Asherons Call: Build Notes are Up!

Listed below are the changes introduced in our February event. We've spelled out specifc changes to game functionality and existing content, but the details on new content are up to you to discover! Speak to town criers, barkeeps, and scribes for the latest happenings in Dereth. For more information on this month's event, please see this month's Letter to the Players. Please submit any bugs you come across to http://bugs.zone.com.

New Functionality and Content

[li]A mysterious tower has been spotted...

[li]Monsters have migrated back to more hospitable climes!

[li]Those skilled with lock picks can now help everyone organize their keys.

[li]Strap on some additional protection from those fire bolts and acid blasts!

Miscellaneous Improvements and Changes

[li]Characters may now devote 64 skill credits, increased from the previous limit of 50, toward specializing skills using specialization gems found in the "Temple of Enlightenment."

[li]As part of our redistribution of monsters, we've tried to define more level-centric hunting grounds. This will give players looking for landscape hunting a specific area in which to hunt. The character level ranges we have defined for these hunting grounds are:

[li]Newbie: 1 - 20

[li]Low: 20 - 40

[li]Mid: 40 - 60

[li]High: 60 - 80

[li]Extreme: 80+

[li]Uber: 100+

For example, creatures found in a Low level hunting ground should be those that are appealing (in both their experience reward and treasure they provide) to a character between levels 1 and 20. The only exception to this would be creatures that protect special treasure chests. These creatures may still seem out of place for the area in which they are found. A graphic representation of these changes can be found here.

[li]In addition to redistributing monsters along character level lines, we've begun the process of rebalancing monsters along those same lines. Depending on the creature, this may involve tweaks to the monster's melee, missile, and magic defenses. It may also involve revising the level of spell it casts and the experience reward it provides. Due to the amount of time involved, for February we were only able to balance creatures found in the Newbie areas of the world. In March we'll complete this rebalancing process, but for now players may come across a monster that seems tougher or easier than those surrounding it.

[li]The resistance to Drain provided by a character's Endurance was not being applied correctly when some spells were draining health. We have corrected this. The target character's drain resistance is now applied during any health-draining spell attacks.

[li]As discussed in the Letter to the Players, we've tweaked the Olthoi Queen quest slightly:

[li]The Olthoi Eviscerators that spray you, thus allowing you to enter the Royal Hive, are spraying you more often.

[li]Aun Hareltah no longer changes your title without asking you. Instead, he hands you a token. If you'd like your title changed to "Queenslayer," just hand him the token back.

[li]Aun Hareltah's logic has been changed slightly. He shouldn't stamp you as having completed the quest unless you've actually received the reward.

[li]The quest can now be repeated every three months.

[li]Ivory may now be applied to Bandit Weapons so that they can be taken out of a character's inventory and stored.

[li]We've implemented some fixes to help address duplicate hooks and storage chests. Please see this month's Letter to the Player for more details.

[li]On very rare occasions, a hook could become unlinked from its house. This could, in turn, cause any items in those hooks to be lost. Therefore, we've changed the behavior of houses when they are loaded by the server. As it loads, a house essentially verifies that its hooks "know" which house they belong to. It should no longer be possible for a hook to become unlinked from the house that owns it.

[li]It was sometimes possible for a house to mistakenly register that more of its hooks were being used than was really the case. Houses now do a more accurate inventory of the hooks they own, so this mistake shouldn't occur in the future.

[li]When we gave mansions more hooks, we said that the update gave the mansions 100 hooks and that players could use all 100 of these hooks. However, in reality mansions each had 100 above-ground hooks and 41 below-ground hooks. We've updated mansions so that you can now use all 141 hooks.

Minor Details

[li]We've corrected a situation that could cause the Player Killer portal use restrictions to be triggered accidentally by the use of some recall and dispel spells.

[li]The chests found scattered throughout the "Valley of Death" have a much longer regeneration cycle, allowing more people to loot each chest before it locks again.

[li]The Neydisa Hauberk got a bit more useful.

[li]We've spoken to Larry the Bunny Master again, and he says he'll try to be around his cottage a bit more.