Patch 9 - 10/30/14 - Halloween Update

[Jack]

Halloween

The dead are rising from their graves and have been spotted in various places around Britannia, these are no ordinary monsters!

These monsters will prove a challenge for all character types, it will be no easier for a tamer or bard to down these creatures than it is for a warrior. Band together and fight the evil!

The respawn on these creatures is quite long, so you'll have to move around the world to find them. There are over 50 spawners - hint: they generally don't spawn in the lost lands.

The monsters will drop a special type of coin that is limited time. These coins will be removed from the world on November 5, so don't bother trying to save them! There will be a direct exchange rate from Holiday Coins to Gold, for those who need to exchange their last few coins.

Expect something special on Halloween!

A list of Halloween items will be found in the next comment of this post.

Housing

• The interior decoration tool will no longer function. They have been removed from vendors.
  
• You can now insta log when you have been aggressed. The 2 minute combat delay only applies to being an aggressor.
  
• Containers that are locked down, but not secure, can now be accessed by anyone.
  
• Fixed a problem with locking down containers that were full of items. Locking down a container no longer checks the total lockdown count against what is inside the container.
  
• When you destroy an add-on in your house, it will no longer return to your pack as a deed.
  

Loot

• The amount of reagents in treasure chests has been lowered.
  
• Ophidian avengers, ophidian matriarchs, terathan matriarchs and dragons now have better gold drops.
  

• Shipwrecked items should now give the correct description, for example: "a pillow recovered from a shipwreck". All previously fished up shipwrecked items will be automatically updated. Not all items pulled up from a shipwreck have this property.
  
• Various item descriptions fixed. Will have to take a closer look later.
  
• The max charges on clothing/jewelry has been reduced. Invisibility items will drop less often.
  
• Gnarled stave drops have been tweaked, they were dropping ID a bit too often.
  
• A more thorough look at what is dropping will be coming up. Loot tables in regards to vanquishing, etc, will likely be buffed.
  
• Fixed a bug with protection items giving a permanent boost to armor. Protection items will now only apply their effect if the virtual armor mod is 0. Jewellery overall needs a bit further looking into - fix the bouncing stats issue, add a cooldown to ring invis charges, etc.
  

AI Behaviour

• Monsters almost never cast heal now. They will only do it below 10% health. The fix last time was partially broken.
  
• Fixed a bug with tamed fire breathers not processing their attack target correctly.
  
• The chance for an tamed fire breather to acquire a target has been lowered slightly.
  
• Monsters will pick direct damage spells more often than before.
  
• The Evil Mage Lord will now immediately cast spells when it has a valid target.
  
• Giving a pet or hire a neutral order, will no longer have any effect on its combatant status. If the pet/hire is in combat, it will remain in combat.
  

Skills, Spells and Combat

• Your swing state can no longer advance when you do not have a combatant. eg: You can not go from "unable to swing" to "able to swing" unless you attack something. Although that may seem pointless (since you need a combatant to be able to swing), you receive a full delay on arming a weapon if you are unable to swing. Thus, it is a good idea to consider this while in combat.
  
• It is now a bit easier to get away with stealing things and not being noticed. The new calculation is based on the same factors as before, just a different calculation. The absolute minimum chance to not be noticed is roughly 75% with GM stealing (stealing 0-1 stones with nobody else around except the target). The chance to be caught also considers your stealing skill.
  

• Stealing can be witnessed by any human (player or NPC) within 10 tiles of the crime. The chance for someone who is not the target to notice, is one quarter that of the target's chance. The witness must be in LOS to notice, but LOS is not necessary to call guards. The range of the witness does not yet play a role (it will later). Any human within 10 tiles simply gives another check to be caught. This is non compounding, so even with 100 humans in range, you would still have an extremely small chance to not be noticed.
  
• A bug has been fixed with the curse spell. It now correctly applies when casted by a monster.
  
• Removed a debug message from meditation that was left in during panic after a server crash.
  

Misc

• An option has been added to the MOTD to disable it on login.
  
• Removed poison immunity messages from blade spirits and energy vortexes. They still trigger poison immunity messages on other mobs.
  
• The Ancient Wyrm occasionally reflects spells back at the caster.
  
• The messages you receive when asking NPCs to train you, are now a lot tidier.
  
• When you add items to player vendors, the item description should now be correct.
  
• Dismounting a horse or opening your paperdoll now count as an action. Yipee!