MAY 8, 2002

Items:

• We've made some changes that will cause a few proccing items to be out of charges after the patch. Players with such items will need to petition and ask a GM to swap the item out with a new one.
• Focus items using the "Naki's Pernicity" effects should now be working as intended.
• Focus items that affect a spell's duration should now work for clickable items.
• It should be impossible to equip an item that will reduce your hit points by more than your maximum hit points. Also, hit point reduction items should not lower hit points below 1.
• Tinkered Compass now adds the appropriate bonus to the sense heading skill.
• Hit point bonuses on food items should be working.

Spells:

• Higher level familiars should once again survive when their masters go invisible, Abscond or Evac.
• Fixed a bug that was preventing the Lesser Familiar mana regeneration component from working.
• Familiars no longer cause damage to their master upon death.
• Familiar buff remains after the caster uses the /pet get lost command to remove the visual representation.
• Torrent of Fatigue should be working properly now.
• Allure of the Wild has had its level cap raised to make it a useful upgrade.
• Umbra has been improved to give a slightly higher AC benefit.
• A character can no longer trade with an NPC when invisible. Character must turn visible before starting the trade.
• Characters can no longer scribe a scroll that they can't cast due to deity restrictions.
• Invisibility should now remain after a link death.
• Theft of Thought will no longer give mana when cast on PC classes that do not have mana (in PvP or in a duel).
• Drain/Share spells can no longer be cast on players on blue servers, and can no longer be cast on group members on PvP servers. Spells Affected: Succession of Shadows, Crippling Claudication, Mind Wrack, Degeneration, Zevfeer's Theft of Vitae, Torrent of Hate, Torrent of Fatigue, Torrent of Pain.
• Spirit Armor scroll no longer lists Shadowknights as a class that can use it (they couldn't anyway).
• Bard AE songs now have vertical limit of 50 feet. This is also the case for Mass Group Buff.
• Gating and porting while in tree form should no longer cause crashes.
• Removed all "Begins to cast X spell" text from procs.
• Resurrection request box will now reset if you open another window while it is up, preventing a problem where a character is unable to be resurrected if he has the res box up and he loots a mob or opens a trade window.
• Fixed a bug with lifetaps that would cause people around a lifetap to see, "You feel drained..." instead of "Fippy feels drained...".
• Issues with Healing seeming to be delayed have been fixed (see Spell Filters).
• Fixed a bug that was causing "soandso's song ends" to show up as "he's song ends" if the bard was targeted, "it's song ends" if not targeted.
• Divine Glory received a small upgrade to make it more in line with the spell series.

Spell Filters:

• Issues with healing seeming to be delayed should be fixed. The problem was with filters that allowed players to ignore spells that were hitting them. The following changes were needed to fix this issue.
• Player characters will now always see spells that hit them and spells they cast.
• Players with the Group option set for PC spells will see the start spell casting messages for people in their group and they will also see when member of their group are hit with spells.
• Players with the ALL option will still see all PC spells and spell hits.

Spell Stacking:

General stacking changes: Some buffs were not being allowed to stack which now will stack, and other buffs were being allowed to stack which should not have.

For example, many stacking problems with spells that have a See Invisible or Levitate component are now gone (e.g. Dead Man Floating), while a number of stacking exploits that granted too much regeneration, too much offense (ATK), too large of a damage shield, or too many hit points have been fixed. Here are some of the details:

• Vision abilities (natural or spell-granted) should no longer cause spells to fail to take hold.
• Bard songs should in general overwrite fewer spells.
• Harness of Spirit no longer stacks with spells that grant Strength or Dexterity boosts. It was never intended to do so.
• Harness of Spirit and Avatar should now stack properly.
• Call of the Predator and Warder's Protection should no longer stack.
• Arch Lich should no longer overwrite innate racial vision abilities.
• Levitate and Dead Man Floating should no longer conflict.
• Dead Man Floating should no longer conflict with any vision abilities (natural or spell granted).
• Spirit of Eagle should no longer cancel Levitation/Levitate spells.
• Fixed a stacking exploit with Armor of Protection and Armor of the Risen.
• Focus of Spirit should no longer overwrite Visions of Grandeur.
• Focus of Spirit should now stack with the Whistling Fists effect.
• "Circle of" Druid spells should no longer stack with their Resist counterparts.
• Shroud of Spirits and the Cloak of the Akheva should stack properly now.
• Cantata of Soothing should no longer overwrite Clarity spells.
• Cantata and Chorus of Replenishment should no longer overwrite Acumen.
• Bladecoat no longer overwrites Clarity II.
• Lower level druid group buffs should now be less likely to overwrite higher level buffs.
• Avatar and Force of Nature will no longer stack.
• Ancient Feral Avatar should now stack properly.

Alternate Advancement:

• Improved Familiar should now be better than Greater Familiar.
• Fixed a bug with Permanent Illusion that was causing the caster to see his illusions drop when zoning, even if others continued to see the illusion.
• Trolls and Iksar no longer receive double regeneration ability from AA abilities.
• The Archetype skill Casting Deftness will no longer supercede the Class specific Quick Buff casting time reducing skill. Note that at this time there is a maximum benefit to casting time bonuses of a 50% reduction.
• Casting deftness was changed to reflect the increases presented by the in-game help (5, 15 and 25%).
• Turn Summoned should now work on all summoned creatures, not just pets. The text should correctly say that there is only one level for this ability.
• Improved Reclaim Energy now works with the epic pet.
• Fixed a crash bug caused by Call Corpse.
• Alternate Advancement abilities that affect a spell's duration should now work for clickable items.
• Quick Summon should now work for Call of the Hero and Manifest Elements.
• Quick Summon also changed to match the benefits presented by the in-game help.

Skills:

• Increased the velocity tolerance for the Hide skill. This may slightly improve the functionality of the Evade skill.
• Poison should no longer be interrupted.
• Sneak only breaks when a character is hit, not when he hits someone.
• Fixed a bug that was causing a problem when Pick Pockets was used before Beg had refreshed. Beg and Pick Pocket use the same timer, so now using Beg or Pick Pocket will cause both buttons to gray out.
• A message is now displayed and skills are properly reset when a rogue breaks sneak and/or hide because he is looting a corpse.
• Beastlords should function like other hybrids when casting in melee.

Zones:

• The Hole now uses Kunark-level Mez/Charm/Taunt rules.
• Petrified humerus should now be available.
• Zones where mounts cannot be summoned will now remove mounts when they enter the zone.
• High level NPCs can now be taunted in Cazic Thule.
• Random frame lag in Guktop and Oasis should be fixed.
• Fixed a pathing problem in Tenebrous Mountains.
• Fixed a pathing bug in Paludal Caverns.
• Fixed pathing exploits in Chardok.
• Fixed a pathing exploit in Cazic Thule.
• Fixed a pathing exploit in Acrylia.
• Fixed a pathing bug in the Tower of Frozen Shadow.
• Fixed a pathing bug in Fungus Grove.
• Fixed a spot where characters could get stuck in Twilight Sea.
• Moved the Permafrost 'safe point' closer to the zone line.
• Addressed an issue with an aggressive NPC that appeared outside of the Arx Building in Sanctus Seru.
• Modified the Vyzh`dra the Cursed spawn trigger to make the various incarnations more accessible.
• Modified several NPCs in the temple of Ssraeshza to address the disparity between melee and caster effectiveness in the zone.

Quests:

• Adjustments have been made to the 8th Coldain Prayer Shawl quest.
• High Priestess Alexandriana should be working properly now.

Tradeskills:

• Added over 1,000 new tradeskill recipes for all levels of skill, along with many recipe books. A few of the vendors of Norrath might be able to get you started on your way.
• Added Mortar and Pestle to a Thurgadin merchant.
• Rubbing Alcohol is now available from a vendor in Thurgadin.

Guilds:

• Fixed many bugs with the guild system, for example: GMs can now rename guilds without the need to destroy and recreate them, guilds can have names that share the first 15 characters with another guild (they couldn't before) and people should no longer experience random guild kickouts when a guild on their server is deleted/reformed.

Pets:

• A character may now have a horse, a pet and an Eye of Zomm at the same time.
• /pet attack range has been limited to prevent its use as a targeting tool. Asking pets to attack targets outside the range will generate a "not a legal target" message.
• Pets will once again tell you who they are attacking by sending its master a /tell.
• Pet attack animations should now be working for all pets.

Chat Channels:

• Players can specify a chat channel as their default channel using the /channel commands (e.g. /channel chat mychannel).
• The 'old' method for setting the default channel is also now saved in the INI file.
• Kick and Invite should be working for chat channels.

Horses:

• Potions now work while on a horse.
• Skeletons can now ride horses (meaning: PCs should be able to mount and ride horses while changed into a skeleton).

Miscellaneous:

• Fixed a bug that was causing the AFK flag to sometimes not be visible to players entering a zone after it was turned on.
• Made some adjustments to factions to make Beastlords, Druids and Rangers (as well as small adjustments for Vah Shir) a little better liked by animals (those that don't adhere to a faction).
• No updates are sent when the player character is not moving, saving resources. We've also increased the rate that position updates are made by moving player characters, using up some of those saved resources but making movement a bit smoother.
• Stationary NPCs should no longer warp when they aggro/summon.
• NPCs who shout names while they Death Touch should be fixed.
• Teleports arriving in some zones should spread the arrivals out a bit more. Affected zones are Nexus, Skyfire, Emerald Jungle, Butcherblock Mountains, South Ro, Greater Faydark, Tox, North Karana, West Commons and Lavastorm.
• Fixed the bug that was preventing players from seeing the "your spell is interrupted" or the NPCs spell interruption message.
• Fixed the issue with boats depositing players at the safe point of the zone after zoning.
• Fixed the strange floating NPC bug (seeing NPCs floating in the air after zoning).
• /cry is now working.
• /consent %t should allow the consented character to drag your corpse.
• Target Nearest NPC (F8 by default) has been fixed.

Sullon Zek Rules Change:

We have increased the number of character that can be created on an account to three. These characters, however, must be on the same team.

Firiona Vie Rules Changes:

Since the launch of Firiona Vie we have had tremendous support for this special server from players who want a very roleplaying immersive environment. Players have made numerous suggestions to tweak the ruleset a little more. We have taken many of those suggestions and made changes accordingly.

We will be keeping the following rules intact:

• /ooc will remain unavailable to remind people that acting in character is strongly recommended.
• The Common language will remain out, to help maintain the feeling of race-based community and to allow people to continue to roleplay someone with a native tongue.
• The Trivial Loot Code and all of the special rules for no-drop items will remain. This has worked out nicely for the sense of community on the server.
• The one character per account restriction will remain.

However, we will be removing the following restrictions:

• Anonymous/roleplay flags will no longer be required. They will remain available, but forcing anonymity on characters was causing undue problems finding groups and other such things that are essential to enjoyable gameplay.
• The language learning limit/speed restrictions will be removed. While the idea of limited languages seemed like a good idea, this is another item that was just making it too hard to actually play the game. Roleplayers that don't want their characters to be overly literate always have the option to play their characters that way.
• /shout and /auction have returned to unrestricted use to allow easier grouping and selling. People are welcome to filter those channels if they prefer not to see them, but the benefits of having them available is just too great. /ooc will remain disabled on this server. Obviously, acting in character on any channel is strongly recommended.
• Alignment restrictions has been removed. Forced restrictions for grouping make playing the game too much of a chore. Characters, however, may always decide who they wish to group with based on any factors the character perceives. If your Dark Elf won't group with a paladin, he doesn't have to (and shouldn't). If your cleric of Quellious wants to heal a necromancer because healing people is the right thing to do for him, then you should be able to do so. But not allowing these things is a restriction on your ability to play that character 'in-character', and a real hindrance to general gameplay.

Again, it's important to understand that this is still a roleplaying preferred server. The rules that we are changing were often as much of a restriction to one's ability to roleplay as they were a help. And the artificial barriers to grouping, especially the trouble created in just finding a group, needed to be removed to allow people to actually play the game.

April 30, 2002 Patch:

• Corrected a couple of graphic corruptions in Vex Thal.