August 2017

8/31/17

General

Bunch of work on invisible infrastructure.

Bugfixes

Fixed some features that had "reverted" (e.g. monk armor skill) due to a bad merge. Fixed backstab calculation so that you have to be behind the monster for it to work. Fixed some of the spam when doing "sell all". Fixed sell-all to sell empty bags (have to do sell all again after they are empty).

Official Notes

8/30/17 #2

Guild

• Bracers no longer interfere with ninja sneak
• Ninjas now get +1 darksight for every 2 guild levels
• Doubled Rak claw-sharpening bonus to +2 wc per level
• Reduced the enemies-near radius from 10 to 8 for focus ability
• Shout verb for ninjas is now "murmur", and for rak ninjas is "purr"
• Added ATM, identify table, etc. to ninjas guild shop

Bugfixes

• Fixed falchion to be wieldable (but took away the find-weakness bonus)
• Fixed the dup-item message when buying back something sold from a bag
• Fixed it so non-VIPs cannot save in the VIP inn.

Official Notes

8/30/17

Guild

• The new Ninja guild is in the Sakura Dojo, an RD northwest of Stensele, 15th level. You can get a guild-only portal to it for your home, ninjas only.
• Quest requirement is the Secrets of Sidewinder Caverns.
• No race restrictions. Welcome to all. There is custom artwork for all races.
• Core Bonuses: Bonus 1/level to Blades, Sneak, Dodge, Meditation and Hurled (for throwing stars, later)
• The Sneak ability is disabled whenever you wear metal armor, but other materials like leather are OK -- not exactly the same as the Monk's guild armor restrictions. *You still get guild XP for kills as long as you are wielding a blade (or for a Rak or Naga, unarmed or Claws).
• Crystal platemail also disables the sneak bonus. Let me know if you find other armor that probably ought to. (Dragon mail is all no-sneak except for gold dragon mail, so that's probably the best ninja guild armor).
• Giants are not very good at sneak normally, but can get up to +15 total (or even higher with magical bonuses) as guild members.
• All shields currently disable sneak.
• Claw Sharpening: Rakshasas get sharpened claws: +1 wc-cut per guild level
• Speed: Big move-speed bonus: -20ms/level (almost like an extra speed boots each level)
• -5/level to all Arts and Elements. I know some of you wanted Spellblades, and that could potentially be a future specialization. Would have to come with downsides, though.
• Backstab: Bonus +1/level to your weapon skill (+10 skill at guild max) when you backstab an enemy. They simply need to be facing the same direction as you for it to count as a backstab. Works with ranged attacks as well as melee attacks. The skill that's augmented is whatever you are using for that particular attack.
• Fast Healing: There is no HP bonus for the guild. Instead, there is a ninja-only focus command, which uses mana to fast-heal you when out of combat.
  • You can do it every 60 sec, scaling to every 30 seconds at guild level 10.
  • It takes 20 seconds to fill you up from 0 to max-hp at level 1, scaling down to 10 seconds at guild level 10, regardless of race.
  • If you move/cast/fire while focusing, it breaks concentration and stops midway, and you have to wait for the cooldown again. You can move on purpose to stop focusing, **if you want to stop burning mana.
  • If you run out of mana, focusing stops and the cooldown starts. You can do partial heals if you do not have enough mana for a full heal. Similarly, if your hp fill up, focusing stops as well.
  • If any enemies are nearby (within 10 squares), you cannot focus, even if they cannot reach you.
  • Giants cannot focus while shrunken, because being shrunken also requires concentration and their tiny brains can only do one thing at a time.
  • All races except Giants can fully heal by focusing. Giants can heal anywhere from 35% (Stone) up to 61% (Storm) because of their limited mana pool, but they do it in 3 to 6 seconds at max guild level. Tigers need 100% of their mana to heal fully (0 to max), and other races use less, down to Pixies, which only use 11% of their mana to heal fully. Nagas can focus in any form, but would be wise to do it in frog form.

Commands

• The focus command has a new button-bar icon, but I couldn't get it working in time because the game crashed, so it should be ready for next reboot.

Official Notes

8/28/17

General

• Merchant changes:
  • Lowered the merchant cap for dwarves from 20 to 10. I untrained all dwarves above 10 down to 10.
  • Lowered the shop sell cap at 10 merchant to 1500 gold, 2000 for VIPs.
  • Cut merchant skill cost in half.
  • Looted/bought items are now tagged with the original finder.
  • Selling the item only uses merchant skill if the seller is the original finder.
  • You can see the original finder for an item by appraising the object.
  • Everyone can sell an item they did not find, but it will not use their merchant skill.
  • Merchant skill now only works in shops with no discount.

Commands

• New "lootsplit" command for sharing the proceeds from group expeditions:
  • Every item picked up by a group member is invisibly tagged with the group.
    • This does not apply to items that have ever been bought or auctioned.
    • It will not be tagged if all members are not in the same map when the item is picked up.
• When all group members are in a shop, each group member can type "lootsplit", and all their items (including in bags) tagged with the group will be sold and the profits distributed evenly among all group members.
• This is cooperative: If one group member holds out, their stuff is not divided up.
• The merchant skill used for computing the price is the average of the merchant skill of all members of the group.
• You can also use "sell-split <item>" for splitting the profit for a single item.
• lootsplit/sell-split will skip over items that are tagged with a different set of group members than when the item was looted.
• If one or members are not in the group (i.e. logged out) at the time of the call to lootsplit, nothing will get divided up. You all need to be there. The game will not tell you which players were present at the time each item was picked up. Keep track of your group members if you are going to use this feature.
• For technical reasons, it splits the proceeds on a per-item basis, so the exact amount (in silver) may vary very slightly from member to member if it is not evenly divisible.
• You cannot 'buyback' items sold with lootsplit. This command is for dumping junk, and 'buyback' would be hard to implement and probably abuse-prone.
• For all lootsplit computations, the group leader is considered just another member. The order of the members does not matter, nor who is the leader. You can all (or some) quit, come back and recreate/rejoin the group, and your looted items will still have the tag for that particular group and can be split. All that matters is the members of the group are the same as when the item(s) were picked up.
• The change is not retroactive; old loot does not get the tag unless you group and then go pick it up.

Official Notes

8/22/17

General

• Formula changed for how Death Protection is calculated:

Resist chance = (monster chance - your dpro)
Monster chance = 10 + monsterLevel * 5
Your dpro = resist-death + protection*3 + level*2.5

• Discarded the graph library's Dijkstra shortest-path cache and instead keep my own small cache of paths it has found.
• Changes to Rod of Death Ray:
  • Made them artifacts since they're apparently OP due to recent changes.
  • Lowered max charges to 25
  • Added them to angel/archangel inv artifact list
  • Changed angel/archangel artifact drop rates to 1/50 (up from 1/250)
  • Added them to the generic random artifact list so they'll show up in other spots that generate artifacts.
• Death ray change that was reverted. See that thread for updates.
• New Armor skill, which is being tuned and then will open up for all.
• Instanced Alaria training tower.
• Instanced the pirate Ziggurat.

New "button-bar init" command for setting your button bar to the default buttons. Useful for older characters.

• Enlightenment now shows what level monster can kill you with death ray.
• ed a hidden escape hatch to the new Tutorial. In the map outside the cabin, go to the lower left corner of the map and it will prompt you to leave. Useful both for experienced players and for folks who are stuck due to edge-case bugs.

Bugfixes

• Fixed major horrible bug in tutorial where nobody could finish it. (The skills training.)
• Fixed VIP casino instancing.
• Fixed bug where you could drink someone's potion in their home.

Official Notes 1 Official Notes 2 Official Notes 3

8/21/17

General

• New VIP-only Armor skill. Each point gives you +2 protection. Protection acts like AC for every damage type except internal damage (poison/drowning), and also 3% death protection per point of protection.
• Changed protection from 5% death resistance per point to 3%.
• Enlightenment pot now shows your protection level.
• Earmuffs now give you immunity to a banshee's Death Wail.
• Only a few monsters have death ray now -- Demon Lord, Reaper, Arch Dracolich, Cacodemon, gold dragon, Asgard banshee, and of course the new Banshee's Death Wail.

• Reverted the min-death-chance, and Enlightenment now shows your death protection. I will be looking at ways to make Death Ray scarier without being an instakill, and without being a simple clone of Petrification. Thanks to all those of you who participated in the debate.

Bugfixes

• It was always intended that your resistance would cap at 99%, but I did the calculation wrong, so everyone who's been reasonably well-equipped has been immune. That's going to change. However, 99% feels like too low of a cap, so I've changed it to 99.5% for now. I actually roll random(1000), and if you roll a 4 or lower, you die. Meaning an average of 1 in 250 death rays will kill you if you are maxed on DPro without having actual immunity (e.g. from dragon mail).

For in-depth explanation and calculations, Official Notes

8/20/17

General

• Added a mission for the Moon Quest, on the Alaria mission board.

Official Notes

8/18/17

General

• Added Helpless Forest Warlock mission.
• Moved Mist Temple mission over to Alaria mission board. Too many new players accepting it.

Bugfixes

• Fixed bug where some races didn't get the skills-training part of the tutorial mission.
• Fixed bug where you couldn't complete the tutorial if you quit right after fixing the portal.

Official Notes

8/17/17

General

• Minor new perk: VIPs now get 30% off displayed builder mode costs.
• Instanced Westerly Forest quest.
• Instanced the Botanica quest.

Bugfixes

• Fixed major missions bug that was causing those exception traces, and also preventing missions from being declined properly, etc.
• Fixed a bug where if you did the cat quest too slowly, the cat would never spawn.
• Made the same fix for the Troglodyte King quest.

Official Notes

8/16/17

General

• Fixed a Post Explorer mission bug that sent you to the middle of the ocean.
• Added autobag shortcuts "wands" (wands/rods into wand quiver) and "scrolls" (into scroll tube). "reagents" already exists, despite rumors to the contrary.
• Fixed bug in Flame Blade where it wouldn't give your mana back after dispelling.

Commands

• New "commands" command that shows all the commands you have available.

Official Notes

8/15/17

General

• Instanced Trog quest.
• Fixed "set spell" button-bar configuration option.
• Added a new "set command" button-bar configuration option.
• Fixed VIP shop selling.
• Fixed "withdraw all" in ATMs.
• New builder mode feature, suggested by the older Hail: You can now set an object's image using a photograph in your inventory. Drag the eye onto it to choose which photo to use. Heqet can now build that wax museum he's always wanted.

Commands

New "flee on" / "flee off" option for toggling automatic fleeing from danger.

• Experimental new feature: Various commands that bring up lists of players to act on will move certain players up to the top, including your friends, group members, the last person you talked to, and people in your current map. We'll see how it plays.

Official Notes

8/9/17

Misc

• Resurrection machine now gives you the option of going back to where you died (1 extra Crown).
  • Doesn't work if the map unloads, so you should use the option within a few minutes of dying.
  • Not available in all maps.
• Portable holes now show charges.

Bugfixes

• Disabled firing in shops because of a duping bug.
• Horn of plenty no longer resets its charges on every login.

Official Notes

8/7/17

General

• Multi-logins are disabled permanently. Easy come, easy go. (They were disallowed in Old Wyvern.)
• VIPs’ alts can now save in each other’s homes.
• VIPs can pick up items owned by their other alts, inside homes that they own. You have to drop the item for this to work. Drop it on the ground inside your home, and then an alt on the same email can pick it up.
• There’s a bug with dropping stuff in some of your home maps, which will be fixed on next reboot.
• There is a new kind of portal that lets you go to your alts’ homes. It also lets you go to friends’ homes if they have invited you with the “invite” command. You can see who you have invited with “invitelist”.

Commands

• There is another new kind of portal, a Party Portal, for throwing parties at your house. There’s a new command, “party on/off”, which throws a party.
• Added an “anchor” command that keeps you from moving. Type “anchor on”/”anchor off”. Useful for when you want to stand still in MAH or VIP lounge or wherever. It was bugged and permanent (until logout) before, but it’s fixed now.

Official Notes

8/2/17

General

• Put in a band-aid for the lag. Seems to have solved the problem for now -- there's been no lag all day.
• Animated HoF images now show up in your character list and Leaderboards. However, you have to log in once with that character for it to start working.
• Fixed invisible trees in many areas.
• Your summons can no longer curse you.
• Lots of tutorial bug fixes based on player testing.
• Fixed age-old bug with jar of fireflies in bag being only as bright as glowstones when you save with them and then take them out.

Stat Changes

• Everyone in the group has to be in the same guild for anyone to receive guild XP.
• You only make guild XP at half the normal rate while in a group.

Official Notes