Aardwolf MUD Blog

Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Yearly Rankings

There are several new sets of rankings on Aardwolf: daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. There is also a new ‘rankings’ board and at the end of each period the winner in each category will be posted to that board.

Several new commands and/or options to existing commands come with these rankings:

drank [rank] : show the detailed daily rankings.
wrank [rank] : show the detailed weekly rankings.
mrank [rank] : show the detailed monthly rankings.
yrank [rank] : show the detailed yearly rankings.

You can also use the ‘daily’, ‘weekly’, ‘monthly’ and ‘yearly’ options to the regular rankings command. Only one of these arguments at a time makes sense and they are checked in the order listed.

Several other new rank options exist:

myrank all      : Show your ranking position in all periods. Does not
                  show the total - not enough room for all of them.

myrank [period] : Period can be daily, weekly, monthly or yearly.

myrank [ranktype] [period] : Show the next few players above and below
                  you in a specific daily, weekly, monthly or yearly
                  ranking.

rank times      : Show the time that each ranking last reset. This has
                  been in test a while now so only yearly does not
                  start at a full calendar year.

There is another new commad called ‘toprank’ that will show a summary of the top rankings for any of the new time based rankings. For example, ‘toprank 10 weekly’ will show the top 3 in each of the weekly rankings.

A screenshot showing an example of the ‘toprank’ output is above.

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Other Game Changes:

Several other game changes in this reboot including an increase in remort auction items and practice percentages:

• The max you can practice a skill to has been increased to 85%. The scholar wish now takes that up to 95%.
• Primary class mage, cleric and psi will now gain a few extra points of mana per level up to SH.
• Max rauction items has been increased from 3 to 10.
• The duration of the flag when envenoming weapons has been increased a little and is based on dex more than level now.
• When a venomist is using a weapon with a poison flag, they will get an extra hit added to their backstab and that hit will be poison damage. The flag can be from envenom or can be permanent, either works.
• An assassin using strangle will have no lag on success and will instead have a 3 second recovery time.
• The 19x-201 gquest ranges have been separated. Level 200 and 201 now have their own gquest range with potentially higher level mobs.
• The mafia game now has its own board. ‘Board mafia’.

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Bug Fixes:

An the usual assortment of bug fixes, thanks to everyone who takes the time to report these:

• The Envenom affect on a weapon should now last for the full duration it was cast. There was a bug in the poison flag code making this not the case.
• Cleaned up the output on ‘wish costs’ so it will fit within a standard 80 character terminal.
• Myrank [ranking number] using the regular rankings is now working again.
• Gaining stats from daily blessings now sends appropriate GMCP message.
• Single class casters are supposed to gain an extra hit from haste. This wasn’t working 100% and should have been.
• Campaign check will now also show whether or not you are able to take a new campaign at the current level.
• An item in the room with the name just ‘@@w’ will no longer show as a blank line when displaying the room and will no longer show when you do a ‘get all’.
• Eqdata tags will now open correctly when you are not actually wearing any equipment.
• Using ‘glance’ will now show the GMCP room info.
• You can no longer reunion into a pclass room you would not otherwise be able to enter.
• The ‘You have XXX trains available for instinct’ displayed after instinct buy will now show the real amount available including deposited trains rather than just trains on hand.

Potsearch (potion search):

There is a new feature called ‘potsearch’ to help players find potions, scrolls, wands, pills or staves containing a specific spell. As with eqsearch, it does not cover all items in the game, but does cover all open clan equipment, the potions in Aylor, and a few more easily acquired items.

The syntax is:

Potsearch [spell name] [object type] 'details'

Type will filter the output to only items of that type and can be any of:

   pill, potion, staff, stave, wand.

The optional 'details' argument will list all of the spells on each items
returned rather than just a list of the items themselves.

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Venomist Update

A few changes to the venomist subclass skills:

• When a venomist uses the envenom skill, it will cause the flag to do some damage when it fires during combat. This only works for a venomist in combat regardless of who actually added the flag.
• When a venomist uses the envenom skill, it will also add a small amount of average damage to the item. The amount is based on dex but is also capped based on the item level (ie, no level 1 items with +20 avg dam).
• The benefits of the venomist skill ‘cell potential’ will now increase slightly with level as well as stats. The amount that dex affects the bonus has also been increased.
• When an item has been envenomed, using the full identify spell will now show the duration of the spell remaining.
• The lag on a failed ‘necrotic’ is now just a single round of combat. The recovery timer on success has not changed.

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Temple of Shouggoth - New Goal:

The god Shouggoth is known throughout Andolor as the god of decay, ruin, and unlife. Years ago, he paid a visit to a temple tucked away in the Demon’s Halo Mountains of Alagh. At the time, the temple was dedicated to a now-unknown god. Shouggoth took it over, murdering the clergy and turning them into zombies. He cursed the temple with decay and through his powers of unlife he maintained the unholy life of the zombies. Thus the Temple of Shouggoth was born.

However, the temple did not keep Shouggoth’s interest for long. Soon he became distracted by Yurgach. Yet he desired to maintain a foothold in the temple and so left a statue containing some of his presence in the temple so the curse of decay would continue. This statue was intended to work in conjunction with a vile beast, however, for for some reason, the curse is weakening…

Level Range         : 10 to 50
Goal Difficulty     : Easy
Goal Reccomended At : Level 40
Goal Converters     : Phalae and Raistlin
Area Author         : Kali

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Keep of the Kobaloi - New Area and Goal:

Who are the Kobaloi? They are an odd little race that many take for unusually intelligent kobolds. However, the Kobaloi would be insulted by such an assumption. They are, rather, akin to Ratlings, and are on very friendly terms with that race.

The Kobaloi tend to be shy, and rarely leave the confines of their mountain home known as The Keep of the Kobaloi. The Kobaloi live in a fairly rigid social structure, organized into four factions. Those who tend to the Royal Family (the Keepers of the Palace); those who tend to the Kobaloi Gods (the Keepers of the Temple); those who farm the subterranean ponds within the mountain depths (the Keepers of the Ponds) and those who guard all of the above (the Keepers of the Peace).

The Kobaloi are suspicious of strangers, but will, on occasion, accept an outsider as one of their own. Perhaps, with a little effort, you might gain their trust and become an Honorary Keeper of the Kobaloi.

Level Range         : 10 to 80
Goal Difficulty     : Medium
Goal Recommended at : Level 25
Goal Converter      : Ariel
Area Author         : Lumina

This area replaces The Dwarven Kingdom.

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Other bug fixes:
A handful of minor bug fixes and updates also went live today:

• Using ‘$’ in says will no longer cause to appear in GMCP ’say’ messages.
• Dtrack can now track Balefire correctly.
• Initiating PK with ‘charge’ should now correctly add the revenge flag.
• Necrotic Touch should now improve with use.
• The incomplete healing spell cast from the daily blessing potion (only) can now be used by anyone.
• An area that has no speedwalk and no speedwalk message listed will now be ignored when using ‘runto’.

Daily Blessing:

There is a new feature called ‘daily blessing’. Every 23 hours, you can enter daily prayer’ to get some form of bonus. The most common bonuses will be action oriented (next 50 kills are double exp, etc) but there are also some nice random bonuses that will occur less often and a handful of very rare and valueable bonuses. To see your current timers and any existing daily blessings, just type ‘daily’.

We are very excited about this feature because of what we can add to it, rare chances to get some really nice and unique rewards along with the more common daily stuff. I will also be quite likely to add new things in here without announcing them.

A note on the double exp part of daily blessing - double exp adds not multiplies. This means that If you kill a mob for 100xp and double is running, you get another 100. If you also have the daily blessing double you get another 100 for 300 exp total, not another 200.

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A completely new area and new goals in two existing areas were also added today:

Tanra’vea - New area and goal:

The forest of Tanra’vea is filled with a wondrous beauty, majestic waterfalls, quiet glades and rolling hills. It is also filled with an ancient, twisted evil that dwells deep in the ruins of an old city. Centuries ago, a large meteorite crashed to the earth, creating a cloud of toxic dust that killed or mutated most of the population. The Tanra’veans, guardians of the forest, were wiped out and their city fell to ruin. When the dust settled, the Skreans were born, a bi-pedal race of scavengers who live in a simple village in the forest. A dark and evil presence took up residency deep in the forest, slowly killing the trees and spreading its evil throughout the area. Life bloomed and flourished in the crater left by the meteor, the torn landscape now a flourishing ecosystem separate from that of the nearby forest.

The good that the Tanra’veans did over their life span has been erased and forgotten. Once they lived in harmony with the forest in which they made their home, now they are mere shadows of themselves, turned evil. One ghostly girl remains behind, with enough of her spiritual essence present in the now that she almost seems like she stepped out of time. She needs your help to try and set things right in the forest once again. Her intentions are goodly and pure, and through your actions, she may finally find her peace and depart from this world.

Level Range             : 180 to 201
Goal Difficulty         : Medium
Goal Recommended at     : Level 200
Goal Converters         : Rumour & Paramore
Area Author             : Rumour

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Fort Terramire - New goals:

A rabbit hole, in itself surprising in width and depth, leads to a highly complex and militaristic society of giant hares. These are the bunnies of Fort Terramire, feared for their random and vicious raids on bipeds and quadrapeds alike, taking them as slaves to do their bidding. However, all is not necessarily well within the walls of the Fort, as rumors of treason, rebellion, and dark magic reach the ears of those in command.

Level Range         : 10 to 35
Goal Difficulty     : Medium
Goal Recommended at : 25
Goal Converter      : Halo & Lumina
Area Author         : Vladia

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Artificers Mayhem - New goal:

The castle of Fal’Shara was a quiet and happy place. The suddenly artifacts began stirring. Filled with a life of their own, they overran the castle and filled the residents with fear for their lives. Then the princess disappeared, further creating panic. Now the King and Queen are searching for a champion, but so far the champions have been lacking. Will you be that champion?

Level Range             : 180 to 201
Goal Difficulty         : Easy
Goal Recommended Level  : 200
Goal Converter          : Domain
Area Author             : Korridel

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Other changes in this reboot:

• The duration of web when cast on a player by a mob has been lowered. No change to PVP web.
• Skills and spells will now improve on average around 30% faster.
• Using ‘to’ in give should work correctly, both for giving items and gold as they use slightly different code. (Fiendish/Khroxas). Using Fiendish’s note from ideas:

  > give x to -> gives x to “to”
  > give x to y -> gives x to y
  > give to y -> gives “to” to y
  > give to to y -> gives “to” to y

• The mud currently does not send map or GMCP information in a clan PK room. We considered sending it in non-maze rooms but I think it should be down to each clan whether or not they want their main hall to be mappable. There is now an ‘allowmap’ flag. Clans can add it to their hall rooms free of charge for the time being, please post to ‘upgrades’ as usual. Imms, this flag is ‘allowmap’.

Some other changes made in today’s reboot. The most important are the redo for masteries and the skills modified to continue unused hits on the next target.

• Skills converted to that subsequent hits roll over to the next target:

  Hammer, Sweep, Spiral, Circle, Bodycheck, Headbutt, Kick, Flay, Lash,
  Warcry, Bash

• There is now a way to redo masteries to put them into other damage types. There is a 2% cost involved but this cost cannot be higher than 4000qp and 50m gold. When you redo masteries, the total cost spent on them goes into new ‘deposited’ values and your masteries are reset to zero. The following new options have been added:

  mastery totals - shows total spent so far for each mastery type.
  mastery check - shows tax amount and totals before/after rebuild.
  mastery rebuild - does the actual rebuild of masteries. Requires a ‘confirm’ option.

  Using mastery with no arguments will now also show any amounts deposited and when you buy masteries, deposited amounts will be used before onhand qp or gold.

• To help with rebuilding masteries, there is a new ‘mbuy’ option which allowed you to buy up to 100 points of mastery at a time. Syntax is:

  mastery mbuy [amount] [damage type]

• Modified the combat carry over a little. The way combat finds the next target is:
  • Is there another mob in the room hitting me?
  • Is there another mob in the room fighting my group leader?
  • Is there another mob in the room fighting another group member?

  These last two will now only be checked if you have autoassist on. I believe
  this is more consistent with what ‘autoassist’ is meant to be.

• It is now possible to idle out while fighting. No more newbies fighting Barney for a week while linkdead.
• Fixed the ‘fail’ tags on Ironfist.
• Socials that have no messages set for others/self will now also give a message when used on channels.

Three new areas were added this reboot. Each of them also includes a new goal:

Ruins of Stormhaven:

Stormhaven was once a prosperous town. Ruled entirely by the mage’s guild, there was no control of them. To have a child who was a mage was considered the greatest blessing one could have. Trisaldi and Keln were blessed with three such children. As the children grew, their power was evident. However, each was very different from the other. The youngest, Krichel, loved helping others and learned many healing spells along with potent combat spells. He desired to protect everyone. Ozwalt, the middle child, often hid in the background. Trouble always circled around him, but rarely was connected to him as he pulled the strings from the shadows. Sakelth, the eldest, delighted in torturing animals just to see what he could do. He was constantly in trouble with his parents and teachers. The teachers privately told each other that he didn’t have a single decent bone in his body. The brothers fought often, and their fights were terrible.

The three brothers became full mages on the same day, and they were inducted into the guild. Soon after, people went missing. It started with beggars and urchins, and then began moving up the social ladder. Then Sakelth led an army of the undead against the city, destroying the city and reducing it to ruins. Krichel gathered as many of the living as he could and retreated to the castle. He cast powerful spells of protection and warding to protect his people. Ozwalt retreated to the south, and brought forth his army of shadow creatures. He sent them to do battle with his brother’s forces, while he prepared for attack. Sakelth continued to try to consolidate his power, using his undead to create a castle. Each is unable to gain an advantage over the other so they continue to search the ruins for magic artifacts to use to gain that advantage. Will you be the advantage they can use?

Level range         : 150-201
Goal Difficulty     : Difficult
Goal recommended at : 200
Goal Converter      : Domain
Area Author         : Domain

Note: This area replaces Arboria.

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Brightsea and Glimmerdim:

On the surface, Brightsea appears to be a peaceful seaside tourist town with little of interest to offer the average adventurer. But within the town’s underbelly, certain nefarious individuals are recruiting for organized crime. Ambitious thieves may wish to pay a visit to Brightsea, but only if they have the skills and the stomach for it.

Level Range         : 5 to 35
Goal Difficulty     : Medium
Goal Recommended at : 25
Goal Converter      : Lumina & Ikyu
Area Author         : Lumina 

Note: This area replaces The Port. The quest is open to any evil-aligned thief, full time (pclass) or part-time (remort).

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Dhal’Gora Outlands:

The Dhal’Gora outlands are ringed by a range of mountains known as Razor Spine Ridge, and are divided by the feared Forest of Teeth. The forest is full of deadly traps and creatures that will devour the flesh from your bones. On the eastern side of the forest are the plains of Dhal’Gora, barren and empty. Across the plains are the High Elves, their capital beset upon by a foe who cannot breach their walls. To the west of the forest are the humans, who enjoy a vibrant trade with the other denizens of the land. Tales of terror are told about the Swamp of Blood and Tears, which lies far to the south of the outlands, brave adventurers and travellers from far lands often disappear in the swamps, and those who do manage to survive lose a part of themselves forever, or so rumours would have it.

In the High-Elven city of Eyllsineldth, Ruarail has a terminally ill patient and he needs some rare ingredients to finish making his remedy to cure the horrible disease that is ravaging his patient’s body. As the city is under a constant attack, no one can be spared to begin the long and difficult search. Are you up to the challenge? It would mean a harrowing trip into the mountains of Razor Spine Ridge, surviving the dangers of the Forest of Teeth, and wallowing in the mud that is the Swamp of Blood and Tears. You are his best chance to find a cure for this disease, will you be able to help him or will you die trying?

Level Range         : 10 to 50
Goal Difficulty     : Easy
Goal Recommended at : Level 35
Goal Converters     : Rumour & Paramore
Area Author         : Rumour

Some fairly large changes to core skills and spells in the game were also made today:

• The version of enhanced damage used by pclass psi, mage, thief and cleric has been buffed and the difference between the two is now half of what it was.
• The impact of ‘desecration’ during PVP has been turned down by roughly the same amount so that it will be around the same overall. It hasn’t been changed vs mobs so the enhanced damage boost is an indirect boost to desecration vs mobs also.
• The experience modifier used when grouping has been increased slightly for groups larger than 2. It stops increasing at 5 people in the group.
• The base duration of power projection has been increased, which will help with the percentage of time this affect can be up vs down. At max stats it is now very close to 100%.
• The number of hits you get on average from test of faith has been increased slightly, and the chances of getting the additional hit based on the moon for you alignment being up has been increased. All of these do still depend on align difference between and target and int/con, although the amount of align difference required for faith to kick in at all has also been lowered.
• Test of Faith and Gaias Revenge will cause unused hits to continue on to the next target as if they were regular melee attacks (see previous post).
• Instinct with no arguments will now show how many trains you have available for instinct.
• You can now use ‘help [something]‘ while at class selection and subclass selection in character creation. This already existed at race selection, not sure there’s much value in it anywhere else.

Bug Fixes:

• When you try to ‘pick [direction]‘ in a room without a door in that direction you will be told, rather than simply getting ‘you failed’.
• The ‘indoor’ check on unlawful entry was not checking all the flags that can define a room as indoors. Now fixed.
• Trying to use socials against others or on self that have no messages defined for those lines will now give a message rather than just a blank line.

Some fairly major enhancements made to how combat works both in groups and when attacking multiple targets. Combat should be much smoother now, unused hits roll over to the next target and assisting is pretty much instant. Full details below.

Regular Combat Change:

There is a fairly large change to combat in how hits are used when you have multiple mobs attacking you or your group. None of this affects fighting one mob at a time.

Under the old system, let’s say you normally get 7 attempted hits per round of combat. If you killed your target in the first 2, the remaining 5 might be wasted until the next time the mud updates all combat (every 3 seconds), or you might get a whole full round against the next mob in the line. This was purely random based on where you happened to be in a linked list.

Under the new system, if you kill the mob in the first two hits the next 5 hits will automatically go to the next mob in line. However, you will only get one round of combat, one full round of combat, for each time the mud does a combat update.

Autoassist/Group Change:

This change also required autoassist to be rewritten. The biggest change is how the next mob to kill is selected. Imagine that Razor, Lasher and Testchar are in a group (in that order) and Razor killed the mob before Lasher and Testchar had a chance to hit.

Under the old system a number of things could happen here. Either Lasher and Testchar miss their round of combat completely for this mud-wide combat update, they hit the next mob in line as expected, or they hit the next mob inline and manage to pull Razor back into combat so Razor gets an extra round of combat. There was also a more obscure case where the group, or just some of the group, could now be out of combat completely.

Under the new system, Lasher and Testchar should automatically move on to the next target in line and get their full round of combat, but again, only their full round of combat. Ideas note #15349 (live port) gives an example of some of this.

One other advantage to come out of this is that autoassist can be made much more effective. To start with, as soon as you ‘kill’ something your groupies will autoassist. They won’t actually _hit_ the mob until the next combat update (up to 3 seconds depending on timing), but will immediately be in combat and able to cast their spells etc.

Another change is when mobs are killed out melee combat by skills or spells - groupies would be out of combat until the next mud combat update, which also meant that skills/spells would not work for a round unless the mob name was actually given. They should now switch the mob they are targeting as soon as the tank does.

Quite often I read notes and see comments about “the dwindling player base”. We’ve been hearing that for years, so long that it is just accepted. I decided it was time to find out if this is actually true.

As some of you know, the ‘online 2′ command will show the average players online for each 24 hour period, going back just over a year. I went through old backups and managed to piece together a full set of data since September 2001 and put it into a quick Excel chart. Click the image below for a larger and easier to read version.

So what does this show? There’s many ways you can read a chart, but trying to be objective:

• Without a doubt, the peak years were 2004-2006. I have seen this time period referred to as the “golden age” for MUDs by other MUD owners. The internet was mainstream but MMOs weren’t mainstream yet. They were out there, but not mainstream.
• 2008 through 2011 have been very seasonal, but remarkably similar. The MUD isn’t really growing, but this chart doesn’t spell “dying” to me either.
• I really wish we had the data prior to 2001. 1997 to 2001 was a very fun time, hitting our first 50 onilne, then our first 100. Almost every week the MUD grew. We had less people online then than we do now, but the trend was definitely up. Interesting with hindsight that the direction is more motivating than the absolute number.
• This chart says nothing about player ‘engagement level’. My perception is that people multitask more now and do other things while they play Aardwolf. Purely anecdotal, no evidence to back it up.
• That big white line in the middle of 2004 is the 2 week period we were down after 3 back to back hurricanes back when the MUD was hosted on a T1 in Orlando.

So anyway, my conclusion is we’re not dying. I’m not painting a rosy picture here either. It’s frustrating to have put so much work into playability and other areas over the last 3-4 years just to effectively stand still. We’ve had multiple iterations of the client, the mapper was added, the world was redesigned, the academy, level limits on saving were removed, in-game features such as spellup, runto and eqsearch. These are just the main items aimed at making it easier for new players to get started, not even remotely a full list.

Admittedly, we have effectively stood still while a number of other MUDs have seen numbers decrease significantly but that’s not really any comfort either, I’d prefer to see all muds thriving and growing as a genre.

The other thing I don’t know is how this graph would compare to the same graph for other MUDs. We’ve had our share of mistakes, we’ve made unpopular decisions, could we have done more things to keep some people around for longer relative to other MUDs? Probably, but I’d imagine this applies to most MUDs too … we all have our list of “could have, should have” …

What I do know is we still have a large and active community that is very passionate about their game and we’re not planning to go anywhere anytime soon.

Amnesia - New Mindflayer Spell:

There is a new mindflayer ability called ‘amnesia’ that allows the mindflayer to target a single ability on the victim and make the target forget, or partly forget, that skill/spell. The syntax is:

cast amnesia [skill or spell] target.

Target is optional if you are already fighting someone (which is why it comes after the skill name). There is no lag on failure but there is a small recovery time. When used against mobs, there is no additional recovery time. There is a longer recovery time when successful against other players.

With this skill who you are fighting is going to play a large factor in what skill you target. If you land the skill with a 50% reduction in (for example) second attack, and the target has 40 instinct in second attack, the outcome will be that they use second attack as if they just had it practiced to 90% and no instinct. Because of this, it is possible to have the affect land over 100%.

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Quickstab - New Bandit Skill:

The Assassin subclass has a skill called ‘quickstab’. This skill sets an affect and has a recovery - both based on a combination dexterity and luck. While this affect is up, the assassin will have a chance to backstab without lag.

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Ninja Backstab Upgrade:

The Ninja subclass now has the ability to backstab while in combat. You can still only backstab a mob once and cannot backstab a mob other than the one you are fighting. The timer that gets set on a target so they can’t be backstabbed again has been reduced to be between 90 and 00 seconds. Was previously 6 to 12 minutes.

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Combat Spell Enhancements:

We have made a change to how combat spells work that should help casters etc in groups. If you have more than one mob attacking you and cast immolate then kill the mob with the first immolate hit, assuming you would have gotten 3 casts, the next 2 will hit the next mob inline so that you get a ‘full’ cast of the spell. This also applies to extra hits from projection. Some of the older spells that do multiple hits but all within a single cast within (balefire, pyromania, etc) and not covered by this ‘rollover’ of hits, and it only applies to spells *for now*. Want to get the code will tested before expanding it to other areas of the MUD.

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Slow spell rewritten - Pscionicist:

The mindflayer ’slow’ spell has been overhauled. As a reminder, this spell causes the victim to fight without the benefit of any attacks from haste or lightspeed. Most mobs have at least one of these, both at higher levels so, it is well worth landing. There are several changes in the new version:

• The affect is now a percentage based on the new saves routine (see ‘help newsaves’). If you are affected with 50% slow you will lose 50% of your haste hits. This means it is easier to land than before, but how well it lands can vary based on stats.
• There is no lag on casting - it has been replaced with a few seconds recovery time. This means that, as with zombify, you don’t have to lose a round of combat trying to land it.
• The recovery time when used against mobs is gone (other than the few seconds lag replacement mentioned above). The recovery time when used against players is unchanged.
• The amount of dexterity that ’slow’ takes away has been increased.
• Haste is no longer a cure for ’slow’. At the time of writing this, there isn’t a cure.

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Other changes in this reboot:

• Fixed a bug with necrotic touch/poultice not returning resists correctly when used on a third party.
• Shoplifting will now improve on buying. No need to buy items 1 at a time to force this - if you buy 100 items you will get 100 chances to improve (it improves slowly).
• Ironfist now has a chance to improve while in use in addition to when first cast.
• ‘Gq-h’ now does the same thing as ‘gq history’

Necrotic Touch - New Venomist Skill:

Highly trained venomists can learn the dark art of necrotic poisons. These poisons spread require only light contact with the skin to infect a victim. Necrotic Poison will gradually eat away at the victims cell structure, making them more vulnerable to physical attacks and further poison based damage. Using Necrotic Touch has no lag, but does have a small recovery time on failure, with a longer recovery time when the poison is successfully injected.

There is no direct cure for necrotic poison, but a skilled venomist using poultice may be able to reduce the strength of the poison until it is weak enough to be rendered harmless and considered ‘cured’.

Primary Stats:
Attacker - Strength, Dexterity and Luck.
Victim - Dexterity, Constitution and Luck.

Note: This skill uses a new type of affect in which both the degree of the affect (how much it hurts) and the strength of the affect (how hard it is to remove) will vary based on the stats of the attacker and the victim. See ‘help newsaves’ for more information on this.

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Shoplifting - New Bandit Skill:

Shoplifting is the bandit ability to steal items away from a shopkeeper right before their eyes. Shoplifting is a passive ability - when buying items you will automatically have a chance to steal them.

Stolen items cannot be sold back to shopkeepers, but can still be auctioned or fenced on the black market.

Primary Stats:
Dexterity and Luck.

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Other changes and fixes:

Several other changes and bug fixes this reboot include:

• When you have multiple mobs attacking you, the rate at which they will continue to fight from one to the next within a single round of combat has been reduced. Getting 10+ full rounds of combat within a single regular round of combat is just too much.
• When using charge, not all mobs will be directly in the line of your charge and will not be attacked - chance of that happening is based on their luck. When this happens it is not considered an attack so means that there is no longer a guarantee of charge hitting every mob in the room.
• Fixed a bug with ‘clients’ command - some players were not having their client type set correctly when using autologin.
• The ’saffects’ command can now use the same filters as ‘affects’. More info can be seen in ‘help affects’ and the actual options are listed in ‘help spells’.
• Viewing a character that is AFK in the room and has no other flags (such as sanctuary etc) would show an extra space before the name. Now fixed.
• If you challenge someone, or are challenged by someone, and the challenge expires - the timers are only updated when someone uses the challenge command. This meant that you could quit hours later and if the other person were still online they would get a ‘challenge cancelled’ message. Now fixed.
• You can now use ‘info goals’ and ‘info quest’ interchangeably.
• In most marketplace (lauction) operations, the item was being transferred to the player/seller before the ‘kept’ flag is set. All within a single command this wouldn’t normally matter, but was causing the ‘k’ flag to be missing from {invitem} tags. Now fixed.
• It was possible at very low level/stats with 1% refresh to technically succeed in the spell but still refresh 0 moves. Minimum is now 1. Same for rejuvenate.