Guide: Client Patch Notes

[Spirited]

Introduction

Conquer Online has a notoriously bad website. Their patch notes have been broken since 2010 and have never been fixed. This threads helps construct a full history of major patches for Conquer Online. I may continue updating this thread; but with Conquer Online being a declining game, I probably won't. Technical details of patches end around 5600. I provide some opinion here and there.

Conquer 1.0

The original client is buggy and difficult to run on modern versions of Windows. Though the client was clean and had a unique brown-wood interface which is no longer available, it's not recommended that you run these versions. You can easily take the interface from these patches and apply it to early Conquer 2.0 patches which are more stable. Otherwise, you might be fixing client bugs by reassembling the executable / hooking the client.

• 4217 - The alpha release of Conquer 1.0 with 16-bit graphics and open PK across all maps.
• 4267 - New item looks and 32-bit graphics. The last major patch for Conquer 1.0.

Conquer 2.0

The golden standard for classic servers. Most run on patch 5017, since older patches are less stable. My favorite patch from this series is 4294 since the interface is extremely clean without CPs, potency, etc. It contains a client bug around string termination for chat, but it's Conquer 2.0 at its bare core.

• 4282 - The first patch for Conquer 2.0 with a new blue interface. Some graphical glitches.
• 4294 - The first Christmas in Conquer with some fixes for graphical issues. The cleanest Conquer 2.0 patch.
• 4312 - Second rebirth was added, initially only to Dragon server and then rolled out to others.
• 4336 - Conquer Points added (CPs), along with the shopping mall and lottery center. MagicalBottle and MiraculousGourd added.
• 4353 - Potency added, and level cap was increased to 135. 
• 4353 - Background music and fix for patch 4351, which contained a virus (no longer available to download).
• 5002 - Demon Exterminator quests, +12 items added, WuXing oven, new methods of adding sockets, and GMs are blue pigs.
• 5017 - New fonts, nobility ranks, pathfinding, auto team invite, chat filters.
• 5022 - Guild leaders get 3000 CPs when winning guild wars, trade partners, item locks, PK rules changed, level cap increased to 137.
• 5031 - New client with gold dragons and watercolor background added with cleaner looking buttons.

Conquer 2.0 New Dynasty

A favorite era for most in the community, but divisive. Ninjas were a difficult addition since they were overpowered. The addition of talismans were also divisive as it gave preference to paid players. This was a very clear sign that most free players were just content for paid players, and a large percentage of the community left to create private servers.

• 5053 - New hairstyles added, new shields and headgear options, flame lit event.
• 5066 - TQ official servers leaked, many exploits. Confiscator system, arrows auto-reload, new item composition system.
• 5078 - Talismans, guild war halos, and flower rankings added.
• 5095 - Ninja class, bound equipment, PK tickets no longer required.
• 5103 - Quiz show added and a disconnection bug was fixed.
• 5127 - Enlightenment system, interaction emotes, new chat log interface, and world chat.
• 5135 - Some interactions removed for being a bit too explicit (can easily be re-added to client until patch 5290).

Conquer 2.0 Raiding Clans

Another favorite era which introduced horses for mounted travel. Arenas and clans were fun additions to PVP, but the expansion was pretty short lived. Lots of private servers in the community emulate these patches. First and last names were removed almost as quickly as they were added.

• 5165 - Frozen Grotto map, mounts, clans.
• 5187 - Martial arsenal system, arenas, and couple PK tournament.
• 5212 - Poker system, alternative equipment switching, refinery, horse racing, item stabilization, arena store, first and last names.

Conquer 2.0 Legends Return

This expansion added a lot of good and bad. Most legacy players quit at this point due to more unbalance added by Monks and item systems. Though, mounted combat and mount armor gave a lot of players more customization options. PVP was a big center focus as TQ attempted to win back players (hence the expansion name).

• 5250 - Subclasses, artifact system, weapon accessories, boss hunting, new warehouses and shopping mall.
• 5290 - Reincarnation, pure skills, permanent stones, clan qualifiers, elite PK tournaments, hide buttons button.
• 5310 - Max level increased to 138, new house maps and horse racing maps, logout button added, create character auto-logs in.
• 5355 - Monk class with updated skills.
• 5376 - Team PK tournaments, capture the flag, team qualifiers, new spear and wand skills, and escort missions.
• 5395 - First macOS client. New garments, VIP window, wrangler subclass, and mount armors added.
• 5517 - Guild recruitment, new menu options, mounted combat.

Conquer 2.0 Invasion of Pirates

Lots of players left again with the introduction to pirates and skill boosting systems which off-balanced the classes even more. Besides the large boost to paid players which led to large player gaps, the lore of Conquer Online was also broken. The Japanese were pirates, not the Chinese (who barely knew how to fish). Most of the private server community ignores patches higher than this, as community interest in Conquer Online is dead at this point. Nation flags also led to more racism and nationalism between players.

• 5570 - Pirate class, new pirate themed maps.
• 5607 - New skills and weapons added for ninjas and warriors to help them compete with other classes.
• 5619 - Mine caves removed due to abuse from botters, first anti-bot system patch added which began to kill the botting scene.
• 5622 - Chi system added, which allowed players to dump money into stats.
• 5639 - Nation flags, more gambling systems, new composition and subclass systems.

Conquer 2.0 The Oriental Assassin

Ignoring the bad translation of the expansion name using outdated terminology, this patch introduced additional PVP options and map overhauls. For those still in the game, these were very welcome changes that brought some players back for a short time. Other systems that focused on paid players and gambling again also drove them away. Private servers rip maps from these patches. Most patches from now on are for temporary cash-grabbing events and free tickets to try gambling/lottery.

• 5697 - Assassin profession added to archers, composition systems added to one Forge menu.
• 5706 - Skills and items modified for assassins and archers.
• 5729 - Champion's arena, character transfer options, and hunting bots built into client for paid players.
• 5761 - Jiang Hu added for partitioned overworld PVP anywhere.
• 5838 - Conquer 3.0 as a remake is canceled, and maps are overhauled and merged into Conquer 2.0.
• 5920 - Epic quests for getting overpowered weapons in the game, Sky Path event, and Apex of the Forbidden City event.
• 5932 - Roulette wheels and gambling game managers added, cross server travelling, attribute point manager, login rewards.
• 5939 - New character creation, Ninja war events, and ninja skills.

Conquer 3.0 King of Kung Fu

TQ got very shamelessly money grabby at this point and embraced sucking wealthy players dry. They experimented with a lot of ways to draw in crowds of players, but this ultimately demanded that players spend large amounts of money to compete and participate in these events while holding a large sum at the end of the event for them. It turned into a gambling competition for real world money, which is a dangerous bridge to cross. The game is only gambling and PVP at this point, which is where I lost focus on keeping up with events.

• 5987 - Dragon Warrior class added, mine caves return, new bosses, new server events for paid players.
• 5993 - Way of Heroes system added to aid in level up experience, tower ascension event with eSports prize.
• 6000 - Added quests which can reward you 690,000 CPs for already being completely overpowered.
• 6005 - Added bidding for a Kingdom Guild War event (the higher you bid, the greater the chance you can compete).
• 6023 - Increased server transfer price, added more poker tables, slot machines, wheel of fortune, and more gambling games.
• 6073 - Removed Flash dependency from the login screen and updated with new art for Taoists.

Conquer 3.0 Taoist Ascending

At this point, TQ continues to embrace that their game is unbalanced and broken. They hold tournaments for battle power (potency) and continue to host routine gambling game events and items which improve attributes. They begin boot-legging mounts and bosses from Blizzard games and pop culture. This will continue for the rest of Conquer's history so far (ripping from anime, games, movies, etc).

• 6075 - New epic weapon and skills for Taoists, sashes are now mobile warehouses with 200 slots.
• 6085 - New login screen image, new boss which looks very Diablo ripped called "The Chaos Ripper".
• 6118 - Fast & Furious event which is just a race on a previous event with higher CP rewards.
• 6216 - New PK log interface for showing who you've killed.

Conquer 3.0 Might of Shadow Fan

I can no longer write descriptions for these expansions. It really is the same formula over and over again now. Introduce a new class and weapons that people need to pay money into, introduce new PVP and poker tournaments for paid players, steal content from other games, rinse and repeat.

• 6385 - New Windwalker class, weapons, and skills.
• 6569 - Cross server poker, team PK tournaments, and guild wars which they call "Super Guild Wars".

Conquer Online past this point is not worth looking at (in my opinion). They add Dominos gambling games, more lottery, even more poker tables and "instant play" poker features, devils from Diablo, mounts from World of Warcraft, ninja skills and tailed beasts from Naruto, the nether from Minecraft, in-game FIFA world cup betting, etc. Do yourself a favor and don't invest in Conquer. It crashed in 2014 and never recovered.

[_zaphod77_]

According to some old posts, 4353 was where the level cap was raised to 135 and potency was added. TQ have removed this information from their patch note to give the impression that potency/battle power was always there.

I can 100% confirm that 4351 does NOT have potency, and will need a 4353 private server to test if that is indeed where the potency bit showed up. It's 100% when the VIP stuff showed up, as is completely obvious from the filenames.

[Spirited]

According to some old posts, 4353 was where the level cap was raised to 135 and potency was added. TQ have removed this information from their patch note to give the impression that potency/battle power was always there.

I can 100% confirm that 4351 does NOT have potency, and will need a 4353 private server to test if that is indeed where the potency bit showed up. It's 100% when the VIP stuff showed up, as is completely obvious from the filenames.

I'm going to go off the assumptions that I heard previously about the patch, but I'm interested about when they added potency. I'll try to start up a client soon and verify your findings. If someone else can verify that before me, then I'll go and fix it up. I might not be able to get to it this week since I'll be traveling.

[_zaphod77_]

4353 is 100% the one that added potency to the interface. i tested myself, connecting to my source, even though it doesn't do potency and was 4351. The potency number showed up at the upper left corner of the status box.

This makes 4351 the last client version before potency, and 4353 the point at which PVP became 100% pay to win.

While many other people prefer pre CP, CP is good for private servers because they can add ways to gain CP in game, and also have their own donation rewards. And they can always not hand out the CP at all, and remove the shopping mall NPC, and it's pretty much classic conquer.

also, lol pirate lore. pretty sure they were just cashing in on the pirates vs ninjas meme. :)

and ninjas were japanese too, not chinese. so lore was actually already broken. :) Katana and shuriken are japanese. there were chinese sabers that were similar to katanas, though, and there were throwing stars as well.

[Zedaf]

Looking through the various patch notes, I can see there are things I would like to have in my server from as late as patch 5165 (Frozen Grotto map), maybe even later than that. My question is, how do people decide on a patch? Would you find one which already has everything you want and then try to remove the things you don't want or would you go as low as possible and add things like maps which didn't exist? I want to have a largely classic server but there are things I would like to cherry pick from later patches.

Edited August 29, 2024 by Zedaf

[Spirited]

15 minutes ago, Zedaf said:

Looking through the various patch notes, I can see there are things I would like to have in my server from as late as patch 5165 (Frozen Grotto map), maybe even later than that. My question is, how do people decide on a patch? Would you find one which already has everything you want and then try to remove the things you don't want or would you go as low as possible and add things like maps which didn't exist? I want to have a largely classic server but there are things I would like to cherry pick from later patches.

Generally, I think it depends on what you need from the other patches. Maps are generally not tied to a specific patch, but mounts best require a higher patch. 

[Zedaf]

4 minutes ago, Spirited said:

Generally, I think it depends on what you need from the other patches. Maps are generally not tied to a specific patch, but mounts best require a higher patch. 

Yeah that makes sense. I guess you would need to consider, "is this something that would require new calls to be made by the client, to the server", if the answer is yes, you will need a patch high enough that those calls would be made. If the answer is no, you can probably add those additional requirements yourself (maps, meshes etc. visual stuff basically)

[theshadowpriest]

Love your work Spirited, keep it up. 

Was doing some digging to feed my nostalgia for old conquer, and just wanted to comment on the noteworthy changes between 4294-4348 for clarification on your OP

About Conquer 2.0:

Patch 4282 was Released November 1 2005
News article was posted "Upgrade Conquer Online 1.0 to 2.0" On November 1 2005
News article was posted warning "DO NOT run Patch 4283 before 00:01 Nov. 15" On November 2 2005
News article was posted "Upgrade Conquer to 2.0" On November 14 2005. 
Patch 4284 was Released November 16 2005

Clarifications about 2nd Reborn, "CO Points" Currency and Potency Systems:
 

4312 - Second reborn system was added. It was added to Dragon initially as a "test" and phased out to other servers from there.

4336 - Conquer Points currenty was added, along with Talisman and Garment slots and the Shopping Mall

4353 - Potency System was added 4353, Level cap was also raised to 135 here.

Failed to find actual patch notes from before 4292 for further clarification 

Patch Notes.txt

[Spirited]

On 3/1/2025 at 2:56 AM, theshadowpriest said:

Love your work Spirited, keep it up. 

Was doing some digging to feed my nostalgia for old conquer, and just wanted to comment on the noteworthy changes between 4294-4348 for clarification on your OP

About Conquer 2.0:

Patch 4282 was Released November 1 2005
News article was posted "Upgrade Conquer Online 1.0 to 2.0" On November 1 2005
News article was posted warning "DO NOT run Patch 4283 before 00:01 Nov. 15" On November 2 2005
News article was posted "Upgrade Conquer to 2.0" On November 14 2005. 
Patch 4284 was Released November 16 2005

Clarifications about 2nd Reborn, "CO Points" Currency and Potency Systems:
 

4312 - Second reborn system was added. It was added to Dragon initially as a "test" and phased out to other servers from there.

4336 - Conquer Points currenty was added, along with Talisman and Garment slots and the Shopping Mall

4353 - Potency System was added 4353, Level cap was also raised to 135 here.

Failed to find actual patch notes from before 4292 for further clarification 

Patch Notes.txt 29.92 kB · 0 downloads

Thanks for the extra notes! I'll get things updated.

[CptSky]

My own notes (originally based on yours Spirited, but verified more the 5016-5100 range for COPS X):

5016: Nobility & Team Aura Groups

5022: Mentors/Apprentices, Suspicious items, Trade partners, Locked items

5028: Flash Login Added

5031: Synchronized Date & Time

5035: Shields lvl 120, Plumes, Headbands

5039: TBD -- new exec

5053: Flame Lit Event

5055: TBD -- new exec

5066: Arrow auto-reload, New Composition System, Free Items

5072: Talismans, Flower Rankings

5078: Halos

 

5089: Ninja

5095: Ninja

5103: Quiz Show

5127: Enlightenment, Flower Ranking, World Chat, Low HP effect, New Chat Interface, Different Gems Images

5165: Mount System, Clans

5187: New Password Cipher

5212: Alternative Equipment, Refinery/Stabilization

5250: Subclasses, Artifact System, Boss Hunting

5290: Reincarnation, Clan Qualifiers, etc.

~5310: Compressed Maps

5376: Team Pk Tournaments, Capture the Flag, etc. <-- Source

5392: VIP Window

5517: Attacking on Mounts (broken)  <-- Source

5532: New Password Cipher (Unknown)

5557: Achivements

5622: Chi System

5639: Country Flags

...

~6178: Flash Login Removed

6605: Latest 2.0-ish, before meshes were updated. (10/13/2017)

6606+: New meshes being rolled out slowly.

 

 

 

 

============

 

5089: Ninja

5101: Quiz Show

5127: Enlightenment, Flower Ranking, new action UI

5160: Guild branches removed

5173: New account server encryption

5183: Classic CO (Unsure if special server build)

5200: Alt Equipment, Texas Hold'em Poker

5205: Magic Artisan can downgrade gear to level 15 for a DB

5212: Refinery

5250: Sub-classes, Artifacts, 3-6th floors Frozen Grotto, Boss Hunting

5287: Elite PK Tournament, Clan Qualifier, Pure Skills, Reincarnation

5302: Gender-specific titles for nobiility

5310: Level 3/4 houses, gender-specific transforms (and 5313)

5350/5351: Monk

5376: Skill Team Pk, Capture the Flag, Team Qualifier, Spear & Wand skill