Asherons Call: Somewhat Overdue Q&A

Grumpy Gharu asks: Please fix LS recall. Not a HUGE problem, but it's irritating and smacks of sloppiness IMHO. Might be only the LS recall spell or only certain LS's doing it but anyway, I've had various surprises when returning to various lifestones. So, whether it's /lifestone or the LS spell, what I expect is to arrive at a lifestone... 1. Facing it or 2. Standing in the same relative position (SW or NE or whatever) as when I tied to it or attuned to it. It's just icky to do LS recall and end up facing AWAY from the LS.
Ibn@Turbine: The location and facing of the Lifestone Recall spell is fixed to prevent potential exploits. We can start looking at where each Recall spot is facing, but it would be a lot of time and effort.

Vilow asks: Would it be possible to add worthwhile loot to chests that are at the bottom of dungeons and at places like abandoned towers gaurded by a bunch of critters?? (e.g. Skeleton Tower (2.3N,27.8E)). I'm not meaning 'super oober' 'more valuable than the trip was worth' loot... just something decent and fair. Even if you can only access the 'dungeons last chest' one time per account and even a timer between being able to open one 'dungeons last chest' to another.
Ibn@Turbine: This is something that the Devs have been adding in here and there, when they have time. We agree with you, it'd be cool to have a little reward for all these random dungeons and towers scattered across the landscape.

Ravlen asks: Just to be 100% sure... the new RR imbues are like the old ones? I'm at 1 for 14 now... I know it can be a run of bad luck, I've got a friend at 1 for 9 now... Just want to be sure, with old imbues it was like 350 skill + moderately good salvage to get 33%, right? Is this the same with the new stuff? Do you maybe need 400+ to get the full 33% chance?
Ibn@Turbine: Yes. The difficulty on the RR imbues is equivalent to the difficulty on the previously existing imbues.

Aargau asks: Request: New allegiance command: ban -account <name>. Sometimes guilds have people who are booted from the allegiance reswearing in under someone else and causing the same problems as before like scamming (or on Darktide trust killing players and bots). How about a command ban that bans a given person (or account) from swearing in under anyone in the guild. The check would happen when someone tries to swear in to someone in the monarchy. Another one would be boot -account that breaks all characters on that account from the guild. Or better yet, let us see all characters on an account by name lookup.
Ibn@Turbine: I ran this past the team and apparently (and unfortunately) it is not currently feasible. We would like to get it in sometime in the future, because we understand how useful it would be.

Divine-Assasin asks: Lag is not fixed on DT. I am on cable, run fine in the dires, the second me and others get around people we all start lagging hard, running in place etc. It is not cool running in place for 15 seconds then showing up at the ls...
srand: For various reasons, Darktide has always been a bit laggier than the other worlds. Over the past couple weeks, however, DT was afflicted with truly criplling, game-breaking lag. Last week, we isolated what we believe was the cause of this crippling lag, and on Thursday got a fix in place. Since then, reports seem to indicate that the crippling lag has improved quite a bit.
At the same time, the 'usual' lag is still with us. (We'll never be able to wipe out lag entirely, but we try to keep it as low as possible.) The 'usual' lag is a bit higher than normal on all the worlds right now, including Darktide -- but we're investigating that issue, and we'll keep working on it until we've got a solution.

Kremti asks: Does srand get to write Ciandra's words? :D Obviously Ciandra represents srand... Does srand get to say a word on what Ciandra says in the teasers and stuff? Is there a real life representation of Nuhmudira? Someone from MS *laugh*
srand: Other than a small confluence of names, there is no connection between myself and Ciandra. I do not control her actions, nor is she a reflection of me or my attitudes. The Olthoi Queen, now ... *grin*

DiamondsoulX asks: Umm, I heard someone blew away their Major Bow Tassets with Ebony. Evidently the guy had 525 item tinkering skill and failed the attempt, first tinker. I thought these were NOT imbues...
srand: Just to be safe, I just went and double-checked these materials. Ebony and copper (and the other new tinkering effects) all use the tinkering forumla, not the imbuing formula, to determine their chance of success.

kailman asks: It seems like every patch they are more and more common maybe soon they will drop like minors =D, yay!
srand: We haven't actually touched the drop rate on majors for awhile. The last change we made that had any effect on the major drop rate was when we changed Singularity Troves to only give magical loot. That indirectly increased the chance of finding a major by increasing the amount of items in one pull that could have majors. But we didn't increase the major drop rate, nor did we change anything in that regard with the July update.

kailman asks: Well you may not have changed drop rate on majors, but there are the newer creatures like Cabalist, Peerless, and Slashers that drop just as many majors as a sing trove... Which in the end if you add Sing troves, Mahog chest, oaken chests, the old monsters that droped majors and all these new uber awesome ones who drop majors you mgiht as well have changed the drop %...
srand: This is true -- incomparable quality loot is more readily available than it used to be. But we still didn't change the drop rate on majors. *grin*

Otto.Mo.Beale asks: Current +100 mana is not much of a boost. If Moonstone gave +250 mana might make a good last tink when the main tinks (steel or iron) are too risky.
srand: This has come up before, but it's not a bad idea. Hmm ... Okay, we'll take a look at increasing the effect of moonstone.

Chipsky asks: Does anyone know who took over the writing starting in August of 2002? Until then, the ACInsiders page gave credit with the script. They no longer provide that information - at least I have not found it. A couple months back, there was a statement regarding Tim Holmans taking over the writing... but I may be mistaken.
Orion-Turbine: I've handled them for a very, very long time now. /dons flame proof undies

TehUberGeekasks: I notice me and my friend are the same level. I'm a mage, level 45, and it takes me around 2-3 mins to kill one. With the Magic vuln, and the vuln/war. Now my friend, he/she(not sure) is lvl 46, Crossbow, and .. "It" can take Warriors down in around 20 secs with no imperil. Deadly blunts, 145% bow no tinkers. lvl 7 buffs. Just wondering if you could take out two level 50 chars, an archer and a mage, and see how much faster a archer is then a mage. Maybe a fix next patch? Either lower the magic D or higher the missile D.
Orion-Turbine: Olthoi have traditionally been an anti-mage type of creature. They were the species that took down the Empyrean after all, they are supposed to be tougher for mages than they are for melee and missile. Additionally, Warriors aren't really meant for level 45's.

Tyrial333 asks: Did you mean for the spawns outside on Asherons Island vanish when the Quest is solved? I loved hunting out there. Asherons Island finally gave me a fun place to hunt with my UA. I was able to get a good amount of exp and loot where I was challanged but as long as I was careful I would live. I don't enjoy going out to hunt only to have every monster sittign there chain casting debuffs and war spells at me. Killing a bunch of drudges isn't fun when any two of them casting at the same time can mean that I'm dead.
Orion-Turbine: To answer your question, yes. You've driven back those portions of the invasion when the spawns are clear.

.Anck. asks: The Knorr Queen certainly considers this but a temporary setback. Possibly at some point in the near future her redoubled forces will retake that area? In other words, how much have we won? Have we 'won' won? Or will the spawns return after a certain amount of time?
Orion-Turbine: *shrug* I guess you'll just need to wait and see. :-)

Glace_Soji asks: Topic: Will hunger, thirst, sleep ever be introduced into the game? Just curious... I think it would be a lovely addition. There might actually be a reason to prepare all the different varieties of foods available. It would be great if players were flagged with different foods giving different levels of nourishment. (That way it would avoid only certain foods being created only) - Sort of like having a paticuliar favourite food. (Hope that made sense) Sleep would help eliminate the whole macroing debate as well. If a person slept in a bed, they would have a better rest and it would require less time to regenerate, opposed to sleeping on the ground. Plus, a player would be vulnerable to whatever whilst they slept.
Orion-Turbine: This is something that we've never discussed adding to the game, and is thus something highly unlikely to be added. While these are things that we do in our everyday lives, and something that would bring an added edge of realism contributing some more depth to the world, they are also the kind of tedious aspects that can be left out of a game. While on the one hand they serve to place that realism, on the other they pull away from the escapist feel of playing your character. That being said I always keep a beer stein and some kind of food on my characters for social gatherings.

GrimTempest asks: [about the dissappearing coordinates under radar bug] That happens to plenty of people who arent even using Stretch UI.
Zycra: This bug affects the coordinates under the radar whenever the radar is in the 3d area, which is most commonly seen when the stretch UI is turned on. However, if you minimized the inventory panel on the right, that also puts the radar into the 3d area. If you are getting the bug while the radar is in the 2d area, please let me know.

HyuStrider asks: Please make the Sword of Lost Light droppable/giveable. :) I'd really, really like the SoLL to be hookable. It can't be ivoried due to infusions and SoLH, so the only other option is to make its un-infused form droppable. Considering it's not an uber sword anyways, this really wouldn't hurt anyone or unbalance anything. :)
srand: Hmm ... well ... We can probably work something out ... *grin*. Seriously, you'll be pleased to know that we have plans to make the Sword of Lost Light hookable quite soon.

HyuStrider asks: Can the Panaq please be hookable? :) I did the quest because I thought the bow looked nice, and it was quite fun (almost "Zelda style", which I like) -- but then I ivoried the bow, and found that I couldn't hook it anywhere. :(
srand: We don't always have time to make items hookable as we go -- especially bows, which as you may have noticed often require some special attention or else they end up looking funny. But we do try to make items hookable as we have time, and I am sure that we will be getting to the Panaq sooner or later.

Nockmaar asks: Please fix some of the Tusker Dungies on AL. I know Srand has said that the tuskers have been reworked to reward xp according to their level, power, etc, etc. But something needs to be done, a few of the Tusker only dungeons (Tusker Armory, for example) are bare because the xp vs time to defeat a Tusker in such dungeons are not competitive when compared to the next lower level dungeon, Tusker Pits.
Orion: Rampagers became easier when they lost Shield Hollow. Armored Tuskers are on par with the Rampager, only instead of a high damage output they have more defense. Plateds, are again, very well armored and therefore take longer to kill. I'm looking at them at the moment, but there are still no plans to change them.

Nockmaar asks: [concerning the upcoming change to missile ammunition and item enchantment] Please reconsider this change! I do not know *anyone* who does this and I have been playing AC since November of '99. There is no reason to change this and frankly whenever something like this is toyed with it has a cascadeing affect on other (in this case) equipment in the game. I really don't want to have a whole month of not being able to buff my :insert weapon type: because they have some code tie to ammo that wasn't found before because the code that ties them was first programmed during Beta and has two inches of dust on it.
srand: I appreciate your concern, Nockmaar. It's true that changing long-untouched code can sometimes cause unintended results. This is especially true when the code is deeply buried or complex. In this case, this code is neither -- and in fact it's not even long-untouched, since a lot of the magic changes in the past year and a half have routed through the very same function. And, of course, we were quite careful in our testing of this change. So while I appreciate your concern, I do not believe that this change will cause a major problem. Of course, if I'm wrong you get to say "I told you so!" *grin*

Remeber folks, there's more on its way!