Aardwolf MUD Blog

Another reboot with lots of updates, most of these are related to subclass changes and, in most cases, these are buffs:

Subclass Changes:

• The effectiveness of Enhanced Damage on melee attacks has been increased fairly significantly for warriors and a smaller amount for thieves, rangers and paladins. The increase is based on Strength (Dex for thieves) so you will notice more of an increase at higher levels. This increase does not apply to backstab damage.
• For warriors, the chance of landing third, fourth, fifth and sixth attacks has also been increased. This increase is also based on stats - whatever is the appropriate stat for that skill, usually dex.
• There is a new Harmer spell called ‘Void Sermon’ that is essentially the same as ‘Voice of God’ but does negative damage and costs a little less mana. This does also have instinct.
• Made a couple of changes to the Humility (Priest) spell:
  • The duration of Humility (Priest) has been extended and uptime will be much higher for everyone, it will now reach 100% uptime at a combined wis+luck of 600 whereas it previously needed 600 in both.
  • Humility now has instinct which will make the spell more effective as instinct is increased.
• Curse of Sloth can now be cured at healers by using ‘heal sloth’. Unlike other spells, it will not let you waste the gold if you’re not affected by Sloth.
• Power Projection now has a much shorter recovery time but is also slightly less effective. At around 150 int the recovery is low enough that the spell will be up 100% of the time unless you die. The recovery continues to get shorter so that you can re-cast it sooner if you die and at 600 int there is no recovery at all. Overall this is a buff but it does make the ‘burst’ damage a little less, however…
• Power Projection now also has Instinct - more instinct increases your chances of additional casts.
• Quite a few Elementalist changes so they get their own section. The short version of this list of changes is that, all combined, they make it so that Air Skewer, Earthen Hammer and Ice Daggers are equivalent alternatives to Immolate but with different elemental damage types.
  • Elemental Focus now has instinct. More instinct = more damage bonus for those damage types. The instinct increase in damage only applies to spells not melee damage but it is a fairly significant damage incresae overall.
  • The 3 higher level elementalist spells (Air Skewer, Earthen Hammer and Ice Daggers) now all have the same calculation as immolate and have been moved up a little in levels. These three spells will also now use instinct in Immolate so that you don’t have to buy instinct in all 4 spells. If you have instinct in either of these three spells we recommend that you classchange to free it up so that you can use it on something else. It is no longer possible to buy new instinct in those three skills/spells.
  • Showskill will inform you when a skill or spell shares instinct with another ability and will show the correct amount of instinct based on that shared skill.
  • When elemental focus is up, any damage done in Water, Air, Earth or Fire damage types will use whichever mastery of these 4 you have the highest amount in.

Other non-subclass changes:

• Added ‘MUDslinger’ to the list of clients recognized in the ‘clients’ command.
• Made some changes to dtrack to help with some testing I am doing of my own:
  • Columns are wider to allow for commas in the format.
  • There is a new ‘damage per round’ melee average on the first line.
  • If you assign a skill using ‘dtrack skill’ it will save over reboot.
  • Expanded the output of the dtrack skill section because ‘hits’ isn’t too useful without come context around how many casts that is. This section now shows how many times you cast the spell, number of hits per cast and how many casts. Currently only works for spells, skills need to be updated individually so that is to follow.
• Each hour, time last on in the roster will update for players online. This solves an issue with ‘last on’ appearing to be days ago if someone stays online for a long time. Roster used on imms (wolf clan) no longer shows date last on at all.
• When ‘Sense Life’ was written we didn’t have epics with extended repop times. When the repop time is more than an hour, the output will now change to something like this (Nuanse):

      You sense that life will return to this area in roughly 1 day,
      23 hours and 12 minutes.
  

New Goal: Paradise Lost:
The King of Hell, Lucifer, has been acting strangely lately. He rarely
talks, he only appears in public for short periods of time, and there is
an odd stiffness to his motions. There are even whispers that he has been
replaced by an impostor. If you’re determined to get to the bottom of this
mystery, perhaps you should pay him a visit in his private chambers.
Remember to bring a plaza pass!

Level Range         : 50 to 70
Goal Difficulty     : Easy
Goal Recommended at : Level 70
Goal Converter      : Alison
Area Author         : Vladia

We have quite a few other changes in today’s update, details below:

New Area and Goal: Svrogan’s Logging Camp:

After years at sea, with now tatterred sails and dwindling
stores, the call from atop the main mast comes as a shock:
"Land ahoy!". Captain Svrogan and his crew have been in search
for the fabled Ironwood Isles. It is said the Ironwood trees
produce the hardest wood known to man. Many have called it a
fool's errand, and that it was but a fabled land. Svrogan
however, knew that if he could find these Ironwood isles he
could be a rich man indeed.

In the distance, a faint glimmer akin to mirage in a desert
heat caught his eye. Encircled in a thick fog, only the faintest
of treetops emerged high above. Just then, a ray of sunlight
caught just right, and sent a cascade of brilliant light that
pierced the fog ever so briefly. 

At long last the journey for the lost Ironwood Isles is about
to pay off! Svrogan knew that the journey was just beginning
though, as now he would have to make shore and setup his
logging camp before any profits would be seen. 

Will you answer the call and help Svrogan and his lumberjacks
establish camp on the island of the lost Ironwood forests?

Level Range         : 80 to 110
Goal Difficulty     : Medium?
Goal Recommended at : Level  100
Goal Converter      : Myrddin
Area Author         : Myrddin 

New Goal in the Dark Temple of Zyian:

Among the villagers in Abend, whispers and rumors have said that people
have gone missing when they are around the well. There are also rumors
about a group of robed and hooded people entering and leaving the well. A
few brave and adventurous people have gone into the well, and none have
returned.

Will you be the person to investigate what is happening and end their
nefarious intent, or will you just walk by?

Level Range          : 130 to 150
Goal Difficulty      : Medium
Goal Recommended at  : Level 140
Goal Min Level       : Level 100
Area Author          : Rundvelt
Goal Converter       : Teleron

Other game changes:

• As I think most of you know (annnounce note 1437) there is a group of players and imms looking at changes to improve balance and PVP in the game. Part of this process will involve some experimental changes to try something and see how it goes.

  One of those changes is to speed up PVP at Superhero. As of this note, all PVP damage at level 200+ is doubled. Maybe it should be 50% or some other number or maybe we decide this is too broad of a change and remove it completely so let’s try it and see what we learn.

• Aard has been without a web client for a while. I have been working on a modified version of MudPortal and getting it working for Aard. It has been out there for a while unannounced but it is now ready and available at:

  https://play.aardwolf.com

  Note that this is only meant to be a very basic quick way to try Aard, the Aardwolf Mushclient is still the recommended client. Also, although it is a web client this does report the *real* I/P address to the game so please don’t try to use it to multiplay.

• The max number of people you can ignore has been raised from 10 to 20.
• Scribed scrolls / brewed options will now have descriptions and keywords that look like this:

    +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
    | Keywords   : scroll 3xincompletehealing incompletehealing       |
    |            : 1xrefresh refresh                                  |
    | Name       : a scroll of 3*incomplete healing, refresh          |
    +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
  

  Note the difference between 3x in keywords and 3* in the description. One is better for reading the other is easier to manage items. (Yajan/Myth)

• Fixed a couple things with the ‘clients’ command. Mudlet never counted correctly because of the way they change the client ID with each version and also added “Mudrammer” and the new web client.
• ‘Runto healer’ now works in Aylor to take you to the healer. (Kelaire)
• Wolf Spirits gives higher bonuses during three moons but this was only working if the spell was cast while outside. I removed the outside part of the requirement and also removed the lower duration under three moons.
• Social usage by mobs and players is now tracked separately.
• Fixed the player name not apppearing correctly in ‘yell’ when they have a pretitle set. (Talia)
• The message when you gain a powerup will now show powerups this remort in the message. (Losteix)
• When you use ‘:’ to emote no a channel, if the next character is ) or (it will use that instead so you can still do the basic smile/frown symbols on channels. (Guinness)
• Fixed the ‘(Null)’ message to room whenever anyone wears/removes Aard sleeping bag.
• There is a new policy for restrings - you don’t need every character to be a different xterm color, but this will allow a little more at least - short desc limit 40 characters as displayed / 100 characters including color codes, long desc limit has not changed as long desc generally should not have many (any?) color codes anyway. (Vilgan)

Classchange rewrite and instinct / mastery rebuilds:

A lot of work and discussion is taking place behind the scenes to improve balance between the subclasses.

As part of the changes that are coming, we want to make it much easier to change primary class, masteries and instinct to be able to try out the changes as they are done. Because of this, there are some big changes to classchange:

• You can now class change free of charge every 7 days. There is no decreasing cost, wait 7 days or pay the cost to change earlier.
• The cost to classchange if you don’t want to wait is 1000qp. It does not reduce with time.
• A class change will automatically rebuild mastery and instinct too. If you don’t want to rebuild these, you must use the NOINSTINCT and/or NOMASTERY options.
• If you prefer to use the old commands to reset only mastery or only instinct, they work the same as before but there is a maximum cost of 500qp / 1000 trains which is significantly lower in most cases. These commands will go away eventually, except perhapt the ’single skill’ version of instinct rebuild.
• The ‘noskills’ option has been removed - classchange will no longer reset skills but will try to return practices for the skills you are losing based on what it would have cost you to practice them at current stats. If this paragraph makes no sense to you that is ok, NOSKILLS was overly complicated which is why it has been removed.
• If you try to classchange to the same class, the game will warn you but allow it - this is for when you only want to rebuild mastery or instinct with the free classchange. When you use this option there is no automatic rebuild of stats.
• Retier will also automatically reset mastery and instinct. If you don’t want this to happen, add the NOMASTERY and/or NOINSTINCT options when entering the retier command.
• You can also use this command to change only subclass or race only. Details are in the helpfile.
• Rebuild works the same as before but I added warnings to check classchange status first in case you are about to pay for a rebuild that would be free with classchange.

I tried to keep the highlights in the note as simple as possible - there are quite a few options to the classchange command now. Full details are updated in ‘help classchange’.

Hopefully these changes will make it easier to try new classes as we start to get into the individual subclass/class changes which you will start to see coming through in the next update.

Some large updates to Fractals of the Weave were added today:

     ---  Major Updates ---
- A new minigame themed after the Unseelie Court.
- A new minigame themed after a battle with corrupted Vorel.
- A new minigame themed after caravan defense from desert raiders.
- The above games feature 59 new explorable rooms for players.
- Fractals of the Weave will now automatically repop every 60 hours.
  There is no announcement for the respawn, as players can arrange
  based on elapsed time.

     ---  QoL Improvements ---
- After each of the three minigames above, player health and mana
  is restored.
- After you hand your thread in to the rewards mob at the end of
  the run, player health and mana is restored.

     ---  Bug Fixes ---
- A minor logic issue in the rewards code caused players to be
  transferred to the spire before rolling the additional loot
  table if they got lucky (random occurence).  This has been fixed.
- An invisible bug where shards tried to purge themselves as
  many times as there are players in the room has been fixed.

     ---  Misc Changes ---
- Fractals of the Weave and punching bag mobs can no longer
  be spawned until an hour between respective events has lapsed.
- Credits have been updated.  Thank you to those who helped me
  test these changes!

     ---  Take Note ---
- IMM-spawned Fractals events will be much more scarce and only
  occur on special occasions or odd weekends.
- IMM-spawned Fractals events will not count towards the hour-
  long timers listed under Misc Changes.
- Punching bag events and Fractals have seperate timers.  You
  can still run a Highway Man/Martini Master/Knitting Needles/
  clan mob directly after Fractals, provided there isn't already
  a cooldown timer in place.
- Fractals will not automatically respawn upon posting this
  note, but there will be a global echo to announce when the
  repops do begin.  This is due to observation on the new mechanics
  in a live environment.

Androgyne/Non-Binary Gender, other changes:

• The main reason for this reboot was to clean up a lot of things with gender. Mostly the messages like “They is dead!” and a lot of the socials. I think some of the clan info messages might still be off until we review them but, other than those, if you see any messages or socials where the wording just doesn’t fit with the gender, please post them on typos. Many thanks to everyone who helped go through all the socials on the test port - it was a lot of work and a few very dedicated people got it done quickly.
• The ‘neutral’ gender that was known as ‘genderless’ for about 5 minutes is now called ‘Androgyne’. There is a ‘help androgyne’ which explains more about why. If anyone used tpspend to genderless and really doesn’t like this new name please contact me and I will return the trivia points so you can change back.

HELP ANDROGYNE:
Androgyne is the Aardwolf neutral (none-binary) gender. In-game actions
and commands will use they/them/their pronouns for characters with this
gender.

After adding a non-binary / neutral gender into Aardwolf, we had some fairly
long conversations about what to call it. Neutral was too easily confused
with Neutral alignment. We had 'genderless' for a while and it just seemed
too bland. The Wikipedia description for 'Androgyne' fits exactly what we
want to accomodate and also has a "kind of RPG" feel to it:

"An androgyne is a person who does not fit cleanly into the typical
 gender roles of his or her society. Androgynes may identify as beyond
 gender, between genders, moving across genders, entirely genderless, or
 any combination or all of these. Androgyne identities include pangender,
 bigender, ambigender, nongendered, agender, gender fluid, or intergender.
 Androgyny can be either physical or psychological; it does not depend on
 birth sex and is not limited to intersex people."

"An androgyne may or may not look androgynous. Someone who looks
 androgynous may or may not be an androgyne. A "psychological androgyne"
 is one term for a person who has an androgynous gender identity, but
 doesn't necessarily look androgynous."

This is a very complex and rapidly changing real-world situation while we are a fantasy based RPG. I do sincerely hope that these recent changes help make Aardwolf more inclusive, but we also need to move on and focus on the core game now. We will fix messages and code that just sounds “wrong” with the new gender, but no other changes for now.

---

Some other changes in this reboot:

• It is no longer possible to train stats with a cost higher than 1 while you have unallocated tier stats or wish stat.
• There is a new command ‘areaquests’ that will show the most popular areas for quest targets. Like mobdeaths, this is on a delay and updates every 15 minutes or so. Not exactly Aardwolf’s biggest need but I wrote it to troubleshoot a bug report so figured I would make it available to everyone.
• The ‘quest obj’ stat max amounts have been raised slightly, they are now as listed below:

       Levels 1-29    : 1 stat
       Levels 30-59   : 2 stats
       Levels 60-89   : 3 stats
       Levels 90-119  : 4 stats
       Levels 120-149 : 5 stats
       Levels 150+    : 6 stats
  

• One of the gquest ranges has moved from 200-201 to 201-201 which means it will pick up some additional areas.
• There is a new ’spamreduce consider’ option - when this is turned on you will no longer see when other people consider mobs in the room.

New Ranger Spell - Gaias Totem:

There is a new spell called ‘Gaias Totem’ that allows a Shaman to summon a totem into the room. There’s quite a lot to this spell so lots of detail below. There are three types of totem:

    Ent     : Reduces damage taken when you have a totem in the area.
    Bear    : Increases damage inflicted when you have a totem in the area.
    Owl     : Increases exp when you have a totem in the area.

Any group members (in level range) with you in the same room (as you) also get some benefit from the totem but half as much. Multiple totems of the same kind do not stack, but three shamans in the group each with a different totem in the area will add all three benefits. If both you and a group member have the same totem in an area, yours will take priority so you get the higher bonus. You cannot leave a totem in a clanroom or combat maze.

You can use the new ‘totems’ command to see if you have a totem in the game, where it is, and how long until it expires - although it doesn’t actually go away until the first tick after it expires.

Totems are “kind of” mobs and can be attacked by anyone who can attack you, but it is based on if they could kill *you* at that point in time. So if you’re not OPK and not in a PK room, your totem can’t be PKed even if it is, and vice versa. Aggro mobs will not attack totems and they are not a valid target for transportation spells. Your totem will not join a fight if someone attacks you, but if your attacker uses an area spell they will hit the totem and pull it into the fight. If a totem in another room kills someone, it does not count as a PK for you.

The duration of a totem will increase with stats and the recovery is always 2 minutes longer than the duration. This means that the percentage of uptime will go up as your character grows but will never quite reach 100%.

Temporary situation - when you gain extra exp because of an owl totem, you are not going to see it in the exp message - it is just part of the first number. There’s too many numbers in there already and I don’t want to add one more. Next reboot will have a way to see the breakdown of each kill in your history and simplified exp messages.

Other Ranger Related Changes:

• The Ranger ‘Gaias Revenge’ spell no longer has a recovery. Your ‘affects’ might still show one until it wears off but casting it next time won’t add a recovery. (Just about every Ranger ever).
• Gaias Revenge now has an additional random damage type - Electric. (Quadrapus / Ilbrost). Gaias Focus has also been modified to allow this to be selected.
• The ‘Energy Ball’ spell is now level 36. (Viar)
• The ‘Call Lightning’ spell no longer requires you to be outside to use it, but will do less damage indoors. ‘Rainbow’ also no longer needs you to be outside, but no difference in damage on this one. (Viar)
• Significantly lowered the recovery on the ‘Summon Life’ spell that resets an area.
• Crafters now have a chance to roll bonus stats on skinned equipment. Chances of getting anything are about the same as regular game load. The odds of getting the much higher bonusloot items are lower because this gives you basically unlimited tries, but still very doable over time.

This Subclass merge and changes:

Some pretty big changes to thief. The main one is that the Assassin subclass has been merged into Bandit and anyone who was previously an Assassin is now a Bandit. All thieves also have a subclass timer reset. These are the overall changes to each thief subclass:

Ninja:

• The ‘Stalk’ and ‘Quickstab’ abilities have been moved into Ninja.
• Lag free strangle is now a Ninja ability.
• Ninja has a new ability called ‘Veil of Shadows’ that allows them to become immune from to magic damage for a few seconds. The duration and the recovery are both based on dex, str, and luck.
• They also have a similar ability called ‘Veil of Stone’ that allows them to become immune to physical damage for a few seconds.

For the purposes of this skill, ‘magical damage’ is anything not bash, slash or pierce, so can still be weapon damage if it is a magical type.

Both abilities are combined under a single skill and command just called ‘veil’. They can both be used in combat and are lag free, but cannot be used at the same time.

Bandit:

• The ‘Assassinate’ ability has been moved into Bandit.
• The extra (up to 5th) attack on Backstab has also been moved into Bandit.
• Pilferage has been significantly increased. The old range of gold bonus was 10-30% and maxxed out at 300 luck. The new range is 25% to 80% and maxxes out at 600 luck.
• Moving through a room that has been entrapped will now be slightly slower than before. Kind of a niche use but mudinfo #1929 has more info on why this matters at all.
• Bandit can now backstab while in combat, but in a different way than Ninja. Ninja can start a fight with a mob then still backstab it while bandit can only backstab *another* target not already in combat, so this is useful to initiate combat with one mob while already fighting another.
• Bandit has a small chance (based on dex and luck) to insta-kill a mob with a backstab. Mobs with extremely high HP for their level may not be outright killed but will still take significant damage.Mobs that cannot be assassinated can also not be killed this way, or mobs immune to your damage. There is also a level check in here but it won’t impact anyone not trying to use this feature to repeat backstab / flee on massively higher level mobs. Nocrit mobs can’t be affected by this either.

Do you ever wonder where NPCs go after they have been wounded in battle, then suddenly reappear as if nothing ever happened? They make a visit to the Tilule Rehabilitation Clinic! Here, patients receive medical care to heal their wounds, and even have surgery performed on them to correct those more serious ailments.

Things are not as they seem at the Tilule Rehabilitation Clinic, though. The owner of the clinic, Tilule, needs your help completing various tasks to help clean up the clinic and ensure it continues running for many years to come. If you are up to the challenge, find the owner on the third floor of the clinic. He will be happy to accept any help that comes his way.

Level Range         : 50 to 80
Goal Difficulty     : Medium
Goal Recommended at : Level 75
Goal Converter      : Rhuli
Area Author         : Rhuli

The Western Halo Mountain Range’s shadow’s edge looms over an ancient burial ground known as Shadow’s End. Wind whips through the pass and gives a chilling voice to the skeletal remains trodden deep into the dirt and they scream hollow tales of generations of warfare. Over the years, bloodied victors, maimed survivors and their distant kin raised many mausoleums to house the remains of the luckless victims of such senseless bloodshed.

The beautiful, gracious and noble queen of Lamentia named Lailah possessed a heart of gold. Lailah cared deeply for each of her few followers and gave generously, despite her own poverty. On the 147th day of the Season of Piety, of the Year of the Followers, Queen Lailah entered Shadow’s End to pay her respect to the fallen.

As she walked among the burial grounds with her friend Starburst, the sun goldfinch, Queen Lailah chanced upon the swept marble landing of an open tomb. An open tomb, this long after the hostilities, drew her attention and roused her suspicions. The Queen carelessly approached the tomb and stepped into the prison of a powerful, deceitful being of shadow known as The Dread.

The Dread offered Lailah endless riches in exchange for shared possession of her own body. Lailah, who had borne witness to the greatest depth of poverty possible in the war-devastated lands over which she reigned, gave in to The Dread’s temptation out of misguided hope. During their unification, The Dread leeched the generosity of Lailah’s heart, at once feeding off her loss and twisting her soul toward corruption, greed and darkness.

Lailah’s humanity withered under The Dread’s corrosive influence and her body followed the perverse degradation that started in her mind and soul. The queen’s heart still beat with a golden light, however, and her soul, not wanting to leave the world with a twisted reminder of its foolish pact, compelled Lailah to design an end to her master’s reign even as she fell under his power.

Lailah designed a map to lead her followers to the treasure chamber. Sensing her betrayal and hating that golden fragment of humanity that remained to her, The Dread viciously ripped Lailah’s golden heart from her body using her own twisted hands. Lailah’s corrupted shadow immediately shredded the map but was blinded during its work by Starburst, who stole the remnants of the document and distributed the tattered pieces across the land. Only one who possesses great wisdom and strength will be able to reclaim
Lailah’s treasure.

Welcome to Shadow’s End, adventurer.

Level Range         : 200 to 201
Goal Difficulty     : Difficult
Goal Recommended at : Level 201
Goal Converter      : Trepid & Robbo
Area Author         : Trepid

Note: Two people working together are required to complete this goal.

A long time ago, there was a group of individuals who followed the God Njord and his struggle to destroy the Aesir. These were the Clan of Vanir. Ultimately, the Aesir tore the Vanir asunder and their fight was ended. The only thing left behind is the ruins of their former Clan Hall. Recently, a team of Aarchaeologists, lead by the Professor, unearthed their ancient Clan Maze.

This is a test raid that can be unlocked with the completion of the first test in raiding, the Testmaze10 raid. Please see Goals Testmaze10 for more information.

This is a tribute to the Vanir clan, which disbanded in August 2014.

• Have made some changes to gquest timers and extended time. If a global quest is won within the first 10 minutes, the timer will now be extended for 5 minutes. It was previously 5 minutes with the timer extended for 3. (Throxx / Mendaloth)
• You no longer need stormy weather to use Call Lighting, but you do still have to be outside. Many people have suggested this over the last year or two no not putting a specific name next to the idea.
• The delay between shots while using ‘volley’ has been increased and the duration of the skill itself has been extended. Overall amount of damage will be the same but a little more spread out giving people a chance to escape. If you can’t because you’re not paying attention or stacked too many commands then that’s on you. Triggering recall on combat is not legal and this does include ranged damage.
• The addition of critical hits impacted the balance of some high end epic areas a little too much. We now have a flag to ignore critical hits completely for certains - they won’t do critical hits and critical hits will not happen against them. This won’t be set on too many but I will ask the imms to post to mudinfo as they are identified and flagged. Builders, you can’t set this flag yourselves, an imm has to do it for you. (Quadrapus / Koala)
• Critical hits were not showing when the weapon damtype was just the generic ‘hit’ message. Now fixed. (Ocho)
• The cause of the last crash was pretty obscure - forcing an animated object to talk on a channel while we had the code on that requires new players to be ‘approved’ by an imm/advisor/helper before others can hear them, but is now fixed. Related bug causing special characters in mob names to throw a GMCP error when they talk on grouptalk also fixed. (Fiendish)
• Chance of retreating / fleeing from a high percentage in web have been reduced.
• The ‘reown’ command was not sending a GMCP update after the trivia points were charged, making it look like you didn’t get charged at all if you were only looking at client stat windows. (Shemyaza / Anaristos)>

New “Mindflay” Skill:

There is a new mentalist ability called Mindflay which allows you to damage a target in a nearby room by channeling the power of your weapons into a ranged mental attack. The attack works similarly to ’shoot’ but does not require any special equipment and, while it does require you to be close by, does not require line of sight. This is a skill rather than a spell and will not work on other Mentalists. The attack will do the equivalent of a single hit from each of your weapons. The only dodge that works against it is ‘Time Shift’ but you can still “miss” the hit based on stats or just bad luck. The attack does the damage type of your weapons, but if a mob is immune to mental damage will not work. Adding instinct in Mindflay will increase the chances of additional hits.

There is no lag on success on the attack but there is a small recovery - it is intended to be more of a slow steady damage from a safe distance than a major attack. The mobs will not hunt you down so feel free to sit 3 rooms away and safely kill something. Similarly, if you see someone OPK idling somewhere they shouldn’t, feel free to mindflay them down. I can see an obvious temptation to bot with this skill - please don’t do that, getting removed from the game will not help your character progress.

Expect changes to this as it’s pretty experimental. Damage may be too low, too high, just right, I don’t know. I won’t be at all surprised if I have to limit the potential for 20 mentalists to sit in a room and waste an epic by remote control. If certain mobs really need to be immune to mental because of this let us know. There’s a few additional pieces of information on the mechanics in the skill helpfile.

Critical hits and other skill / spell changes:

• There is a new critical hit feature where each weapon hit in regular combat has a hitroll based chance to do a critical hit. Primary class thieves have a higher chance of doing additional hitroll critical damange and can also critical hit with backstab. Mobs can also get these but at a lower rate, and they also tend to have less hitroll anyway.
• If you are displaying full damage message you will see this with a ‘*’ at the start of the damage message. If you have combined / average damage on then it will just be rolled into the totals - you will see a “*” if any of the attacks that caused that message were a critical hit.
• I wanted to make this high enough to be worthwhile at higher HR but a 15 to 25% buff to melee damage at high level was too much. It’s still a buff overall but base damage against mobs at higher level has been reduced to account for this. Note that none of this affects spells or skills other than backstab. (Watlok)
• Holy Reprisal has been turned down by a few percent to counter the effect of the HR hits as I’m not adding even more damage onto Avenger. Righteous Anger has been changed from double damage to be more around 60% because it was OP, and probably still is with crit hits but we’ll see.
• I have changed the way Amnesia works. In addition to targeting a single skill it will now also do a lower amount of reduction to all skills and spells so it is like a longer-lasting mini daze. It does also stack with daze. The duration has been increased and, when used against players, the timeout has been increased by the same amount.
• A venomist using the ‘envenom’ skill may now add the argument ‘poison’ or ‘disease’ to the command which will set the damage type of the weapon to poison / disease for the duration of the flag. When the weapon affect expires, the item will go back to its previous damtype. The duration of the effect for venomist has also been increased. (Tymme)
• The previous change with illuminate was to make it still possible to cast the spell even if an item already has a (Glow) flag. It was supposed to still set the Illuminate flag on a successful cast but was only doing that when stats were added. That made it possible to keep casting until you land stats and making enchanter’s focus pointless. This has now been fixed.

Equipment Capacity Changes:

• When you have saved superhero stats, and your saved Dexterity and Strength are higher than your current Dex / Str, then your max item and weight capacity will be determined based on your saved SH stats. You won’t have the full capacity you had at SH because you won’t have the benefit of stats from SH equipment and spellups, but this should at least help a lot with inventory issues right after remorting. Using the ‘weight’ command will show when your saved SH stats are being used. (Redryn)
• Once you have reached level 201 and remorted, your aard bags will stay at level 201 but Tiers won’t get the full benefit of bag over level 201 until they reach the appropriate level. Main reason for this change is to help with the equipment weight problems after a tier / remort / redo without increasing carry capacity overall at high level. (Redryn)
• You can now ‘quest sell’ a bag back to questor for 1,000qp. This seems like a fair price given that people have had use of the bags but now may have more than they need with the above change.

Other Changes in this Reboot:

• There is a new goal and an extension to the Diamond Soul Revelation area (DSR), both were created by Teleron. More information in the DSR helpfile.
• When typing ‘friend’ you will now see players who are invisible to you and it will show (Invis) next to their name. This only works on people who are also friends with you. (Sammael)
• The login screen no longer shows date last rebooted. Not sure if it was good to show we’re stable enough to be up 3+ months or bad to show we haven’t rebooted for that long. Either way, I don’t think new users care about reboot time and existing players logging in after a reboot already know about it.
• Fixed the alignment for a player kill in ‘lastkills’ (Tymme)
• When you have autoloot / auto sacrifice on and couldn’t carry the items in the corpse, the autosacrifice would not go through. This was not working the same way with special “always loot” items. If you kill a mob with one of these and can’t carry the special item, the corpse will no longer sacrifice (Ocho)
• Some skills / spells that can remove all stats from an item when they fail such as sharpen and reinforce will now also remove enchants recorded on the item. (Roume)
• Using ‘runto kflag’ in Aylor was taking you to the wrong room. Now fixed. (Bitties)
• Fixed a bug with large gold amounts in market bid charging the wrong commission. (Ixultar)
• When a clan changes its tax rate, it will no longer be broadcast to the whole MUD on the info channel. (Tymme)
• When you ‘look’ and see another player in the room, the ‘is here’ will no longer be shown if they have a title set. You will still get the message if they are sleeping, resting, etc.

Removal of ‘rebuild trains / simplification of rebuild and superhero process:

We have removed the ‘rebuild trains’ mechanic from the game. When you rebuild or class change, all stats will now be available for instinct. Any trains you had that were ‘rebuild trains’ before this reboot are now also available for instinct. Reason for removing the mechanic is that it’s overly complex and really hard to understand for newer players, and many older ones at times too.

The downside to making this change is people can rebuild right before they SH to get their trains on hand back before stat restore, so I guess everyone now gets bonus trains per redo / remort. Rather than leaving this is as a hidden mechanic only existing players will have the benefit of, I have changed Superhero so that it will automatically do a rebuild and add the trains to your total when stats from the previous remort are restored. The superhero command now has a ‘norebuild’ option for if you don’t want this to happen although I can’t think of too many reasons you wouldn’t want it. Because of this automatic rebuild, superhero no longer give an actual free rebuild on stat restore.

• When a non-primary class spellcaster is using staves, there is now a limit on how many targets can be hit. This does also affect Rangers and Paladins, but their limit is higher. The same change has been made to AOE spells. When the spells belongs to the primary class casting, such as ‘Ice Storm’ with Ranger or ‘Wrath of God’ with Paladin then the limit does not apply.
• When object bonuses are rolled, resists will be randomly more weighted towards whichever one is chosen first rather than completely random. Stats already work this way and makes the items more useful for people focusing on one damage type or stat. The way the code works there’s plenty of chances for more distributed resists too.
• Using ‘channels curse’ will now act as a filter to show only channels where cursing is allowed.
• When using the ‘lastkills’ command, the output will now show the total exp received as before but also the base experience from the mob before any bonuses were applied.
• It is no longer possible to strangle a Ninja, applies to both players and mobs.
• The ‘Precision’ skill will now only work against dodges that the warrior knows innately when fighting other players - this means dodge, parry and shield block. It is unchangd vs mobs. (Castiel) I know subclasses need a lot of work. Not going to promise some big sudden overhaul but will try to focus on more steady changes on the long march to fill them out. There are quite a few subclass changes already coded for the next reboot including at least a couple of new skills, but I want to do more testing before putting them in.
• We have turned off mob name scrambling in gquests and campaigns so any newly generated campaigns / global quests from this point forward will not have scrambled mob names. It served a purpose for a while but it’s time to move on from this.
• The drop-off in Hammerswing damage now starts at 3 mobs instead of 4 and increases slightly faster.
• The effect of being ‘dazed’ has always been much higher on spells than on skills (50% vs 30% or so). I have lowered this so that skills and spells are affected the same.
• The Illuminate spell has been modified so it no is no longer blocked by a (GLOW) flag when cast by an Enchanter. The spell is only blocked if the item has already previously been illuminated. It will still set the Glow flag if none is present. Trying this out on this one and depending how it goes may do the same for Resonate and Solidify.

• Increased the width of mob names in the ‘mobdeaths’ and ‘mobkills’ commands.

Fixed a null message when trying to unlock a door that cannot be unlocked because there is no key defined, presumably put there to require people to use pass door for a shortcut.

• If you had info clanonly on then outcast with it turned on it was impossible to turn it off because you’re no longer in a clan. This is now fixed.
• Goal info was not being displayed for any player if you had clanonly or friendonly filters set for info goals. Should by fixed now.
• Fixed some ‘weirdness’ in missing damage output in very large epic groups. Nobody probably noticed anyway as I doubt many people have groupspam on, but fixed now.
• Fixed a bug in rebuild that showed the wrong amount under ‘Charging {amount} trains’. It charged correctly, just showed the wrong number.

New Area and Goal - Ookushka Garrison:

Long ago, when the Tairayden tribe first attacked innocent beach goers, one person decided to try to take action against them, hunt them down and get revenge for their horrible actions and crimes against humanity. Since then, she was able to locate the origins of the tribe where she gathered much needed information to assist in tracking down the current location of the tribe. Now, using that information, Cedyca found the tribe’s hideout, known as the Ookushka Garrison. She stands at the ready near the entrance of the garrison, ready to recruit followers into her rebellion clan.

Are you brave enough to face off against the tribe, at the same time increasing your reputation with the rebellion clan? If so, seek out Cedyca and let her know of your interest in joining the effort. Be warned, though, this will be no easy task.

Level Range         : 201 to 201
Goal Difficulty     : Easy
Goal Recommended at : Level 201
Goal Author         : Rhuli
Area Author         : Rhuli

New Area and Goal - Arboretum:

The arboretum was a pristine refuge for plants and animals that flourished as the diva, elves, and other creatures of nature protected and preserved it. Others that walked through it would talk about the magnificent plants and animals they saw and how glad they were that they were able to experience it!

After some time, strange stories started to come from the visitors. At first it was just how the ‘feeling’ of the land had changed and how the visitors no longer felt welcome there. These initial reports were written off, saying that the people who reported it were already not in a good state of mind and shouldn’t have been there in the first place. It wasn’t long after those reports were received that other things started to happen. People turned up missing, and the feel of the place changed from uneasy to a strong feeling of malevolent intent from there. In their desperation to discover what happened, an investigative party was sent there. No one has heard anything from them for quite a while.

When the lone survivor emerged, he was ranting things about carnivorous plants and strange plant/animal mutations that were impossible. Will you be the one to investigate and find out what happened here, as well as deal with the cause of the problems, or will you just walk away and pretend that nothing really happened?

Level Range          : 110 to 120
Goal Difficulty      : Medium
Goal Recommended at  : Level 115
Goal Min Level       : Level 115
Area Author          : Teleron

• The Cabal clan has merged into Loqui. Any members of Cabal will now be a member of Loqui and will receive a note explaining the change at login.
• Professor Ray Deanking has taken a sabatacle from his classes at Aylor University to assist players in the art of (Raiding). You can find him in the ‘Raiding School’ testmaze.

  This is a new goal added by Rezit for the first Test Maze. More testmaze related goals will follow in due course.

• Fixed a bug in berserk spell tags for ‘already affected’ which was coming through as spell disabled.
• Fixed a bad error message when you aren’t specific enough on choosing subclass in creation it was showing the race prompt. Amazing how stuff like this can sit out there for 12 years before anyone notices.
• The gold cost of Pray for Absolution and HP cost of Pray for Damnation were both slightly incorrect. Now fixed.