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- 390.0
- "No."
- Hello to all. This letter contains information about some upcoming changes, both in the November update and in future updates. These are important changes, so please read this entire letter.
- "What is that, the fifth island discovered?" Langdon grumbled. "How many islands are there around this accursed isle?"
- New Functionality and Content
:Tuskers! It's a madhouse! A madhouse!
:Skill sell-back makes its debut!
:Chests containing valuable treasure are rumored to be dotting the landscape.
:Six new chessboards are to be found in the world.
:Although defeated, the Harbinger's spirit does not rest in peace.
- Last month, we discussed some possible tweaks to Life Magic to address the continuing difficulties faced by some life mages. Unfortunately, at this time we are satisfied with neither the design nor the gameplay effects of those changes. We want to take more time to study the problem and consider your feedback so that we can make the best decisions we can about what tweaks are necessary. For this reason, there are no changes being made to Life Magic in the November update. We will keep you posted on our progress with these changes in the future.
- "Yes, Your Grace. After defeating the Tuskers surrounding it, I approached the shrine and suddenly found myself tumbling through portalspace. Once the haze of portal magic faded, I was standing on the island. Well, one of the two islands that-"
- The Duke blinked for a moment, opening and closing his mouth as he searched for something to say. Finally he blurted, "Bobo?"
- "Nothing," Kinross said then quickly added "Your Grace."
- As he stalked out of the room, the Duke muttered loudly under his breath, gesturing angrily in response to the discussion he was carrying out with himself. Once he was gone, the audience chamber exploded in conversation, each person wondering what to make of this island of Aphus Lassel and its mysterious king.
- "Well Your Grace, it appears the Tuskers have a king of sorts," the man replied. "Surprisingly, some of the Tuskers' grunts were almost understandable. The ones I defeated would occasionally speak of their king as they fell."
- "A Tusker, Your Grace."
- "And his name is…" the Duke prompted.
- "Aphus Lassel, Your Grace."
- "Bobo," the man said quietly.
- "I see, and what did this shrine look like?"
- "Just tell us the name!" the Duke bellowed.
- "Nothing, Your Grace."
- "Nothing? Were they unwilling to talk?"
- "No… Your Grace."
- "Yes, Your Grace. Bobo."
- Below are the changes made in the November event. We list changes to game functionality and existing content, but there is also new content up for you to find! Speak to town criers, barkeeps, and scribes for the latest happenings in Dereth. For more information on this month's event, please see this month's Letter to the Players. Please submit any bugs you come across to http://bugs.zone.com.
- Aphus Lassel was not the only discovery. The Archmage Celdiseth told of a soul who stumbled into his cottage, a beatific smile gracing her face. He said that after mumbling a few words about finally being able to set things right, she collapsed. After hearing this report, explorers have set off to the northwest of Celdiseth's cabin, following the trail the woman left behind her. Others, hunting in the wilds of the lands, told of valuable treasure being found in guarded camps throughout Dereth.
- "No, Your Grace, they seemed unable to talk. The only sounds I ever heard from them were a few grunts. They were almost totally unresponsive, except when it came to the Tuskers around them. They seemed unusually dedicated to their Tusker masters."
- Kinross bowed his head. "Yes, Your Grace."
- Life Magic Tweaks
- Minor Details
:After a long discussion with your corpse, we finally got it to agree to lie down instead of standing up and scaring the children.
:We've corrected a long-standing bug that caused more randomization than intended in the selection of items to be left behind on your corpse.
:Weapon damage is no longer displaying extraneous zeros in the examination panel.
:Chests no longer snap shut in your face.
:The profit margins on many common crafting interactions have been examined and reduced.
:All Crystalline arrows and bolts can be fired from Crystal bows and crossbows once again.
:The treasure profiles for the Hea Raider's Cache, the Directive Caches, and Master Troves have been brought in line with the changes made to Sturdy Iron Chests in September.
:Eviscerators and Mosswarts are now losing their heads.
:The Dark Sarcophagus has been tweaked so that players should have an easier time affecting it, as originally intended.
:Terese, horticulturist and mistress of the Swamp Gardens, has mended her ways and no longer takes seeds from players without giving them at least some sort of response… although it may not be the response they are looking for.
:The White Rabbit's AI has been slightly tweaked so that he shouldn't be so easy to distract. However, we suggest you test this for yourself, just to make sure…
:Etheric Seals are no longer needed to unlock the various statue pedestals.
:The preservatives found in Marshmallow Eeps keep them fresh, even when they are on a hook in your home!
:The bats have flown off.
- Skill Sell-back
- The Duke blinked. "'No?"
- The Iron Coast
- "Your Grace, it is not unheard of for we Isparians to be dominated by another species," Kinross interrupted. "You, of course, recall the dark years when the Olthoi enslaved us, forcing us to prepare that disgusting gruel they fed to their grubs."
- The Duke muttered more noticeably this time, but then turned back to his follower and said, "Does this king have a name, or do you know how he can be found?"
- Dereth reveals her secrets slowly, yet each day yields new discoveries. Occasionally the discovery may be just a few ruins uncovered by desert winds, at other times something larger, such as previously unknown lands. At the dawn of the month of Leafcull, bruised and battered explorers returned to tell of a newly discovered island called Aphus Lassel and ruled by Tuskers. Any foolish enough to attempt the exploration of this new land, these adventurers warned, would have to find and kneel before a Tusker shrine to gain passage to the island.
- "Interesting." The Duke rubbed his chin. "An island where Tuskers rule over men?"
- "I was exploring the northern wilds of Osteth when I came across a pack of Tuskers. Standing in the center of this group was a shrine of some sort. The Tuskers seemed unusually interested in defending it."
- "Yes, thank you!" the Duke cut in abruptly. "The number of the islands is not important at the moment. What is the name of this new island?"
- :Each step of a skill change--that is, increasing a skill from trained to specialized, decreasing a skill from specialized or trained, or decreasing a skill from trained to untrained--requires the completion of this quest. You can still increase a skill from untrained to trained the old-fashioned way by pressing the green triangle; this does not require a quest.
:This quest is restricted to characters level 25 and higher.
:You will not be limited in the total number of times you can do this quest, but you can only complete the quest once every three weeks. This is a change from our original concept, but we felt that being able to complete the quest twice during each monthly event was too liberal. We may decrease this wait time in the future.
:You will be able to untrain the free skills , but you will not be refunded the skill credits for those skills nor will the skills actually become untrained. You will be refunded all the experience you invested into those skills, however.
:You will be able to untrain your racial skills, but you will not be refunded the skill credits for those skills nor will the skills actually become untrained. You will be refunded all the experience you invested into those skills, however.
:You will not be able to specialize in any of the Tinkering skills.
:You will not be able to spend more than 50 credits in specialized skills. These 50 credits include both the credits invested to train and to specialize the skill. This limits players to the same sets of skills that are possible at character creation. We may lift this restriction in the future.
:You will not be able to alter a skill in such a way as to cause you to no longer meet a wield requirement for some item that you are currently wielding. You will be asked to remove that item, and then you can attempt to alter your skill again.
:For new characters: Any skill points unused in creation will now carry over with you when you first enter the world, instead of being lost forever as they were previously.
- As previously announced, we are introducing a method by which players can "sell-back" or untrain skills, as well as a method to specialize skills after creation. We had two main goals for this change: first, to allow characters to change decisions that they may have made before they understood the full consequences of those decisions; and second, to allow characters to deal more flexibly with the changing world of Dereth.
- "Yes, yes," the Duke said, beckoning the man to continue with an impatient wave of his hand.
- The error that required this hot fix appeared in the newly introduced skill sellback quest. When untraining a skill, Asheron’s Call checks if you are wielding any items that have wield requirements for that skill. If you are, the untraining action fails and the skill gem is not destroyed. While this error checking was working, the game was still refunding the skill credits and experience spent on that skill to the character. Since the gem was not destroyed, characters could fail to untrain and receive the skill credit and experience refunds repeatedly.
- So in order to reduce these performance hits, we are changing the behavior of monster corpses slightly. In November, monster corpses will remain on the ground for five minutes--a much longer period than they currently do--but when they decay, any unclaimed loot that remains on the corpse will also decay. This will reduce the number of items on the ground and thus reduce the load on the game servers. Note that this change does not affect player corpses in any way. Also note that this does not change the period of time in which a monster corpse is "protected" .
- "Another Empyrean name," the Duke sighed. "How did you come to find this island?"
- "Well, Your Grace," a figure standing beside the Duke's throne began. "If you count the individual Vesayen Isles, this would be at least the twelfth such island. Likely there are quite a few more; all the records we've discovered point to Dereth being part of an archipelago."
- The other issue that was corrected in this hot fix involved the Critical Strike imbuement. Unfortunately the percentage of receiving a critical hit while using this imbuement was changed to the percentage used by projectile spells. As this percentage for projectile spell is noticeably lower than melee and missile attacks, players were noticing a significant reduction in the number of critical hits they were dealing out.
- Unfortunately two issues surfaced in today’s "The Iron Coast" event, and due to the severity of one of these errors, a hot fix was required. Along with this, a database rollback to right before the worlds were brought down for the event was required as well.
- The Duke sat silent for a moment longer, then suddenly stood up and spoke in a loud, authoritative voice, "This audience is at an end."
- In the future, we will also be re-evaluating our treasure tables to reduce the amount of absolutely useless junk that creatures drop. This change, however, is not part of the November update.
- We regret that these errors appeared in this month’s event and want to thank you for your patience as we confirmed and resolved these issues.
- "Thank you, Kinross," the Duke sighed. He pinched his fingers to rub the bridge of nose. "I appreciate you being studious in your duties as Vizier; however, the question was merely rhetorical."
- These are the issues we wanted to communicate to you as soon as possible. Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions, please post them at http://www.accmty.com/idealbb.
- Duke Langdon sighed and turned back to his liegeman. "Please continue your tale. You found a shrine, you said?"
- The man shifted uncomfortably. "Well, Your Grace, I might have heard his name." He paused.
- New dangers and new rewards await the people of Dereth, if they are brave enough to face them…
- Turning his attention back to the messenger who remained kneeling before him, the Duke asked, "And the name of this new island?"
- "Well, I'm not sure I understood them correctly, Your Grace. The Tuskers' grunts were difficult to understand."
- Muttering under his breath, the Duke turned his attention back to the man kneeling before the dais. "What other information do you have to offer us?"
- "Interesting," the Duke said. He turned to address his Vizier. "Kinross, do you think the Tuskers have developed some sort of totemic belief system? Perhaps due to the Virindi influence?"
- In order to sell-back or specialize a skill post-creation, characters will need to complete a quest. I won't go into the details of the quest, but here is the important information you should know about how this system will work:
- "People you say? What did you learn from the townsfolk?"
- "Thank you for that history lesson, Kinross," the Duke said sharply. "Although, again, it was simply a rhetorical question."
- Duke Langdon sent the call to his followers, requesting they all come to his mansion immediately to hear news of the latest discoveries in Dereth. The covenant crystal hummed with the arrival of each follower, and soon the Duke's audience chamber was filled to overflowing with people all struggling to hear this news.
- Seated in his throne at the front of the chamber, the Duke addressed his messenger. "You mean to tell me that there is yet another island off the coast of Dereth?"
- "Well, Your Grace, I found myself in what could best be called a village, although it was unlike any village I had ever seen. The buildings all stood on stilts, and as I climbed up to the platforms, I found Isparians living in the buildings."
- "A king? Amazing!" the Duke exclaimed. "Kinross, what do you make of this discovery?"
- "Actually it consists of two islands, Your Grace, so these would be the thirteenth and fourteenth islands discovered-"
- "Yes, Your Grace," responded his liegeman diffidently.
- "That's fine, just tell us what you think you heard."
- "As I said though, Your Grace, the Tuskers' grunts were barely what I would call speech-"
- Treasure and Corpse Changes
In our ongoing effort to improve the performance of our servers, we are making several changes to the treasure system, in particular as it operates with monster corpses.
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