April 28, 2013

March Madness
by Antons

The month of March 2013 was a busy one for changes to both equipment and classes. Silairyas, the new WoM assistant, has become the new face of change and changed many gameplay dynamics about warriors and a few things about equipment in general. In this brief synopsis I'll go into March's changes and what they mean to you. As time progresses it's my intention on making a series of informative Mudslinger articles to help supplement the changes as they occur. One of the big goals of the ongoing equipment revamp is, with enough variety in stats, any zone can offer something unique or useful for people to go run. Below is the list of the changes I'll be discussing, what those changes mean to you, and what their projected impact is on the player-base itself.

03/05/13
- There have been rumors that the Neumanaga recently expanded their patrol of The Hunting Grounds.
A few blocker mobs with a fast repop time were put in, to try to help with the problem of people using clan-less and often equipment-less alts to rush the zone. The zone should have the danger of being open cpk and be bankable, but we don't want gearless alts to be able to run in and try for a lucky hands or trip with nothing to lose except a level. The overall idea is that if you can beat the new mobs quickly and get to the formation you're trying to bank; your group has enough gear to also run the zone.

03/09/13
- A new shop has been added to Trellor that allows rerolling of some component EQ. Please note this feature is still in testing, and item availability, cost, and components are subject to change as necessary.
This is still being tweaked some, but it allows for some previous high cost component items that could potentially be junk when made to now be rerolled, which should result in better overall item stats for those seeking to make component equipment if they wish to reroll them for better stats. Most importantly a melee ww-ring equivalent has been added to Mystic Steel in trellor. This item is nobadtweak, just like a regular ww is, but this does not guarantee a max tweak of 5/3 in this case.

03/14/13
- The order of some of the keys in Bloodstone has changed, and new content has been added.
This basically started off as just the cool idea of, "Hey there's this unused part of Bloodstone, it used to load a mob there but now it doesn't, it would be easy to fix it up and put it back in". As that process progressed, we came to the conclusion that the real existing flaw of bloodstone is there isn't much useful gear that loads before day 3 and 4, and adding another mob onto the end would just add to the problem. So as a result Deathknight and Glaberzu keys can be attained much earlier and run before day 4 if so desired. The idea is that the zone will become a sliding scale of difficulty so smaller clans could do the first couple days of stone, gets some nice stuff, then work together on the bigger days or sell their keys to the bigger clans.

03/15/13
- Meditate now takes 20% fewer movement points.
This change is just as it reads you can meditate easier and more often without standing to cast refresh.

- All classes now have the same footfall chance for backstab. Previously, there was a penalty for non-thieves.
This is a huge buff for those clerics and mages that wish to build an hr/dr set and backstab, and also a slight buff for warriors who wish to stab. Very often it becomes better to make a hitroll/damroll set in herobattles and simply stab as a cleric/mage, now it will be even more viable.

- It is now more difficult to flee from raging warriors.
This change makes it even more difficult to flee from warrior type mobs most especially high level ones that rage a lot. When you would normally be able to flee sometimes you will now receive a message saying you were unable to flee from the raging mob. Overall this will make running equipment zones somewhat harder if the mobs are set to warrior, and slightly buff the ability to flee from player warriors. Hopefully this results in less bash/trip/zerg warriors and more rage warriors in CPK as well.

03/17/13
- Rumors speak of a ferocious new monster and unearthed treasures in E'urdin Zilartzen.
There was a portion of E'urdin that was meant to be used as the entry point for a future day 2 that never got finished. So a chunk of the zone was just there with no purpose, with nothing loading except a few mobs. A new mob has now been added and another little surprise a lot of people have found. It's all on the same difficulty level as the rest of the zone, but can be low-manned and possibly even solo'd by someone. Within the whole zone the gear (including the component gear) was given a lot of new stats and adjusted. The goal being that you could find interesting stuff there without having to be in a power clan to run it.

03/17/13
- The shop in the holosection near Elnissa has reopened. Several of the items have had their costs and stats adjusted since the shop was last open. Make sure to use the 'inquire' command to see stats before you buy. There will be no refunds for mistaken purchases. As with other shops, this shop should be considered 'in-testing' and item cost and availability will be subject to change as needed.
Very simple change and is exactly as it reads, new items in the Elnissy shop!

03/18/13
- Low-level warrior mobs will no longer use the rage skill during combat. The chance for all other warrior mobs to use rage during combat has been slightly lessened.
This is because the original change to warrior players inadvertently caused all warriors including mobs in the game to rage tons, and caused even more issues with people trying to flee from them.

03/24/13
- Parry now receives a modifier depending on the type of weapon you and your opponent are wielding.

- Disarm now receives a modifier depending on the type of weapon you and your opponent are wielding.
For both disarm and parry, 2hander > 1hander > bser, and a bonus is also given if an offhand is wielded, or if the weapon has the LONG flag. This seems to have resulted in warriors being more effective vs mobs and for equipment runs. This also seems to have resulted in warriors being slightly less effective vs other classes in pk situations, but perhaps warriors haven't gotten used to what they need to do to be effective given the new changes.

- Players and mobs will be unable to re-wield their weapons for 1 round after being successfully disarmed.
This change is fairly simple, if someone takes the time to disarm you, which is now harder to do in some respects, you will remain disarmed for one round.

- Warrior mobs will now use disarm and bash slightly less often.
The recent changes to warriors made most of the high level warrior mobs in the game unrealistically hard, and this change was a way to balance out warrior mobs to help make them easier. This appears to only have slightly made them easier and they still appear significantly harder than they originally were.

- The ruby dragonhide proc for hand items has been modified to give a slightly lower chance of attempting disarm and protecting against disarm.
This has been done to help balance disarm back out slightly as it now takes one round to rearm. The overall effect should be that ruby hands won't be used as a huge advantage for mages/clerics against warriors/thieves as they have been for so many years.

Also of note Toshi and Warrens have had their xp, mob stats, cpk risk, and a few pieces of eq changed.