Patch Notes from 1997-09-02 number 1

Patch Notes from 1997-09-02 number 1

• A general weakening of creature difficulty.
• Slowing down of creature movement.
• Fixes to animations when riding horses.
• Another pass on starting equipment.
• The magic system moved to difficulty based as well. Using low level spells when at a moderate skill level will not enhance your skill, and using a high level spell that is a challenge for you will confer a greater reward in terms of learning.
• A fix to reagent taking in spells, so that they take the right amount of reagents for a spell. There is still some randomness involved.
• Failure to smelt consumes some of the ore.
• Smelting a useless piece of ore will no longer check your skill.
• You won't be able to repair items already in perfect condition.
• The amount of raw materials required for making items has been put on a curve, so that the nicer items require substantially more raw materials than before.
• Reagents will be lighter.
• Magic item variety should be greatly increased.
• Fixed some clicking problems where double-clicks registered as only single-clicks.
• Pets will only take single word names with no punctuation.
• New character windows with more room for the titles and name.
• Creatures will now have a shorter "alertness" range before they can spot you and decide to attack (on-screen only).
• Tamed creatures and hirelings will no longer freeze when released or they quit.
• Smelting ore is now based on mining skill, not blacksmithing.
• Moongates will be guarded regions.
• Spellbooks are no longer stealable.
• Animal taming will now require some time spent convincing the animal.
• Many spells were fixed.
• A new skills window is in place, with a smaller font, and buttons you can single-click for the skills usable from the skills window.
• You can no longer use items that belong to other people.
• Alchemy should be working again.
• The protection spell should work again.
• The Armor Rating statistic shown in your status window now displays the AR weighted by equipment slots. This is purely a change in display, not in the internal mechanics of the way armor works.
• The interface to blacksmithing changed slightly. Using a blacksmithing tool now brings up a selection window. The anvil in the selection window represents repairing an item rather than making one.
• Blacksmithing now searches your inventory for metal rather than making you target it.
• You can now chop up carpentry-made items with an axe. Only the owner of a house can chop up items in his house.