I'm Back! What've I Missed?

[Ciaran]

Sooo I've been gone for more than a year now... can anyone get me up to speed? I'm mainly interested in any like huge major changes that've happened either storyline or gameplay wise...

 

[JayelleNephilim]

Welcome Back!

Besides checking the front page for recent news updates (Jan - March '08), you can look at this old thread for updates from sept '06 - march '07. Uncortunately our news page isn't archived (*cough* someone should fix that *cough*), so there is a bunch of news missing from in between. You could always search the forums, and browse the Tome of knowledge and Policy Plaza for newer threads with key infos.

 

[Ciaran]

Welcome Back!

Besides checking the front page for recent news updates (Jan - March '08), you can look at this old thread for updates from sept '06 - march '07. Uncortunately our news page isn't archived (*cough* someone should fix that *cough*), so there is a bunch of news missing from in between. You could always search the forums, and browse the Tome of knowledge and Policy Plaza for newer threads with key infos.

Yeah, I've been working on doing just that while everything installs again. From the looks of things everything is doing much better than the last time I played.

 

[JayelleNephilim]

Wiz gave me the archives link and I'm not sure if it's somethign I'm supposed to pass on, so I'll share the rest of the updates here until Dynak gets a functioning "News Archive" tab working for the front page:




* * * WARNING LOTS OF WORDS TO FOLLOW * * * * * * WARNING LOTS OF WORDS TO FOLLOW * * *

A couple of bard changes
- 22% bard haste added to the spell Relic: Fiery Warcy of Tarhyl.
- Relic: Lcea's Lament will now give you a minimum of +5 mana regeneration, even if your mana regeneration is capped.
- Patched in all prior notes from the development team.

Tue 10/04 2007 - Wiz

Fear!
Fully functional fear has been added to all zones. This fear does not make use of any advanced pathing, so it may behave slightly illogical, but it should work at the least decently. This also means that feared players will run away instead of being frozen to the spot.

We have also decided to give a limited instanced house to all players on the server above level 20, not just donators. Please follow this link for details.

Fri 20/04 2007 - Wiz

Thurgadin Quests
A series of quests, dubbed "Starfall 2 quests", have been added to Thurgadin. These quests offer two very good items for every class, and are tailored for levels 45-60. Despite the name they have no direct connection with the Starfall quests, and can be done entirely independently.

Mon 23/04 2007 - Wiz

Brief notes
In now:

* Fix to SNP newbie quest, mage side, Tomin step.
* Clockwork adjusted to drop a bit more loot (a la ASOM) due to the immense investment of time required to reach and kill him.
* Slightly higher cooldown time between Clockwork's abilities.

Next patch:

* South Newport int caster newbie armor quest items now have weight
* Plane of Nightmare very near live status

Wed 02/05 2007 - Thinkmeats

Upcoming Changes
Next Patch:

-The new elemental focuses are being implemented as outlined here.

Please note that only the focus changes are being put in at this time. The item changes are due fairly soon yet not quite complete.

-The Elder Bremm encounter in Plane of Water has been changed to work properly with the recent implementation of fear. He should no longer be so spooky as to fear you under the world.

-The Prophet of Tarhansar encounter in Plane of Water has been reduced in difficulty slightly.

-Axe of Brawn will be getting a new icon to solve the problem where some players see it as invisible.

-Stronghold of Enthann is very near completion. Look to see more of it in the next few days.

-Tower of Tarhyl is near completion. Look to see more of it in the next week or so.

Thu 03/05 2007 - Woldaff

Plane of Nightmare goes live
The Plane of Nightmare zone, Marlow's home plane, is now live. The physical zone to the plane is in Erudin Palace, in the troubled mind of a comatose prisoner. The zone itself has 11 fights ranging in difficulty from Patrol Master Dblash all the way up to Arbiter of Air, and the mass port spell will now drop as normal for a level 63 spell.

Thu 03/05 2007 - Thinkmeats

Stronghold of Enthann
Stronghold of Enthann, the culmination of the Valor line of zones, is now live. You can reach it using the key achieved in Plane of Valor by clicking on the portal located behind the NPC you received the key from.

Stronghold is comparable to late Inner Prison or early Thazeran's in difficulty.

Fri 04/05 2007 - Woldaff

Stronghold Balancing
After two raids on the Stronghold the following has been done to balance the encounters to their intended levels.

Denos, Chosen of Enthann has been given a few more abilities to liven up his encounter. This should not add to difficulty per say but should make it a tad more interesting.

Anos, Chosen of Enthann has been made slightly easier. You will find a longer cool down time following his main special ability and a slight reduction in his melee damage as the fight proceeds.

Fri 11/05 2007 - Woldaff

Upcoming Changes
Currently Live-

-Anos, Chosen of Enthann no longer area effects when he is not in play.
-Anos, Chosen of Enthann has had his slow mitigation reduced significantly.
-Lowered the drop chance slightly on archaic fragments for trash in Stronghold of Enthann (A couple percent).

Next patch-

-The spell Alter Plane: Tarhyl's Tower will begin dropping again in response to the zones impending release.
-Various items from Stronghold of Enthann will be tweaked to correspond to its difficulty. Look for a general trend of upgrades although one or two items will be getting downgrades.

Tue 15/05 2007 - Woldaff

Thazeran's Tower Fix
- Portals in Thazeran's Tower should be much more reliable. They've been moved over to a newly available scripted Area system, rather than the old scripts used to move players around.

Thu 17/05 2007 - Xeldan

Raid mob respawns
On account of the fact that a vast amount of raid content has been added since 2.0, and people are spending all their time raiding the same zone while lots of similar tier content sits untouched, we are changing the "average" raid respawn time from 3 to 6 days (with a random factor + / - up to 2 days).

Tower of Tarhyl will shortly be re-released into the game as a extreme high end zone, which is the only tier that might have a lack of options to choose from previous to this.

As a part of this all zones have been fully repopped.

Sun 20/05 2007 - Wiz

Notes
I've been working on the war recently, so the AI upgrades mentioned below will have to wait. However, I did get time to do a couple non-war things:

-The spell scroll for Alter Plane: Nightmare is now working
-Changed the emote text on 'a lujein clansman' to make the buff's role clearer
-Fixed races/classes on Summoned: Nightmare Arrow

Fri 01/06 2007 - Thinkmeats

Stronghold of Enthann
A few final changes to the zone are going in-

-Increased the amount of trash in the zone by a fourth.
-The Chosen of Enthann will now drop 2 loots 100% of the time.
-Spawn time on trash has been decreased slightly.
-The Enthann trials loot will be upgraded to be in line with the difficulty of the encounter. (Next Patch)
-Multiple chosen loot will be upgraded to be in line with the difficulty of the encounters. I will publish a list of the changes when the patch goes live.

*Note: The zone has been rebooted and respawn timers have been reset as a result of these changes*

Tue 12/06 2007 - Woldaff

Priest Archaic Fragments
With the reboot today(June 12th), Priest Archaic Fragments which drop from Lower Thazeran's Tower named have had additional drop locations added deeper in the zone.

Tue 12/06 2007 - Xeldan

Brief update
- Expanded the Rust Factory named-boost quote to include the key nameds outside the factory. As before, fighting monsters of the named's basic type will cause the named to be more likely to spawn.

- Added zonewide announcements for when the affected Rust nameds spawn. This should make it a bit easier to see when they've spawned per the above.

- Changed the text in the Lujein event in PoNightmare to make it easier to figure out. You guys will be pretty when you find out how simple it was =P

- Fixed a lot of kaezul war stuff.

Tue 19/06 2007 - Thinkmeats

Crystal Caverns!
Crystal Caverns, a 45-65 dungeon has been added to the game! You can find the entrance to it in the mines of Thurgadin!

Thu 21/06 2007 - Temellin

General patch
- Added logic for underwater mobs. In the future, water mobs such as fish will no longer fly out of the water they reside in and chase you over land.
- Fixed just about every bug on the bug list (see shardsofdalaya.com/bugs for list of closed / dismissed bugs)
- Reset the deities of all players to default (unsworn or class/race default) in preparation for the deity & alignment system.
- Readded a couple of disabled quests from Guardsman Scott in north badlands (eastern badlands tasks).
- Tagged a significant number of quest EXP-turnins NO DROP to put a stop to the alt PLing industry that has grown up around them.
- Increased the cash return when handing in charms to the charm trader.
- Increased the AE range on Modulative Conjuring to 100.
- Added various fixes and anti-lag tweaks to The War.


Tue 10/07 2007 - Wiz

Patch
- Itemized two new nameds in the Ruins of the First City.
- Fixed a whole lot of bugs!
- Added a journal system for quests. Only a few quests currently use it, but more will be added as we progress through the Quests for the People Project.
- Kickstarted said Quests for the People Project. See: this post for details.
- Revamped Jayla's Insight. The information gained from this AA is now a lot more structured and well, informative.

Wed 11/07 2007 - Wiz

Small Patch
-Fixed multiple small problems with Stronghold of Enthann loot.
-Fixed the chests in Stronghold of Enthann. They should no longer have a chance to crash the zone when killed.
-Added in a ton of finalizing stuff to Tower of Tarhyl. Release of ToT is approaching very quickly.
-Added in multiple new quests utilizing the new journal system. You can find bits of them in Goblinskull, Newport, Grobb and Oggok.
-Added in some preliminary quote for the continuation of the Blackscale quests. The wait is soon to be over!

Fri 13/07 2007 - Woldaff

A Little Update
* Grudge and Dis's Shank of Betrayal now have functioning focus effects.
* Many Kaezulian War mobs no longer see invis.
* The lowest tier of Kaezulian War mobs no longer summon.
* Kaezulian War named monsters now have significantly more hp and a bit more damage.
* Added a merchant and a banker to the PoN worshippers' hedge. It's pretty modest for now, but more stuff'll be coming soon.
*Xaxazan`s Ceremonial Patch can now be used by more classes
*Coda now sports a focus effect for caster users

Sat 21/07 2007 - Thinkmeats

A big update
* Fixed some spelling errors in Kaezul War item identify messages.
* Fiddled with many pieces of nightmare loot, especially that from Alpha Wolf Jeremiah on up.
* Changed Whirlwind graphic to be a bit prettier.
* Gave Dis's Shank of Betrayal a graphic.
* Platemail of Agility is now Chainmail of Agility, and is usable by chain classes.
* Changed 'Fleshhungry Buzzsaw' to 'Shadowy Buzzsaw', completely reworking the item in the process.
* Made Heavy Pneumatic Hammer clickable from inventory to make it useful as a pulling tool.
* Harmonic Mandible is now usable by many classes.
* Coda now sports Cast Speed 6
* Machine Crown's clicky has improved

Thu 26/07 2007 - Thinkmeats

Wiz's Changelog
- Added the first of the new learning quotexes that provide a new use for EXP after AAs and levels. These quotexes are sold in the Valley of Erimal. See forums for details.
- The entire world should be properly setup with water area definitions that let you skillup swimming and restrict where water-only mobs (like fish) can go.
- Considerably increased the amount of time you have to clear a wave of extremely difficult treasure map guardians, which will also reduce the amount of time it does to get the chest.
- Increased the amount of time you have to clear a wave of difficult or very difficult treasure map guardians.
- Improved the loot of extremely difficult treasure chests and added a ton of new items to the loot selection.


Sun 29/07 2007 - Wiz

Woldo's Changelog
-The Tower of Tarhyl is now live and ready to be explored. It is a linear progression raid zone starting at about the Inner Prison difficulty level and continuing on from there. You can reach the zone through the wizard spell Alter Plane: Tower of Tarhyl.

-Fixed the brewing combine for Stinky Badlands Brew.

-Next Patch: The item changes in their entirety are going in. Read more about it here.

-Next Patch: The first batch of player made books will be placed in game and added to the Erimal library. Read more about it here.

Sun 29/07 2007 - Woldaff

Thinkmeats's Changelog
- Prison Sanctuary is live. Good luck, you'll need it.

Mon 30/07 2007 - Thinkmeats

Tower of Tarhyl Fixes
-Fixed the problem with Archfiend Ghon's area effect spell. You should no longer get an annoying buff window when hit by his ae.
-Fixed the problem with a Djar Sheikh that had it hitting 32 times a round instead of 2. (One of my better typos I must say.)
-The flag mob for Ansaag should now be working properly.
-The two tribes which were previously not scoutable no longer see rogue hide as a whole. This should make it a little bit easier to see what is going on up ahead while still keeping scouts on their toes.

Mon 30/07 2007 - Woldaff

Small patch
- Added dialogue shortcuts to spare your keyboard the typing (and from being bashed in when you typo the same dialogue prompt five times in a row). See this post for details.
- Contagious diseases (such as rotting plague) can now be spread to you by being near, or trading with, diseased players and NPCs. Watch out who you associate with, they may be a filthy plague carrier.
- Frost King Rymaz Sunbane will now summon his bodyguards mid-fight if they are not killed beore attacking him.

Sun 05/08 2007 - Wiz

Fearstone Two: Stone Harder
Retooled fearstone:

>Enemies who harmtouch and fear now do not always do so--it's far less likely, for example, to eat three harm touches on a triple-pull of shadowknights.
>Meddled with some of the loot.
>Added four new nameds to the zone.

There are a couple minor issues (nameds are green instead of brown, one named likes to drop unstackable race: none food, etc) that will be fixed next patch, but I figured I'd put it live now because they're not particularly bothersome. Have fun =)

Wed 08/08 2007 - Thinkmeats

Disease tweaks
- Reduced the chance of being infected by another player's contagious diseases simply by being near them.
- Contagious diseases will no longer be spread to players below level 10 by other players (nor will players below level 10 spread any diseases in turn).
- NPCs can no longer be infected by players.
- If a player spreads a disease to another player by any means, they will not be able to infect anyone else for two hours (to prevent a single plaguebearer infecting everyone at the bank with several diseases).

Tue 14/08 2007 - Wiz

Some fixes!
- Fixed traps to work correctly. Traps in your home plane will no longer trigger on you, all other traps will work again.
- You can now see if someone is afflicted with a contagious disease using /cm stats.

Mon 20/08 2007 - Wiz

Little update
-Fixed the food and water dropped in Fearstone to be ALL/ALL.
-Meddled a bit with the final two encounters in the Plane of Nightmare.
-Fixed the Orchide Haversack dropped in Fearstone.
-Corrected the color of Fearstone nameds.
-Added more backend for Council of Innovation quests.

Fri 24/08 2007 - Thinkmeats

Little Rust update
Finally got around to hardening Silver against server crash and moving his timer over to the new one. All four of the lower-tier encounters in rust will no longer be borked by server crash, and all of them operate on the "unlimited time as long as you're active in the area" system.

Also, changed Mercury so that it's safer to rez in his room. When he was hardened against server crash a while ago, his drones were changed to not reset, but since players are used to adds depopping etc and the inability to rez in the room doesn't add terribly much to the encounter, I just put it back to the way it used to be (adds depop) to avoid confusion.

Lastly, as a side note, Clockwork's encounter will not be hardened against server crash. For a couple of odd reasons, it's essentially not possible to do without drastically reworking the encounter.

Mon 27/08 2007 - Thinkmeats

Small Update
-Put in a good deal of back end quote for the upcoming release of the post Heartlands Blackscale quest line.
-Added back end quote for the Plane of Earth. Expect to see Sihala making her big debut soon.
-Changed the clicky effect Fulmination to be slightly more powerful.
-Upgraded the heal component to the clicky Mending Flames but made it self only.
-Lowered the hitpoints slightly on Folerit Redsun in the Tower of Tarhyl.
-Made the spell Burning Feedback undispellable.
-Quests in the Plane of Valor and Plane of Water should now use the new journal system.

Fri 07/09 2007 - Woldaff

Hotfix plus upcoming stuff
Hotfixed and live now:

- Fixed the problem that could occur where Kadrax and Xardak would respawn at different intervals. They should now respawn together.
- Added in part of the back-end for the Thazeran, The Great Guardian encounter. More to come.

Coming soon(possibly next patch, more than likely the one after):

- Thazeran, The Great Guardian will be finished and added to Thazeran's Tower. This is the final encounter in the zone and will unlock quite a bit of lore about Dalaya.

Sat 08/09 2007 - Xeldan

Notes from today's patch
- Thazeran's Tower class-specific armor saw effects added, as well as a few tweaks to pieces for certain classes.
- Sandstone Girdle's focus effect has been changed to "Sihala's Blessing" - a weaker version of Runes of Healing - to not devalue higher tier charm focus effects.
- Legplates of Vituperation can now be worn by Paladins and Shadowknights.

You can check out all of the class armor changes in this thread.

Tue 11/09 2007 - Xeldan

Lavascale items tweaked
I reviewed Lavascale's drops and tweaked them to be more in line with the encounter's difficulty. Look for the upgraded versions in an upcoming patch.

Sat 22/09 2007 - Jayelle

I'm a biiiiig update and I need a biiiiig cereal
-The Council of Innovation now offers quests to bring you to the same maximum rank as that enjoyed for so long by Silver Crown adherents. Check their outposts in the Sea of Storms, Thurgadin, and Shadowdale for quests.

-A pair of new tier 2 raid mobs will be live after their items are added to the db, probably in the next patch.

-The "a loyal failures" no longer have variable level, since I found out that dire charm takes an hour to repop even if used on an innapropriate level target.

-Fiddled a bit with PS trash items.

-Upgraded Taraztu's Infernal Trap. It now works on root immune mobs, sports a recast similar to the paladin spell, does far more damage, is harder to resist, lasts half as long, and costs less mana.

-Added "PENDING NO DROP" tags to items from Lenny, Plaguefang, Fluxator, and for some unknowable reason, Ancient Wind Torrent. Take the first three seriously, ignore the last one.

Sat 22/09 2007 - Thinkmeats

Quick note
The Bits 'n Pieces council of innovation quest is once again active.

Thu 04/10 2007 - Thinkmeats

Plane of Water
I have gone back through all of Plane of Water in an attempt to make the mobs present coincide better with the line of sight issues inherent in the zone. This should make the zone much less annoying while not diminishing the difficulty. These changes will be going in during the next patch.

A sample of the changes:

-Rampage mobs now have replacement abilities. (When casters have to be within 5 feet of a mob to cast rampage is a bit cruel.)
-Many mobs have been shrunk to make walling them out of line of sight harder.
-Revamped many pathers so they do not go through line of sight intensive areas.
-Removed some traps that were spawning mobs in line of sight shadows.
-Replaced some trash to make pulling a bit more about pulling and less about guessing what stalactite is blocking line of sight for the entire cavern.
-Replaced the third loot bonus chance for class differentiation on the last two bosses.
-Reduced the melee damage on Trillent and Guardian of the Caverns. As it happens their slow mitigation was a good deal too high.

Hopefully these changed will make the zones content less hampered by the inherent line of sight and casting flaws in the zone (which are not removable by us.)

Edit- The recent (read a week or so) bug with Plane of Water and Kedge Keep that was causing the zone to crash will also been fixed next patch.

Sun 07/10 2007 - Woldaff

Captain's journal, stardate October 12th... point two.
Two new low-tier raid mobs have been added to the game. One is in Darkwoods, the other is in the Northern Wastes of Tarhyl.

The Dungeon Restoration Project kicks off with a visit to the Sorceror's Labyrinth. While the DRP still has more plans for this chilly carnival funhouse, the first step--adding two nameds in the back of the zone--has been completed.

All of the farming portions (ie non-guaranteed mob drops) of the Council of Innovation post-heartlands quests have had a reduction in droprate to bring them more in line with the amount of grind required for Silver Crown quests. The 'event' quests were not changed.

Fri 12/10 2007 - Thinkmeats

Minor Update
The Dungeon Restoration project visted the Sun Mines today, repairing a long-broken named spawn and reshuffling a certain enslaving imp to a more equitable location.

Wed 17/10 2007 - Thinkmeats

Post-Heartlands Blackscale
The Order of the Blackscale will now bring you to the same maximum rank as the Council of Innovation and Silver Crown. Check out the enclaves in Kaladim, Obsidian Shard Mountains and Greenmist.

Please direct any bugs or problems with the quest to this thread.

Edit- There has been a new quest series added to Greenmist. Be sure to check it out! (October 24)

Sun 21/10 2007 - Woldaff

Smithing Change
Player crafted shields are now available in game! Check your smithing book for more details!

This new content brought to you by your local GM-Tempus.

Fri 26/10 2007 - Woldaff

Misc Updates
Rust raid gems are now sellable to NPC vendors for very decent prices.

The items dropped by "Xixiv, Eater of Men" have been brought more in line with his difficulty, as befits the second-hardest named in the zone.

Added rare drops to Astatine, Iridium, Silver, and Mercury's loot tables.

Thu 08/11 2007 - Thinkmeats

Poisons!
Tier 1 of Make Poison is live. Visit your local rogue guild for more info. See this thread for discussion.

Be sure to thank your local Ikaa for the effort and time she has put into this.

Sun 25/11 2007 - Woldaff

Ker-patch!
Archaic: Sun Storm is now a rain with appropriate damage and mana costs.

Cmalath 3 bosses now have a chance to drop ancient spells. The summoner himself has a very good chance to drop an ancient spell. Earthshaker in rust now has a chance to drop ancient spells.

Charm spells' resist adjustments now scale more appropriately with level. In addition, two of the necromancer charms were exact copies of each other; this has been corrected. One of the druid charms had no resist adjust at all; this has been corrected. This change will primarily benefit lower-level players.

A word of warning: The thaz augments that have flowing thought will all have their FT changed to a bonus to energy/defense or focus/mind, depending on class. This will happen next patch.

Sun 25/11 2007 - Thinkmeats

A Balancing Act...
Over the next few nights I will be going around and balancing content that has either been overlooked since 2.0 or has become much easier/harder than intended after recent new releases. I will also be looking through some of the older quest items in order to update them to todays standards.

You can read specific examples of things already done and things to come here.

Fri 30/11 2007 - Woldaff

Lil Update
Necro thaz bp's effect works now.

Beastlord thaz bp's effect will be updated to what Xeldan said it would be next patch.

Beastlord test spells coming along nicely, expect to see more of them in the future.

Artificiers in Starfall are no longer aligned with Jayla, meaning that they'll stop butchering pariahs who come to them.

Tue 01/01 2008 - Thinkmeats

Beastlord spells undergoing live testing
As some of you may have noticed, two new beastlord spells have entered the game: Harsh Winter, a level 59 spell purchasable from npcs, and Venom of the Wild, a level 64 spell which must be farmed or purchased from other players.

Venom of the Wild is a fast-acting and powerful, but inefficient, DoT spell. Harsh Winter is a mediocre direct damage spell that casts a recourse on the beastlord, improving the damage of all DoT effects that beastlord currently has running for the next three ticks.

In addition, the beastlord spell Rage of the Wild has had its duration cut in half, but has had it's damage-per-tick improvement improved. Specifically, it goes up 18 base per tick instead of 9, but lasts half as long.

Discussion of these new spells goes here.

As a final note, these spells are subject to change for the next few patches while they're tweaked to make sense balance-wise.

Sun 06/01 2008 - Thinkmeats

More Balance!
Next Patch:

-Thazeran's Tower class armor sets have lost their battle at evading the item nerfs of three months ago. Not all pieces have been struck and total mana/hp lost across an entire set is only around 50-70.

-Sanctum loot is getting an area wide rebalanced to make it worth while for the difficulty of the area.


Bard Armor Changes-

Bard armor instrument mods are getting a bit of an overhaul this upcoming patch. As it now stands bard Thazeran armor instrument mods are a huge leap up from their predecessors (IP puppet, CoD sword etc.) To fix this we are going to be lowering the Thaz armor mods while adding other pieces of armor with both higher and lower mods throughout the tiers. This should both balance the Thaz armor and make them less irreplaceable.

Bind of Equip and Pristine-

Bind on equip and the pristine item quote are in game! Check out this thread for details.

Sun 20/01 2008 - Woldaff

Patch
The empty area in the back of Fire Grottos is empty no longer, as it has been occupied by a new raid encounter intended for low-middle tier guilds.

NPCs who cast complete heal now cast a slightly different spell with a significantly longer casting time, allowing more time to interrupt them.

The Necromancer spell 'embedding darkness' has been upgraded.

Finally, look for a whole lot more content coming soon :O

Wed 30/01 2008 - Thinkmeats

Tailors!
If you happen to be of the tailoring ilk be sure to check your recipe books. Somehow things were written in them while they were still in your inventory.

-Changes brought to you by your local GM-Tempus.

Thu 31/01 2008 - Woldaff

Patch
Returned the spawn rates of nameds in First Ruins to their former glory.

Increased the spawn time of 'Earthshaker' and slightly reduced the spawn rate of 'a dead machine' in the Rust.

Zaela's adjustments to Prison Sanctum loot are now in-game.

Added a few more stones to the small mountain of content looming just over the horizon.

Sat 09/02 2008 - Thinkmeats

Knock knock. Who's there? A lot of new content.
The Plane of Earth is now live and ready to accept raids. It ranges in difficulty from PoTorment through to beginning Sepulcher.

Emberflow Caverns, a new very-high-end xp zone in the 6-man style of cmalath or catacombs, is now live and ready to make corpses. Look for it in Fire Grottos.

A new tree of many quests, the largest in the game by an order of magnitude, is now live. It begins in humble Stinger's Bog and promises immense rewards to any player who manages to complete it all, along with plenty of good stuff for people with less time on their hands, too.

Thazeran himself is now active in the zone which bears his name.

The Eyes of the Father are no longer crossed.

Sea of Storms and Sea of Swords now have new monsters lurking in the depths.

Deepsea bow is now tradable and less bad.

A Bone Girdle has been fixed.

Ganzese the Mercenary wasn't correctly beating players as badly as he was supposed to be. This has been fixed.

The Plane of Earth, Thazeran Himself, and about 30% of Emberflow brought to you by Team Woldaff. The rest is my fault.

Sat 16/02 2008 - Thinkmeats

Tailoring - It's what you're wearing
* Pantherskin Boots now exist!

* Wyvernhide / Wyrmhide had their AC lowered and their other stats adjusted / boosted.

* Tailors check your books as some of the basic recipe concepts (number of hides / number of ointments) for each item have been adjusted.

* Trivials for each armor set were standardized for their respective skill ranges. This should reduce the need to make one single item an obscene number of times in certain skill ranges (See: Sharkskin Shoulderpads).

Thu 21/02 2008 - Tempus

New Server!
We now officially have the new server box up and running. Once we get all the kinks out this should mean a substantial reduction in lag and zone times and a increase in general server capacity.

Be sure to tip your hat to any of our awesome hardware and web team for making this possible. Also special thanks goes to our very own GM-Xar for single handedly donating a large portion of the new hardware.

Enjoy the new server folks!


Edit- Be sure to click "Repatch all" in the patcher if you are having trouble logging in!

Sat 23/02 2008 - Woldaff

Lil Patch
Improved faction hit generated by killing higher-level Cult of Eternal Flame monsters. Adjusted Boomba's Key faction requirement to apprehensive.

Added *Clockwork to the game.

Adjusted the click effect on the Standard of the Vah Rehn to stack more properly with other spells. The click on the Lands of Magic item with the same name remains unchanged (IE, doesn't stack with much).

Added vah quest tree sidequests/dialog options for Sivyana and Tarhyl followers who can't obtain the drops from First Ruins. Hail the monsters you would normally kill to find them. Note that the one to locate the 'a hidden presence' will not be active until the next patch.

Added chances for the Spawn of Bloodfang and the Nazdrich nameds to drop the quest item their trash drops. They are more likely than trash mobs to drop the item, but are not guaranteed to do so.

Improved droprate of the 'chilly flint rocks' item in Everchill Caverns.

Tue 26/02 2008 - Thinkmeats

Wiz? Who's that guy?
He's the guy bringing you some updates! (Note: This will go in next patch)

- The new EXP Quotexes from Emberflow and other fun places will now work
- +skill bonuses from augments will now work

Also, we have two new admins: Thinkmeats and Woldo have been officially appointed to the jobs they've already been doing for a while, which is to jointly lead the dev team. Two hurrahs for the two-headed admin giant.


Sat 01/03 2008 - Wiz

 

[Ciaran]

Awesome! I appreciate it, although can I ask what the deal with the pristine items is? I can't find a thread about it anywhere, just threads talking about problems with it... I can tell it ups the bonus on things (10%?) but how exactly does it handle this and what else does it do?

 

[robopirateninja]

The pristine item bonus is applied to tradeable items that you yourself looted, and is lost immediately if the item is traded or sold.

 

[Ciaran]

Ahhhh, very cool, I take it that it affected anything tradable you had when it went into effect? In that case I'm curious about the bind on equip code since most of my pristine gear is bind on equip too it looks like.

 

[JayelleNephilim]

Awesome! I appreciate it, although can I ask what the deal with the pristine items is? I can't find a thread about it anywhere, just threads talking about problems with it... I can tell it ups the bonus on things (10%?) but how exactly does it handle this and what else does it do?

After lots of evaluation and thought, we've created another model [Bind on Equip] (a variant of the battered item system) that we are presently considering for fixing market overflow of goods. This model works as follows:

1) All droppable and equippable items (yes this includes tradeskill crafted gear), when equipped, become NO DROP.
2) Any droppable and equippable item that is looted from a NPC (no tradeskill items are not looted from npcs) is PRISTINE. A PRISTINE item gains a moderate bonus in AC, hp, mana, stats and resists (10-20% probably). The item remains PRISTINE only as long as it is not placed into the inventory of a different player from who looted it. At that point, it becomes a normal item (it doesn't become NO DROP unless equipped as above).
3) The harshness of the anti farming code will be cut down to where duos and singles are not quite as harshly penalized (but it still pays to have a group along).

This very neatly deals with the problem of overpowering farmers, as any items you earn for yourself will be better than those you do not, ensures that every droppable item is valued only based on its stats (one mantle of the forest costs as much as another mantle of the forest) and solves market flooding permanently. Yes, you can no longer pass on / sell old gear, but that is a relatively small cost to pay compared to letting the economy degenerate even more into a completely ruined mess.

To clear up any confusion in the matter, PRISTINE items will be ones you have looted yourself from mobs you helped kill. You will not be able to sell someone a pristine item. (Well, you can sell it, but it becomes non pristine in the process)

 

[robopirateninja]

Ahhhh, very cool, I take it that it affected anything tradable you had when it went into effect? In that case I'm curious about the bind on equip code since most of my pristine gear is bind on equip too it looks like.

all old tradeable items were grandfathered in (minus tradeskilled items), I'm guessing because before the pristine change the client didn't actually track who looted an item

 

[Ciaran]

Thanks, I think that answered all my stupid questions. I really appreciate it.