| Text
| - Skills
- Treasure
- *****
- 1.6
- We've spent the last few months collating player feedback and performing our own detailed analysis of the skills present in the 9 main and 18 specialty trees. For our March Episode, "Revelations," we are tweaking a variety of skills.
- A ragged cheer rose up behind her. She turned to see a violet light piercing the heavens. Looking back over the wall, she saw the Drudges break off their assault and look up. She allowed herself a tight smile as a few turned to run. The wards were complete; her duty was almost finished.
- Outside of the extensive list of skill changes we detailed in our first letter, there are only a few more additional changes to mention for March.
* Failing to summon a pet will no longer start the reset timer .
* In the past, a pet owner had to turn on the "See Other Characters' Damage Numbers" option in order to see the damage being done by and to their pet. We've changed this so that pet damage is now shown automatically for all types of pets.
- The last stragglers squeezed through the nearly-closed doors of the fortress. The resounding thud of the doors finally closing was quickly followed by the sharp clang of its bar sliding into place. The doors secured, she looked out into the darkness from her position on the fortress walls. She could already hear the low drumming of Gurog hooves slamming into the frozen tundra. They would be here soon.
- We hope that these changes will make everyone feel welcome in Asheron's Call 2!
- While we know that most of you desire far more inventory space, increasing the inventory slots of a character dramatically increases the size of that character object. As larger and larger character objects get passed between servers, server performance begins to deteriorate. This is why we're moving forward cautiously with increasing inventory space. As we evaluate server performance with the March changes, we will be able to decide whether we can continue to increase personal character inventory slots in future months.
- Because of the sheer number of changes made to skills in March, we've decided to offer players a one-time opportunity to remake their skill choices. When you login after our March episode has gone live, you will have one-time access to a "/skills reset" command. Typing this command will untrain all of a character's skills and return the skill credits and experience spent on those skills. You can then choose to spend those credits and experience again on a new skill set. This command will only be available during the March episode, so if you want to make use of it, you must do so during this episode. We want to stress that while we may offer this command again when we make sweeping changes to the game's skill set, it may not be available again for a few months or it may be limited to specific character classes.
- For March, we are adding a number of new effects into the treasure system. This represents only the first step in a series of planned transformations that will take place over the next several months.
* We've added a variety of new beneficial effects to treasure items.
** Shields:
*** Splendor—Lowers the min. level requirement by 1.
*** Absorption—Absorbs a portion of damage 20% of the time.
*** Bone Splitter—Adds +2 or +3 damage.
- A moment more and he could rest.
- Character Class Index
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- Continent Recall
- Friends Tab
- NEW! Experience Reward
- "Rock pusher," it sneered as it raised its axe once more.
- Skills and Pets
- ** For all pieces of armor:
*** Grace—Lowers the min. level requirements by 1.
*** Armor Increasing Effects—These effects increase the armor level of a piece of armor by the specified amount.
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- When Asheron's Call 2 launched, there were two types of dyeing success states and two types of failure states. Most success states were "critical successes," meaning the item took on the dye color. A smaller percentage of success states also gave the item the desired color, but slightly damaged the item. Most failure states would give the item the desired color, but horribly damage the item. Finally, there was a small chance for a "critical failure," which resulted in damage and a strange color, like orange or pink.
- In the blink of an eye, an intense violet light banished the gloom. His Burun adversary turned and sheltered its eyes with its hands. He, too, squinted into the brightness and followed the line of the violet arc as it raced upwards into the sky. Suddenly, with a thunderous crack, the arc expanded and terrified croaking filled the night air. The light blazed ever stronger; soon there would be nothing else.
- The first time characters log in during our March episode, they will be awarded one half of the experience needed to advance to their next level, up to a maximum of 5 million experience points. For more details on why this is the case, please take a look at this thread on the official Asheron's Call 2 message boards.
- Quest Changes
* The experience rewards given out by the following quests have been increased:
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- She grimly released arrow after arrow into the hordes as the mages worked feverishly behind her. An incoherent scream nearby told her that another of their number had fallen, but she dared not turn to see who it was. It sounded like Eldeth… Another friend lost in this battle. Of course, she thought, all who had chosen to stay behind had known the consequences.
- Telkhe started from his sleep. Sitting up, he looked around their campsite. Jasi was still asleep beside the fire. Thukkos was on watch, looking out into the darkness of the night. The low sounds of the jungle night and the crackle of the fire were all he heard, but he knew something had awakened.
- As he turned to direct his next attack, a Burun appeared before him. It swung its scythe-like blade at his head, but he ducked under the swing and quickly drummed a beat that called a lightning bolt down on the creature. The Burun's limbs twitched erratically as electricity coursed through its body, then it fell over. As two more Burun heads peeked over the wall, a cry came from behind him: "The wards are almost set! Just a moment more!"
- We apologize for this confusion. We also would like to say that we are aware that many dyed items do not take on the color they should. This is due to an issue with our graphics engine. We'll try to fix this in the coming episodes, but at this time, we can't provide a specific date on when the fix will be implemented.
- Our focus in this first comprehensive pass is on non-functional skills and/or true bugs. In some cases, we've made design changes to balance out certain skills or specialties. This list is not our attempt to make all classes equal; distinctly superior and inferior specialties still remain. We will share our initial plans to address these inequalities sometime next month.
- ** Weapons:
*** Grace—Lowers the min. level requirement by 1.
- * "Revelations" Teaser
* Complete March Episode Guide
** Major Skill Changes
** Inventory
** Friends, Fellowships, and Allegiances
** Skills: Continent Recall and Pets
** The Treasure System
** Crafting and Dyeing
** UI and Shortcut Bars
** Quest Change
** Misc. Bug Fixes and Tweaks
** Episode Guide Addendum
** NEW Command Aliases for EQ and DAoC Players
- As a reward for completing all seven Vaults on a continent, you will be able to access a skill which allows you to recall to that continent's capital city . Once you have finished all seven Vaults, travel to a Nexus stone located on the outskirts of the specific capital for that continent. Use the stone to unlock the skill. Some things to keep in mind regarding Continent Recall:
* NEW! There will be a 30-second "Lifestone protection" cast upon your character once you begin portalling back to the Nexus spot.
* Like other recalls, you will need to have full Vigor to begin recalling, and recalling uses up all your Vigor upon completion.
Our goal with this skill is to allow characters to travel and congregate more freely, especially characters in different level ranges.
- Important notes about the "/skills reset" command:
* You will only be able to use this command once per character.
* You will only be able to use this command during the March Episode. Once the April Episode goes live, you will not be able to use this command.
* Only characters created before the March Episode will be able to use the command.
* We suggest that you spend your skill credits first. Only once you are happy with your skill credit allocation, then spend your XP.
* Make sure you train all the skills you want to train. Sometimes it can be easy to forget a Paragon or Adept skill because they are not visible in all skill trees.
* Be careful of inadvertently spending too much XP too quickly. Skills can cost a lot of XP at the higher levels. Make sure you have enough XP for all of your important skills.
* We will not be offering this command again anytime soon, so please be careful if you decide to reallocate your skill credits and experience. Game Admins will not be able to help you in this matter.
What follows is a list of the skill changes. Please keep in mind that we are publishing these changes early with the goal of getting your feedback. Threads will be started on the official AC2 message board to collate the feedback.
- We've also implemented two other minor changes which will benefit everyone. In March, hitting the "r" key will automatically start the "/reply" command in the currently active chat window. Also, if a character name consists of one word, the comma is no longer needed in a "/tell" command. So to send a tell to "Citan" in March, for example, you could type "/tell Citan give me phat lewt!" and have the message sent to that character. Of course using the comma in the tell command will still work, no matter the length of the character name.
- In order to make Asheron's Call 2 more accessible to players of all sorts, our March episode included some new features to help players from EverQuest or Dark Age of Camelot who are giving Asheron's Call 2 a try. They're still in the game, and they should making traveling from Norrath, Hybernia, Albion, or Midgard easier.
- She swung her blade, severing the Gurog's head. As its body fell to the ground, she saw out of the corner of her eye a Gurog Champion rushing toward her, its axe already in motion. Even as she tried to evade its blow, she felt a sharp pain cross her chest. Falling to her knees, she struggled to draw breath, but only a wet gasp escaped her lips. A moment passed. A shadow passed over her. She looked up, struggling to focus her eyes. Finally her vision cleared and she saw the Champion looking down on her.
- In the March Episode, there is again one success state and two failure states. A success state will give the item the color. A failure state will do nothing; the item will not change color or be damaged in any way. A critical failure state will damage the item and give it a strange color.
- She was looking up at the Gurog when it was suddenly backlit by violet light. The Gurog turned to face this new enemy and roared in rage as the expanding brightness drew nearer. As she concentrated on trying to draw breath, she turned her head to look down at the ground before her. "Rock pusher," she muttered. "Feh." She gasped one final time, and the ground drew closer. Then there was nothing.
- When the February Episode launched, the success state that damaged armor was removed, meaning there was only one success state and two failure states. However, the message given by the more common failure state was causing some confusion. Due to localization issues, we were unable to easily change this message in the update, so we temporarily disabled the common failure state. This means that in the February update, there are only two dyeing states, a success and a critical failure.
- Initially, AC2 had a fellowship bonus, but it was taken out before the game launched because fellowships were already far more effective than solo players in killing creatures and gaining XP. However, we recognize that some of the issues present in playing in a fellowship—finding a group, coordinating a group, developing effective hunting strategies—all contributed to many players choosing to stay solo. One of the core strengths of AC2 is in hunting, exploring, and questing with a group of other players; therefore, in order to overcome "solo-inclined" inertia and get more people excited about grouping without hurting the ability to solo, we have brought back the concept of fellowship XP bonuses as follows:
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- The constant drumming had driven nearly all the feeling from his fingers, yet he continued. As he beat a rhythm to ease his companion's pain, he looked out over the walls of this, their last holding in Omishan. Only a dim gloom illuminated the scene below, for heavy clouds of ash obscured most of the sun's light. Even that dim illumination was all he needed to see the vast tide of Burun still surrounding the fortress, a tide that stretched off into the distance.
- UI and Shortcut Bars
* Double-clicking on a skill icon in your Skills panel will no longer add a shortcut to any shortcut bar beyond the one currently displayed.
* Due to a UI bug, items at the bottom of your inventory were being hidden when items were generated in your character's overflow slots. It was only after three or more items were generated in the overflow slots that these items appeared. We've corrected this problem so that now all your items are displayed, whether they're in an overflow slot or not.
* We have solved a problem that was causing tool tips to be far too small for the amount of text they needed to display. They should now display properly in the Options panel.
* Previously when you created an alias that you wanted to appear on a specific shortcut bar, you needed to specify the slot number and the shortcut bar number. Now the alias command simply assigns the alias to the specific slot on the currently displayed shortcut bar. So if the fourth shortcut bar is the currently displayed bar, you simply need to assign an alias to the 2 to have it appear in the second slot there.
* If you type more than a multi-line text box can display at one time, the text box will now automatically scroll to display what you are typing.
- Your Inventory Panel now contains four separate containers: one main pack of 42 slots, and three side packs of 12 slots each, making a total of 78 slots . When you pick up items, the game will attempt to put them in the first open slot in your main pack, then in the first open slot in your top side pack, and so on down the side packs. Items that were toward the bottom of your inventory before the patch will be distributed to the other three side packs. Side packs are not separate objects, and cannot be dropped on the ground or given to other players.
- The first feature is two new key maps. One is for players familiar with EQ's keyboard layout, while the other key map is for players more comfortable with DAoC's layout. To alternate between these different maps, simply click the "Controls" button in the character selection screen. Here you'll find two new buttons, one labeled "EQ Keys," the other labeled "DAoC Keys." Clicking one of these buttons and confirming that you want to apply the changes will map your keys to a layout similar to those used in those games. There's also a new button to switch your keys back to the default Asheron's Call 2 keys.
- Dyeing
With all the recent changes that have been made to dyeing, we want to take a moment to give a comprehensive history of this craft, so that the March changes will make more sense.
- We've added a new Friends tab to the Social panel. Clicking on this tab will give players the following options:
* Check the online status of the characters on their Friends list. The different status types are "Available," "Do Not Disturb," "Away from Keyboard," and "Offline."
* Set their own status to one of the status options .
* Add or remove friends from their Friends list. In order to add characters using the Friends tab you will need to have selected the character first. To remove a character from your list, you can simply select the name on the Friends list and click the "Remove" button.
* Note that all the old "/friend" commands, such as "/friend status," still work.
Fellowship XP Bonus
- She sat among the rough assemblage of warriors, those lucky enough to have survived the initial onslaught. This was the mortal races' first-and last-council of war on the Nemesis attacks. The most accomplished portal mages stood before the assembly explaining their plan, the only hope they saw of saving most of the survivors. Upon conclusion of their presentation, they asked if there were questions, but she knew there would be none. Everyone present understood what was at stake; there was nothing to question.
- Another feature added in March extends Asheron's Call 2 to respond to many common commands in other games. Using the "/rest" command will cause your character to sit down, providing the same functionality as the existing "/sit" command. In situations where Asheron's Call 2 doesn't offer the exact same functionality as another game, AC2 provides help text explaining how to get equivalent functionality. For example, typing "/quest" gives a new player a help message directing him or her to open up the Quest panel. Here, players can find information about what quests they are on currently.
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