This post in other languages: Versão Portuguesa, Українська версія
This update introduces the long-awaited obstacle avoidance and movement improvements for NPCs and monsters. Also it includes the final batch of monster skills for Prontera region and some quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes.
Pathfinding and obstacle avoidance
No more monsters getting stuck in textures and hitting you from a mile away. Hopefully. 
Now monsters and NPCs are aware of the level geometry and can plan and follow the path to the target avoiding any physical obstacles along the way, including any fences, trees, walls, bridges…
Monster movement abilities are also taken into account, so for example, fish stays in the water, the monsters that cannot swim don’t enter the water any more, crabs can enter water but cannot float, large monsters cannot enter tight spaces while small ones can, etc.
This is a big change that also affects the gameplay. Now you can use the terrain to your advantage in combat: run away from a monster by jumping over fences, use ranged attacks while standing on a balcony… But be careful, because some monsters do have ranged skills as well, and also if they understand that they cannot reach you, they may try to run away.
In addition to that, movement synchronization between client and the server is now also greatly improved. It’s still not perfect, there’s a lot of room for improvement on that side, but it should already feel much better compared to what we originally had.
Monster skills
Finally, every monster that you can currently see in the game now has proper skills. And they can use them in combat (and sometimes, out of combat) to their advantage. And every kind of monster has their own set of skills that makes them special.
We still have to balance monster stats, because a lot of these monsters did become more powerful now with these new skills. And we need to make bosses work properly and command their summons. That is going to be taken care of in the next update, it’s the highest priority now.
Full Changelog
Added
- Proper geodata and pathfinding for NPCs and monsters (see above).
- New monster skills for the monsters in the Prontera region (see above).
- New chat command:
/online, that shows the count of players online on the current world.
Changed
- Client-server movement synchronization improvements:
- Collision model adjusted to avoid monsters getting stuck in tight spaces.
- Desync detection system added that teleports the monster to the correct position when it detects a synchronization problem between the client and the server.
- Various other player and monster movement synchronization optimizations.
- Harvestable resources can now be properly looted after harvesting is finished even if you close the loot window pop-up.
- Monster spawn system adjusted to take the new geodata into account.
- Monster “Returning” state adjusted: it now makes the monster invincible to the damage-over-time auras too; Lasts for 15 seconds regardless of how far the monster has to travel; Health regeneration works even if the monster is still in combat.
- The monster “Returning” state now also gets triggered when the monster cannot reach the target for too long.
- Natural health recovery in combat is now disabled by default. Later it will be possible to enable/increase it with passive skills and/or status effects.
- Small monster stat adjustments:
- Cats and Zadoras Babies now can try to run away if their health drops below certain point.
- Parronite are now restricted to underwater movement, their movement speed is reduced.
- Normal attack range slightly increased for Gray Field Mouse and Scarabaeus.
- Gray Field Mouse and Stony Spider movement speed slightly increased.
- Thief Bugs now detect enemies under the cloaking level 1 effects.
- Hydra’s normal attack is now physical ranged and has a shorter range.
- Incorrect monster vision cone calculation fixed. Also monster vision is now limited vertically as well.
- Added server-side distance checks for NPC dialog interactions, mailboxes, auction.
- Various improvements regarding server-side error handling and logging.
Fixed
- Incorrectly assigned NPC/monster body sizes fixed.
- Incorrect “backstab” condition check fixed.
- Incorrect global skill cooldown check fixed.
- Fixed the order of NPC skill checks to fix some monster skills not being used by the monsters with high attack speed.
- Fixed a bug that made the client send revive request in the background after the player character has already been revived.
- Various server-side distance calculation fixes and improvements.
- Fixed various bugs in monster skill usage system.