The Korean Patch 1.9 has hit the player-test realms, and the notes have been translated from Korean on the Powerwiki. Read on for the highlights!

• A new system to combine two-handed weapons for increased power!
• Supplements to assist with reducing the failure rate of socketing manastones.
• The maximum number of sockets increased to 15.
• Enchanting armor will increase HP in addition to physical defense.
• Gathering and Crafting increased to 499. New crafting and morphing recipes.
• A brand-name boutique shop has been added in each capital. Suit up!
• A new Rental system has been added, with weapons and armor that can be used for a set amount of time after purchase.
• New Legendary class weapons and armor that can only be purchased from the Abyss Contributor have been added.
• New wings have been added to the Wing Feather Seller’s Items for Sale in the large cities.
• Characters who have progress slowly from level 15 despite long connection times and continuous in-game activity will now obtain bonus EXP through the Energy of Salvation.
• Energy of Repose will now be earned starting at level 15. Its effects have been increased between levels 30~45.
• New stats have been added that allows spells to critical strike, as well as, resist critical strikes.
• All stigma stones types can now be purchased from the Stigma Seller located in the large cities.
• The cost of Soul Healing, Soul Binding, and Flight Transportation have all been decreased.
• A Looking For Group function has been added to help players find others for group quests.
• A new quickbar that can be moved anywhere on the screen has been added.
• A new function will allow players to buy back items at the original sale prices.
• A number of new skills for all classes have been added.
• The Dredgion’s play time has been changed from 1 hour to 40 minutes.
• The number of Abyss Points players can earn on the Dredgion has been slightly increased.
• The drop rates of the boss monsters in a number of dungeons have been increased.
• Some of the instances that could only be entered during a campaign quest can now be entered at any time.
• "Daily quests" have been added allowing players to undertake a new quest every day upon joining certain groups.
• New Dredgion quests have been added.
• When undertaking the crafting quests [Elyos] “Well Rounded” and [Asmodian] ”Proving Proficiency”, the number of "Boiling Balaur Blood Stains" needed to craft the "Heart of Magic" has been reduced from 125 to 100.
• The difficulty of some campaign quests has been decreased.
• The reward stats of some quests that can be acquired after level 20 have been increased.
• The Abyss Fortress War interval has been changed from 2 hours to 1 hour, and boss difficulty and spawn times reduced to 30 minutes.
• The opposing race’s bind point can no longer be invaded.
• New paths and Obelisks that can be reached through flight have been added.
• Teleport coordinates have been added to the teleport statues in the city regions. NO MORE FAILBOAT!

Be sure to join the discussion already in progress on the VN Boards.

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Depending on your actual start date, the 5-month Honored Daeva Veteran Rewards are available at the NCSoft Master Account page, which honestly you should have bookmarked by now given the larger number of scam sites attempting to redirect you away from there.

There is nothing truly special about this month's rewards, but who couldn't use a couple of Lodas Amulets for their alts?

• Lodas Amulet (4)
• Revival Stone (4)

NCSoft brought down the Aion servers early this morning for a maintenance patch 1.5.1.11.

During this downtime we will be applying a number of fixes to the game which you may find detailed in the PowerWiki.

• Instanced Dungeons [Dark Poeta]: Artifact Activation and I Need Materials! - Both entry quests now function
• Expert Major Armor Flux - level 33 and 43 no longer share the same name; level 43 renamed to Expert Superb
• Many quest text and spacing issues corrected
• Class [Chanter] - "Blessing of Rock" has been changed to "Blessing of Stone"
• Destination signs now state “Km” instead of “Kr”
• Sound Options - Two sliders both named SFX Volume have been better defined
• Command - /AutoHuntingReport will now work when typed in chat
• Pop-up window showing a recommended server will now display at the server selection screen
• Audio – Tweaks to several NPC’s that incorrectly used Greets as Farewells and vice versa
• Audio: Cutscenes – Some reworked to better match text on screen

The update is estimated to take no longer than 3 hours.

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The developers over at NCSoft have taken the data collected from the in-game survey a few weeks ago and compared it to their internal server statistics. Based on these factors, their decision is to "keep the enemy on their heels". Next week they will be changing the fortress capture timer to one hour, which is twice the amount of time it is currently set to.

The goal in the original change was to increase the difficulty of these battles and reduce the amount of time players needed to dedicate for the event. They believe that the new timer achieves a good balance, but that doesn’t rule out future re-evaluations. As usual, they will be closely monitoring activity in the Abyss after the timer change is implemented to make sure that the battle rages on without any new negative side effects!

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The number of reported hackings have increased seemingly of late, and NCSoft has posted some security tips for you in hopes that you will protect yourself.

Greetings, all. I’m Scott Jennings, otherwise known as GM Luminary, working with NCsoft’s Game Surveillance Unit (GSU). I’ve been asked to take some time to speak for a bit on the fallout from the war that we’ve been fighting in our games against real money trading (RMT) companies and others trying to violate your account security, and how you can help in the fight.

It is actually a pretty long document, so if you are curious as to what more you can do to protect yourself, be sure to read the entire tip sheet.

Looks like some shuffling in the ranks has allowed for a new promotion. The following was posted to the official site earlier in the week:

Now that we’re well into a new year, we’re going to begin talking about the almost overwhelming amount of things we have in store for Aion in 2010. It’s only fitting that with the new year comes new leadership on Aion. As such, Chris “Kinslon” Hager has taken a step up from Associate Producer and has been named Aion’s Producer.

You may know Chris already – he’s been with NCsoft since the fall of 2005. He has worked on multiple NCsoft titles throughout the years including Guild Wars, Lineage II and Aion. His passion for games goes far beyond his profession: He’s also a hardcore gamer that plays games across multiple platforms. Some of his favorite titles include: Bioshock, Mass Effect and the Legend of Zelda series (He’s never been able to decide on a favorite.)

We’re all very excited to follow our new Producer forward. His intricate knowledge of Aion and deep history with the game and NCsoft are invaluable as we move forward. Needless to say, there is plenty to be excited about that we have yet to announce.

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