Funcom's released a new update for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, and it seems to be a pretty extensive set of changes. In addition to the usual class tweaks, this latest patch has split up a questline into four parts, re-allowed limited spellcasting on mounts, and revamped active blocking.

Here are the full set of patch notes. Feel free to go ahead and update your client while you're reading, so you can get back into the action as soon as possible.

Player Character

Archetype

• The bonus magical damage granted from Mystical Attunement has been doubled for Mages.
• Spells that were incorrectly receiving bonuses from increased magical damage will no longer scale with increased magical damage. This adjustment will only affect such spells that were not meant to have scaling with the increased magical damage bonus. This resolves issues with enhancement spells like "Pact with Set" where the health loss was too high for the trade off for the bonus to damage.

Barbarians

• An issue where Barbarians lose strength between the levels of 42 and 45 has been resolved. Please note that this is only between those specific levels.

Demonologist

• Infernal Knowledge and Diabolic Insight will no longer appear as hostile spells and will still persist after death.

Necromancer

• The bonus gained from magical damage has been increased on all damage-over-time (DoT) spells.
• Despoil the Soul duration has been substantially increased and is no longer removed on death.
• Frost Blast's area-of-effect (AoE) has been changed to be a 90 degree cone in front of the caster.
• Shatter now additionally works on targets affected by Frost Blast and Ice Shackle.
• Dark Knowledge and Vile Insight will no longer appear as hostile spells and will still persist after death.
• Mark of the Devourer duration has been reduced to 60 seconds.

Ranger

• Raid-level bows and crossbows for Rangers have been corrected to add ranged DPS instead of melee DPS.

Combat

• Active blocking has been revamped to bring it back in line with the original design. Active blocking will now correctly display a buff in the debuff GUI to indicate the effect. You will now have an initial stamina cost upon activation and shielding bonus rather than evade chance. Attacks and heals performed while in “Active Blocking” will also have a reduced effect.
• Certain group buffs should no longer keep you in combat when your pets are also in the group.
• Melee pets will now do splash damage.

Items

• Bags that were not able to be equipped can now be equipped again.-
• The two-handed edged weapon Earthwrack has now received its visual appearance back.
• Exaltate's Girdle, Exaltate's Armbands, and Hellbreaker Hammer will now appear correctly.
• Javelins have been revamped based on player feedback. The length of all current javelins will now be of decent length. All javelins have also received some adjustments to the throwing and holding animations, as well adjusted so all characters correctly hold the javelin by the shaft.
• Polearms have been revamped based on player feedback. All polearms have been standardized to a new larger size.

NPC

• Solo monsters, minibosses and bosses have been adjusted to be more of a challenge than what they had been previously for level 70 and up. The adjustments will not affect grouped and raid monsters in any way as this will only affect solo monsters. The change will ensure that the game is both entertaining and challenging at higher levels.
• All players in a raid dungeon are now hated by the boss while the boss is under attack.
• There should no longer be multiple versions of Aquilus in the Armsmans Tavern.
• Champion of the Honorguard will now use his axe throw ability less frequently.
• The adds for Vistrix and Yakhmars have had their AI revamped.

Massive PvP

• Battlekeep owners should now be able to apply to attack other battlekeeps without any problems.

Mounts

• You should now once again be able cast spells while mounted. There will be some limitations on which spells and which type of spells you're able to cast.

Playfield

• Raid playfields should now properly reset correctly.

The Black Castle

• This Kopshef Province dungeon has been completely redone. We encourage you to pay it a visit. Overcome the challenging new encounters along side with your companions and reap the rewards. This group instance is aimed for characters in the 30 - 35 level range.

Quest

• Kidnapping and Torture: You can no longer interact with the palisades while the NPC is burning. This should help make it clearer when the quest can be completed.
• Ante Up - Giants Approaching: When the timer expires you should be able to interact with the Rock to restart the event.
• Master of Gargoyles: Cha will now thank you for completing the quest.
• Bowls of Set: The quest should now properly display the goal names.
• The Honoured Dead of Cimmeria: This quest has been removed and revamped into 4 smaller quests with new rewards. The new quests are "The Honoured Dead I," "The Honoured Dead II," "The Honoured Dead III," and "The Honoured Dead IV."

Tradeskills

• Opening Alchemy Tradeskill book should no longer crash the client.
• All vendor-supplied tradeskill resources have had their max stack size set to 20, with the exception of city-building components from vendors which have the max stack size of 100
• Mages and Priest mobs will now drop an Alchemists Cache randomly, which contains random resources for the level-range where it was found. This will make it possible to obtain the resources that have not been dropping for alchemy. - Item was causing problems, deactivated until next update
• All crafted shields will now have gem slots.

General

• You may now limit particles to show on (All / Raid Members / Team Members / Self).
• Particle effects and banners for PvP building have been optimized.
• The client should now disconnect from the chat server after camping.
• Cimmerian and male Stygian dancers beware - dancing near the edges of tall cliffs may be fatal to your health.
• Characters will no longer slide when jumping and then moving as you're landing.