Letter to the Players
posted on 27-Jul-2004

Welcome to the August Letter to the Players!

Last month in Dereth, a third Falatacot temple was discovered. A new portal was opened - whether intentionally or accidentally - allowing a previously unseen species of Burun to come through. It seems likely that these hulking Guruk will add a new level of threat to the Burun/Renegade alliance.

Meanwhile, on the Vesayen Islands new evidence was discovered linking the Moarsmen to the Burun and to the meddling of the Falatacot priestesses.

Will the legacy of these ancient cultists prove to be the undoing of Isparian society on Dereth?

Before we look at the changes coming in the August event, I'd like to provide some information on the recent Frostfell, Leafcull, Solclaim, and Thistledown extended downtime.

Recent Server Issues
Early Monday morning, the database cluster that supports these four worlds suffered a hardware failure. Operations was able to recover data from 7AM EDT Monday and start all four worlds back up early Monday evening. The only reported data loss were the items stored in one housing community on Solclaim.

However, late Monday night the database cluster suffered another failure. Multiple players were unable to login and received error messages. It was necessary to bring all four worlds back down and begin an emergency migration of these four worlds to new hardware.

Unfortunately the old hardware was too unstable to allow us to successfully complete this migration. We made the difficult decision to roll back all four worlds to the last good backup: 7AM EDT Sunday, July 25. This would allow us to restore from the backup tapes directly, bypassing the old hardware altogether.

Operations completed this task much more quickly than expected and began bringing the four worlds up at 4:00PM EDT on Tuesday. As of Tuesday evening the worlds appear to be stable. There have been reports of houses becoming available due to the expiration of the timer on maintenance, but there appear to be no further major issues.

While we can't directly replace any experience or items lost due to these hardware issues, we can provide the following as a form of reimbursement: During the September event, characters on the four affected worlds will have the option of receiving one free level's worth of experience from a Town Crier. Please watch for the September Letter to the Players for more details.

Please accept our apologies for this unplanned downtime.

Now let's take a look at what's coming in the next monthly event.

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

Crafting Quests
As we've said in previous articles, we will be adding additional quests for crafting characters to use in gaining experience and other rewards. Several of these quests will be added in this month's event.

One change that we want to warn you about ahead of time is that the Ash Gromnie Tooth rewards from the Glenden Woods crafting quests are being reduced. They are currently worth 25% of the experience needed to get 1 point in the appropriate craft skill; this is being reduced to 10%, and the difficulty of the craft skill interaction is being reduced from 250 to 200. However we're adding new craft interactions with rewards equal to - and greater than - the Ash Tooth rewards.

Iasparailaun
When we revised the Gaerlan Quest in June, we changed the Gaerlan sword turn in to better reward players at level 126. Unfortunately, the experience reward at 126 was being shared among fellowship members.

We had always intended that players could complete the quest with one character and then have a different character receive the reward. This is why the sword is giveable, and why you don't need to have completed the quest to receive the experience reward. However the ability to fellow with a 126 and receive half of that flat reward was not intended.

After some discussion, we have decided to change this experience reward so that it is not shared among fellows - the character who turns in the sword will receive the entire reward.

Biting Strike and Crushing Blow and War Magic in PK and PKL
In last month's revision of the Singularity Weapons quest, we added Biting Strike and Crushing Blow to the Singularity Scepters. However on the Ultimate Singularity Scepter, these modifiers were higher than the maximum effectiveness of the Critical Strike and Crippling Blow imbues in PK and PKL (player-vs.-player or PvP) combat. With these modifiers, the Singularity Scepter was arguably better than the Weeping Wand, which was never our intent.

We needed to find a way to keep these items from being unbalancing in PvP combat, but we wanted to do this without nerfing them in player-vs.-monster (PvM) combat.

To that end, we have changed the way that Biting Strike and Crushing Blow work on casters in PvP combat. They are still fixed bonuses, but the amount of the bonus will be based on the maximum effectiveness of the comparable imbues. For example, a weapon with Biting Strike, in PvP, will never be more effective than the maximum effectiveness of a loot weapon imbued with Critical Strike. The same is true for Crushing Blow and Crippling Blow.

Again, this is true only in PvP, and it only applies to casting items.

Content Revision: Aerlinthe
As part of our ongoing goals of revising existing content to better fit today's game, for August we have revised Aerlinthe Island and the Aerfalle quest.

...Aerlinthe is now designed for characters from level 40 to level 80, with specific areas for 80+ characters.

The Aerfalle quest is intended for characters from levels 40-60, but we've made some changes that will make it worthwhile for characters above that level as well. We've also streamlined the quest to remove some of the delays. For example, the respawn timer on the Repair Golem has been cut nearly in half.

One important change to the Aerfalle quest is that the Ashen Key is being changed from giveable and always-drop-on-death to Bonded and Attuned. If you have Ashen Keys on a mule, we strongly recommend that you move these Keys to a character capable of completing the quest and do so prior to the August event.

You'll also see some brand-new monsters on Aerlinthe, and we believe that we've kept the unique feel that the island has always had.

Content Revision: Mattekar Robes
In August, the Mattekar Robes will receive an update. All new and existing Canescent Mattekar Robes, Hoary Mattekar Robes, Swarthy Mattekar Robes, and Robes of the Tundra will be improved in some way. The sole exceptions are older Robes of the Tundra, those that do not have spells on them. In general, Armor Levels are being increased across the board. Plus there'll be a bit of a surprise!

Phyntos Wasps
In addition to the new monsters found on Aerlinthe, we've improved the appearance of all Phyntos Wasps. So the next time your mid-level characters are running, screaming, from a White Phyntos Wasp, be sure to turn around and admire their new look!

Biakas and the Caul
Recently we have seen a lot of player activity at the center of the Singularity Caul, where the high-level Biakas spawn. In addition to the player activity, there've been a number of posts on the various community forums - and calls to the Envoy teams. Everyone wants to camp these spawns! When we took a closer look, we saw why - these creatures were giving out much too much experience when they were killed. No wonder this was one of the most fought-over hunting grounds in Dereth!

Unfortunately, once we observed this, we realized that it would be necessary to decrease the experience granted by these creatures. Starting in August, the Hellion, Biaka, Graal Margul and Helcan Margul are having their experience decreased by 37.5%, 33%, 40% and 53% respectively. This will bring these creatures back into balance and resolve the overcrowding issues at the center of the Singularity Caul. It was never our intent for hunting in this area to be so much more profitable than hunting in other areas on the island.

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

Crafting Quests
In addition to the new quests we're adding for August, we plan to add several more crafting quests in September.

Content Revisions
In September we expect to revise the Three Crystal Quests. As we've done with other content revisions, the quests and their rewards will be revised and rebalanced.

In addition, the content surrounding the town of Khayyaban will be revised in much the same way as was recently done with the town of Lin.

War Magic Improvements
Along with the critical hit improvements that we added in July, we are looking at increasing War Magic damage on Bolts, Arcs, and Streaks at spell levels 1 through 6. The goal is to improve War Magic damage over time at lower levels, where it currently lags behind other combat skills in comparison to its skill credit cost. Level 7 Streaks may also have their damage increased, although this is still being researched. We want to ensure that any improvements we make benefit War Mages in PvM combat without unbalancing War Magic in PvP play.

PvP Missile Speed Increase
As part of our ongoing efforts to improve the effectiveness of Bow, Crossbow, and Atlatl in PvP combat, we are investigating increasing the attack speed on these three weapons in the three PvP weapon suites: Hollow, Phantom, and Weeping. We continue working on other means of improving the effectiveness of missile weapons in PvP, we feel that this will help considerably.

In Concept
(These are the game changes that we are thinking about for October 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.)

There aren't any new In Concept topics this month. We're continuing to work on and research the topics listed in previous articles, with the goal of moving them to In Development soon!

Thanks for reading the August Letter to the Players. Don't forget, you still have time to sign up for Turbine Nation! Get the latest information on the next Asheron's Call expansion pack, meet the Live Team and your fellow players, and check out Turbine's other games: Asheron's Call 2, Middle-Earth Online, and Dungeons & Dragons Online!

See you in Dereth!

- Ibn