Lineage II has just released new information regarding their upcoming free expansion, Gracia. Highlights include a new dungeon, faster leveling, and new skills and items!

Part of the notion of a quicker, more accessible and fun Lineage II with the release of Gracia doesn't involve just faster leveling. We've improved many of the skills so that playing Lineage II is even more fun and exciting than ever before. The amount of inventory items has increased greatly-we've filled up the lower tier of items so new players can get decent gear a lot sooner, added new tier weapons to shops and even the chance of refining items into more rare and valuable items. Finally, we've spruced up some of the hunting areas in the game, like the Cruma Tower, so players can get more use out of them.

The skill system has undergone many changes, all for much for the better. The idea is to let skills help players in battle a lot more, enabling them to defeat more, tougher opponents, support each other better in raids, and let them advance in status quicker. Generally, all short-ranged physical skills now enjoy a boost in power along with a reduction in MP cost. In other words, they hit harder for a lot less mana. A couple of popular, useable skills like "Escape Shackle" have reduced casting times as well. Kamael skills can now be used without souls (though the more souls you use, the more powerful they are), which is a nice boon to our newest race. We've also increased the critical damage rate for magic across the board.

"…Numerous and mysterious disasters suddenly befell the peoples of Aden: whole fields of healthy crops blighted overnight, unknown plagues laid waste to entire villages, and the weather itself became strange and unpredictable. Doomsayers, once deemed insane, took on a fresh and terrifying confidence. The sages sought to reassure the people, but their words lacked conviction-they too had gazed into their crystal globes and read the cards, and they too felt foreboding deep in their bones.

The land's adventurers and other citizens had been encountering strange dreams, where they fought against endless hordes of shadowy enemies until overwhelmed. Some would wake up with headaches or wounds; some wouldn't wake up at all. The sages determined that the increasing tales of a dream world and the tales of prophecies had to be connected. They studied the bodies of the dream-killed and listened to the tales of the survivors.

Check out the five new screen shots that accompany this dev diary, and read on for the rest of the diary!

Lots of changes were made to the Lineage II public test server!

The 2nd Throne - Gracia - Part 1 update is now live on the Public Test Server! Be one of the first to try out the new Vitality System, new quests and skills, changes to crafting and PVP, and much more!

Check the official Public Test Server forum for more info on The 2nd Throne - Gracia - Part 1 update Public Test Server!

More details of what to expect in this Gracia update can be found on the Gracia Preview Site !

Ah, the daily grind. We deal with it every day in work or school, and it wears us down. Do we really want to deal with it in our games, too? Of course not, and that's why Lineage II has announced an update which will make leveling faster and easier. You can visit the preview site for the update here .

One of our greatest assets is our fantastic group of players, who are a very dedicated, hardcore bunch that spend a lot of time and effort building up their characters and battling each other in big player vs. player (PvP) fights like castle sieges. However, the process of building and leveling characters can be a very long and frankly tedious process in Lineage II, which may serve as a barrier for letting a much larger group of potential customers to fully enjoy our game. While in the past the developers in Korea have continually built the game with this hardcore mentality firmly set, with the release of Gracia, they've completely changed the rules and made Lineage II even better and a lot more fun.

The big change is that leveling a Lineage II character is now extremely easier-and we say "extremely" in a fairly conservative manner. A normal new character that goes through the beginning quests can gain a few levels in just a few minutes, and players should find leveling now quite easily, all the way up to level 60 and beyond. Players that could spend several months of hardcore grinding to get up to a competitively high level will now be able to accomplish the same feat perhaps a month, if not less. They'll also be able to get to their occupation changes a lot faster, so developing a selection of specialized characters is a much more realistic option. Building characters is now a lot fun and easy to do, rather than a long-term activity many players would rather do without. This drastic change in leveling is due to several factors.