Asherons Call: A Quick Valentines Surprise..

Question: Bowdiddly - Hey DEVS: I find it VERY hard to believe that noone on any server has yet to find even part of the "blue Kits". If Ulgrim knows, he's not talking or saying anything we undrstand as being part of it. I enjoy a good challenge, but dang, are you sure these are "in-game"? Some kinda hint other than yes they are there and only Ulgrim knows would be great! I am sorry but I and many others have spent ALOT of time on this and if we can't find them please let us know so we can get back to playing, hehe.
Answer: Sean_Huxter - Some of you seem to think that there aren't enough in-game hints for the Blue Kits. Those people are assuming too much, like we WANTED to put in-game hints. There are things in-game you do not require hints for. Some things are not to be "quested" for. If it wasn't for Ulgrim and a hacked portal.dat you wouldn't know about it at all. Why is that? No in-game hints. Notice what I said. NO IN-GAME HINTS. That wasn't done by accident or neglect. We didn't put in inadequate hints, we put in NO hints. For a reason. Some of you are quoting Stormwaltz saying that if something hasn't been discovered in a year it was a failure. His comments are taken completely out of context. Not to mention, it's only one designer's opinion. To him, if he designed a quest in which a key element was not discovered for a long time, he considers it a failure as not enough in-game pointers were given. However some items are meant to be that way. Rare drops, rare rewards... these do not require hints. If you get them, you get them. If you do not, you do not. Either way, complaining about it is useless, pointless, and counterproductive. If those aren't found too quickly, I consider it a huge success. And it has been proven beyond a doubt these are currently obtainable in-game. But no one has obtained them yet. It's really quite simple.

Question: GrimTempest - Just something I want to point out about the skill check in this game according to the skill check table a character at 175 item enchant skill should cast a level 5 spell 32% of the time. Kinda like imbues should work 33 % of the time. Go in game with a character with either 175 for a level 5 or 225 for a level 6 or 125 for a level 4 etc...and try to cast one of the spells. Do it 100 times and see how often you cast them. You wont be very happy with the results. The system is sporked. There's got to be a way to change it to make it a little more reliable. This figures right in with all the mages complaining about fizzling spells when they should have nearly a 100% chance and your magic item tinkerers like me who have gone 0 for 17 or worse on attempted imbues. This isnt a whine thread...this is a serious request for the devs to check the way their system works because alot of us dont think it works properly.
Answer: srand - Casting spells uses a slightly different skill check curve than that used for all other skill checks. It has the same midpoint, but is steeper through the middle. So once you are over the 50/50 point, your casting gets reliable much faster than with a normal skill check curve. But conversely, under the 50/50 point your casting is much less reliable than with the normal skill check curve. I just found this out tonight, myself.

Question: Ariq - Drain 1 vs. Drain Resistance. My "resilient" char is getting drained for the full max dmg of 30...is this "working as intended"?
Answer: srand - Nope. As previously stated, this is a bug and it will be fixed with the February update. It's actually an interesting bug that grew out of the addition of multipliers to the drain equation. See, the drainer and the drainee negotiate between them how much will actually be drained. On the drainer's side is how much health he is down from max, the transfer cap -- and now a multiplier on how much he gets back. On the drainee's side is his current health, the % drained by the spell, the transfer cap, and his drain resistance. The problem was that drain resistances really should be counted in the equation only after all the other negotiation is complete -- that is, the drainer and drainee figure out from all other information that the drainee is going to lose X and the drainer is going to gain Y, and *then* resistance is applied. Previously, however, resistance was included in the negotiation on the drainee's side, which worked out okay because without a multiplier on what the drainer gets back, the transfer cap is really only being applied once and so the order of operations just sorta worked. But once you add a multiplier, the transfer cap becomes important on both sides of the negotiation, and then it is very important to only apply drain resistance after everything else has been figured out. Otherwise, the effect of the multiplier plus the transfer cap obliterates your drain resistance.

Hmm .. *rereading above text* ... maybe I just should have left it at "It'll be fixed."