Update v253 — logins, trading and handy fixes

When you start the game, the launcher updates it first.

• Logging in without VIP — accounts without VIP log in with the R3SPECT game client (start the game with the R3SPECT launcher). Once you are in the game you can switch phBot to clientless. A clientless phBot login for an account without VIP is refused with "Login server error or the account does not exist": log in with the game client first, then switch. Logging in with the game client through phBot works. Still one character without VIP per PC.
• VIP accounts — no change, log in any way you like.
• Fixed — some players were disconnected with a "no R3SPECT client" message although they used the client.
• R3Client.dll — the game now needs this file in its folder; if it is missing, a message tells you and the game does not start. The launcher puts it back by itself, for example after an antivirus took it: just start the launcher again. The launcher itself updates with this patch.
• The thieves' den market — too many caravans are robbed right outside their towns, so the den is flooded with those goods and pays only the stake for them. Goods taken far out on the roads are scarce and worth more, and when the den asks for certain goods it still pays its demand bonus. Free trade goods are worth nothing to the den.
• Free trade goods — the 33 free goods a day now count across the whole server, not per area.
• Constantinople ↔ Alexandria — the route pays a new rate.
• Thieves — the cargo panel shows what a caravan's goods would bring at the den, and the merchant pipe shows the exact honor the dealer pays for your stolen goods.
• Job balance — the Hunter / Thief join limit counts only active players (played in the last 14 days). Nobody loses a job.
• Called-in monsters — the monsters the boosted uniques call for help leave 30 minutes after they appear (no drops, no EXP), so the fields no longer fill up with them.
• Stacks — Energy of Life scrolls and speed potions and scrolls stack up to 1,000.
• +50 STR / +50 INT scrolls — right-click the buff to end it, like the normal scrolls; cooldown 1 second (was 1 hour).
• Socket Stone of Liberation — the grades with an active skill: skill cooldown 30 seconds (was 60).
• Auto-imbue — turns itself back on right after you are revived.
• Stat points — hold Ctrl and click "+" on STR or INT to add up to 100 points at once.

Tuned after the first days on the road

• Uniques pay double — for the level 130 cap, world uniques pay twice the honor and twice the Elements of Destruction. Jewels stay as they are. Unique honor now shows "[n] Honor Points gained." in the system log, like all other honor.
• Boss drops in stacks — Elements of Destruction drop in stacks of 5 and Sabakun's jewels in stacks of 2: the same totals, far less to pick up. The biggest bosses no longer lose part of their drops to the ground limit.
• Tougher caravans — the Hunter's caravan and the Thief's merchant pipe hold about a third more HP; the biggest takes 1,230,512.
• Sharper thief tips — the Trade tab tells the thieves who heard about a trade when it was raided (thieves sold its goods at the dealer, e.g. 20/33), lost (its goods vanished from the ground — stolen goods a thief dropped and nobody brought back within 10 minutes count as lost too) or completed, and in which town. 4- and 5-star trades are tipped again after a ferry, tunnel, flying-ship or gate crossing — now including the Asia Minor–Egypt ferry and the Delta, Storm Desert and King's Valley gates near Alexandria.
• Thieves call for backup — a thief who has a trader's loaded caravan in sight shows up on the other thieves' minimap and world map, so they can join the hunt, until he loses sight of it or dies — even while he stands still attacking it. A thief carrying stolen goods never shows up, and traders never see thieves on the map — the trader is only told when he is being tracked.
• A chat for your job — what you write in the Trade tab (or start with "&") reaches everyone of your job on the whole server, in blue in the All tab: thieves see "Name(Global Thief)", Hunters and traders see "Name(Global Hunter)". The two sides never see each other's lines.
• Pick pets — can only be traded, sold in a stall, dropped or put in guild storage with an empty inventory.
• Riding a Fellow pet — attacks on the pet you ride now hit you, and you are not knocked back while seated (damage and stuns still land). The pet itself still can't die.
• Login rules — one character without VIP per PC, played through the R3SPECT game client. A second one from the same PC is refused at the login screen, with a button to get VIP. With any VIP rank, Bronze and up, there is no limit and clientless play is allowed. Premium alone does not count as VIP.
• Combat you can read — every hit you take is shown with its damage number; hits that arrived late used to be skipped silently. Your HP bar follows the hits you see instead of freezing and then dropping all at once. Standing up from a knock-down straight into a skill now shows the skill and its damage, and a knock-down on your screen lasts exactly as long as it does on the server.
• No instant comeback in job fights — killed by a player while you wear a job suit, or in Fortress War? Your Resurrection and Reverse Return scrolls work again 1 minute after you die. Ordinary PvP and deaths to monsters: no wait, as before.
• Anonymous in the arena — in Deathmatch and Last Man Standing your pet no longer shows your name.
• Arena sign-up — the "players on stand-by" count updates the moment someone joins or leaves.
• Unique buffs don't stack — a unique monster holds one copy of each buff at a time.
• Trace keeps up — Trace no longer drops a player who wears a job suit.
• Trade honor counts for your crest — honor from selling, settling, thief sales and escorts now counts toward the crest titles, and the crest updates the moment you gain honor.
• Premium Lucky Powder — now works on all Devil's Spirits.
• Alchemy window — the item tooltip and its "Stat totals" box refresh properly, and clicking a window brings its attached boxes to the front.
• Old accounts removed — accounts from before 2026 that came with the server's original database are gone. If you only had a login from before R3SPECT, register a new account.
• EU flag — the server list shows the EU flag.
• Installer 1.3.2 — shows its version in the window, handy for bug reports. (The current installer is 1.3.5.)

Free daily items for everyone

• The item mall's New & Free Daily tab gives every player, VIP or not, up to 30 of each per account per day: Wheel of Fate, Wheel of Fortune, Max Enhancer and Max Protector.
• A small counter on each item shows how many you took today. It resets at 00:00 UTC.
• VIP Silver and higher still find these four on the Alchemy shelf, with no daily limit.

Hotfix: phBot launch and the installer

• Client 1.250 — starting the game through phBot ("Launch") works again; the client no longer stays hidden until "Hide Client" is pressed twice. The launcher delivers it automatically.
• Installer 1.3.1 — fixes installs that stopped at about 56% (Data.pk2) and kept saying "connection lost" on some Windows PCs. Stuck? Download the installer again from your profile and run it into the same folder — it continues where it stopped.

The Silk Road awakens

• The old trade is back — traders, escorts and thieves on the road again, one free load a day, and town workshops that turn delivered goods into Elements of Destruction. Read more
• Uniques built for a maxed-out server — the world uniques, Roc and Death Bone, the White Viper, the gods of the Job Temple and the four bosses of the Temple of Destruction. Paid in honor, Elements and Sabakun's jewels. Read more
• EXP from what matters — only uniques and Elites give EXP and SP, and only uniques drop items. Arena kills and completed trades give EXP too. Read more
• Fortress War twice a week — Thursday and Sunday at 18:00 UTC, all four fortresses take applications, and every fortress starts fresh. Read more
• A fair arena — every kill pays EXP, feeding a character pays no honor, and nobody gets stuck in the queue any more. Read more
• Scrolls — resurrection works 1 minute after death, the reverse return scroll has a 1-minute cooldown, and Devil scrolls are gone.
• Keep your whites — degree upgrades, the Golden Shield and Gori's exchange keep an item's white stats.
• Gold VIP for gear trades — equipment, Elements and Sabakun's jewels change hands only between Gold VIP players or higher.
• More bars, any key — Extended Slot 2 and 3, mapped to any key, mouse button or wheel. Chinese imbues can recast themselves.
• Wings that fly — the Vampire wings always fly; the Steam Punk wings fly if you choose Flight at the Blacksmith.
• Knock-downs that hold — a knocked-down enemy stays down for the full time, and a character knocked down mid-skill no longer stays stuck turning toward the target.
• Everything else, chapter by chapter, is in the game guide

Shambhala opens its gates

• A first look at Shambhala — the temples of the latest official expansion are walkable now. The Mortifying Monk in the Taklamakan takes you to the Ice and Fire Temple, the Ancient Prophet in Hotan and Baghdad to the Temple of Destruction. It is quiet for now. It will not stay that way.
• Stat totals — hover an item and a box beside the tooltip adds up its repeated blue options. The socket box no longer jumps to the other side.
• Titles like official iSRO — no more brackets, bonus titles in orange.
• Bigger stacks — runes, wheels and Max Enhancers up to 1,000. Resurrection scrolls and the honor Berserker potion: 1-second cooldown. Items on the ground vanish after 30 seconds.
• Monthly honor reset — unspent honor resets on the 1st; the game reminds you on the 15th and the last day. Party arena team mates keep their real names.
• Golden Shield (VIP mall) — gives a +12 Degree 15 shield the gold +15 glow, to match your weapon.

The big update — and a new home

• A new server machine with much faster disks. The game now connects to sro.r3spect.win — the launcher patches your client to it automatically, no reinstall. Fresh installs get the new installer from your profile.
• The Survival Arena is open around the clock — Last Man Standing, Deathmatch and Party arenas (2v2, 4v4, 8v8), all paying Honor. The Battle Arena pays Honor now too, instead of arena coins.
• Crest titles — Justice, Protection, Charge and Courage, up to +10% damage, earned with this month's arena honor.
• The Valor — your profile on L, and your own banners. The season's top three fly theirs on the town gates of Hotan, Jangan and Constantinople.
• Every existing Fellow pet raised to level 130, and the R3 Starter Pack now levels your Fellow with you. New Purchase Pet Buffs shop.
• Sound, finally fixed — the volume sliders work over their whole range (quiet is quiet, not silent or full blast), effects no longer cut out when turned down, music is no longer full volume at the low end, and effect and environment volume are kept after a restart.
• Gori's Equipment Exchange now takes wheeled armour and it keeps its blues.
• HP and MP Recovery Grains at the potion merchant in every town.
• Fellow pets: summoning sickness after death 10 s (was 30), STR/INT buff cooldown 30 s (was 300), and the SROR Macro's Summon Trigger and Resurrect work for the Fellow even while your pick pet or horse is out.
• Your own buffs survive death and teleport; the Gold honor buff shows its gold sword; the Recovery skill tree no longer crashes the game.
• A new launcher look with rotating artwork and working Discord and Website buttons, a transparent start-up splash, and the R3SPECT logo at login.

The R3 Starter Pack

• Every new character finds a red gift box in the bag. Open it, confirm, and you get the level cap, job cap, 15M SP, 10B gold and a 109-slot inventory.
• The R3 Store gained a Sockets tab — the twelve socket stones that really drop in the game.
• Fixed: buying D15 armour at the R3 Store no longer hands you a weapon.

The whole mall, free

• Every listing in the item mall costs 0 silk. Up to 999 per purchase, delivered to your Item Storage box in full stacks.
• Alchemy items from the mall are account-bound — share them between your own characters freely.
• Fixed: "Item Mall and a survey cannot be used at the same time".

DDoS-protected hosting

• The server moved to a dedicated machine in the EU with DDoS protection. Same characters, same items — a faster, steadier road.