Publish Notes from 2003-11-25

Publish Notes from 2003-11-25

Publish 21 Updates & Bug Fixes

Nov 26 2003 3:07PM CST

Publish 21, as with most game publishes, contains a number of game updates and bug fixes. This article contains a summary of the upcoming game improvements that will come about with Publish 21.

Housing, Player-Vendors, Player-Barkeeps

• If you attempt to trade a house to someone who already owns a house, the trade gump-window appears immediately. There is no longer a delay until the other person clicks through the “You will condemn your houses” warning gump.
• An issue with BOD book lockdowns has been corrected. Each locked down BOD book will now take up 1 lockdown plus 1 additional lockdown for every 5 BODs that the book contains. A full BOD book will take up 101 lockdown counts. (Houses at the maximum lockdown count may therefore see the available lockdown count become a negative number. However, all of your locked down items will remain locked down, even though your lockdown count is negative, unless you release them yourself.)
• An issue causing characters recalling out of customized houses to appear in the ban spot before the final location has been resolved.
• “You cannot access this house while it is being edited” sometimes incorrectly appeared when starting to customize a house. This will no longer occur.
• Characters will no longer be able to recall into a castle courtyard.
• Corrected an issue when exiting house customization mode that would cause a house to display an incorrect number of lockdowns when stackable items, locked down in separate piles, in the house automatically combined in the moving crate.
• An issue that caused guildstones, that were moved outside during house customization and then back in again, to start decaying has been fixed.
• Text has been added to the barkeep menu that describes how to delete a message.
• Barkeeps will now display the proper title when it is changed.
• Dressing a player-vendor with an invisibility item will not activate the item (the vendor will not become invisible nor will any charges be used).

Crafting, Decorating, Items

• Master smiths and tailors will now have a better chance of succeeding at enhancement based upon their skill level. Ancient Smithy Hammers will contribute their bonus to smiths who have them equipped, but each enhancement attempt will use up a charge from the ASH being held.
• Some buying habits of players will have a more significant effect on NPC shopkeeper prices. This applies to all shards except for Siege Perilous and Mugen. (See Vex’s recent Team Comment for more details & insights on these changes.)
  • The more stackable items, excluding reagents, sold to a specific NPC shopkeeper, the lower the price that the shopkeeper will charge for those items. For every 1000 units bought from a player, the price will drop by 1 gold piece per unit.
  • The more stackable items, excluding reagents, purchased from a specific NPC shopkeeper, the higher the price that the shopkeeper will charge for those items. For every 1000 units sold to a player, the price will increase by 1 gold piece per unit.
  • Shopkeepers will always stock 500 of their respective items, and can always purchase up to 500 of their respective items in one transaction.)
  • NPC shopkeepers will always buy one of these types of items at 1 gold less per unit than what they charge for it. The minimum “sell price” is 2 gold and the minimum “buy price” is 1 gold.
• Only owners and co-owners of a house will be able to use an interior decorator tool to manipulate locked down items in that house.
• Repairing an item will now cause that item to incur one point of permanent damage to its maximum durability rating per every failed repair attempt. Items will also have a chance to receive one point of permanent durability damage per success, depending on the amount of durability repaired and the skill of the repairing craftsman.
• The new Japanese wearables will now properly display the "blessed" tag when a bless deed is used on them. Also, an issue which prevented players from being able to use clothing bless deeds on the new wearables has been fixed.
• If you craft using a runic or regular hammer that's in your backpack while having an Ancient Smithy Hammer equipped, charges will now be used from both hammers.
• Master smiths and tailors will now have a better chance of succeeding at enhancement based upon their skill level. Ancient Smithy Hammers will contribute their bonus to smiths who have them equipped, but each enhancement attempt will use up a charge from the ASH being held.
• An issue that prevented crafted golems from regenerating health naturally has been fixed.
• Crafted golems will no longer be vulnerable to poison.
• Powder of Temperament will now be called Powder of Fortifying and will work on any item that has a durability rating.
• Runebooks will now contain buttons for Recall, Gate Travel, and Sacred Journey.
• Repeating crossbows and composite bows will no longer spawn with the “Use Best Weapon” magical property.

Adventuring, Combat, Skills

• The wrestling special moves will no longer require arms lore or anatomy.
• Archery Buttes are once again keeping score. Additionally, they now also announce the shooter’s name, score, and “number of shots fired” to the audience instead of just the shooter.
• Order and Chaos shields will no longer retain any of their special functionality and will behave as regular shields.
• Weapons can no longer have more than one “slayer” magical property.
• Paralyzed characters will no longer be able to throw purple potions.
• Pets will now properly follow & attack their targets across server boundaries when commanded. (As a side effect, monsters can now pursue player characters across a server boundary.)
• You will now be able to cast Vengeful Spirit against a player flagged as your enemy in town without incurring the wrath of the guards.
• Weapons and shields with the "spell channeling" property will no longer receive acid damage from acid spewing creatures if the wielder of the item is using a ranged attack, such as casting a spell.
• The lance's special dismount move may only be used against other players if they are mounted and also wielding a lance.
• A bug that allowed Animal Lore to work on stabled pets in some instances has been fixed.
• Runic crafting items will now make a linear roll between their minimum and maximum values when determining the intensity of the magic properties they impart on the crafted item.
• Decreased the amount of time it takes to heal yourself with bandages—between 5 – 10 seconds, based upon the character’s Dexterity.
• The amount of damage restored when using bandage-healing has been lowered. (Ex. If you have 100 Healing and 100 Anatomy, and your fingers have not slipped, then you can expect to heal about 36-60 damage).
• Increased the distance allowed between the person healing with bandages and the person being healed from 1 tile to 2 tiles.
• It is now more difficult to interrupt bandage-healing—your fingers will not slip if you take less then 26 damage while bandaging. However, if interruption & slipping does occur, the amount healed will be reduced by about 35%.
• An issue with guild highlighting not updating properly when one side has declared peace has been fixed.
• The ability to gain over 100.0 in Evaluate Intelligence, Provocation, and Musicianship skills on Siege Perilous has been now verified (when using Skill Scrolls of Power, of course).
• Monsters that are under the influence of Peacemaking have an improved chance of breaking out when they are hit.

Factions

• Fixed an error where an expired faction item was not giving the appropriate message when expiring.
• Fixed a missing spawn area for Ogre Lords.
• Fixes a spelling error on the Magincia faction stone.
• The Magincia town stone will now properly reflect all changes made to the town's treasury, including gold made through faction vendors.
• Players will no longer be able to cast Blade Spirits in Faction strongholds.
• An issue that was causing faction players to wrongfully incur a murder count for killing players in an opposing faction has been addressed.
• Faction players will now properly receive faction points and silver when their pets kill monsters aligned with an opposing faction.
• Fixed an issue with sigils that caused the timer for recapture to be a lot shorter than was intended. The timer for sigil recapture should be 15 minutes.
• The issue on Chesapeake that prevented the CL's in the Minax faction from being able to adjust the tithing rate for their faction has been fixed.
• Corrected text under commander options on faction stones. "TRANSFER SILVER" should now appear as an option.

Quests, Locations, NPCs

• Fixed an exploit that allowed players to remove the puzzle boxes from Khaldun.
• Improvements to Dungeon Doom’s bone daemon “champion skull reward” looting rights to ensure the player who did the most damage will always be rewarded the skull.
• Adjusted Dungeon Doom’s bone daemon loot to a “lesser” set.
• A fix to the Buccaneer’s Den bank will now ensure a banker is always available there on all shards.
• After some Malas houses were demolished, some crates that had been locked-down were not properly decaying. This has been fixed.
• Fixed an issue where recalling off the default location in a runebook would sometimes take you to the wrong facet (which sometimes also meant trying to take you to a location that was blocked on that alternate facet).
• You will no longer be able to resurrect other players in Dungeon Khaldun by using the Noble Sacrifice Paladin ability.
• Chaos Dragoons will no longer spawn in their birthday suits. They will be properly equipped with armor and weapons.
• Implemented some fixes for Haven escort “quests.”
• Levels 4 and 5 Treasure maps now have improved loot.

Bulk Order Deeds

• The Bulk Order Deed reward system now scales better in regards to the value of the rewards given.
• The distribution of Bulk Order Deed rewards will be more consistent and not as random.

Miscellaneous System & Feature Updates

• Overloaded characters will no longer drop items to the ground while moving items within their backpack.
• You will no longer drop your weapon to the ground if you are disarmed while your backpack is full. The weapon will now drop into the disarmed player’s backpack.
• You will no longer drop your ethereal mount to the ground if you dismount while your backpack is full. The ethereal mount statuette will now drop into the dismounting player’s backpack.
• You can no longer enter into trade if you are already involved in a trade.
• Fixed a bug that allowed trapped chests to be traded.
• You can no longer target hidden players with the “last target” macro.
• Fixed an issue that allowed access to a boat even though the plank was locked.
• Removing an item from a stack and dropping it to an invalid location will no longer allow that item to “snap back” and return to the original stack. The item will now drop into the player’s backpack.
• You can once again refresh a boat by clicking on the plank (as long as you have the boat’s key on your person).
• A bug that kept drydocked ships from displaying the proper name has been fixed.
• You can now combine necromantic reagents into commodity deeds.
• Field spells, such as Poison Field and Fire Field, can once again be cast on boats.
• Tillermen on boats will no longer display item/storage counts in their Item Properties displays.
• Players may now add Recall scrolls to locked-down runebooks. Also, anyone with security access to the runebook can rename it, change its default location, add runes to it, and drop runes from the runebook.
• Players can steal from town chests again.

Game Client

• The trade gump-window art has been updated with a textured background.
• Runebooks will no longer show item/stone counts as containers do.
• Tooltip description for Whirlwind Attack combat move has been improved.
• An issue that caused a “Life Remaining” tag to appear on a character when using Cartography has been fixed.
• The Item Properties display for a boat will now update immediately when that boat is renamed.
• A player can no longer initiate a trade if the other player is holding something on his cursor-hand.