(It’s a redux! My favorite spawn from my favorite season of Prison is back, all to usher in a wonderful summer! I’m really excited for the amazing things we’re doing this summer and I hope you are too!)

Hey everyone, the newest season of Prison Neptune is finally here!

With this release, we are focusing on quality of life improvements with overhauled Pickaxe Enchants, improvements to Gem Armor, and lots of other fixes for “annoyances”.

Now, an overview of the changes we are bringing to map 7.

Pickaxe Overhaul - Leveling, Progressive Enchants

While pickaxe levels have been a gameplay element since Map 1, we’ve always believed that they could have a greater purpose to them. Instead of the sole purpose of unlocking thresholds at which you find Gems for Gem Armor, we have decided to make pickaxe leveling a central component of gameplay.

For starters, we’ve completely rebalanced the leveling system. Instead of our most dedicated players only reaching level 150 by the end of the season, we’ve rebalanced the system such that Level 1,000 is the new level goal to reach by the end of the season.

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Between levels 0 and 1,000, Pickaxe Gem Slots, Gem Unlocks, and most importantly Enchant Levels are unlocked. Gem unlocks (Ruby, Zircon, and Jade) are unlocked at Pickaxe LV 250, 500, and 650. Pickaxe gem slots are unlocked at LV 0, 250, 500, 750, and 1,000. Finally, pickaxe enchants are made available to purchase evenly throughout these ranges. Instead of having all levels available to purchase right away, 500-1000 levels of each enchant are unlocked at a time.  As a nice bonus, we’ve also **doubled **the number of levels for most enchants.

Finally, we have made pickaxes locked to each player by popular demand. This will help to keep gameplay fair between people playing by themselves and in large gangs, ensuring everyone has a chance to compete.

**We believe that this will make Pickaxe Enchants **not only more of a grind, but will help to make sure that it remains an enjoyable grind for 6+ weeks even for dedicated players.

Gem Armor Improvements - Balancing changes, new Runes, and improved scrolls!

Last season, we completely redesigned Gem Armor based around a new concept of Runes which are applied to Gem Armor pieces. While this was a great start, we have noticed some flaws with it and have decided to work on improving these flaws.

For starters, we have made the higher tier versions of Gem Armor (mythical/legendary) more difficult to obtain. Instead of being common rewards in most crates, they are now more exclusive rewards in only the best crates.

In addition to this, we’ve added one new rune at release (a Beacon rune) and will continue to add more throughout the map. This should help to make Gem Armor a more interesting part of gameplay.

Finally, we’ve made ascension a bit more difficult (raising up the EXP costs) in order to give EXP a greater role in our economy.

Robots Improvements - Filtering & Annoyance Fixes

While these are relatively minor changes, I think it needed attention because they are highly-requested. We’ve added a filter view for Robots which will allow you to see just robots which you are able to upgrade (robots which have an upgrade which can be afforded).

Furthermore, we’ve fixed a huge annoyance: you will no longer be forced out of the robots menu when withdrawing! This should make it easier to withdraw multiple robots at once.

Finally, we’ve changed the rarity of Robots. We are going back to a feel from Map 3 where Robots tended to be rarer, so we are making Robots lower chance drops from Mine Keys, Loot Finder, and other crate keys. We’ve also rebalanced the upgrade prices for Robots as well as their drop rates.

At some point throughout the season, we’ll be unveiling a new form of Robots which will allow them to expand beyond just Money! Stay tuned for this…

Trophies Improvements - Annoyance Fixes

This is also a minor change, but I figured it needs mentioning. We’ve removed the delay between purchasing trophies to allow for faster trophy buying! We’ve also tweaked the trophy pricing to make it less tedious to buy trophies for /g top.

Stats - Keep track of your progress all season long!

We’re also adding another highly-requested feature: Statistics tracking! Now you will be able to use /stats to see information about your prison journey. From the number of times you’ve activated Dragon Burst to your overall playtime to the number of blocks you’ve mined, you can keep track of everything important to you throughout the whole season!

Multiplier Improvements - Improved /multi view

This also seems like a minor thing to change, but I figure it deserves mentioning because it really is a great change. Very few people know that it’s possible to use /multi to view your multipliers for other currencies (/multi orbs to see all Orbs multipliers, /multi EXP to see all EXP multipliers, so on and so forth).

To rectify this, we’ve decided to change the /multi view so it is more comprehensive. Instead of just showing your money multipliers, it now shows an overview of multiple currencies, their total multipliers, and the top multiplier of each, with the ability to click on any individual section to see its full breakdown. We think this will make it a lot easier to tell where your multipliers are coming from, and I believe that is a great change.

Frenzies - Compete with others in short bursts!

(For those who played towards the end of last map, we tested this feature out, but we’ve made some changes to how it works and that’s why we’re considering it a headlining feature of this reset Smile :) )

One of the best parts about Prison as a gamemode is that a lot of the fun comes from trying to go head-to-head with other players to see who can get better enchants or mine more blocks. In considering how we can extend this feel, we’ve come up with Frenzies - a really fun, fair, and competitive short event that happens every few hours!

Every few hours, a frenzy starts with a goal in mind. This could be mining blocks, activating Dragon Burst, killing Ozone mobs, opening mine keys or more. For the next 15 minutes, everyone on the server can try to do this as much as they can. When the period ends, the top winners of the event get great rewards! Specifically, they get a 30 minute pickaxe experience multiplier! Sounds fun, right?

Legend Pass Improvements - Better User Experience, Improved Rewards

Last season, we introduced the Legend Pass, which is a great feature where you complete challenges to gain rewards, with new challenges being added every week of the season.

This map, we are making a few useful improvements to it. First, we have expanded the UI such that you can view up to 30 challenges per page, which is equivalent to viewing an entire week’s challenges without scrolling. This is a much needed improvement to make our pass easier to navigate.

Second, we’ve reworked some of the challenges and their rewards. We’ve added new challenge types (rune application, mining # of blocks, etc) and also revamped the rewards. Most significantly, pickaxe skins are now spread out throughout the entire map. You won’t be able to get the gold pickaxe without grinding several weeks of the pass!

Boss Improvements - More exciting bosses, better rewards.

Since map 1, bosses have been a favorite feature. They provide a great enemy to fight in exchange for rewards. However, we have long seen that improvements can be made to them, and that’s what we are working to do this reset.

First, we’ve added new types of bosses with different attacks. This should make bosses more exciting to fight!

Second, we’ve improved boss rewards. Rather than winning (admittedly bad) Event keys, there is now a variety of rewards that can be achieved from bosses! From exclusive pieces of gear to the iron pickaxe skin (very rare) to exclusive multipliers, there are lots of great rewards that can be won from fighting bosses now!

Miscellaneous Changes

In addition to these important changes, there is a lot left to mention that I can’t feasibly describe in detail (there is a word limit on forum posts…). Here’s a shortlist of those:

  • Pet ascension has been reworked to now require pets to be their max level to be ascendable.
  • This has been removed. We are instead going to make Pet Boxes rarer in all aspects of the economy.
  • /tinker can now be used with the “all” argument to tinker all possible items in your inventory.
  • Plots are now double the size (100x100 instead of 50x50).
  • Vote parties now require you to have voted within the last 24hr to receive rewards.
  • Prestige keys have been buffed and are now received every 3,000 prestiges instead of every 50 prestiges.
  • Crates have been rebalanced and now have improved rewards.
  • Internal bug fixes & improvements.