Rollout Article
posted on 14-Apr-2004
"I'd never have believed it if I hadn't done it myself." Celdiseth folded his arms across his chest. "It's like the ley lines changed, shifted, flooded magic up through the world and into our beings. Who knows where the possibilities will end." He looked to Ciandra, "It might also explain why Shoyanen was able to start working with lifestones."
Ciandra chuckled and continued studying the rings on the strange object recovered from the Blackmire Swamp.
"Whatever the cause of this shift in the ley lines, and I've got my theories mind you, it isn't as new as we all think." He shook his head. "I seem to remember a certain person mentioning something to you not all that long ago about changes and using things that we didn't wholly understand."
Ciandra clearly understood the barb, but showed no signs of letting it affect her.
"I think that whatever was done to the ley lines may have facilitated that wave of magic. That's my take on things." Celdiseth walked up behind Ciandra. "All these spells casting so fast... it's just not right."
Ciandra turned, "Celdiseth, while I appreciate your position I cannot help but wonder why you're here. If you mean to help me, then please help. Do not yammer to me in thinly veiled nuances that this might all be my fault." She stared him down.
Celdiseth unfolded his hands and held them palms open. "All right, what can I do?"
Ciandra motioned to a stack of papers. "Review the findings I have written out so far." Celdiseth nodded and walked toward the stack. As Ciandra turned back to the device a wide smile spread across her face. She had stood up to him and it felt good.
The Ongoing Saga
The investigations of Antius Blackmoor and the archmagi of the Council have yet to conclusively determine exactly what happened deep within the Blackmire temple last month. One thing is certain - the Burun have arrived, and they don't appear to be friendly.
The fluctuations in the ley lines have had even more far-reaching effects - the Arcanum has discovered how to cast many enchantments more quickly, allowing the heroes of Dereth to prepare for combat faster. They have also made improvements to dispel spells and potions, allowing for greater ease in ridding oneself of negative spells.
But will these increased powers be enough to face this new threat?
Many of this month's changes have been already described in detail in the Letter to the Players. There are two additional changes that we'd like to mention in detail.
Scattershot Fix
For some time it's been possible, at very low levels of Bow, Crossbow and Thrown Weapons skill, to have a "critical failure". In these cases, your shot would go "wild" and veer far off target. These days it's only seen frequently on low-level Drudges that use Thrown Weapons.
This code only impacted very low-level characters and creatures, but it was checked on each and every missile attack. This was a small but non-negligible impact on server performance, so we've removed it. This should not impact the vast majority of ranged weapons players.
Skill Gems and Experience
It has been possible for some time to get into a difficult state with regards to your unspent experience pool and a skill sellback gem. If the experience that you would gain from untraining or unspecializing a skill would put you above the maximum amount of unspent experience, the game would not allow you to use the sellback gem. For very high-level characters, this could result in situations in which they needed to spend a small amount of XP to get under the cap, but had no skills in which they could spend that amount of XP.
Starting this month, if the experience that you would gain from untraining or unspecializing a skill would put you above the cap, you will be informed of this in the warning dialog box that you receive when using the gem. At that point, you can choose not to use the gem. If you choose to proceed, you will lose any experience beyond the maximum unspent of 4,294,967,295.
The benefit to this change is that if an untrain or unspecialization would put you only 10 experience points over the cap, you can choose to lose those 10 points and continue with the action. In the past, those 10 points would prevent you from using the gem.
One other note about this change - to fit all the necessary text on the screen for this situation, we have reduced the font size used in the gem confirmation dialogs.
April 2004: A New Threat
