Welcome to the September Letter to the Players!

Last month in Dereth, we discovered more details of the Burun-Renegade alliance, as well as the fact that the Burun have plans of their own. The appearance of the hulking Guruk may have more ominous implications than we first thought... what is the idol in the Direland swamps supposed to represent?

High Queen Elysa's representatives are investigating, and we have received valuable information from our unexpected Mosswart allies, but will it be enough? Are the Burun too entrenched in Dereth to be defeated?

As we ponder that question, we'd like to take a moment to say thanks!

We'd like to thank all of you who made Turbine Nation 2004 such an amazing day. The turnout was fantastic - the Asheron's Call Player Luncheon sold out and both Asheron's Call sessions were standing-room-only. All of us on the Live and Throne of Destiny teams had a great time and we hope you did too.

(These are items that we plan to implement in the September event. Many of these items were mentioned in prior articles. These changes are in addition to the new quests, dungeons, and items that we'll be introducing in the September event.)

As we stated in the August Letter to the Players, in September we will be allowing all characters on Frostfell, Leafcull, Solclaim, and Thistledown to obtain one free level. At some point during the event, simply go to Al-Arqas and speak to Jalina al-Hajj. She will give each character the amount of experience required to get from the current level to the next. For example, it takes approximately 5 million experience points to get from level 49 to level 50. If I am level 49 when I talk to Jalina, she will award me 5 million experience points, no matter how close I am to reaching level 50. Characters who are level 126 will receive 165 million experience points.

We do remind players that they will need to do this sometime during the September event. It will be removed in the October event.

As we announced in our Hardware Upgrades article, we have invested in a new database cluster to replace the backup hardware that these worlds are currently using. We expect to be able to post more information, including when we will be moving the worlds to the new hardware, very soon.

As we wrote in previous articles, in September we will be slightly increasing the damage on some War Magic spells. Bolts and Arcs at levels 1 through 6 will have their damage increased, as will Streaks at all levels. It is important to note that level 7 Bolts and Arcs are not being changed.

You can see the old and new numbers below:

As you can see, the largest increases are for War Magic spells at the lower levels, where currently it is underpowered.

After a great deal of research, we've made a change to the Weeping, Phantom and Hollow Bow, Crossbow and Atlatl that should improve the effectiveness of these weapons in PK and PKL combat.

Starting in September, the flight speed of projectiles (bolts, arrows and darts) fired from these weapons will be increased by 80% to 100%. The increased flight speed will make it more challenging - although not impossible - for players to physically dodge incoming missile attacks from these weapons. The Missile Defense check does not change in any way, nor does the maximum range on the weapons.

We'll be watching the use of these weapons very closely in September. Depending on their effectiveness, we are considering giving players the ability to increase the flight speed on other missile weapons.

This spell, which players can learn through quests introduced in August, was never intended to be added to the game. However after players asked us not to remove it, we decided to leave it in. In September this spell will change to self-targeted, and players can use it as a faster alternative to the @lifestone command.

In September we'll be revising the Fenmalain, Caulnalain and Shendolain Crystal quests. Fenmalain is being revised for characters around level 20, Caulnalain for level 40, and Shendolain for level 60. The creatures and quest rewards are being revised accordingly, as has been done with other older quests of late.

As we said in the August Rollout Article, we chose to revise the town of Al-Jalima instead of Khayyaban as we'd originally announced. The quests and content surrounding this town will be revised and balanced for characters from levels 20 to 40.

Several of the new Gromnie trophy weapons, specifically the Brass Knuckles, Copper Cutlass, Sable Tooth Dirk and Ebon Tooth Katar, were introduced with incorrect wield requirements. The numbers on the wield requirements are correct, but currently they check against a character's buffed skill level as opposed to the base skill level. This is a bug and is being fixed for September.

If you are currently wielding one of these weapons and your base skill is lower than the number in the description, we recommend that you unwield the weapon before logging off for the last time before the September event. If you log in after September and are wielding a weapon whose wield requirements you cannot meet, the game will attempt to move this weapon to your main pack. If your main pack is full, the weapon will drop to the ground.

After changing the scale of Biting Strike and Crushing Blow in PvP, we have continued to closely watch these weapons and listen to players' feedback regarding them. After much investigation and discussion, we have decided that these weapons are, unfortunately, overpowered - particularly when used by very high-level characters against Virindi.

In September we will be making the following changes: All Singularity Scepters will have their Virindi Slayer quality reduced by 22% and their Crushing Blow ability will be removed. The Biting Strike ability on the Ultimate Singularity Scepters will be reduced by 6%. As the standard Singularity Scepters and Bound Singularity Scepters do not need as great a reduction as the Ultimates, their Biting Strike abilities will be increased considerably to compensate for the lack of Crushing Blow. The Biting Strike on the Ultimate Scepters will still be higher than that on the standard and Bound Scepters.

Those who have been watching carefully may have noticed that we've been making a number of adjustments recently to the damage on high-level quest weapons. You may be wondering, Why all the changes? As was mentioned in a much earlier In-Concept article, we are continuing to do preliminary work on higher wield-req melee weapons, missile weapons and casters in loot. We don't want our high-level quest weapons to be immediately useless the month that these new weapons begin dropping. But at the same time, we don't want to make these quest weapons the must-have always-best weapons for the time until the new loot weapons appear. Thus there has been more balance "juggling" than usual.
[p]So when are the new loot weapons coming? Our very tentative plans call for them to begin showing up in loot in the December event. However these plans may very well change between now and then.