Aardwolf MUD Blog

MUD Update - March 31st 2018:

• The main reason for the reboot today was to merge Dominion into Retribution.

A few other minor changes that made it in with the reboot but nothing really that important:

• The bug with OPK flag sometimes getting confused with the Augmented healing recovery should now be fixed.
• I have changed the delay on being able to remove the flag after you add it from 3 days to 12 hours, and, changed the delay on being able to add the flag back after you remove it from 24 hours to 3 days. The goal is to have the same overall timeout but give a people who try out OPK and get “griefed” a chance to get out of it sooner. This is instead of having limits on how often someone can be PKed hard-coded into the game.
• Might be some helpfiles that need cleaning up but otherwise have removed references to “nobles” from the game, including messages when someone reaches level 100, gamestat, who, etc.
• Using ‘runto kflag’ in Aylor now works as an alias to go to the Aylor forge.
• The GMCP ‘base’ set of data now has a list of your remorts in the order they were gained. The values are numbers that correspond to the order of classes in ’showskill’, so 0 = mage through 6 = psi. Some redundancy here with ‘class’ and ‘remorts’ but I didn’t want to change those and break existing plugins.
• Cleaned up the ouput of ‘deposit’ and ‘withdraw’ with no arguments to be a little more helpful.

Equipment Bonuses Enhancements:

• The object bonuses are a little (just a little) more weighted towards DR over other stats and the base bonuses are upped a little.
• Items will now also have a chance for lower level when the bonus kicks in. This is on top of the regular level randomizing so it’s possible you get one that looks no better than usual if it repopped higher then the bonus lowered it, or one even lower level than previously possible.
• The max stats an item can get is now based on the item’s default level not it’s actual level. This means that a level 181 item repopping at level 178 doesn’t get penalized with lower potential max stats at level 178.
• It is harder for items with already close to max stats to get bonuses. I’ve changed this so the difference isn’t quite as high.
• Bonus items that are donated or sold will now last much longer. They will stick around for about 6 hours on average compared to just over an hour for donated items and average 45 minutes for sold to shop. Would like to make this even longer but need to balance with clutter in the shops and donate rooms so let’s see how it goes.
• Items with the ‘nodrop’ flag can now get bonuses. If there are “bad” items imms particularly don’t want to have bonuses there is a separate flag we can set.
• The amount of weapon base damange a bonus item can add has been increased slightly. There is also a minimum amount of damage that will be added to lower level bonus weapons when a percentage doesn’t really do a whole lot for it.
• Arrows will no longer get stat bonuses. They can still get bonus flags though and will get the added damage. Also a reminder that tempering arrows greatly increases the number of uses.
• When a bonus item gets player stats (str, con, etc), the stats will now tend to more weighted towards the first stat it picks. This means that items adding lots of stats will generally (not always) have more of one stat than completely randomly spread which makes them more useful to people trying to optimize for one stat. It is also possible for these stats to go a little higher than before.
• Items that get a bonus will also fetch a higher price when selling to a store or fencing them.

Other Changes this Reboot:

• There is a new command called ‘bonusloot’. Setting this flag will cause you to loot items that load with random bonus stats even if you have autoloot turned off. This defaults on ON.
• There is also a new command called ‘lootnext’ which will cause you to loot the next corpse only. The idea is that you can keep autoloot off but use this command to loot only the next mob you kill. You can also make an alias to turn this on then attack your target if you are going to use lootnext often.

There is a little extra complexity in how autoloot, bonusloot, lootnext and skipnext flags interact. You should get a message when the flags contradict each other. If you turn on skipnext it will cancel lootnext and vice versa.

• When you loot an item it will now get a hidden ‘looted’ flag. You can do ‘inv filter looted’ to show the items looted and, once the items are shown, it will clear the flag. This means that you can use the command to look at items looted since last time you checked. This only happens when you autoloot an item. Manually getting it from a mob corpse or acquiring it any other way does not count. Dropping the item, putting into a container or any other action that takes it out of your main inventory (including wearing) also removes the flag.
• Using ’shelp’ will now show how many times a social has been used since reboot. Something I wanted for my own reasons and figured there was no reason to not let everyone see it.
• There is now an ‘inv filter bonus’ that also works with ‘lbid filter’ but, unfortunately, will only work with bonus items loaded from this point forward.
• The ‘poison’ and ‘disease’ flags on a character will no longer prevent the full ‘Green Death’ from working, in terms of other skills only the green death skill effect itself will prevent it landing again.

Accessibility Features:

We are working on some features to make the game more accessible for players using screen readers. There seems to be some debate on which term is appropriate and I am told people are moving away from ‘vi’ and just going with ‘blind’. We can figure that out later but I don’t want it to get in the way of improving the game for screen reader users so I’m just using “blind” below.

• There is now a ‘blindmode’ command. Setting it to 1 means that other players can use ‘who blind’ or ‘who vi’ to find you. Settings it to 2 means it is private. Setting 2 doesn’t actually do anything yet, but over time the game will output commands to you differently based on that setting (see below).

After some discussion with a few people on the personal board, we are trying to figure out the best way to present some of the Aard commands that output tables of data into a format more friendly for screen readers.

To help get to some answers on that, I made a few new versions of the ’stats’ command. I picked this command because it’s a short table with a lot of data and totals at both row and column level.

I would appreciate it if the players using screen readers could try these out and give feedback on the ideas board on which works best for you and why. Please use ‘note replay 39108′ for that thread.

• The “stats vi” command is fairly verbose and describes each column each times it reads the data.
• The “stats vi2″ command tells you up front what the columns are going to be then just gives the numbers.
• The “stats vi3″ command is a combination of the two with a definition up front then a short letter prefix. I did this because if I were using
  only a screen reader on longer more complex tables I’d probably forget what each column was by the time I got to the end.

The inconsistent labeling of stats is intentional to see which works better for you.

If there is a better format than any of these then please post examples along with why. We need to get this as easy as possible for screen readers before converting many of our other commands to use the same format.

Thanks to everyone who took part in the early discussion on this as we would have definitely not gotten this far without you. I want to move the discussion to a public board now and involve anyone who wants to take part.

Equipment Bonuses on Game Load Items:

There is new code in the game to randomly add stats to game load items. This feature has a lot more code behind it than simple “add some random stats” and tries to be a lot more intelligent about what stats an item already has and the max stats items that level can have in which categories.

There is an initial dice roll for whether or not an item gets stats and, every time the roll passes, there is another roll. More rolls mean more stats are added. It’s all random but there are some levels of bonus (odds in the hundreds of millions) we are not likely to see, but you never know. Weapons will gain a damage bonus. It won’t show as a + amount in identify, it will just have a higher than usual base damage.

It is balanced with the goal of randomly loading decent items, more rarely loading really good items and even more rarely, items that could easily be the best in the game but with odds such that farming isn’t really practical.

Items that load with a bonus will have a flag that looks something like ‘(Polished)’. Those with red instead of green brackets are the most rare. These flags become part of the item name so they will be visible in auction messages etc.

Right now this only applies to regularly loaded items that are reset on the mob and looted. Anything loaded via a mob prog (where the mob usually gives it to you) will not have a chance for the bonus stats. I may add a lua command to fix this later. You can also only roll bonus stats on mobs close to your own level or higher. There isn’t much naturally loading tier equipment in the game but the few items there are do get similar bonuses up to the tiermaxes allowed.

I expect to have to modify this up and down in some level ranges but for now let’s see how it goes.

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Other changes in this reboot

• Number of free rebuilds on hand is no longer reset when you tier. If you don’t have any rebuilds at all, one will be added, but if you have more they will no longer be lost.
• It is now possible to forward an empty note. (Fiendish). Also cleaned up the note prefix line a little on forwarded notes.
• The ‘nowar’ setting which toggles warfare message on / off is now visible in config all. Could make an argument for this to go in any of config, channels or info but at least it is visible somewhere for now. (Fiendish)
• The duration of each game season was off by a day causing it not to match the help file. Now fixed. (Endymion)
• Fixed a bug in an imm object list command that caused the last crash.

Winds of Fate Epic Area:

What are the winds of fate? Is it a flutter of air that passes over your brow that sends a shiver down your spine? Is it a smell of something fresh, anew, like freshly baked bread, or a warm apple pie? Or is it something dire, such as an assassin breathing down your neck, ready to slit your throat at a moments notice.

A steward now rests in an unholy grove. This grove was created due to those winds and the decisions of people before them. Navigate the winds and decide your fate. Hopefully those winds will be fair. The steward will assist you in your journey to figure out how those winds created the havoc set before you.

Level Range           : Level 200
Goal Difficulty       : Extremely difficult (Epic)
Goal Recommended at   : Groups of 8-10 people
Goal Converter        : Rezit
Area Author           : Rezit

Note:
This is a very high level area that requires a large group of powerful characters to complete. This area is a morgue area- unclanned/outcast players dying in this area will suffer usual death penalties but will wake in the Aylorian Hospital with all their equipment.

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New Superhero Area - Crossroads of Fortune
Begin a journey with Lord Durkin who plays the part of the fool in this lifelong adventure. Walk in his footsteps as he travels through the Land of Major Arcana; a place where hopes and dreams are revealed.

Relive the lord’s life with him as he travels through the four realms of the Minor Arcana. The Realm of Spring is one of childhood and growth, the Realm of Summer reveals young adulthood and its challenges, the Realm of Autumn is a place for love and marriage, and the Realm of Winter tackles the struggles of a career and parenting.

When doubt and worry change Durkin’s path, he finds himself in the Land of the Major Arcana Reversed. Stumble through this land of pain and sorrow as the lord becomes lost in his own guilt and fears.

Lord Durkin could use some assistance in getting his life back on track. If you have the time and patience to help him, then it is likely that good karma will join you in your future travels.

Level Range         : 201
Goal Difficulty     : Easy
Goal Recommended at : Level 201
Goal Converter      : Robbo & Guinness
Area Author         : Robbo & Guinness

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New Goal in Realm of the Zodiac

Long ago, in her anger with Zeus, Hera conspired with Gaia and Tartarus to create a monster capable of defeating Zeus. That monster was named Typhos. Zeus and Typhos fought a terrible battle that resulted in Typhos being defeated. Now, ages after that battle, Typhos is gaining strength and threatens to destroy our world. With the threat of Typhos emerging again, some of the gods have gone into hiding again.

Will you be the person to venture into the Zodiac and save the world?

Level Range         : 20 to 30
Goal Difficulty     : Easy
Goal Recommended at : Level 25
Goal Min Level      : Level 20
Goal Converter      : Teleron
Area Author         : Aardwolf Community

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Code changes this reboot

• When a player is outcast from their clan, if the ‘info clanonly’ flag is set it will be automatically cleared. (Rezit/Guinness)
• Increased the output limit on ‘owned’ from 500 to 1000. Any more than that and you’re just going to have to get rid of some stuff.
• Dying while in your own clan hall with a Hardcore flag now counts the same as dying anywhere else and the flag will be removed. Clan leaders may want to consider their own policies on attacking Hardcore clannies. This does not apply while defending against a raid.
• Fixed a bug where Avengers would get the ‘flail’ skill on creation but are actually given a whip. They now correctly get the ‘whip skill.

Priest / Martyr Subclass Merge:

The Martyr and Priest classes have been merged with the subclass skills of the two combined into Priest. If you were a Martyr before this reboot then you should have received a note explaining the change. If you were a Priest before the reboot then you gained:

Humility, Sacrifice life, Heavenly Smiting, Serenity

Be sure to read the helps on these and if you just got these skills for the first time you will need to practice them. If you were a Martyr then any percent practiced in these should have carried over.

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Holy Preference / Unholy Preference - New Priest / Harmer Ability:

There is a new Priest ability called ‘Holy Preference‘. More information is in the helpfile but the short version is that this a passive ability that causes Protection from Good to be ignored on the target, unless the target is also a Priest (and some mobs can be priests).

There is a new corresponding Harmer ability called ‘Unholy Preference‘ that causes Protection from Evil to be ignored on the target. Again, more details in the helpfile but this does *not* stack with Desecration. I realize that for max-stat Harmers this does nothing at all as you can have Desecration up 100% of the time, but it will help at other levels and stat ranges.

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Channel Changes:

There is a new feature to allow you to turn off a channel for a set number of minutes rather than permanently. This only works on regular channels, not channels tied to a specific feature such as auction. As an example, to turn off gossip for 10 minutes use:

 gossip *off 10

If the channel is already off then you are basically setting a timer to turn it back on in 10 minutes. The timeout shows in the ‘channels’ command and if you manually turn on the channel in the meantime then any timeout on the channel will be cancelled.

Gossip channel is relatively quiet these days and with this new feature in place to turn off the occasional temporary “explosion” on the channel, we would like to encourage more discussion on gossip rather than sidebar channels. Between that and clearing up a couple of channels we just no longer need, the following channels have been removed:

Debate, Mxit, Sports, quote, Gsocial, Nobletalk, Advice and Gametalk

Obviously we’re not going to tell people to move conversations to channels that don’t exist so this can be considered a loosening of the the channel rules in terms of where conversations take place. It does *not* change any of the rules about excessive trolling and spamming.

These channels have also been removed from ‘gamestat 12′ and from colorset options.

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Other Changes in this Reboot:

• The amount by which align impacts Paladin damage has been increased. This means that extreme align Paladins will do more damage with spells (approx 25%) then before the change. Paladins closer to neutral will do slightly less damage than before. I have seen suggestions to remove this alignment bonus / penalty completely but would rather keep it and make it more worthwhile.
• The Blazing Fury spell has been added to the list of spells that cannot be used on clan items (staves, scrolls, etc). This was an earlier oversight as the other higher level paladin attack spells were already on the list. No impact to existing items in the game.
• The ‘Desecration’ and ‘Party Sanctuary’ spells can now be cast while in combat.
• Made ‘Curse of Sloth’ duration more based on stats and greatly reduced the recovery timer (Kane). Made the same changes to the ‘Flank’ skill.
• When using Hammerswing, the hammer will start to slow down after the first 3 opponents in the room and do less damage to subsequent targets Overall damage over time (number of rounds) does still increase regardless of number of opponents.
• The ‘Sacrifice Life’ spell will now show the actual amount healed. (Daresia)
• The base percentage on Precision (soldier skill to ignore dodges) has been increased, particularly in PVP.
• The ‘pkoff’ setting will now be set by default for new users. This is the one that prevents you from attacking another player via area attacks etc. (StarsOcar / Arcidayne)
• Someone who is hardcore should now be able to attack OPK players but with the usual level checks in place. Someone who is OPK should be able to attack hardcore without level checks in place same as everyone else. (XiQuan)
• When you Superhero you will now get a full restore. Not a big deal but with sometimes large amounts of HP being restored from saved stats this will allow a new superhero to enjoy their own double without having to spend 5 minutes healing. (DjVoltron / Soleila)

Avenger / Inquisitor Merge:
The Inquisitor and Avenger classes have been merged with all of the subclass skills of the two combined onto Avenger. If you were an Inquisitor before this reboot then you should have received a note explaining the change. If you were an Avenger before the reboot then you gained:

Flay, Lash, Interrogate and Tortured Visions

Be sure to read the helps on these and if you just got these skills for the first time you will need to practice them. If you were an inquisitor then any percent practiced in these should have carried over but you will need to practice Righteous Anger.

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Holy Reprisal - New Avenger Ability:
There is a new Avenger ability called ‘Holy Reprisal’. This is an automatic passive skill like weapon skills or fast healing which means that you don’t have to cast it as a spellup. You do still have to practice it for it to start working.

This skill will give you a damage bonus against any player or mob that initiates combat directly against you. This skill is not like revenge - when the fight stops the list of attackers is cleared. The main point of this skill was to give a damage bonus against aggressive mobs, the PK benefit is just a bonus.

In terms of activating this skill, it does not trigger if the attacker has revenge against you or when the Safeguard skill is used to rescue someone. If someone attacks a group member present in the room at the time of the attack then you do get Holy Reprisal against them too. When a group member is attacked rather than the Avenger directly the reprisal is not as powerful, but still enough to punish them for attacking your group.

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Other Changes:

• The ‘Tortured Visions’ ability now has no lag when casting but has a small recovery on failure of one round of combat. This means that you can try (and retry) the spell without it affecting other combat abilities but can’t just spam it with zero lag. The base amount of intelligence it removed has also been increased slightly.
• The ‘info other’ channel has been removed as it was no longer needed. The double exp messages previously in there are now part of info global. The only other thing it was used for is remort / retier info which is now under classchange. The ‘levels’ info might have been more logical for that but I wanted it to be possible to get the info on ‘major’ levels such as remort and retier without having to keep on all the other level info spam.
• Added a few new builder lua prog commands on the test port over the last couple of weeks so check them out if you’re a builder.

Aardwolf Server Move:
Aardwolf moved to a new server tonight - the domains should update shortly but the new I/P address is 23.111.136.202. The domain ‘aardwolf.net’ can be used to reach the server immediately as DNS on that was updated weeks ago.

Other than a general technology refresh this server will allow us to experiment with ‘instances’ and some other ideas we haven’t been able to touch because of memory constraints on our previous server.

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Aardwolf Update - January 28th 2017:

Quite a few unrelated but important changes this reboot. The list is below:

• There is now a ‘who wanted’ option.
• The speed at which the Navigator “Timeshifting” spell reduces lag is now based on stats and is generally lower than before but now has 100% uptime. At max stats it is very close to what it was before so this is a minor buff overall. Navigator is clearly not one of the classes most in need of attention - this was a fairly quick fix to help depend on recoveries less, nothing more than that.
• The ‘parry’ skill has been modified so that proficiency in your own weapon is far more important than the attacker’s weapon. This means that it is now possible (but still more difficult) to parry attacks with weapons you don’t know.
• When dying in an epic area your chances of losing a stat have been greatly reduced. We have not removed the chance completely but it’s about 10% of what it was before the change
• The starting cost of a class change is now 5,000qp and it will decrease 100qp per day over 50 days until you reach and eventual cost of zero. The previous 2,000qp minimum has been removed.
• The way daily prayer reset tokens work has been changed so that they no longer reset your original timer. For example, the means that you can use a token with 3 hours left on your timer and the timer will still be 3 hours. Note that when you use a token it now does the new daily blessing immediately rather than simply resetting the timer - this was the only way the new timer could work.

  This also opens the potential for being eligible to receive a new DB while you already have effects from the previous one (you use a token close to original expire time). If this happens the game should warn you and require a ‘confirm’ option to overwrite the previous blessing.

• Ambush will now completely ignore the HARDCORE flag - this means that you can only ambush a person in a room if you would be able to attack them normally in that same room. OPK and all other flags (should) work as before.
• The OPK flag now shows in ‘whois’.
• The ‘keyring data’ option now shows the actual color codes to make it consistent with invdata. If you want to see the actual colors, use ‘keyring data ansi’. Made this same change to the ‘vault data’ command.
• There is now a 3 second period after a successful backstab during which you can’t flee. This closes a loophole with quickstab being able to backstab (no lag), flee, and repeat for each mob in the room with no delay. I did not add the delay to ‘retreat’ as retreat already has a skill delay. So now we have a ‘no flee’ recovery maybe it should be set for a while when you initiate pk on someone, or maybe not, just a thought…

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Info Channel Rewrite / New Filters:
The way that the ‘info’ channel works has been redone. If you type ‘info’ now you will see a matrix of settings for on/off on each type of message but also for being able to make each type of message include friends or clan members only.

If you set both options then friends _and_ clan members will show, not only people who are both. If you are not in a clan at all you’ll only see the ‘friends’ column. The previous ‘clanonly’ filter is no longer used - if you had that set then your levels, deaths and powerup info channels have been set to clanonly.

  To change options, Use the syntax:

       info [channel] [friends] to toggle on friends only.
       info [channel] [clanonly] to toggle clan only options.

  You can also abbreviate these 'fr' and 'cl'.

When you view history for info you now view each type separately. You do see everything, not just what was filtered and shown to you. The syntax is:

info -h [channel]

The ‘channel’ value is any of those shown when you type ‘info’ with no arguments.

Messages that previously went to info and couldn’t be filtered such as marriage, season changes and double exp are on a new ‘info global’ setting so there is probably some clean up to do between this and ‘info other’. The ‘notes’ info channel is also global as that is based on whether you are subscribed to the board not who posted it.

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Bugs Fixed in this Reboot:

• When PK was changed to not create a corpse that was for convenience only and rot-death items were still supposed to have had the timer set.
  This also introduced a bug with clan keys and raid items not being removed in a PK death, including a suicide. I (hopefully) fixed this in a way that does not cause rot-death items to be removed in previous scenarios that didn’t produce a corpse such as morgue rooms, but needs testing. Sorry it took a while to fix this pretty serious bug, was super buy over the holidays and it was a fairly complex fix.
• Fixed the 7 digit note numbers on personal - will correctly loop at 999,999 in future. Not going to fix the exiting note numbers so it will be ‘untidy’ for a little while until those personal notes expire.
• Fixed a bug with the default ‘elemental focus’ type not being used correctly.
• The ‘pkstats’ command was giving incorrect message for non-clanned or NOPK clanned players with OPK flag. Now fixed.
• Fixed a bug with items carried and weight carried when a player dies to a mob with items on the keyring.
• There was a bug in campaign rewards with practices not counting in your total for rebuild. For someone who does a lot of campaigns, this could result in negative practices showing in rebuild stats.

Open PK (OPK) feature added to Aardwolf:

There is a new feature called ‘OPK’ which is an abbreviation of ‘open PK’.

A player can flag ‘OPK’ at any time but, once set, cannot be removed for at least 3 days or until you remort. When the flag is manually removed, there is a 24 hour timer before it can be added again. The most important things to know about the flag are:

• You can be PKed by other OPK players in any room in the game that is not a ’safe’ room or similar.
• There are no clan restrictions on using this. The game considers you a regular PK player regardless of clan. This means that any other ‘PK’ player (not just other OPK players)s can attack you in a PK room. Only other OPK players can attack you in a non-pk room. Other than this, who you can and can’t attack follows regular PK rules including level checks, not being able to kill people in same clan, etc.
• While you are ‘OPK’ flagged, you will receive a 10% exp bonus for all kills, enhanced campaign rewards similar to hardcore and will receive, on average, 2 extra qp per quest. We will probably end up tweaking the numbers for both hardcore and OPK but right now these are decent bonuses for the added potential of interruption to your playing but intentionally less then hardcore bonuses.

A few other housekeeping items related to Open PK:

• You cannot be hardcore and OPK at the same time.
• OPK (and Hardcore) players will no longer show their location in ‘where’ unless they are either in warfare, in a clan room, or you have revenge on them. Oracles and Ninjas can see full location.
• Hardcore players, Hardcore kills, OPK Players, OPK kills and regular PK kills now show in gamestat 5. Pinning down exactly what is considered a “OPK kill” vs a regular PK can be tricky. A kill is considered ‘OPK’ if the two players wouldn’t have normally been able to kill each other without the flag but it doesn’t check every single scenario - mostly if the players in a non-pk room or are in a PK room but one / both of them are not clanned. There are probably other scenarios where it technically isn’t an OPK kill (such as revenge), but this is close enough to get a feel for activity level of the new feature.

Other PK related changes:

• To prevent ‘griefing’ on corpse retrievals and genally make PK less of a pain, you will no longer have a corpse to collect after being PKed. Equipment will be kept on you as if it were a warfare or combat maze kill. You do still get transported to your morgue with hp/mana/moves at 10. The grace period on OPK kills has also been increased to 10 minutes.
• Using ‘who pk’ will now also include OPK and hardcore players.
• Hardcore mode now has a bonus qp for each quest completed at an average of 3qp per quest.

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Keyrings and other changes unrelated to OPK:

• Made a couple of changes to the way keyrings work. When you die, a container will be created called, for example, Razor’s Keyring. Whatever items were on your keyring at the time of death will be in this container. Whenever this container is returned to you, the items will be quietly transferred back onto your keyring. Rot-death keys will *not* be purged on keyring so this transfers over the bag ‘loophole’ which I don’t have much appetite for fixing after all these years.
• If someone else loots your corpse then your keyring will sit in their inventory as a normal container until they return it to you, at which point the items will transfer to keyring again.
• Changed the way ‘Elemental Ward’ works - it will remember the last damage type you chose and automatically use that same damage type if you cast the spell with no arguments. This makes it more useful with the ’spellup’ command.
• The Air Focus, Fire Focus, Earth Focus and Water Focus spells have been removed and replaced with the single spell ‘Elemental Focus’. When you cast it you now have to specify which damage type you want to focus on. As with Elemental Ward, it will remember the last damage type you used and default to that if cast with no arguments. Also to clarify, this effect does increase melee damage too, not just spells, so with the recent increase it is fairly significant.
• Any percent practiced you had in air focus is now elemental focus. The game will estimate practices spent on the other 3 and add some practices for them at login.
• Allspells will no longer show spells that have been removed.
• Invsort by weight should now correctly display the weight of aard bags and other containers that have items in them and a weight multiplier.
• Setwanted will now show the player name that set the flag in the info message.

In addition to the stats saving across each remort, a number of other changes were added to the game today:

• When you superhero loud, you will now be given 200 additional trains.
• Channel history size for global channels such as gossip, auction, etc is now 200 lines, was previously 100.
• There is now an ‘invsort weight’ option that will show inventory sorted in descending order of weight. Works on a container, for example, ‘invsort weight bag’. Also works with ‘vault sort’ and ‘keyring sort’.
• When viewing inventory, keyring will now always show even if it has no items on it. Always showing it is best way to inform / remind people that the feature exists at all.
• The change mentioned to Hammerswing last reboot is now in - no change at all to Hammerswing when solo. When using Hammerswing in a group, you will only hit targets you are directly in combat with, which means that either you are targeting them or they are targeting you.
• Elemental Ward has changed a little - you have to specify one elemental damage type (air, earth, fire or water) when you cast it, but the protection for that one type has doubled. There is no output to the room when you cast this - others will not know what type of ward you have used.
• Elemental Ward and the Elemental Focus focus spells can now be cast at the same time and no longer have a recovery time. They can also both be cast during combat.

I’m going to improve the syntax on these so elemental ward remembers the last type you gave is so it will work better from ’spellup’ then do the same with the focus spells. Don’t want this to hold up the reboot though so it will be in next reboot.

• The ‘Precision’ skill no longer has a cooldown. The effect of precision is already stat based so having a cooldown also based on stats makes less sense now than it must have whenever I wrote the skill.
• When you are in character creation mode after tiering, you will no longer be asked your MUD experience level.
• There was an older bug where you could wear an item with a skill bonus before you have the skill then remove it after you gained the skill and would end up with a negative bonus. Good example was the Rudolph Nose (+6 to toxic cloud) worn before level 175 then removed after level 175. Should be fixed now.
• Fixed a bug with quest appraise showing incorrect stats for bag at level 201 as a tier.
• Fixed a bug with new tierpins not showing in owned.

Major change to save stats across every remort:

• The way stats are stored across remorts and tiers has changed. Whenever you remort, *all* of your current stats will be saved. When you reach level 201 on your next remort, those stats will be restored. If you do not have a free rebuild at the time you superhero, you will be given one. This is not a +1, if you already have one then you don’t get another.
• The goal of this change is to allow someone to do some powerups at level 201, maybe experience a superhero group run or two, and not have those trains or stats be wasted. It will break up the grind rather than having to immediately remort as soon as you hit level 201, or have time spent at SH wasted. It also gives the option to save base stats rather than hp, mana or moves across tiers. If you have saved stats, the ’stats saved’ command can be used to display them.

The next few paragraphs get really into the details and get quite complex. If you don’t understand all this, the basics are that stats are saved across remorts and, when you reach level 201, whichever is higher of your current *total* stats vs your saved *total* stats is restored. It’s hard to mess up unless you remort at level 201, put all your trains into hp/mana/moves then leave yourself with no stats when you reach level 201 next time around - don’t do that!

• To get into some more of the details, your trains on hand and practices on hand are also restored so there is no way to “double spend” your trains by rebuilding at level 200. The only exception to this is that any trains on hand at the time you superhero that are instinct eligible (previously unspent / not from a rebuild) will get added to the restored trains on hand.
• Because trains on hand are stored across remorts, the ‘auto instinct deposit at remort / tier’ is no longer necessary and has been removed. If you try to remort with rebuild trains on hand (cannot be saved) then the game will advise you to spend them on stats instead.
• There is a ‘norestore’ option to superhero that also requires the ‘confirm’ option to be added. Taking the norestore option will mean that your previous stats will NOT be restored and will be overwritten by your current stats when you remort. This is irreversible, there will be no manual pfile edits because someone did not pay attention. The main purpose for this existing at all is if your current stats are close to the stored stats and, for whatever reason, you prefer the current stats.
• When you superhero, if the total cost of your current stat (in trains) is higher than the total cost of your stored stats, the game will warn you that you might want to consider taking the norestore option to keep your current stats, then will require the ‘confirm’ option either way. This is based on current training costs including wishstats / tierstats.
• Because I had to calculate these anyway I figured might as well make them visible in a command, so the ‘train totals’ command will show the total train cost from your base stats to your current stats based on current training costs. If you have saved stats, it also shows the same for your saved stats. This is useful to help you decide which set of stats to keep.
• If you are a tier with previously saved hp/mana/moves or on a t9 redo, those stats will restore the next time you reach SH and from that point on you will be under this new system.