Publish 57

Deployment History

October 3, 2008 - expected mid-November 2008
October 29, 2008 - expected late December 2008
November 18, 2008 - Champion Spawn Additions announced
December 12, 2008 - released to Test Center shard.
December 16, 2008 - released to Origin shard.
December 18, 2008 - released to all remaining shards.
January 9, 2009 - major pvp changes released to Test Center shard.

Champ Spawns

Non-Felucca facets Champ Spawns will now give special rewards for working the spawns
Killing the Champ Spawn boss on any facet has a 30% chance of dropping a special reward
Working the Ilshenar spawns gives Transcendence scrolls but not 105 powerscrolls
A black gate will no longer appear after killing the Champ Spawn boss unless you are in Felucca
Rewards have a durability of 150/150 and cannot be enhanced or unraveled
Each Champ Boss has a chance to drop a Unique, Decorative, or Shared reward drop - such as Animated Water Tiles with Rock
Shared rewards do not mean every boss has them, but only that more than 1 boss may drop it (usually 3 bosses).
Drop rate of rewards set to an overall 30% chance, as follows:
- 5% Unique reward
- 15% Decorative reward
- 10% Shared reward
Two types of rewards can be obtained while leveling the spawn: Scrolls of Transcendence (SoT) and 105 Powerscrolls (PS).

Holiday Gifts

Players will be able to pick one of 5 new unique holiday items this year per character. Characters must be 30 days old.

For Thieves

Players can now steal various items from monsters:

A given monster can be stolen from once in its lifetime
Gold, bandages, gems, potions, scrolls
Thieves with GM skills or higher have a chance at stealing rare items
- Seed Of Life, Mana Draught, Gem Of Salvation, Balm Of Strength, Balm Of Wisdom, Balm Of Swiftness, Balm Of Protection, Stone Skin Lotion and Life Shield Lotion.
Drop rate on stealables:
- GM Stealing: 2%
- 100.1 to 110 Stealing: 5%
- 110.1 to 119.9 Stealing: 8%
- 120.0 Stealing: 10%
Stealing Bonus based on monster fame
- For the purposes of stealing, a monster's fame is now scaled from 1 to 40 (previous fame levels 1 to 5). Level 40 being the equivalent of 30,000 fame points. The higher the fame level, the higher the stealing bonus.
Stealing bonus by fame level:
- 0% below level 15
- 1% below level 25
- 2% below level 35
- 3% below level 40
- 5% at level 40
  - So a thief with 120 skills stealing from a level 40 monster would have a 15% chance of obtaining a rare drop.
Players cannot steal twice from the same monster
Rare items only drop in Fel Dungeons and Champ Spawn areas (all facets)

Trammel & Felucca

The stealables are consumables. Using a Balm or Lotion while one is already active will replace the effects of the first, not combine them. The list includes:

Seed Of Life: Stackable/Uninsurable. When eaten, instantly heals between 25 to 40 HP, even through poison and mortal wounds. 10 min cooldown.
Mana Draught: Insurable. When drunk, the player instantly recovers between 25 to 40 mana points. 10 min cooldown.
Gem Of Salvation: Blessed. Upon death, the carrier will have the option to invoke its power to self-resurrect, destroying the gem in the process. Unlike Sacrifice, the player’s belongings will remain on his corpse and he will be resurrected with the same minimum health as he would if rezzing at a shrine. 6 hours cooldown.
Balm Of Strength: Insurable. On use, the player benefits of a 10 Strength increase for 30 min. Can’t be combined with any other Balms or Lotion.
Balm Of Wisdom: Insurable. On use the player benefits from a 10 Int increase for 30 min. Can’t be combined with any other Balms or Lotion.
Balm Of Swiftness: Insurable. On use the player benefits from a 10 Dex increase for 30 min. Can’t be combined with any other Balm or Lotion.
Balm Of Protection: Insurable. On use, reduces by 50% to 100 % the damage sustained from acid (grizzle), and AoE cold (prism icy water, ice elementals), fire (blazing gargoyles). The resistance chance is rolled for each tick. This balm does not protect against spells or weapons elemental damages. Cannot be combined with any other Balms or Lotion. Duration: 30 mins.
Stone Skin Lotion: Insurable. On use, increases player Physical Resists by 30 but reduces his Fire and Cold Resists by 5. Cannot be combined with any other Balms or Lotions. Duration 30 mins.
Life Shield Lotion: Insurable. On use, reduces by 50% to 100 % the Life Drain damage from Succubus and Tentacles the Harrower. The resistance chance is rolled for each tick. Cannot be combined with any other Balms or Lotions. Duration 30 mins.

Misc Bug Fixes

Players will no longer receive an error when they try to plant a seed in a bowl of dirt with a seed in it already.
Fixed an issue with rocks not being heavy in Orc Dungeon
Fixed the issue with Treasure Maps in Bucs Den that caused the spawned monsters to spawn underground out of the reach of players.
Fixed the HP issue with faction warhorses.
Players will no longer see an error in their buff gump with Reactive Armor.
Fixed an issue involving Norton update that was wiping the configuration file.
Added a choice of direction for the Veteran Rewards for the brazier and cactus.
Fixed Weapon Special Nerve Strike to not work while someone is frozen from casting.
Added Bandanas, shrouds, robes, apron, boots and sashes for items that can be repaired with a deed.
Fixed an issue with Meraktus the Tormented not resetting properly.
Fixed an issue with Rikktor getting stuck.
Fixed an issue with Irk and Saliva getting in areas players could not reach.
Fixed an issue with escorts barking you failed the escort quest upon completion.
Changed the range of Protection from the Justice virtue to 90 tiles when in use.
Changed to teleport location in Sanctuary.
Added a confirmation gump when dismissing a vendor (KR does not have a working gump).
TC1 will now have 5000 special boards in their banks instead of 500.
Fixed issues with the hyperlinks in the help menu.
Fixed an issue with the one of the hidden rune containers in Malas providing a faulty rune.
Fixed a grief issue that allowed players to gate other players in the middle of the ocean.
Fixed an issue allowed mutated plants and bonsai to produce seeds and be cross-pollinated.

Slime Event

Slimes are on the move! Driven out of their dungeons by the dark forces corrupting the land, a special variety of slimes are making random appearances throughout the world for next few weeks after publish. Researchers have discovered that these specially hued slimes can dye artifacts and magically enhanced items! They tend to stay in an area for two days before moving to a new location and shifting their hue.

There are a total of 35 colors: 30 minor tokuno dyes, and 5 new hues.

War of Shadows Fixes

Login teleport redirection, and safety redirection when recalling/gating for towns is now removed. Be careful when moving throughout the kingdom, the safety net has failed! (This also resolves the problem with Felucca redirects in the invasion)
Faction warhorses now all have the same strength and hitpoints.

Gardening

Adding a resource from an existing peculiar seed that will identify any type of seed.

Crafting

Added hitching posts to the craftable menu in tinkering.
Added bookcase to the craftable menu in carpentry.
Changed the skill level to work special logs into boards: Regular wood (0.0) , oak wood (65.0), ash wood (75.0), yew wood (85.0), heartwood wood (95.0), bloodwood (95.0), frostwood (95.0).

Updates

Update 1

On December 18, 2008, the following was published:

Fixed an issue on Origin that now allows players on that shard to receive Holiday Gifts.
Fixed an issue to allow players to steal standard stealable items from giant beetles.

Update 2

On December 20, 2008, the following was published:

Fixed an issue with players with stealing from pack animals in Trammel.
Fixed an issue with the Gate spell.

Update 3

On January 8, 2009, the following was published:

The Slime Event will be extended until January 24th.
Slimes will now switch locations every 3 days.
New hues will be available.
Barding deeds can no longer be colored with Tokuno dyes.
Barding deeds can no longer be recycled.
All swamp dragons with Tokuno dyed barding armor will be reverted to iron.
All dyed barding deeds will be reverted to iron.

Update 4

On January 9, 2009, the following were published to the Test Center shard(but never later published out to production shards):
TC1 Balance Testing Notes

These changes reflect an effort to not just bring balance to the PvP system, but to promote diversity of playstyles, improved combat tactics and hopefully rewards players for investing in both their characters' skills as well as their own gameplay skill.

Immunity/Diminishing Returns System:

There are quite a few 'rinse & repeat' combat tactics in game currently. Some of these are because of limitations of choices in template play styles, or just from the fact that they are just so "effective" there's no reason to do anything else. To encourage variety and limit the capacity for exploiting these currently infinitely repeatable tactics, an Immunity/Diminishing returns system has been added in places.

This system works under the premise that characters will develop immunity or resistance to a particular effect after repeated exposure.

This immunity/resistance is temporary, and decays over time. Currently most of these will be reset on death.

Specific Testing Points of Interest:

Rate of Decay
Rate of Gain
Amount of reduction of effect due to immunity.

Talon Strike:

This should now work as a functional Damage Over Time effect.Duration should be scaled on players ninjitsu skill Bonus damage is dependent on players Hiding and Stealth and is scaled according to their FENCING SKILL. (UBSW is not a substitute for the bonus damage dependent on fencing skill)

*NOTE* This is subject to Diminishing returns and targets will gain immunity to this.

Immunity gain is dependent on attacker ninjitsu skill.
Immunity reduces the number of rounds of this DOT.
Legendary Ninjitsu guarantees at least (1) round.

Testing Points of Interest:

How does this stack with other DOTs? Too Powerful?

Concussion Blow:

Previously this was direct damage scaled according to the difference between Current Mana % and Current HP %. This implementation penalized players for being low on mana or health. So a playing using mana to keep themselves fully healed would increasingly take more damage from the attack. Also if a player was hit with the attack and did not use mana to heal, then the next attack would do additional damage because of the difference between mana and hp increasing from the first hit.

Additionally, this damage was in addition to the damage from the actual hit allowing for HUGE damage output to players.

This has been recoded so the bonus damage is CONSTANT. The old concussion effect of reducing the targets mana pool has been tweaked and put into play again. Concussion will now have the effect of a temporary mana drain, scaled by the targets immunity to the effect. Attackers will ALWAYS get the bonus damage from the attack, the drain effect will be scaled based on the defender's immunity/resistance.

Heal Potion Usage:

Previously heal potions can be chained indefinitely limited only by the 10 second timer between greater heals or less for lower power potions.
Players will now become immune to the effect of healing potions. As long as a player will not exceed full immunity by drinking a potion, they will receive at least 50% of the healing from that potion.
Players with Enhance Potion items will still experience the effects of the enhance potions, but will become to the effects of their heal potions faster than players without Enhance Potion items. This increase in immunity scales based on the Enhance Potions value.
Players with Alchemy will gain immunity slower than players without the alchemy skill.
Immunity reduces the damage healed, and eventually the player will be unable to drink a potion until the immunity has lowered.

Testing:

Immunity Decay rate: Too Slow? Too Fast?
Immunity Gain rate: Too Slow? Too Fast?
Diminishing Returns: Too much of a decrease in effects or too little decrease in effects due to immunity?

Dispel Evil:

Now works on Player Summons.
Players must now combat flag summons to dispel innocent summons

Dispel Proc (Weapons)

Weapons with Hit Dispel should now be able to dispel summons.