Source | Translated by Yuan

Combat & Skills
Assassin

• Skill cooldown reduced for Mist Slash and Tear Slash.
  
• The skill “Deep Thrust” and Tier 3 of the skill “Deep Thrust” in the training menu will now knock back 9m.
  
• Changed the debuff icon for when you are poisoned.
  
• Enemies will no longer resist attacks if they are inside a Tier 2 Smoke Bomb skill.
  
• Fixed a bug with Tier 5 ~ 6’s Thunder Kick.

Lyn Blade Master

• You can now use the skill “Charge” while using the Qing Gong, Qing Gong Jump and Glide.
  
• Your “Chi Choke” can no longer be canceled by an ally performing Submission or Dominate.
  
• Fixed a bug with the skill “Windmill”
  
• Fixed a bug with Tier 5 Chi Choke talent.

Summoner

• The skills “Cat’s Ferocity” & “Cat Tricks” both received new skill icons.

Area

• Some unpopular areas in the beginning zones had their Dragon Pillars removed.

Dungeon
Port Blood Shark (Night)

• You need to complete an entry quest before entering this instance.
  
• You will need the item “Naryu Region’s Gold Coin” to enter for the first time and “Naryu Region’s Silver Coin” to re-enter from then on.
  
• Daily quests have been added for the instance.
  
• The Port Blood Shark (Night) instance can have up to 24 people taking down the named monsters and can be entered with either a party or by yourself.

• Regular monsters in the Port Blood Shark (Night) instance will have a small chance to drop a Port Blood Shark Key and Luxurious Port Blood Shark Key.
  
• Killing the “Toxic Man-eating serpent”, “Juk Ryong-Gwee” and “Hong-Rang” bosses in the Port Blood Shark (Night) instance will reward you with a “Supply Chest” which can be opened with a Port Blood Shark Key.
  
• Killing “The Mysterious Man” in the Port Blood Shark (Night) instance will reward you with a “Rusty Mysterious Supply Chest” and/or a “Mysterious Supply Chest” which can be opened with a Luxurious Port Blood Shark Key.

Grave of Sacrifice

• You can now block the Infernal Lord’s flame attack with the Destroyer’s Iron Wall skill.
  
• The Infernal Lord’s Back pedal kick was taken out of its skill routine.

Port Blood Shark

• Chung-Rang and Hong-Rang now drop new head pieces, Hong-Rang’s Bandana and Chung-Rang’s Blindfold as well as Chung-Sil exchanger and Hong-Sil exchanger.
  
• Hae Moo-Jin will now drop Pirate King exchanger as well as Pirate’s Pride exchanger.
  
• Also a slight nerf in the Juk Ryong-Gwee fight.

Solo Dungeon, the Tower of Mushin

• A new system added where you can start from the 5th floor.
  
• To start from the 5th floor of the tower you need to do a quest which enables that feature.
  
• The cost to start at the 5th floor is 5 gold once you complete the quest.
  
• Room of Chung-Woon and Room of Juk-Woon have been changed to an instance.
  
• Room of Chung-Woon will now hold Hong-Sil instead of Chung-Sil.
  
• You can now complete the quest “Training Start” and “Road to Training” from anywhere instead of heading back to the NPC to return the quest.

NPC

• Added some new voice overs for NPCs.

Quest

• Some items now provide higher grade weapons instead of normal grade.
  
• Added an escort sign to the target you are escorting via a quest.
  
• Fixed some typos in the quest text as well as voice sync problems with NPCs.
  
• Fixed the cinematic where Jung Ha-Do first makes his appearance.
  
• Other minor changes to various quests as well as fixes.
  
• Added daily quests as well as quests that can be completed without the need to go back to the original quest giving NPC to complete.

Interface

• Fixed various UI bugs.
  
• Your summoned cat will now properly be matching the pet in your pet tab.
  
• Your summon’s HP bar’s color will change depending on its fur color.
  
• You can now fix the size of the summon’s UI.
  
• Added a graphical effect to newly appearing items in your inventory since the last time you opened your inventory.
  
• Added a bling effect to jewel type items in your inventory.

Items

• Fixed typos in some item tooltips.
  
• If you dismantle an item from the Sool-Wul Praries you have a chance to get Naryu Region Coins.
  
• If you dismantle an epic grade item you will have a chance to get Naryu Region’s Steel Coin / Silver Coin.
  
• If you dismantle an Heroic grade item you will have a chance to get Naryu Region’s Silver Coin / Gold Coin.
  
• Fixed graphic issues of Bo-Pae set effects that disappear once you teleport to a new area.
  
• The items Hong-Rang’s Bandana & Chung-Rang’s Blindfold had their item ranking raised to Heroic.
  
• The facial hairs of characters will no longer stick out of items like masks.

System

• You will no longer die from falling, instead go down to 1 health if you have a fall that would normally kill you.
  
• Chi Meditation now takes 20 seconds for you to revive.
  
• You can now stop giving Chi to an ally using Chi Meditation.

As we approach the start of a new year, we wanted to bring you up to speed with what's been happening with Blade & Soul®, and what happens next.

The game is already in its finished form in the original Korean-language version, but bringing Blade & Soul to the West involves more than simply translating the text and recording new dialogue. Gameplay styles differ greatly in different cultures, meaning that what players in Korea consider fun and balanced might not be as well-received in Europe and America. Addressing considerations like these takes time and NCSOFT® is committed to doing it right--without sacrificing any of the elements that make Blade & Soul as popular as it continues to be in Korea.

The development team at NCSOFT West has been working closely with Team Bloodlust to ensure that we deliver the best, most faithful version of Blade & Soul to Western gamers. We are making progress and plan to reveal more details about the game in the coming year.

In the meantime, our goal is to build excitement for Blade & Soul, by introducing Western audiences to the game's beautiful graphics, compelling story and innovative gameplay. Then, when the time is right, we will release the sorts of details you have been waiting so patiently for.

Thanks for bearing with us, and stay tuned!

Source | Translated by Yuan.

Combat & Skills
Blade Master

• Fixed a skill description error of Flying Sword skill saying it would be usable during the Summoned Sword state.
  
• Fixed the animation glitch where it won’t display your character getting up if you used the “Block” skill while knocked down.
  
• Fixed the skill bug of Tier 4 “Guardian Spirit” giving enemies an immune when they were within the skill range.
  
• When you learn the Tier 5 of the “Spin Slash” talent the tooltip will now properly display you gain 7 Chi when you hit an enemy

Kung-Fu Master

• Tier 6 of the skill “Landslide” will now recover 15% health instead of the previous 5%.
  
• Targets hit by the Tier 1 of the skill “Choke” will now properly gain a “Unconscious” debuff.
  
• Fixed the tooltip issue of Tier 4 Talent of the skill “Hidden Punch” saying it gives 15 second of critical hit chance buff when it is actually 1.5 seconds.
  
• You can now use the skill “Escape” when you are unconscious.

Force Master

• You can no longer use the skill Tier 2 of “Freeze Finger / Frost Finger” on an enemy that is in the air.
  
• Your “Back Roll” skill’s cooldown will now show on your buff icon and will countdown until it is available again.
  
• Fixed the bug of your Tier 1 “Ice Flower” curing both enemy and your ally’s unconscious state.

Assassin

• Tier 2 of the “Smoke Grenade” talent will now recover more health in its AOE area, also lowering the cooldown of the skill to 24 from 45 seconds.
  
• You can now properly teleport to your teleport Ward skill while under the effect of “Stealth”.
  
• The skill “Heart Jab” skill now animates faster also it causes a shorter global cooldown.

Destroyer

• When you learn the Tier 1 ~ 3 Talent of the skill “Iron Wall” you will now gain the increased 40% of your health healed.
  
• When you learn the Tier 1 & Tier 3 of the “Iron Wall talentl your cooldown will be increased to 30 seconds.
  
• When you learn the Tier 2 of the “Iron Wall” talent your cooldown will be increased to 45 seconds.
  
• When you learn the Tier 3 of the “Kick” talent and if your skill causes an enemy the unconscious state you will gain an icon showing the time left to “Reuse” the skill.

Summoner

• If you change your summon’s mode to “Follow” mode it will lose interest in its current target and follow the summoner.
  
• Tier 5 of the “Flower Pollens” skill will now recover 20% of the health instead of the 5%.
  
• Tier 6 of the “Flower Pollens” skill will now recover 100% of your Chi instead of the 50%.
  
• When you learn Tier 5 & 6 of the “Flower Pollens” skill your cooldown of that skill will decrease to 24 seconds from 45 seconds.
  
• Blade Master will be no longer to deflect the summoner’s takedown skill.
  
• Fixed the debuff icon tooltip of the Tier 1 “Retreat” skill to properly display that it is display the cooldown time left on the skill.
  
• Tier 6 of “Foxtail” skill will now properly knock back enemies when used during “down, groggy, unconscious, chi choked, dominated or submissioned”.

NPC

• If you kill a “Corrupted Spider” you will now gain a Large Heroic Medal instead of a Small Heroic Medal.

Dungeon
Dungeon > Heroic Dungeon > Port Blood Shark

• Toxic Man eating Serpent’s health was decreased.
  
• Toxic Man eating Serpent’s “Poison Nova” skill will no longer stack up to 3 times and now will not stack at all.
  
• Chung-Rang and Hong-Rang’s damages were decreased.
  
• The game will properly kill off both Chung-Rang and Hong-Rang if you kill one of them when the other is Chi Meditating.
  
• Chung-Rang and Hong-Rang will no longer be able to Chi Meditate when being submissioned, chi choked or dominated.
  
• Hae Moo-Jin’s damages were decreased.
  
• Phase 4 of the Hae Moo-Jin’s fight when he used the skill “Craze Winds” it will no longer deflect attacks.

Items

• Eating “Small Vege Dumpling” now properly shows on the combat log.
  
• The inventory will now play a proper sound effect when moving the items “Pirate’s Loot”, “Pirate King’s Symbol”.

Party & Community

• Once you register your party in the “Party Finder” and select someone as a party leader, you will no longer receive messages from people who wants to join.

Interface
Closet

• You will now also be able to access the “Closet” from the same NPC who let you access your storage.
  
• You will gain 24 slots in total and unlock up to 56 more slots.
  
• The cost of the slots gets progressively more expensive.
  
• You can store “Clothes, cloth accessories, head accessories, face accessories, summon’s clothes, summon’s headpiece and summon’s accessories” in the closet.
  
• You can use the “auto arrange” features in the closet just like the storage.
  
• You can also separate them by their categories with the radio button on the bottom of the window.

Settings

• You can now enable a feature that alerts you when your daily quest has been reset.
  
• Fixed the bug of “Auto detect” feature showing in other areas other than the graphics tab.

Chatting Window

• You can now set the opacity of the chatting window to 100.
  
• When you press the “reset” button it will completely reset all the tabs in your chat window.

Gathering & Crafting

• You will now be able to leave an organization even if they are in the middle of handling your request.
  
• Lumberjack organization will now show you where you can find some “Zelkova” trees.

System
Appearance Change

• You can now redesign your character after purchasing a "Customization Ticket" with a button that is integrated within the character select screen.
  
• If you want to customize your character you need to purchase a “Customization Ticket” from the cash shop.
  
• There’s now an “Appearance” tab in the photo journal.
  
• You can press the “Save Appearance” to save the settings of your character’s appearance.
  
• You can press the “Apply Appearance” to implement the saved appearance on your character.
  
• The saved appearances will be stored My Documents\Pictures\BnS\CharacterCustomize as the file “race_gender_Date_number.jpg”

Character Customization

• Jin males got 3 more hair styles and Gon males got 4 more hair styles.
  
• You can now select different backgrounds and camera angles.
  
• You can now compare how big your character is compared to other races via a silhouette.
  
• The outfits you try on will now disaply outfits in this order: Undergarment - Lawful League – Demon Cult – Autumn Leaves – Proof of Event – Racial outfit
  
• Some areas of the sliders were increased in its min max range.
  
• All races will now be able to change how big their head is and their height.
  
• Kuns will be able to adjust their shoulder size, length of their thighs as well as their calves, height of their eye brows, eye shape, eye width, distance between the eyes and shape of the bridge of their nose.
  
• Gon males will be able to adjust their shoulder width, shoulder size, length of calves, eye size, eye shape and width of the bridge of their nose.
  
• Gon females will be able to adjust their shoulder size, feet size, length of their thighs and calves, eye brow height, eye width and the distance between the eyes.
  
• Lyn males will be able to adjust their neck length, shoulder width, thigh width, thigh length, calf length, upper body size, eyebrow height and eye width.
  
• Lyn Females will be able to adjust their neck length, shoulder width, shoulder size, thigh length, calf length, upper body size, eyebrow height and eye width.
  
• Jin males will be able to adjust their shoulder width, shoulder size, arm length, waist width, thigh length, calf length, eyebrow height, eye shape, eye width and eye to eye distance.
  
• Jin female will be able to adjust their shoulder size, thigh length, calf length, eyebrow angle, eye size, eye shape and eye width.

This is an exciting time for us as we can now use our official website, Twitter feed, and Facebook page to share information and provide status updates on the development of Blade & Soul® for Western audiences. We will use these platforms as a way to not only distribute official assets and information, but to directly address community concerns. With that in mind, we wanted to take a moment to shed some light on rumors that NCsoft West is censoring the content of Blade & Soul.

As you know, Blade & Soul features a rich, beautiful world inspired by the artistic style of Hyung-Tae Kim, an internationally renowned artist we consider ourselves fortunate to be working with. Hyung-Tae Kim brings with him a very recognizable and risqué anime style that, combined with the game's deep storyline and modern martial arts style combat, delivers a game experience like no other.

Due to ESRB guidelines, however, our marketing material must abide by a different set of considerations than the final product. This is why Blade & Soul's rating is listed as "pending." It is NCsoft West's intention to accurately depict the game in its original, unaltered form, with only minor adjustments for gameplay considerations.

In short: We are not planning to censor or alter the actual in-game content you have come to expect from an artist such as Hyung-Tae Kim and a studio such as Team Bloodlust. Rest assured that we love Blade & Soul as much as you do, and any modifications to the marketing material are not indicative of our plans for the final content.

We appreciate your concern, and we hope that we've helped set your minds at ease. We're very excited about bringing Blade & Soul to Western audiences, and we intend to do our best to deliver the game you want to play.

-- Blade & Soul Team, NCsoft West

SEATTLE - SEPTEMBER 13, 2012: NCsoft ®, the world's premier publisher and developer of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), today confirms its Western expansion plans for Blade & Soul, the wildly successful Asian martial arts fantasy MMO developed by Team Bloodlust, an in-house studio based in NCsoft's headquarters in Seoul. Blade & Soul has already captured the hearts of millions, consistently ranking as one of the top games in PC cafés across South Korea since its launch eleven weeks ago, and plans to reach the same level of success and popularity in Western markets.

Blade & Soul brings MMO and RPG gaming communities an online world rich in Asian martial arts, a theme that has traditionally been limited to fighting games. Once Blade & Soul launches in the West, players will have the ability to experience the flowing nature of action martial arts that they have come to love, but will experience it in a modern format blended together with deep story lines and an epic online world populated by millions.

Bringing to life the fantasy style and signature character movement made popular by the classic martial arts adventure films House of Flying Daggers and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Blade & Soul embraces the essence of historic martial arts combat, set in a beautiful world inspired by the stunning art of renowned artist Hyung-Tae Kim, Team Bloodlust's Blade & Soul lead artist. Kim's strong international manga following and his unique style of blending Japanese anime and Korean art will expand Blade & Soul's appeal to a broad range of audiences.

Exact release timing for Blade & Soul has not been confirmed, but NCsoft is already aggressively tailoring the title for Western players, working closely with Team Bloodlust to ensure the rich Asian martial arts theme stays intact.

For more information on Blade & Soul, visit the official website at www.bladeandsoul.com.

About NCsoft
NCsoft®, headquartered in Seoul, Korea, is the world's premier publisher and developer of massively multiplayer online games, including the critically acclaimed Aion®, Blade & Soul, Lineage®, Guild Wars® and WildStar™ franchises. NCsoft West is a division of NCsoft that holds operating responsibilities for North America, Europe, South America and Australia/New Zealand. More information can be found at www.ncsoft.com.

About Blade & Soul
Blade & Soul®, developed by NCsoft®'s Team Bloodlust, tells the story of players' quest for vengeance and redemption against a backdrop of Asian fantasy, set in a beautifully crafted online world drawn from the work of renowned artist Hyung-Tae Kim. Blade & Soul prominently features martial arts inspired combat and Qing Gong "light body" movement, as depicted in classic Asian martial arts adventure films. For more information on Blade & Soul, visit www.bladeandsoul.com.

Source | Translated by Yuan.

Combat
Destroyer

• You will now gain 50% of the damage your deal as life instead of 20% when you learn the “Smackdown” Tier 5 talent.
  
• Tier 2 & 3 of “Aerial Smackdown” skill will now cause the main target to take more damage but the AOE damage will be less.
  
• Tier 2 of the “Destroy” skill will now execute the skill even faster, also if you put two points into it you will now be able to chain the skill right after another.
  
• Tier 2 of the “Iron Wall” skill will now properly deal damage to those hit by it.
  
• Tier 3 of the “Dismantle” ability will now grant more damage.
  
• Tier 4 of the skill “Headbutt” ability will now deal 20% / 40% damage to their Chi while recovering your own by 20% / 40% instead of damaging their Chi by 40% / 80%
  
• Tier 4 of the skill “Flame Wheel” will no longer grant you Chi if you happen to miss with the skill.
  
• Tier 5 of the skill “Amputate” will now leech 100% of the damage instead of 50%.
  
• Tier 6 of the skill “Charge” will now regen 30 Chi and will cost no Chi to use.
  
• Tier 6 of the skill “Flame Wheel” will now grant 50% Chi regen if you deflect an attack.
  
• Tier 6 of the skill “Smackdown” ‘s tooltip was fixed to properly describe what it did.

Force Master

• “Ice Flurry” will now activate if you crit any of ice type spells.

Blade Master

• Tier 4 of the skill “Spinning Slash” will now generate more Threat.
  
• You will no longer be able to use the skill “Wind Sword” and “Kick” skill while your target is in the air.
  
• “Sword Charge” tooltip will now properly display that it is usable during Qing Gong.
  
• Fixed the bug with the skill “Ambush” and “Evasion” interfering with entering the “Quick Draw” stance.
  
• Fixed a bug with “Wind Sword” interfering with the player also using the skill “Parry” skill.
  
• You will now properly charge forward if you use the skill “Charge” “Ambush” “Five Way Strike” and “God Dance” after using the skill “Evasion”
  
• Fixed a UI bug that displayed wrong whenever the player had full Chi.

Kung-Fu Master

• You will now be able to use “Flying Kick” during Qing Gong.

NPC
Water Moon Prairie

• Fixed a male NPC in the area that had a female voice.

Dungeon
High Tier Dungeon

• You will now get a different type of ring when you kill the boss monster “Frog Lord Doowuk”.
  
• New Ring; Attack Power: 4, Critical chance: 80 was added called “Ghostly Skeletal Ring”
  
• Deleted the "Ghostly Protection Ring" and "Ghostly Flower Ring".
  
• You will now get a different type of earring when you kill the boss monster “Frog Lord Doowuk”
  
• New Earring; Attack Power: 4, Penetration: 80 was added called “Ghostly Skeletal Earring”
  
• Deleted the "Ghostly Protection Earring" and "Ghostly Flower Earring".

Top Tier Dungeon

• Fixed a certain quest monster now appearing in the dungeon “Howling Temple”

Heroic Dungeon

• Fixed a monster disappearing after the combat reset in the dungeon “Chong-Gak Crew’s South Sea Navy Headquarters”
  
• Buffed the stats of a green gem acquired at the “Sea Serpent Cave”.
  
• Fixed an issue where you couldn’t activate the Steam Engine controls more than once while going through the “Po Hwa Ran” encounter.

Quest
General

• Fixed an audio sync problem with quests as well as quest text typos.

Dragon Forest

• You will now get “Revive at South Sea Navy Graveyard Charm” when you complete the quest “Chapter 25: Ready for the final battle.”

Grand Desert

• You will now get “Revive at Tomb of Sacrifice graveyard charm” when you complete the quest “Where is the scout?”

Water Moon Prairie

• You will now get “Revive at Sea Serpent Cave Graveyard Charm” when you complete the quest “Another base of the Chong-Gak Crew”
  
• Fixed the typo in the quest text of the “Yuwa’s Rage” quest.

Interface

• Added some tooltips for certain options.
  
• Various changes in settings options.
  
• You will now be warned if you want to destroy / dismantle / sell or buy certain items.
  
• /help will now display how to properly send someone a whisper.
  
• If you target a blocked player it will display at the back (Blocked)
  
• When you mouse over an item the tooltip will now display how many items are stacked.
  
• The time remaining of the buff / debuff will now be displayed in the middle of the icon.
  
• Icon displaying if whether you can skip the cutscene or not will be displayed larger.
  
• Other various UI changes.

Item

• You will now instantly get the “Satisfied” buff when you eat food.
  
• “Ressurection Charm” will now be able to resurrect those in fatigue, also the range was increased to 55m from 10m
  
• Buffed the Bo-Pae with health increased stat.
  
• Fixed graphical glitch with Lyn females and the “Nightmare” outfit.

Party

• Added new chat commands. /ginvite to invite someone to your guild. /sandbox for opening your sandbox window. /follow to subscribe to someone. /simulator for a training simulator.
  
• Many chat commands will now work with English if you happened to mistype Korean while in English keyboard mode.
  
• You will now be able to tab through your whisper contacts with the tab key.
  
• You will now be able to resize your chat window in Chat window settings.
  
• Other various chat function fixes / changes.

Level

• Fixed a bug where you were teleported to a wrong place when you used your “Dungeon escape charm” in certain dungeons.

System

• Guild Member cap has been increased to 30 for level 1, 40 for level 2, 50 for level 3, 60 for level 4 and 60 for level 5~10.
  
• You will now require less experience to level up from 43~45.
  
• You will now be rewarded of the extra experience you’ve earned through 43, 44, however you will only be able to get to level 45 3%.
  
• Previously you needed 181200 exp to hit 44 from 43 but now you need 90600 and from 44 to 45 you needed 199000 but now you only need 99500.
  
• Default time for auctions will now be set at 6 hours instead of 24 hours.
  
• Your teleport cooldown will now be 3 minutes instead of 5.

Event

• “2012 Korea’s Victory project” has ended.