catastrophe saturated the area with deadly energy, killing many of its inhabitants and turning large swaths of the region into the brilliant glass for which it is named.
I must admit I did a double take when I saw this. Trion is selling almonds now? Or maybe tuna?
Diamond Shores is a new zone to ArcheAge, and brings a bunch of sweeping changes to the already existing lands of Auroria. Many monsters will have their levels boosted and their drop tables altered to give players new areas to level. The first Obsidian weapons, tiers 1-6, will make their appearance. I’m anticipating another mad housing rush as new plots will be open – and in Diamond Shores there are no taxes aside from those determined systemically around how many plots a player owns!
Far more controversial is the pvp flagging. In the spotlight blog, Merv “Khrolan” Lee Kwai, the producer of ArcheAge explains that it is to prevent the zone from becoming the undisputed best turn in for fish:
The North American and European versions of Diamond Shores will be launched as a contested Aurorian area. This means PvP combat will be enabled throughout the zone. The goal of this change is to ensure that Diamond Shores falls in line with the other Aurorian zones and that open-world PvP is encouraged and supported. It’s our intent to keep the area immediately surrounding the Library’s zone-in point a safe zone to ensure players can enter the zone normally and can form groups without PvP similarly to how the other dungeons work. Another main reason we enabled PvP is to ensure that Diamond Shores doesn’t become the best, universal turn-in for fish – it’s important that players continue to travel to Freedich Island and the southern turn-in spots to spread fishing activities out across the Arcadian Sea.
To read more, check out the blog post, or visit the thread discussing these announcements on the official ArcheAge forums.
