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 23, 18 [2521]
Fix up the split/merge size issues.

From Shadowfax:
If a player tries to install a trap on top of another trap that was
installed by a player, it will trigger but not harm anyone.

From Draak:
Even more 'spam extreme' additions.
Adjusted logic of flourish morale damage to make it more effective.
Adjusted crafting checks so that skinned shells can be made into proper
grips for weapons.
The elemental vulnerabilities bestowed by some advanced poisons
are now a bit stronger.

Metallurgy split and combine respect a rough system of density,
so an ingot of copper will be larger than an equivalent weight
of platinum due to copper's lesser density.
You can now list individual metals and their properties with
'metallurgy list metal <metal name>'.

---- Jun 18, 18 [2519]
Fix bug in valor - it should now work properly.
Rearrange the commands for exp marking to make them easier to use.

From Draak:
Fixed glitch in dragonscale armor that created items with 0 or 1 ac apply.
Added more strings to the spam extreme filter, including other characters
giving and dropping objects.

---- Jun 16, 18 [2517]
The 'show con' command now displays constitution.
Try to fix a few more negative exp bugs in the combat code.
Add 'exp mark' and 'exp rate' commands.
Raise damage of skirmish.
Make crippling attack less repeatable.
Try to make nomelee mode more resistant to incidental attacks.

From Draak:
Added a heap of room send strings for everything from valor
to corpse/object timeout to drinking potions to spam extreme.
Consider no longer shows very low resistances. No more 7 lines of extra spam
for figuring out a beastly fido is not resistant or vulnerable to anything.
New leathercraft items: sheath, scabbard
New dragonscale item: grip (for making weapons)
Fixed bug with harvest bone that yielded bones with 0 size. (Mertag)

---- Jun 15, 18 [2516]
Adjust damage on new thief skills, now that we know a bit more about
their general usage patterns.

---- Jun 12, 18 [2514]
From Shadowfax:
Raise ranged weapons' ability to overcome a target's AC.
Make sure exit has a guarded flag when checking to see if a guard
should prevent player access to doors.

Raise damage of skirmish and fix logic error that now allows it to
be used against sleeping targets while unhidden and out of combat
as the help page implies.  Also added a little play in the skirmish
event rescheduler.

---- Jun 10, 18 [2512]
From Shadowfax:
Add new level 35 thief skill, 'crippling strike'.
Add new level 38 thief skill, 'skirmish'.

---- Jun 09, 18 [2509]
From Draak:
Improvements and fixes to foraging.
Squashed a rather obscure crash bug involving lapidary inlay and
harvested bones.  (Mertag, Shryth)
Enchant camouflage move/mana/shadow cost lowered.
Stone knapping aliased to knapping to make it easier to locate
trainers with 'skill find'.
Object taste will now save on logout. (Persephone)
The absolute upper weight limit for crafted weapons should now be the
highest possible weight a player can wield.
You can forge weapon heads and blades up to 60% the minimum weight
instead of 50%. Increased max weight of hafts and poles as well.
You can now add gemstones to dragonscale collars. This was an
oversight. My apologies for missing it. (Smyth)
Some minor changes to splitting and merging.

If you can carve runes into wood, you can now carve runes into
objects with a composition of ROOT, WAX and RESIN. These are
fairly uncommon compositions for worn objects.

Help pages will now show if a spell or skill is helpful, important
or critical. This is in relation to the spell's class and does not
take playstyles into account.

From Shadowfax:
Reduce odds of mobs from dying to negative hpregen incurred by acid and
players losing credit for the kill.
Guards at doors should now prevent lock picking, opening, closing and
other actions on guarded doors.
Add new level 1 skill, 'trapping'.
Add new level 33 thief skill, 'trapmaking'.
Add new level 38 thief skill, 'occult trapcraft'.

---- Jun 04, 18 [2507]
Try to improve the 'replay' command for ordinary replay.
Display equipment update warnings a few seconds after login, so it
doesn't get spam filtered.
Raise friend count from 120 to 150.

---- Jun 02, 18 [2504]
A handful of high level exp tweaks.  Some of these will take a few
weeks to take full effect.

From Draak:
Fixed weird old bug in dancing lights that let you cast it right
through closed doors!
Fix bogus failure send string with fishing.
Meteorites are now slightly more common and should send very obvious
sends over a large area on impact.
Draak changed the daily gift sound for dclient/msp users.
BRACE YOURSELF, LADS!
Added keywords for various locations/sectors (Archais, Ramanek,
extraplanar) to the 'group comment' allowed keywords. (Ravenna)
You can now split large pieces of butchered meat. (Mai)
Shored up limits for splitting/combining of materials. (Phytell)
Leadfoot has a chance to reduce the damage of stomp and kick attacks. (Runner)
Hatmakers now have more color options - 'tailor list color' for a list.
New gathered wood type: elderberry
You can no longer gather food, wood and herbs in clan areas.

You can now use the arguments 'critical', 'important' and 'helpful' with
the slist command, for example 'slist critical' will show a list of the
critical skills and spells a teacher can train you in.

Rename various 'boat' strings to 'ship'.  This should help clean up the
nomenclature to distiguish between buoyant BOAT type objects and proper
sailing ships.

Poison resistance and armored skin can now improve as you get the stuffing
beat out of you by toxic or normal damage, respectively. You might want to
invest combat points instead.  This only works if your attacker is close
to your level and is not a player. Damage from self harm, room regen,
traps and the like will not increase these skills.

When you assemble a new weapon, its weight will be lowered to
attempt to match your wield strength, down to half its weight. If
you are very weak and are assembling a hefty weapon, you may
still end up with a weapon you cannot wield. Remember to boost
your strength first! (Renne)

---- May 19, 18 [2501]
Various minor cleanup and fixes to fishing, gathering, lapidary, metallurgy,
salvaging, and woodcrafting.
Added a couple of rare events where you gain gold from unexpected sources.

New forged simple weapon: halberd.
Some mithril alloys renamed to sound fancier.
Weapons that require certain kinds of guards will now display that
information on 'metallurgy list <weapon name>'. (Theia)

Certain high-quality crafted objects have a chance for having extra
unfilled quality composite. This is expected to be the last major
change for crafted objects so we can have a period of data gathering.

---- May 13, 18 [2499]
From Draak:
More object price adjustments, including a price adjustment for weapons
with elemental and other unusual damage types.
Add 'check reaper' for necrodruids.
Characters afflicted with noxious cloud can now be detected by smelling,
while being afflicted with noxious cloud interfers with your ability to
detect other scents.
You can now get and put objects into worn containers and look inside
of worn containers. Please report any weirdness to Dentin or Draak.
Add a 'restart' command that tells people how to restart.
Gems with asterism may now give out mana regen as a secondary effect
instead of their normal one.
It should now be a bit easier to get better at increased stamina.
Tweaks to lapidary, minor tweaks to make quality bonuses easier to achieve
for all crafting skills.
Armor now takes a bit less time to forge.
Control weather is now a little bit stronger.

---- May 06, 18 [2497]
From Draak:
Reduced the impact that item effects have on object price.
Tweaks to weather, to shore up a few corner cases like outdoor lava.
Cooking will give more exp for recipes with more ingredients, and seasoning
with higher level herbs.
String adjustements to heraldry, to make most of the strings shorter:
"a snowflake ironwood shield" vs. "a heraldic snowflake ironwood shield"
Patchwork leather equipment has a higher chance to random.
Cleanup long descs for paired leathercrafted eq, gloves, boots, etc.
Fix multiplication/addition bug in food and refined food hp/move calculations.
Taste will give you a stronger indication when food is done when cooking.

---- Apr 28, 18 [2494]
Fix 'list search -level'.

From Draak:
Increased the amount of hp and movement from eating cooked food.
The following skills and spells have been made obscure:
listen, camouflage (thief)
despair, remorse (cleric)
Tweaks to the spook, mesmerize and control animal druid spells.
Improved feedback from 'fish check' when fishing (and not fishing).
More randomized types of fish fishy fishies FISH.
New metallurgy jewelry: brooch (Mertag) For now brooches are just neckwear.
Forging estimates for new items should now work properly again. (Adara)

Lapidary check will now show you the primary stat a stone can bestow, if
your skill level is high enough compared to its difficulty.  Lapidary
stone secondary stats now have a bit of randomness, but not much.

If you know gemcutting and forge armor, you can now inlay stone onto forged
armor. This is purposefully less powerful than adding gems to jewelry and
more powerful than inlaying metal, but it can sometimes shave down the ac
of the armor.

---- Apr 21, 18 [2491]
Fix better-at bug in ancient oak. (Gate)

From Shadowfax:
The swear filter will now catch capitalized curse words.
Angelic crusaders should now be more willing to fight the forces of evil.

From Draak:
New wood: holly
New wood type: bitter
Tweaks to fishing to make actions more consistent and meaningful.  This also
adds new fish types.
Spell failure strings will now almost always include the name of the spell
that fails. (Adara)

Corpse-eating mobs under the effects of mesmerize animal, hold undead,
confusion, or a bad poisoning of vexed visions will no longer eat
corpses.  (Gate) These conditions will also keep mobs from scavenging
equipment off the ground and autowearing eq (under most circumstances).

---- Apr 15, 18 [2489]
From Draak:
You can see kinds of items shopkeepers (might) buy by typing 'buy list'.
Shopkeepers are still all kinds of stingy/poor.
Small changes to metallurgy exp handling and a few corner cases with strings.
Enchant analyze will now stop shaming I mean spamming you if you don't know
all of the enchantments.
Fished a pair of minor bugs out of enchant essence, that combined were
causing some major issues.
Dispelling spells from objects should now have more consistent
strings. (Gate)
Harvest venom should now give exp normally. (Gate)

Arrowheads now contribute to the speed of ammo. Adding a mithril arrowhead
to an arrow or bolt may make it faster, while an adamantine one will make
it slower.

'Spell/skills all' now accepts the args 'known' and 'unknown' to
see lists of all spells or skills you know or all those you do
not know, respectively. (Runner)

You can pluck feathers from bird corpses, and use the tailoring command to
add them to hats (if you know hatmaking of course).  Plucked feathers can
also be used to fletch arrows, which can improve their damage and accuracy.
They are also brewable spell components.

---- Apr 07, 18 [2487]
From Shadowfax:
You can now evade spells even after the caster has died.

From Draak:
Cosmetic change to ancient oak. (Gate)
Obscure spell 'find object' changed to 'pinpoint object', so it doesn't
conflict with 'spell find'.
When using the review command on a corpse, it will also give the information
you would have gleaned from consider.
If you use poisonous ingredients while cooking, your dish will
be poisoned! Be cautious when foraging, especially untrained.
Withdraw should no longer lag you if it fails to execute due to you not
being in battle. (Runner)
New hats for hatmaking: toque (chef's hat), mitre
The level of a bonecrafted item  is now dependent on your necromancer level,
and most will have a necromancer flag.

Changes to the consider command to make the distinction between
saving spell and magic resistance more clear. Magic resistance
is rare and thus will only be displayed if the creature has it.

Some druid earth spells have chance to add to or remove mineral resources
from a room. If is room is mined out, an earthquake or unnatural spring
spell *might* help.

Enchant essence will now work on two additional wear slots for
each class, except druids. Druids can essence enchant totems
and fetishes.

Crafting skill synergy: if you know hatmaking and leathercraft, you can use
leathercraft to fashion hats from skins. The hats are functionally identical
to leathercrafted caps, and can made with fur or dragon scale if you know
furrier or dragonscale armor, respectively.

---- Apr 01, 18 [2486]
From Shadowfax:
Fix for chain lightning crash bug when the target died before
the lightning quit bouncing.

---- Mar 31, 18 [2484]
From Shadowfax:
'Cone of cold' no longer sends a message to the room when it strikes
an ally, like how firefield works.

'Chain lightning' now avoids attempting to damage allies (thus avoiding
a bunch of "You can't harm so-and-so" spam) and is subject to evasion.
The 'ground' spell helps players engaged in melee avoid chain lightning.

From Draak:
Bladed weapons are now slightly better for parrying. Slightly.
Dragonfang quartz added to the lapidary table. (Morpheus)
Patched bug with blood sacrifice. (Runner)
Strings for cooking recipes can now be more awesome.
Butchering now recognizes more types of distinct meat.
A few minor changes to low-level trainers and skills.
Preparing corpse to become undead  will now check if a corpse
is usable before checking for a preservation spell. (Lokar)
Fixed minor bug with resisting being stunned and look.
Tweaks to enchant essence to make analysis more accurate.
Added 'set alarm' to set an alarm for in-game hours. (Rukia)
Type 'set alarm help' for more information.

---- Mar 24, 18 [2483]
From Draak:
Fixed weird little bug with new dragonscale armor ac calcs and
two-handed shields.
Carve fetish should now improve upon use. (Smyth)
Increase to chill touch's initial damage to make it more effective
at low levels.
Improvements to skin insult strings.

New obscure skill 'kiltmaking'! Happy St. Patrick's Day!
...since noone cares about St. Andrew's Day :(

Saving throws on dragonscale eq now have a slightly random
range. Shields and tower shields are more stable.
Scales from acidic or toxin-resistant dragons may yield
poisonsave. Scales from crystal or gem dragons will give
spellsave instead of breathsave.

Lapidary split added. Lapidary stones can now be split into
smaller pieces, but be careful: the harder the stone, the
more difficult it is to split.

Improvements to newbie hint code. This includes reminders for
low-level characters to wear equipment they pick up, if
they can use it and have the appropriate empty wear slot.

---- Mar 20, 18 [2482]
From Shadowfax:
A couple minor consecrate fixes.

From Draak:
Misc typo corrections and adjustments with crafting.
Fishing "cycles"  made a bit slower.