Asherons Call: All srand, All The time..

Question: TickyAtack - C lord suggestions. Up the xp reward cause after 2 hours of killing it with 7 people, 200k isn't worth it. Maybe 5 mil, or 10, then it'd be about a mil per person. Make loot a little better, I find better loot off a shadow. Up the timer for its corpse to delay, to all 7 people scrounge through the loot takes longer than 5 minutes. This would make the overall experience of killing these a lot more fun.
Answer: srand - Crystal Lords have an override on their corpse decay time, by the way. I believe it's 15 minutes.

Question: Solandra-LC - Ok, I'm confused here... Why do such items as Shirts, Pants and Steel-Toed Boots not cover all the items on your body that they graphically cover?!
Answer: srand - I don't know why they were designed that way. I wasn't around then. I do know why we didn't change what they cover when we changed what they say they cover -- because there's about 6 very complicated interlocking systems involved, and I don't know any of them well enough to go tinkering with them. I could devote a few weeks to figuring the systems out, but there are several thousand things with higher priority right now.

Question: TemplarNocturne - Did you guys forget about Assault Weapons, too?
Answer: srand - Not forgotten -- we just haven't gotten to them yet. Personally, I'd like to spruce up the entire quest.

Question: Turn_Blade - House trading idea. Make the deeds tradeable only via trade window. When you trade somone your deed they become the owner of the house...
Answer: srand - Trading the deed is possible -- but it requires quite a bit of work to make that translate into transferring ownership of the house. It would be especially complicated if we wanted to support trading of two houses at once -- for instance, I trade you my villa for your cottage. This functionality is on the long list of housing features we'd like to support, but because of the amount of work it will require it is a bit further down the list.

Question: darklightadept - Neydisa/Bandit Quest bugged on WE. I started this quest on my noob, got the note to take from Neydisa to Bandit castle. Gave it to Jourgensson, got my 20 bandit daggers, and then the npc locked up before giving me any experience. When I try to give him stout so I can do the rest of the quest, I am told that he is "too busy to accept gifts right now" So now not only can I not get my 100K xp, I can't do the rest of the quest (Since I have to give him more of the stout) so I miss out on 250K exp and a spiffy chain haubby
Answer: srand - You must be level 40 or higher to get the experience rewards from this quest. You can get the other rewards at lower levels, but the experience rewards are restricted to 40+. So you didn't actually lose out on anything with your noob. There is an issue that is causing three of the NPCs to freeze up when they reward a character of less than level 40. If you let the landblock reload, they will fix themselves -- and they will be fixed for good with the January update.

Question: blambik - Ivory on sing bow ? I tried to use ivory on my sing bow but I got an error msg. Does the ivory need to be 5.00+ quality?
Answer: srand - Try dropping your bow. That is the message you get when the bow does not have the attuned bit set. The attuned bit is the no-give bit -- you cannot ivory things that are already givable. If the bow isn't attuned, then you should be able to drop it. Is it possible that you already ivoried this bow?

Question: Zappage - Devs, were war magic crits supposed to be like this? I barely use my CS staff anymore b/c normally I hit higher than I do if I crit hit. Example, I'll be killing a silver Tusker, level 6 vuln and level 6 wars, 235 damage (normal hit), critical hit! 130 damage. Was it intended to be like this? And some Ive noticed criticals bowman or melees do are A LOT higher than a mage could ever crit hit for.
Answer: srand - Magic didn't have the chance to critical until we added the code a few months back. We added the critical hit notification a month or two after that so you could see when you critical. Magical critical hits were not meant to be a large power boost for mages. They were meant to be a small nifty thing for mages. So yes, magical critical hits are supposed to be like this.

Question: acuser - Earned assigned lockpick xp for examining lockpicks. Around April 2002 when the appraise skills were rendered ineffective and before tinkering skills were created the devs eliminated earning xp for examining healing kits and scrolls to earn healing skill and arcane lore. It now seems that December 2002's patch has eliminated earning xp for examining lockpicks now. Can anyone confirm this. Srand, why was this done?
Answer: srand - Well that's odd. There were no changes that I know of that should have affected this. *shrug* I'll take a look at it when I get a chance.
Answer: srand (later post) - Ahh, I know what changed now. Hmm ... no, that's probably going to stay changed.

Question: Shoushi SE Training Master - Why do Olthoi Servants/Drones have such bad loot compared to all other Olthoi?
Answer: srand - Harvesters & Gardeners drop Soldier loot ... although they shouldn't. It's an old bug from the beginning of ACDM. It was decided not to 'nerf' their loot for various reasons. However, when we added Servants and Drones, we decided not to perpetuate the bug. Since Servants and Drones occur in dunegons with Harvesters and Gardeners, you have your choice of xp or loot.

Question: Telaziz - This a known issue? Tusker Title Quest. You give Brighteyes, the Tailor Tusker Liberator Tusk.
<{ Combater }> XP Change: 75
Brighteyes, the Tailor tells you, "Bobo, says that these tuskers are heroes because they have helped to free so many of their brethren. But what about us? We're not free. But thanks to your efforts we will be someday."
You've earned 75,000 experience.
Answer: srand - It is now. We'd actually had reports of that before, and looked into the matter and found nothing wrong. However, in looking again today I did find a problem. (Perhaps we need coal ... ) At any rate, thank you for the report, and it will be fixed in January.

Question: Banderling Briber - Request to extend the Golem Key stacking dynamic to sik and sings.
Answer: srand - Internally, intricate carved keys are not keys but craft tools. You use them on a mnemosyne and that performs a craft interaction, destroying the locked mnemosyne and creating an unlocked mnemosyne. Now, the craft system knows how to deal with stacked tools, but the locking/unlocking system that real keys use does not know how to deal with stacked keys. And sing and SIK keys are real keys. All of which is to say that we can't just make them stackable. With a little work, however, we can provide a collection mechanism for them, and we are indeed looking into this for a future update. (Not January.)

Question: Alissa - Yeah, the one level 7 scroll I got off a mob (crystal golem) was true value 7. ;-(
Answer: srand - I'd hang on to that.

Question: Overlord_Fenris - Bug with Oak Flagon's. Hey guys, there is a bizarre bug with oak flagons. I can't put them down on the ground. It says "Oak Flagon cannot be dropped" whenever I try.
Answer: srand - Indeed, this is an old and very odd bug. I looked into it in the distant past and was unable to find a reason for this behavior. Now that I have more experience with our code base I should look again -- I may be able to find something. It sure makes you wonder ...

Question: Gator - Extra space for spells? Just a thought. When casting spells, there seems to be a lot of space below the current spells that another row could be added to save from having to scroll back and forth so much while fighting with a mage. That would also be easier than switching from tab to tab, too. I know I would enjoy the additional spaces.
Answer: srand - That's an interesting idea. That space used to be taken up by the personal spell economy bar, of course. But since there is no more personal spell economy, there's no more bar. I'll ask around and see how feasible this idea that might be.

Question: Drezden - Recall Icons. Recall Icons are getting a bit confusing again... Can we get more icons?
Answer: srand - Many of the spell icons are identical or very similar, and it can make them hard to tell apart. As we have art time, we will be working on making many of the spell icons more visibly different. Recall spells will probably not be the first phase of this, but we will get to them as we have time.

Question: Aqueous-DT - Hollow/Phantom Missile Weapons. Will these ever be getting an increase in power? They are massively underpowered and I haven't used mine since I got them the day they were released a few patches ago.
Answer: srand - We started these out a bit conservatively because of the balance considerations involved. We will be tweaking their power -- slowly -- starting in January.

Question: Protes - Thrown Weapons. I have yet to get a clear answer from anyone in regards to Atlatl weapons vs thrown weapons. Does strength have any type of damage or range factor with Atlatl weapons?
Answer: srand - All weapons that use the Thrown Weapons skill get a damage bonus from your Strength.

Question: AncientWizard - Will we ever see salvage that can lower the work on an item? I got a nice bow that I wish was work 4 not 5. Are they any chance for salvage that lower the work.
Answer: srand - The team has discussed this idea some, but it's unlikely that we will implement in in the next month or two.

Question: Flavious - I have always wanted a crest or a pic on my shield or to at least dye it a diffrent color. is this a possability in the future? is it possable for both dye and stamping of shields to be implemented? ive had some feed back on this and wanted to see any responce from you guys.
Answer: srand - We've always wanted these abilities as well. *grin* The tech isn't there right now to support dyeing or stamping of shields, but we have considered it, and we will be investigating this as a possibility in the future.

Question: Garioc - Why doesn't AC have an option to Duel - as opposed to just going Red?
Answer: srand - The reason AC doesn't have this option yet is because 1) it's not as simple as we'd like and 2) our priorities haven't yet allowed us the resources to accomplish it. But dueling is something we'd like to see in AC some day, and something that is often at the back of our minds as a cool feature to implement.