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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---- Dec 03, 22 [3060]
From Draak:
Added 'show description', for seeing your long description without
anything else.
Creatures without faces should no longer have looks of terror crossing
their face when hit with fear effects on account of not having a face.
New heraldric image: wings
Added some new skin colors that will not show up randomly, but can be
chosen with 'set desc' similar to certain hair colors.

Fixed an issue with female characters getting beards on creation. Now
nobody gets a beard by default. If you want a beard, you must use
'set desc facialhair'. If you want to be a bearded lady, the game will
not stop you.

Added three new switches for the look command:
- description: see only a character's long description
- tattoos:     see only a character's tattoos
- condition:   see only a character's health condition

New level 31 mage skill: elemental collapse
New level 39 mage spell: disrupt magic

Elemental collapse causes fire, ice, lightning and crystal elementals
destroyed by dispel magic to collapse into essence, which can be
used as a spellcomp.

Disrupt magic attempts to isolate and destroy spells on a target one
at a time, causing damage as each spell is disrupted.

From Brak and Draak:
New mob service: tattoo artist
Mobs with this service can ink tattoos on your body using the
'buy service tattoo <bodypart> <tattoo>' command. Instead of a tattoo
name, you can substitute 'random' to get a random tattoo on the
chosen body part.

You can list available tattoos with 'buy service tattoo list'.  This
feature must be added to mobs manually, so please us time to integrate
tattoo artists into the world.

You can remove an existing tattoo for a modest fee with 'buy service
tattoo <bodypart> remove'.

Tattoos are derived from heraldry code. For right now, only basic charges
can be made into tattoos. We may or may not do auras and features. We
will be adding more to do with tattoos, including options for holy
symbol and clan tattoos.

---- Nov 20, 22 [3058]
From Draak:
You can no longer delete clan rooms that contain workshops such as forges
and tailorshops.
Debugging of new mtype damage code, including adding caps to avoid mobs
with total immunities.
You can no longer give gold to minions. If a minion is killed, the gold
is obliterated, and nobody wants that.
You can now add grips to lapidary clubs.
Distraction levels should now show up on case for shopkeepers. (Dex)
The navigate command can now be used by anyone in a ship.
Sea navigation has changed to the extremophile skill, which reduces movement
costs through difficult terrains ranging from ice to crystal to lava!
Forest navigation renamed forester, to eliminate help page conflicts.

The event channel will now flag itself listen-only during trivia contests.
This has been tested and you can still answer questions and use other
event commands, it just prevents sending.

Fixed a bug with mastercraft exp that was stacking multipliers. Multipliers
have been raised, but they won't be as high since they should not have
been stacking to begin with.

Two new southern-style weapons: jitte, tekkan.  These are made with a new
weapon part, the jitte blade. These are one-handed pounding weapons with
guards, so they can have gemstones mounted to them.

Ammunition created by the bone arrow spell only has a chance to gain
the FRAGILE flag when used. Each should last 2-5 shots instead of 2.
Higher quality ammunition has a reduced chance of being destroyed when
used. For example, a mastercrafted arrow is less likely to be destroyed
than an expertly crafted one. (Deadinator)

---- Nov 19, 22 [3057]
From Draak:
Due to persistant issues with certain players making long descriptions that
purposely trigger other people's clients, Dentin asked that I unhook the
ability to set long descriptions. This was done with great reluctance.

In its place, 'set desc' now has a set of options for changing your
features for autogenerated long descriptions, including eye color, hair, 
length, hair style, hair color, skin color, complexion, facial scars, facial 
hair and the shape of your nose, chin, cheeks and mouth. You can also
randomize your long description. Eventualy, certain conditions, such as
diseases, may temporarily alter aspects of your appearance.

Special thanks to Capitolina for suggesting hairstyles and consulting for
the hair features in general.

If you had set a custom long description before, it will be preserved. You
can change or randomize your features to generate a new long. You will be
able revert it with the 'set description restore -force' command.

---- Nov 13, 22 [3055]
From Draak:
Added 'set nogiftlootcrate'. If you have nogiftlootcrate on, you will
receive experience as a substitute for lootcrates for daily gifts. (Kliro)
Fixed a bug with the hypothermic chilled condition being applied to
mobs that should be immune, such as ice elementals.
The exp for crafting mastercrafts has been dramatically increased, and
crafting exp should be somewhat improved.

You can no longer use 'event post' when a trivia game is in progress.
This should help prevent people accidently giving away the answers
to questions with the wrong command, while prompting them to use
'event answer'. (Recommended by literally everybody I asked.)

Updates to the way resistances and vulnerabilities to basic damage types
like blunt and pointed are displayed with consider. In addition some mob
types have had their resistances adjusted and several mob types now have
minor resistances/vulnerabilties they did not have before, such as
amphibians being slightly vulnerable to slicing. See updated help pages
about basic damage and creature types for more information.  More
creatures had vulnerabities added than resistances.

---- Nov 05, 22 [3054]
From Draak:
The level for staying connected to the newbie channel has been
raised to 24.
Bird-type mobs take extra damage from ranged attacks. This stacks with
the extra damage to flying creatures.
The winterkin tonic will kill campfire regeneration.

Changes to crafting exp. Crafting exp is now routed through a single
function so we can have double craft exp events. The ranges should be
wider, and multipliers come into play when you create mastercrafts.

---- Oct 29, 22 [3053]
From Draak:
Job nearby should now accept categories of jobs such as 'delivery' or
'retrieval' like jobs find. (Ezechar)
New woodcrafted item: greatclub. Woodcrafted quarterstaffs will have
higher attack speeds, while greatclubs will be slower.
You can now add handles to woodcrafted clubs and greatclubs.
Entangled opponents may start bleeding when hit by storm of roses.

Added 'show debuff', which will tell you if you are on fire, burned by
acid, suffering from hypothermia, poisoned, nauseated, unbalanced,
bleeding, dazed or stunned.

If you knew forge nihonto, you now have a new level 8 thief skill: flick.
This weapon-based attack doesn't do much damage, but can quickly daze and
stun opponents if it hits multiple times in a row.

---- Oct 23, 22 [3051]
From Brak:
New 'summon demon pcorpse' option. This petitions a demon to retrieve your
corpse for a purple soulstone. (Morpheus)

New 'set runeinfo' option. This toggles the display of rune names and/or
affects when looking, identifying or carving an object, and is intended to
replace the unmaintained 'config runeinfo' option in Mush-Z which doesn't
work properly. (Xera)

From Draak:
Mobs in melee combat are much less likely to dodge grenades.
Keyword 'rare' added to craft label options. (Shryth)
Minor changes to kicking strings when mortally wounded or hitting
knocked over opponents.
The level from channel casting the "Tal" rune is now based on your
total levels instead of a static value.

Smelter jobs for the Smith Guilds now have a much lower chance of choosing
metals such as manganese, tin, nickle  and bismuth and a much, much
greater chance of choosing lead, copper or iron.

The forge kozane and forge nihonto skills have been folded into a single
Smith Guild grandmaster skill: forge kozane and nihonto.  Having them be
separate skills didn't make much sense anymore.  The practices you spent
on 'forge nihonto' will shortly be applied to a new skill, so they aren't
lost.

The skinner skill has been folded into leathercraft. The leathercraft
skill is now at apprentice rank in the Rangers Guild. The other skills
have been reranked to match. The Rangers Guild rank level requirements
have also been adjusted to better match the corresponding skills.

If you knew the skinner skill, you now know flay animental. This is the
Grandmaster skill of the Rangers Guild. When you skin an animal with the
fire, ice, lightning or crystalline type, the skin has a chance to take
on asborption effects correlating to the creature's type, i.e. fire
asborption for a fire-type mob.  This only applies to non-shelled,
non-draconic creatures.

Some minor changes to reduce skill/spell clumping at certain levels:
Warrior skill last stand lowered from level 39 to level 37.
Necromancer spell ironblood lowered from level 25 to level 24.
Necromancer spell flesh beast lowered from level 13 to level 12.
Necromancer spell bone prison raised from level 20 to level 21.
Druid skill carve fetish raised from level 26 to level 27.
Druid spell mesmerize animal raised from level 28 to level 29.
Druid skill reduce decoction lowered from level 18 to level 16.
Druid skill animal lore raised from level 13 to level 14.
Druid skill call squirrel raised from level 12 to level 15.
Cleric spell sacred touch lowered from level 11 to level 8.
Cleric spell holy weapon raised from level 25 to level 26.
Cleric skill waypoint lore raised from level 30 to level 31.

---- Oct 15, 22 [3049]
Woocraft jobs should no longer ask for rotten wood types. (Morpheus)
Hunter jobs should weigh much more heavily towards targets in solo
zones. (Lokar)
Tracked down an odd bug in with guild jobs returning bogus jobs if
the proper skill isn't known. (Enochian)
Trivia exp lowered a bit.
New trivia questions about gods added, use the 'gods' command to find
answers!

Some changes to the trivia game format based on feedback, most notably
the removal of 'locked in an answer' strings during the contest as
it made replaying the channel to see questions very difficult.

Trivia now records the names of everyone who scored at the end of each
game and adds a list of participants to the news. The number of people
that answered each question is displayed along with the answer.

---- Oct 08, 22 [3047]
From Draak:
New heraldic devices: cucumber, squash
Shield block is now critical instead of important, and rescue is now
important instead of critical. (Erg)
Cry of victory helps prevent you from being stunned, though it does
nothing if you are already stunned.
Guild list guildmaster will show what area a guildmaster is in, if it
is in a city-flagged zone.
Many special features like floating rocks and gas vents in the Field
of Fonts will yield dedicated deposits of rarer minerals and ores.

New weekly event: trivia games! These will be held periodicaly throughout
the day on Saturdays on the event channel. Use the 'event audio' command
to answer multiple choice questions about Alter Aeon's spells, skills,
areas and library books.

A very special thanks to Draak's wife, Capitolina, for recording the
new trivia game MSP sounds.

---- Oct 01, 22 [3046]
From Draak:
Smith jobs that ask for medallions should now complete. (Eggweard)
Special adjectives have been added to craft naming for liquid
containers (Ezechar)
Color spray damage turned down to low.
The center skill lags less and costs less movement. (Sirand)

The method that meditate uses to determine if you have taken damage
during your meditation has changed, and shouldn't trigger false
positives with raw stat changes now. Hopefully.
You can no longer meditate if you are poisoned.

Some keyword cleanup for crafting:
Leathcrafted caps are now skullcaps.
Tailored phrygian caps now have the keyword 'cap'.
Tailored mob caps are now mobcaps.
Tailored jester's caps are now cockscombs.

---- Sep 25, 22 [3044]
From Draak:
New metallurgy item: medallions. These can have heraldry added to them,
and can be attached to tailored ribbons.
Forged medallion belts are now coin belts.
Movement costs reduced slightly for light forest and thick forest terrains.
More kinds of woods have been made rare. This should help make it
easier to find rare woods.
A high constitution will help you recover from hypothermia more quickly.

The dclient inventory screen should now update glow, light and crystal 
flags when faerie fire, continual light and crystal coat spells are
cast or wear off of carried objects.

From Draak and Shadowfax:
Changes to cleric favor display. Favor usage will now appear more linear.

You will gain favor automatically in larger increments when your favor
is low compared to when it is high. When your favor is very high,
autofavor gain will slow. Meditate and jobs will fill in the gaps here.

You will gain favor more quickly if you match the alignment and class
of your god. There are no penalties for alignment or class mismatches,
only bonuses for matches.

---- Sep 10, 22 [3043]
Lower weightless merge limit from 200 pounds to 100.

From Draak:
New tailoring item: ribbon. Keep an eye on this one, I've got plans...
Fished out a long-standing spacing bug with damage types in the help
pages.
You can use lapidary check on mined materials that cannot be crafted
with lapidary to see if they are uncommon or not.
Cetain hypothermia strings are now more explicit to help new players
figure out what's going on.
Tailoring guild jobs now require you to deliver the finished piece of
clothing to a nearby mob instead of just turning it into the guildmaster.
Light-based spells like colorspray and sunstorm do extra damage to 
SHADOW type creatures and vampires.
You might notice some changes in the City of Fonts in preparation for
the release of Primordial Chaos in November. Do not be alarmed.
Spells that cost favor have had their strings adjusted, and if
you are running low on favor, they will send a message when cast.
Fixed issue with tailoring jobs not always registering a successful
delivery.

Be aware that an updated spell damage system is going in. You may
see spell help pages with a Damage entry with various tiers (minor, low,
moderate, high, massive). Spell damage will be roughly the same on a
a spell-by-spell basis, we're just standardizing them so they can be
displayed and spells can be compared more directly.

---- Sep 03, 22 [3042]
From Draak:
Dclient map will now display air rooms as pale gray so up/down exit
markers are visible.
Melt skill room strings are now filtered by spam extreme.
You can now improve at saw lumber even when you break wood. (Lokar)
Remains of campfires should now be a viable carbon source for forging,
as advertised. (Miranda)

---- Aug 27, 22 [3041]
From Draak:
You can now appraise things you are wearing. Hurray! (Mink)
Certain craft abilities will now update the dclient inventory screen
properly. (Uicli, Sirand)
Osage orange wood has been changed to bodark to avoid a possible issue
with the two-word name. Bodark is just another name for the same tree.
The better you know spell lore, the more spell auras you can discern
with detect magic before being overwhelmed.

---- Aug 21, 22 [3039]
From Draak:
Added a few new thief-oriented gemstones to the mining and lapidary tables.
Detect magic is no longer obscure, and is now level 9 mage instead of 12.
Bitter and sharp tasting food will help you resist being stunned.
Spicy foods will instead help you recover from being chilled.

---- Aug 13, 22 [3038]
From Draak:
New day and night ambient dclient tracks for forests.
A few tweaks to crafting to help with mastercraft issues, specifically
not sending a notification message and not triggering the achievement.
More improvements to jobs displays, including location names for
alchemist and assassin brew jobs and color standardization.
The number of invigorate spells that can be put on a tincture is now
dependent on the brewer's druid level.
Shadow type mobs take less damage from shadow strike.
The damage for impale has been increased, and some changes have been
made to the damage type requirements, see 'help impale' for details.

---- Aug 06, 22 [3036]
From Brak:
Improve the odds of cartography jobs sending players to areas closer to the
size of their group. (Morpheus)

From Draak:
The compare command should now work with lapidary gemstones.
Foulblood now poisons any attackers that used edged damage types such as
slash, clice, chop or claw, though it only nauseates biting attackers.
Most gather and guild jobs will tell you what area the job is in. (Elsbeth)
Meditate can no longer bring you to max favor.
The favor from doing priest jobs has been increased.
Survey should no longer give false positives for mining in city-flagged zones.
Gather jobs will reject objects that have had their weight magically
altered, such as from crystal coat or unburden spell.

Detect magic now shows a LOT more detail about spells on mobs.
The potency of using detect magic on a mob before dispel has been increased.
Dispel magic cost raised to 18, since it is now more powerful.

Knowing fire focusing, ice focusing, lightning focusing and crystal
focusing will help you dispel fire, ice, lightning and earth-based
spells. This stacks with the bonus you get for knowing the spell
you're trying to dispel.

---- Jul 31, 22 [3034]
From Brak:
Smiths will no longer service weapons that have weight altering spells
on them. (Asclepius)

From Draak:
Tailoring lag and movement costs have been standardized and applied
to all uses of the skill.
Woodcraft jobs will not give you very small projects if you do not
yet know the saw lumber skill.
Split wood will now have the keywood 'swood' instead of 'fwood' in
its insult string.
The amount of wood needed for woodcutter and rare wood gathering
jobs has been lowered.

From Valront:
It will now be much more obvious if the reason your fear effect failed
is because the target is under the influence of valor or bravery.
The spell Lethargy now has an additional string sent to the caster when it
fails to land.

Added achievements for attaining the rank of grand master in guilds.
If you've already achieved  grand master use the 'guild advance' command
at an appropriate guild master and you will get the achievement.

---- Jul 24, 22 [3033]
From Draak:
Fixed a bug with meditation and taking damage.
You cannot become sharp while you have a disease like Chaos Sickness
or Turkey Fever.

---- Jul 23, 22 [3031]
From Brak:
Limit banked experience to 5 billion.  If you have over 5 billion banked
please spend any excess as soon as you are able. (Dentin)

From Draak:
Tons of minor job fixes and updates, including broken woodcraft jobs.
Command 'jobs find guild' should now accept guild names, also fixed
display bug with guild names.
Woodcrafting jobs will no longer ask for larger objects.
Campfire regeneration is now calculated directly into player stats,
so it will be part of show regen. It is also somewhat more potent.
Lapidary check will now indicate if a mineral is uncommon, useful for
prospector jobs.

Changes to how caps are displayed in, and added 'show cap' command.
Caps were never meant to be the end-all goal when killing mobs, and
the new wording in both the commands and help files reflects this.

Some reorganization to the wood gathering table. Most region-specific
woods are now considered rare. Woodcraft check will indicate the
region where woods are from.

If you sleep long enough, you will feel sharp. Being sharp increases
regeneration, helps you recover from shadow exposure faster and 
boosts exp gains for a short period. If you are feeling sharp, you
have a higher chance of producing mastercrafts while crafting.

New level 20 cleric kill: meditation
This skill allows you to meditate while resting, communing with your god to
regain favor in their sight. It has a limited duration based on your wisdom,
and a cooldown between uses. See 'help meditate' for more information.


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