Patch 00017

November 3rd, 2004 - Chapter 1: Changing times

SPECIAL NOTE

. All stanzas, actions and characters' stats have been reset. However, we have given back all the skill points to your characters. This is due to a major balancing in the actions / stanzas costs.

WHAT'S NEW

[ G e n e r a l ]

. The merchant system is now live. It enables you to sell any sellable items, goods as long as they are not worn (they need to be 'new' in order to be sellable by the merchant). You need to go see a merchant, the merchant will then take your item for a minimum price and you can define your own selling price. Your selling price is the price displayed for other players. If your item is bought by another player, you will then get your selling price minus dappers given to you by the NPC. An item can remain on sale only 7 days. You have the possibility to view all of the items that you have put up for sale, including the ones for sale on different continents. You can sell up to 100 items at a time to the merchant.
. You can now use the 'tab' key at the login screen to swap between login and password !
. Added a native music player to the game.
. Magic amplifiers are now gauntlets, no more batons.
. Added some filters when trading with merchants for easier trades.
. Hitting escape will now close most of the in-game windows.
. Mission contextual cursor has priority on trade windows.
. Added some text descriptions when trading.
. Miscellaneous text problems resolved in English, French and German.

[ G a m e p l a y  c h a n g e s  &  i m p r o v m e n t ]

. Wear has been reviewed after taking into consideration fast weapons users. As a result, it is now proportional to the damage factor of the weapon and/or the ammunition. So, if your weapon has a damage factor twice bigger, it will wear twice as much per hit (but its damage rate is two times bigger at equivalent speed).

. Quitting the game or teleporting are now considered as game play actions and thus can be interrupted when moving or being hit. If you leave the game in a non normal way, your character will stay a bit in game and could be hit or killed.

. Mobs will now tend to give up on players who they have been pursuing at a more reasonable distance than before.

. The Speed Power is now available from all tainers and not just the fight trainer.
. Lots of balancing on spells and resists.
. Improvement to the consider system for a better overview of your oponent strength.
. It is now possible to sell used items to NPC merchants.

. A new text over the player's head to indicate that there has been an event (such as dodge, parry, critical hit) that they can react to if they have appropriate 'opening' actions.
. When using a zone effect or a double effects action spell, a wearing effect happens once on item / armor / focus. However, if you fight with 2 weapons it will have a wearing effect your armor twice (once per weapon).
. Sap crystal casts didn't play animation.

[ F o r a g i n g  &  P r o s p e c t i o n ]

Here is a non exhaustive list of changes regarding foraging in Chapter 1: 'Changing times'.

**What's new in prospection
. Added new stanzas in order to refine your search of sources to a specific raw material quality. e.g.: "Find Up To Choice Materials" can now be upgraded with "Find Only Choice Materials".

**What's new in foraging
. You can now reduce the explosion damages. In order to do that, you need to activate, before the source explodes, the stanzas "Reduce Explosion Damage".

**What changed in prospection
. Messages about specialized prospection failures are now more specific: hints about wrong saison, wrong time of the day, wrong meteo (instead of the generic "at the moment").
. The delay before not exploited sources vanishes is not function of the player's level anymore but function of the number of sources prospected at once ("Multiple spots" stanza).
. The XP gain for players performing only suring up/ stabilization actions on forage sources is now related to the effectiveness of the players in preventing explosions and other such problems.
. The "Multiple spots" stanza does not reveal a random number of sources between 1 and the indicated number anymore, but the very indicated figure on the stanza.
. Ecosystem oriented prospection activated with a "normal" prospection (without Deposit Tracking), won't boost the number of available sources anymore but the harvested quantity (Rate stanza is then boosted).
. "Prospecting Plan" and "Deposit Tracking" descriptions have been revamped in order to make their subtleties clearer for a better game play experience. Reading them is highly recommended to any harvester.

**What changed in foraging
. Extraction quality stanzas are now upgraded 10 by 10 at the trainer (you will then find 25 aggressive and 25 gentle). The higher the quality, the more important the difference of danger between gentle and aggressive is.
. Extraction time is now function of the quality extraction stanza. The prospection stanza "source time" is now a time bonus. When you just have that time left (the time based on the quality is gone) the time bar becomes red.
. During foraging, quality can now grow faster or slower.
1°) The better the quality is expected, the slower the quality grows .
2°) When the quality expected is 10 below the player's level : higher the difference between the expected quality and the player's level, slower the quality grows. E.g.: I have a 200 level in Desert specialty and it's my first time in the forest (50 is then my level in Forest specialty) I can forage for a quality of 200 with a very slowly growing quality or forage for a quality of 50 growing faster. It is more crucial then ever to take care of the source if a high quality is expected. Furthermore, if you decide to use another stanza regarding the quality during foraging, the quality will change after a while. Note : in order to maximize the use of the available time, you would better carely prepare your actions, keep in mind that your focus does not lasts forever ! E.g.: instead of trying to have both high quality and quantity, focus more on one of them.
. Bars shown on top of a source are now all full at start, and show the remaining proportion. For instance the quantity bar half empty shows that the available quantity has been half extracted; you can however still see the exact amount of extracted quantity the same way than before. The remaining time bar gets empty faster if the initial amount of available time is lower.
. The risks bars (life and stability) do not stop anymore when the player end foraging : they still get slowly lower.
. The max distance between the source and the harvester has been decreased. It's now more difficult to get far from a toxic cloud.
- The source mode, which is a hint about the more simulated dangers, is not changed by a new action anymore but by events such as explosion / toxic clouds or if you reach the source max quality. Furthermore, the difficulty is based on the first harvester on the source, so a beginner player being helped by a higher level healer won't see the danger bars lower as quickly as if the harvester was the healer, as it was before.
- Heal stanzas are more efficient than before.
- The raw material specialized extraction won't boost the quality over the quality extraction stanza value anymore, but boosts the growth of the quality (but the quality remains maximized by the extraction stanza's one), decreases the risks implied by the more aggressive speed stanzas (the most powerful). On the other hand the ecosystem specializations decrease the risks implied by the most aggressive (powerful) quantity and quality stanzas. Regarding the healing actions, specializations increase, respectively, preservation and stability.
. Armor penalty is now part of the system regarding focus consumption. The armor is now taken into account when calculating raw materials sources explosions damages.
. Foraging XP now takes into account the extracted raw material quality.
. Removed the 'too far' message when you start an extraction and your character starts to move towards it.
. A specialized extraction per material gave a quality higher than the one of the stanza's quality. From now on, the extraction specialization per material increases the speed of rise of the quality, reduces the risk from the most aggressive brick, while specialization by ecosystem decreases the risk of bricks from the quantity and quality the most aggressive. For care plans, the specialization increases depending on the efficiency of the preservation and stability.

**What is fixed in foraging and harvesting
- Sources can't pop up on statical obstacles (trees), in the middle of the water, nor inside or on buildings.
- Some dependences between stanzas have been fixed.
- The quantity of damages caused by a supreme material source has been modified.
- Sources healers' XP has been revamped (it's now a portion of the foraging XP, and rely on the number of explosion and toxic clouds).

BUG FIXES

[ M i s c e l l a n e o u s ]

. Some raw materials now have their final icons.
. Some fixes in character creation overview.
. Adjustment in the word wrapping and use of lines when you are writing long sentences.
. Improvement to the targeted name layout system.
. Balancing on faction requirements for certain tasks.
. Blinded mobs will behave differently now.
. Balanced the link actions such as: stun, which was not really stunning the mob, as a result mobs should not dodge anymore when stunned.
. Various fixes in player apartment / guild inventory:
- Display of max bulk from player apartment.
- Fix on bulk update when swapping partial stacks (only 1 item was taken into account).
- Fix on display of max bulk from guild inventory.
- Fix on guild inventory bulk.
- Inventory window now shut down when quitting guild house or player apartment.
- Fix on max bulk for player apartment.
. Only some Raw Materials can be sold by NPCs now and not all of them.
. You can now crystalize a spell even if you target yourself.
. Fixed the bug when 2 players had the same missions and were in the same group, only the group leader was validating his mission steps.

[ I n t e r f a c e ]

. The compass is now updated better when targeting moving NPCs.
. In the action book interface there's now an option to allow one to unfold more than one section of the skill tree at a time.
. The sorting system for items in the inventory has been improved.
. Added a better item description that reflects the statistics of the item including the class of the item (basic, fine, etc) and the primary trait of the item (speed, durability, etc).
. In your mission interface, the title of the mission should not overflow the window anymore.
. When you open a mission window with an NPC, you can no longer use the hand on your handbar.

[ M o b s  b e h a v i o  r ]

. There have been fixes in AI behavior relating to attacking players at different heights from the mobs and fixes in mob obstacle avoidance.
. The balance of players' and mobs' chances to dodging and parrying each others' attacks has been improved.
. Mobs were running far too fast when using an alternative path in a fight, that is when they were blocked the first time when going to enemy.

[ M e k t o u b  p a c k e r s ]

. Mektoub packers now vanish 3 days after their death.
. It was not possible to liberate all mektoubs that were out of range.
. You can now free dead mektoub packers.
. Fixed the command for mektoub packers to follow his owner.