Developer Notes #14 - AMA Season 2 Key Responses

Greetings, Star Guardians.

This is PD Koo of .

I am delighted to greet all our Star Guardians through this fourteenth edition of the Developer Notes.

Through our recent AMA, a tremendous number of Star Guardians directly shared their questions and feedback with us. You provided far more insights than we had anticipated, and our entire development team is reading through each and every comment, deeply feeling the weight of your words.

We are carefully reviewing everything you shared to ensure nothing is overlooked, and we found that much of your feedback directly ties into the upcoming Version 1.6 update.

In this edition of our Developer Notes, alongside details regarding the Version 1.6 update, we would like to address the topics that were brought up most frequently during our second AMA.

■ Version 1.6 Update Details
1. 100-Day Anniversary Seasonal Events
In this Version 1.6 update, a special seasonal event will be held to celebrate our 100-day anniversary milestone. As some of you may have already guessed from our teasers, this update will feature a beach vacation theme.

Players will be able to enjoy a dedicated Event Story set in an exclusive event region. By progressing through the Event Story, you can obtain Mannie’s swimsuit Outfit Skin completely for free.

Furthermore, you can challenge special bosses and discover new gatherable materials exclusively within this event region. We are preparing a variety of activities in this area to provide you with generous rewards, including Star Fragments, so please be sure not to miss out on any of them.

As many of you are already aware, swimsuit Outfit Skins for Merlin, Clotho, and Mannie will also be released alongside this update.

Currently in Origin, you can acquire Skins through the Skin Draw even if you do not currently own the respective hero. If you obtain the hero later during a rerun banner, you will be able to immediately equip any Skins you previously secured, so we hope you look forward to their release.

Additionally, starting from the second week of the update, the multiplayer mini-game event ‘Magic★Pop’, which we previously revealed at global game shows, will be officially open. We look forward to your excitement and participation, Star Guardians!

2. New \[Hell] Difficulty Added to ‘Taranis's Sanctuary’

With the Version 1.6 update, we plan to introduce a lower \[Hell] difficulty to ‘Taranis’s Sanctuary’.

In this newly added \[Hell] difficulty, you will be able to obtain Star Fragments, the resource our Star Guardians need the most, in the same exact way as the existing \[Abyss] difficulty.

Because this new \[Hell] difficulty is designed to be more accessible, individual pieces of the ‘Greedy Ruler’ armor set will not drop directly from the boss reward list. However, we are adding an exchange feature that will allow you to trade the ‘Mystic Tokens’ earned from clearing the dungeon for ‘Greedy Ruler’ armor pieces instead.

For Star Guardians who currently find the \[Abyss] difficulty a bit too challenging, our goal is to provide a smoother, step-by-step progression path. You can utilize the \[Hell] difficulty to farm Star Fragments, grow your heroes, and master the encounters before confidently taking on the \[Abyss] difficulty when you feel ready.

3. Pet Expedition System

We are introducing a new feature that allows you to put your captured pets to good use by having them gather field resources on your behalf

Whether you need Tree Sap or Platinum Ore, you can now dispatch your pets to specific regions to collect the necessary materials, saving you the time and effort of traveling there yourself.

The specific pets you can assign will vary depending on the type and grade of the target resource. Furthermore, your pets' grades and unique skills will directly boost the overall efficiency of the expedition.

Since we plan to continuously introduce a wide variety of new pets in future updates, we will keep expanding the Pet Expedition system accordingly. Our goal is to ensure that seeking out and capturing pets remains a meaningful, long-term pursuit for all Star Guardians.

4. Time Attack Ranking Pre-Season Details

Since the Time Attack Ranking inherently drives players to push for the fastest possible clear times, we anticipated that unexpected variables and rule-related issues might arise.

This is exactly why we chose to run a Pre-Season to identify potential systemic flaws before officially launching the regular season. We are currently reviewing the various issues that surfaced during Time Attack Pre-Season 2.

We have identified several problems, such as terrain glitches used to artificially shorten routes and gimmicks triggering under unintended conditions. We are actively working on fixes for these issues ahead of the regular season’s launch.

Our development team is fully aware of the immense effort it takes to shave seconds off your records, perfecting the timing of every single skill and dash. We sincerely apologize for our shortcomings during Pre-Season 2 and for failing to provide a completely stable environment for those who worked so hard on the rankings.

We will do our utmost to ensure a stable, competitive environment for the upcoming regular Time Attack season.

In addition to the Pre-Season 2 fixes, we touched upon the strategy of stacking buffs in the starting area before combat begins in a previous developer notes. Based on the clear records and gameplay data you provided during the pre-season, we closely reviewed the impact of this playstyle to determine how to handle it moving forward.

Because Origin’s combat emphasizes team synergy and rotating buffs over the raw power of a single hero, we concluded that the performance gap between players who pre-buff and those who do not would be extremely difficult to bridge fairly.

More importantly, this strategy requires a long and tedious setup phase, forcing players to unnecessarily spam skills just to build up Magic Points. We felt this shifted the core focus of the mode away from engaging with floor mechanics and boss fights, turning it instead into a contest of how many buffs can be stacked beforehand.

For these reasons, starting with the regular Time Attack season, skill usage will be restricted in the waiting area before combat begins. We want the Time Attack Ranking to serve as a true test of your heroes’ growth and your own combat proficiency, rather than a tedious preparation exercise.

Finally, to encourage even more Star Guardians to take on the challenge, we are preparing new Achievements and corresponding rewards for the regular season. Rather than strictly rewarding high rankings, we are designing the system so you can steadily earn rewards simply by participating and registering your clear times. We look forward to seeing many of you take on the challenge.

■ AMA Season 2 Key Questions & Answers
During our second AMA, we received over 600 inquiries from Star Guardians across all of our global regions. 

Our development team is currently reading through and carefully reviewing every single submission. Today, we would like to start by addressing the topics that were brought up most frequently.

While it is difficult to provide an individual response to every question, we will continue to review everything you have shared and provide further answers in future Developer Notes.

Q1. The difficulty of the ‘Taranis’s Sanctuary’ Raid feels unreasonable. 

The most frequent piece of feedback we received during this AMA was regarding the difficulty of the ‘Taranis’s Sanctuary’ Raid.

‘Taranis’s Sanctuary’ was originally designed as weekly cooperative content intended for Star Guardians who have already achieved significant growth through Dungeons, Boss Challenges, and other end-game activities. Rather than allowing one or two highly geared players to simply carry the party to a quick clear, we designed this content to provide an experience where everyone must strategize and work together.

However, since this is the primary content for acquiring Star Fragments, our internal metrics confirm that many of you are repeatedly attempting and failing to clear it at your current progression levels.

Regarding the feedback that party play actually makes the experience disproportionately difficult, we plan to closely monitor your overall progression following the addition of the new \[Hell] difficulty. Based on those live observations, we will carefully review whether further adjustments to the overall balance are necessary.

Q2. Manually changing equipment loadouts and settings is inconvenient.

We received a lot of feedback regarding the inconvenience of manually swapping Engraved Equipment, Armor, and Accessories every time you change weapons. Our development team completely agrees that this causes significant fatigue during repeated gameplay.

✦ Addition of Equipment Presets by Weapon TypeWe are currently preparing a feature that will allow you to configure separate equipment presets based on your weapon type, aiming for release in the update scheduled for Wednesday, July 15.

Once this feature is implemented, your entire armor setup will automatically switch whenever you change your weapon, significantly reducing the hassle of swapping your gear piece by piece. We will provide more specific details in a future update details notice closer to the feature’s release.

Q3. Hawk Pass rewards like Enhancement Stones and Refinement Stones lack appeal.

The Hawk Pass was originally designed with a focus on weapon progression. However, as various in-game changes have accumulated over time, such as Elite Monster reward cubes becoming free to open, our development team is fully aware that the perceived value of certain items included in the Hawk Pass has shifted.

Following the Version 1.6 update, we plan to thoroughly review the overall efficiency of the Hawk Pass rewards. We will restructure the contents to ensure our Star Guardians feel they are receiving practical, meaningful value for their progression.

Q4. Escanor feels significantly lacking in utility and performance compared to other Attacker heroes.

Many Star Guardians have shared their feedback regarding Escanor’s combat performance. 

Based on the extensive feedback we received, we closely reviewed Escanor’s actual combat data. As a result, we plan to buff certain aspects of his performance in the upcoming Version 1.6 update.

✦ Escanor Performance Adjustments (Scheduled for the Version 1.6 Update)
We are easing the activation conditions for his Axe and Greatsword skills and enhancing their overall utility so they feel much easier and more natural to use. Additionally, we are making adjustments to raise his maximum damage potential. We will share the exact values and specific details in advance through an upcoming update details notice.

Q5. There are not enough Star Fragments obtainable through gameplay.

During this AMA, we continued to see feedback regarding the scarcity of Star Fragments.

Our development team is currently focused on continuously expanding the amount of content that allows you to farm Star Fragments, similar to Taranis’s Sanctuary.

In addition to regularly expanding permanent farming sources, we will also gradually increase the amount of Star Fragments you can earn from events that launch alongside our major content updates. Moving forward, we will continue to scale up the available supply in tandem with the addition of new content and events. 

Q6. We want to see a wider variety of events and content. 

Many of our Star Guardians have expressed a desire for immersive, large-scale events rather than simple, mission-based checklists.

While we will continue to run basic mission-based events so players can easily participate and claim quick rewards, we are also regularly preparing major seasonal events. These will feature unique storylines and exclusive areas, similar to the previous ‘Echoes of Hearts’ events and the ‘Spray Island’ region debuting in the Version 1.6 update, to provide you with a much richer gameplay experience.

Q7. The demand for gatherable and minable materials like Platinum is increasing, but the limited supply makes them scarce.

Through this AMA, we noted feedback that the demand for Platinum Ingots has spiked significantly since they are now required to craft the ‘Tailor’s Stitching Needle’ and ‘Engraver’s Fabric Scissors’, while the available supply has not been able to keep pace.

We are closely monitoring the acquisition and consumption rates of materials that require mining. Moving forward, gatherable and minable materials like Platinum will be expanded into the new regions arriving after the Version 1.6 update.

In addition to expanding these resource nodes through upcoming regional updates, we are also providing an alternative supply route through the Version 1.6 event region.

✦ Additional Gathering & Mining Materials in the Version 1.6 Event RegionIn this upcoming event region, you will be able to gather ‘Platinum Ore’ and ‘Sunstone Ore’, as well as ‘Flower Petals of Pure Love’ and other essential materials required for creating armor. We highly encourage you to take full advantage of these extra resource nodes during the event period.

Q8. Occasionally, Combined Attacks do not trigger properly, or Ultimate Move buffs fail to apply.

Many Star Guardians have reported issues regarding Combined Attacks failing to trigger correctly. Our development team is fully aware of these issues, and we are currently working on fixes to resolve them.

One of the primary causes we identified is an issue where a Combined Attack fails to execute if the partner hero is currently in the middle of a Tag-Out animation. We are currently working to streamline Tag-Out animations to address this problem, aiming for a fix within the July update.

Additionally, we have identified other instances where Combined Attacks fail to trigger due to targeting errors, such as when no target is locked onto, or when the target is airborne from a jump or knock-up. We will continue to investigate and implement continuous improvements to resolve these issues.

✦ Combined Attack Activation RulesGiven the high volume of inquiries regarding Combined Attacks, we would like to provide a more detailed explanation of how this mechanic currently functions in-game. 

We realize that the current lack of clear in-game explanations has caused confusion, and we plan to steadily improve this transparency in future updates.

Currently in Origin, a Combined Attack allows two heroes to unleash their Ultimate Moves simultaneously to deal higher damage. The system calculates this by pooling the total damage output of both heroes' Ultimate Moves and distributing it across the duration of the Combined Attack animation.

Because of this specific calculation process, the individual utility or buff effects tied to each hero’s standard Ultimate Move do not trigger independently. Instead, only the raw damage values are combined.

While individual Ultimate Move effects are omitted during this sequence, we designed this mechanic to instantly trigger a Burst Effect based on the executing hero’s Attribute. This design choice was intended to create a distinct tactical difference between using a standard Ultimate Move versus a Combined Attack.

In multiplayer party play, a Combined Attack occurs when separate players trigger their Ultimate Moves simultaneously, fusing them into a single coordinated attack. Consequently, any zone-based effects that normally persist within an Ultimate Move’s radius will immediately disappear once the Combined Attack activates. However, any instant effects applied immediately upon casting the Ultimate Move will still trigger.

We understand that the lack of clear in-game guidance regarding these rules has caused significant confusion for many of you. We will make sure to add comprehensive in-game descriptions detailing these exact mechanics in an upcoming update.

✦ Bug Fixes Regarding Combined AttacksSome Star Guardians may have noticed that the individual effects of an Ultimate Move would occasionally trigger when using a Combined Attack.

This behavior contradicts the actual intended specifications of Combined Attacks and was caused by a processing error with buff application timing during development. This issue will be resolved in the upcoming Version 1.6 update.

Additionally, we would like to inform you about an important balance fix. Currently, there is an issue where heroes equipped with Reaction Immunity are mistakenly gaining immunity to status ailments as well, rather than just hit reactions.

At present, ‘Black Rook’, the first Elite Boss in Taranis’s Sanctuary, is the only boss capable of inflicting status ailments. Due to this bug, certain skills that grant Reaction Immunity are incorrectly blocking Black Rook’s stun effect.

Because this issue could negatively impact upcoming content featuring various status ailments, we will be correcting it in this update so that Reaction Immunity properly applies only to hit reactions, as originally intended.

We sincerely apologize once again for the confusion caused by these hero skill errors. We will continue to closely monitor and resolve any remaining issues moving forward.

Q9. The materials required to reset Engraved Equipment feel unreasonable.

We received a significant amount of feedback from our Star Guardians regarding the Engraved Equipment reset system. In particular, many of you pointed out that the risk of your equipment stats potentially rolling lower feels unfair given the high value of the materials required for crafting them.

As an immediate measure, we are preparing to provide more opportunities to acquire ‘Tailor’s Stitching Needles’ and ‘Engraver’s Fabric Scissors’ through events and other channels.

In the long term, we will continuously work on gradual improvements to ensure that the practical value and utility of ‘Tailor’s Stitching Needles’ and ‘Engraver’s Fabric Scissors’ truly live up to our Star Guardians’ expectations.

Q10. Having to roam around every single day to gather resources feels far too exhausting.

Gathering fatigue is an issue that our Star Guardians have consistently brought to our attention. To be entirely honest, our development team actively mines for resources every day as well, so we fully understand this exhaustion firsthand and are monitoring the issue very closely.

As an immediate step to alleviate this burden, we are introducing the previously mentioned Pet Expedition feature in the Version 1.6 update.

We plan to first allow you to automatically acquire basic materials through Pet Expeditions. After analyzing the impact of this new system, we will continue to implement further solutions to steadily reduce gathering fatigue moving forward.

Because the addition of the Pet Expedition system makes capturing pets significantly more important, the capturing improvements we introduced in our previous developer notes will also be implemented in this Version 1.6 update.

We are adding a new recipe to craft a higher-grade Potion of Charm than the existing ‘Concentrated Potion of Charm’, which previously could not be used to capture certain hidden pets. This new potion will expand your opportunities to capture hidden pets, even if the success rate remains low.

Furthermore, we are improving the system so that your capturing potions will not be consumed if you accidentally use one without a target pet selected. Since learning a hidden pet’s behavior patterns and mastering the capturing timing is already a difficult challenge in itself, we want to ensure you never lose your hard-earned potions to a misclick. Our goal is to reduce unnecessary stress throughout your taming journey. 

Q11. When will Knighthood content be updated?

As mentioned in our previous developer notes, we are currently developing Knighthood content with a target release in July.

This update will introduce Knighthood Boss Battles alongside Knighthood Rankings, and the system will be structured so that you can earn rewards based on your Knighthood activities and overall contribution. Our goal is to continuously expand Knighthood content step by step following the July update. Regarding expanding the maximum member capacity for Knighthoods, we plan to carefully review this in stages after observing live gameplay data once the system is live.

✦ Expansion of Team Formation SlotsWe are also aiming to introduce an expansion to the total number of Team Formation slots, a feature requested by many of our Star Guardians, alongside the upcoming Knighthood update.

However, increasing the number of available team formation slots is not just a simple UI change. It is a task that requires a thorough technical review of our entire server architecture, as it impacts how the team composition data for every single one of our Star Guardians is stored and managed. We plan to proceed with this update only after conducting exhaustive testing to ensure absolute stability. We will provide more comprehensive details in a future update details notice closer to the feature’s release. 

Q12. The game causes severe overheating during gameplay, and the overall stability feels poor.

Our development team has been prioritizing crash stabilization above all else. Even after reaching points where we felt stability had been largely secured, we have continuously identified new crash instances arising from subsequent update content, and we are currently focusing heavily on resolving these issues.

At the same time, we are parallely working on performance optimization across all platforms. We have identified specific, high-resource bottlenecks within the gameplay loop and are systematically addressing them step by step. Our goal is to implement these optimization fixes incrementally with every major update as they are finalized. We will not stop our optimization efforts until every single Star Guardian can enjoy a smooth and seamless experience on any device.

Q13. We want to experience more story content.

Our goal is to continuously expand the narrative depth and volume of the Main Quests moving forward. In particular, starting with the Version 2.0 update, the stage will shift to an entirely new region, which we expect will allow us to deliver a much more robust and substantial storyline than before.

In addition, through this AMA, we clearly heard the voices of many Star Guardians who miss the original story of \[The Seven Deadly Sins]. We received numerous requests from players who wish to experience the iconic moments of the original series right here inside Origin, alongside the new adventures unfolding in our game.

While completely recreating the entire original series storyline presents significant structural challenges, we are currently developing a dedicated story mode that will allow you to directly experience the major events and iconic highlights of the original series in a condensed format. We will share more comprehensive details through a future developer notes as soon as preparation is complete.

Q14. What are your plans for hero rerun banners?
During this AMA, we also received a high volume of inquiries regarding the rerun schedule for major Pick Up heroes like Meliodas and Clotho.

In particular, many of you expressed a strong desire to see the rerun of heroes who serve as core DPS characters for each attribute, as well as fan-favorite characters from the original series.

To address this through today’s AMA, our development team is currently aiming to establish a regular rerun schedule roughly centered around our half-anniversary milestone. Excluding permanent banners accessible to all players at any time, or unavoidable technical exceptions, we plan to reintroduce Pick Up banners for previous heroes starting from the half-anniversary mark.

We are currently preparing something a bit special for our very first rerun banner, so we hope you look forward to it with great anticipation.

Q15. Please fix the bugs.

We sincerely apologize for the persistent bugs and technical issues that have occurred since launch. While we have been continuously working on fixes, we are deeply sorry for the ongoing inconvenience caused by both new and remaining bugs during your gameplay. We will continue to track down and resolve every single issue without exception, doing our absolute best to provide you with a much more stable environment moving forward.

■ 100 Days Since Launch: Our Sincerest Thanks and Apologies

In this edition of our developer notes, we aimed to address the most frequent inquiries raised during our second AMA.

We will continue to carefully review all the feedback you share with us beyond today’s notes, and we will do our absolute best to provide successive answers wherever possible in future updates.

It has already been 100 days since the global launch of Origin. While we have poured our hearts into delivering a stable service, we feel a deep sense of responsibility knowing that there are still many areas that fall short of your expectations.

In particular, we will continue to relentlessly track down and resolve ongoing technical issues regarding optimization and hero mechanics. Simultaneously, we are reviewing and refining our internal QA processes to minimize the occurrences of such bugs in the first place. We are fully committed to showing you a steadily improving Origin.

To express both our profound gratitude and our sincere apologies to all the Star Guardians who have walked with us throughout this 100-day journey, we have prepared a small token of our appreciation below.

In addition to this gift, we are preparing to offer even more abundant rewards through the upcoming Version 1.6 update, so we hope you look forward to it with great anticipation.

✦ 100-Day Anniversary Daily Giveaway Event Additional Rewards

June 18 (Thu)

- Star Fragment x100

- Platinum Ingot x5

- Radiant Potion of Charm x1

June 19 (Fri)

- Star Fragment x100

- Platinum Ingot x5

- Concentrated Potion of Charm x5

June 20 (Sat)

- Star Fragment x100

- Platinum Ingot x5

- Concentrated Potion of Charm x5

June 21 (Sun)

- Star Fragment x100

- Platinum Ingot x5

- Radiant Potion of Charm x1

June 22 (Mon)

- Star Fragment x100

- Platinum Ingot x5

- Concentrated Potion of Charm x5

June 23 (Tue)

- Star Fragment x100

- Platinum Ingot x5

- Concentrated Potion of Charm x5

* Please refer to the \[100-Day Anniversary Giveaway Event!] notice for more details.

✦ Developer Notes #14 - AMA Season 2 Rewards

- Sunstone x10

- Malachite x10

- Brilliant Potion of Charm x10

* Please note that the following rewards will be distributed alongside the launch of the Version 1.6 update.

* Following the Version 1.6 update, you can claim these rewards from your in-game mailbox until July 8 (Wed) 14:59 (UTC).

Thank you once again to all our Star Guardians for walking this 100-day journey with us.

Sincerely, 

PD Koo