Patch 8 - 10/25/14 - Monthly Rewards, Combat Updates, AI changes

[Jack]

Message of the Day

• You will now receive a message of the day on login. This will be used to keep players updated on any changes, events or possible downtime.
  

Monthly Rewards

• To view your currentmonthly reward status, you can type the command [platinum in game. This can also be accessed through the MOTD gump.
  
• You will now gain platinum based on your activity. For every 50 hours logged in per account, you will get a monthly reward of 1 platinum. There is a maximum of 10 platinum per account, per month.
  
• You can "cash out" your platinum at the beginning of every month.
  
• All players will receive platinum for their game time prior to this patch.
  
• A list of platinum rewards is coming... promise.
  

Monster and Tamed Behaviour

• Tamed fire breathing creatures are now aggressive toward monsters and murderers. On average, a tamed fire breathing creature will acquire a new target roughly once every 10 seconds. The chance of any attack at any given moment is entirely random. If the fire breather already has a combatant, it will not do this.
  
• In a very similar fashion, animals that have been released or gone wild are now aggressive toward monsters and murderers.
  
• If a tamed fire breather attacks a murderer, it is considered an aggressive action and sets the tamed animal's control master as "can be attacked" to the murderer, unless the murderer attacked first.
  
• You can now tell a tamed animal to "drop" and it will drop whatever is in its backpack.
  
• The way a monster checks whether to heal or not has been changed.
  
• Tames can no longer move to a tile when the 2 adjacent tiles in the path are occupied. To put it more clearly, forming a diamond/square shape with 4 players surrounding a dragon, would cause the dragon to be completely immobile.
  
• Monsters will now be blocked by impassable objects (such as a table or chest).
  
• Most monsters will break impassable objects in their path, however some low level monsters are exempt from this and their movement will be entirely blocked. Objects that cannot be moved, will not be broken (eg, treasure chests, lockdowns).
  
• Monsters, animals and NPCs in general, move around less when they are idle.
  
• Animals should no longer run unless they are fleeing.
  
• A fix to pet loyalty decaying too fast.
  

Combat Changes

• Weapon speed for fists is now 50. Monsters/NPCs will retain their old swing speed value for now to avoid overpowering monsters.
  
• Disarming or arming a weapon, when your swing is not ready, now causes your combat timer to reset. The new combat timer will be based on what weapon you currently have equipped. If the weapon is fists, it uses the fist timer.
  
• When arming a weapon, there is now a 1 second delay until you can swing it.
  
• Weapon timers are now on a "tick" based system and recalculate their status every 0.25 seconds. Simply put, this means it is only possible to swing weapons at intervals that are multiples of 0.25s. The number is always "rounded up", so to speak. So if your timer to swing should be calculated at 1.3 seconds, you will swing the weapon every 1.5 seconds.
  
• The above changes mean you can now "cycle" slower weapons with wrestling to make them hit faster. With 25 stamina, this would create a 3.25s cycle time, with perfect timing.
  
• If you don't have a combatant and something either attacks or casts a spell on you, your combatant will always change to the person/monster that attacked you. In the case of delayed damage, the attack will happen at the time of damage.
  

Skill/Spell Changes

• Leather armor now gives a penalty to mana regeneration.
  
• There is now a check that takes place when you meditate to see what types of armor you are wearing, and active meditation will fail if you are wearing too much. "Regenerative forces cannot penetrate your armor". This is based on armor type, not armor rating.
  
• When debuffs are casted on a target that is already fully debuffed, the caster will receive a fizzle effect. The spell still disturbs, it is an entirely visual effect accurate to the era.
  
• The explosion spell no longer stacks. If you release a second explosion before the 3 second delay is up, the first explosion will never connect with the target.
  
• Wrestling, and tactics gains while using wrestling, have been slowed to account for the increased wrestle speed. It should take roughly the same amount of time to GM wrestling, just more attempts overall.
  

Item Changes

• Removed barkeep contracts from vendors that still had them. These will really be deleted this time, so PM me if you want the money back. 2 days amnesty!
  
• Many item price changes. The list of T2A accurate prices is absolutely massive so we will get this done over time. For now, the prices on jewelers are now completely era accurate, your gems should sell for a bit more. Ingots now cost more from vendors (9gp). Raw ribs and leather sell for less, but cooked ribs are still a 6gp sell price.
  
• Chess, checkers and backgammon boards are now 5k each. This is done purely because of the large item count increase that comes from having a lot of these items. Our save times are short now, but that likely won't be forever.
  

Runebooks

• The range to use and recall out of a runebook is now 2 tiles, up from 1.
  
• Runebook weight corrected to 0.
  
• The runebook can only be stolen indirectly. Targeting the runebook directly will give the message "You can't steal that." It can be stolen when it is chosen at random (by targeting a player), or if it is part of a sub-pack (steal the sub-pack).
  

Misc

• Some general tidy up on gnarled staves. They now require IDing, they have a message during their cooldown, and ID staves don't have a cooldown.
  
• There is now some basic collision detection for boats. There are still some situations in which monsters can end up "boarding" the boat, however it is now possible to escape monsters in this situation as they will simply pass through the boat, instead of being dragged along. This was a fairly complex issue which deserves a decent amount of time spent on it - at a later date.
  
• Hirable NPCs charge more. They were working for an absolute pittance and would have been better off hunting mongbats for a living. They probably still would be.
  
• Healers no longer have magery. This does not prevent them from resurrecting.
  
• An easter egg has been added to the energy vortex spell. You probably already know what this is
  
• There is now a system message when you see a player attacking another player. (eg, "You see Jack attacking Tyler!"). This will be added for various things, it was mostly a test.
  

[Jack]

Sorry guys. There is an issue with the patch, am working as quickly as possible. I don't expect this will take more than 30 minutes.

[Talia]

Thank you for all your hard work, it is greatly appreciated!

[Jack]

It's a pleasure to work on