Patch Notes from 1999-03-17

Patch Notes from 1999-03-17

Blue PK changes

We are slowly phasing in changes to the reputation system to reduce antisocial behavior. In this update, we have some changes that will push blue PKs to being red.

• A new "long-term" counter will be added that tracks the total number of people you have murdered. (When the patch goes in, if you are at four murders, this will keep those four murders.)
  • This counter will go up when you are reported for murder, like the current murder count.
  • This counter will decay at the rate of 1 every 40 hours (the "short-term" counter goes down 1 every 8 hours).
  • While the "long-term" counter is five or more, you will highlight red, and will be vulnerable to attack.
  • Stat loss will still depend on the "short-term" counter. (The counter which can be reduced one murder by waiting eight hours.)

• Another new counter we term "pingpong" will be added.
  • This counter increases each time you go red.
  • If this counter reaches five, you will be permanently red (meaning, you will be attackable. You will not suffer stat loss unless your murder count is also high).
  • This counter does not decay.

• Murdering other players will seriously affect your karma. (In a negative way.)
• To summarize, there are now three counters which track different aspects of murderers.
  • The "long-term" murder counter will track murders which occur over longer periods of time. (i.e. Murder are reduced only after forty hours of play time.) It does not affect stat loss.
  • "Short-term" murder counter which tracks your murder count for stat loss. This counter will reduce one murder for every eight hours of gameplay.
  • "Pingpong": The actual behavioral counter, where if you have reached red status five times, on either of the previous two counters, you will be flagged permanently as a murderer.
  • Any murder will increase both the "short-term" and "long-term" murder counters. It will simply take longer to be removed from the "long-term" murder counter.

Skills

Fishing

Fishing has received a major overhaul. There are yet more changes planned for fishing in future updates.

• Based on your skill level, you now have a chance of pulling up the following (listed in increasing difficulty order)
  • One of any of several types of boots
  • Fish, as always
  • Magical fish, which can boost stamina, strength, intelligence, or dexterity.
  • Treasure maps
  • Messages in bottles
  • Sea serpents (on failure)
  • Deep sea serpents (on failure, and if deep in the ocean)

Fishing for sunken treasure

• Double-clicking on a message in a bottle will extract a waterstained SOS.
• The SOS will have sextant coordinates on it which will be somewhere in the ocean.
• Fishing at the location given will try to recover the sunken treasure, as long as the SOS is at the top level of your backpack. You may recover bones, artifacts from the sunken ship, or the treasure itself.
• You can keep fishing until you get the treasure, at which point the message disappears.

Carpentry

New items have been made craftable.

• These items require tailoring to make.
  • Small beds
  • Large beds

Ballot boxes

• The first person to use the ballot box becomes the owner of the box.
• The owner of the box can set topics for the box. When they do so, the votes are zeroed out. As the owner types in the topic, it will present to them the full topic thus far in the bottom corner.
• The owner of the box can also zero out the votes at any time.
• Non-owners can use the box, see the current yes/no votes, and vote yes or no on the topic.
• A given character can only vote once on a topic.
• You can chop them up to make them go away.

• Dartboards
• Water troughs (yes, these work as water sources)
• Musical instruments, which require musicianship to craft:
  • Lap harp
  • Standing harp
  • Drum
  • Lute
  • Tambourine
  • Tambourine with tassle

Tinkering

New items have been added to tinkering.

• Jewelcrafting. Crafting jewelry requires you to target a gemstone to add to the jewelry.
• Necklaces
• Earrings
• Wedding rings
  • These items say "a wedding ring" on them
  • These items are "newbiefied" and will remain with your corpse when you die
• Globes
• Pewter mugs
• Keyrings
• Iron keys
• Hatchets
• Mortar and pestles
• Candelabras
• Forks
• Spoons
• Goblets
• Lockpicks

Hiding

• You can no longer hide while casting a spell.
• Using hiding sets the number of stealthy steps you can take to zero.

Stealth

• Shoving past someone while stealthy will reveal you.
• Snooping will reveal you.
• You cannot stealth while riding a horse.
• It will become substantially more difficult to start stealth when in the vicinity of other players.
  • The more players, the harder it will be.
  • They have to be within 10 paces to count against you.
  • Only players affect this, not NPCs.
  • This only affects when you start stealthing, not while you walk stealthed.

The number of steps you can take while stealthed has been halved.

Other changes

• Problems with the exit from the ice dungeon will be corrected.
• You will be able to declare guild wars via new menu option that lets you just target a member of the opposing guild.
• New options have been added to the disguise kit.
• Optimizations were done to improve guildstone performance.
• The blacksmith's guild will list the correct guild name when you attempt to join the blacksmith's guild.
• Brokers will now buy back house deeds.
  • When you come near an broker, if you have a house deed in your backpack, the broker will offer to appraise it or buy it.
  • If you say "appraise" to the broker, you will get a targeting cursor so you can target the deed you want appraised. The arhictect will tell you what he would pay for that deed.
  • Dropping the deed on the broker will sell the deed to him. The money you get will be placed in your bank box automatically.
  • Brokers may be found in the same places as carpenters and architects.

• A major optimization was done to houses and boats. You will no longer receive the objects that are on or in houses and boats until you step on them.
  • You will still be able to see monsters, animals, or players.
  • You will still be able to see things that are on the steps.
  • This will significantly improve your connection when around buildings that are full of stuff.
  • This will also cause a noticeable pause when you step onto the step of a building, as the contents of the building are downloaded to you.
  • You will still receive the contents of the last building you set foot in, as long as you are within update range. This means that stepping on and then off and then on the step again will not cause repeated delays.

UO-Patch Notes