Last week I had the pleasure of visiting the NCSoft building in Austin, Texas and talking to some of the Lineage 2 Team about the upcoming update, Chronicle 4. C4, which is now live on Public Test Servers, brings an unbelievably massive amount of new content to the game — about 800 megs worth of new areas, systems, and classes.

While C3 addressed many issues in the lower player areas, making the 20 and under experience more friendly to new players, C4 caters almost entirely to upper-end gameplay. The maximum character level has been raised from level 75 to level 78, and a 3rd class change available at level 76 has been added. Players who complete their 3rd class change transfer will be able to purchase new skills at levels 76, 77, and 78.

While 1st and 2nd tier classes required you to purchase different levels of skills (IE Shield Mastery 1, Shield Master 2, etc), the 3rd class change opens up the ability to enchant skills. To enchant a skill you also need to have skill points and (for the first enchant on any skill) the rare item “Giant’s Secret Book”, only obtainable by participating in the newly added Olympiad, creating them via the Castle manor system, or completing your 3rd class change — or buying it from other players.

Not all skills can be enchanted, but enchants are more versatile than leveling a skill up; when you enchant a skill you get to pick what to improve (mana cost, power, accuracy, recharge rate, etc). The downside is that enchantments don’t always work. If you are insanely lucky you can enchant a skill to level 20 or 25, but failure has a price: you lose skill points and the enchantment level drops to 0.