Episode Updates (RO)

Major changes in the geography and history of the world take place as Episodes in the Ragnarok Online timeline. As the development team is located in South Korea, this list will consist of updates made to their particular servers for developmental consistency.

NOTE: According to the kRO site, the earliest update utilizing the word "episode" was Episode 2 (featuring Lighthalzen), which doesn't really make sense in the broad scheme of things. Therefore, episode information is cross-referenced from the Korean Wikipedia.

Episode #	Episode Updates	Date Added
1	Start of the Adventure	2002 August 03
2	Lutie	2002 Deccember 17
3	Comodo	2003 February 04
4	War of Emperium	2003 May 02
5	Juno ~ Forgotten Legacy of an Ancient Era	2003 July 15
6	Beyond Rune-Midgarts (The Global Project)	2003 October 07
7	Village of the Utan Tribe ~ Umbala	2004 January 27
8	City of the Dead ~ Niflheim	2004 February 23
9	Branch Job System	2004 April 19
10	The Republic of Schwarzwald Einbroch ~ The Steel Town in a Red Haze Lighthalzen ~ The Apex of Lights, The Shadow of Darkness Noghalt ~ The Abyss Lake, The Tower of Thanatos Hugel ~ A Haven for the Forgotten	2005 March 29
11	The Religious Nation, Arunafeltz Capital City "Rael" ~ Sacred Precinct of the Goddess Veins ~ A Hidden Gorge of Thor's Volcano Third Story of Arunafeltz ~ Nameless Cursed Abbey	2006 July 11
12	Nightmare of Midgard, Destruction of Morroc	2007 October 17
13	ASH VACUUM Encounter With the Unknown El Dicastes	2008 June 25
14	Bifrost Eclage Decisive Battle	2010 July 01
15	Fantasmagorica Fantasmagorica Second Story ~ Memory Record	2013 July 02
16	Banquet of Heroes	2015 February 25

Renewal

At one point in RO's life, the developers felt that the game had reached its limit in trying to compete with newer and more polished MMORPGs. So in 2008, development began on RO's Renewal, which would change the way everything worked in the game. After about 10 months of testing, RO was renewed on 2009 June 17.

The following compares the more major changes to the game.

Pre-Renewal (2002-2009)	Renewal (2009 - Current)
EXP requirements increased exponentially with each level-up.	EXP requirements increase linearly with each level-up.
Cards influenced your attack power directly. (Made 4-slotted Level 1 weapons more desirable than Level 4 weapons.)	Cards that influence your damage now only affect your weapon attack power. (Level 4 weapons became more desirable.)
Players were able to achieve instant cast with high DEX and cards.	Most skill casting is now composed of both a fixed cast time and a variable cast time. (The fixed component of the cast time cannot be reduced via stats.)
Old formulas made magic users very powerful in battle.	Revamped formulas weakened magic users and buffed melee players.
DEF on gears contributed more to decreasing damage received.	DEF on gears are now of little to no significance.
Character performance was more stat-dependent.	Character performance became more gear-dependent.
Players were limited to 1 hotkey bar when it came to using skills. (Battle Mode alleviated this to some degree, but players could not customize their hotkeys.)	Players can now fully customize all their hotkeys and have the ability to view 4 rows of hotkeys for skill usage.
Every monster was unique in terms of stats and difficulty.	Monsters were streamlined to be more homogenous and difficulty was amped down significantly.
No EXP penalty for killing monsters several levels higher or lower.	EXP penalty incurs for killing monsters 15 levels higher or 5 levels lower.
No drop penalty for killing monsters several levels higher or lower.	Drop penalty incurs for killing monsters 5 levels higher or 10 levels lower.

See Also

• List of Unimplemented RO Features