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September 2024 Promotions Leaf Village Jonin: @Jero Chunin: @Not Zakui @Komaru @Plazq17 @Not Sora Specialized Jonin: N/A Mist Village Jonin: @Dull @Yuki Kasumi Chunin: @RaimatsuX @The Architect @Yahia Specialized Jonin: @Eska Sand Village Jonin @kukks Chunin: @Jinzu @Enkaii @Chakra Milk Specialized Jonin: N/A

Hello everyone, The Academy Event Series has been concluded. Most of the ninjas who participated graduated and were given the forest outfit. They completed the necessary trials and maintained composure and showed exemplary behavior throughout. For future events such as the Academy Event Series, please make sure to visit the forum for announcements!

Dear Ninja, With most of our community activity taking place in Discord in recent years, on top of an onslaught of spam bots on the forum these days, we've decided to move all community activities to our Discord server. For years now, we've been slowly transitioning to it as the way we communicate with our players. It's become the default mode of communication for gamers everywhere in 2024, so it makes the most sense to just move it all there. Click here to join our discord server Best Regards, Ueda

Dear Ninja, With most of our community activity taking place in Discord in recent years, on top of an onslaught of spam bots on the forum these days, we've decided to move all community activities to our Discord server. For years now, we've been slowly transitioning to it as the way we communicate with our players. It's become the default mode of communication for gamers everywhere in 2024, so it makes the most sense to just move it all there. Click here to join our discord server Best Regards, Ueda

From what I heard, Stamina was a feature intended to be added to Nin Online over 10 years ago. While I understand this might have been the intention, I want to make it very clear that the idea of a stamina system truly is something that belongs in a game 10 years ago. I have several examples of games that initially had a stamina system that later removed them for the reasons that it hinders gameplay in Nin Online today. 10 years later, there's a lot of research that has gone into making video games more fun, especially in the field of MMORPGs. But first let's look at the stamina system on Nin Online, how it's implemented and ways that it can either be changed or removed. What is Stamina Stamina was implemented in June of 2024, a mechanic intended to be added to the game at the start over 10 years ago. This mechanic is tied to combat as well as travel. This is important to note because in modern day games, stamina has either been completely removed or combat has been slowed down to the point where stamina management is another aspect of the game. In titles such as Genshin Impact, stamina is used to traverse the land at a faster rate through climbing and sprinting. However, the reliance on stamina is greatly reduced later on based on teleportation through the map. Genshin's combat also has attacks that will use stamina such as charged attacks or repeated heavy attacks. However, the combat is rarely hindered by Stamina. This is because stamina is mostly relegated to dodging attacks in combat or to temporarily increase your speed to move out of the way of an AOE. However, our stamina system is more in line with a game like Elden Ring. The problem with this is that Elden Ring utilizes telegraphed animations in order to give the player more time to dodge, counter or move out of the way. Running takes stamina, attacking takes stamina, jumping and dodging takes stamina and larger hits take stamina all at variable rates. We don't have a form of larger hits, but to summarize it better, Nin Online is currently in a state of Unbalanced Elden Ring on crack. To better demonstrate this, here are some of the i-frame data from Elden Ring. (these calculations are at 60 fps) Bloodhound Step allows for 41 frames of invulnerability while the lowest i-frame move, fat rolls is 24 which is a dodge roll while at 70%-99.99% weight ratio. Weight isn't something that isn't in nin online, nor do I think it would be an effective correction to our current stamina system. But I just wanted to showcase that Stamina in Elden Ring is balanced around close quarter combat. It's not like Nin Online where you will have to chase around an entire stretch of land to fight and kill another player. This is mainly why our current stamina system doesn't work. The main form of gameplay is currently pvp in which you need to manage your stamina against 1-10 people in most cases who have the ability to traverse multiple maps. While we share similarities with Elden Ring, you're also not fighting 4+ bosses at once who can attack you 5-6 times per second depending on build. However, I want to reiterate, this is a shortcoming of our stamina system. I would rather see stamina changed than see cooldown adjustments on attacks or jutsu. Why Stamina was removed from FFXIV Back in 2010, FFXIV was released and became a commercial failure. The MMO received an average rating of 5/10 from most critics and a 4/10 from user reviews via metacritic. The game was initially created by the original developers of Final Fantasy 11 a game that was released back in 2002. Those same developers used a lot of inspiration from Everquest (1999) in order to make Final Fantasy 11. This is just to show how outdated the mechanics truly were. However, one of the most complained about mechanics in FFXIV during initial launch was Stamina and fatigue. Stamina was a combat gate introduced to FFXIV 1.0 in order to prevent players from attacking too quickly and preventing them from fighting multiple monsters in a row. This was eventually removed all the way back in June 2011 after massive development team changes, but the damage had already been done to the game. Players often complained about how sluggish the combat was. Restrictions on quests and etc hindering progression in the game. Systems like stamina and fatigue making it so even in the down time from questing you still had to struggle with progressing in the game. The remnants of the fallout between developers and the community still linger through websites like the square-enix forum and GameFAQs. "Remove Stamina Bar" "Please get rid of Stamina" "Removal of the Stamina Gauge and Auto-Attack" it was a unanimously hated system, and it's not too different in the way it's implemented in Nin Online. This is somewhat hinted to in the Final Fantasy XIV 3-part documentary that I've linked below. The barriers created by our stamina system As it stands, Stamina in Nin Online creates barriers for multiple forms of gameplay. It hinders exploration, it hinders leveling, and it hinders pvp. For years one of the biggest complaint about the game was that traveling took too long, especially after Mist was introduced. With large scale maps, traveling to Mist often times took 5 minutes just from Asoki port. That means from Sand it could take 10 minutes and then another 10 minutes if you were doing a mission that required you to survive all the way back to your village. This was originally remedied by Erox with the reduction of maps between Asoki Port and Mist. However, the time to get from Mist port to Asoki port with stamina management is now back up to 4 minutes. This means that boat is once again better than walking because the time difference is negligible and you won't be forced to walk around the the longest flicker ranged NPC. This also dramatically impacts the new player experience. One of the most common complaints has always been that early game leveling takes a long time. If we take a look at the average new player, such as formattedorc, and we extrapolate his playtime it would seem that most new players take roughly 6-8 hours to reach level 15. This was before the stamina update. This means that for new casual players it would take roughly 10-12 hours to reach level 15. Before stamina it took me an hour on blessing to reach level 15. Now I believe the time is probably upwards of 2 hours, but this is just an assumption because I can't stand to play the game for more than an hour at a time on a new account. As for PVP, there is nothing that will save low levels that will make veterans happy. Some people only play this game to kill low level players in safezones. This stamina update is a blessing to them because it's impossible for a low level to escape a high level without abusing log out. We genuinely have people bragging about escaping 8 sand ninja at level 20 because he map switched and logged out before they could combat log him again. There's another game we know of that suffered from these problems and it was called Pirate Souls. Let's check out some of the reviews for the game on steam. Why does it matter and what changes can be made As someone who has played the game off and on for nearly 11 years, I've seen the game go through a lot of changes. One of the biggest struggles the game has always had was retaining new players. We unfortunately can't rely on maintaining a healthy playerbase solely off of the people who have 10+ accounts and 5 years of experience. We need new players to be able to get into the game and play for more than a week. We need new players to enjoy their experience at the beginning of the game. We can't keep catering to the people who are leveling their 8th account. We shouldn't require veterans to babysit new players every inch they walk because systems are implemented to slow down the early leveling experience. I think the best thing we can do is change stamina to be more like Elden Ring. Here are the changes I would make to better balance out combat. Remove stamina from running: as stated above, though this deviates from the gameplay in Elden Ring, most NPCs engage in combat with the player. In a PVP MMORPG, not engaging is a form of strategy. This also removes the inherit reward that mapswitch camping received from the introduction of stamina to the game. Remove Jump and Replace with Dodge Roll: For this to work we would need to increase the invulnerability frames and also add in recovery frames so it can't be spammed like jumping currently is. This would practically remain the same, except changes to the animation and duration. Keep Stamina cost for melee: This is perfectly in-line with Elden Ring as a damage gate for melee attacks. Scale Stamina cost to base damage/speed of weapons: This will basically make it so end game items will be more balanced around timed attacks rather than holding down the button. This might further kill hybrids, but I don't think that's a playstyle that is desired given all of the other recent changes to the game. Remove "infinite stamina" from Youthful Springtime: Since stamina would be removed from running in this instance, the penalty for holding down the A button should remain, however since the stamina cost for punches isn't that low to begin with, this won't really penalize Youthful Springtime as much as it should. Increase weapon melee base damage on slower weapons: As it stands, the above changes would heavily impact slower weapons like Adamantine Sword and Kraken Hammer and heavily reward weapons like bone sword a ridiculous amount. This should even out their damage in a way. the problem with this system, as well as Stamina in its current iteration, is there's very little penalty for int builds. Stamina cost on running, in a way, balanced them out as most jutsu require you to chase someone or at least move within range. However, this made masteries where you don't have to run at all (Int Weapon Master) the most desired mastery after several months of already being the strongest mastery. This is essentially why stamina for Nin Online doesn't work. Elden Ring's solution to this is that most magic has a walk speed penalty and an associated cast time. Since majority of jutsu are instant casts, this doesn't make sense for Nin Online. On top of this, having jutsu with an associated stamina cost on top of the chakra cost doesn't entirely sound appealing either. It would prevent people from using too many attacks after one another, but the only mastery that has enough true combos to be penalized with this system would be lightning. The only perfect solution to balancing stamina around ninjutsu and melee masteries in nin online is to simply remove it entirely. Ninjutsu masteries already benefit from higher base damage, higher scaling and the lack of stamina requirements for using jutsu. There's really no reason to penalize melee masteries, especially so one-sided in terms of str weapon master with previous changes to weapon swapping and general str weapon jutsu scaling. This combined with the fact that Int weapon mastery revolves around camping your traps. This penalizes opponents pushing you and pushing maps during raids which was always at a disadvantage to begin with. In closing, stamina makes everything in the game take longer, which has been a complaint about the game for almost 10 years. It slows down combat, leveling, daily missions, and traveling to an insane degree and the above proposed changes will at least minimize the impact it has on every level of the game as opposed to heavily punishing new players. Also just to make sure it's stated, if Yamikami makes any comment on this discussion, please for the love of god ignore it. As for me, it's been a fun decade to see the game grow, but I'm going to head out and play games that I actually enjoy until stamina is either changed or completely removed

So! After a reallyyy long (embarrassingly long e.e) time writing about Aruka's biography, here it is! I put it in a spoiler cause it's actually kinda big, the reason I took this long was because I wanted to take the extra mile writing about some actual stuff Aruka lived in nin (a lot dramatized and a bit out of chronological order, but it makes sense in the story lol) instead of only having an in game reference of her in here! TL;DR Aruka was born in a clan of healers, but had to learn to use poison to survive and create remedies in the ninja world, since she is bad at ninjutsu, taijutsu and genjutsu. After enduring the pain of loss of her team member multiple times, she learned to also use ninja tools to help protect herself and others. After a while, she went after forbidden means to be able to perform ninjutsu, which cost her health, but gave her much stronger power. Now she uses her strength to make sure sandies keep them selves safe in the wars that plague the ninja world! One day I'll be able to draw like you guys do and have her drawn as a proper OC T-T

this is a joke how many players fishing instead of go out and make dz crowded. players really changing thier outfit to look like a fisherman.. Sadge This is not the harass i'm searching. y'all jerking off afk fishing and only joining auto event to show your fishing pole in action i will put bounty on each fisherman in this game ngl

The Temari hairstyle, which I think is a very pretty hairstyle reminds us of a very important figure in the world of manga and anime alike, and even inspired websites such as 4chan and other chans around the web. Meet Yotsuba: Originally born with the same vibes from Azumanga-Daioh the previous 4 panel manga title from Kiyohiko Azuma, this time Azuma decides to give it the same feeling of Azumanga-Daioh and bring in the comedy slice of life feel to life with Yotsuba-to. In Yotsuba-to, you will notice the funny day to day life of a girl form the campside of Japan that is moving to a more urban enviroment, she is probably not like the kids form the city life. The manga still ongoing to this day with many fun adventures to read. The thing behind the 4 winged hair style is the sillyness and goofy situations that Yotsuba brings along with people around her, or by herself. Sadly there is no Yotsuba anime yet, but who knows one day it'll air somewhere hehe.

This is the final judging! The winner is Indra, taking home 20 Ninja Credits. Although not in the original competition prizes list, I also decided to reward Sirch with 10 Ninja Credits! Congratulations! Thanks everyone for participating!

Some of my art.

The Ninja Academy Event Introduction Hey everyone, I'm excited to announce that the Ninja Academy Event introduction is scheduled for July 27th at 1:00 PM EST. For those who have applied to the Ninja Academy Event series, please let me know if you are unable to attend. For those who haven't applied yet but would like to, you're in luck! Due to increased interest, I will still be accepting applications until July 26th. During the introduction event, I will be assigning ninjas to their teams based on the submitted applications. There will be time for teams to meet and familiarize themselves with the other ninjas participating in this event series. I will also assist in ensuring that teams set up communication channels among themselves, as this will be crucial for the events in the coming weeks. Looking forward to seeing you all there!

May 2024 Promotions Leaf Village Jonin: @Daftz @Jayda @Jinsoh Chunin: @Prodigina @Uchiha Noturno Specialized Jonin: @Shisue Uchiha Mist Village Chunin: @The Godfather @Fortune @Yuki Kasumi @Zeon Specialized Jonin: @Hekla Sand Village Jonin: @Leper Chunin: @Psychosis @Dengen Specialized Jonin: @Savior

Good day folks, been a while since I've made a post on the forums, as it's been probably for a lot of you, some I know don't even visit the website except for the cash shop. I just wanted to spark a few questions towards @Ueda hoping we could hear a word regarding the state of the forums. A lot of us have been wondering, is the plan for the future now to deprecate these forums and move community discussion strictly to the Discord? A lot of parts of this site aren't optimized at all or not even working properly. Where are the forums going?

The death of forum activity has honestly hurt discussion revolving all the different aspects of Nin. Discord is much more chaotic and messages sent there are much more reactionary rather than thought out (in my opinion). I miss the glory days of these forums being active

A nice relaxing visit to the bar after a successful summoning...

Hidden in the depths of the sewers.. The Cult gathers to summon their most vile abomination yet.......

Hello guys. I know most prices are already established in the game amongst the higher-level players, however, I feel like the low-level's deserve a fair chance too. As such, I'm posting a list with the market prices of each item. If they do not sell on the market, I will just insert their value when sold in any village store. (If anything is wrong with the list, notify me by PMing me on discord or just correct me on this post itself.) You should, naturally, feel free to add in on all the things that I have personally forgotten the prices of, such as the Tunneler's tongues. I mean, come on... They only thing I farm nowadays is wolf fur, lol. Thank you! Without further ado, here are the lists: Items with no market price: Cocoon (14-09-2020) 1 ryo each Spider Eggs (14-09-2020) 2 ryo each Scorpion Tail (14-09-2020) 2 ryo each Ant Feelers (14-09-2020) 2 ryo each Dragonfly Wings (14-09-2020) 2 ryo each Canine Fang (14-09-2020) 3 ryo each Honey Comb (14-09-2020) 3 ryo each Fox Fur (14-09-2020) 3 ryo each Tiger Fur (14-09-2020) 4 ryo each Scarab Shells (14-09-2020) 4 ryo each Rat Tails (14-09-2020) 5 ryo each Tunneler's Tongue (14-09-2020) 5 ryo each Big Scarab Shells (14-09-2020) 5 ryo each Insect Wing (14-09-2020) 5 ryo each Undead Charm (14-09-2020) 5 ryo each Bear Paw (14-09-2020) 6 ryo each Grey Bear Paw (14-09-2020) 7 ryo each Hawk Talon (14-09-2020) 7 ryo each Items with market prices: Snake Venom (14-09-2020) 15-20 ryo each DNA Sample (14-09-2020) 55-75 ryo each Wolf Fur (14-09-2020) 50-100 ryo each Racoon Tails (14-09-2020) 80-100 ryo each Hawk Feather (14-09-2020) 250-350 ryo each Blank Scroll (14-09-2020) 250-300 ryo each Tier I scroll (14-09-2020) 500 ryo each Tier II scroll (14-09-2020) 1,000 ryo each Tier III scroll (14-09-2020) 1,500-2,000 ryo each Rare drops (market prices): Cigarette (14-09-2020) 1,000-2,000 ryo each Gas Mask (14-09-2020) 1,500-2,000 ryo each Seji no Hani (14-09-2020) 2,000-2,500 ryo each Poison-Laced Kunai (14-09-2020) 2,500-3,500 ryo each Twin fangs (14-09-2020) 3,000-4,000 ryo each Religious Katana (14-09-2020) 3,000-4,000 ryo each Black fan (14-09-2020) 3,000-6,000 ryo each Snake Rope Belt (14-09-2020) 4,000-6,000 ryo each Veiled Sakkat (14-09-2020) 4,500-7,500 ryo each Red Scarf (14-09-2020) 7,000-15,000 ryo each Great Grandfather's Muramasa (Usually just sold to the shop for 7,500 ryo) (14-09-2020) 8,000-9,000 ryo each Arms Bandages (14-09-2020) 20,000-30,000 ryo each Gloves Knuckle (14-09-2020) 20,000-40,000 ryo each Shirokata (14-09-2020) 40,000+ ryo each Dark Bandit Blade (14-09-2020) 50,000+ ryo each Ragged Bandit Pants (14-09-2020) 60,000+ ryo each Oriental Fan (14-09-2020) 80,000+ ryo each Tonfa (14-09-2020) 90,000-120,000 ryo each Blood Katana (14-09-2020) Picture: TBA 120,000-150,000 ryo each Kotsuzui Tanto (14-09-2020) 200,000+ ryo each Blood Tonfa (14-09-2020) 250,000-350,000 ryo each Festival Items: Black Dragon Festival Mask Price: TBA Red Dragon Festival Mask Price: TBA Event HQ Items: Stylish Sword (14-09-2020) 6,000-10,000 ryo each (Un)Hooded Robes (Various Colors) (14-09-2020) 6,000-10,000 ryo each Hermit Forehead Protector (14-09-2020) 6,000-10,000 ryo each Sashed Kimono (Various Colors) (14-09-2020) / 15,000-20,000 ryo each Limited-Time Tradable Cash Stop Items: Purple War Armor (14-09-2020) 4,000-6,000 ryo each Gold Furred Armor (14-09-2020) 5,000-10,000 ryo each White Hermit Cape (14-09-2020) 8,000-12,000 ryo each Ceramic War Armor (14-09-2020) 50,000-60,000 ryo each Date and time notation is written in European Format: "DD-MM-YYYY"

The Ninja Academy Event Series Get ready for a series of events coming your way over the next few weeks! I’ll be experimenting with teams, inspired by the classic Chunin Exams experience. To participate in these events, you must be open to being randomly assigned to a team! Each team will consist of: 3 Genins 1 Chunin/Special Jonin There will also be platoons led by 1 Jonin. Jonins without a team placement may be assigned to a team or designated as helpers throughout the events. This event is open only to players from the Leaf, Sand, and Mist villages. I'll be hosting these events separately for each village. As we move forward, we'll gradually transition into some final joint events to conclude. (There will be other events for Rogues.) If you’d like to participate, please message me either in-game, on Discord (Deathmall), or via the Nin Online forum with the following information: Submission Deadline: 7/13/2024 Username: Village: Time zone: Rank: Level: Mastery/Masteries: Language(s): Other details (optional but highly recommended): Interests, combat style, and a brief introduction.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with this, and I definitely agree with this, you have to admit this is one of the most well thought out and structured posts concerning changes to the game. Well done brother.

Thank you! I tried to emulate the style as best I could.

Deadline extension!

As someone with many different characters it would be nice to be able to use my house as a central hub for storage and spawning. To prevent abuse it could restrict the characters to sharing a faction with the owner. I think it would also help with the housing shortage that can happen since people wouldn't need to pay for multiple houses across their accounts.

This ain't cool. Haven't played in a while, come back and there's a 2 second delay on weapon swapping. This nerf really changed the way my character plays and not in a good way. It's a huge nerf to my character build and its not fun. I put thousands of hours into this character and now the character is nerfed, nigh unplayable. I have to remake now because the change is that bad. I would like a free mastery change at the least. Usually, there is no compensation for this type of thing and it effects a lot of peoples accounts/builds/time. Hoping to hear from @Ueda because you legit nerfed 3000 hours put in a character and now I have to remake because of it.

just logged in to spread the harass ringed on. i figured out that i can't do my thing and the fact Erox wiped the whole org god know why. aint fair.. life is never fair i paid the fking 300k to do my terms and everything can blow up. anyway i guess i will have to pay Rain next right? this is how nin works right?

Currently i am a missing ninja but i am willing to lend my extraordinary power to any of the 3 villages. Having me in your village is a benefit as my sheer power will scare other enemy villages and organizations away. So sand, mist and leaf, all the kages out there let me know. I am also willing to pay 10k ryo to any kage that is willing to let me play in there village. Kind regards, Your friendly neighborhood Nagamushi

Mail Hageshi and Sage both 50k ryo and you'll be allowed to sit on the benches at square.

Wm bubbles are unplayable I legit abandoned that char and made a new acc and not respending money on all the cs items I had on that char, ez fix

Dear Ninja, It's been a very turbulent last couple of months, we started having server issues out of nowhere in late November 2022. This was especially surprising and disorienting because at that point, we had not made any code changes to the server since about July 2022. We were sent on a goose chase to figure out why these issues were happening, and without our dear beloved (rest in peace) Robin to come rescue us from issues like this as he had in the past, we had an especially hard time. But I want to write this development log to explain why this issue was so pervasive, evasive, and abrasive, so players understand why this wasn't a simple "fix your server" kind of issue. To understand the rest of this post, you need to know what the following terms refer to: Server Software - Our proprietary, in-house server software we wrote to run authoritative logic for Nin Online and to handle networking aka. keeping players connected and sending data between them. Server Hardware - The actual machine that we rent to run the server software. This hardware belongs to a third-party company. Third Party Service Providers - Services that provide us with databases for the post part in our case, but can refer to any company that provides SaaS. DDoS - Distributed Denial of Service Attack, typically on a server, to prevent normal operations. SYN - Clients requests connection to a server by sending SYN (synchronize) message to the server. ExitLag - A shady company Phase 1: Locating Fault With a software as complicated as Nin Online. There's a lot of places fault can be found. All we knew based on player reports was the following... There are possibilities in third party service providers, client, server hardware, server hardware (OS, Networking), it could come down to almost anything. First I'll talk about what we tried in Phase 1. Restart Server Software Restart Server Hardware Check and reboot all third party service providers (MongoDB, MySQL) So basically all the things you do when you have faulty technological issues - "Have you plugged in out and plugged it in?" "Have you tried restarting your modem?" The next thing we tried was to make sure it wasn't an isolated issue with that specific server. We rented a new VPS server and hosted Nin Online there for awhile to see if it was something that was solvable that way, and if it could be down to Windows Server settings, an issue/change to do with our hosting provider, DNS issues, anything that could be isolated to server hardware/provider. This was not the case, so we moved back to the original server. From this, we diagnosed that the issue must have to do specifically with our server software. Because it happened on multiple different server hardware. A further clue was that Nin Online's Brazil Server was fine, and the Brazil server didn't have a lot of code changes that Nin Online NA had. So it was a good lead. Despite the fact that we didn't make any code changes, it is not impossible that existing code changes between that span of time could've started acting up later. Phase 2: Looking through code changes We first looked at content changes. Nin Online's engine gives a large amount of freedom to developers to create content on the fly. Although no code changes were made. It was completely possible that it was caused by a content change eg. A new map, a new item, a new NPC. But nothing really aligned with the timeline that would cause the bug. There was one thing that stood out... Erox had just launched the Christmas Event, and this year was the first time we had pathfinding changes. This led to the train of thought that perhaps it could've been that a massive amount of NPCs (Zombies) was causing the server to hang for a long amount of time, and during this time, the server could not send any data to players - hence the hanging. The caveat to this is that our pathfinding is threaded. Meaning, even if the pathfinding was hanging, the rest of the server processes should've continued fine. But to be safe, we decided to first disable all A*Pathfinding. We left the server online to see if it stopped, but it persisted. We later went back to the drawing board many times, looking at what content or code could have changed. We investigated if Erox has added any events/npcs/items etc. and forgot about them. (he didn't) The next thing I tried was to look through all the error logs that the server created. There were a dozen or so errors the server was throwing that seemed inconsequential. These could be things like a projectile/jutsu trying to target a player that was already disconnected. The server would normally ignore these errors. But I fixed them just to be sure. This didn't help either. After a few days, after discussing it with Wolf, we thought perhaps the issue could be due to threading pathfinding entirely. Threading it in the first place was a risky idea, even though necessary, because as I said, A*Pathfinding is expensive. So we decided remove threading for pathfinding. This didn't solve the issue, but it did mislead us for a few months. Phase 3: Completely misled A few weeks later, to no avail in solving the issue, we started looking to other data. Sadly, as we'll soon find out data lied. We looked at server performance while the server was having these hanging/spikes/disconnection mass events. We did this by profiling the server, looking into metrics we have been collecting for years, and we found that during increased player activity, the server showed obvious signs of degradation. I'm skimming through weeks of work to collect data, but basically our findings were that was a correlation between these hanging issues and degradation of server stats, namely TPS. The server was running less ticks per second when these issues were occuring! Hoorah, if we can figure out what is causing this, we can solve the issue. We spent weeks figuring out what the issue was that was causing the server performance drop. Clearly something was wrong with it, if we solved it, we would most definitely fix it... right...? So we started looking into the call stack and performance profilers to figure out what was causing the drops in performance. We looked at what changes could have been made around late November that could cause it. (Just note that although the graph looks like it only shows degradation in mid-December, this is only obvious now that we have a lot more data than we did in December. We found that certain packets ran processes on the server that were taking a long time to process. Namely packets/processes that interacted with MongoDB. So I spent a few days moving this these processes to Jobs (basically threading). It was possible that due to these packets not being threaded would cause a long pause where the server was just processing these on the main thread - hence causing the hanging. Unfortunately, this did not resolve the issue either. The server was optimized. There should be nothing left that took this long to process that it was bring the TPS down... except... Pathfinding. We later realized that the reason TPS was down was simply because we stopped threading Pathfinding. Pathfinding was so expensive that it single handedly was bringing TPS down more than anything. We sent ourselves on a goosechase because of what we had did in Phase 2. In hindsight, of course this was the case. But we were trying and doing so many things at once we lost track of what we had changed a little and we forget to go back to basics. We were consumed with the idea that the TPS was causing the login issues, when it wasn't. It was months of stress over trying to figure out what in the server was causing the TPS to drop that much, and it was just pathfinding. I'm glossing over days of me and Wolf diagnosing server performance. Running third party software on the server software to figure out what was causing it to hang. But this was work. Real work. Phase 4: Back to basics We went back to the drawing board and looked to what we knew as fact. The timeline of everything we knew and decided to look into what was happening during one of the disconnection events. We let the server fail in debug mode, so we could look into the internals of the server while it was having disconnections. Up until this point, the server was still functional for most of the day, it was just crashing every 24 or so hours. I was on full-time watch for the server, making sure it went back up when it was down. It had been months of this, it was stressing me out a lot. We noticed that the server had a large amount of connection sockets (TCP connections usually used to send data between client to server and vice versa). We started looking at what code issues within our login system that could be causing them to pile up without clearing. We spent weeks on this, making potential changes and hopeful fixes, to no success. One of the hardest parts of this issue was that we could not recreate it locally, so we had to rely on the live server to debug it. Each time we tried a code change, we had to wait until the next time the server crashed, so there was a lot of time when we could not do anything but wait for another crash. Sometimes code changes we made seemed to work, but really didn't. The bug would not appear for a few days, or even a full week, and then suddenly happen again. So we were constantly being thrown into "Yay we fixed it!" and "Fuck it's back". The only clue we still had was, no matter what we did, these connection sockets leaks were still happening. Phase 5: Player testimony We went back to player testimonies, hearing what people were experiencing and getting footage of what was happening what all was going down. We heard people tell us it was probably to do with Automated Tournaments, Quick Logins and various other features. So we went through rounds of disabling things and re-enabling things until we could find what was wrong. Eventually, the bug for some reason seemed to change it's modus operandi. It started manifesting as log out issues instead of login issues. Players who were logged in, were not having their characters ever log out... Curious. Phase 6: Discovery Not all players were having logout issues when there were little players online. But once there were a ton of players online (around 100) there started to be widespread logout issues. Because players were being stuck on logout, I started investigating why they weren't being logged out, since it mainly happened to a small number of individuals when the server was fresh and not very populated, I started with those users. I found that the players were having ping packets sent even when they told me that they had the Nin Online client closed. That's literally impossible I thought. Without the Nin Online client open, what could possibly be pinging the server...? ExitLag. Phase 7: ExitLag ExitLag around November last year, started using a method of "optimization" that was essentially, on scale, a SYN Flood Attack. The culprit was a third-party software that wants desperately to provide "better ping" for players. So it uses a combination of techniques to do so. One of those includes using multiple relay servers to send the same packets to our server, spamming our server with unnecessary information multiple times. It sends dozens of SYN packets per second to our server through the port our game client uses to connect to the server. It does so through distributed servers across the world. About SYN Flood Attacks https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ddos/syn-flood-ddos-attack/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SYN_flood It doesn't even hide it. In the picture above, it shows that it's established multiple connections to our server and is constantly sending and receiving unnecessary data through it. What's scary is (we've not fully investigated this claim) but the software seems to also triple the amount of data our server sends for large packets of data like Map data. IP address/connection slot of someone using ExitLag and their source port number The reason why it was causing login issues was because it was filling up all the temporary slots allocated to TempPlayers (a method we use to verify and give real players a slot in the game) because the server had no choice but to check all these empty packets that was being sent. The reason it was causing logout issues for players not using ExitLag was because it was overwhelming the disconnection system, blocking the disconnection queue and causing a threading leak issue which was slowing down the server. A normal DDoS attack would've been quickly triggered by our DDoS protection we had in place since 2013. But because this was done at the authentication level (it wasn't spamming packets, it was spamming SYN packets) it was creating a lot of new issues. Our DDoS protection was "per connection" whereas this was creating new connections constantly. Another thing that really pissed me and Wolf off is that this isn't the first time ExitLag's methods have caused us issues. It was causing our server to throw errors in the past, and so we actually built workarounds. If only we had straight up banned it then. Lastly, we unfortunately had an issue with timing out TempPlayers. The intervals our KeepAlive packets were being set at was 30000-60000 seconds instead of 30-60 seconds. Which is a dumb mistake on our part. This made the logout issues much worse, but also just aggravated the issue of us being DDoSed. We never found that mistake for 5 years before this because we never had this issue. Phase 8: Resolution Now that the following have been put in place, this should prevent a future SYN flood attack and also ensure players aren't accidentally banned by using ExitLag. We've tweaked Windows Server's provided SYN Flood Protection capabilities to suit Nin Online With the help of ChatGPT, I wrote a new application that checks for SYN Floods and quickly (within a minute) bans IP addresses that are flooding our server We've banned ExitLag from being used with Nin Online, so players don't accidentally get their IPs banned. We fixed a bug that was causing KeepAlive packets to only be sent out every few hours. So even if a SYN Flood Attack happens, it will not cause widespread logout issues. We've contacted ExitLag to remove Nin Online from their listings. This has been one of the hardest 5 months of developing Nin Online. I've been on full time "make sure the server is not malfunctioning" duty for the entire time, and I've been caused severe mental distress by this ordeal. All this to say, I don't like ExitLag. Thank you to Wolf, Delp and all the players who have been helping provide information for the help in solving this issue. Regards, Ueda

Become the Fish King so you can buy your spot back in Akatsuki along with me.

After listening to @Ueda and @Serias talk about the vision of the game and the amount of effort that went into implementing the Hidden Mist Village and the Hidden Sand Village me and my friend @SpellWiz started brainstorming ideas and a village layout for the Hidden Cloud Village. This is what we came up with, because Rory and Serias appreicate any playermade content that could contribute to future development and success of NinOnline Basic line-art of cloud village layout I imagine use of flicker pads and bridges to traverse the village Exclusive Passive: Body Flicker range is increased by 2 tiles. Decently balanced mastery. Similar to Sand's perfect cloak. Due to the Cloud Village's structure, it's ninja have adapted to traverse the large gaps. Exclusive Combo Mastery: Laser [Water / Lightning] Ninja from the Cloud Village have passed down techniques that utilize Storm release to create focused lasers. Exclusive Alternate Mastery: Cloud-style Kenjutsu [Weapon Master] Agility-locked sword(s) with agility-based weapon master skills. Can use strength-based weapon master skills with the cloud-locked swords, and vice versa. Agility and strength-based weapon master skills share respective cooldowns. Any cloud-locked swords have lower base-damage than current swords, but higher attack speed. Level 10: Cloud-style Backlash Slash Free-aim-based skill. Charge and perform an upwards slash, interrupting casting jutsu on-hit. 1-2 tiles directly in-front of the user and 2-1 second standing-running cast-time based on level. Level 15: Cloud-style Reverse Beheading Free-aim-based skill. Spin instantly, dealing damage to all enemies within 1 tile. 1s - Instant cast-time based on level, 1 tile radius in all directions. Level 20: Cloud-style Riposte Free-aim-based skill. Users swiftly lunge forward creating an extended range of up to 3 tiles. 3-2 second running cast-time based on level. Level 25: Cloud-style Afterimage Strike Target-based skill. After seemingly splitting into 3 from the intense speed, users instantly move in-front of and attack their target up to 3 times instantly. 2-1 second running cast-time and 3-7 tile range based on level. The user briefly appears surrounding the target on all sides except directly behind them, and any spots unavailable reduce the amount of hits. Level 30: Cloud-style Deception Beheading Substitution-based skill. The user feigns Substitution Technique, preparing to counter. Before receiving an attack, they reappear right in-front of the attacker and launch a counterattack. Level 35: Cloud-style Crescent Moon Target-based skill. Makes the user instantly move in-front of their target and widely slash, creating a large crescent shape hitting all enemies within 2 tiles on all sides of the user, except directly behind. 2-1 second run-cast and 2-4 tile range based on level. Exclusive Summons: Drill Bird Walk/Flicker. Lunges forward to attack head-on with it's beak, creating an extended range. (2-6 tile range based on level) Not as ugly or huge as Pain's monster. Baku Stationary/Target-facing. Pulls in all enemies in a cone-shaped radius. (3-7 tile furthest-point range and 1-2 tile knockback towards summon based on level) Not as huge as Danzo's monster. Or a simpler elephant. Exclusive Organization: Kinkaku Force 5 Members. Aimed to be a heavy team-play based squad. Bashōsen (Fan): Weapon-slot item with jutsu-on-basic. Random large-scale element-based attack is released on auto-attack. High damage, as well as effects based on element. Cost 100 chakra per-cast. Gives 25 intellect. Kohaku no Jōhei (Pot): Weapon-slot item with jutsu-on-basic. On use, pulls target towards snared user. (Think 1 tile knockback towards the user, 2 tiles if target is below 50%) Consumes 100 chakra per-second. If a target is touching the user, while below 20% health, they are killed and instantly sent to their hospital and counted as a kill for the pot's user. Gives 25 fortitude. The next three are a testament to the "team-play" design of the organization Kōkinjō (Rope): Weapon-slot item with jutsu-on-basic. Upon the user successfully landing an auto attack on a target without "Word Soul Leak", "Word Soul Extract", "Word Soul Seal", nor "Word Soul Sentence" debuffs, 100 chakra is consumed and the target receives the "Word Soul Leak" debuff for 30 seconds. Gives 25 agility. Shichiseiken (Sword): Weapon-slot item with jutsu-on-basic. Upon the user successfully landing an auto attack on a target with "Word Soul Leak", 100 chakra is consumed, the target's "Word Soul Leak" is removed and they receive the "Word Soul Extract" debuff for 30 seconds. A linked, targetable and invincible, "Word Soul" mob is spawned at the location for the debuff's duration. Gives 25 strength. Benihisago (Gourd): Weapon-slot item with jutsu-on-basic. Only with a "Word Soul" mob as a target, on use the user pulls the target towards themselves. (Think 2 tile knockback towards the user) If the target touches the user, it is unspawned and whomever it is linked to has "Word Soul Leak" removed and receives the "Word Soul Seal" debuff for 30 seconds. After "Word Soul Seal's" duration you receive "Word Soul Sentence" for 30 seconds, during which you are pulled toward the gourd's user. (Think 2 tile knockback towards the user, 3 tiles if target is below 50%) Anyone touching the gourd's user while under the effects of "Word Soul Sentence" are killed and instantly sent to their hospital and counted as a kill for the gourd's user. Consumes 50 chakra per-second while pulling anyone. Insignificant chakra results in the inability to pull "Word Soul" mobs, as well as no one with "Word Soul Sentence" being pulled in. Those affected by "Word Soul Sentence" are only pulled while the gourd is equipped. Gives 25 chakra. Cloud Village is years-away content, and I expect literally nothing to come of this post besides simple chatting. For most things I have given example cast-times, ranges, etc. but more balancing would be required for any actual implementation. The organization items may sound a bit OP or over-tuned, but compared to puppets/ssm I would defend the suggestions. Specifically, the 3-man combo items would require 100 chakra each and 30 seconds to execute 1 person, which a 3-man squad should be able to do easier than using these items. The theory is 3-man comboing the healers and killing everyone else. Also, the Gourd user would be a target the entire time to stop the effects of "Word Soul Sentence." There's also the village layout; according to the devblogs, round buildings are especially tough...that's the entire village. Flicker pads is a personal preference, as I feel that it would be cool to traverse the village that way. Based off the basic line-drawings, a pure conversion to pixel-art and mapping wouldn't be possible, but the ideas are there.

Great year for nin!

Table of Contents Banking on change Simple yet useful Housing and Banking It's been too long Banking on change Since we have received the housing update, I wanted to make a series of suggestions to better help players, new and old that would also help leadership in villages. To make this suggestion, we need to understand why it's desperately needed and why it's not entirely a suggestion and rather a demand. Please bear with me as this is going to a large thread. We are several decades behind the curve on MMOs. A lot of Nin Online was inspired by World of Warcraft, Everquest and so on, yet we've been missing a feature that is key to games like this. That is the banking system. Simple yet useful While I understand the importance of the Inventory expansion in the cash shop, with the implementation of furniture, event items, non-cash shop items and more, my inventory is almost always congested. What's interesting is we already have a bank system in the game, but it's only used for premium items. The reason that I think this should be suggested and implemented soon is because we are already creating our own banks in game with alts. There is no excuse to prolong their absence from the game. Before it could have been argued that people would use the bank to hold faction items in them. However, this already exists in the form of alts. People already pass off their faction items to their personal banks, so there's no way we can (or should) prevent that. If the Expansion Slot is supposed to be a replacement of a bank, the more content we add the less effective it will be. Instead I suggest we add a bank in each village with a limited inventory, then with the expansion slot you would increase your own inventory as well as the inventory in your bank. To simplify things, here's a quick list of things the bank can do. A safe-zone indoor map located in Leaf, Sand, Mist and Takumi (maybe Tanzaku) Hold Ryo up to 99,999,999 Hold 40 items Hold up to 80 items with Expansion Slot Housing and Banking While this could be its own suggestion, I wanted to add this quickly because I believe it's vital to keeping the player base populated with village events. Right now you can buy houses in villages, some you can even buy without being a member of that village. I want to take that money that gets deleted and instead add it to the kage bank, a bank that only the kage of a village can access. With this money, Kages would be able to provide more events for their players, or be corrupt and use the money for other means. This would also deter players from buying homes in enemy villages as it would benefit that village more than your own. Instead of this bank being based on player name, it can simply just be based on village and rank. This way only Kage can access this bank and Kage can't access the bank of other village's kage. It's been too long Banks have been in MMORPGs since 1999. It's a vital part of the game as the items you acquire the further you play into the game need places to be stored. We're not requested a market place where we can buy stock or take out a loan. We're not requesting for anything complex, as stated before it's something that's already in the game. It shouldn't have taken this long to include it in the game, but it has, and the only way to rectify that mistake is to finally add it. Either that or to stop adding items and cosmetics to the game, that is the only viable solution if banking isn't an option for this game.

Hello, today I would love to try and suggest whole new mastery based around genjutsu, lot of these jutsus will be support sided and will be best combined with element as 2nd mastery but hopefully not too weak to not be played solo. Ill try to keep it in nin limitations too. Little trivia from anime to begin with. Genjutsu (幻術, Literally meaning: Illusionary Techniques) is one of the main jutsu categories which uses chakra. Unlike ninjutsu, the effects of genjutsu are not real, being only illusions by those who fall victim to it. With this info we can already see that the mastery effects (even durations) would primarily scale off from chakra stat, I would love to see little supportive scaling from Intellect too but since Im no balance expert this is up to @Ueda really. First of all I would love to introduce new sensory like technique because most likely all of the techniques here will be homing and long range - therefore you need a way to get them off you. Also it would be nice to implement mechanic similiar to blocking basic attacks but chance of genjutsu not being succesfull if target has high chakra. Sensory like technique - Release - would have 80 chakra points requirement and will clean all debufs from genjutsu to characters 2 tiles from the user. Would be instacast and have 1 minute cooldown I feel like this way you could possibly encourage teamplay against this support mastery. Level 10 technique - Illusionary Crows - This technique sends flock of crow hallucinations to cause bleed like effect on the target slowly chipping away his HP, I think that 10 seconds duration and 20 base damage done overall through that time would be good enough to help you farm and at the same time not be as rewarding as full intelligence masteries for example. I feel like first technique should be damaging and PvE able so low level players arent discouraged by the mastery not helping them level up in those first crucial parts of their story. Therefore I would suggest long cooldown to about 1 minute. Level 15 technique - Blinding - Technique that blinds the target for duration of 5 seconds where he can see only his character and black screen around it, mobs would need to have different effect which I suggest to lose aggro for 2 seconds. Long cast time to, maybe even 2-3 seconds. But shorter cooldown so it can be used in group fights more effectively. This technique could scale its duration off chakra points with same scaling as agility reduces cas time speed. Level 20 Technique - Illusionary roots - This technique could be either single snare, but I suggest making it snaring the target and everyone 1 tile around him too for 2 seconds with roots around their legs. Again high cast time around 3-4 seconds and high cooldown. This technique could scale its duration off chakra points with same scaling as agility reduces cas time speed. Level 25 technique - Exhaustion - This one will go nicely with the next technique, it would induce slow, base percentage 30% but would scale with chakra to everyone 3 tiles around the user, for 4 seconds with 1 second cast time. I feel like this one is less harmfull and could again have more normal cooldown like the Blinding about 20 seconds. Level 30 technique - Rellocation - This would be Genjutsus users either Escape or Dive in plan. It would be 1 second stand cast and would transform the user into flock of crows moving 7 tiles, or until physicall obstacle is met, forward, with invincibility during that animation. The rellocation would take 1 second overall and Additional effect is that anyone you pass through will have 10% of their chakra drained. This would have 1 minute cooldown and heavy chakra cost. Level 35 technique - Chakra disorientation - To top it off this would increase Chakra cost of targets jutsu by 100% by distrupting his chakra flows. Of course would be heavy costing on user too and would have 3 seconds stand cast time, but should have cooldown under 30 seconds. On mobs this would neet to have different effect aswell so I suggest doubling the damage of next hit they recieve. This kit I feel like would make Genjutsu users very valuable in teamfights and not encourage them to dive right in with their long range long cooldown and cast times, but still leave them with at least some sorts of defense in 1v1 situation, plus they would have weaker farming at cost of being more annoying at PVP. Feel free to discuss, add, adjust or criticize anything in the comments, cant wait to read all of it and hope we will get this mastery in game one day nwn.

Elemental mastery LVL 10 LVL 35 LVL 10 LVL 35 LVL 10 LVL 35 LVL 11 LVL 40 LVL 10 LVL 35 Non-Elemental Mastery Chakra medic LVL 10 LVL 35 Int medic LVL 10 LVL 35 Int Weapon master LVL 10 LVL 35 Str Weapon master LVL 10 LVL 35 LVL 10 LVL 35 Hidden Mastery FAN LVL 10 LVL 35 Gentle Fist LVL 10 LVL 35 Bubble LVL 10 LVL 35 Note: Many new players are confused about which stat to put in this guide might help you on what stats you should choose. But feel free to choose anything and change the builds. Thanks so much for providing the builds for this post! @Aesthetic and thanks @Vaxure for the help with gentle fist.

Man, this is amazing! Well done on the escort I love this RP.

There's always a lot of questions, or rather complaints, that come in the form of "How come X mastery can do this while Y mastery can do this". Eg. Why doesn't fire have any targeted jutsu, How come Gentle Fist has 100 CP cost and long cooldown on their main jutsu. This is going to be a short series explaining the design behind more unique masteries, or atleast the thought process when I designed them. Balancing Playstyles The idea behind each mastery being good at a different thing comes from classic table-top RPG archetypes. However, instead of building classes around Tanks, Supports, Damage classes. In the ninja world, every class is able to fight, but can also be built to be more tanky, or do more damage, or in some cases be built for utility. Eg. having a Earth Ninja that purely uses agility and chakra, standing behind his team mates in a group fight to quickly cast CCs for his team. Or having a fully attack medical ninja vs. having a fully support medical ninja or anything in between. While some of this is held back by meta, or by incompleteness in features. This is the vision™. We want each mastery to be different in not just how they fight, but how they are experienced on more fundamental levels, with each class having unique leveling experiences, focus in progression, and different improvements when they rank up and how they should traverse the world safely. Tools Ninja aka. Ten Ten Style The mastery is built with a different sustainability dynamic than other masteries. While Tools Ninja can only use their jutsu a limited amount of times before needing to restock up on tools, and become virtually useless when they don't have tools, Tools ninja jutsu cost half of what their non-tool ninja counter parts cost in terms of upfront Chakra Points. While a Fire mastery ninja would be able to last longer out of their village, a tool ninja who is well stocked can last twice as long in a single encounter without charging chakra if their stat distribution is done the same as their enemy. Their downtime would be much less, giving them more time to punish enemies who have ran out of chakra. At the cost of ryo, they get a more complete set of jutsu, being the only mastery that at full potential can utilize Stuns, AoEs and high damage potential. Like a Trapper in D&D, they can set up traps to prepare for fights ahead of time and will find their use more in situations like defending against incoming raids, and fights in the Forest of Death where they can hold their ground more. Traps will be increasingly useful as more possible scenarios are created in the game. In terms of game economy, they also serve the purpose of being ryo sinks where in-game currency is given an almost direct conversion into fighting power. As time goes on and there are more smaller villages in between to stock up on tools it may become more convenient, but for now, having your team members hold tools for you is one way to extend your usefulness without returning to villages. Sword Master Although a lot of people are going to like the idea of carrying around a sword, just because they look aesthetically pleasing. The overall design of the Sword Mastery play-style is based on giving players who love hunting gear in MMORPGs a class just for them! In Nin Online, gear are mostly cosmetic, because we don't want to force players to look a certain way in order to be PvP viable, or look a certain way to be optimally powerful. Looking how you want to look is a big part of giving people the ability to immerse themselves in their ninja identity and role play. The class is based around the way Suigetsu is going around the ninja world trying to collect all the swords of the 7 Swordsmen of the Mist, except on a larger scale, where you go around fighting different enemies to collect swords from all over the ninja world. Playing any hybrid of Sword Master with an elemental mastery will give you a hybrid of both, because having the best swords won't matter as much when only half your kit relies on it. As time goes on and more of the game is fleshed out, I hope to have hundreds of swords with unique abilities, so switching between them can be useful in different scenarios. There should be a good combination of swords you get in different ways. Ones which you can do by simply finishing missions. Ones where you have to hunt bosses for days or months, and when you get them, they are the rarest items in the game. Ones which you can just buy from a shop. Ones that you can only buy from a shop somewhere obscure. Ones that you can only earn from events like we did back in 2013 (and have honored till today. Only Shauri will ever hold a Tsuarigi sword as a player!) To be honest, the current state of Sword Master is something I'm quite unhappy with and am still hoping to distinguish their fighting style more. And... There's still a lot to be said regarding why things are a certain way, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask them and I'll answer them in the next development log!

Rory's Development Log #7 Chunin Exam Arena, Ino's Flower Shop, Konoha buildings & more! Dear Ninja, This is going to be a pretty long, detailed development log, I'd like if everyone take their time to enjoy each picture and sentence, because It's a whole lot to take in! First of all, I'd like to apologize for the lack of development logs, and the scarcity of live streams recently. I've been making good progress, however, a lot of this is hard to show in pictures, so I've kept them to myself. Some of these things include GUI pieces like the new shop window, buff display, team/party menus etc. These things are usually not much work on my part, and thus I don't enjoy showing them off, so I wait for Whack to code them in and let him show them off. I've been concentrating on maps for the first demo release, a lot of which has been rebuilt since the previews which were shown. Konoha is about 1/2 done at the moment. I took a short break on that to touch up on certain other important visual aspects, and interior maps. Here are some previews of the Konoha map in action, along with some new buildings & locations! I'd like to stress that this is not everything, and I'm showing things selectively! Random Building/Shop Ino's Flower Shop Besides this, I've also spent some time to improve the previously one colored, boring water sprite into this! It's a small addition, but it really gives the village much more life! This is a big thing I took a really long while to do, it's only the exterior of the Chunin Exam Finals arena! This is a screenshot of a playground in Konoha. It is based off (but not copied exactly from) some scenes of Konoha from the latest Naruto movie. I've also spent some time on some really juicy looking interiors. These are iconic places that every Naruto fan should recognize in an instant! Chunin Exam Finals Arena Chunin Arena within the forest of death, where the preliminaries are held! The hands took almost two days to complete because of all the detailed shading it required, but it's finally done. The rest of the arena still needs touch up, but I'm glad the hardest part is done. I spent some time working on jutsu scrolls. This pales in comparison to the other work above. But I'd like to show it off anyway. Some of you were complaining of me being "lazy" and not posting dev logs, so I decided to get this one out. So you can rest assure that progress is coming along smoothly on my side as well as Whack's! For some bad news. First early Alpha release delayed! Don't panic! It's only delayed till the 1st of August. We initially wanted to do it on the 31st of July.. so the delay is of one whole day! That's all for now! Regards, Rory