Asherons Call: July Letter to the Players is up!

Hello there and welcome to the July edition of the Letter to the Players[/p]

With the emergence of Grael and his minions, the citizens of Dereth once again brace for a battle which could determine the very survival of us all. The Shadow invasions in many of the towns across Dereth were a chilling reminder that no matter how safe we feel, evil still lurks, waiting to strike. Many fear that this is the time that Grael will begin to bring terror to all the land. What is in store for the people of Dereth next? Will we be able to stand up to the might of Grael and his armies?

Now let's see what new and exciting things are coming to Asheron's Call this month!

New Content and Updated Functionality
With the heart of summer upon us, most of the baby creatures have grown into young adults and should no longer be found on the landscape.

In order to help the ever increasing number of new players coming into the game we have created new racial sets of armor for new characters coming into Dereth. These new armor sets have a higher armor level and have some more helpful spells than previous versions of starter armor. We love our new players and want to help them along their way to a long life here in Dereth.

There will be a large number of unscheduled live events occurring this month at all times of the day. Please be aware these can happen in any town at any time, so please be aware when placing characters in towns. You may log in to a less than friendly greeting.

We believe we have found the source of the issue that was causing some characters to end up at their lifestone's upon login. A fix is in place but it will require players to log on their main characters first and open up their housing. The mules should then be safe to log in and should not end up back at their lifestone's. Players will be able to close their houses after doing this and should not have to open them again unless they choose to. Unfortunately this fix may not solve the problem for everyone, and there still may be isolated incidents of characters till ending up at their Lifestone. When and if this happens we will continue to investigate the matter.

The Cartographers of Dereth have been hard at work this month. You will notice that the Points of Interest have returned to your in-game maps.

A new island has appeared in the northeast. The area is aimed at characters level 150+.

There is a new creature roaming Dereth. While this little thing might appear cute, please use caution when approaching, it has a quite a bite!

In Concept
These are game changes that we are thinking about for upcoming events. We cannot guarantee when or even if these changes will be added to the game, as scheduling and priorities can change. These changes are in addition to the new quests, dungeons, and items we will be adding to the game. With each monthly event we will be discussing an in concept topic, in order to give you as much information about the item that we can.

For some time now players have been asking for some skills in the game to become more useful. In the coming months that is exactly what we want to do, starting with the Alchemy and Cooking skills. While these skills have some use right now, there is no real reason for players to take or keep these skills on there characters that are higher levels. Our goal going forward is to make these skills once again useful for players at all levels of gameplay. At this point we will not get into the specifics of this, we want to make these skills useful for characters that are less focused on combat, and more focused on the trade skills in general.

[p]So there are just some of the things we have in store for Asheron's Call in July and beyond. Please remember that along with everything listed here, there are several new quests and exciting things going into the game for the July event.