The Madness of Men
Four days without feeding, four days without wash and four days without any sign of his quarry. He drew a hand through his greasy hair and looked at the shreth beneath his boot. Hardly worth killing, true, but at the moment he would settle for a drudge. He spied the note on a corpse nearby, likely some poor sod who had wandered too near the pack of shreth. Kneeling, he caught the scent of crisp cold air. Snow was coming soon. The letter was odd, but it made him think of the witch. He smiled in spite of the aching pain within his soul and headed north.
*****
"What is it?" Wah Chon asked Ye Te. The two stood outside their shop doorways looking out across the town crossing. Snow fell, obscuring their vision.
"I don't know. I don't think that I want to." There was a long pause. Wah Chon started moving cautiously down the hill.
"What are you doin'?" asked Ye Te.
"I want to know what it is." Wah Chon snapped, startled and nearly leaping into the air. "Stop yelling, you fool!"
Ye Te shook her head. "Remember the last statues that appeared in town. These could be the same," she chided her friend. "Best you wear your armor and prepare to fight."
Wah Chon waved a hand at Ye Te to show her displeasure and stepped closer to the small statue. Her face became pale as she turned to her friend. Ye Te took a step towards Wah Chon, who turned and ran, slipping up the hill. Ye Te spied glowing red eyes and black wings through the snow. She grew pale as well as she retreated into her shop and slid the door closed.
The Ongoing Saga
After the eruption of darkness on the island to the southwest, many adventurers assailed the transformed Caul in an attempt to discern its secrets. New horrors were discovered, as were new trophies and rewards. As the reformed Council tries to respond to this new threat, additional dangers seem to be found daily, some much closer to home.
Now let's take a look at some of the changes in this month's event.
Tuskers and Physics
After the January event, we began seeing a number of unusual server-side lag spikes, generally occurring alongside strange reports of invisible monsters and players who suddenly found themselves in total darkness, unable to move.
Over the course of this month, we have taken several steps to resolve these issues, such as temporarily removing all monsters from the most frequently affected dungeons and restarting the servers with increased logging.
With the February event, we believe we have resolved most if not all of the bugs that caused these situations. We have also added improved logging to help us stamp out any remaining issues.
Speedhack Auto-enforcement
In August of 2003, we enabled auto-enforcement of speed-altering violations on Darktide, in addition to the auto-detection which had been active for some time. This meant that if you tried to use a speed-altering program like Gear or Speedhack on Darktide, you would get booted on your first three offenses, and banned for additional offenses.
Since that time, we have made some improvements to the auto-detection and auto-enforcement system, and we are now prepared to activate auto-enforcement on the seven NPK worlds. The same rules will be used as on Darktide.
* On your first, second, and third detection, you will be automatically booted from the game.
* On your fourth detection, you will be booted from the game and given a one-day ban.
* On your fifth detection as well as any further detections, you will be booted from the game and given a three-day ban.
We will be rolling out auto-enforcement in waves to ensure that there are no unexpected snags. Approximately a week after the February event, Frostfell will be briefly restarted in order to have auto-enforcement activated. The other six worlds will most likely follow in the March event.
Chat Improvements
This month, we've made some improvements and bug fixes to allegiance chat, as well as adding several new commands for general chat.
* @filter -allegiance no longer filters global allegiance chat. It still filters all @m, @p, @v, and @c messages.
* You should no longer see text from characters that you have squelched in allegiance chat.
* There is now an option in the Character Options panel, "Global Allegiance Chat." Checking or unchecking this option will enable or disable allegiance chat for your character. You can also toggle this option via the commands @allegiance chat on or @allegiance chat off. Existing characters have this option on by default.
* You can now set allegiance chat as your default chat mode by clicking on the Chat button to the left of the chat bar.
* Allegiance chat is now orange instead of pink.
* When you type @r, the chat bar will now autoreplace this with @t <name of the last player who sent you a tell>. Now, if you receive a tell from a second player while you are typing your reply, it will go to the correct recipient.
* We have added @mr, which will autoreplace with @t <name of the last follower who sent you an @m message>.
* We have added @pr, which will autoreplace with @t <name of the last vassal who sent you an @p message>.
You can now map keys to the following commands via the "Configure Keyboard" button in your Options panel: @r, @mr, @pr, and toggle allegiance chat.
Treasure in February
As we mentioned in the Letter to the Players, we are in the process of rebalancing treasure in much the same way that we rebalanced creature difficulty and experience last year. Our goals are twofold: we want treasure to be 1) useful and 2) interesting.
February is only the first stage of our rebalancing, and although some changes you will notice are obvious steps towards our goals, the value of other changes will only become clear as the process continues. In particular, here are some areas in which things are not yet perfect:
* Spell scrolls: The level of scrolls that you find on creatures is badly out of whack right now. Truthfully, it has been for awhile, but our other changes in February really emphasize this issue. We plan to have spell scrolls of appropriate levels dropping with the March update.
* Wield Req. Weapons: The distribution of weapons with wield requirements at extreme levels (80+) is not satisfactory. We will be working on this aspect of treasure over the next several months.
* Spells on Items: The distribution of item and creature spells on items at extreme levels (80+) is not satisfactory. We will be working on this aspect of treasure over the next several months.
* Chests: February concentrated on creature loot; March will concentrate more heavily on chest loot. So during the February update you may run across some chests that are not yet properly adjusted for the area in which they appear.
* Armor in general, and Covenant Armor in particular: We have some interesting plans for loot armor, but it is likely going to be many months before you see these plans come to full fruition.
So keep these factors in mind and remember that we're going to be working on treasure for the next several months. And enjoy the changes!
NPCs and Stacks
There are many NPCs who will reward you for items that can be stacked. In the past, if you had a stack of these items, you had to split them up into individual items before you could hand them in.
Starting this month, you can now hand a whole stack to any NPC that accepts an item that can be stacked. The NPC should take only one item off the stack, leaving the remainder in your pack, and then give you your reward.
Town Criers will still take whole stacks of items and dispose of them for you.
Fellowship XP and Trophies
Last month, we made a change to the way fellowship XP was handled with regards to player location. One aspect of this change that resulted in a great deal of feedback was the increased difficulty in sharing XP from trophies, such as the Olthoi Queen's head or the Olthoi Pincers. If a character in your fellowship happened to be standing outside Behdo Yii's house when you turned in an Olthoi Pincer, for example, he would receive no XP as you were indoors, and he was outdoors. Fellowship XP doesn't share between indoor and outdoor characters anymore.
Starting this month, XP rewards from trophy turn-ins are no longer subject to the fellowship restrictions. Those rewards that are shared among your fellowship will be shared no matter where any individual member of that fellowship is standing. So when you hand in the Queen's head, you won't have to worry about everyone in your fellowship having to crowd into Aun Hareltah's tent in Timaru.
Secure Trade Window
We've seen a number of complaints, both on the forums and in reports to the Admin team, regarding players who close the secure trade window in mid-transaction, in the hopes that their trading partner will accidentally hand them an item or drop an item on the ground.
To prevent this behavior, we have made the following change: if a player closes the trade window, the other player's trade window will not close automatically. Instead, the other player will receive the "The trade has been cancelled" message and the trade window will stay open. The other player can close the window at his or her leisure.
