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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---- Oct 20, 19 [2697]
Spell recasting is now suspended when you're at a waypoint.  When you
leave the waypoint, recasting will automatically restart.

From Shadowfax:
'Where priests' will show all non-pantheist priests if you do not worship
a god, or it will show only your priests and pantheist priests if you do
worship a god.

No longer display a priest's patron god using consider.  It wasn't
correctly identifying pantheist priests, you don't lose favor from
killing priests anymore, and consider is spammy enough anyway. 

From Draak:
Fixed bitrot bug with lapidary club speed and high total levels, also
smoothed out some other hit/dam issues with lapidary clubs and marbles.

---- Oct 19, 19 [2695]
The 'ignore' command now allows you to set different ignore/allow flags
for do-not-disturb mode.  This means your default DnD settings can be
to allow your friends or clan members, without needing to manually
toggle it every time.

---- Oct 12, 19 [2692]
From Draak:
You can now show and brag objects, for when you bag some sweet loot
or craft a mastercraft object and want to show it off. (Aegis)
Metallurgy check will now identify useable sources of carbon for
steel-making.
You can now designate a level for bonecrafting, lapidary, metallurgy and
woodcrafting.
If you have a crafting skill at perfect, you cannot craft objects of less
than expertly crafted quality.
Lapidary now makes equipment based on total levels instead of character
primary levels.

Using forge check on an ore now gives its purity. Using forge check on
your inventory will list the  metal, and purity / difficulty for ores
or metals, respectively. (Castmaster)

---- Sep 29, 19 [2690]
From Draak:
Jobs should no longer choose encounter mobs as targets. If any job givers
step out of line, let Draak know so he can... discipline them. (Morpheus)
Hone weapon is now dependent on metallurgy instead of forge simple weapon.
Customize weapon requires forge simple weapon in addition to hone weapon.
You can add grips to woodcrafted bows and longbows. (Leoric)
Adding rims to woodcrafted shields should now properly add ac when
possible. (Ragtime)
Help pages will now give relative speeds for skills and spells. This is
somewhat experimental, and there may be a few inaccuracies.

You can now designate a level when leathercrafting. This is a test -
bonecraft, lapidary, metallurgy and woodcraft will follow after we work
out the kinks, if any.

---- Sep 21, 19 [2688]
From Draak:
There are now over 50 different random sea encounters!
Encounter rates have been boosted slightly and cooldowns lowered a bit.
Two new wood types for the mainland of Atmir: bilinga, ovangkol
Fixed issue with leathercraft check and sheets of dragonscale. (Colonel)
Misc crafting tweaks.
You can not give way containers with KEEP flagged objects in them.

---- Sep 15, 19 [2685]
From Draak:
New alloy for jewlerymaking: liver copper (copper, gold, silver)
New leathercraft weapon: knout (two-handed whip)
Fixed bug with 'drop all -force', sorry about that.
The KEEP flag will prevent items from being added to campfires and
emptied out of a carried container onto the ground.

New forged weapons: spontoon, long flail, partisan, swordstaff, tekpi,
falx, fauchard, and sovnya.  These should allow more granularity when
assembling weapons to attain the desire emphasis on speed, damage, etc.

Some forged weapon recipes have changed a bit, such as tridents requiring
a haft instead of a pole, ranseurs now having a trident head and no guard,
and scythe blades being replaced with sickle blades to make scythes.

When using coffin to free comrades from magical prisons, the the spell
will now grind away at the prison's level on failure instead of being
strictly binary.

From Shadowfax:
The favor command will now indicate when you have maximum favor with
your god. (Sirand)
Display remaining time for hallowed ground spells on waypoint lists.

Job updates:
Lumberjack jobs require more wood at higher levels to complete.
Ironmonger jobs require less ore, especially at higher levels.  They also
pay a bit more, too.
Add 'reject' option for jobs command.
Print time remaining for a job on 'job info' instead of 'job display'.

Priest jobs now use display favor instead of real favor to determine
whether a player's favor is maxed out and qualifies for extra
experience. (Sirand)

---- Sep 08, 19 [2682]
Level 103 and 104 builders now have the same BUILDER tag on the who list.
We might give them different tags if we can think of good ones.

---- Sep 07, 19 [2679]
From Draak:
Credit buy nosac removed.  Use 'set keep' instead.
Misc tweaks to forged mastercrafts and the Smiths Guild.
New heraldric beasts: baboon, beaver, crow, mole, opossum, raccoon, skunk,
turkey, vole, and woodpecker.
Moondust can be higher level now.
Elemental enchants will now work with a few other object types. (Mertag)
Cost for splitting/ combining metals and smelting ore lowered.
New forged weapons: cleaver, trisul (one-handed trident)
Unguents should now respect your god's favored composition.
Fixed up the logic for scribeable spells a little. Frostflower should now
be scribeable. (Malificent)

Added KEEP flag and 'set keep <object>' and 'set unkeep <object>'. Adding
a KEEP flag to an object will prevent it from being dropped, given away,
sold, auctioned or donated. (Ankor)

The thief 'poison' brew is now 'basic poison', so it can be looked up with
'brew poison search' properly. It had previously conflicted with poison
ivy and poison mushroom. (Camus)

From Shadowfax:
Add five new 'gather' type jobs: lumberjack, slaughterhouse, fishmonger,
ironmonger and skinner.
Retrieval jobs will now take player level in account and favor solo areas
over group areas when choosing target items.
Delivery objects self-destruct a short time after they are dropped.

Any job that has been accepted but not yet completed will now save and
load across reboots, except for delivery jobs.  Any such job has its
timer reset to six hours.

---- Aug 24, 19 [2677]
From Draak:
Encounters should now ignore the presence of dancing lights, continual
lights and other system mobs.
You should be able to skin and butcher animals smaller animals now.
Producing mastercrafted items is bit more dependent on skill, and a bit
less dependent on luck.
You can sometimes gain a profession point when finishing a mastercraft item.
Fixed display issue with weapon traits on weapons with damage type
'none'. (Artisan)
Confusion is now dependent on feeble mind instead of forgetfulness. (Huntsong)
Remove curse is now level 10.
Sense life is now level 9.
Smelting ore takes half the time.

Job changes from Shadowfax:
Jewelry retrieval jobs have been given broader specifications so that
more objects qualify as jewelry.
Retool 'goals' command to show both currently accepted quests and jobs.
Add remaining time on job descriptions when displaying in-progress and
completed jobs.
Mobs that only give hunter jobs are no longer disqualified as targets for
delivery, missionary and minister jobs.

Delivery jobs now expire upon logging out, and all job-related
letters/parcels/tracts are flagged as NOSAVE.  This should help prevent
the confusion of having deliveries for jobs that have already expired.

Job and quest commands now mirror one another much better and are more
intuitive.  Also, 'nearby' and 'completed' options were added for the
job command.

Non-newbie retrieval and delivery jobs are now weighted toward choosing
targets from the same sector.  Jobgivers will still occasionally select
targets from other sectors and planes, and such jobs will pay more when
completed.

Hunter jobs are now weighted toward choosing targets from solo and group
4 areas.  Additionally, these jobs now take a target's area group size
into account in addition to the its level when judging its worthiness
as a hunter target.

Hunter jobs and pilgrimages won't choose very high level targets or very
high level areas, respectively, until players reach level 38 (raised
from level 33).

---- Aug 17, 19 [2675]
Fix bug in 'credit buy boat'.  We'll refund the affected players.

From Draak:
Messages when comparing weapons now specify that they measure the weapon's
melee combat damage only.
Weapon messages for what mobs are vulnerable or resistant to a weapon's dtype
have been condensed.
Metallurgy costs lowered a little bit.
Fixed bug in mystic armanent that added the magic dtype before checking
if existing effects would interfere with the spell. (Lexie)
Lower level characters should now have a better chance of making
mastercraft items, if their skill level is high enough.
More reorganization for weapon info on id/list.
Profession point costs for hone weapon, customize weapon, balance weapon
and reinforce armor reduced. (Uicli)
Fixed bug where shadow cost would get stuck after channel casting with
the 'blok' rune.
Added %php, %pmn and %pmv tags to the prompt for percentage of hit points,
mana and movement, respectively. (Artisan)

Smiths' Guild should coming online. You advance in rank by forging mastercraft
items.  As you go up in rank, you receive a small but growing discount to most
forging costs.

The identify command can now target objects in specific wear locations.
For instance, if you want to identify whatever you're wearing on your
feet, 'id feet' will give you the stats for whatever you're wearing
on your feet, if anything. (Aven)

Level 18 and 22 cleric had very few spells, while the levels below and
above them had too many. The following spells have been re-leveled to
smooth out these irregularities:
Spell 'word of recall' is now cleric level 18, up from 17.
Spell 'slow poison' is now cleric level 18, down from 19.
Spell 'hold undead' is now cleric level 20, up from 19.
Spell 'area refresh' is now cleric level 22, down from 23.

---- Aug 11, 19 [2672]
From Draak:
The check command should be a bit less harsh judging the melee capabilities
of warriors and thieves.
Terrible weapons will now show a JUNK label when identified or listed.
Suboria's sector has been shrunk back to its proper size.
Mystic armanent now works on flexible weapons like whips in addition to
blunt weapon damage types.
The speed differences between forged weapons with grips vs. ones with
handles and ones with hafts vs. ones with poles should be more pronounced.
Crafted weapons should have better dierolls.
Brewonly spell help pages should now indicate that they can be created by
brewing potions.
Some vendors now buy cooked recipes.

Leathercrafted armor will tend to gain much less AC, but can have much
stronger bonuses to hitpoints and/or movement. Some will still be
blank - these are good for adding spikes, studs or runes to.

Forged spikes and studs more heavily favor adding damroll, hitroll and
attacks to leathercrafted equipment over other stats.  The type of metal
used is also more important.

From Shadowfax:
You must worship a god to do priest tasks, even from pantheist priests.
Make amount of gold requested for almoner jobs more reasonable for low
level players.
Players who are underleveled for the sector they are in will no longer
receive pilgrim jobs in that sector.

Changes to dread portent and soulsteal:
Dread portent will always notify when a creature in the same room is near
death.  Knowledge of the 'soulsteal' spell is no longer necessary.

The threshold where dread portent notifies that a creature is near death
is now the same as when the creature is vulnerable to 'soulsteal'.

Soulsteal can now be cast as a duration spell, provided one is affected
by 'dread portent' at the time of casting.  The target's soul will be
stolen (or at least try to be) as soon as it becomes weak enough for the
spell to work and if the caster is still affected by 'dread portent'.

Multiple soulsteals in quick succession now count less sharply against
the caster.  You will fail less often, but you will still sometimes fail.

---- Aug 03, 19 [2671]
From Draak:
New scribing affinities: force, shadow

You should now be able to scribe scrolls using spellcomps that have an
affinity for the spell, not just spellgroups. Keep in mind that many
spells cannot be scribed, just like some cannot be brewed.

Spell help pages will now display if they can be brewed, scribed, put on
spellstaffs, etc. at the bottom of the page.  This required the creation
of a new flagging register for spells that was added by hand to each
spell entry - please let Draak know if you find any errors or omissions.


From Shadowfax:
Make minister job construction much more efficient.
Fix bug preventing priest tasks from being accepted by priests of certain gods.

---- Jul 29, 19 [2669]
From Draak:
Added 'sector' command, for looking up the various sectors of the game.

---- Jul 28, 19 [2666]
From Draak:
Changed colors for daze and stun sends.
Encounter help page added.

Sea boarder encounters are now active.  Creatures from the depths of the sea
will board vessels from time to time. Most are hostile, but some may have
other purposes for seeking out sailing vessels.  This is experimental, and
has a built-in manual override so Draak can adjust the rate or turn it off
altogether if there are issues.

---- Jul 20, 19 [2665]
From Draak:
Shored up blindness routines to prevent rare cases where unintended
permanent blindness could happen. (Valkyrie)
Rune list now shows what runes do when channel cast.
Added a couple more channel cast runes.
Modernized guild help pages.

Crafts all hooked into a universal function for calculating movement
costs.  This should, in most cases, reduce movement costs, expect when
working with high difficulty materials like certain metals and gems.

Metal constructs made with metals with magic absorption or spell resistance
will gain spellsave. Metal constructs made with metals with elemental
absportion effect will gain corresponding elemental saving throws. (Onunku)

---- Jul 13, 19 [2662]
From Draak:
Add 'cryomancer' to the 'advice' command.
Craft quality should now work properly with items that are lower
than WELL CRAFTED.
Cloak of fear should no longer toggle on if you type 'cloak fear
off', as this is clearly not the intent. (Colonel)
Added several more runes to channel casting.
The rune command will indicate if a rune can be used for channel casting.

The Cartographer's Guild should be coming on-line soon.  It's directly
linked into explorer points. Some guildmasters and rewards are already set
up, more will be forthcoming.

Lightly armored enemies are more vulnernable to ranged attacks.  This
shows on the 'consider' command. Also, a few other little tweaks to
ranged attacks that should be fun.

---- Jun 30, 19 [2660]
From Draak:
Fatigue and exhaustion can no longer take you deeply into negative
movement.
Channel cast strings will now be gagged by spam gcast. (Mathayas)
Softened damage from high level traps.
You can use metallurgy to load any wooden weapon, increasing its
weight and changing its dieroll.
Carve mooncatcher can no longer be taught by demonic tutor, and
has a proper place to learn it.
Mobs that can recharge select wands and staffs will now show what
objects and for how much gold on 'list' and 'sell list'.
Spruced up strings for wand/staff recharge trades.

Mooncatchers can be converted into moondust, a brew component that boosts
the level of a brew without altering the outcome of the recipe.
This might see some level tweaking as we assess how powerful it is.

Added 'craft quality' command. This uses profession points to increase
the quality of a crafted object. You must know how to craft the object
in order to upgrade it. The point cost goes up sharply for each tier
of quality an item is improved, and also increases with level.

---- 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.


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