Tymaron
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| posted on 4/11/2006 at 01:34 |
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UO in Review -- 3 Nov 2006
I hope you had a safe Halloween. Meanwhile, it still is going on in UO
capping off one of the better months in the game, content-wise. October
saw the return of Tokuno Treasures(that has since ended). Sherry the Mouse
made an appearance and you can now follow her around Castle British as she
makes her rounds. Ricardo had a bit of a scare while being transported
from Trinsic Jail to the Court of Truth. But the capper was the tons of
Halloween content: trick or treating, jack o' lanterns, Shard of the Dead
II and the Grim Reaper. And in the middle of all that, Publish 43! Quite
a bit to catch up, so I'm sorry I haven't been writing updates for some
time, since I have been busy.
Pub 43 Good and Bad
* 6th Month Reward: +5 stat cap bump for all characters on accounts that
are 6 months or older and did not receive the AOS stat increase.
This actually is working extremely well. The characters I chose to bump
their skills years ago got their stats bumped. The characters who
originally got their stats bumped didn't get any additional advantage.
Characters I had yet to bump at all still get the AoS bump gump [hmm, bump
gump, sounds like a pop hit], Characters whose skills I have subsequently
bumped with the AoS bump gump got the additional stat bump at the next log
in. My rump has bump gump, using the sump pump.
* Fixed a bug that was preventing Paladins to be capped at FC2 if they have
70 or more Magery skill as was originally intended
Good.
* Corrected the damage range on legacy Ornate Axes, Talon Bites, and
Taskmaster weapons
Good. If it's to be fixed, it should be fixed for all weapons.
* While in Vampire form, using a spell from any source (scroll, LRC, arcane
clothing, spell) that normally would use garlic now damages the caster
Eeh, okay. Apparently just thinking about garlic gets the necro
zapped.
* Fixed a bug that allowed players under the affects of Vampiric Embrace to
life steal from casting spells
(as opposed to doing damage via weapon)
Oops.
* Fixed incorrect leech properties from Pub42 on certain weapons that had
SSI
Percentiles are tricky.
* Corrected the resists for the Helm of Spirituality, which had been
accidently reduced
Where's the other five pieces already?
* Increased the range that the Exorcism spell will affect around a champ
spawn
Still useless.
* Added an NPC to Siege and Mugen that will redeem players’ transfer tokens
for 7th Anniversary Tokens. These new 7th Anniversary weapons / armor will
not be blessed.
Okay. Where's the NPC?
* Pet Protection now works with summoned pets
Okay.
* Fixed an issue with Pet Protection that could cause a dead player who
logged out to lose a dead bonded pet. Added a message telling players that
they need to resurrect themselves and log back in in order to reclaim dead
bonded pets.
Make that "log out, then log back in" and we may have something.
* Different characters on the same account should now all be able to use a
vet reward cannon placed locked down in their house
Cannons to the left of me...Cannons to the right of me...
* Character Statues will no longer lose their Sculpted By name (existing
statues will need to be resculpted)
Resculpt them statues already! I'm tired of seeing "Sculpted by
1!~name"
* Male characters can now restore female Character Statues that are wearing
female armor without issues
Exception being to social conservatives.
* Reduced the maximum number of unicode characters that could be typed on
an item being engraved to prevent the property from wrapping to the next
line
über.
* Personal Attendants will no longer go invisible when their owner hides.
This was removed because it was causing problems for Heralds placed inside
of houses and was not an essential feature
The Great Tymaron is now house hiding! Make way for my invisible
master!
* Players will now only receive one Herald message total per minute, with
exception of the owner who will always see the Herald’s bark
Just deserts.
* Fixed a bug that was causing Heralds to bark their announcement more than
once after having their options changed multiple times while in a house
Hark the Hearld Angels Spam.
* Fixed an issue that could allow players to sell their Personal Attendant
deeds on their vendors
The meat market is now closed.
* Personal Attendants are now removed if the character that they belong to
is deleted
Hopefully the last attention these attendants receive. This has got to
be the least interesting feature that has received the most attention in
quite some time.
* Fixed the error message that was displayed when a player tries to place
furniture in another person’s house
What about Feng Shui consultants?
* Increased the chances that an NPC mage vendor would sell 2nd-4th circle
magery scrolls.
Might as well make it 100%; with the exception of Recall, few people
actively sell magic scrolls.
* Verite and Valorite Elementals will no longer do extra damage to certain
types of artifacts that were being destroyed too quickly before
They're still powerful though. I hear Valorite Elemental Paragons are
fun.
* Removed spawns of non-tamable Dire Wolves that started appearing after
ML, except for one intentional group located in Gnaw’s Cave
Gnaw's Cave is located on Ice Island.
* Added some new properties for EMs to use on event items.
That's nice for the shards that actually have EMs.
* Limited character transfers to once a day per account
Copying is reduced to once a day.
9th Anniversary Released
Hopefully by now my gazillion copies of 9th Anniversary CDs are on their
way to my front door. Am I the only one who thinks that the only people
buying these are vets trying to get complete Heritage sets? As far as who
gets the software first, it seems that EBGames wins the horse race. This
is handy to know in case the next expansion has land available. Boomer
Sooner! By no means actually order directly from EA. They simply don't
have the capability to handle individual orders. Anyway, despite having to
go through a few hoops to get the 9th Anniversary tokens, all seems to be
well, with the exception of ladders, which due to some z-axis issues, is
trickier than previously thought. I only wish the early buyer bonus was
for 60 days instead of 30. That way, it would run through Christmas and I
wouldn't look sheepish if I handed out already opened packages to the
nephews and nieces.
Shard of the Dead II
I haven't logged on to this either. Too busy in the "real" UO.
Halloween Items
In the "Give Us More Lockdowns!" Department, Halloween saw an unusual
amount of special items spawn. While regular Jack O'Lanterns were spawning
out the wazoo in every pumpkin patch and field with the names of every EA
Employee, there were black ones that were rarer. In the cemetaries, red
named undead dropped Twilight Lanterns, which were either orange or black,
and ghoul statuettes. After a while, the Grim Reaper would spawn. The
Grim Reaper is sort of a revenant that followed you all the time until you
were dead. Initially, it would remain in the spot where you died, but now
it returns to the graveyard from which it spawned. It had a chance to drop
cursed artifacts and the Grim Reaper's Scythe. For the easily amused,
there was trick or treating. By saying "Trick or Treat" to any NPC, you
had the chance to get a treat, usually candy. But occasionally, the NPC
would yell "Trick!" and either change you into something or cause you to
explode. Trick or Treating also had the chance to get 9th Anniversary
items such as 9th Anniversary Pizza or whatnot.
Things will be happening around here soon, so call your friends! I'll
probably just start posting more regularly
instead of trying to sum everything on a weekly/monthly/yearly basis.
There's just too much stuff anymore!
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Tymaron
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| posted on 4/11/2006 at 17:00 |
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Addendum:
I seemed to have grabbed an old copy of Pub 43 changes.
This is the correct
version.
The key omission was the Evasion and Detect Hidden changes:
quote:
- Tageted Detect Hidden has been changed as follows:
- The targeted detect hidden chance has been slightly reduced against
hidden players and creatures.
- The targeted detect hidden range penalty has been slightly reduced
(less of a drop in the chance to detect a hidden mobile as you get further
from the tile you targeted with detect hidden)
- Players without the hiding skill using the invisibility spell now has
some chance to resist targeted detect hidden.
- Monsters using targeted detect hidden have less of a chance to detect
hidden players if the monster has less than 100 detect hidden skill. At 100
detect hidden skill the chance remains the same.
- Monster passive detect has been changed as follows:
- The base monster passive detect chance has been reduced.
- If a monster's detect hidden skill is greater than zero, it now has a
minimum 2% chance to detect players.
- Players always have at least a 5% chance to remain hidden from a
monster.
- Player passive detect vs. stealthed players has been changed as
follows:
- The base player passive detect chance has been significantly
reduced.
- The passive detect range is now a 4 tile radius from the player.
- The range penalty on the chance to passively detect a stealthed player
now drops exponentially as range increases. This means that the chance to
passively detect another player is much higher if the players are 1 tile
apart vs. 4 tiles apart.
- Players who have both the stealing and stealth skills at 100 or higher
skill have a higher chance to remain hidden at a distance of 1 tile from
another player.
- Dexterity penalty to parry if dex is less than 80 has been restored to
its Publish 25 value.
- Evasion modifier to parry now scales with Bushido skill
- If the player has higher than GM Bushido, and at least GM Tactics and
Anatomy, they get a bonus to their evasion modifier (10% bonus to the
evasion modifier to parry NOT 10% to the final parry chance)
- Bonus modifier to parry range: (these are the ranges for the evasion
modifier)
- 16-40% bonus w/o tactics/anatomy
- 42-50% bonus w/ GM+ bushido and GM tactics/anatomy
- Evasion duration now scales with Bushido skill
- If the player has higher than GM Bushido, and GM Tactics and Anatomy,
they get a 1 second bonus
- Evasion duration range:
- 3-6 seconds w/o tactics/anatomy
- 6-7 seconds w/ GM+ Bushido and GM tactics/anatomy
All those changes to Detect Hidden wouldn't have been necessary if they had
simply removed passive detect from elves. At least they removed the
massive passive detect. I think a better solution would be to have detect
hidden just give the detector a message saying "Someone is hidden nearby"
and give the detectee a message saying "Someone senses your presence."
This would not actually reveal the hider, since that is a different
skill entirely. Revealing should be a separate skill. So now it's fairly
easy, Detect Hidden vs. Stealth; Reveal Hidden vs. Hiding. Oh, well.
I'm not sure they got the memo on the need to nerf Evasion,
especially for non-melee templates. Lamentably this makes it even more
necessary to have Bushido on a dexxer, already overcrowded as it is. But I
guess six seconds is a good amount of time to play mage tag.
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Arjuna
Blind Swordsman 
Registered: 5/9/2002 Member Is Offline
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| posted on 5/11/2006 at 15:00 |
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quote:
Originally posted by Tymaron
* While in Vampire form, using a spell from any source (scroll, LRC, arcane
clothing, spell) that normally would use garlic now damages the
caster
Man oh man this part made me mad, mad, mad, mad (mad). The first
necromancer I made was a mage necromancer, and he's been a vampire for
years. Now you can't have mage necromancers be vampires--it's a melee only
form.
Did I mention that made me mad? Mad, mad, mad. **grumbles**
quote:
* Fixed an issue with Pet Protection that could cause a dead player
who logged out to lose a dead bonded pet. Added a message telling players
that they need to resurrect themselves and log back in in order to reclaim
dead bonded pets.
Oh, good, they fixed that? I lost two or three bonded pets to this bug
before. I'd logged out to get another char to rez me, and when I got back,
my pet was gone. Glad they fixed it.
quote:
* Different characters on the same account should now all be able to
use a vet reward cannon placed locked down in their house
Cannons to the left of me...Cannons to the right of me...
**laughs**
quote:
* Personal Attendants will no longer go invisible when their owner
hides. This was removed because it was causing problems for Heralds placed
inside of houses and was not an essential feature
The Great Tymaron is now house hiding! Make way for my invisible
master!
**laughs**
quote:
In the cemetaries, red named undead dropped Twilight Lanterns, which
were either orange or black, and ghoul statuettes....
I love that they finally put spell channelling lanterns into the game,
though I hope they let us craft them soon, too.
As for the red non-reaper undead from where you get them, holy cow, those
are way too hard! They scaled their difficulty so that the more they're
killed the harder they get. Well, last night I popped over to brit trammel
cemetary to kill some undead with two or three friends and whoever else was
there, and i'm glad i took a char with almost maximum armor and armored
swampie and 130 hit points, because the lich lords were doing 105 to 125
damage instantly against my high resists, the bone knights were doing 80+
damage a hit plus sometimes mortal strike, and the undead in general were
just insane.
People around me were one hit dying constantly. I was the only person not
one-hit dying because of how many hit points I had, but I regularly ran
like crazy with 15 or 3 hp left so that I could heal up and run back in.
I do think they kind of overdid the difficulty level on that one, hehe.
The Grim Reaper was already hard enough before they increased the
difficulty on the sub-spawn that summoned the reaper.
Overall, though, they did great on Halloween this year. I love that if you
blew up from begging they gave the insurance money back, so that you could
walk around saying trick or treat, and then if you blew up from taking 6500
damage instantly, you only had to get rezzed, get your stuff back and then
tentatively ask trick or treat again to the npc that blew you up, hehe.
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Black Sarah
Semi-Nuub
Registered: 16/2/2004 Location: U.S.A. Member Is Offline Mood: not smelling
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 posted on 14/2/2007 at 16:26 |
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Please new topic on the front!
Please put a new update on the front, anything!
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