Patch 5 - 10/06/14 - Post Launch Tweaks

[Jack]

I wanted to wait to put this patch out, however due to a bug causing some monsters to spawn with double or even triple loot, we have put the patch in early. If there are any issues with the patch we will revert with only the monster loot change. Special thanks to Creager for reporting the excess loot on monsters.

• Harvest tools now have a 1 second action delay, including mining and lumberjacking tools.
  
• Scissors must be in your backpack to use.
  
• Bolt of cloth now weighs 5 stones.
  
• Removed messages regarding "Treasure Map Protected Zones".
  
• The minimum cast delay is now 0.5s.
  
• Tinkering now plays a crafting sound.
  
• All regions which should be considered T2A, are now considered T2A. This includes Fire Dungeon, Ice Dungeon, Britain Sewers, Delucia Passage and any other T2A passages. This means you only need to enter these passages to recall anywhere in T2A.
  
• Much of Terathan Keep is now a "no recall/gate" zone.
  
• Animals which require less than 45skill to tame can now be controlled by anyone. This fixes an issue with horses ignoring their owner if their taming skill was too low.
  
• Tamed AI now gives up on attacking players when they either hide, or go offscreen.
  
• Fixed a bug where you would not gain fame/karma when pets/summons killed monsters.
  
• You now correctly lose 10% of your fame on resurrect. There was no fame resurrect penalty before.
  
• You can now enter Lord British's castle, as well as other faction areas (note: we do not have factions, this was a RunUO default).
  
• Monster AI max acquire range is now 10 tiles.
  
• Monsters will only cast spells if one of the following is true:
  
  • • The monster has been attacked (double clicked in war mode).
      
    • The monster has received damage.
      
    • The monster has made its own melee swing.
      

In the next few days, I will be looking into a few things, so you can expect these at least:

• Vendors will carry a maximum of 2k gold per restock. Buying items from the NPC will increase their cashflow, selling items to the NPC will drain their funds.
  
• Due to the above, scrolls will sell for a bit more and be profitable. We will keep an eye on this.
  
• We will look into an anti-AFK harvesting system (captchas). AFK harvesting on UO Lost Lands is illegal, we will discuss what the penalties for it will be. For now expect to be jailed if you are caught.
  
• We will take a deeper look into selling stackable items to NPCs and how profitable this is.
  
• "Damage counters" will be turned off, the numbers which pop up were supposed to be for testing purposes only.
  
• Monsters seem to be taking a little too much damage and too easy to kill. Some monsters have a damage output that is too high and end up being "glass cannons", we will balance it so they are a bit tougher but deal less damage. We will use era accurate sources where possible.
  

[Jack]

Another patch tonight to fix some launch issues we have seen.

• House decay time has been increased to 14 days, it was only 2 days before. We will manually refresh the 2 existing houses on the shard to make sure there are no issues.
  
• All weapons now use dice. You can see how the damages are calculatedhere.
  
• All practice weapons now deal damage of 2d4 (2-8). Before they were dealing 1-3.
  
• Archery now has a 1 second "plant time". You must stand still for 1 second to fire.
  
• You can now apply poison to any bladed weapon, including 2 handed weapons.
  
• Players no longer deal double damage to monsters. The calculation is the same as before, except the damage is now halved if the attacker is a player and the defender is a creature. This is the best solution at the moment to dealing with the incredible damage players were able to deal to monsters.
  
• Monsters will no longer give up attacking their target until their target is 24 tiles away. Before, monsters were giving up far too easily (10 tiles). 24 sounds like a lot, but it is not that far when you try it in game. Monsters are still easy to outrun.
  
• Liches no longer flamestrike, and have 50 eval (was 100). Monsters in general will have an overhaul in the upcoming weeks as we attempt to find T2A accurate sources for these.
  
• Damage is no longer visible. There are no "damage counters" that pop up.
  
• The following skills are now easier to gain:
  
  • • Parrying (50% adjustment)
      
    • Peacemaking (20% adjustment)
      
    • Provocation (20% adjustment)
      
    • Healing (25% adjustment)
      
    • Stealing (12.5% adjustment)
      
    • Remove Trap (25% adjustment)
      
    • Veterinary (25% adjustment)
      
• The following skills are more difficult to gain:
  
  • • Hiding (10% adjustment)
      
    • Lumberjacking (~15% adjustment)
      
    • Mining (25% adjustment)
      

The Vendor Patch





Vendors now carry a limited amount of gold - I will go into detail on this here.

• Vendors start with 2000 gold that they can buy items from players with.
  
• 2000 gold is also the maximum amount of gold the vendor can hold.
  
• Vendors lose money when players sell items to them, and gain money when players buy items from them.
  
• Vendors will gain between 100-400 gold per restock, naturally. Restock is once per hour.
  
• Since vendors do not always restock (it requires a player to speak to them), the following is true:
  
  • • When a player triggers a restock, a check takes place to see when the last restock was.
      
    • If the restock was between 1-4 hours ago, the vendor will gain 100-400 gold (random amount) for each hour since the last restock.
      
    • If the last restock was 5 hours ago, the vendor will go back to having 2000 gold (reset).
      
• Because of this, vendors now purchase scrolls for the full amount.
  
• Vendors only buy a maximum of 5 items at a time.
  

[Baron]

Scolls still seem to sell for the same low values, 8 gold for Fireball, 16 gold for Gate Travel.

[Jack]

Doh, you are right. Looking at the scripts I'm not sure why it's retained the old value. Reverting the sell values for scrolls was dumped in at the end after testing everything else, I have to head to bed but I will check in the morning why they are selling for the old values.
Thanks for reporting it.
edit: After looking into this, the changes successfully went through. However, this caused some scrolls to sell for barely more than they were before, and others for significantly less. It was a blunder, as I thought the RunUO defaults were quite high. I'll do some research into accurate scroll sell values and update them in the next couple of days.