Asherons Call: Letter to the Players

The Slumbering Giant[/P]

Welcome to the January edition of the Asheron's Call Letter to the Players. The AC Live team hopes that you are enjoying the winter season, both in-game and out. The January update for AC is just around the corner. We're busy putting some of the final touches on this month's content along with taking some time to improve gameplay for our players. There's a lot to cover this month, so without further ado, here are the bigger changes that will take place in Dereth in January.

Life Magic Changes
In our examination of the magic system, we found that the previous changes to transfer spells helped us reach many of the goals we had set for these spells, but we also found that we could improve the magic system further. Moreover, we found that there were many other areas of magic we could improve upon at the same time. We think these changes will help mitigate some of the concerns our players have had with the previous changes, as well as introduce even more strategy for those who enjoy playing a mage.

The following chart explains the changes made to the Life Magic transfer and harm spells:

Table 1 - Transfer and Harm Range Changes

The health transfer spells received some special attention, since these serve a unique purpose for many mages. The chart below explains the changes, but the concept behind the changes can be summed up rather easily: Lower level health transfers are geared for defense, while higher level transfers are geared toward offense. Remember that the changes below only affect health transfers; stamina and mana transfers remain the same.

Table 2 - Health Transfer Spell Changes

One thing that has not changed in Life Magic is that you can only transfer as much of the secondary attribute as you need. So if you are completely healed, you still will not be able to transfer health from a target.

If Table 2 seems a bit confusing, we can provide two examples that may help clear things up:

Example 1 - A mage is taking damage and would like to recover some health quickly. Using the level 1 health transfer spell, he takes 30 points away from a monster attacking him and receives 60 points in return. He does this a few times to help keep him alive while he tries to make a speedy retreat.

Example 2 - A mage has taken some damage, but well within what she can handle. She targets a nearby creature that has quite a bit of health. Using the level 7 health transfer spell, she takes 180 points of health away from the creature, and receives 90 in return.

Another change to Life Magic revolves around the Life Bolts. Their travel speed has been increased so that their rate of travel is exactly between the speed of a War Magic Bolt and a War Magic Streak. Previously, the Life Bolts traveled at the same rate as a War Magic Bolt.

War Magic Changes
With regard to War Magic, we felt the majority of people's issues revolved around one point: War Magic can do tremendous amounts of damage, but can be inconsistent over short periods of time. This inconsistency could lead to frustration, so we've made two changes to War Magic to try and address this. The first change involves increasing the damage dealt out by volley and blast spells, a class of spells that many war mages found ineffective in the past. These changes will bring the spells in line with the damage dealt out by Bolts and should be useful in crowded situations. The chart below breaks these changes down further:

Table 3 - Blast and Volley Damage per Bolt Changes

The other change this month involves revising the damage and casting time of the Streak spells, as explained in the following chart:

Table 4 - Streak Damage and Rate of Fire Changes

The figure for the rate of fire in Table 4 is an approximation of how many times the spell can be cast per minute. You can see that the damage has actually been reduced for most streaks. However, mages can now cast these spells significantly faster than they had in the past, providing mages with the ability to fire off streaks in rapid succession, or use them as a "finishing move" on a creature that is almost dead. We hope these changes will give War Mages more options in dealing out damage, depending on the situation they find themselves in.

Item Magic Changes
Item Magic received a slight change this month to two of its spells. Since the appraisal skills were removed, the Hide/True Value spells served no purpose in the game. In January, they will be reborn as spells that increase or decrease the mana conversion modifier on wands and other casting implements. This spell works a bit differently than similar spells, such as Heart Seeker or Defender. Instead of adding to any existing bonus, this spell multiplies any existing bonus. For example, casting Hermetic Link I on an orb with a Mana Conversion bonus of +10% would increase the bonus by 1.1 to +11%. This means that items without a mana conversion bonus do not receive a benefit, since the spell's effect is being multiplied by zero. Since these new spells replace the existing Hide/True Value spells, all characters who had Hide/True Value in their spell books will automatically receive the new spells.

Attribute Redistribution
Post-creation skill alteration is a good way to allow characters to adjust to ongoing changes in game systems, but it's sometimes not quite enough. Attribute allocation, after all, is almost as important as what skills you have trained. In fact, it is only at higher levels of play that the effects of the character's starting attributes are really felt. So in January, players will be able to adjust their starting attributes using a system similar to the skill alteration gems that appeared in November. We feel this is the last bit of flexibility you need to adjust your character as you see fit to deal with any past or future game play changes we might make.
The exact method for changing your character's attributes is via a quest similar to the one introduced for skill sell-back, but for every point of one attribute raised, you must lower another by the same amount.  To choose which attribute to raise and which one to lower, you will need to obtain two gems, one for the attribute to increase, another for the attribute to decrease. Combining these two gems will result in an attribute transfer gem. Using this gem will remove 10 points from one attribute and give it to another. Keep in mind that this works similarly to how attributes are handled at character creation; that is, the innate attribute amounts cannot be lower than 10 or more than 100. If the attribute is close to one of these limits, only the amount to reach that limit would be transferred. For example, if an innate attribute was 95, only 5 points could be transferred to it. Essentially this means that you can now redistribute the pool of 270 attribute points given to your character at creation. You can find out a character's innate attributes at any time by examining the burden panel. It will now list the character's innate attributes, along with his or her resistances and other important information.

Note that each gem used for raising and lowering attributes has its own pickup timer, so that one of each can be picked up every two weeks. This timer is not shared with the timer used for skill alteration. The combined transfer gem is not givable or droppable, but it can be saved for later use.

Changes to the Gaerlan Quest
As promised, January will include changes to the Gaerlan quest. We've removed the dynamics that were causing it to not work as intended from time to time. Below are the changes that were made:

• The Guardian portals are permanent fixtures at the various Essence ruins.
  [LI]Guardians within the dungeons will reappear once every hour. This means that one group of players can be ahead of another group by one hour at any stage of the quest, but overlapping quests shouldn't present a problem.
  [LI]The Platinum Golem outside of the downed Citadel will no longer be event-driven; rather, he'll now be a permanent spawn. Beware though; if you've bypassed any section of the quest, the Golem will now return you to Eastham when you speak to him.
  [LI]The Platinum Golems within the Ziggurats will also be a permanent spawn.
  [LI]Activating or failing to activate the Platinum Golems in the Ziggurats within the allotted time no longer controls whether Gaerlan appears or not.
  [LI]Five portals will now appear in the Citadel Library. These portals consist of four dungeon portals, for the various level breaks, and a portal into the final reward/prison chamber. Players that are killed by Gaerlan and recalled to the Library will be able to rejoin their fellowships.
  [LI]When you kill Gaerlan, he will no longer summon a portal into the reward/prison chamber. Rather he will summon a portal back into the Library.
  The above changes should be all that are needed to remove the possibility of malfunction on this quest. If there are issues, we will address them.

The Marketplace
Since the inception of Asheron's Call, trading and other services have been informal, player-driven affairs. However, these player-driven dynamics can have a huge impact on how much enjoyment players get from our game, since equipment and spells are necessary to survive in the hostile island of Dereth. To facilitate these dynamics, we are introducing a new Marketplace to Dereth in January. This Marketplace is essentially a modestly decorated dungeon. It contains a small foyer where players will appear, and four hallways leading off to four distinct wings. There are no chests or monsters in this dungeon and there are no portals into or out of the Marketplace. Players can only get there by using the new "@marketplace" command, which works in the same way as the "@lifestone" command. Of course, instead of taking you to your lifestone, "@marketplace" takes you to the Marketplace!

Miscellaneous Changes

• New Ivory Targets: There are new ivory targets this month, and merchants who sell the tinkering books now carry a book that lists all the targets available for ivory tinkering.
  [LI]Ashbane: Ashbane (the trophy sword from Aerfalle's Chest) used to drop on death, but starting in January it will no longer drop on death.  If you have used dropping it on death to get it on a secondary character, you may want to consider shifting it back to your main character before the January prop.

New Patch Day
As you may have noticed, last month's patch and this month's patch are being delivered one week later than usual.  To allow both Microsoft and Turbine to give AC the attention it deserves, we have decided not to update both AC and AC2 the same week. In that way, if an issue shows up in either game, it won't distract from the other.
 
That's it for the big changes coming up for January.  Of course, that's not all that we have in store for you in the future. But for any updates on content, you'll just have to wait and see... As always, enjoy the game, and thank you for playing Asheron's Call. 

-The Asheron's Call Team