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.

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---- Jun 21, 19 [2658]
From Draak:
Lag reduced on crafting skills a little bit.
Fixed bug in leathercraft that did not allow a 'blank' composite bonus
on non-dragonscale equipment.
Warrior skill rebalancing: Tanking is now level 22, down from level 24.
Lag and movement cost for crippling strike has somewhat increased.
FYI it is still quite a bit faster and less costly than leap attack.
New geology type: salty, for highly saline, non-marine environments.
New angelic wood: thyine
Happy Solstice! Keep an eye out for summer squash when foraging.

Mage practice rebalancing:
Ground is now level 12, up from 10, since it was the same level
as shocking grasp.
Obscure spell chimes is now level 10, since there were multiple
obscure spells at level 11.

New mining minerals: selenite, alabaster (both forms of gypsum)
and very rare polyhalite and bloedite. These favor salty geology,
along with various halide minerals like sylvite.

---- Jun 08, 19 [2655]
From Draak:
A successful feint will reduce the cooldown timers that lessen the chance
of a successful flourish and lower the damage of crippling strike.
Added a couple of tips to the bottom of slist. (Duckworthy)
You can no longer scribe high level spells onto low level scrolls.

Areas can now have different geologies set that affect what
minerals are most abundant there. You will see a message about
the local geology when you start prospecting.

Most druid called animals are gaining the ability to eat food they are
given. They will be picky eaters, so don't try feeding apples to a
mountain lion or fish to an ape.

Mage practice balance changes:
Prism is now level 18 instead of level 12.
Level 12 spell shield is now critical and dependent on mana
shield instead of fly.
Dependencies within the force field spelltree have rearranged.

Thief practice balance changes:
Contortionism is no longer critical.
Shadow decoy is now critical.
Stealthy movement is now level 22, up from level 21.
Shadow bind is now level 15, up from level 14.
Brew poison is now level 14, down from level 15.
Case is now level 12, down from level 13.
Cloak of darkness is now level 13, up from level 12.
Backstab is now level 9, up from level 8.
Survrey is now level 8, down from level 9.
Feint is now level 6, down from level 7.
Pickpocket is now level 7, up from level 6.
Crippling strike is now level 20 and critical.
Shadow strike is now level 28.

Necromancer practice balance changes:
Consume is now level 17, up from 16.
Skeletal warrior is now level 16, down from 17.

Cleric practice balance changes:
Breath of life is now level 31, up from level 28. (Lokar)

---- May 28, 19 [2653]
From Shadowfax:
Display brew level of object when identifying it. (Shermanator)
Allow 'knockback' to be used while defensive fighting without penalty. (Ivey)
'Jab' can no longer be used while defensive fighting without penalty to
balance the change to knockback.
Lower cooldown of 'infernal visage' from about 45 minutes to roughly half
an hour. (Rowroad)
Using higher level soulstones can result in a more powerful infernal
visage. (Rowroad)
Raise damage of skirmish a bit more. (Martin)

Fix various bugs with accio spell, including having it trigger contact traps,
and disallowing the spell if a player is inside the target.  Also allow
it to find a target within nested containers.  (Rowroad)

From Draak:
Add remaining bank time to the bank command.
You can now specify a level when scribing scrolls. This is mostly
for making scrolls for characters lower level than yourself, such
as allies or customers. (Morpheus)

The level 13 'blindness' spell is now the level 38 'eyebite' curse. This
curse blurs vision, lowering hitroll, increasing vulnerability to blinding
effects, interfering with shadow disciplines, and SEVERELY hampering
ranged attacks such as thrown weapons, bows and firearms.
Eyebite (blindness) and cure blindness now have MSP/dclient sounds.

The cure blindness spell will incrementally remove eyebite with successive
castings. It has been retooled to also remove temporary blindness from
dust, chemical attacks and bright lights. If it successfully removes
temporary blindness, the target of the spell is briefly immune to
blindness (but not the eyebite curse, which removes the immunity).

There will no longer be critical spells and skills above level 30. By
then, you should know everything your primary class needs to survive.
What you learn next is highly likely to influenced by your secondary and
tertiary class choices.

Cleanup to spell exigencies in relation to spell dependencies (critical
spells are dependent at critical, important spells are dependent on
important or critical spells, and so forth)

Thief balance changes:
Shadow walk is now level 31 instead of 30.
Shadow mastery is now level 30 instead of 31.
Crippling strike and evasion are no longer critical.

Warrior balance chagnes:
Cleave is now level 10 instead of 26, critical and dependent on lunge.
Leap attack is now level 20 instead of 10  and dependent on cleave.
Ground strike is now level 26 instead of 20.
Defensive fighting is now level 15 instead of 13 and is critical.
Battle tactics is now level 17 instead of 15.

Cleric balance changes:
Condemnation is now level 32, from level 28.
Breath of life is now level 28, from level 32.
Faith shield is now level 5, critical and dependent on armor instead of bless.
Refresh is now level 4 instead of 5.
Bless is now level 6 instead of 4 and is important instead of critical.

Mage balance changes:
Fireweb is dependent on greater fireball instead of fireweb.

Necromancer balance changes:
Infuse element is now level 28 instead of 29.
Demonic tutor is now level 29 instead of 28.

---- May 27, 19 [2650]
From Draak:
You can now show your last thought. How useful!
The check command will point people with extreme alignments towards obscure
alignment spells that will benefit them. (Lokar)
Picking up a spell book containing an obscure spell or skill will
trigger a message.
Fixed bug in sunder that allowed it to repeat on illegal targets.
Straightened out an issue with caught fish being worthless. (Ironleaf)
Groundstrings for caught fish should now make more sense in relation
to cooking. (Mertag)
Spell show <level> has more information now.

Special update from Draak:
Lots of class skills and spells will be moving up or down by a level or
two, be tweaked in practice cost, or changed to a different level of
exigency. The end goal is to make sure each class has roughly the same
number of critical, important and helpful practices, at roughly equivalent
intervals. Some spells and skills will be receiving improvements. The few
large jumps in level will be handled with grandfathering.

Critical practices for mage, cleric, druid and necromancer are more or
less in their final state. Warrior is partially there, and thief is in
the planning stages.

I've done my best to document the changes here, but there may be some
unintentional omissions and the possible broken spell dependency or
two - this is a big project! This will be ongoing for the next couple of
weeks.

Unclassed practice rebalancing:
Monster lore is now level 8.

Mage practice rebalancing:
Dancing lights is now level 5.
Burning hands is now level 6.
Shocking grasp is now level 10.
Shield is now level 12.
Fireball is now level 14.
Lightning bolt is now level 19.
Greater fireball is now level 21.
Frostbite is now level 23.
Ball lightning is now level 25.

Cleric practice rebalancing:
Bolster is now level 9.
Sanctuary is now level 11.
Consecrate armor is now level 11.
Flamestrike is now level 13.
Inflict suffering is now level 15.
Heal is now level 17.
Protection from evil is now level 19.
Harm is now level 21.
Major heal is now level 23.
Petition incarnate is now level 25.
Petition crusader is now level 28.
Famine is now level 26.
Lethargy is now level 25.
Despair and breath of life are now level 32.
The jinx curse is now level 15.
Forgetfulness is now level 25.
Feeble mind, forgetfulness and confusion are no longer obscure.
Protection from evil is now the foundation of the know evil spellgroup.
Detect evil is now level 19 and dependent on protection from evil.
Know alignment is now level 24.
Both spells, along with conceal alignment, are now obscure.

Druid practice rebalancing:
Animal lore is now level 11.
Ice fog is now level 12.
Mudwalker is now level 10.
Spellstaff is now level 18.
Call squirrel is now level 11.
Grow mushroom is now level 13.
Deadoak is now level 20.
Call animal is now level 9.
Water is weird is now level 8.
Control weather is now level 11.
Animal lore is now level 13.
Walk on water is now level 19.
Squeaky floors is now level 20.
Call waterborn is now level 20.
Entangling roots is level 22.
Petroglyph is now level 21.
Carve fetish is now level 22.
Sunscreen is now level 32.
Leech life is now level 38.

Warrior practice rebalancing:
Disarm is now level 6.
Stomp is now level 5.
Unarmed combat is now level 14.
Increased stamina is now level 13.
Advanced tactics is now level 24.
Double attack is now level 21.
Groundstrike is now level 20.
Sunder is no longer obscure. (Lokar)

Necromancer practice rebalancing:
Undead lore is now level 8.
Bone blade is now level 7.
Spectral hand is now level 7.
Corpsecutter is now level 6.
Demon lore is now level 10.
Bone arrow is now level 9.
Soulsteal is now level 11.
Foulblood is now level 11.
Skeletal mage is now level 19.
Life tap is now level 21.
Skeletal knight is now level 25.
Spectral claw is now level 27.

---- May 12, 19 [2647]
From Shadowfax:
Add help option for the 'variable' command.

From Draak:
Fixed a bug with consecrate armor stat changes and wear locations.
Some spells and skills that were labeled as both obscure and helpful are
now just obscure.
Liquid containers can no longer be rune-carved. (Shermanator)
Using 'reveal curse' on a character makes the next casting of 'remove curse'
on that character by the same caster more effective. (Demon)
Detect poison will hint at the presence of foulblood, rancid flesh and
dying breath when cast on a target.

Optimization to cleric practice trees, including:
Overconfidence is now level 12 cleric and the foundation of the cleric
curses of the mind spells. Feeblemind is now level 19 cleric. Feeblemind,
forgetfulness and confusion are now obscure.
Detect undead and detect poison are now obscure. Slow poison is now
dependent on remove poison.
Holy weapon is now level 25, since the other level 25 cleric spells were
obscure and the divine conjuration tree was kind of clustered around low
levels.

---- May 05, 19 [2646]
You can now remove a friend using the name of any of their multis.  This
should help in cases where a friend is being annoying but you don't know
which of their multis you have friended.

From Draak:
Dclient users: the duration and intensity of spell cast/remove colorflash
events has been reduced.
If you are wearing consecrated armor and the consecration weakens, your
stats should update properly to reflect it.

---- May 04, 19 [2643]
From Draak:
Minor check/advice command updates.
Minor holiday updates and additions.
You should be able to add gemstones to forged jewelry again, sorry about that.
Turtles and tortoises should yield shells when skinned. (Dizzy)
Warrior combos can now add hit point regeneration and constitution.
They will add moveregen if str, dex or con are maxxed out. (Lokar)
Fished out an odd bug that would strip ARTIFACT and RARE flags from
consecrated eq in some circumstances. (Sirand)
Successfully calling animals can improve animal magnetism if you know
the skill. (Ragtime)
Worshipping certain gods will now attract the attention of specific types
of angels or vespers when using most petitions.
Gods will show up as having preferred compositions for brewing unguents.
This will not be turned on until all gods have been properly set.

The 'where' command works a little bit differently now to prevent
conflicts with mob names and searching for specific service
providers in cities - for example, 'where priest' in a city will
list all priests in the city (if any), while 'where priest' in a
dungeon will find mobs or players by the name of 'priest'.

The level 25 cleric spell 'mystic projectile' is now the level 14 cleric
spell 'mystic armament'. Mystic armament can be cast on ammunition and
weapons that have a blunt damage type such as pound, crush or punch.
It adds magic damage to weapons or ammo so enspelled.

Dclient users: spells that can be cast on characters now have color
flashes when they are cast or wear off. This has been set on sanctuary
and many detection and protective spells. (Dex)

---- Apr 29, 19 [2642]
Update server SSL keys.

---- Apr 20, 19 [2640]
DClient users - we've been doing a lot of infrastructure work.  If any
of the dclient features you use stop working, please notify Dentin so
we can get it fixed.

From Shadowfax:
Clan dues bought with credits will now be added to the buyer's 'Total
dues paid' roster entry and update the 'paid last' timestamp. (Wyrm)

From Draak:
Crippling strike should be less crippling against other players in pk.
Feinting an opponent makes crippling strike more effective.
Necromancer spell 'mend bones' has been lowered to level 34 and
made critical.
Necromancer spell 'bone dragon' has been raised to level 37.
Mage spell 'ice wall' is now dependent on frost bite.
Mage spells 'ice wall', 'lightning bolt'  and 'ice elemental' are
now critical.
Cleric abilities 'Clasp of corruption', 'death and decay',
'petition aspect' and 'celestial audience' are now critical.
New wood types: almond, driftwood (common on beaches.)
Minor crafting cleanup for a few weird cases. (Wily, Juggernaut)
Added 'heraldry check' option to see if objects can have heraldry
added to them.

Leathercraft check, lapidary check and woodcraft check tightened and
improved. Let Draak know if there are any problems with the checks or with
adding upgrades to leathercrafted, lapidary and woodcrafted equipment.

Ice imprison is more effective against enemies that have been 'chilled'
i.e. affected by chill touch, Tarrant's spectral hand or spectral claw.
It is less effective against unchilled opponents. Also, each casting
of ice imprison against a chilled opponent weakens the chill spells
on it. (Lokar, sort of)

---- Apr 07, 19 [2638]
Add more information to kxwt_rvnum. (Demon)
Player maps should now save instances.

From Draak:
New alloy: red gold - copper and gold.
Added more details that can be added to heraldic images. See
'heraldry features' for more info.
Added 'metallurgy enhance check' to use on items to see if they
can be enhanced with metallurgy.
Lapidary check can now be used on items to show what can be added to them.
Fixed damage type bug with 'luk' channel casted spells. (Runner)
New MSP/dclient sounds for combat points, profession points, explorer
points and newbie helper points.
Tailoring analyze/check/estimate will now check to see if a feather
can be added a crafted hat.

From Shadowfax:
Add help text for 'dice' command.
Randomize durations of cleric petition and necromancer summon cooldown
timers a little.
Cleanup weapon trap damage strings. (Brak)
Fix bug that made you keep trying to unlock a trap after it already
had been unlocked. (Brak)
Up damage of snares, snaptraps, caltrops and mana blast traps. (Brak)
Make it clearer when the 'shield' spell has protected you against a
ranged attack or fusillade trap.
If you do not have the proper key, then failing to unlock a contact
trigger trap risks springing the trap. (Brak)
Prevent "none" priest tasks from becoming available. (Lilmike)
If you are struck by a projectile from a ranged attack that is larger
than you are, it will no longer end up in your inventory and always
land on the ground. (Brak)
Group members must now be in the same room as any escorted mob when it
reaches its destination in order to receive credit for its escort quest.
The extreme spam filter will now block shadow decoy deaths.
Mobs must now be awake in order to notice you killing another mob in
the same room. (Lokar)

---- Mar 24, 19 [2634]
From Shadowfax:
Adjust trap damage so it scales more smoothly with level.
Fix bug in leech life that allowed a mob to leech a player after the
player had died.

From Draak:
Tweaks to luck, mostly invisible.
Help text improvements when changing various channel settings.
Added 'Tal' rune option to channel casting, gives a small clevel boost.
Added 'Ganta' rune option to channel casting, gives an increased chance of
casting success. 
You can now add forged spikes and studs to bonecrafted weapons.
You can now use 'leathercraft check' on leathercrafted and dragonscale
armor to see how they can upgraded with the leathercraft skills.
You can now use 'woodcraft check' on woodcrafted items to see how they can
upgrade with the woodcrafting skills.

---- Mar 16, 19 [2631]
Fix account bug preventing previously existing GuideDog accounts from
being linked via the 'account email set' command.

From Draak:
Fix 'luk' channel casting damage bug. It can now also be partially
mitigated by shields.
Rune channeled spells should now have a chance of improving the requisite
elemental focus skill.
Cleaned up logic in leathercraft for determining what items can
be made from shell/dragonscale and which cannot.
The way finished areas are determined has been streamlined.  Expect the
some area weirdness until all areas are updated.

---- Mar 10, 19 [2629]
From Shadowfax:
Shadow decoys will now self-destruct when released.  (Rashid)
The survey skill now allows you to set temporary landmarks.

---- Mar 09, 19 [2627]
From Draak:
You should no longer be able to give things to dancing lights.
Added unique MSP/dclient sounds for crippling strike.
Splitting lapidary items should no longer accidently hide things in your
inventory.
Soulsmithing should be a bit more forgiving with high level soulstones if
you're wearing castlevel.
Help pages for spells now show if they can be channel cast.


The climb COMMAND has been deprecated. Players will automatically attempt to
climb when going through climb-flagged exits, in the same way players will
automatically swim when entering water rooms. The climb skill will still
determine how much movement you take and lag you incur when climbing. This
should help put players on all clients on equal footing when it comes to
autoclimb. This is complicated and there may be bugs. Please report any bugs
directly to Draak and Dentin.


Channel casting now allows you to modify certain mage spells by preceding
the spell name with a rune word:

'Alu' for slow, low-mana casting. 'Alu' casting is the default for channel
casting, so you don't need to specify it.

'Ort' to add blunt-force blasting damage to spells.

'Luk' to focus damage spells into beams that slice into enemies.  This is
a total transformation, as the spell retains none of its original
properties save its elemental damage type. The damage is formulated from
the amount of mana the spell uses, the level of the spell and the
caster's level. The beams can be evaded.

The latter two runewords increase the mana cost and lag of the spells by
a modest amount.  An example casting string might be:

ccast ort fireball target

All this is experimental, and subject to change or removal in the future.

---- Mar 02, 19 [2625]
From Draak:
Excavated minerals from high level areas will now be a bit lower in level.
New taste 'pine' added, for evergreen plants. Pine flavored food helps with
cases of poisoning similar to mint.
Spalted woodcrafted objects now have a chance to randomize similar to
patchwork leathercrafted objects.
Chill touch, Tarrant's spectral hand and spectral claws no longer leave a
lingering chill effect on ICE type mobs. (Leos)
Fixed whacky lapidary bug with lapidary inlaid forged armor and other
items. (Necrosabor)
Fixed soulshatter's identity crisis. 
Small tweaks to disarm.

New level 33 necromancer skill: soulsmith, for adding soulstones to crafted
jewelry and weapons!

The vast majority of gathered herbs and mushrooms should now have a taste set
on them. There are also a few more poisonous herbs and mushrooms than there
were before. Big thanks to Morpheus for helping with this tedious project.

---- Feb 24, 19 [2624]
From Draak:
You can now use salty-tasting spellcomps as seasoning when cooking, and
a few flavor tweaks.
Loading and other ranged weapon strings added to spam extreme.
If you know lapidary and reagent lore, you can crush ores into powders
that can be used as spellcomps.
Clan names now show on where and the dclient map.
You can customize your clan area's name with 'credit buy clanname'.

---- Feb 17, 19 [2622]
Freak soulsteal display and achievements have been changed from a factor
of 4 (1, 4, 16, 64, 256) to a factor of 2 (1, 2, 4, 8, 16).  We've also
added freak 32 and freak 64 achievements, so you can now soulsteal one
freak level higher than previously.  Note that this changes only the
display, and not the soulsteal levels or exp.

From Draak:
Shopkeepers that buy gems or ingots should be less stingy.
Fixed a bug with quest-restricted doors.
Crafted weapons can now have better dierolls based on their quality level.

---- Feb 16, 19 [2620]
From Draak:
New MSP/DClient sounds for coffin, infernal visage and firefield.
Added special "humpday" code...
Command 'event quest' split off from 'event show'. (Morpheus)
Fixed metal inlay strings with certain pieces of dragonscale armor.
Successful warrior combos can now daze and stun opponents.
Fixed bug that could strip quality bonuses from equipment with
consecrate. (Sirand)
You can now add gemstones to crafted masks.
Cleanup and sounds added to various summon demon abilities.

From Shadowfax:
Nudge skirmish damage up a bit. (Martin)
Tie experience yielded by the skirmish skill more closely to performance.
This should result in a small overall increase.

---- Feb 09, 19 [2618]
From Shadowfax:
Ammunition with the two_wield wear slot are no longer considered legal.
Fix bug in infernal visage that made the DEMON mtype persist if one
died while under its effect. (Rowroad)
Prevent infernal visage from working in the unlikely event that you are
affected by 'censure demon'.
Prevent crystal coat from affecting mining deposits. (Victorious)

---- Feb 03, 19 [2615]
From Shadowfax:
Allow an unnatural spring to be used as a water source for the flood spell
if no other source is available. (Druidia)
Never time out waypoints that require a quest to obtain. (Soth)

Fix bugs in 'conceal alignment' that made good aligned characters appear
to be neutral when adjudicating mob behavior with respect to assist alignment
and spare alignment flags.

Necromancer class update:
Add 'temptations' option for consult demon.
Demonic lorekeepers will now mention if an object or door is trapped
when analyzing a lock.
Add level 38 'coffin' spell.
Add level 38 'infernal visage' skill.

From Draak:
Lots of minor quality of life improvements.
Objects can be split by weight now, 'split <object> <value>'.
It should now be possible to scribe rejuvenate.
It should now be clear when crippling strike misses or is dodged
by an enemy. (Lokar)
Fixed minor size calculation bug in woodcraft.
Certain kinds of forged jewelery will have reduced stats, so there is more
play in the composite when adding gems, enchants and soforth. (Victorious)
Field of the grasping dead is now more effective against ethereal cratures.
Tweaks to consult demon, in particular it should indicate what sector
gathered herbs and mined materials are native to.
Added 'job' option to consult demon. The consulted demon can tell you
what it knows about objects you need for retrieval jobs.

Hiding players will no longer be exposed by searching players.  A
searching player may, however, notice the presence of a hiding player.
Do note that pkok players can still unhide other pkok players, so hide
doesn't become a super pk unspoofable cloaking device. (Lokar)


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