Greetings, Rune Hunters.
Nice to meet you. This is 'Seong Seop Song', the new director of UNDECEMBER, taking over from the former director, Sang Kwon Han.

It is both a great honor and responsibility to answer to your expectations.
I promise our team and I will present you with a better service to fulfill your anticipation.

Since the Season 5 'Exodium' update, UNDECEMBER’s development team has been working on the content for the upcoming third anniversary and the next season.
As we prepared for the third anniversary, the update’s scale became massive in proportion to the event’s gravity.
Also, the necessity to review what we have been preparing for the long-term service of UNDECEMBER has arisen.
So, the new season, 'Re:Birth', will be the first exhibition of the upcoming changes of UNDECEMBER.


■ Season 'Re:Birth'

Starting from this season, each season will be given a unique name to hint at the season’s concept more intuitively, instead of the current numbering system.
The new season is called Re:Birth, which implies the revival of the 13th god of UNDECEMBER, Serpens the Evil God, in a more powerful state, and the rebirth of UNDECEMBER into a new shape for the upcoming third anniversary.
Also, the Re:Birth mode I will mention hereafter will be the key element of the season.

1. Re:Birth Mode

Re:Birth Mode, which will be added in the upcoming season, is a new mode that takes the best of the previous mode, Origin, and remedies its shortcomings.
Although Origin Mode has provided Rune Hunters with the fun of farming through chances of obtaining gears with all options (even the legendary ones) without having to enchant, it had a clear downside that you relied solely on random chances to obtain the desired option.

In the new Re:Birth Mode, every Gear is dropped with every option granted.
After you clear all the episodes, you will become able to use different Enchants as you can in the base mode.

You will be able to enjoy the fun of farming you can only find in the Hack-and-Slash genre while exploring through episodes.
Later, diverse Enchants to allow Rune Hunters to design the build they want will become available.
The goal of Re:Birth Mode is to provide you with these different kinds of fun throughout your gaming experience.

2. Re:Birth Mode Exclusive Content and Events

In the Re:Birth Mode, a new Ancient Chaos Orb (Tier 10) that provides even more Stats and Blessing Value will be added.
You can obtain this Chaos Orb from the reborn Serpens appearing in the Re:Birth Mode.
The reborn Serpens appears in the new Domain of Might (a provisional name) you can enter by collecting Chaos Keys (Madness/Hatred/Defiance) and new Materials.

Also, the Re:Birth Mode will have a unique ranking event separated from the existing Standard or Season Rankings and will provide surprising rewards.
To ensure fairness, audits will be conducted after the weekly ranking calculation, and the rewards will be sent via mail to Rune Hunters who are verified that they fairly achieved the ranking.
Upon the end of the season, new Ranking Titles will be granted as a reward for your enthusiastic challenges in such a short time.
Further details of the exclusive ranking event will be disclosed in the upcoming Season 'Re:Birth' update in November, so stay tuned.

Lastly, we will add more Re:Birth bosses in the future featuring stronger patterns and rewards, starting with the reborn Serpens.

■  New Content and Changes

1. Offering to Twelve Gods System

From now on, your actions in the world of UNDECEMBER will earn you the blessings of the Twelve Gods in the form of Offering Point.
You can make an offering to the Twelve Gods for their blessings by using the Offering Points.
Offering Points you earned in a season will accumulate so that you can use them in future seasons.
Therefore, Rune Hunters who complete a season will have more blessings from the Twelve Gods and enjoy advantages in the next season.

2. New Skill Rune 'Black Plague' and Improvement to Energy

A new Skill Rune, Black Plague, will be added.
Although we have tried to position Spell Skills as directly casted skills instead of secondary Trigger Skills in the Season 5 'Exodium', we will add another Spell-type Skill Rune based on our internal evaluation that it was not enough.
The Black Plague is a Spell-type Movement Channeling skill that transforms the character into a poisonous cloud, and the character can move while maintaining the channeling status.
Enemies touching the poisonous cloud accumulate debuffs, and you can deal a tremendous amount of damage to the enemies in proportion to the accumulated debuffs upon canceling Channeling.
We hope Black Plague, with Wings of Ignition added in the previous season, may bring the revival of Spell Skills.

In addition, Energy, which was improved during the last season, will go through another improvement.
Zodiac Nodes to offset penalty Stats attached to the Energy will be added, and new Link Runes to obtain Energy of each Element will be added along with the huge improvement of Extract Energy Rune's effect.
Plus, we made some improvements to Skill Rune effects that functioned as a penalty upon obtaining Energy, to avoid disadvantage accompanied with previous Energy generation.
We hope these changes will allow Rune Hunters to design new Energy builds.

3. Teneo Raid and Improvement to Matching System

Teneo, the final boss of Kustodia, will appear in the Raid.
Teneo is waiting for Rune Hunters' challenges, armed with more sophisticated and powerful attack patterns.
You can obtain new useful Runestones as a reward for your endeavor, and we look forward to your active participation.
Also, we are integrating the matching system for both Standard and Season Mode after the beginning of the Re:Birth Mode to solve matching issues in Raid.

4. Addition of Guidebook and Improvement to Tutorial

A Guidebook system will be added for Rune Hunters’ better understanding of the complicated game system.
Currently, we are providing guides on our website, but limited accessibility hinders providing proper assistance.
To solve such an inconvenience, we are adding a new in-game Guidebook system to provide better access to information.
In addition, we are working on improving the tutorial and quests in Saluto for faster and easier adaptation of new Rune Hunters to the game.
This improvement of quest routes will not be limited to the upcoming season but will be made constantly.

5. Balance Adjustments

A few balance adjustments will be made.
Although we have aimed to provide Rune Hunters with an exciting gaming experience, consideration in the game design was insufficient to support this goal.
We ask for your understanding that we have made this decision after much deliberation between the value of our Rune Hunters' efforts and the long-term stability of our service.

 1) Drop Balance Adjustments

Drop chances of new Unique Items added in the upcoming Re:Birth Season in the Re:Birth Mode will be equivalent to the existing Hardcore Mode, so we look forward to your active participation.
We are also adjusting the drop chances of Kustodia Tickets and Ancient and Divine Essences with the season update.
Expected amount of drops will be tuned to greatly differ according to the difficulties of Hard Mode.

 2) Adjustment to Fixed Partial Transfer Cost

We made an update during the last season that improved the Fixed Partial Transfer to add more depth and fun to crafting by providing new ways of Enchants.
While the update worked as intended to a certain extent, we believe it allowed Rune Hunters to craft Gears too powerful compared to the cost and difficulty of crafting.
We concluded that it could be detrimental to balance in the long run, so we are increasing the cost of crafting.

 3) Skill Rune Balance Adjustments

Effects of certain Skill Runes to which improvement of Energy during Season 5 ironically added penalties will be revised substantially.
In addition, rarely used Skills will be improved.


■ In Conclusion…

As this is my first Director’s Letter, I had so much to share with you, dear Rune Hunters, so it became lengthy.

In the upcoming Re:Birth Season, we aim to present you with fresh fun in new ways, including exclusive content and events.
(Re:Birth Mode’s exclusive content will be added to the Standard Mode once the season ends.)
Therefore, the duration of the season will be rather shorter, lasting two months, and the Standard Chaos Statue Level will not be reset, unlike previous seasons.

Although it will be a short season, we will do our best to provide you with a full gameplay experience.
We promise we will meet your expectations with dense and exciting content, despite the short season period.

We also ask for your interests in our future season update after the Re:Birth Season scheduled for next January and the Third Anniversary Event, and I will share more details in the future Director’s Letter.
With the update imminent, UNDECEMBER’s development team will stay focused on completeness and stability until the last step.

Thank you. 

Seong Seop Song