The History of Asheron's Call

Pillars Made of Sand - June 2004

Letter to the Players
posted on 26-May-2004
Last month in Dereth, a new factor was added to the Burun threat – the Lugian and Tumerok Renegades. The Renegades, having failed to capture Fort Tethana several months ago, appear to be trying to parley with these new creatures. A unified front could be disastrous for Isparian life in Dereth.

The Burun continue to impact Dereth in new ways. Emboldened packs have begun attacking southern Sho towns in lightning raids. Small bands of Mosswarts have been reported migrating away from the Blackmire, and rarely Isparians have been approached by lone Mosswarts seeking aid.

The Council continues to investigate, even as they maintain their work on improvements to towns and research into more efficient magic. But as they work, the new threat of an alliance among our enemies hangs ominous over the land.

Coming Soon
(These are items that we plan to implement in the June event. Many of these items were mentioned in prior articles.)

Crafting Changes
In June, we will be making all player-craftable items unsellable. We will also begin introducing new craft skill miniquests. These will be similar to the Glenden Wood pacifists and they will reward players for crafting items from store-bought components.

Crafting Changes
posted on 18-May-2004

Over the last several months, we have received increasing complaints regarding crafting money macros. These macros could be seen clapping their hands outside shops in many towns.

In the April event, we made changes to eliminate the usefulness of two of the most popular macroed craft items: applesauce and potions. However, new macros have sprung up in their wake. Recently the number of macroing characters – and complaints about these macros – has increased dramatically. In addition, we recently had an incident in which one player’s use of multiple macroing characters on multiple accounts actually destabilized one of our game servers.

It has become clear that further action is necessary, particularly as we prepare to open the new world Verdantine. In the past, we have identified and fixed macroed tradeskill interactions as they were discovered. Unfortunately, the cycle of macro – nerf – find new macro could go on for much longer. Any changes to vendor buy/sell rates could introduce a new problem.

We have decided after much discussion to solve this issue with a larger change. Starting with the June event, it will no longer be possible to sell any crafted items to vendors. This affects all crafted items. Potions, arrowheads, food – it will no longer be possible to sell any of these items to vendors. This is true even if the item was not originally crafted by a player. For example, ordinary arrows can be crafted by players; therefore no arrows – player-crafted or otherwise – are sellable.

It is important to note that this we made this as a sweeping global change to ensure that we didn’t miss anything. It is possible that specific cases will turn up that will require us to make some items sellable again. In addition, we are continuing to look for alternate solutions to the issue.

While this is a major change, we believe that it will not impact the majority of our players. Crafted items, for the most part, are created for use in the field or for trading to other players. Players who craft items for these purposes should not see any difference.

However, we do see that this can create an obstacle for new tradeskill characters, particularly those who may not have a patron to supply them at low levels. These are the type of characters we are likely to see on Verdantine. If these characters cannot sell the fruits of their labor, it will be difficult for them to purchase new raw goods for crafting.

To assist these characters, in the June event we will begin introducing new NPCs similar to the Glenden Wood pacifists. These NPCs will provide pyreal and experience rewards to characters for handing in specific crafted goods. These rewards will be on a timer so that they cannot be macroed.

The first of these NPCs will be targeted for new and low-level crafters, but we are committed to introducing new NPCs for higher-level characters in the coming months. In addition, we have increased the two lowest-level rewards on the Glenden Wood pacifists.

The team strongly believes that eliminating these money macros is in the best interests of the long-term value of the game, particularly for the opening of Verdantine. We believe that this change is the best way to eliminate these macros without impacting the majority of our players, but we want to ensure that new crafters still have opportunities for advancement.

PvP Weapon Changes
We plan on adjusting the weapons in the three PvP weapon suites – Weeping Weapons, Hollow and Deadly Hollow Weapons, and Phantom Weapons. The most powerful weapons will see their abilities slightly decreased, whereas the weaker weapons will be made more powerful to improve their usefulness in PvP combat.

PvP Weapon Changes

by Delmar Wynn - 05-19-2004 @ 03:17 PM
Ibn just sent word of upcoming changes posted on the AC Website

In June we will be making a number of changes to the PvP weapon suites – Weeping Weapons, Hollow Weapons, Deadly Hollow Weapons, and Phantom Weapons. Our goals with these changes are the improvement of PvP weapon balance and diversity. To that end many of the less-powerful weapons are being made more powerful, and a handful of the most powerful weapons are having their power decreased.

Here is a summary of the upcoming changes:

Weeping Weapons
All of the melee Weeping Weapons, including the elemental variants, will have their non-spell attack and defense modifiers removed. The special Item Enchantment spells on the Weeping Weapons that boost these modifiers by 18% will remain. The Human Slayer bonus will be decreased 14% on all melee Weeping Weapons – however, all non-sword Weeping Weapons will now have higher base damage, allowing these weapon classes to compete better with sword in terms of PvP damage.

All missile Weeping weapons will have their non-spell defense modifiers removed, but the special Item Enchantment spell on the Weeping weapons that boosts the defense modifier by 18% will remain. The base damage modifier for the Weeping bow has been increased, while the base damage modifiers for both the atlatl and the crossbow have been decreased. Weeping Bow damage is now comparable with Weeping Sword; Weeping Atlatl and Crossbow damage now more closely correlates to that of the Weeping Axe and Mace.

We are looking at decreasing the shield-hollow effects of the Weeping Weapons. Currently melee and missile Weeping Weapons ignore 100% of the AL of the target’s shield. We are considering decreasing this to 90% so that there is now some reason to use a shield when fighting an opponent using these weapons.

Weeping Wands will have their non-spell Mana Conversion modifiers reduced to 1%. The special Item Enchantment spell on the Weeping Wand that boosts the Mana Conversion percentage will remain. The Hunter’s Lash spell found on the Weeping Wand will have a wider damage range of 70-180 (formerly 110 – 180). The Human Slayer on the Weeping Wand is not being changed.

Hollow Weapons
All melee Hollow weapons will have a 5% attack modifier, and all melee Deadly Hollows will have an 8% attack modifier. All melee Hollow and Deadly Hollow weapons are having their damage over time improved considerably.

Also, all “Heavy” (Sword, Axe, Mace, Spear) Hollow melee weapons will now have a weapon speed of 30, while all “Light” (Staff, Dagger, Unarmed) Hollow melee weapons will now have a weapon speed of 20.

The Hollow missile weapons are gaining a 6% defense modifier, and the damage of Chorizite and Deadly Chorizite ammunition is being increased. The damage modifier of the Hollow Crossbow is being decreased, but the average damage will go up due to the increased damage on the ammunition.

As both Hollow and Phantom missile weapons use Chorizite ammunition, we found that this was the best way to balance the damage output of these weapons. We set the damage on the ammunition and then balanced the weapons accordingly.

Phantom Weapons
All melee Phantom weapons are gaining a 10% attack modifier. Several weapons are gaining a speed increase, and the damage on the Mace, Spear, Staff, and Dagger is being increased. The weapon speed changes for Phantom melee weapons are identical to those for the Hollow melee weapons (Heavy weapons use 30 speed, light weapons use 20 speed).

The Phantom missile weapons will have a 10% defense modifier, and have had their speed adjusted. The damage mod on all three weapons has decreased, but with the improved Choritize ammunition all three will see increased damage over time. As was mentioned above, both Hollow and Phantom missile weapons were balanced around the increased damage on the ammunition.

Conclusion
In general, we have tried to improve all Hollow, Deadly Hollow, and Phantom weapons so that they will be more useful in today’s PvP combat. Although the Weeping Sword, Atlatl, and Crossbow will see a slight reduction in damage, all other Weeping Weapons will have increased damage, making them more competitive than they were previously. The difference in damage across all weapon classes in PvP combat will continue to scale from sword (the highest or most damaging) down to dagger (the lowest or least damaging), but the differences between these weapons is now greatly reduced.

Looking to the future, we have a lot in store for higher wield-requirement weapons and casters, as well as new types of imbues. The ability to find and tinker loot-generated weapons and casters that are comparable to or better than the Weeping Weapons is in-concept currently.

Allegiance Bind Stones
As of the May event, Bind Stones have been seen next to Meeting Halls in many towns. In June, these Stones will become active.

Any monarch will be able to tie to a Bind Stone simply by double-clicking on it. All monarchs will have this ability; we chose not to put restrictions on it. Once that has been done, any member of the monarch’s Allegiance will be able to recall to the Bind Stone location by typing @allegiance hometown.

Monarchs will be able to change their Allegiance’s hometown simply by double-clicking on a different Bind Stone. This can be done at any time.

Buffing Improvements – Item Magic
We’ve made two important changes to the improvements that we proposed in the May Letter to the Players. The first is that we will not be introducing new spells – existing Item spells will be changed to affect multiple pieces of armor. The second is that these spells will target your clothing as well.

Starting in June, if you target yourself with Impenetrability or a Bane spell, it will automatically cast itself on any piece of armor or clothing you are wearing. The mana cost of the spell will increase by 20% of the base spell cost for each enchanted piece of armor.

For example, let’s say I am wearing an amuli coat, amuli leggings, gauntlets, sollerets, a helm and a raiment, and I wish to cast Brogard’s Defiance on all six pieces. Previously, I would need to cast it six times, with a total mana cost of 420. Starting in June I will be able to target myself and cast the spell once – it will affect all six pieces and cost 154 points. That’s 70 + (14 * 6) points.

Note that these spells will only redirect to armor and clothing when they are self-targeted. If you cast one of these spells on another player, they will redirect to the shield as they have for several months.

The spell will not attempt to cast on items that are Unenchantable.

It is also important to keep in mind that this is not the sole planned improvement to Item Magic buffing. We’ll be presenting ideas on additional improvements in later months.

Fishing Changes
In addition to the changes to crafting mentioned above, we also have some small changes to fishing in order to make fishing macros less useful.

Starting in June, we will be making the following changes:

Most fish will have a value of 0.
Junk items will have a value of 0 and a workmanship of 3.
The chance of finding jewelry is being decreased, and jewelry will be created from the lowest wealth rating.
The Tacklemaster only rewards you with pyreals 25% of the time. The rest of the time he will reward you with 0 value potions.
Rusted Shouken will no longer be stackable. If you currently have a stack of Rusted Shouken, on the day of the event the stack will become one Rusted Shouken. Please unstack these items prior to the event.

Content Revisions – Marae Lassel
We will be making a number of revisions to Marae Lassel landscape hunting and quests. Here is a quick summary of the most major changes:

• Landscape spawns across the island have been revised. There will be areas designed for New (1-20), Low (20-40), Mid (40-60), and High (60-80) level characters.

• The generation of the Aun and Hea champions (such as Aun Ralirea and Hea Temenua) and the Virindi Collector will no longer be tied to the status of the Queen’s Quest. Most of the items dropped by these creatures have been updated as well. Characters with the existing versions of these items can exchange them for the new version via an NPC if they would rather have the new version.

• The reward on the Olthoi Eviscerator Pincer has been decreased to 2 million XP, but we’ve introduced higher-level Pincer quests.

• The Aun Mariona, Aun Tanua’s Taiaha, and Raeta’s Necklace quests have been adjusted slightly.

• The town criers in Bluespire, Greenspire, Redspire and Timaru now report the same news as the town criers on the mainland. The Marae-specific rumors can now be found on local barkeeps.

• Quests not mentioned above – including the Queen’s Quest – are not being revised at this time.

Content Revisions – Gaerlan Quest
We made a number of revisions to the Gaerlan quest for June. The majority of these changes were “under the hood”, and were made in order to fix bugs in the quest and remove aspects that either broke frequently or could be bypassed.

These are the changes that are most noticeable:

• Gaerlan must now be killed for players to receive the quest rewards.

• Handing in an Iasparilaun can be done once per day, and does not require completion of the quest. There is a new XP reward for characters who are level 126.

• Characters with War Magic trained will no longer get four wands before they get another reward. They will randomly receive one of the four wands.

• The rewards are giveable.

• Once a character has received all of the possible quest rewards, the cycle of rewards will begin again.

• We had previously mentioned the possibility of a second tier of rewards for this quest, but these will not be going into the game in June.

Baby Animals
As Spring turns to Summer, the young creatures in Dereth mature into adults. If you want to get a Spring Cleaner token, you will need to get one before the June event.

Verdantine
As we’ve announced previously, a new Asheron’s Call world will be opening concurrently with the June event: Verdantine. This will be a standard-rules server identical to the other NPK worlds. All housing on the server will be open when it goes live.

It’s quite possible that the Verdantine lobbies will be active prior to the June event, but the world should not be accessible until the day of the event.

In Development
(These are the game changes that we are working on for the July event. None of these items are guaranteed to be added for July, as scheduling and priorities can change. Your feedback on these topics is particularly valuable.)

Crafting Quests
We plan to introduce new quests similar to the quests described in the Crafting Changes article. These will be intended for crafters beyond New and Low levels.

Improved War Magic Critical Hits
We are working on several changes that are intended to improve War Magic damage over time in PvM, as well as improve the usefulness of Critical Strike and Crippling Blow for projectile magic. These changes include:

Currently when a projectile spell scores a critical hit, it adds a multiple of the base damage of the spell to a normal damage roll. We are looking at instead adding a multiple of the max damage of the spell to that normal damage roll. This will mean that magic critical hits will almost always do more damage than a non-critical hit.
We are considering increasing the maximum effectiveness of Critical Strike -- that is, the chance to critical -- at the highest skill levels. The minimum chance to score a critical hit will not be changed.
We are considering increasing the maximum effectiveness of Crippling Blow -- that is, the multiplier that is applied to the extra critical damage -- at the highest skill levels. The minimum multiplier will not be changed.
The above three changes only impact projectile spells in combat vs. monsters. Magic criticals for PvP combat will not change.

There is one additional change that we are considering that would affect both PvP and PvM combat. The effectiveness of the Critical Strike and Crippling Blow imbues scale based on the attack skill of the character. There is a miniumum skill below which the imbue has the minimum effect, and a maximum skill above which the imbue has the maximum effect. We are looking at changing the minimum and maximum skill levels for magic to bring these levels more into line with melee and missile levels.

These changes are intended to improve War Magic damage over time in PvM combat.

Aegis Effect for Loot Missile Weapons
As was mentioned in the PvP Weapon Changes article, this was not ready for the June event. We expect it to be ready for July.

More details on this can be found in the Future of PvP article.

Content Updates
We plan on making three content updates in July:

• A town to be determined at a later point will have its surrounding content revised in a manner similar to the revisions made to the three starter towns.

• The Singularity Weapons quest will be revised.

• The Three Crystals quests – Fenmalain, Caulnalain, and Shendolain – will be revised.
  

In Concept
(These are the game changes that we are thinking about for August and beyond. We cannot guarantee when – or even if – any of these changes will be added to the game, as scheduling and priorities can change. Your feedback on these topics is particularly valuable.

If not mentioned elsewhere in this Letter, topics listed as In Concept in prior articles have not changed status.)

Improved Allegiance Officers
This topic was previously mentioned in the In Development section of the May Letter to the Players. After initial development work on this, we have decided to hold off on implementing further Allegiance Officer ranks and tools until we have further data and feedback on how the existing Allegiance Officer tools are being used.

Conclusion
Those are our plans for June and beyond. Please note that topics that have been previously mentioned in the In Development and In Concept sections of prior articles are still being developed or considered, unless mentioned otherwise. We are working on a page on the official Asheron’s Call website where you can easily reference these topics.