Dark Age Of Camelot: Grab On To the Grab Bag

Chewy:

Q: Got a Frontiers porting questions for you. Here's an example: I am a Midgardian, Hibs hold Bledmeer. I know they can port to Bledmeer, but do they need all the Bled towers to do so? Is there anything in the Hibernian frontier, either keep or tower, I can take (without retaking Bledmeer) to cut off their porting to Bledmeer? What if they take Nottmoor, either with or without Bledmeer. Can they port to it, too?

A: One of the designers of the system (the artist formerly known as Balance Boy, to you long time Herald readers) was kind enough to contribute a detailed response to the Grab Bag.

A couple of key rules to keep in mind:

-Keeps affect supply chains.

-Towers only affect their specific keep.

So, in the case the player mentions above, the Hibs would need all of Bledmeer towers in order to port into it. If he wanted to break their supply chain, he could take Crauchon or nGed or BOTH Scathaig and Ailinne to prevent the Hibs from porting into Bledmeer.

Three more rules to bear in mind:

-Both attacking and defending realms can port into the coastal island keeps (Crauchon, Bledmeer, Benowyc).

-Only attacking realms can port into the other three Coastal Keeps (Nottmoor, Blendrake, and Hlidskiaf for Midgard - Crimthain, Bolg, and Da Behnn for Hibernia - Berkstead, Erasleigh, Sursbrook for Albion)

-Only the defending realm can port into the three inner keeps. (Glenlock, Fensalir, Avarkr for Midgard - nGed, Ailinne, Scathaig for Hibernia - Boldiam, Renaris, Hurbury for Albion)

So, to answer the second part of his question, the Hibs would be able to trace supply to Nottmoor as long as they owned Crauchon, nGed, and EITHER Scathaig or Ailinne, having Bledmeer doesn't matter. Of course, in all cases, a realm must own all four towers in order to port into a keep.

Thanks, Balance Boy!

Q: The Spiritmaster community would like you to know that our RR5 ability doesn't work. Doesn't do anything, doesn't heal, it's just basically another way for me to release my pet.

A: Yes, the bug was reported to us on 12/17. I am terribly sorry that it's gone so long. There are several reasons, all of them dull, and it comes down to I totally apologize, and assure you that it is now in our bug tracker and scheduled for repair.

Q: Feedbacks - Do they act like a "Bladeturn" for the listed effect (such as a casted mez and stun) and absorb the spell, or do they reflect the effect back upon the caster?

The artifacts in question are Gem of Lost Memories - GoLM (/use2) and Ceremonial Bracer - CB (/use and /use2). The internet has a lot of conflicting information, and my own tests are somewhat inconclusive.

A: This is a job for the Item Mistress: "The Ceremonial Bracer and the Gem of Lost Memories spells will deflect stun or mesmerization spells, but they only have a small chance to reflect them back on the caster. Players will need to choose which buff to use, as only one crowd control deflection spell may be used at a time."

Q: I have been trying to get Tribute to Adauron Scroll 3, without any luck so far. After three days of killing green lesser jinns and inferior marids on a small island in Oceanus Hesperos, I was just wondering if the drop rate for the third scroll is different than the rate for the other two?

A: With most artifacts, all three scrolls have the same drop rate. Tribute to Adauron is considered a lower level artifact, and so all the scrolls are on the same clump of monsters - and to compensate for the relative ease and simplicity of hunting, the drop rate for the third scroll is in fact lower than that of the other two. But you can expand your hunt to a third monster. From our Mistress: "The inferior marid, lesser janni, and janni dust do indeed drop all three scrolls for the Ring of Unyielding Will, but the drop rate for the third scroll is lower than the other two scrolls."

Q: A friend of mine recently used BoS to spawn a bow to give to a Realm Guard at a tower he had just taken. He gave the bow to the guard, then tried to equip his Fool's Bow again. Unfortunately, he had given his Level 10 Fool's Bow to the guard! He contacted a CSR, but the CSR told him they could NOT get the Fool's Bow back, nor could he ever get the bow again as it is an artifact.

Here are some of the questions that were raised about this:

1. Is it a bug that you can give a L10 artifact to a guard?

2. If you can never get the same artifact again, what happens when the durability of your artifact gets to zero?

3. Can CSRs not just reset the artifact encounter for that character back so that the character can get it again?

4. Do CSRs not have the power to take that bow back from the guard to give back to the player?

5. Is it true that when an artifact you have reaches 1% Durability that a CSR will set it back to 100% for you?

Thank you in advance for answering some or all of these questions.

A: I spoke to the folks in customer service for the answers to your questions. After we all finished wincing and weeping over the horror that is losing a level ten artifact, these answers were written.

1. Guards can be upgraded with weapons you obtain in game. It actually affects the guard's performance. This was part of the game's design. However, guards don't have inventories in the sense that players do, so after the improvement is applied, the item disappears.

**Side Note: We will usually give Artifacts back in situations like this. The only time we wouldn't be able to is if for some reason the artifact was not in the back-ups for us to copy from.**

2. The same thing that happens to all weapons when they reach zero Durability - it breaks and becomes unusable. Artifacts are no different. We appreciate the feedback we have had on this subject, but there are not currently any plans to adjust the decay rates.

3. If we were to just reset the encounter, that would defeat the purpose of number two. The game is designed so that items decay and become unusable over time. If we just reset an encounter whenever an artifact dropped in DUR, it would trivialize this game mechanic.

4. No, we cannot take items back from Guards. The Guard is upgraded though so, your realm *IS* getting a benefit that way. See the side note from number 1 however.

5. No.

Sanya here. I'm going to just sit here and beg you all not to appeal CSRs about getting back items you mistakenly handed to guards. I really wrestled with printing this answer. It seems that whenever I post that the CSRs will do XYZ, people abuse it, and we're forced to change a customer friendly policy.

For example - we used to provide a free ride service to players who had gone link dead on raids. We'd pick people up and drop them off at their raid, so they wouldn't miss any fun. Word spread that we were willing to do this for our customers, and sure as the sun rises, a tiny minority decided to be jerks about it. We were spending hours giving rides, and neglecting other appeals - and we were seeing chat logs of people saying "Sorry I'm late, but I'll just appeal and tell the stupid CSR that I went link dead." The former was our primary reason for discontinuing this friendly favor, but the latter was incredibly insulting to the CSRs who went out of their way to go above the policy and help deserving customers. Now, they plain aren't allowed to give free rides. And that, pardon my language, sucks.

Right now, our CSRs give back artifacts if they are physically able to do so, i.e., the item still exists in a backup file. If, after this column posts, there is a significant spike in requests to retrieve artifacts (and I can't imagine this is a common problem, most people are really careful with their artifacts), and chat logs indicating people are giving artifacts to guards to buff them up and then using the CSRs to retrieve the uber items... well, I wouldn't be surprised if the good hearted guys in the CS pit are told they can't go that extra mile anymore. So please - let's prove that we MMORPG players "can too" have nice things.

Q: Does Stealth Lore stack with the Vampiiric Embrace spell Vampiiric Senses?

A: From your friends in the testing department: "Stealth Lore will not overwrite Vampiiric Senses, if the player already has Vampiiric Senses on themselves.

"If the player has Stealth Lore up, and then tries to cast Vampiiric Senses on themselves, Vampiiric Senses will overwrite the Stealth Lore effect.

"So in short, no, they don't stack."

Q: I got this e-mail today in my inbox. Is this a prank or for real? Sounds like a prank but wanted to double check.

FROM: THE DESK OF THE PROMOTIONS MANAGER,

INTERNATIONAL PROMOTIONS/PRIZE AWARD DEPARTMENT

CAMELOT LOTTERY,UK

We are pleased to inform you of the announcement today of winners of the MEGA JACKPOT LOTTO WINNINGS

PROGRAMS held on 20th December 2004.

(Blah blah blah)

To claim your winning prize, you must first contact the claims department by email for processing and remittance of your prize money to you. The claims officer contact email is:

name: Edward Pinto

email:claimsadmin@camelotpromos.net

N.B. Any breach of confidentiality on the part of the winners will result in disqualification and any winner below the age of 18years is automatically disqualified

NOTE: Do no reply this mail. You are to contact your claims officer immediately.

A: Complete horse manure. Thanks for sending it along.

Q: I have completed the first instanced dungeon in Albion Barrows (the Lost Wing) several times and have been unable to touch the boss that resides in the last room - Nitaleg. My necroservant cannot attack him, cannot cast spells on him, anything! I understand that the mob must be killed by first killing his "pieces," but a solo necro cannot do anything to even start the battle. Is this working as intended or a known bug with this particular mob?

A: That is not working properly, and it's known to us now ;) Thanks for writing and making me aware of this problem. Our content guys are working hard on a solution.

Q: My heretic is not getting any rps in Thidranki for rezzes. Why is that? She's not capped yet, but probably would be by now! Just wondering.

A: I'm not a healer, so I had to ask around. One of our programmers told me it was simple - because you get back a portion of the RPs awarded for the kill when you resurrect someone, the portion for rezzing someone that gave out 1 RP is ... well, less than 1.

***

Boy, I missed you guys while I was on vacation. (Last week's grab bag was actually written before I went out of town, so I guess I'm guilty of really large scale macroing.)

The feedback forms were still read, however. Our Community Vixen, Missy, was just reading away through the entire holiday. One fine young gentleman apparently did not understand that in order to have time to READ all the forms, we can rarely ANSWER the forms. It's just a priority with us to read all the feedback that our players take the time to mail in, and that means it's very hard to reply to all but a very few. This gentleman must not have realized that fact, so he sent his feedback over five hundred times. And THAT meant that time we would have preferred to spend reading the feedback of other customers was wasted deleting hundreds of duplicates. Even a nice note explaining that we got the first one, and passed the content to the dev team, didn't stop hundreds more from coming.

So now there's a thirty minute limit - you can only send one feedback form in thirty minutes. I will ask to have this reduced in the near future, but just be aware of the speed bump for the time being. Sorry, everyone. Your feedback forms are extremely important to the entire Herald team. We want to make sure that we read them all, and we can't let one person interfere with everyone else's fair share of our time.

Have a great weekend - if you can't be good, be careful.