Letter to the Players

Last month in Dereth, a new factor was added to the Burun threat - the Lugian and Tumerok Renegades. The Renegades, having failed to capture Fort Tethana several months ago, appear to be trying to parley with these new creatures. A unified front could be disastrous for Isparian life in Dereth.

The Burun continue to impact Dereth in new ways. Emboldened packs have begun attacking southern Sho towns in lightning raids. Small bands of Mosswarts have been reported migrating away from the Blackmire, and rarely Isparians have been approached by lone Mosswarts seeking aid.

The Council continues to investigate, even as they maintain their work on improvements to towns and research into more efficient magic. But as they work, the new threat of an alliance among our enemies hangs ominous over the land.

Coming Soon
(These are items that we plan to implement in the June event. Many of these items were mentioned in prior articles.)

Crafting Changes
In June, we will be making all player-craftable items unsellable. We will also begin introducing new craft skill miniquests. These will be similar to the Glenden Wood pacifists and they will reward players for crafting items from store-bought components.

For more information, please read the full article on Crafting Changes.

PvP Weapon Changes
We plan on adjusting the weapons in the three PvP weapon suites - Weeping Weapons, Hollow and Deadly Hollow Weapons, and Phantom Weapons. The most powerful weapons will see their abilities slightly decreased, whereas the weaker weapons will be made more powerful to improve their usefulness in PvP combat.

For more information, please read the full article on PvP Weapon Changes.

Allegiance Bind Stones
As of the May event, Bind Stones have been seen next to Meeting Halls in many towns. In June, these Stones will become active.

Any monarch will be able to tie to a Bind Stone simply by double-clicking on it. All monarchs will have this ability; we chose not to put restrictions on it. Once that has been done, any member of the monarch's Allegiance will be able to recall to the Bind Stone location by typing @allegiance hometown.

Monarchs will be able to change their Allegiance's hometown simply by double-clicking on a different Bind Stone. This can be done at any time.

Buffing Improvements - Item Magic
We've made two important changes to the improvements that we proposed in the May Letter to the Players. The first is that we will not be introducing new spells - existing Item spells will be changed to affect multiple pieces of armor. The second is that these spells will target your clothing as well.

Starting in June, if you target yourself with Impenetrability or a Bane spell, it will automatically cast itself on any piece of armor or clothing you are wearing. The mana cost of the spell will increase by 20% of the base spell cost for each enchanted piece of armor.

For example, let's say I am wearing an amuli coat, amuli leggings, gauntlets, sollerets, a helm and a raiment, and I wish to cast Brogard's Defiance on all six pieces. Previously, I would need to cast it six times, with a total mana cost of 420. Starting in June I will be able to target myself and cast the spell once - it will affect all six pieces and cost 154 points. That's 70 + (14 * 6) points.

Note that these spells will only redirect to armor and clothing when they are self-targeted. If you cast one of these spells on another player, they will redirect to the shield as they have for several months.

The spell will not attempt to cast on items that are Unenchantable.

It is also important to keep in mind that this is not the sole planned improvement to Item Magic buffing. We'll be presenting ideas on additional improvements in later months.

Fishing Changes
In addition to the changes to crafting mentioned above, we also have some small changes to fishing in order to make fishing macros less useful.

Starting in June, we will be making the following changes:

Most fish will have a value of 0.
Junk items will have a value of 0 and a workmanship of 3.
The chance of finding jewelry is being decreased, and jewelry will be created from the lowest wealth rating.
The Tacklemaster only rewards you with pyreals 25% of the time. The rest of the time he will reward you with 0 value potions.
Rusted Shouken will no longer be stackable. If you currently have a stack of Rusted Shouken, on the day of the event the stack will become one Rusted Shouken. Please unstack these items prior to the event.
Content Revisions - Marae Lassel
We will be making a number of revisions to Marae Lassel landscape hunting and quests. Here is a quick summary of the most major changes:

Landscape spawns across the island have been revised. There will be areas designed for New (1-20), Low (20-40), Mid (40-60), and High (60-80) level characters.
The generation of the Aun and Hea champions (such as Aun Ralirea and Hea Temenua) and the Virindi Collector will no longer be tied to the status of the Queen's Quest. Most of the items dropped by these creatures have been updated as well. Characters with the existing versions of these items can exchange them for the new version via an NPC if they would rather have the new version.
The reward on the Olthoi Eviscerator Pincer has been decreased to 2 million XP, but we've introduced higher-level Pincer quests.
The Aun Mariona, Aun Tanua's Taiaha, and Raeta's Necklace quests have been adjusted slightly.
The town criers in Bluespire, Greenspire, Redspire and Timaru now report the same news as the town criers on the mainland. The Marae-specific rumors can now be found on local barkeeps.
Quests not mentioned above - including the Queen's Quest - are not being revised at this time.

Content Revisions - Gaerlan Quest
We made a number of revisions to the Gaerlan quest for June. The majority of these changes were "under the hood", and were made in order to fix bugs in the quest and remove aspects that either broke frequently or could be bypassed.

These are the changes that are most noticeable:

Gaerlan must now be killed for players to receive the quest rewards.
Handing in an Iasparilaun can be done once per day, and does not require completion of the quest. There is a new XP reward for characters who are level 126.
Characters with War Magic trained will no longer get four wands before they get another reward. They will randomly receive one of the four wands.
The rewards are giveable.
Once a character has received all of the possible quest rewards, the cycle of rewards will begin again.
We had previously mentioned the possibility of a second tier of rewards for this quest, but these will not be going into the game in June.

Baby Animals
As Spring turns to Summer, the young creatures in Dereth mature into adults. If you want to get a Spring Cleaner token, you will need to get one before the June event.

Verdantine
As we've announced previously, a new Asheron's Call world will be opening concurrently with the June event: Verdantine. This will be a standard-rules server identical to the other NPK worlds. All housing on the server will be open when it goes live.

It's quite possible that the Verdantine lobbies will be active prior to the June event, but the world should not be accessible until the day of the event.

In Development
(These are the game changes that we are working on for the July event. None of these items are guaranteed to be added for July, as scheduling and priorities can change. Your feedback on these topics is particularly valuable.)

Crafting Quests
We plan to introduce new quests similar to the quests described in the Crafting Changes article. These will be intended for crafters beyond New and Low levels.

Improved War Magic Critical Hits
We are working on several changes that are intended to improve War Magic damage over time in PvM, as well as improve the usefulness of Critical Strike and Crippling Blow for projectile magic. These changes include:

Currently when a projectile spell scores a critical hit, it adds a multiple of the base damage of the spell to a normal damage roll. We are looking at instead adding a multiple of the max damage of the spell to that normal damage roll. This will mean that magic critical hits will almost always do more damage than a non-critical hit.
We are considering increasing the maximum effectiveness of Critical Strike -- that is, the chance to critical -- at the highest skill levels. The minimum chance to score a critical hit will not be changed.
We are considering increasing the maximum effectiveness of Crippling Blow -- that is, the multiplier that is applied to the extra critical damage -- at the highest skill levels. The minimum multiplier will not be changed.
The above three changes only impact projectile spells in combat vs. monsters. Magic criticals for PvP combat will not change.

There is one additional change that we are considering that would affect both PvP and PvM combat. The effectiveness of the Critical Strike and Crippling Blow imbues scale based on the attack skill of the character. There is a miniumum skill below which the imbue has the minimum effect, and a maximum skill above which the imbue has the maximum effect. We are looking at changing the minimum and maximum skill levels for magic to bring these levels more into line with melee and missile levels.

These changes are intended to improve War Magic damage over time in PvM combat.

Aegis Effect for Loot Missile Weapons
As was mentioned in the PvP Weapon Changes article, this was not ready for the June event. We expect it to be ready for July.

More details on this can be found in the Future of PvP article.

Content Updates
We plan on making three content updates in July:

A town to be determined at a later point will have its surrounding content revised in a manner similar to the revisions made to the three starter towns.
The Singularity Weapons quest will be revised.
The Three Crystals quests - Fenmalain, Caulnalain, and Shendolain - will be revised.
In Concept
(These are the game changes that we are thinking about for August and beyond. We cannot guarantee when - or even if - any of these changes will be added to the game, as scheduling and priorities can change. Your feedback on these topics is particularly valuable.

If not mentioned elsewhere in this Letter, topics listed as In Concept in prior articles have not changed status.)

Improved Allegiance Officers
This topic was previously mentioned in the In Development section of the May Letter to the Players. After initial development work on this, we have decided to hold off on implementing further Allegiance Officer ranks and tools until we have further data and feedback on how the existing Allegiance Officer tools are being used.

Conclusion
Those are our plans for June and beyond. Please note that topics that have been previously mentioned in the In Development and In Concept sections of prior articles are still being developed or considered, unless mentioned otherwise. We are working on a page on the official Asheron's Call website where you can easily reference these topics.

As always, we value your feedback on this letter. See you in Dereth!