Publish 41

General Characteristics

Doesn’t engage in combat
Passable, so it can’t be used as a block/shield
Will not block line of sight, targeting, etc
Invulnerable
Attendants will have no backpack space (they are not extra inventory slots)
No Follower Slot usage
Only one Personal Attendant in use, anywhere, at a time
Contract cannot be stolen
Upon a player's death, the Personal Attendant will re-deed itself and go into the player's backpack
Anytime the character exits the world, the NPC will re-deed into the player’s backpack
NPCs will have a persistant name randomly chosen from a list on creation from the contract

Obtaining a Personal Attendant

Players will receive a token which, when double clicked, will present the player with a contract for a Personal Attendant
When this contract is used, the player will then select the type of Personal Attendant they want to place in the world

Types of Personal Attendants

Guide
- Helps players find services and merchants in towns:
  - List of locations for each town in the game
  - Player can select nearby shops/locations
  - List will dynamically populate based on the characters current location, and shopkeepers available in the city
    - Will lead the player to the specified location
- When double-clicked, the Guide will:
  - If the player is not in a city, the Guide will tell the player they are not in a city
  - If the player is in a city, the Guide will present the player with a list of locations in the city
- If the player disconnects when en route, the guide (like all NPC Attendants) will re deed to the backpack. The player will have to bring the guide out and select the destination again.
Fortune Teller
- Always Female
- The Fortune Teller's functionality is accessed through the context menu
- Tells your fortune via Tarot cards:
  - The player will ask the Fortune Teller a Question
  - The Fortune Teller places three cards on the table gump, representing the past, the question and the future.
  - The gump will contain three cards in a traditional layout (Note: The cards currently are represented with placeholder art, and will be replaced before the feature is published.)
  - The cards will be selected randomly (or are they?)
  - There will be Inverted Cards chosen at random
  - The gump will also have a text area below each card that will display the card's meaning
  - The interpretation of the cards will be left to the players
Lucky Dealer
- The Lucky Dealer's functionality is accessed through the context menu
- A gump will display the choices of dice to choose from:
  - Dice sets are d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, d100 (up to four)
  - You also choose the number of dice to be rolled
- The Die Roll will be barked out by the Lucky Dealer, and will appear in the journal as well
- Each die will have its roll displayed, separated by commas
Herald
- Herald can be placed in a player's house
- Will greets people visiting your home
- Can be placed in both public and private houses
- Only the house owner may place a Herald
  - Conforms to any legal placement rules for a single tile object (on steps etc..)
- If house if traded or demolished, Herald will re-deed to the players inventory (or bank if inventory is full)
- When placed in the house the Herald will not re-deed when the player logs out or disconnects
- When not placed in a house, the Herald will follow the player as any other attendant.
- The Herald will make announcements periodically
- The player will be able to set the Herald's messages by entering the greeting and announcement text in a gump
  - the gump will be accessed by using the Choose Messages option in the context menu.
  - The gump will contain two text entry fields marked In House Greeting and Herald’s Announcement.
    - Each text entry will be filtered through the Profanity filter before being validated for use.
  - If the text is not valid, the gump will return an appropriate error and ask the player to enter a new line of text

NOTE: The personal attendants are a feature that will be introduced in Japan as part of a boxed SKU and in North American as a digital sales item. More info will be released on them soon.

Other Fixes

Fixed a bug that was causing certain items that had been changed in the past to not fix themselves. This may have an affect on certain items such as the Aegis of Grace
The Aegis of Grace can now be equipped by humans
Fixed Elven Dressers facing south. These items were being placed in 2 sections
Imprisoned Dogs will no longer take items players accidentally drop on them
Imprisoned Dogs no longer change shape while stabled
Players will no longer get The Shattering book in their Bank Box

Updates

Update 1

On July 11, 2006, the following was published:

Red bank checks that were changed into a bag with 1 coin in them have been fixed
Fixed the guard zone outside of Wind to change it back to the size it was before Publish 41
Fixed an issue that could cause Personal Attendants to de-spawn
Players who had their Personal Attendants de-spawn will recover them in the form of a contract in their pack
Heralds placed inside of a house will no longer go invisible when their owner goes invisible. This will also fix Heralds that were already in this state.

Update 2

On July 20, 2006, the following was published:

An issue that could potentially cause a shard to crash has been fixed
An exploit has been fixed.

Update 3

On July 28, 2006, the following was published:
"As we were coming back from lunch today, they noticed that the security forces here at EA Redwood Shores were fully engaged in battle with what appeared to be Ophidian warriors! Quickly running inside, preparations were made to counter the inevitable onslaught. Though many EA employees have fought valiantly throughout the afternoon, it appears that our time here is growing short; the Ophidians are currently assaulting the elevators and it is now plain that our hopes of repelling these giant snakes were in vain.

Draconi has been busy coordinating our defenses, but he just sent word that his calculations now show a 100% chance that the Ophidian force will reach all shards and take them offline at approximately 7:45PM PDT today, July 28th (2:45AM GMT July 29th).

Fortunately, once the Ophidians have taken control of all shards, we expect them to only be offline for only approximately one hour while the Ophidian Shamans teleport the entire invasion force into UO. Hopefully someone will be along to resurrect us before too long after they have departed. Good luck, and may you have better luck fighting the Ophidians than we did!"

Update 4

On August 11, 2006, the following was published:

New Ophidian Invasion content
All cursed Ophidian artifacts that were blessed will lose their blessed status. Any bless deeds used to bless these items will be lost. Please do not page a GM to replace it
Players will no longer get stuck under houses when summoned by an Ophidian

Update 5

On August 18, 2006, the following was published:

Removed Skara Brae's Justice region in Tram so that players can cast area effect spells
Pushed back the no-recall zone at Serpent's Hold to not include player housing
All moongates during the moongate invasion should only have a dozen or so Ophidians
Ophidian Healer require more of their mana to cast healing; can only cast on allies when they can be seen