Welcome to 2003's final Letter to the Players. How quickly the year has gone by! In the last twelve months, we've seen an Olthoi Invasion, a Valley of Death, a full rebalancing of the creatures of Dereth, an assassination attempt, and more changes and updates than I could possibly list in this space.

As the festival season continues in Dereth, a chill is in the air and autumn is slowly turning into winter. Let's take a look at some of the changes that are coming in the December event!

Melee Defense Imbue
When we initially introduced the Armor Imbues in July, we stated that we would be monitoring the usage and effects of these imbues and tweaking them if we felt it to be necessary. This month, we will slightly increase the effect of the Melee Defense Imbue.

In the past, the bonuses to Melee Defense granted by an Armor Imbue were applied after any melee defense multiplier granted by your weapon. The formula looked something like this:

(buffed melee defense * buffed weapon modifier) + Armor Imbue

After the December event, it will look more like this:

(buffed melee defense + Armor Imbue) * buffed weapon modifier

(Note that these formulas are not exact-other modifiers for stance and motion are also involved.)

We feel that this will slightly improve the performance of the imbue. This change is retroactive-it will affect all previously imbued pieces of armor.

We will monitor the balance of this change, and continue to monitor the use and balance of Armor Imbues in general. In addition, we are currently considering other changes that would improve the performance of all three Armor Imbues.

Creature Missile Attacks
Like players, creatures have always had the option to vary the speed and accuracy of their missile attacks. At the fastest attack speed, they would attack at 50% of their buffed skill. At the slowest speed, they would attack at 150%. At high levels, this is a very big range. For example, a Lugian Juggernaut has a missile attack skill around 300. Any given Juggernaut could end up attacking with an effective skill of 150 to 450!

This variance has, however, shown several side-effects-it has made Missile Defense feel less useful, as well as making missile-using creatures somewhat difficult to balance. If we balanced them to be able to hit players of the appropriate level, frequently they would either attack too fast and miss too often or attack too slow and hit too often.

As of December's update, creatures will no longer vary the speed and accuracy of their missile attacks. They will attack at a fixed 100% of their skill. We believe that this will make the Missile Defense skill feel more useful, as increasing your skill will always increase your chances of dodging a creature's missile attacks.

Just to be clear: this change does not impact player-versus-player missile combat at all.

Housing Changes
Starting in December, we are making three small changes with regard to housing:

[li]In the past, only the character who actually owned a house could receive violent pink warning messages at login. Now, all characters on the account will receive the warning message if maintenance has not been paid. As before, however, if the house is a mansion and the monarch does not have sufficient rank to maintain the mansion, then only the monarch himself will see a warning about the rank requirement.
[li]All characters on an account which owns a house will have access to the house UI panel, where you can see the location of your house and the maintenance status.
[li]All characters on an account which owns a house will automatically be added to the guest list and storage permission list. It will no longer be necessary to manually give storage permission to additional characters on the house-owning account.

Weeping Weapons
Also in December, we're introducing two changes to Weeping Weapons. The first-and perhaps most noticeable-change is that Weeping Weapons will no longer be unenchantable. The base spells on the weapons will still override all positive enchantments, but they are now valid targets for debuffing. They will use their wielder's Magic Defense skill to resist negative spells.

In addition, all Weeping Weapons will be able to be tinkered with Ivory and placed on wall hooks.

The Harbinger Quest
Since the reintroduction of the Harbinger quest, players have asked us for the ability to re-enter the dungeons to accompany their friends, even if their own reward timers had not yet expired. December's update will allow this possibility, although there will be some restrictions.

First, you will still only be able to enter the portal near the emissary you have chosen to aid. Second, this change will only take effect the first time you complete the quest after the December event. If you have completed the quest recently, you will not be able to re-enter the dungeon until your timer expires. After that time, you will be able to enter the dungeon at will. It should be noted that the timer on the quest reward has not been changed.

We had hoped to allow all to re-enter, regardless of when they had completed the quest, but unfortunately this turned out to be unfeasible. We felt that making the change described above was better than making no change at all.

If your timer for this quest has recently expired, or will be expiring soon, you may want to wait until after the December event to run the quest again. That way, you'll be able to take advantage of the changed portal restrictions.