S1→S2: Korea's Season 2 as a preview for Taiwan

✍️ Alice・愛麗沙

Season 2’s first four months in Korea

Taiwan column = Korean date plus the 444-day mean lag — an estimate; Taiwan may merge or pull items forward (the 9/9 gem revamp came early).

Season 2 arrived in batches just as Season 1 did, but with one turn Season 1 never had: the rule changes on 8/13 and 9/17 were both aimed at “players refuse to swap to the new runes”. Every section below comes back to that.

The new gate: magic pressure and magic resistance

Season 2 added a second number alongside combat power. Spaces under the keyhole’s influence, such as abyss and raids, have magic pressure; characters have magic resistance; the gap between them decides how much damage you deal. Nexon only published the direction. Korean players measured the curve (recorded on the Korean wiki, unofficial):

There are two versions of the cap. A guide site and July player tests say 40%; the Korean wiki quotes in-game text saying 50%. It may have been changed in the 8/13 patch, so this site lists both.

The mechanism to watch is the asymmetry. Below the pressure, every 1,000 halves your damage; above it, it takes 4,000 to reach half the cap. So the value of resistance is concentrated in “just reaching the pressure”; past that, each extra point returns much less. This is why Korean players talk about the “overpower line”. Someone a little short of the line should spend before someone already well past it.

Where resistance comes from: S2 runes at ★9 epic and above carry base resistance; the community measures about 300 per slot for a 10-star rune, enough through Very Hard. Hell and above needs resistance gear made from magic stones (the afterimage and sea-abyss lines; provisional names), and at the top is the Drakein weapon (provisional name) that opened on 7/16. Actual thresholds: Kabrak Intro about 2,000; Runda Very Hard 2,200; Runda Hell 2 was lowered on 9/17 to 6,000 required with pressure 6,600; Hell 3 needs 7,200 with pressure 7,800; Airel Very Hard needs 3,000 with pressure 3,500.

Arithmetic: the real cost of one S1 rune slot. An S1 ★8 carries no resistance, so wearing one leaves that slot 300 short of a ★10. Filling it with sea-abyss gear: each coating gives +14 for about 8,000 dk; 300 ÷ 14 → 22 coatings, about 176,000 dk. In Season 2’s first three months Korean players were willing to pay that, because the S1 rune’s unique effect was worth more (the community’s rune-value calculator puts one unique effect at +24–27% expected damage).

Why S1 runes were stronger for Season 2’s first three months

This is the part of Season 2 most worth remembering in Taiwan, because it explains every rule that came after.

Soon after Season 2 began, players found that S1 ★8 combinations, especially ★8 emblems with awakening (such as “Distant Light”, provisional name), beat the S2 ★10s they had just obtained. A widely reposted 8/12 test swapped two 10-star runes back to 8-star old ones. Resistance fell from 7,200 to 6,600, yet the same abyss Hard auto-run times went from 1:41 / 1:53 / 1:44 to 1:32 / 1:13 / 1:07, about 30% faster. Read it carefully: both old runes he switched back to were transcended and the two new ones were not, so that is the transcendence gap, not only the generation gap. But the conclusion holds: nobody wanted to swap.

Nexon acted in two steps. 8/13: block Blessing of Night from stacking with S1 awakening. That did nothing; the old combinations stayed first choice. Announced 9/9, effective 9/17: S0 and S1 rune unique effects are switched off in Runda Abyss Intro to Hell 3, Kabrak Intro to Hard, Airel Hard and Very Hard, and Nightmare Drill zones 1–30; S0 runes also lose them in White Succubus Very Hard. The runes can still be worn, base stats and enhancement remain, combat power still counts them. Behind those doors only the numbers are left.

What this means for Taiwan: on the day Season 2 starts, S1 runes will not stop working. But expect that whenever old runes beat new ones, Nexon will find a way to make them not count. This rule was added three months into Season 2; whether Taiwan’s Season 2 starts with it already in place, nobody knows yet.

Runes: ★10, new tags, two seasons of rune words

• Cap ★10: legendary and mythic both sit at ★10. S2 legendary weapon, armour and emblem runes carry a Light, Dark or Dragon tag, and Molly sells jars for each tag.
• Rune words, memory imprints and transcendence imprints now start at ★10 legendary; in S1 they started at ★8 legendary.
• Promoting S1 into S2 loses no enhancement (stated outright at the official showcase).

Source: Korea’s NEXON NOW 룬 승급 probability page (post-maintenance 2026/6/25 version); weapon, armour, accessory and emblem carry identical numbers (only the ★9→★10 mythic outcome is weapon/armour only). Three runes of one slot go in, one comes out; an old season’s epic and legendary rows have no “fail” — you always get a rune. That is the bridge between seasons. The Korean wiki’s reading: drop the old rune two rarities (legendary → new elite, epic → new rare), and a success adds a star.

Arithmetic: exactly the same shape as Season 1. 3 S1 ★8 legendaries → 40% S2 ★9 epic, so 7.5 for one. S2 ★9 → ★10 is 9.95% (plus 0.05% straight to mythic), and a failure keeps one rune, so on average 21 ★9s make one ★10. Multiply and it is again about 158 top old-season runes for one top new-season rune. Every season change produces the same number: old runes are a bridge, not a road.

Rune words are a separate line. S1 and S2 rune words sit on two pages and you cannot pick across them; the moment you activate an S2 word, the S1 one turns off. If your newly built S2 rune-word total is still below your old S1 one, the switch itself is a loss. Promoting an S1 rune into S2 also does not make it count toward an S2 rune word: promotion changes the rune, not which set of conditions it satisfies (the rune-word exclusivity piece has the full transition arithmetic). There is also a dedicated rune-word set for S1 runes raised to ★10 in their ”+” versions (Radiance+, Sunlight+ and so on; provisional names).

Transcendence imprints: effects already imprinted stay. But S1 transcendence materials cannot be used on ★10. From 6/25 they could not be listed on the exchange (listed ones were returned), their crafting recipes were removed, and the NPC buy price was raised temporarily, which amounts to asking you to sell. Because the new runes were so weak, the 8/12 live stream put S1 transcendence materials back on sale once more.

Worth a lookSeasons S0→S1→S2: what changed and what you keepKorea has changed seasons twice: level 65→…

Season skill, awakening, Soulstream

Trace of Night: Season 2’s season skill, made of class passives plus awakening skills (the core one is Blessing of Night, 15 seconds, 60-second cooldown). Nexon says it stays until Season 3 and is then replaced. That is the first time Korea said outright that a system has an expiry. Nearly every Season 2 emblem and rune plan revolves around Blessing of Night’s 15 seconds. In the same season the awakening cooldown went from 90 to 60 seconds (the awakening cooldown piece).

Soulstream: opens only at Lv100. The summed combat power, life force and charm of every character on the server each set the hourly automatic output of one of three souls, red, blue and yellow (five tiers, 0.018–0.108; membership +0.036). You can also buy with gold 30 times a week (starting at 10,000 gold and rising). Effects come in two kinds: stars (up to 3 levels, need all three souls) and dwarf stars (flat values, each uses one soul type), and they apply to every character on the server.

Here is Season 2’s biggest “gains value”: life force. The life force you save in Season 1 for processing facility Lv5 (10,000 / 13,000) gets counted again in Season 2, where it directly raises the whole server’s soul output. Life skills trained in Taiwan today pay across two seasons (the Soulstream piece).

Abyss, raids, tokens

Abyss: Bari ran its last week from 6/29 06:00 to 7/2 05:49, and you had to clear it to be settled. Runda opened Intro and Hard on 7/2; first settlement and Hell 1 on 7/13; Very Hard on 7/27; Hell 2 on 8/13; Hell 3 on 9/21. The new abyss’s difficulties again had to be unlocked from scratch.

Fossils: this time there was no conversion. After the 7/2 maintenance, “abyss fossil → mutated” and “red 3 → mutated 5” were deleted outright; the notice only told players to convert first. “Deep-sea fossil 1 → mutated 1” was added. The extra 67% from the Season 1 handover became zero at the Season 2 handover: the same currency, two handovers, two fates.

Raids: Glas Ghaibhleann retired before Season 2 began and Tabartas ended on 7/20. Both shops closed about a month later, after which their tokens became 100-gold boxes, and their achievements were deleted (claim support items first). Kabrak opened on 7/16, with Intro at about 65,000 combat power plus 2,000 resistance, and has a solo mode. White Succubus and Airel are side stories; they stay, with rewards switched to the current season. Every raid’s rune rewards became S2 runes.

Tokens unified: Bari’s and Tabartas’s hunt tokens were deleted on 7/2, and weekly content now runs on monster-hunt proofs. Their shop has a once-a-week ★8 legendary accessory rune selection box (500), an emblem enchant scroll box (300), dk boxes limited to three per server per week (300 / 300 / 400), and lets you buy raid and abyss weekly rewards directly. Korean players concluded that since a field boss now gives only 2 proofs each, buying the boss reward with proofs beats going to kill it.

Fashion and titles: Season 2’s compensation

Fashion: old sets’ 3- and 4-piece effects were raised to +220 / +450 (Taiwan’s notices already show these numbers). New sets from generation 6 add final damage +3% to the 4-piece, not back-filled to older sets (Nexon separately gave 20 premium fashion tickets per part). The same day added legendary pity, applied retroactively: every fashion-fusion failure since 2025-03-27 pays 5 fragments, every promotion failure 7, every pet-promotion failure 7; 100 converts to a box or ticket, and the compensation mail expires 2026-12-31 23:59. If Taiwan does the same, every failure you take now gets counted back in Season 2. That is one of the few places where a loss today is partly refunded later.

Titles: abyss title achievements with a hold effect had their clear status, count and title moved as-is into new generic achievements (the notice included a 16-row map). Once the old achievements were deleted, unclaimed support items were gone.

Five common misunderstandings

“Season 2 runes are always stronger than Season 1 runes.” For the first three months it was the opposite; Nexon changed the rules twice for exactly that reason.

“After 9/17, S1 runes cannot be used.” They can be worn, with stats and enhancement intact. Only the unique effect is switched off, and only in specified endgame content. The field, ordinary dungeons and places like Glas Ghaibhleann work as before.

“Promote an S1 rune into S2 and you keep the rune word.” Promotion changes the rune, not the rune-word condition; S1 and S2 rune words are two separate pages.

“More magic resistance is always better.” Past the pressure, every 4,000 only gets you half the cap. Spend on the stretch that reaches the pressure.

“Soulstream is personal progression.” Output is shared by the server (the total combat power, life force and charm of the whole server), and the effects apply to every character on it.

How Taiwan (October 2026) should use this piece

Taiwan is about a year from Season 2, so this piece is not for “what to do today”. It is for setting how far to invest once Season 1 arrives.

Do now:

1. Keep training life skills. Life force for processing Lv5 is used once in Season 1 and again in Season 2’s Soulstream.
2. Do not agonise over fashion fusion and promotion failures. Korea’s Season 2 retroactively refunded failures as fragments. Whether Taiwan does the same is unknown, but at least it is not a pure loss.
3. Keep running White Succubus. It is a side story and stays in both seasons.

Once Season 1 arrives (around December 2026 onward):

1. Treat S1 runes and transcendence imprints as an investment of about nine months (Korea’s Season 1 lasted nine months; players relay Season 2 at about six). Worth doing, but do not count “still usable in Season 2” into the payback period.
2. Use or sell S1 transcendence materials before Season 2. Korea locked them out of the exchange on the day Season 2 began.
3. Spend abyss currency before the Season 2 handover. The 67% you gained at the Season 1 handover becomes zero at the Season 2 one.
4. Clear achievements, mailbox and passes before the handover.

Ignore for now: Runda and Kabrak mechanics, Trace of Night point allocation, the price of magic-resistance gear. All of that is 2027.

What would invalidate this:

• Korea’s Season 3: Nexon only says Trace of Night stays until Season 3, with no date. If Season 3 starts at the end of 2026 (as players relay), the shape of “each season shifts the last one up two stars, and old effects go off three months in” will be confirmed again, or overturned. This site will update.
• Taiwan’s Season 2 starts with the 9/17 rule already in place, or skips it entirely: old runes would be worth very different amounts in Taiwan’s Season 2.
• The resistance formula was measured by players; one official change and it has to be recomputed. The 40% versus 50% cap is not settled either.

The full three-season picture is in Seasons S0→S1→S2; how to prepare for Season 1 is in the S0→S1 piece; run your own numbers in the season-carryover calculator.