Increased development support

Years of preparation work on the engine and rewriting the engine to be able to support updates of this caliber

Prior to 2020, Nin Online was written in Visual Basic 6, a programming language and IDE from the 90s. It was very outdated, lacking even basic modern computer functionality like scroll wheel support when editing code.

From 2020-2021, we rewrote the entire game engine (Server and Client) to be fully C# .NET.

The years following, 2022-2024 was filled with tedious work replacing all our dated technologies over time with modern alternatives and sometimes fully from the ground up. It also involved rewriting a lot of legacy code that was holding the engine back and modernizing code practices. Of course, we also couldn\'t completely halt development of the game while doing all this modernization, so the Nin Online community still received hundreds of updates ever

Thanks to all these years of work, Nin Online is in a good spot for expansion of features and content. We\'ve put in so much work into the engine that we\'ve been able to add entire features within the span of a day.

July

It\'s crazy to think that this is only a small portion of all the updates in July alone.

• More Coverage for Translations/Localization in the game

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• Ryukyu Trains Expansion

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• New Repeatable & Daily Missions

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• Most Binded Items became tradeable

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• Item Drop Rarity Indicators

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• Stat Balancing in unfair Tournament Match Ups

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• Faming Offline Blessing Players

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• Locating Mission Start Points in Mission Logs

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• Tutorial Pop-up Guides

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• Fainting Rework

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• Reverse Knockbacks (Pulling) Feature

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• Camera Panning in Cutscenes

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• Using Equipment in Waiting Area of Events/Tournaments

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• Shop Expansion

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• Housing District Expansion

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• Consistent Zoom Levels for all players (No more screen advantage)

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• Advanced Fog Effect for Mist Village and more maps

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• Added toggle settings for individual Desktop Notifications

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• Additional Anti-cheat System for Botting

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• New Route from Sand Village to Kinsen Quarters (8 New Open World Maps) and New Route from Mist Village to Takumi Village (7 New Open World Maps)

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• Swear Word Filter in Usernames

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• Jutsu Weapon Requirement Feature

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• New Graphical Damage Numbers

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• Increased Corp Sizes

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• New AI Moderation Systems

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• War Crimes & Military Police Rework

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• New Timing-based Mining mini-game

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• Secondary Entrances to all villages

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• News Popup on Main Menu

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• UI Window Opening Animation

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• Scroll-wheel Support on Minimap

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• Pathways to become Missing Ninja in various places outside of Prison and being Exiled

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• Berry Bushes and Fruit Cactuses

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• Kage Approval Rating System

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• Reworked Cloak of Invisibility Technique and Sensory System

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• Added Preliminary Visual Manipulation Genjutsu Support

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• Added Music Name UI at bottom left of screen

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• Animated Hitspark Splash Screen

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• New Mysterious Well Questline

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• Hyoketsu Prison Released

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• Criminal Ranks (eg. S-Rank Criminal)

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• HP and Melee Damage Rebalancing including Melee Damage with Level scaling for everyone

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• Right-click Chatbox Messages to report

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• New Teams HUD

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• Tournament Teammates Indicators

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August

As I\'m writing this, I\'m starting to begin to believe we\'ve managed to make more outward facing updates to the game each month than entire years prior to this.

• Drop Rate Blessings

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• Arrest Missions

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• Crafting Missions

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• New Item Pickup Animation (Where item flies into player)

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• Right-click to copy text or reply in Chatbox

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• Bandages, Honey and Antidote Crafting Update

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• Added total of 24 new monster drops and tons of new craftable recipes

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• 2 New Guild Perks (Gatherer and Artisan Perks)

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• Ramps / Slopes Traversal Feature

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• Added Boss HP Bar Feature that uses a larger HP Bar for certain NPCs

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• NPC random in-world chat bubble messages

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• Scheduled Server Maintenances Feature (Allowed us to schedule maintenances)

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• Player Target Window now displays the Buffs and Debuffs that user currently has active

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• New Keyboard Targeting System

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• HUD Buttons fade out when inactive

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• Melee Attack Sounds

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• Discord Notifications for In-Game Happenings

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• Hand Sign Animations when Casting Jutsu (Crazy this wasn\'t a thing before!)

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• Action Prompt HUD (X Key to Pickup etc.)

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• Map Links Display HUD (Map you\'re entering\'s name is displayed on screen)

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• Tutorial explaining Dashing & Targeting

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• Fishing Lines now have a curve and sway with the wind

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• Sounds are throttled when the same sound is playing too many times

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• Halloween Event

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• Added a ton of items to crafting, event shop, Halloween event, cash shop

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• Weapon/Taijutsu Rebalancing

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• Village Inns Added

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• Animal Pal Cosmetics Added

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• New Clan Leadership Systems (Hokuto Spheres)

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• Raid Music

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• New Players Start with Basic Jutsu

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• Housing Panel Upgrades

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• Added Clan Leader Clan Icons

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• Clan Leaders are able to manage Clan House furniture

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• Improved Fire Jutsu Animations

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• New Mobs - Blight Leeches (Level 19) and Crimson Leeches (Level 21) & Missions

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• Improved Tree Arena map graphics

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• Custom House Entrance names

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• Animated Wires (from building to building)

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• Maps, Organizations and Items Renamed to Original Nin Lore

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• Headband Selection UI

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• Defame on Fainted Screen

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• Player Equipment Viewable on Player Info Window

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• Avatar Maker in Ninja Menu

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• Level Range Exclusive Bosses Unlocked

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• Team Deathmatch Events

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• EXP Orbs Animation

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• Recommended Server Feature

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• Water-Only NPCs Feature

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• Support for Decimal Cast Times for Techniques

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• Removed OpenTK Requirement from Client and .NET 8 Upgrade

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• Player Login Queue System

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• Beginner players start with 10 Jutsu slots instead of 5

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Hawk Server (South America Launch)

[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/40800315/0de5a6b7255c7c9f3858079a44e096b7055e7d05.png\"][/img]

One of the happiest moments for me this year is finally being able to bring back our South America/Brazilian Game Service.

In the early 2020s, we had a Brazil Server, but it was impossible to keep sustaining due to costs, lack of monetary support and difficulties setting a stable server with infrastructure in the region being limited. This coupled with the game engine still not being ready to support two servers easily, we sunset the service once before finally re-opening the service again in August 2025.

[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/40800315/258e05cf5d3f11f9ad73c2090b3a928d52e56cad.png\"][/img]

We instantly saw an outpouring of support from the community, which almost unanimously chose for the new server to be a \'Fresh Start\' server. In a single day, the player base saw a large spike in players flooding the new Hawk server and beginning their ninja journey in a brand new ninja world.

Since launching the Hawk server, South America has out-paced North America as our largest player base, and I\'m happy to see that Brazilian gamers love Nin Online! We\'re continuing to look into how we can improve support for the region.

Future Expansions

We hope to expand to more regions in the future as it becomes more sustainable cost-wise and for our team to handle more regions, localizations and manage more services and players.

Post-launch Updates (September - December)

We weren\'t slouching for the remainder of the year, bringing you even more exciting updates once we were done with polishing the game and ensuring a better early game experience for new players.

September

A lot of early September was spent improving support for the Brazilian server as well as polishing TDM Mode and new mission types. After August, more time was spent working on content as well instead of just features (the below will mostly be features but also some important content updates!).

• Added BR-PT Hieroglyph support

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• Preliminary Asian Language support (Japanese, Chinese, Korean)

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• Added Blessing HUD toggle between different blessings when more than one is active

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• Steam Login System (Completely New Login System for Steam Users)

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• Mission Deprecation System

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• Anti-hacking/Anti-cheat system improvements

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• New, faster map transitions

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• Chatbox Spacing Improvement

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• Sticky Venom Technique

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• Moved Mist and Sand documents area into a separate room

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• Corp Reworks

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• Added Metamorphosis Buffs Feature

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• Added new Shop layout for Scribes

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• Added capability for Jutsu attack animations to cast at max range when target is out of range

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• Heal, Revive and Exploration Mission Tasks

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• Added Patrol Duty Missions

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• Hats that hide hair now make your hair look like it\'s been stuffed into the hat instead of going bald

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• Improved Combusting Vortex Technique artwork

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• Weapons no longer contribute to Jutsu damage

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• Capture The Flag Events

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• Kuraken Tentacle and new Daily mission \'Too Many Tentacles!\'

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• 4 New Arenas

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• Tons of Clan Items

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• Added Daily Healing and Reviving Missions for Medical Units of each village in their base

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• Added Great White Sharks and Daily Missions

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• Premium Messenger Hawks

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October

October focused a lot on content updates, not mentioned much below, as well as the new Capture The Flag mode!

• Hotkey bar now disables visually when charging chakra and guarding

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• 2nd CTF Arena

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• Flag Direction for CTF Mode

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• Local Geo Location Service (Removed reliance on 3rd party services for Geo Location Lookup)

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• Knockup Feature for Jutsu

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• Items Obtained HUD became a universal real-time actions notification HUD (displaying event updates and EXP gain)

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• More Halloween Event Updates

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• Improved Realistic Gravity Physics & better arc motion when jumping (Acceleration and Terminal Velocity)

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• New TDM Arena (Waterfall Arena)

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• Wild Rabbits Mobs

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• Lots of new items, cash shop items, event prizes and craftable items

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November

November focused a lot on a major PvP rework that made the game world a lot friendlier to early game players, streamlined the PvP button, and provided more clarity on who is an enemy. This update addressed the longest running complaint from new players and has since shown to improve player retention.

• Winter Event

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• Land of Iron Rebalancing

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• In-game Discord buttons to link to official village discords

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• Crystal Beach Cave Region with bunch of new content

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• Replaced AI Generated animations in Introduction video in line with player feedback

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• New Fishing Mini-game

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• When you first login to Nin Online, you will be prompted to scale your UI

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• Added Basic NPC Platforming

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• Added new (Tilda key default) Minimap overlay feature and shortcut

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• Tunneller Mount

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• New Romaji Boss Drops

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• Tonfa Rework

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• Reworked RP Systems for Exiling/Pardoning

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• Lots of Art Fixes

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• New Toad Mountain boss - Gamakura and new legendary weapon

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• Reworked Game Map Data to use JSON (which allowed us to later add many more map related features with ease)

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• Complete PvP Mode Rework

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• Bounty System Rework

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• Enemy Territory Feature

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• Duel System

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December

Admittedly a slower month for Hitspark. In December, I took more time off because I worked over the new year last year and regretted it. I told everyone on the team to take the last 2 weeks of the year off if they could, and we held our own little Secret Santa.

• Inappropriate Name Reporting

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• Max level can now be set in the server settings

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• Added repeatable Bounty Missions for Special Division Corps

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• Reworked entire player saving system

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• Team Duel feature

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• Added Christmas Cash Shop Furniture Items

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• Added Ring Equipment

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• Added Equipment Slot Item Type Preview Icons

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• Added Weapon Type Requirement to Items/Equipment

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• Added Bounty Claiming Mission Objective

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• New Crafting Recipes and Items

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• NPC Loot Dice Roll System

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• Bounty Station Interface

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• Weapons now scale attack speed based on AGI

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• Added Map Zone Indicators on HUD

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Overall Development Progress

Some years, I\'ve recorded our progress in terms of easy to collect numbers from our workspaces; last year, this was...

• 670 New Items

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• 93 New Mobs, Bosses & NPCs

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• 33 New Jutsu (Not all released)

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• 28 New Hairstyles

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• Over 500 Programming Tasks Completed

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• 4954 Code Commits (13.5 Code Commits a Day)

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• 228 Patches Pushed (1 Update every 1.6 Days)

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Summary

Firstly, I want to thank my excellent Hitspark Team for working with me this year to get so much done. Without you guys, all this wouldn\'t have been possible. Thank you to the artists who have contributed art to the game as well as Game Masters who spend their time making sure the community is having fun with Events and putting out fires (metaphorically) on an almost daily basis.

Secondly, thank you to the players who have been around for longer than just a few months now, who have seen the game blossom over the years. I\'ve learnt a lot from working on Nin Online and you guys have seen it in real-time. In all honesty, I\'m getting a lot older and my tolerance for handling situations personally has decreased as I have to focus more on my health, so you probably won\'t hear from me personally as much, but I\'ll always be here and working on the game.

Lastly, to the new players who joined us in 2026. You\'re really lucky to have joined us in the best time of Nin Online\'s history thus far. Nin Online is thriving now, but it\'s had a really long history and it would mean a lot to me if you learned about the history of the game and the man who inspired the game and made it happen in many more ways than one, who is no longer with us.

Thank you for playing Nin Online and I can\'t wait to show you ninja what is in store for 2026!