Patch 7 - 10/18/14 - Spawn Blocking, Combat Changes

[Jack]

Animal Taming and Spawn Changes

• Tamed animals will no longer unlink from spawners. This means you will have to either kill tamed animals or take them far away from their spawners, if you wish for the animal to respawn. The following will cause a creature to unlink from its spawner instead:
  • The tamed animal is stabled.
    
  • The tamed animal is part of a town, house or boat region. This is to prevent purposeful spawn blocking.
    
  • The tamed animal is taken a certain distance from its spawner. On OSI, tamed animals would not respawn until taken over a server line. We do not have server lines, so it is just based on distance.
    
  • Monsters will acquire previously tame pets, that have gone wild or been released, as attack targets. This will help with cleaning up spawn. However, it is still up to players to to have basic etiquette with taming.
    
• There is no longer a control check, nor is there confirmation required to release tames.
  
• The "all release" command will now release all pets. Admittedly this command felt a bit strange. If others don't like it, I can make pets release one at a time through all release spam.
  
• When a pet bought from the animal trainer is released or goes wild, it is now tameable by anyone, regardless of skill level. Animal trainers previously did not add a new owner entry, which meant the "0 skill retame value" was not applying. This will only apply to pets that are purchased after this patch.
  
• A newly tamed pet is not given any order by default. Previously, the pet would follow its master when successfully tamed.
  
• Changes to pet loyalty based on this link. http://www.tamingarchive.com/pets/loyalty.php Note the part where it says this was tested in 1999.
  
• Pets have 100 max loyalty (unchanged).
  

• Pet loyalty now undergoes a check every 5 minutes. This is a global check, which means it happens to all tamed pets at the same time, the timer is not individual to your pet.
  
• If a pet has LOS and is in range of its owner, it will only lose 1 loyalty point in this check. This would equate to a wonderfully happy pet taking just over 8 hours to go untame, if unfed the entire time.
  
• If a pet is not within 12 tiles of its owner or does not have LOS to its owner, it will lose 10 loyalty points on its check. Likely this should be 20 but it seems too fast. This equates to a pet going untame in 40-45 minutes from wonderfully happy. It is advised if you wish to keep a pet, do not leave it abandoned somewhere.
  
• Pets gain 1 loyalty on a successful command, lose 3 loyalty when they disobey their owner. Pets will become untame if they drop below 0 loyalty in a control check.
  
• Feeding your pet resets it to max loyalty.
  
• An animal is now deleted if it has been previously tamed, and has not had a previous owner in the last 20 hours.
  
• Firebreath occurs every 8-26 seconds, based on the demo.
  
• Tames which carry loot no longer drop a specially named backpack when they naturally go wild. These will not be grandfathered.
  
• Animal trainers will now essentially let players stable as many pets as they wish. This is a bandage patch until I have time to work on era accurate stabling.
  
• Particularly fast pets, are now slowed when they are in combat. Previously, it was hard to outrun a tamed white wyrm, even on a horse. Pets that are in combat now have a maximum speed.
  

Combat Changes

At this point, if melee damages aren't completely era accurate, they're darn close.

• The calculation to derive damages for weapons has changed. The base damage is still derived from a dice roll for each weapon. The new calculation changes the order and values of some bonuses based on this link: http://web.archive.org/web/1999100803321...combat.htm
  • The bonus damage for ruin-vanq was not in this formula. We have calculated this as step 4d, after the tactics, strength and anatomy bonuses are applied.
    
  • Exceptional weapons add 4 damage, below average quality -4.
    
  • The tactics modifiers on weapons can bring the total damage bonus for tactics to 175%, whereas a normal weapon caps at 150% for 100 tactics.
    
  • The halving of damage has been moved to the last step, and thus, armor is much less powerful than it was before. Any crusty old armor making players practically invulnerable against melee swings before.
    
  • The formula for successfully parrying a blow is now ParryingSkill / 2. Otherwise, parrying seemed accurate by default.
    
• There is no longer a bonus to armor rating based on the ingot type a piece of armor is made with.
  

Rares

• There are now over 30 rare spawners on the shard. These are on timers from a few hours all the way up to a month. More rares will be added over time. Good luck rare hunting!
  
• Some rare sandals have been added. Their drop rate will be reviewed down the line based on the number of pairs that exist.
  • Mage escorts always wear sandals. The range of hues is large.
    
  • Bridal escorts now have a very small chance of spawning with sandals.
    
  • Jewelers now have an extremely low chance of spawning with sandals.
    

Notoriety Changes

• When an innocent's corpse turns into bones, it now turns grey and can be looted by anyone. This does not apply if the corpse was cut up.
  
• Cutting up corpses now lowers karma.
  
• Summoning daemons now lowers karma.
  

Skill/Spell Changes

• A certain level of magery is now required to inscribe scrolls, based on the circle of the scroll. Magery has no effect on whether you succeed or fail.
  
• Controllable summoned creatures now have the (tame) tag instead of (summoned).
  
• Blade spirits, summoned animals, summoned daemons and summoned earth elementals leave a corpse on death. The corpse name will always be grey
  

Loot/Item Changes

• Runebooks were becoming blessed on server restart. They will now load as a regular loot type. No runebooks will be blessed.
  
• Cloth and bandages now weigh 0.1 stones. Note that a single bandage will appear to weigh 1 stone, up until you have a stack of 10.
  
• Scribe NPCs now buy books that are stolen from libraries.
  
• Fixed Elder Gazer loot.
  
• Scroll prices have been revised again. They are still profitable at GM level by selling to a vendor, but now they are only barely. Macroing scrolls and selling to vendors will yield a profit but is probably not worth the effort in obtaining the resources to do this.
  
• Any newly spawned evil mage lords will now wear the correct hued robe.
  
• Magical wizard's hats now function correctly, and have the correct description.
  
• Balrons, Ancient Wyrms and White Wyrms now have much better chances of dropping magical items.
  
• Wisps are no longer spawning with a chance of magic items. Instead, they have a 1% chance of dropping platinum.
  
• Corpses are now labelled "a corpse of", only bones are "remains of".
  
• You now lose mana when drunk, based on how drunk you are. If your character gets too drunk, then you can not meditate and will lose stamina. Your "time to sober" timer can not go above 45 minutes.
  

World & Misc Changes

• Secures and strongboxes no longer use lockdowns. For real this time.
  
• Polearms (halberds and bardiches) can now be used to carve corpses.
  
• Public moongates are now usable from 1 tile away, you do not need to stand in the moongate to use it.
  
• If you disconnect in any fashion while you have a resurrect gump open, it now treats the gump as if you chose no.
  
• Fixed a bug with level 4 dungeon chests failing to spawn.
  
• Shades, Spectres and Wraiths no longer cast 6th circle spells. These were a bit too tough for newbies, Stratics 1999 says that Wraiths cast up to 5th level spells and no mention of what the other two cast. As these are generally found in newbie friendly areas, it makes sense that they cast 5th level spells, unless further information is found. All 3 now have a chance to drop a piece of bone armor.
  
• Balrons spawn with 3 different hues.
  
• Nujelm graveyard has been spawned.
  
• Added gates to all graveyards and the Delucia cotton pens.
  
• An item that has no function, now still results in normal range checks and action delays when double clicked. Pointless?
  
• Barkeep contracts have been removed. There are 2 currently in bank boxes these will be removed. If you want the gold back for them, you'll have to PM me, I will delete them in 2 days.
  
• Fixed messages with double clicking an axe or polearm that is in a backpack. An axe now gives a target when double clicked from inside your own backpack, that can be used for carving corpses. An axe cannot be used to harvest kindling.
  
• Bone corpses will now display their item count/weight when single clicked.
  
• The white wyrm is not as fast.