Elemental Spirits Research

[Rytech 392]

Back in March of 2010 (earliest I can find in 3CeAM's records) we started adding the first of the data found for the Sorcerer's elemental spirits and during the next few months other things like tags and ID's for skills, stats, and what else was added. During those first 6 months not much happened with them until September when Pakpil released a working version of the elemental system which excited many. During the next few months their skills and other functions were added and since then nothing else happened other then a few bug fixes.

In May 2012 I did the Sorcerer 2011 update and noted that the elemental system would be worked on in a separate future update. But it never came due to many other things having a priority over it. Not only that but I didn't know much about them and detailed info on them was lacking. The 2011 iRO document had info, but it was small compared to what the entire system holds. And to top it off, the system with its current coding is kinda....meh. So I avoided working on it.

But now that things are pretty much up-to-date and complete for all existing jobs and the latest jobs like Star Emperor and Soul Reaper, there really isnt much to do other then bug fixes and code cleanups. But after coming across some code for the status's that elementals give to allow autocasting bolt skills, I felt its time to tackle the system. Starting with r888 I spent a lot of time updating checks for them and figuring out how this entity is supposed to be handled and how to recode it in the proper way. Then with r889 came the 2nd update to them which brought huge changes. Took much longer since I was still figuring out how to handle them.

That 2nd update made a huge difference with their sub-stats. I added a command to show their sub-stats so I could see if their being calculated correctly since there's no official way to see this. Seeing how well the command worked I decided to keep it in so player's can use it in other server's to see the sub-stats of their elementals. Below are 2 pics showing before and after the updates....

Before r889

After r889

Seeing this big of a difference I really want to do more to improve the system and make it work like official. But to do that I will have to recode the entire core of the system which will take a lot of time to do. Along with this, all of the skills that the elementals cast will need to be properly recoded as well and with that I wanted to know exactly how they work before doing so. Matter of fact, I want to know how everything works. So for around a entire week I spent most of my free time doing research by poking around in aegis files and its zone.exe and created a document containing all of the data and information ive extracted from the files.

With the document now complete I will now share everything I learned from this research....

Elemental Spirits Information.txt

I learned a lot of interesting things about the elementals but at the same time wondered what the hell they were thinking when they made this system. That thought popped in my mind multiple times which isn't good. I feel like they failed to make a proper logical system and kinda rushed it. But hopefully the current dev team at Gravity will rework it into a more proper system when they do the update for the Sorcerer's skills. But seeing that no dev note announcements were made yet and the fact that most of the existing 3rd jobs already got updates, Sorcerers will likely be last on the list due to the elemental system. Might not hear anything til mid or late 2020. Lets cross our fingers and hope for the best.

Expect more major updates in the next few upcoming updates for 3CeAM.