S ranks, a fully raised Aht Urhgan, and ammunition for crafters

A big one. Ten jobs get stronger, Aht Urhgan gets harder in the places the first pass missed, crafters get nine new rounds of ammunition, and a pile of your reports are fixed.

Skill ranks S-, S and S+

There are three new skill ranks above A+: S-, S and S+. Ten jobs that were falling behind now have one or more of them. Nobody lost anything: every other cell on every job is exactly where it was.

Monk, Dark Knight, Samurai, Dragoon, Blue Mage, Puppetmaster and Dancer are unchanged.

What the letters mean in numbers: below level 62 an S rank caps where A+ does. From level 69 up, S- caps 28 points above A+, S caps 56 above, and S+ caps 84 above, so a level 99 at S+ caps at 508 instead of 424. On a weapon, every skill point is a point of attack and a little under a point of accuracy, and merits, gear and item-level weapons still stack on top. You skill up into the new cap the usual way. Squad members of these jobs get the same caps you do.

One thing that follows from ranks being per job: monsters of those magic jobs cast with the higher skill too, and so do trusts of those jobs and some of a Summoner's avatars and spirits.

The Balance pass post has the full list of every job's differences from retail, with these rows added.

Aht Urhgan: every enemy raised

The ToAU +60 missed 389 enemies across eleven Aht Urhgan zones, such as Nostokulshedra sitting at 88-89 in a raised Arrappago Reef. They are raised now, so some enemies in those zones stand as high as level 149. The Apex and Locus camps keep the levels they had.

In the mission Shield of Diplomacy, Karababa was fighting at level 73 beside a level 130 Khimaira. She now fights at her opponent's level plus five.

Ammunition for crafters

New recipes: high-level ammunition

Nine rounds that nobody could get before can now be crafted. Each synth makes 33, and a high-quality result makes 66 or 99. The bolt heads, arrowheads and fletchings were already craftable; now they have a use. The DWCraft recipe book lists all nine.

Woodworking (Earth Crystal):

• Adaman Bolt: Woodworking 81, Smithing 31. Holly Lumber + Adaman Bolt Heads.
• Dark Adaman Bolt: Woodworking 81. Holly Lumber + Dark Adaman Bolt Heads.
• Darkling Bolt: Woodworking 71, Alchemy 31. Holly Lumber + Darkling Bolt Heads.
• Fusion Bolt: Woodworking 81, Goldsmithing 11. Holly Lumber + Fusion Bolt Heads.
• Antlion Arrow: Woodworking 81, Bonecraft 41. Arrowwood Lumber + Antlion Arrowheads + Colibri Fletchings.

Alchemy and Smithing (Fire Crystal):

• Adaman Bullet: Alchemy 81, Smithing 31. Adaman Ingot + Firesand.
• Dark Adaman Bullet: Smithing 81. Dark Adaman Ingot + Firesand.
• Orichalcum Bullet: Alchemy 81, Goldsmithing 41. Orichalcum Ingot + Firesand.
• Dweomer Bullet: Alchemy 61, Smithing 21. Dweomer Steel + Firesand.

DWRaid ammunition can no longer be sold to shops

The Mantid and Tulfaire Arrows, Damascus and Titanium Bolts, and Damascus and Titanium Bullets on the Driftmark shelf can no longer be sold to NPCs, from your bags or from the warehouse. The same goes for their quivers and pouches. Driftmarks were never meant to turn into gil, and a 25-Driftmark stack was selling for almost 4,000 gil. You can still fire, trade, bazaar and auction them as before.

Three ammo pouches now open

Midrium, Decimating and Stinger Bullet Pouches now give 99 bullets when used, like every other pouch.

Magic

Absorb-Attri for Dark Knights (level 91). The spell now works and its scroll is for sale: Mazween in Aht Urhgan Whitegate stocks it for 96,000 gil beside Absorb-TP and Absorb-Acc, and it is on the Conquest Exchange (/cpx) as well. It steals one beneficial effect from your target, two while Nether Void is active. The stolen effect lasts as long as the enemy had left on it, up to your own Absorb spell duration and never more than 5 minutes. Permanent effects cannot be stolen.

Self-Destruct and Final Sting, at the Artisan. Enemies here never use these two moves, so a Blue Mage could never learn them. The Artisan tab in /quests now has a Blue Magic page that teaches Self-Destruct for 50 Drift Coins and Final Sting for 100. You need Blue Mage as your main or support job at the spell's own level.

Spaekona's Coat returns MP. "Converts 2% of elemental magic damage dealt to MP" did nothing on this server. It works now on the coat and all its upgrades: elemental nukes give you back 2% of the damage they deal as MP, per target, and magic bursts count. A squad Black Mage wearing one gets it too.

Addon updates

• DWChat 1.1.0: everything its plan promised. Send any group of lines to your second chat window, one line per group-wide spell ("casts Protectra IV; these five gain Protect"), one line per monster's loot, a digest of buffs wearing off, your own colours for every category, coloured names, and filters to hide others' combat, misses or buffs. The new folds are on, the rest start off.
• DWCon 1.3.0: a compact status display for your target. The effects draw as a tight grid of the game's own icons with the time under each; hover one for its name, exact time and power. Pick Compact or Classic, the icon size, icons per row, where the timer sits, when names show and how dark the backdrop is.
• DWTOD 1.0.1: the /tod window no longer re-asks the server every couple of seconds for a monster whose countdown has run out, and its requests no longer spill into your chat log. It asks about the rows on screen once a minute, and once more when a countdown reaches zero.
• DWQuest 1.36.0: the Artisan's Blue Magic page.
• DWCraft 1.7.3: the nine new ammunition recipes.
• DWHub 1.0.4: DWChat's new description.

Also fixed

• Buying while you are crafting, fishing, zoning or in a cutscene is now refused before anything is charged, at the Conquest Exchange, the DWQuest shops, the DWRaid shop and the market, so the same purchase works once you are done. If you bought something mid-synth before this and it never showed up, zone or log out and back in: it was most likely delivered, and the game just did not draw it.
• Gil sitting in an open trade window can no longer pay for a Conquest Exchange purchase or a Port fare. Both used to go through without charging you; both are refused now.
• The warehouse no longer lets you vendor items that no shop will buy.
• Ghatsad asks for the materials of the automaton frame you actually chose. A cancelled offer no longer leaves you stuck, trading with all five heads unlocked no longer fails, and he talks to you again at level 60 and up.
• The Unity warp into Aydeewa Subterrane lands you on the floor instead of outside the map.
• Corsair and Ranger mythic and relic weapons that make their own ammunition (Death Penalty, Gastraphetes, Annihilator and Yoichinoyumi, the 119 III forms from Oboro), and the ammunition pouches and quivers, now actually hand it out. Every press used to answer "Unable to use item." A full bag now says so instead of giving the same message. The lower rungs of those weapons have no dispense enchantment in the game data and still do not make ammunition.
• Any usable item you had never used before was refused for as long as its reuse time exceeded the server's uptime since the last restart. A never-used item is now ready at once.
• Assault, Imperial Agent Rescue: the gates never fell. The Mamool Ja warders' thrown weapons and Firespit are what break them (stand with your back to a gate so a throw lands on it), but the gates refused to be aimed at and had no hit counter. Both fixed. The same missing counter kept Excavation Duty's rocks from breaking, and every instanced monster now runs its setup script (Nyzul Isle bosses, Salvage, the Ashu Talif captain), so those fights may play a little differently.
• Western Altepa Desert: all nine Phorusrhacos now spawn together. Before, they were packed into four spawn slots, so only one stood at Picolaton's camp.