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!


 
---- Mar 07, 21 [2860]
From Brak:
Minor tweaks to soulsteal code.

Spam filter updates:
Add object custom wear strings to spam wear.
Add skirmish and flourish to spam gfighting.
Add players hiding to spam extreme.
Add earth wall to gcast.
Add taps and store power to spam gcast.
Add timeouts and fades to spam misc.
Add turn to spam extreme.
Add "appears to be blinded" messages to spam extreme.
Move sanc dropping on mobs from spam extreme to gcast. This is so leaders
can see it when mobs are dispeled. (Colonel)

From Mutt:
All four types of mage elementals have been moved from being ordinary cast
spells, to using the 'summon' command similar to necromancer demons.
We've also be added explicit lower level skills for lesser elemental
summoning to help mid level players.  More powerful elementals are now
dependent on the lesser skills, but if you've already learned how to
summon a minion you'll still be able to without the lesser skills.

From Valront:
Require '-force' to give away a container that isn't empty. (Morpheus)
Fixed triple fail string send in remorse. (Mertag)
Minor typo clean up in a few places (Thanks Uicli and Shryth)

---- Mar 06, 21 [2858]
From Mutt:
Added string when clearing all acid off another target with create water.

From Draak:
Added shortinsult mode, for shortid. If shortinsult is on, shortid will
show an object's insult string. Shortinsult is off by default.
Crafted crossbows should now have decent hitroll. (Colonel)
Cleric unusual curses split out of tribulation spellgroup, forming divine
wrath spellgroup. (Dentin)
Continual light is now critical, and only costs 1 practice.

---- Feb 28, 21 [2855]
From Valront:
Minor formatting fixup to weapon speed in shortID.
Overconfidence renamed 'bravery' and is no longer a curse. Bravery is
now dependent on faith shield and it part of the Divine Aid spellgroup.
Despair and remorse are now dependent on feeble mind.
Minor hint string fixes and tweaks.
Fireball is now 'scorch', scorch does single target fire damage and applies
a fire save debuff to living targets.
Greater fireball is now 'fireball'. (cause that isn't confusing right?)
Players will now be notified when they regain their morale.
Frag grenades now use color from the credit buy crystal color options.
Fire shield, flamestrike and firebombs now use color from the credit buy
fire color options.
Call lightning now uses color from the credit buy lightning color options.
Ground strike now uses color from credit buy lightning and fire color
options when wielding appropriate damage types.

Demonfire also now uses fire color, it will use the dark version of selected
colors to stay in theme, default color will now be yellow to line up with
other fire colors.

From Draak:
Misc archery contest cleanup. Thank you for the feedback, everyone!
Strengthened checks for showing the level of crafted components.
The minimum duration of vigor and fortitude has been increased. (Uicli)

Changes to cleric spellgroups:
Feeble mind and faerie fire are now dependent on afflict, merging the
cleric curse spellgroups.
Remove poison is now dependent on soothe wounds, grafting the cure
poison tree into the healing spellgroup.
Sacred touch is now dependent on inflict wounds, grafting the undead
handling tree into the divine might spellgroup.
Groupcasting is now part of the cleric meditation spellgroup.
Remove curse is now lift curse.

---- Feb 21, 21 [2853]
From Valront:
Fixed bug causing vulnerability to no longer be a curse.
Finished cleric newbie hint strings (for now.) Huge thanks to Shryth for
helping me proof read and edit them.
Tripping will no longer grant non-living mobs consciousness only to
cruely rip it away from them less than a second later.
Increased scribing  mana cost on mage combat spells to match old values.

Gods may now be toxic, eg. have 'entropy' be their prefered element. This
causes Toxic/Poison to be their prefered damage type and save. This comes
with all the usual benefits of having a prefered element.

From Draak:
Clean-up of strings when attempting to 'drop all' inside of storage lockers.
Ebon adamantine is now dark adamantine, to prevent parsing conflicts
with ebon mithril.
Impale no longer works on plural mobs.
Crafting sampler lootcrates now come with a skin, hide, pelt or shell.

Afflict now lowers spellsave for both etheral and corporeal targets, and
does not lower normsave. This makes afflict more consistent and useful
for making targets vulernable to follow-up curses.

Fishing derby and archery contest system sends transferred over the event
announcement system, so will only show up if you have the event channel
on. New characters will have the event channel turned on automatically
at level 5.

String clean-up and highlights for archery contest.  The archery contest
will return your ammo from off the ground before returning you to your
recall.

Changes to strings and the help page for bloodletting stab, to reflect
the fact that you can rip into enemies with your hands, if you're wearing
hand equipment with the right dtype. RIP AND TEAR, UNTIL IT IS DONE.

---- Feb 14, 21 [2852]
From Valront:
All mage blasting spells have had their mana costs cut roughly in half.
This is an extremely experimental change and may be subject to further
adjustments depending on the results over the next few weeks.

---- Feb 13, 21 [2850]
From Brak:
Raise threshold on freak 4 soulsteal notifies.
Enable automatic generation of talk strings. This should improve over time
and more mobs will be covered as builders refine the various rules.
Fighting characters now have their own talk strings.

From Shadowfax:
Use real life timers for delivery job objects instead of tick timers. (Ivey)
Fix bug that prevented mobs with wield flags from using shadow strike
without an actual weapon. (Rowroad)
Cartographer jobs should properly setup landmarks in instances. (Juggernaut,
Druidia, Absolute, and Sport)

From Draak:
Minor cleanup with Field of Fonts encounter handling.
Check command will now tell you if you have empty equipment slots, or if
you are wearing equipment more than 10 levels lower than your primary class.
Being dazed/stunned now instills a penalty to dexterity, instead of more
targeted defense penalties, which were not working correctly.
Lowered the level ceiling for mobs in the Field of Fonts.  Most mobs will
be closer to 43-45, but some boss types will still be higher level.
Fixed a movement bug with crushing ores into spellcomps.
Fixed effects bug with forging pitch black metal. (Fumo)

The value command can now directly target objects. It can still be used
with shopkeepers as well. This is useful as shortid does not show an item's
estimated cost. 

Tuesday archery contests are now operational! Contests will be held
periodically throughout the day on Tuesday. Once a contest starts, you can
join with 'event start contest'.

---- Feb 08, 21 [2849]
Fix suicide bug in grenadier skill.

---- Feb 06, 21 [2848]
Do a whole bunch of cleanup to clan stat, clan show, and various clan
control parsing commands.  You can now show some information about other
clans using 'clan show'.

From Shadowfax:
Fix bug in cartographer and hunter jobs that allowed completion without
doing anything. (Gresko)
Added more mana and manaregen to incarnates so shadow god incarnates can
use shadow strike, like they were always intended to.

From Valront:
Minor string fixes for newbie hints.

From Draak:
Fixed an inconsistency with weapon speed descriptions between identify
and compare. (Uicli)

---- Jan 31, 21 [2847]
From Valront:
Add a few newbie helper strings to cleric spells as an initial test.
These will show up when the spell/skill is first learned.
Added hint about 'harvest all' in to generic harvest command.
Bottled potions should no longer be able to become autobind.

From Brak:
Slowed rate at which necromancers get fatigued from stealing successive
souls.

Adjusted the achievement collected 10 black soulstones to 1, and
collected 10 white soulstones to 5. For those that have already met
the new requirement this will trigger when they next soulsteal.

From Draak:
Fixed bug with how jobs were finishing.
The Field of Fonts should no longer have explorer points.

---- Jan 30, 21 [2844]
Minor improvements to grenade and grenadier damage.
Some changes to how move regen is calculated to clean up some nonsensical
combat handling code.  Please let Dentin know if it's horribly broken.
Cleric now has a wisdom stat cap of 39, similar to the mage intelligence
stat cap of 39.
Thief now has the same max stat cap for charisma as cleric.

Change the spell/skill int/wis/chr calculation to scale properly with
player level.  Left unchecked, this would have made most spells uncastable
when learned by level 45.  Note that this raises the costs now slightly,
while preventing a substantial mess for the future level 40 release.  This
also fixes a few spells (like hallowed ground) which were already
uncastable at the level they were learned at.

From Shadowfax:
You can no longer gather while blinded.

From Mutt:
Adjusted prayer for the dying strings.
Added acid removal from healing spells to mend bones.
Restores now remove acid, reset negative morale, and boost morale.

From Draak:
If you know fey woe, you can see what mobs would be vulnerable to it
on consider.
Indomitable will cooldown resistances against entangling roots and
shadow bind have been strengthened.
Grenadier damage avoidance is now more pronounced.
Magic poison is now magical poison.

A small amount of damage reflection added to summoned fire elementals,
i.e. when struck by a physical attack, the attacker has a chance to
take fire damage.

The material a crystal skull is made from has some effect on its ability
to absorb elements. For example, a skull made from obsidian (which
grants fire resistance) will be somewhat better at absorbing fire, but
not quite as good at absorbing magic, ice and lightning. The difference
is not huge.

---- Jan 25, 21 [2841]
Level 39 is officially on-line! Happy 26th Anniversary from the staff
of Alter Aeon!

From Draak:
New craft label 'emptycatchers'. (Castmaster)
Potion throwing now has a chance of dealing more powerful castings
of spells, especialy if you manage to hit the target in the face.

New level 39 mage skill, 'greater ice elemental'
New level 39 warrior skill, 'impale'
New level 39 thief skill, 'grenadier'
New level 39 cleric skill, 'fey woe'
New level 39 necromancer skill, 'crystal skull'
Storm of roses is no longer a witch bonus spell. It is now a 
level 39 druid spell, with a few thematic tweaks.

New high-level solo areas, the City of Fonts and the Field of Fonts,
will be opening shortly. The Fields of Fonts is a first-of-its kind
area, featuring a procedurally generated map that changes each reboot,
randomly-placed treasures and enemies, new job types, mysteries to
explore and randomized encounters that adjusts to the level of your
your character. This project will be actively developed and tweaked
as feedback is received. Please enjoy!

---- Jan 24, 21 [2837]
Fix 'infinite tensor' bug and re-timer them on login.

From Draak:
Tweaked some warrior skills so that sleeping/prone mobs can't get out of
the way.
Added a few new colors, adjectives and fish types to fishing.
The level of crafted components such as gems and forged studs should now
show up on identify.

Ore and forgeable ingots now have prices that are directly derived from
how much it costs to work with the type of metal they are instead of
broad extrapolations.

There have been changes to jobs in prepartion for new high-level job types,
mostly opaque to players. If you encounter any issues with existing jobs,
please contact Draak or Shadowfax.

From Mutt:
Slightly reverted skeletal lich insult strings for player convenience.
Greatly increase effectiveness of leadfoot against fleeing targets.
Groupcast prayer for the dying will now affect the caster.

From Brak:
New 'credit buy clanrankstrings' option.
Exclude plural mobs from soulsteal (Asclepius)

New soulsteal code.  This switches the focus from a mobs hp to the
comparative levels of the spell and the target, as well as other factors
such as a mob's constitution. This should mean that newbie mobs are
fairly easy to steal from while mobs at the higher end become
progressively more difficult. This can be offset by latching on presteal,
lowering a mob's morale and raising your charisma.  There is also some
variation between different mob types with mobs that are more difficult
to steal from generally giving slightly higher value souls.

---- Jan 16, 21 [2835]
From Valront:
Minor string changes in identify info for bound objects and god loaded
objects, you likely won't notice the difference.
Added helpful reminder to check help files when putting your first
practice in a skill/spell.
Added color to various "You need to know 'x' to learn that." strings.
Changed Shards from damage type pierce to damage type slice.
Added hint strings for all non-obscure mage spells/skills up to level 15.

Added framework for hint strings when learning new skills/spells for the
first time.  This is only on a few select mage skills/spells for now, but
will be added to more with time.

From Mutt:
Restores now refill the hp/mana/move of player controlled minions.
Increase level scaling on default 'alu' mode of mage channel casting.
Reduced blood tap bottling cost to 25 gold and increased timer duration.
Removed extra soulstone string from skeletal knight and skeletal lich.
Added using soulstone string to bone dragon.
Added destruction room string inside bone fortress prior to player ejection.
Removed color highlight from shadow bind information in monster lore.
Adjusted regen on cleric petitioned minions to standard values.

Remove player name "are you sure" requirement when casting bone fortress.
This should make it easier to emergency cast bone fortress, when you need
it immediately and a parser fail would kill you.

---- Jan 02, 21 [2833]
From Mutt:
Restores now remove deathly sleep and cure basic poisoning.
Added 'landmarks' command (which works the same as 'where landmarks'.)

From Valront:
Undo changed from Important to Helpful.

---- Dec 31, 20 [2832]
From Valront:
Minor help text improvement in new character creation screens.

---- Dec 29, 20 [2830]
From Draak:
Mining in event areas should now give objects with more appropriate
levels. (Morpheus)
Tweaks to mob aggro and high concentration events.
You can now relabel bottled potions after a different spell that they
have, if they have more than one. (Asclepius)
Removed event show information from 'event quest'. (Morpheus)

Appraise will now indicate if an object cannot have runes added to it
due to the internal calculations of the rune carving skills, which
are not entirely dependent of the item's composite and quality level.

From Valront:
Adjusted brag aep to make strings more sane in corner case situations.

---- Dec 27, 20 [2828]
From Valront:
Added NOTEACH flag to sunder, but specific sunder trainers have been set
up to compensate.
Blocking a player now prevents that player from giving you objects. (Volk)
Add new brag "areaexplorer" ("aep" for short) to brag local explorer
points. (Shryth)

From Mutt:
Added to skeletal lich insult strings.
Purge blood now removes deathly sleep from the target. (Meyaa)

---- Dec 23, 20 [2826]
From Valront:
Death and Decay no longer dependant on obscure spells. (Frak)
The string for Death and Decay falling off of targets now has color to
match the string for landing it on a target.
Added color to strings for successful casts of bloodmist (Frak)
Lifetap half hp limit removed - you could already lifetap down to almost
nothing this just removes the extra steps. (Frak)
Haste no longer hits spell save, this really only served to be a minor
annoyance for players trying to haste themselves. (even MOAR Frak)
Removed magic dtype from rotting sphere, this should help improve its
performance in MOST cases as it will no longer hit two saves. (Frak)

Suspended rule that disallowed mortals of a god worshiping their god.
Recent code changes have automated most god actions and removed manual
pantheon commands, greatly reducing conflicts of interest.  As we
continue this work, we may remove the rule completely.

---- Dec 20, 20 [2824]
From Draak:
Your character will now have a personal record of the heaviest fish you've 
ever caught, visible with with brag/show fish. (Everyone on event channel)
Skeletal knights now have slightly different ground strings from regular 
skeletons. 
Gather mushroom, gather herb, gather bullets and forage now work like
gather firewood.

Mobs that attack sleeping characters may now exihibit aggression towards
players that are crafting or gathering supplies. Be cautious!  To offset
some of the inconvenience, the minimum level of harvested herbs and
mushrooms is now the level of the area in which they were harvested (if
the player gathering them is at least as high level as the area).

---- Dec 18, 20 [2822]
Invisibility can no longer be cast on objects.  We are planning significant
changes to invisibility in the near future, and this is one part.

From Draak:
Added 'set autocompare'. This toggles off the automatic comparison of worn
equipment and equipment that is listed or identified.
Crafting super bonus should now be a bit less stingy.


20 entries displayed.