Alter Aeon Recent Changes and Additions

Recent code and server updates can be found in this changelog.  Only the
last 20 changes are listed.  For a complete list, click here.

For new area additions and area updates, click here.

 Got RSS?  Sign up for the Alter Aeon Changelog Feed!


 
---- Sep 12, 23 [3134]
From Brak:
Clay man recast now stops when it fails terrain check.
Increase speed of minion recasting.
Convert leaderboard level filtering over from primary level to effective
level. (Ivey)
Fix 'leaderboard show' displaying the wrong position.

---- Sep 09, 23 [3132]
From Shadowfax:
New music tracks for the dimensional forest and the mirror plane.

From Draak:
New options for mobs to load mined materials and precut wood, coming to
a shopkeeper near you. (Morpheus)
Fixed targeting for group summon. Again. Fingers crossed, knock on wood.

From Brak:
You can now add clay men to the recast list which will allow them to be
automatically reconstructed when they die.
This is intended to eventually replace the buggy reclay option in Mush-Z.
Currently other necro tank minions such as wood woads and metal constructs
are not included however this is planned for a future release.
Note: if you do use this feature and also use Mush-Z, disable the 'reclay'
feature in Mush-Z or you will likely get multiple castings.

improve the leaderboard command and make level filtering more user friendly:
1. You can now select a leaderboard by name with 'leaderboard show'.
2. There is now a 'leaderboard help' subcommand.
3. 'Leaderboard list' and 'show' now accept an optional level.
For example if you are level 35 type 'leaderboard list 35' to compare to
other players of your level, and 'leaderboard show fame 10 35' to display
the top 10 players on the fame leaderboard who match your level.

---- Sep 02, 23 [3131]
From Draak:
Double exp events can now be seen with 'event show' and 'news experience'.
Refined definitions for de-aging, so it should work in more cases.
Pulled a bug out of group summon that was checking for the wrong room. (Gent)
Bloodcasting now has a MSP sound, which overlaps normal casting sounds.
Added MSP sound for Tensor's floating discs timing out. (Eggweard)
New forged jewelry: anklet.
You can no longer crystal coat fires, to avoid weird weight bugs.
New Purnima job: antiquarian, a demon sends you out to survey ancient ruins
in the Field of Fonts.
Fixed group summon logic bug.

Cleric divine transportation spellgroup grafted onto divine tranquility,
with word of recall now dependent on peace. This is the final spellgroup
merger - all classes now have 8 non-obscure spell/skill groups.

---- Aug 27, 23 [3129]
From Brak:
Allow display of some leaderboards by level, using the 'level' option.

From Draak:
Fished out a rare bug in consider where certain mob types canceled
each other's damage resistance, resulting in (null) displays. (Allison)
More crafting composite cleanup, primarily for woodcraft. Hopefully
mastercrafts will again be more frequent when woodcrafting.
Several crafts are now more forgiving with thier start checks if you
know the skill 100%.
The help page and menu for guilds is now more clear that guild
advance is also used to join guilds.
New where option: buyer. This will give you a list of what shopkeepers
will buy items.
The armored skin help page now tells what the skill actually does.
Sense life is now dependent on soothe wounds.

The cleric cursebreaker spellgroup has been folded into the inquisition
spellgroup. Sacred touch is now level 7 and reveal curse is now level
8 and dependent on sacred touch.

Clean-up with metallurgy check. It will now tell you what skill you need
to learn to forge with a given metal, if you don't already know the skill.
Some metals have had their skills adjusted, in particular, forging pitch
black metal now requires shadow mastery and forging blood red metal
requires bloodcasting. (Mink)

Group summon will now restrict bringing higher level players to the
islands, since people have been using this as end-around to circumvent
the island portals being blocked during events.

You can now bloodcast wood woad, metal construct and crystal skull.
Wood woads and metal constructs gain small amount of normsave and
breathsave, while crystal skulls gain increased odds of absorbing
magic and a higher mana capacity. The introduciton of blood renders
all three somewhat vulnerable to toxic damage.

New option for returning players: age reset. If you have a character
that hasn't logged in for over a year and is at least 200 years old,
you will be able to reset their age to 50 using 'set agereset -force'.
This is intended to help people revitalize old or forgotten characters,
and to make gameplay more enticing for returning players that we have
not seen for a while. 

---- Aug 12, 23 [3128]
From Draak:
You can no longer gather, mine or fish in arenas. (Martin)
Fixed a bug where forged ammo was not giving lycanthrope bane to lots
of forged silver alloy ammunition. (Asclepius)
You can now bloodcast straw man.
Vulnerability is (slightly) more potent at very high levels. (Asclepius)
Cleave and whirlwind now send extended damage types. (Shadowfax)
New credit buy option: credit buy cleanse. This removes all poison, acid,
curses and diseases. (Morpheus)

You can now credit buy deathcards, spellups, purges and loot crates on
behalf of other players. This uses the same cooldowns and restrictions
as newbie gifts. This is experimental, let Draak know if there are any
problems. (Morpheus)

---- Aug 05, 23 [3126]
From Draak:
Smith jobs pay a little better now.
Added 'tattoos' to the where command, for finding tattoo artists in cities.
Attempt to fix 'set nolootcrate' bug where people were still getting
lootcrates.
Cleanup to crafting mastercraft calculations.
Help pages for boons merged into one entry.

You can now bloodcast clay man. The resulting bloody clay man has
several vampire-like traits:
1. It can be healed by blood sacrifice and bloodbond heal.
2. It heals small amounts of damage when attacking bleeding enemies
that are not badly poisoned.

From Brak:
Make progression of famine less agressive when cast on players.
Lower cost of lift curse when brought from shopkeepers since it will likely
require multiple castings.

---- Jul 22, 23 [3124]
From Draak:
New option added to the where command: milk
Note: this will only show dairy animals that you can milk, so if mobs
are too low level to milk they will not show up.

Some fixes to the unarmed combat changes so things are bit less goofy
with certain mobs. All of the strikes are a now single word, to interface
better with Mush-Z, i.e. hammer fist is now hammerfist and soforth.

The cleric spell 'armor' is now 'armor aegis' so it doesn't conflict
with consecrate armor. It will remain aliased to 'armor' when casting
for the indefinite future, much like force shield with 'shield'.

The warrior dragon lore skill group has been dissolved, since the
dragon lore skill was already dependent on defensive fighting and
was technically part of the fighting style skillgroup already.

The necromancer cadaver skill tree has been merged with the undead
skill tree, with undead lore now dependent on corpsecutter.

The druid salve brew tree has been combined with druid tonics,
with brew salve being dependent on brew infusion.

Cleric is now the only class with more than 8 non-obscure spellgroups.

---- Jul 16, 23 [3122]
From Draak:
Aetherstone can now be worked as a lapidary gem, and mined as an
uncommon mineral on angelic planes.
Fixed up some issues with lapidary inlay.

Special attacks like lunge or flourish will now show elemental damage
types. To toggle this on, use 'set edamagestrings'. This will become
the default option once we determine that it works with Mush-z, or
when Mush-z is updated to accomodate it.

If you know unarmed combat, your unarmed attacks will have more varied
strings. If you area wearing gloves with a damage types such as slash
or claw, this will not work, but extended damage types such as fire
or ice will. Some types of strikes will do bonus damage. (bovine channel)

A few skill/spellgroup changes:
The warrior shield skillgroup has been grafted into weapon handling,
with shield handling dependent on parry. The skillgroup only consisted
of two skills.

The cleric divine wrath spellgroup has been moved into divine
tribulations, with faerie fire now dependent on afflict. Revocation
was moved to waypoint spellgroup, dependent on word of recall.

We will be doing a handful more skill/spell group merging in the near
future, with the goal of each class having 8 skill/spell trees, not
counting obscure spells.

---- Jul 08, 23 [3120]
From Draak:
Fished a bug out of tasks that wasn't counting fishing derby participation
properly. (Sarai)
You can now bloodcast deathly sleep and candle.
The movement drain from the fatigue and exhaustion spells can be reduced by
high constitution. The vigor spell helps enhance this effect. (Morpheus)
The afflict curse now interacts with fatigue and exhaustion as it does with
the other inflict spells.

---- Jul 02, 23 [3118]
From Draak:
Fixed a couple display and completion bugs with tasks.
Fixed a bug with bloodcasting some of the wrong spells.

If you bloodcast a damaging spell with foulblood, rancid flesh or
dying breath up, it will alter the damage type of the spell. See
the help page for more information.

Coldfire now follows the same convention as spectral hand and
spectral claw, ignoring immunity and doing half normal damage to
ice creatures.

---- Jun 25, 23 [3115]
From Shadowfax:
Add 'pass to room' and 'bump to room' options to door edit context,
allowing mortal builders to actually set them.

From Draak:
Help page keyword cleanups for a couple of spells.
Mobs being moved between event zones should longer be put in the moved
fame log (this is not retroactive).
New level 22 necromancer skill 'bloodcasting'.

Tasks are now online! Tasks are a checklist of things you can do, such
as gain a profession point, milk an animal or complete a daily job.
Once you complete 5 tasks, you will earn a second daily gift! For more
information see 'task help'.

---- Jun 18, 23 [3113]
From Draak:
Newbie channel level connection raised to level 30 so more people can
be available to help.

From Shadowfax:
Add 'pass to room' and 'bump to room' strings for doors.  Mortal builders
can set these by using 'set door ptr' and 'set door btr', respectively.
Note that these will not display if the character passing through or
bumping into the door is sneaking. (Blaid)

From Brak:
Continued internal cleanup of action code. If you happen to notice any
weirdness with actions not working as intended mudmail Brak.

---- Jun 10, 23 [3111]
From Shadowfax:
Update 'news social' command. (Morpheus)

From Draak:
Inlaying lapidary material should no longer trigger false negatives from
the appraise checker. (Eggweard)

Fixes to the Primordial Chaos generator. Mostly invisible mapping fixes,
but some new lines for room long description have been added. A special
new Chaos material has been to added to a certain extraplanar goblin
as well...

---- Jun 04, 23 [3109]
From Draak:
Fixed a display bug in help page skill and spell metadata.
Fixed the gold rewards for smithing jobs. They should now work as
advertised.
Reseting your character should also reset guild requirements for jobs
and mastercrafts.
Woodcrafted jobs will now drop hints about how to gather long, skinny
pieces of wood when long, lightweight items are requested. (Potato)
You can no longer milk animals that are much lower level than you.

Radiant orbs and sunbeam have been updated.
These spells will do extra damage (not as much as with shadow/undead) to
targets under the effect of a censure demon curse.
Casting them while you have a continual light spell active causes the orbs
or beam to emit from the ball of light. This gives the spells a modest
boost in level and thus damage. (Shadowfax)

---- May 28, 23 [3108]
From Shadowfax:
Modernized the newbie survery to include current mud listings and social
media.
Made the password fail message (for non-dclient users) clearer on how to
recover your password using in-game "account" command.

From Draak:
Found a couple bugs that were preventing ship encounters from working.
Prepared to be boarded, yarr! (Druidia)
Fixed a bug in help files that was innacurately displaying certain spells
such as thorn armor being castable on others when they are not. (Stoney)
Hue now works on crystal spears and crystal shields. Permanently hue-able
items now have colored inventory strings.
You can now add orbs to forged scepters! (Deadinator)
Vampiric vines receive a boost to healing when attacking bleeding targets.

Some changes to how certain spells interact with SHADOW creatures. Druid
light-based spells should do extra damage as advertised, while rorshach
cheers them up.

Graft undead now gives bonuses to hitroll/damroll/armor based on a wider
range of stats. Grafted undead should also keep their bonuses if they
relevel now.

Forged weapon jobs should now give you gold to match the minimum weight
needed to forge the weapon's main component rather than the finished
weight. This will prevent gold losses when weapons are stripped of
weight to match the forger's strength during assembly. (Eggweard)

Bloom has been moved from level 17 druid to level 22 druid. Entangling
roots has been changed from level 22 druid to level 17 druid. This is
so you actually have a minion you can cast bloom on when you first learn
the spell.

A few spells have been renamed. Control animal is now dominate animal,
control undead is now enslave undead and control demon is now pledge
demon. This should prevent wires from getting crossed in the spell parser,
and make it easier to look up each spell in the help pages. Special
thanks to all who participated in the brainstorming for new names.

---- May 14, 23 [3106]
From Draak:
Lapidary check will now be more specific when checking minerals that can
be made into gemstones/jewelry but not into lapidary objects (Absolute).

When attempting to meditate, it will check to see if you are poisoned,
afflicted with acid or have meditated recently before checking to see
if you are resting. (Godselevator)

The druid thistles spell now has a short duration on targets. It slightly
lowers hit point regeneration, and makes the target less able to resist
entangling roots. The mana cost has been raised from 5 to 6.

Changes to the Cartographer's Guild skills:
Swimming is now an independent skill that costs one practice. If you
already know swimming, you will not lose it. It may take a day or two
to get it back on trainers around the game.

A new Grandmaster skill has been added: trailblazer
This skill automatically reduces movement costs when you are grouped with
with other players and moving through wilderness without trails or roads.

Forester is now Apprentice rank.
Climbing is now Journeyman rank
Spelunking is now Adept rank.
Mountaineering is now Expert rank.
Extremophile is now Master rank.

If you have previously gained any of these skills, you will not lose them.
If you are a Grandmaster in the Cartographer's Guild already, you should
be able to learn trailblazer at a high level guildmaster at no cost.

---- May 07, 23 [3103]
From Draak:
A few common terrain types have had their move costs reduced further.
Trails and roads now have a more pronounced reduction of movement costs.
Trying to add feathers to mastercrafted ammo should no longer cause
warnings (Deadinator)
Trying to sell bound equipment now shows a more explicit warning. (Dassein)
Graft undead buffs are bit stronger now.
The demoralizing effect of coldfire is a bit stronger now.

---- Apr 30, 23 [3101]
From Draak:
New forged bladed weapons based on the kris blade: kalis, keris panjang
You have a chance to see weaknesses on creatures even if you don't know
monster lore.
You can no longer list KEEP flagged items in player shops. (Morpheus) 
New quest gate in newbie zones to help teach players about damage types,
creature types and consider command. (Uicli)
You can now relabel scrolls as you can potions. (Peregrin)

---- Apr 22, 23 [3099]
From Draak:
Oops, Draak forgot the grey and lilac stone in Thalos. Its lepidolite now.
The saving spell affect of afflict was bumped up slightly, so it will
show up on consider, most of the time...
Metallurgy enhance check will now see if an object's stats are full. (Uicli)
You can no longer use charm person while possessing a mob.
Grenade damage raised slightly.

The help page for grenade recipes now describes what each type of grenade
does. Some have extra effects now, such as shadow blade bombs doing extra
damage to shadow mobs. Grenades that have effects such as burning, bleeding
or chilling have a much higher chance to inflict their debuffs on opponents
that are not alert. 

---- Apr 16, 23 [3096]
From Draak:
The check command will now give more information about guild skills
that it recommends. (Uicli)
Minions no longer show class letters in group. I've seen several new
players ask about this since the beginning of the year.
Fished a bug out of woodcraft that was setting all weapons to average
speed. Also improved some functionality with appraise. (Uicli)
Smith armor and weapon jobs should no longer ask for rarer metals such
as orichalcum or ziff at lower levels. (Uicli)

The stones founda round Old Thalos have been assimilated as
mining/lapidary stones:

a deep red stone - friedelite
a pink and green stone - zoisite
a teal stone - mtorolite
a periwinkle stone - jeremjevite
a dark burgundy stone - binghamite
a shimmering opal - menilite
a citron - crocoite (FYI citron is a fruit and we already have citrine)
a fiery bloodstone - addlebrookite

Raw amber already is already used in mining and houndstooth stone sounds
cool so I kept the name. These will load in Old Thalos and there will be
deposits in the mines beneath it. A few have also been added to the
general mining table.


20 entries displayed.