Nov 8, 2019

Project: Gorgon - Sims

This update brings some changes and experiments to the game. There's new Fall foods, changes to swimming, and changes to the stats of food.

New Seasonal Content Experiment

In this update we're experimenting with new kinds of seasonal content. Here we're using "Fall foods" as the experimental base, but we might expand this idea to many other types of crafting (and other "seasons") in the future. Or we may change this design dramatically, or even throw it all out, depending on your feedback. After you've had a few weeks to play with this, please let us know what you think!

There are two new seasonal ingredients available for a limited time. Cranberries and turkeys can be found in Serbule, Serbule Hills, and Eltibule, among other places.
In addition, the pumpkin seedlings (which dropped from undead during Halloween) continue to drop from a wide range of herbivorous and omnivorous animals in the 25-55 level range. This includes ferocious boars, many types of slime, most rhinos, polar bears, tundra deer, mountain sheep, Gaz-Uraks, and many others. (And even a few sentient creatures such as trolls.)
There are 21 new food recipes that involve the new seasonal ingredients. These recipes can be found on a broad range of animals (with the best chances being from herbivorous/omnivorous animals).
In addition to the new recipes, the handful of pumpkin recipes from Halloween can also still be found in loot, although the chances are much lower than during Halloween. (And the other Halloween items no longer drop.)
There are also new Work Orders for all of the new foods (and the Halloween pumpkin foods). These work orders will only show up during this "season", and they have a much larger cash reward than normal work orders of their level. They can also be completed every 5 days instead of every 30 days. You can find these work orders at the work-order signs in Serbule, Redwing Casino, and the Fae Realm. (They won't always show up, but when they do, they will be at the bottom of the work-order list.)
A few of the Halloween pumpkin foods already had work orders (such as Basic Pumpkin Pie). They've been turned into "seasonal" work orders

Swimming Changes

In preparation for upcoming content we've made improvements/changes to how swimming works. Please play with these changes and give us feedback and bug reports!

Changed how we emulate gravity underwater. Previously you would instantly sink in deep water, but now you are slightly buoyant: you'll very slowly float upwards toward the surface. This means that if you wish to reach the bottom of a deep body of water you will need to use the Down movement key (default F) to swim down. To swim up for breath use the Up key (default R) -- or you can use the jump button underwater as a "swim up" button.
You now recover your breath automatically when you are swimming on the surface of the water, and breath recovers much more quickly than via the old "hopping in and out of the water" technique. (But still not as fast as when standing on solid ground.)
"Breath" meter is more granular while losing breath
Fixed various problems, bugs, and glitches in the swimming system
Fixed problems with indoor water pools
Note: the river in Kur continues to behave oddly; this is a known issue that will be addressed when the final art for Kur is ready. All OTHER water should behave reasonably sanely now

Food Changes

We've rebalanced food a bit to make Meals more useful. This mainly involved moving some of the power of Snacks into Meals.

Snacks once lasted only 15 minutes, and so were much more potent than meals. But in a previous update we changed Snacks to last as long as Meals (and even receive the Gourmand bonuses that Meals receive), and we're pretty happy with that change. And the total potency of Meals+Snacks combined was in the right ballpark -- it's just that most of that potency was coming from the Snack, and the Meal was largely irrelevant. This is obviously dumb and needed fixing.

We've also made other small rebalances to food stats, including some changes to Cheese stats. Cheese received both minor nerfs and minor buffs. (And since eating a Cheese Meal plus a Cheese Snack was already often over-healing while out of combat, nerfing those numbers isn't as noticeable as buffing the in-combat regen. But the in-combat regen buff was small... so... basically it's a wash.)

Explaining the overall changes is tricky. The changes affect food at all levels, but we'll use some hypothetical level 80 food as an example. That will show the changes the most dramatically.

Tldr: For players that already ate both a meal and a snack, the changes will probably not be very noticeable. If you only ate Snacks before, though, you will definitely notice how empty your stomach is now.

Level 80 (Non-Cheese) Meal: (arrows indicate changes in this update; no arrow means no change)

Out-of-Combat Health Regen (per tick): 273
Out-of-Combat Power Regen (per tick): 222
In-Combat Health Regen (per tick): 48
In-Combat Power Regen (per tick): 32
Metabolism Regen (per tick): 5 -> 6
Max-Health Boost: 0 -> 160
Max-Power Boost: 0

Level 80 (Non-Cheese) Snack:

Out-of-Combat Health Regen (per tick): 273 -> 193
Out-of-Combat Power Regen (per tick): 160
In-Combat Health Regen (per tick): 32
In-Combat Power Regen (per tick): 32 -> 48
Metabolism Regen (per tick): 0 -> 2
Max-Health Boost: 160 -> 0
Max-Power Boost: 80

Level 80 Cheese Meal:

Out-of-Combat Health Regen (per tick): 273
Out-of-Combat Power Regen (per tick): 222
In-Combat Health Regen (per tick): 48 -> 80
In-Combat Power Regen (per tick): 48
Metabolism Regen (per tick): 5 -> 3
Max-Health Boost: 113 -> 220
Max-Power Boost: 0

Level 80 Cheese Snack:

Out-of-Combat Health Regen (per tick): 273 -> 193
Out-of-Combat Power Regen (per tick): 268 -> 160
In-Combat Health Regen (per tick): 32
In-Combat Power Regen (per tick): 48 -> 64
Metabolism Regen (per tick): 0
Max-Health Boost: 160 -> 80
Max-Power Boost: 160

Other Changes:

Items removed from storage vaults now auto-stack with compatible items in your inventory
Fixed bug that prevented carrots from receiving garden bonuses during carrot-specific events
Fixed a Deer combat particle that played at full volume no matter how far away you were from the Deer player
Spriggan Nuts now stack (to 99)
Treasure effect "Stun Trap reuse timer is N seconds faster" was bugged (it actually lowered Power cost by N instead of reset time)
Treasure effect "Lethal Force deals +N damage and reuse time is -3 seconds" was also bugged in the same way (it lowered Power cost instead of reset time)
Treasure effect "Stun Trap deals +N damage, and there's a 50% chance you'll place an extra trap" was bugged and never generated an extra trap
Iceheart Sustenance Oil counts as a Max-Health potion for gifting purposes
The Sacred Grotto is now marked as a cave for craft purposes
Meat-eaters in the Sacred Grotto are now a little more aware of what's being stored by their fellow Wardens

Oct 17, 2019

Update Notes: October 17, 2019

Project: Gorgon - Sims

Happy Halloween! The Halloween event has begun! You will receive a quest when you log in to get you started.

There's also some fun new stuff for animals in this update. Animals, if you're friends with the Suspicious Cow in Eltibule, Norbert in Sun Vale, or Red in Kur Mountains you should pay them a visit. Plus, the Giant Bat skill has gotten a major makeover.

General Changes

The Serbule work order sign has been moved from the docks to Serbule Keep itself, near the player work-order sign. (You still turn in completed work orders on the docks)
The "Dye Placeholder" in Eltibule has sailed off to the east. (His clone, also named "Dye Placeholder", continues to live in Serbule.)
For new players, Lawara's chest has a few partially-random items in it when first opened. (Bug fix.) (This is not retroactive; if you've already opened the chest, its contents are unchanged!)
When you right-click an inventory item and choose "More Info", there is new information shown. The "Find" tab now lists vendors who sell the item in their "Buy New" tab, and barterers who trade for the item in their "Barter" area. This only lists permanent ways to obtain the item, so it can't search the "Used" tab of vendors, nor does it search player-hired vendors, etc. But if you've ever wondered "which vendor in town sells nails?" you can now check under More Info.
Jesina the Fairy no longer sells strawberries. (Once strawberries could only be found in loot, so Jesina was an expensive alternative... but now that strawberry bushes exist, this is no longer needed.)
Missing level 74 Deer ability "Cuteness Overload 5" can now be learned from Noita the Green
Missing level 75 Necromancy ability "Raise Skeleton Mage 6" can now be learned from Bendith the Banished
AI tweak: pets summoned during combat now figure out what's going on slightly faster. (Previously they would sometimes need a few seconds before joining a fight already in progress.)
Fixed erroneous message "Error: you can only use that ability on yourself!" that was sometimes shown when a Combat Refresh triggered
Some modest changes to spawn locations in Kur (more monsters in the northeast corner, and more yetis east of the Yeti cave entrance)
Giant Beetles now have a small chance to drop food Beetles as bonus loot. (There are other ways to obtain beetles during Halloween, but this is a permanent way to obtain a small number of them year-round)
New Rabbit treasure effect (Hands and Main-Hand Weapons): "While Rabbit skill is active, any Kick ability boosts Melee Evasion +6.5% for 10 seconds"
Recipe "Amazing First Aid Kit (Combo Method)" no longer has a prerequisite to know "Amazing First Aid Kit", as they are for different skills
Recipe "Astounding First Aid Kit (Combo Method)" now has a prerequisite of " Amazing First Aid Kit (Combo Method)", not "Amazing First Aid Kit", as they are for different skills
Sour Cream now stacks to 5
Bottles of Sugar Water now stack to 5
The "Icy Feet" debuff used by Battle Chemistry's Toxin Bomb was intended to reduce movement speed by 75% (as indicated in effect description), but actually reduced it by 100%. "Icy Feet" is also used by various monsters and traps, so the fix applies there as well

Giant Bat Changes

This skill had a lot of abilities with different damage types (piercing, slashing, darkness, nature, electricity), and treasure that involved yet more damage types (mostly trauma). This wide spread of damage types meant Giant Bat could take advantage of a lot of different monster weaknesses, but made it difficult to "stack" damage-type buffs. We think the "sweet spot" is a little smaller, so we've consolidated some of these, and also added a bit more treasure that can change damage types.

Ability category changes:
We've also had to reorganize the skill's ability tags (e.g. Core Attack, Nice Attack, etc.) This has several effects -- most obviously, things that affect a certain category will benefit different abilities. But these changes also change the "treasure budget" for these abilities. For example, Smouldering Gaze switched from a Nice Attack to an Epic Attack, allowing the loot to be more powerful. (This also has down sides, notably Power cost increases.)

Tear: Core Attack. (Was nothing special)
Screech: Was a Core Attack; now a Nice Attack.
Virulent Bite: Wasn't in a category before; now a Signature Debuff
Smouldering Gaze: Was a Nice attack; now an Epic Attack. In addition, this ability has been renamed. (See below.)

Ability Changes

Drink Blood now deals a moderate amount of direct-health damage, in addition to draining health. (The bite is Piercing damage, and the health-drain effect is still a Darkness attack, meaning that undead are immune to that part.)
Drink Blood 8 now steals 84 health instead of 68 health. (Bug fix.)
Screech became a Nice Attack, which involved stat-changes: reset time is now 10s instead of 9s; base damage is increased (e.g. 289 damage is now 401 damage); Power cost is increased (e.g. 47 instead of 33); all treasure rebalanced.
Smouldering Gaze became an Epic Attack named Deathscream, which involved stat-changes: base damage is increased (827 instead of 588); Power cost is increased (87 instead of 68); all treasure rebalanced. Damage type is now Nature instead of Electricity.

Treasure Changes

"Drink Blood deals 96 damage over 12 seconds, and 50% of the damage becomes health for you" => all of the damage becomes health for you. This is now Darkness damage (not Trauma).
"Drink Blood restores 19 Power and 19 Armor" => "Drink Blood costs -27 Power"
"Screech Deals 127 armor damage" => "Screech Damage +122"
"Screech Damage +47%" => +41%
"Screech has a 60% chance to deal +108% damage" => 60% damage to deal +90% damage
"Tear deals +70 damage and restores 20 Armor to you" => "Tear and Virulent Boost deal +85 damage"
"Rip damage +27" => "Rip deals +34 damage and restores 11 Power"
"Rip has a 50% chance to deal +68 damage" => " Rip has a 50% chance to restore
"Rip has a 50% chance to restore 20 Power" => "Rip restores 20 Armor"
"Bat Stability restores 100 Armor and 16 Power" => "Bat Stability restores 145 Armor"
"Confusing Double Reset Time -11 seconds" -> -13 seconds, and is available on a second slot (necklace).
"Confusing Double restores 71 Power after a 10-second delay" => 112 Power after a 10-second delay
"Confusing Double restores 90 Health" => 123 Health
"Smouldering Gaze damage type is changed to Nature. 7 seconds after use, it deals 384 additional damage" => "Deathscream deals an additional 594 Trauma damage over 12 seconds"
"Sonic Burst has a 60% chance to deal +60% damage to all targets" => "60% chance to deal +100% damage"
"Combo: Rip+Tear+Any Melee+Rip: final step hits all targets within 5 meters and deals +85 damage" => Combo is now Rip+Any Melee+Any Giant Bat Attack+Tear. Also, this effect was previously found on both Feet and Necklace gear. It is now only found on Feet gear; necklaces with this effect have become Legacy.
"Combo: Screech+Any Melee+Any Melee+Virulent Bite: final step stuns the target and deals +100 damage" => Combo is now Screech+Any Giant Bat Attack+Any Melee+Virulent Bite.

New Treasure

Legs, Ring: "Your Confusing Double deals +55% damage with each attack"
Main-Hand, Necklace: "Confusing Double summons an additional figment. Each figment deals +61 damage with each attack"
Hands: "Rip and Tear deal +33 damage and hasten the current reuse timer of Drink Blood by 1 second"
Chest: "Deathscream deals +45% damage and Power cost is -32, but the ability's range is reduced to 12m"
Main-Hand, Off-Hand: "Screech, Sonic Burst, and Deathscream deal 256 Nature damage over 8 seconds"
Off-Hand, Ring: "Sonic Burst deals 210 Trauma damage over 12 seconds"
Main-Hand, Off-Hand: "Screech deals 240 Trauma damage over 12 seconds"
Chest, Necklace: "Indirect Trauma Damage +57% when Giant Bat skill active"
Off-Hand: "If Screech, Sonic Burst, or Deathscream deal Trauma damage, that damage is boosted +75% per tick"

Sep 20, 2019

Update Notes: September 20, 2019

Project: Gorgon - Sims

This update brings a smorgasbord of new mechanics, new content, tweaks and fixes. The Fae Realm gets some more polish, there are new recipes and new treasure effects to check out, armor sets are a thing (sort of), and lots more. So let's get to it!

Combat Refresh Boost

In this update we focused on providing players with more survivability options, and one part of the game that wasn't pulling its weight (in terms of importance to players) is the Combat Refresh.

Every 15 seconds, your Basic Attack triggers a "Combat Refresh" that restores extra health, armor, and/or power. The amount you recover is partially based on the level of your Basic Attack, but the biggest increases come from your armor: every piece of armor increases the health, armor, and/or power recovered from a Combat Refresh. The amounts are based on the material the armor's made of: cloth, leather, metal, or organic. In this update, we've boosted these numbers quite a lot.

For purposes of comparing old to new values, we'll imagine a hypothetical set of level 80 armor of each material. First we list how much this hypothetical set added to your Combat Refresh before this update, then we list the new amounts for this update.
Cloth:

Old: 96 health, 144 power
New: 320 health, 280 power

Leather:

Old: 160 health, 48 power
New: 240 health, 240 armor, 96 power

Plate:

Old: 60 armor
New: 320 armor

Organic:

Old: 36 health, 36 armor, 36 power
New: 96 health, 96 armor, 96 power

Just to make sure it's clear: your armor doesn't need to all be made of the same material to get Combat Refresh bonuses! We're just using the "full suit" numbers to make it easier to understand what's changed. Each individual piece of armor adds a portion of the above numbers to your Combat Refresh, so if you're wearing a mixture of different materials, your total Combat Refresh bonus will be a mixture of the numbers shown above.

But what if you ARE wearing a full suit made of the same material? In that case, see below...

Armor-Material Set Bonuses

In this update, we're experimenting with bonuses for players who wear all (or mostly all) of the same type of armor. There are five main armor slots: head, chest, legs, feet, and hands. If at least three of these are made of the same material (cloth, leather, metal, or organic), your Basic Attack has a special bonus:

3+ Cloth Items: If your power is below 20% of max, your Basic Attack restores Power equal to 20% of your Max Power. (Max once per minute.)
3+ Leather Items: If your health is below 33% of max, your Basic Attack restores Health equal to 33% of your Max Health, plus your Combat Refresh Healing amount. (Max once per minute.)
3+ Plate Items: If you are out of armor (below 10% of max), your Basic Attack restores Armor equal to Combat Refresh Armor amount. (Max once per minute.)
3+ Organic Items: Your Combat Refresh happens every 12 seconds (instead of every 15 seconds).

The game doesn't tell you about these set bonuses anywhere at the moment -- so it's a good thing you read these patch notes! Once you have enough pieces for the bonus, the bonus shows up on the ability description for your Basic Attack like normal, but nothing in the game tells you that wearing 3 pieces of same-material gear will give you that bonus. This reflects the fact that this system is extremely experimental and may be removed or dramatically altered. Keep that in mind as you try it out, and tell us what you think about it!

New Skill-Agnostic Treasure Effects

In this update we worked to improve skill-agnostic (a/k/a "generic") treasure effects. We've added new treasure effects, mostly focusing on defensive and support options that can be easily worked into existing skill builds.

It may be worthwhile to check the ability tags on the skills you use, because sometimes the categorization can be surprising. For instance, the Deer skill's Minor Heal is also an attack; Battle Chemistry's Major Heal is an area-effect group heal; the sidebar ability First Aid is a Major Heal; almost all combat skills have a Signature Debuff, even if they're not particularly debuffy; etc. Due to the diverse nature of these abilities, in a few cases the treasure won't be useful to a particular skill -- for instance, Mentalism's Signature Debuff deals no direct damage, so the treasure that boosts Signature Debuff damage by +25% isn't helpful. (But the armor-damage still applies.)

The numbers shown below are for the level 80 version of each effect:

Main-Hand: "Core Attacks deal +32 damage and hasten your current Combat Refresh delay by 1 second"
Main-Hand: "Basic Attacks restore 12 Power"
Off-Hand: " Nice Attacks deal +64 damage and hasten your current Combat Refresh delay by 1 second"
Head: "Nice Attacks deal +40 damage and cause the target's next Rage Attack to deal -25% damage (debuff cannot stack with itself)"
Head: "Major Healing abilities also restore 112 Armor"
Hands: "Signature Support abilities restore 80 Armor to all allies within 20 meters"
Chest: "Major Healing abilities restore +78 Health"
Chest, Waist: " Signature Debuffs deal +80 damage and restore 96 Armor to you after a 10-second delay"
Legs, Off-Hand: "Minor Heals restore 71 Armor"
Legs, Feet: "Major Healing abilities have a 65% chance to restore an additional 152 Health"
Feet: "Core Attacks deal +41 damage and reduce the Power cost of your next Minor Heal ability by -22"
Necklace: "Signature Debuffs deal +25% damage and also deal 108 Armor damage"
Ring: "Minor Heals restore +33 Health and reduce the damage of the next attack that hits the target by 20%"
Ring: "Signature Support abilities restore 32 Power to all allies within 20 meters"

In addition, we tweaked the potency of some existing generic treasure effects and added level 80 versions of some effects that didn't have any. Notable changes include:

"Patch Armor restores +77 Armor" => +110 Armor
"First Aid restores +55 Health" => +74 Health

Mentalism Changes

Mentalism didn't receive the full "revamp" treatment in this update: we experimented with some new ideas, but they haven't panned out so far. But there were a number of buffs and revisions.
Abilities:

Electrify is no longer taught by Mu. Instead, mentalists automatically learn the first two tiers (at levels 22 and 36), and the next tiers are trained by Rohina in Sun Vale, with the highest tier (Electrify 5) trained by Raina in the Fae Realm.
Armor Wave now restores armor every 3 seconds (instead of every 4 seconds), effectively boosting armor restoration by 25%.
Power Wave now restores power every 8 seconds (instead of every 10 seconds), effectively boosting power restoration by 20%.
"Psi Armor Wave 6" now restores 18 armor/tick instead of 15 armor/tick. (This effect was bugged and used the value for Armor Wave 5.)

Treasure effects:

"Psi Armor Wave and Psi Adrenaline Wave restore 90 armor to all targets after a 25 second delay" => 158 armor
"Psi Health Wave and Psi Armor Wave instantly restore 76 armor to you" => 84 armor
"Psi Power Wave and Psi Adrenaline Wave restore 34 power to all targets after a 25 second delay" => 54 power
"Psi Power Wave and Psi Armor Wave cause all targets' melee attacks to cost -6 Power for 20 seconds" => -8 power. (This effect was bugged and the level 60 variant was used for levels 70 and 80 as well.)
"Psi Health Wave, Armor Wave, and Power Wave grant all targets +6 Psychic Damage for 60 seconds" => +42 psychic damage
"Psi Power Wave instantly restores 28 power to all targets" => 31 power
"Psi Power Wave and Psi Adrenaline Wave instantly restore 26 power to you" => 32 power
"Revitalize restores +20 Health and removes ongoing Trauma effects (up to 22 dmg/sec)" => (up to 26 dmg/sec)

One thing that the in-game text doesn't do a good job of explaining is that most of Mentalism's heals, including the health/armor/power waves, are subject to phrenological "critical heals". This works similarly to phrenological "critical hits" for damage: if you're healing an elven player and your Elf Phrenology skill is 50, you have an 8% chance to "critically heal" that player. (Note that this applies to Psychology's heals as well!)

By default a critical heal increases the healing by 25%, but treasure effects can boost this number very dramatically. Since every "tick" has a separate chance to critically-heal, high-level Mentalists who use stacked Healing Waves (for instance) will see a big improvement to their total group healing by using gear with "Psychology/Mentalism Critical Hit Damage +X% when skill Mentalism active". (And, of course, by raising their phrenology skills to 50.)

We're considering replacing this system with something that's more intuitive... and a little easier to balance. The current system doesn't do anything at low level, when you probably haven't even discovered Phrenology, and yet by very high level, it starts to become too powerful. (In fact, this is one of the reasons we've held off on raising Phrenology skills above level 50.) So it's possible this entire system will change, but that's how it works right now!

Fae Realm

We've fixed a bunch of bugs and made some tweaks to content in the Fae Realm. We have more content in the works for the area in future updates, and we're still actively evaluating and tweaking the combat and training details, so please keep sending in the feedback and bug reports!

Lethargy Puck's warning screen was not reliably activating.
Fixed recipes for "Dinobites" and "Rustic Meatsterpiece" to use the type of dinosaur meat found in the Fae Realm.
Changed pear and peach trees to drop higher-tier wood; this also increases the level requirements to chop the wood.
Increased the number of special lootable items that spawn only during the day or only during the night (such as certain butterflies, flowers, and mushrooms). There are now 300% to 400% as many of these items in existence at any given moment. This is largely a "bulk" change, and more individual tweaking is likely needed. Play with it for a while and if something seems excessively common or extremely rare, please let us know!
Dramatically increased the chance to find rare level 80 recipe scrolls. (They're still pretty rare, but this fixes a bug that made them INSANELY rare.)
Trolls' auto-healing has been nerfed a bit. (This applies to trolls in all areas.)

In addition, there is a new work order board near Solgribue's work station. The NPC who accepts completed orders is not in town, however -- he appears during nighttime at the second mushroom circle.

Other Changes & Fixes

Carpentry:

Solgribue now trains Carpentry levels 71-80, along with recipes for various carpentry items.
Jara in Serbule no longer trains recipes for chairs. (They were already also trained by Paul Vaughn in Serbule Hills.)
A couple of high-level Carpentry recipes that were taught by Jara and Paul Vaughn are now taught by Amutasa in Rahu.

Mining:

Urzab now raises the level cap for Surveying and Mining to 70, and has new recipes for motherlodes in Gazluk.
The new resource "Semi-Real Hassium" can be found as a rarely-occurring resource all throughout Gazluk, and can also be bartered for with Fluffikins.
Fluffikins now has identical barters for both glowy yellow crystals AND safety-coated glowy yellow crystals.
Awesome Metal Slabs are now called Superb Metal Slabs. (We are renaming "Awesome" items to "Superb" because we have too many other descriptors that start with "A"!)
Superb Metal Slabs can now be located outdoors in Gazluk or in various Gazluk caves (albeit quite rarely).
Removed physics from motherlodes so that you cannot get stuck inside them when they spawn.
"Expert Metal Nodes" can no longer be found randomly spawning in Gazluk or associated caves. (They are junk metal at that level, and there's already enough junk spawning.)

Other:

More recipe-book cash values have been normalized (in this case, generally making rare recipe books more valuable).
Added right-click shortcuts to turn animal skins into leather rolls (assuming you know the appropriate Tanning recipe).
A new rare-drop recipe allows you to combine gold nuggets into gold ore.
Solgribue has a new blacksmithing recipe to melt golden acorns.
Solgribue has a new ring-crafting recipe available.
Solgribue has new blacksmithing recipes to add pockets to metal and organic armor.
Added new code to prevent items that enable Necromancy from randomly having Priest treasure effects, or vice versa.
UI: When you right-click the sidebar and choose "Choose Special Abilities", the ability list previously only showed abilities that can ONLY be on the sidebar (such as, say, Dig Deep). But there are other abilities that can OPTIONALLY be on the sidebar, such as Raise Skeletal Archer or Hunter's Stride. Now when you right-click the sidebar and choose "Choose Special Abilities", these abilities are now listed, too. (These abilities are also listed under their specific skill, as before.)
Nightshade now trains a new recipe to augment wands. This recipe can augment the only two wands in the game, "The Galvanizer" and the Fairy Wand of Cold. (We're still in the process of figuring out how wands will work and how they differ from the staves; these wands are prototypes.) Previously neither of them could be augmented.
Added "acidic shield-wax" recipes to Armor Patching trainers: Tyler Green, Arlan, and Pegast. These were intended to be added last update, but weren't, so now they are.

Aug 25, 2019

Update Notes: August 25, 2019

Project: Gorgon - Sims

The Fae Realm

A new explorable area has been added to the game! It's for those hardy adventurers who can already survive the dangers of Gazluk. Being another plane of existence, it's not especially easy to reach. There is an entry method via the Winter Nexus dungeon, and there is also a way in via one of the caves in Gazluk.

This area is a work in progress -- it will eventually also be the starting location for the playable fairy race, so you'll notice a few empty shop stalls, some suspiciously empty ruins, etc., which will be filled in later.

(There's other things to discover, but we've stayed deliberately vague in these update notes to avoid spoilers for those of you who want to explore the new area fresh.)

IMPORTANT: Given the sheer number of things added in this update, the odds of bugs are pretty high. Please report bugs ASAP so that we can triage and fix them quickly! If serious issues arise, we'll do another update within a day or two. Thank you for helping to beta-test Project: Gorgon!

We also need your feedback about the new area's difficulty, both in terms of soloing and group content. We've experimented with different monster densities, monster-listening ranges, and monster varieties. It could be we got it just right on our very first try... but we probably didn't. Your feedback will be very important!

Shield

We try to revise a combat skill in each major update, and this time around it's Shield. Normally we'd use this time to refine the balance of the skill, but Shield was in a relatively good place balance-wise. Instead, we're trying to inject more fun. The Shield skill was already extremely good at keeping players alive, but much of the treasure felt dull. Shield has a lot more potential to be exciting and engaging!

So in this update, we've experimented with a bunch of new treasure effects, just to see how they play. Most of the new effects replace existing treasure that's been underused by players.

Since these changes are more experimental than usual, they run a higher-than-normal risk of needing to be nerfed later if we overshot the mark, or being replaced entirely if they just don't work out. Your feedback is important in helping us shape the skill! Seriously! We don't hear a lot about the Shield skill, and when we don't hear from you then there's always the danger that something you love could get scrapped. If you play with this stuff and find something to be really fun or really annoying, let us know on the forums or in-game feedback.

Armor Repair and Shield Wax

Armor Repair is the Shield skill's "auxiliary skill", much like Calligraphy is for Sword, or Meditation for Unarmed. There are new Armor Repair recipes that allow you to enhance your shield in a few ways. Tyler Green teaches the basic shield wax recipes. (And if you're wondering why there's a bunch of Acid-buffing gear, it's because of the new acid-based Shield Wax recipes.)

Shield Treasure Changes

"Vigorous Defense restores 85 Health" => "Vigorous Defense restores +48 Power"
"Infuriating Bash deals +40% damage and taunts +330" => +36% damage (This was a spreadsheet error; the low-level versions are stronger but the high level is a little lower.)
"Fight Me You Fools and Finish It boost Core Attack Damage +146 for 6 seconds" => +200 Core Attack Damage
"Shield Team causes all targets' Survival Utility abilities to restore 64 Armor to them. Lasts 20 seconds" => 100 Armor
Replaced (Hands): "Reinforce Power Cost -32" => "When you are hit by an attack, all Shield abilities taunt +182 for 20 seconds (stacks up to 15 times)"
Replaced (Chest, Off Hand): "Stunning Bash restores 35 Health" => "When you are hit by a monster's Rage Attack, the current reuse timer of Stunning Bash is reduced by 1 sec and your next Stunning Bash deals +80 damage (stacks up to 10 times)"
Replaced (Ring): " Fight Me You Fools grants you 33% damage reflection for 10 seconds" => "All Shield Bash Abilities deal +50 damage and hasten the current reuse timer of Fight Me You Fools by 2 seconds"
Replaced (Chest, Off Hand): "Fire Shield and Elemental Ward restore 57 Armor" => "Elemental Ward boosts your direct and indirect Electricity damage +40 for 30 seconds"
Replaced (Legs): "Strategic Preparation hastens the current reset timer of Emergency Bash by 10 seconds" => "Strategic Preparation boosts your Indirect Acid Damage +25% for 20 seconds"
Replaced (Off Hand, Ring): "Strategic Preparation boosts your in-combat Health regeneration +18 for 20 seconds" => "Strategic Preparation causes your next attack to deal +130 damage if it is a Crushing, Slashing, or Piercing attack"
New (Main Hand): "When you are hit by an attack, Finish It damage is +64 for 20 seconds (stacks up to 10 times)"
New (Hands): "All Shield Bash Abilities deal +50 damage and hasten the current reuse timer of Finish It by 2 seconds"
New (Head, Legs): "When you are hit by a monster's Rage Attack, Reinforce restores +42 Armor for 60 seconds (stacks up to 10 times)"
New (Off Hand, Necklace): "Infuriating Bash deals +48 damage and boosts your Indirect Acid Damage +54 for 7 seconds"

Shield Ability Change

In addition, there is one Shield ability change:

Elemental Ward: Power cost has increased, and the first tier of the ability lasts 9 seconds (instead of 10). Second tier lasts 10 seconds (unchanged); there is a new third tier of the ability taught by Gorvessa that requires level 55 and lasts 11 seconds.

Level Cap Increases

All combat skills can now be raised to level 80 (plus bonus levels). Additionally, many auxiliary-combat skills and non-combat skills have higher level caps. Most of these caps can be raised by training with the fairies of the Fae Realm.

Fae Realm trainers require a substance called Royal Jelly in addition to cash. For the most expensive training, this pricing works in players' benefit: e.g. instead of charging 500,000 Councils to raise a combat skill level-cap, they charge 400,000 Councils and 3 Royal Jelly -- and 3 Royal Jelly is easier to come by than 100k councils. However, in other cases the fairies have simply added a Royal Jelly cost without significantly reducing the cash cost.

We have explained to the fae that this is not how prices are expected to work, but fairies are ancient, stubborn creatures who are immune to Haggling. They insist that "mortals will be fine" and "this Royal Jelly is really important" and "you need to stop being so greedy, human".

We will continue to monitor the cost issues, but our advice for high-level players is to carefully choose your training priorities. Of course, you were doing that already.

Some NPC trainers already taught abilities in the mid-70s level range. These abilities are now learned via new 70-80 trainers in the fae realm. The NPCs continue to train them also, but the favor requirement is Soul Mates, which is extremely difficult to achieve. The design intent is that any ability training that requires Soul Mates can also be learned from some other method.

Other level cap increases:

Foraging level cap can now be raised to 70 by Jesina in Eltibule.
Ashk in Rahu can now raise the level cap of Pathology to 70.
Nishika and Rugen in Rahu can now raise the level cap of Skinning to 70.
Nishika and Rugen in Rahu can now raise the level cap of Butchering to 70.
Jake the Buckler in Sun Vale can now raise the level cap of Buckle Artistry to 60.

New Bonus Skill Levels

You earn a bonus level of Lycanthropy when reaching Howling level 25.
You earn a bonus level of Spider when reaching Animal Handling 50, Arthropod Anatomy 41, or Survival Instincts 37.
Fire Magic now grants bonus Fire Mitigation into higher levels. (Previously the final bonus point was at level 45.)
You now gain bonus levels of Sushi Preparation at Fishing 55 and Knife 60.
You now gain bonus levels of Armor Patching when reaching Blacksmithing 50, First Aid 25, Endurance 20, Anatomy 20, Anatomy 40, and Toolcrafting 35. (This is in addition to the previously-existing bonus level at Blacksmithing 35.)
Players earn an additional bonus level of Leatherworking when reaching Tanning 60.

Training Changes

Fletching: Some fletching recipes have new requirements. You learn the recipe for Precision Fletchings automatically at level 50 Fletching. (If you are already that level, it will be in your recipe list when you log in.) This recipe creates the feathery bits for Amazing and Astonishing arrows; some of the types of Amazing arrows already existed and those have had their recipe changed accordingly.
Mittens now teaches Toxic Flesh 8 at Soul Mates; it can also be learned in the Fae Realm.
Some of the very-high-level cheese recipes that Braigon previously taught have been moved to a different trainer.
The level 66 hammer ability Rib Shatter 5 was missing from the game; it is now trained by Falkrin Overstrike.
Furlak no longer trains Knee Kick 5 or 6. (Knee Kick and Jab are alternate powers that are only learnable from loot scrolls.)

Health & Power Advancement

Previously, you received +1 Max Power for each level above 50 in your active combat skills. You now receive a point every other level in the 50s, then receive no further Max Power increases after level 60. For a player with two level 70 combat skills, this amounts to a change of -30 Max Power in total, counting both skills.
Most animal-form skills (except werewolf and bat) are a special case: they use a different power advancement curve, and their Max Power starts dropping off in the 60s instead of the 50s.

Lycanthropy now grants bonus Max Health into higher levels. (At low levels it gives an average of 2.5 Max Health per level, but previously it changed to 2-per-level after level 60. It now gives an average of 2.5 at all levels.)
Previously, the Pig, Spider, and Rabbit skills gave slightly more Max Health and less Max Power than normal combat skills (following the "tanky" pattern of the Lycanthropy skill), but this doesn't really fit the nature of those skills very well, so they now gain max health and max power at the regular rate. (Total change is +10 power and -15 health at level 50.)
The Cow and Deer skills now give slightly more Max Health than before (a total of +15 Max Health at level 50).

Recipe XP Drop-off

When you complete a recipe that is significantly lower than your skill level, you will now earn less than the full XP for that recipe. This is a pretty gradual process: for most recipes, the XP doesn't drop to 0 until your skill level is more than 50 levels above the recipe's level.

The Recipe window now shows you how much XP you'll earn for repeat completions. (Note that this number doesn't include weird one-off XP awards, such as the Teleportation XP bonus for binding to a new teleport spot -- it just shows the basic XP earned from the recipe.)

Not all recipes work this way because it just doesn't make sense in some cases. And a few recipes have slightly different drop-off rates. The intent isn't to make it super-hard to level up, just to push players away from using way-too-easy recipes at very high levels. If you feel a skill is now much too hard to level up (perhaps because of a lack of recipes in a particular level range), please let us know so we can address it!

This doesn't apply to the first-time use of a recipe, which intentionally awards a large bonus. That large bonus is always the same regardless of your skill level.

Other Skill & Ability Changes

Most abilities cost a bit more Power at very high level. A typical level 70 ability costs 1-4 more Power than before. The most dramatic change can be seen in the Epic Attacks; for example, Decapitate 5 (the level 72 Sword Epic Attack) previously cost 72 Power, and now costs 80 Power.
Animal Handling: "Sic 'Em" ability boosts the pet's speed and damage for a few seconds, but the in-game description was bugged and the damage bonus wasn't shown.
Animal Handling: Feed Pet/That'll Do: minor reduction to heal amounts at high level. (formula fix)
Archery: Multishot 5 consumes 5x Amazing Arrows (instead of 5x Masterwork Arrows).
Archery: Blitz Shot 3, 4, and 5 each consumed an arrow that was one tier lower than intended for that level.
Armor Patching: Levels 2-6 restored more armor than they said they would. This has been fixed to match ability description.
Battle Chemistry: Several tiers of Summon Minigolem summoned a golem with lower-than-intended health/armor/rage stats.
Cold Magic: The description of Ice Armor indicated that it reduced movement speed by 33%, but actually reduced by 25%. The ability description was incorrect and has been fixed.
Druid: Healing Sanctuary 5 restores 55 per tick instead of 60 per tick. (data fix)
Druid: Energize 2 and 3 restored 20 Health more than indicated in the ability description. (data fix)
Fletching: Recipe for Amazing Snare Arrows now consumes Expert Wood Glue instead of Advanced Wood Glue.
Fletching: Recipe for Precision Fletching now consumes Expert Wood Glue instead of Advanced Wood Glue.
Hammer: Way of the Hammer 2 and 3 did not buff crushing damage by as much as listed in the ability description.
Knife: The description of Hamstring Throw indicated that it lasted 5 seconds at all levels, but high-level versions last up to 10 seconds. The ability description was incorrect and has been fixed.
Pig: "Grunt of Abeyance" ability has a stronger innate heal. (formula change)
Rabbit: Carrot Power indicated that it consumes 1 carrot, but actually there is only a 33% chance of consumption. The ability description was incorrect and has been fixed.
Staff: Blocking Stance 3 now mitigates 35% of all damage (reduced from 40%).
Staff: Phoenix Strike now causes melee attackers to suffer significantly more fire damage (more than double the previous values).
Survival Instincts: All tiers of Toxic Flesh are now more potent (dealing about 2x more damage to melee damagers). Ability has been changed slightly: it now harms "melee damagers" instead of "melee attackers". This means the attacker must do at least 1 point of damage to you in order to qualify. (This is not normally a problem.)

Other Changes & Fixes

Trade Window

Fixed errant gold icon floating in middle of window.
Made the green "accepted" overlay click-through-able; this has the important benefit of letting you mouse over the items and see their tooltips. (Previously the green overlay prevented the tooltips from showing up.)
Fixed race-conditions that could cause the trade window to get out of sync, making the trade incompletable and requiring players to start the trade over.

Monster Vulnerabilities
Note that only changes are listed here, not full vulnerability/resistance lists.

Summer and Autumn fairies are now vulnerable to darkness but not psychic.
Giant scorpions are now vulnerable to darkness.
Hippogriffs are now vulnerable to darkness.
Gargoyles are now vulnerable to acid.
Hippos are now vulnerable to acid.
Treants are now resistant to trauma and psychic, but vulnerable to darkness and acid.

Misc

Pet AI tweak: Pets in Assist and Defend mode ignore 75% of the aggro they would normally generate due to attackers hitting them. This is to ensure that pets continue to assist/defend you even when being attacked by other foes. (This also applies to mini-golem AI.)
Notoriety: raising Notoriety above level 50 now has stat rewards.
The previous update notes said that some orcs now have bonus Accuracy, but due to an error this change didn't actually make it into the game until now.
The chance for monsters to drop "Telka's Teeth" items has been lowered dramatically. (The chance is approx. 1/4th of its previous chances in desert rakshasa junk loot, and approx. 1/10th of previous drop rate in war caches specifically focused on Telka's Teeth.)
Fixed bugs with the guild quest "Fox Outpost (25-person)". If your guild was actively on this quest, you will need to re-obtain it.
Borghild: Fixed some spawn-positions for loot items and acid sigils; they spawned on shelves where they could not be interacted with.
The cash value of recipe books (found in loot) now follows a simple formula instead of being completely arbitrary. Some scrolls are worth more than before, some less.
NPCs who like "artwork" (Sir Coth, Lawara, Eveline Rastin) considered poetry books to be about twice as nice a gift as intended. This has been fixed.
Lemon shaved ice requires 1 fewer lemons; banana shaved ice requires 1 fewer bananas.
You cannot read Timothy Elerimon's hoplology book while in combat.
With the advent of more fae creatures in the game, Hiral no longer sells Pixie Sugar. (He sold it at an astronomical +2,000% markup anyway.)
Several recipes that incorporated venison were not marked as containing deer meat in the final dish.
Fixed texture problems with Spring Fairy Boots.
Lakrea's Holistic Wellness quests now give better rewards, thanks to a grant from the Redwing Fund for Biped Wellness.

Jun 26, 2019

Update Notes: June 26, 2019

Project: Gorgon - Jackencola

This update is a potpourri of tweaks, bug fixes, and new content. So let's get to it!

Gardening Almanac

Starting in this update, different gardens across the world will get daily Gardening bonuses. There are different bonuses each day; for example, today there might be a bonus to growing carrots in Gretchen's garden in Serbule Hills, and tomorrow there might be a bonus for growing daisies in Sun Vale.

Gardeners who want to take advantage of these bonuses can check out the new Gardening Almanac in Serbule, Rahu, and the Casino. This book can tell you about current and upcoming Gardening bonuses. The Serbule almanac is in the windmill.

Since it's possible for these gardening events to happen in Kur or Gazluk, we've added locations in those areas where it's possible to grow vegetables. However, while it's now TECHNICALLY possible, most players will run into practical difficulties due to the climate. Not all Gardening events are equally useful!

Shop Search Upgrade

You can now use the shop-search golems to search for equipment or augments that meet certain requirements. Just click the appropriate option on the golem's sidebar menu to begin. You can search by slot, skill, rarity, and level range.

This feature involved a lot of new code and could have bugs, so report them if you see them!

War Caches

We've added six more War Cache quests in this update. These are a bit harder than the earlier ones. (But are they too hard? If so, let us know!)
The rewards from spending "Sir Johnson Bucks" were previously guaranteed to be Epic (4-power) items. That ended up being too good for the work involved; new reward items are now Exceptional (3-power) with a chance for higher-rarity items.

Gazluk Keep

Gazluk Keep continues to be our testing ground for high-level group content. The following tweaks have been made in this update:

Bosses have significantly improved chances of rare-drop items. Chances of finding Exceptional (3-power) items are 2-4x higher, and chances of Epic (4-power) items and Legendary (5-power) items are about double. (The exact amount of change varies per boss.)
Certain types of orcs now have some Accuracy in their attacks, allowing them to overcome player Evasion. Affected orcs indicate this in their monster info (when selected). NOTE: this change also happens to affect a few monsters outside of Gazluk: "Orcish Thaumaturges" anywhere in the world now have Accuracy. Give them a pat on the back for powering up. (Even though it may be only temporary.)
Bug fix: Stolen War Golem eventually stops calling for backup after its enemies flee or are killed.

Live Events

We've added some major new tools for admin-run live events. We're continuing to improve the design of live events based on your feedback, so please continue to give feedback after any live event you participate in! Thanks!

Unarmed Skill Changes

Unarmed is the oldest skill (its internal ID is #1) and it has seen many permutations. It is intended to be a strongly defensive skill with a lot of control abilities, moderate damage potential, and powerful combos.

In a previous update we accidentally created a scenario where it was possible to use the skill's Epic Attack every 15 seconds, which added a huge amount of damage potential. As usual, we left it alone for a while to see what the ramifications were (lots of times, balance errors end up working out fine), but in this case it's obvious that this is not going to be sustainable into future higher levels, and it gets more overpowered every time we add a way to buff Epic Attacks. So we've nerfed the treasure effect responsible.

We're also working on making percentage-based mitigation treasure scale better between low and high levels, and Unarmed is the first skill to see those changes. Previously, low-level mitigation treasure was very weak (e.g. "3% of the physical damage you take is mitigated"), then it scaled to the original target power-level around level 50, and then kept going higher after that. Our plan for percentage mitigation now is that it will start off much stronger and cap out around level 50 or 60, and we're adding other effects to the treasure that can continue to scale past that level.

The Unarmed skill was created before Evasion existed, but it's a natural fit for the skill, so we've added a bit of Evasion to the treasure effects. In addition, the game engine can now support "side-effects" of Evading, and Unarmed is the first recipient of these effects. (For instance, one treasure effect is "Any time you Evade an attack, your next attack deals +133 damage".) As with any new tech, bugs are possible; please report them!

We've also tweaked most of the meditation combos. Those changes aren't documented individually here because it's too spammy, but in general the combo changes came in two flavors: boosts to damage, and replacing "Punch" steps with "Any Melee" steps.

Some other changes were made to add more synergy with other Trauma-damage skills.

Ability Changes:

Mamba Strike: This ability has changed from a Crushing attack to a Trauma attack that deals direct health damage. When the target's armor is low (below 33%), it now deals +33% immediate Trauma damage, instead of adding a Trauma damage-over-time effect. Reuse timer lowered from 8 sec to 6 sec.
Slashing Strike and Claw Barrage: We updated ability descriptions to mention that being an empty-handed animal with claws is sufficient to activate the ability. (The behavior is unchanged, it was just not well-documented. Currently only werewolves have claws.)

Treasure Changes:

"Bruising Blow deals +28% damage and hastens the current reuse timer of Bodyslam by 10 seconds" => Now hastens by 5 seconds. (This is the big nerf.)
"Headbutt deals +20% damage and conjures a magical field that mitigates 20% of all physical damage you take for 10 seconds (or until 200 damage is mitigated)" => Now mitigates 15% for 10 seconds or until 400 damage is mitigated. All levels now mitigate 15% physical damage; the damage bonus and mitigation cap increase with each level.
"While using Unarmed skill, 36% of all Darkness and Psychic damage you take is mitigated and added to the damage done by your next Punch, Jab, or Infuriating Fist" => now 25% at a 300% rate. (This effect previously scaled from 8%-36% mitigation with a constant 100% soak-reflect; it's now 13%-25% with a continuously increasing soak-reflect.)
"While using Unarmed skill, 22% of all Acid, Poison, and Nature damage you take is mitigated and added to the damage done by your next Kick at a 100% rate" => now 21% at a 280% rate. (This effect previously scaled from 8%-22% mitigation with a constant 100% soak-reflect; it's now 1%-21% with a continuously increasing soak-reflect.)
"Mamba Strike deals +250% Crushing damage and +400 Trauma damage (if target's armor is below 33%), but reuse timer is +8 seconds" => "Mamba Strike damage +55%"
"Mamba Strike and Front Kick deal 95 Trauma damage over 15 seconds" => "Mamba Strike and Front Kick damage +80"
"Barrage and Headbutt ignite the target, causing them to take 130 damage over 20 seconds" => 212 damage over 8 seconds.
"Unarmed attacks have a 23% chance to conjure a magical field that mitigates 10% of all physical damage you take for 1 minute (or until 100 damage is mitigated)." => "While Unarmed skill is active: you gain +4% Melee Evasion and any time you Evade a Melee attack you recover 64 Armor"
"Unarmed attacks have a 16% chance to conjure a magical field that mitigates 10% of all physical damage you take for 1 minute (or until 100 damage is mitigated). Damage mitigated in this way is automatically added to the damage you do with your next Kick attack." => replaced: "While Unarmed skill is active: When you Evade an attack, your next attack deals +188 damage"
"Hip Throw and Bodyslam deal +148 armor damage" => "Hip Throw deals +192 armor damage"
"Cobra Strike and Mamba Strike boost your Nice Attack and Signature Debuff ability damage +44 for 7 seconds" => +55 for 7 seconds
"Slashing Strike and Claw Barrage boost damage from Epic attacks +60 for 10 seconds" => +74
"Infuriating Fist taunts +460 and deals 150 Trauma damage over 12 seconds": This effect can no longer be found on Hands slot, only on Legs slot. Hand items with this effect have become Legacy items. (See below for instructions on what to do with Legacy items.)
New treasure effect for the Hands slot: "Infuriating Fist damage +103. Damage becomes Trauma instead of Crushing"
Slashing Strike: The damage-over-time is now applied over 6 seconds instead of 12.
"Slashing Strike deals +126 Trauma damage over 12 seconds" => over 6 seconds
"Infuriating Fist taunts +460 and deals 138 Trauma damage over 12 seconds" => over 6 seconds
"Cobra Strike and Mamba Strike Damage +38%" => +58%
"Cobra Strike and Mamba Strike restore 32 Armor to you" => 40 armor
"Bodyslam deals +37% damage and slows target's movement speed by 45%": This effect is no longer available on Hands, just Head. Items with this effect on Hands have become Legacy Items. (See below for instructions on what to do with Legacy items.)
New hands treasure effect: "Bruising Blow deals Trauma damage instead of Crushing, and targets suffer 12.5% more damage from other Trauma attacks for 20 seconds"
"While using Unarmed skill, 22% of all Slashing, Piercing, and Crushing damage you take is mitigated and added to the damage done by your next Punch, Jab, or Infuriating Fist at a 100% rate" => now 18% at a 260% rate. (This effect previously scaled from 3%-22% mitigation with a constant 100% soak-reflect; it's now 10%-18% with a continuously increasing soak-reflect.)
"Headbutt and Knee Kick deal +138 armor damage" => "Headbutt and Knee Kick Damage +108"
New treasure effect for the chest and off-hand slots: New chest and off-hand treasure effect: "Headbutt Damage +44%"

Legacy Items

Legacy items are items that cannot be generated in-game anymore, typically due to changes to the treasure-effect tables. If you have a Legacy item, you can continue using it for 30 days before it becomes permanently broken. There is a small golem in Serbule (in a house near the well) called the Legacy Item Replacer. This golem can tell you why an item is Legacy, and can replace the item with a new randomly-generated item with the same rarity.

New to this update, you can also use Transmutation to remove the treasure effect that is making your item Legacy. After you've used Transmutation to change the offending effect into something else, log out and then log back in so that the game re-examines the item and removes the Legacy status. (If it works, the message "THIS IS A LEGACY ITEM" should disappear from the item description after relogging.)

Werewolf Treasure

We've taken a second look at a few treasure effects, especially the effects for Shadow Feint. We didn't correctly account for its dual-state nature and the effects were a bit too weak.

"Blood of the Pack restores 90 Health over 30 seconds to you and your allies" => over 10 seconds
"Shadow Feint causes your next attack to deal +144 damage if it is a Werewolf ability" => +192 damage
"When you teleport via Shadow Feint, you recover 50 Armor and your Sprint Speed is +3 for 10 seconds" => 83 Armor
"When you teleport via Shadow Feint, you recover 70 Health" => 100 Health
"Shadow Feint reduces the taunt of all your attacks by 35% until you trigger the teleport" => 46%
"Shadow Feint raises your Lycanthropy Base Damage +36% until you trigger the teleport" => +52%

Fixes to Damage Type Overrides

When a treasure effect changes the type of damage an ability deals, the game previously only partially implemented this: the target's vulnerabilities and resistances to the new damage type were calculated correctly, but it still used the original damage type when calculating total damage. For related reasons, the ability tooltip didn't completely show what was changing, only mentioning it at the bottom under "Other Effects".

This is fixed, both internally and in the displayed info. The tooltip will show the new damage type in green (indicating it is enchanted), and the damage is calculated based on that new damage type.

Sonic Damage Retired

We're retiring the "Sonic" damage type. It was basically only accessible from the Giant Bat and Bard skills, and Giant Bats can't be Bards, so there wasn't much synergy (except perhaps in groups). After playing with some ideas, we realized no upcoming new combat skills were going to do a lot of Sonic damage, either.

So we're converting all Sonic attacks to a different damage type to allow for more interconnectedness between skills. We've converted them all to Nature damage for now, although some may get changed to another damage type when we next focus on the individual skills involved.

Bard ability Blast of Fury damage type is now Nature.
Bard ability Blast of Defiance damage type is now Nature.
Bard ability Blast of Despair damage type is now Nature.
Giant Bat ability Screech damage type is now Nature.
Giant Bat ability Sonic Burst damage type is now Nature.
Bard Treasure change: "Thunderous Note deals +45% damage, and damage type is Sonic instead of Trauma" => Nature instead of Trauma
Bard Treasure change: "Thunderous Note causes the target to take +13% damage from Sonic attacks for 15 seconds" => Nature instead of Sonic
Giant Bat Treasure change: "For 30 seconds after using Drink Blood, all sonic attacks deal +45 damage" => all Nature attacks deal +45 damage
Giant Bat Treasure change: "Sonic Damage +32%" => "Nature Damage +32%"
Bard Crafting: Bard Shirts and Bard Gloves now boost Nature damage, not Sonic damage.
Council Pathfinder Helm now mitigates Nature, not Sonic.
Ratty Tactics Ring now boosts Nature, not Sonic damage.
Rattail-Ring of Screeching now boosts and protects against Nature, not Sonic.
All monsters that were vulnerable or resistant to Sonic have been changed. Most are now resistant/vulnerable to some new type instead.
All monster attacks that dealt Sonic damage now deal Nature damage.

Preventing Unintentional Quest Turn-ins

Having an NPC steal your good boots, when what you wanted was to give him your not-nearly-as-good boots, is a frustrating pain! So we've tweaked the behavior a little:

Equipment that is part of a Load-Out is never counted as part of a Quest or Work-Order.
Equipment that is in a Vendor-Locked folder is never counted as part of a Quest or Work-Order. (Note this only applies to equipment, not other items. This is so that players can still put regular quest items in vendor-locked folders to prevent accidentally selling them, and the items can still be turned in for the quest.)

These sound like small bug-fixes, but they involved a bit more work than it may seem. The changes have been tested, but as always, please be on the lookout for bugs or complications.

Footsteps

We've made major changes to the footstep sound-effect system to allow for more types of sounds, such as squishy sounds for sand and splash sounds when running in shallow water. More work is planned in this area eventually, including volume fixes and different sounds for different boot types. (Currently the game assumes you're always wearing metal boots.)

Other Changes

Fixed many teleportation arrival positions where the camera could get switched around to face the player instead of being behind the player.
Made configuring guild permissions a little more intuitive.
Fixed bugs that could prevent the "glowing" effect on high-tier loot (in the loot window).
Thimble Pete no longer notices if you are an animal while turning in a work order. (But still won't train animals.)
Small performance improvements to humanoids (both NPCs and Players).
Trolls' regeneration (when not on fire) is MUCH more potent!
Tweaked resistances and abilities of mummies.

Lore Adjustments

We've made a few small tweaks to game lore:

The "Rains in Ilmari" lasted for 2 years, not 20. (Exaggeration at its best!)
References to the "Red Mantis Gang" have been fixed to reference the "Red Wing Gang".
Removed a reference to the god Bogdelle because she has been retconned out of existence.
References to "Mirraverre" have been fixed to the correct spelling "Miraverre".

External Character References

We're working on some new ways for you to share your deeds and actions with the outside world. One thing we're working on is a "news ticker" that shows recent heroic exploits, such as killing a boss, completing a recipe for the 1000th time, maxing out a skill, that sort of thing. (It's not live yet -- we're still experimenting with it.)

We'll only be using your character's name, and possibly other in-game names such as your guild's name -- we'd never share any real-life information. But if you are uncomfortable with having your character name-dropped outside of the game, you can opt out: in the "Social" window, under the "RESTRICT" tab, turn off "External References".

And, of course, when you're in Incognito mode you're also left off of the news ticker, because you obviously want to be incognito! (As a reminder of how incognito works: you can log-in Incognito by holding down the SHIFT key at the character-selection screen. The "LOGIN" button will change to say "INCOGNITO LOGIN". This mode prevents your friends-list from being notified that you logged in, prevents you from showing up in /who lists and Guild-Online lists, etc. If you want to play incognito all the time, you can type "/incognito on" (without the quotes) into the chat window.)

Apr 25, 2019

Update Notes: April 26, 2019

Project: Gorgon - Sims

Ilmari War Caches

Decades ago, the Crone Hegemony built massive bunkers in the Ilmari Desert, bunkers which have since been buried deep in the shifting sands. But what the wind hides can be unhidden...

Ilmari War Caches are mini-dungeons with level 50-60 solo monsters. Each War Cache is designed to be a quick solo adventure. Each time you start a War Cache quest, you'll get a map that works much like a treasure map, except the treasure is an entrance portal. The map is used up when you enter -- you can't get back in if you have to leave, so you need to come prepared! (If you fail the quest you can just cancel it and get a new quest, but the next quest may send you to a different dungeon.)

However, these quests aren't time-limited: you can log out of these dungeons and log back in later. You just can't leave the dungeon and come back later, since leaving would fail the quest.

These are not instanced dungeons, so it's possible for other players to be randomly sent to the same dungeon. Any quest items that come from monster loot are cloned for each person that loots it. However, since this is primarily a solo experience, all the "puzzle" mechanics are instanced. This means when you flip a lever to open a gate, only your version of the lever flips and only your version of the gate opens. We did this to ensure that other players can't screw up your puzzle, intentionally or not.

Note that the "map fog" in War Caches erases itself when you leave, so if you repeat the war cache, you'll need to map it again. (Clearing this fog does not earn Cartography XP.) This is our way of saying "don't obsess over clearing every inch of map fog, just play!"

To get started with the War Caches, talk to Sir Johnson in Amulna.

We'd love to get your feedback on this experience! To report a problem with a particular quest, please refer to it by the indicator mentioned in the quest text, such as "War Cache T-1".

Note: Because these dungeons aren't instanced, and because we expect a lot of players will want to check them out immediately after the update, please expect some congestion at first and schedule your time accordingly.

Transmutation Cost Changes

We've changed the amount of Phlogiston and Durability consumed by Transmutation. Transmutation costs are now tied to the rarity of the item. This is generally a "buff"; costs are reduced in most cases. For reference, the rarity levels are Uncommon (green), Rare (blue), Exceptional (red), Epic (purple), and Legendary (gold).

Skill-Specific Effects:
When you transmute an effect associated with a specific skill (e.g. "Unarmed Base Damage +20%"), the cost now depends on the rarity of the item:

Uncommon and Rare: 5 Durability and 25 Phlogiston
Exceptional: 10 Durability and 30 Phlogiston
Epic: 20 Durability and 35 Phlogiston
Legendary: 25 Durability and 35 Phlogiston
Previously, the cost for all Rarities was: 25 Durability and 35 Phlogiston

Generic Effects:
When you transmute an effect that isn't tied to a skill (e.g. "Max Health +10"), the cost now depends on the rarity of the item:

Uncommon and Rare: 5 Durability and 10 Phlogiston
Exceptional: 10 Durability and 15 Phlogiston
Epic: 15 Durability and 20 Phlogiston
Legendary: 20 Durability and 20 Phlogiston
Previously, the cost for all Rarities was: 20 Durability and 10 Phlogiston

In addition, the phlogiston cost is reduced for low-level items:

15 less Phlogiston for items level 15 and under
10 less Phlogiston for items level 30 and under
5 less Phlogiston for items level 45 and under

Hammer Changes

The Hammer skill was somewhat heavily-impacted by the damage-formula changes in the last update, so we spent some time refining this skill. We've restructured some of Hammer's gear to have more favorable synergy with other effects, sometimes by changing small percentage bonuses to larger flat bonuses. We've also added a few new treasure effects (not listed here, as usual).

Concussion Debuffs:
Certain hammer treasure effects apply Concussion debuffs which makes the victim "prone to random self-stuns".
- These debuffs are now a bit more effective. (Also note that these three debuffs stack with each other, although that isn't a new thing.)
- One of the aforementioned Concussion debuffs has been moved out of treasure and added to the basic Rib Shatter ability

Rib Shatter:
This ability previously caused Trauma damage over time. But since Hammer doesn't have much Trauma synergy (and doesn't really have room for it in its treasure tables -- Hammer has a lot of other stuff going on!), Rib Shatter has been revised. It is now a heavier-hitting hammer attack that also causes the target to be prone to random self-stuns -- in other words, it applies the Mild Concussion debuff that used to be a treasure effect for Reverberating Strike.

Various treasure effects were adjusted or replaced as a result.

"Rib Shatter deals +220 Trauma damage over 10 seconds" => "Rib Shatter restores 40 Health to you"
Way of the Hammer: "For 10 seconds, all targets deal +15% Crushing Damage" => +35%
"Way of the Hammer boosts Slashing and Piercing Damage +17% for 10 seconds" => +34%
"Way of the Hammer boosts all targets' Electricity Damage +20% for 10 seconds" => +35%
Way of the Hammer is now marked as a Signature Support ability for the purpose of buffs that affect Signature Support.
The treasure effect "Hammer attacks deal +16% damage but generate +48% Rage" was incorrectly boosting hammer Base Damage, not regular damage. This has been fixed, making the effect typically generate more damage in high-level builds.
The cost of Pound To Slag was tweaked slightly, and its Reuse Timer changed from 50s to 45s. (Some treasure mods were recalculated very slightly as a result of the shortened reuse timer.)
Latent Charge: Delayed electricity damage now occurs after 5 seconds, not 8 seconds.
The treasure effect "Pound To Slag hastens the current reuse timer of Look at My Hammer by 5 seconds" was previously available for all levels 50+, and did the same thing at all levels. There are now higher tiers of this effect which also boost Pound To Slag damage. All pre-existing versions of this effect are still the level 50 one, but new gear can obtain higher versions now. (Note that this effect is still not available in gear below level 50.)
"Reckless Slam deals +33% damage and taunts -360" => "Reckless Slam deals +64 damage and taunts -285" (It deals about the same damage but synergizes more nicely with other Reckless Slam mods.)
"Reverberating Strike restores 38 armor to you and taunts -275" => " Reverberating Strike restores 96 armor after a 6-second delay"
"Hurl Lightning Damage +39% and Reuse Time -1 second" => "Hurl Lightning Damage +94 and Reuse Time -1 second"
"Thunderstrike Damage +38%" => "Thunderstrike Damage +128"
"Reverberating Strike deals 70 direct health damage and applies the Mild Concussion status: target is susceptible to random self-stuns" => "Reverberating Strike Damage +85"

Lycanthropy

Lycanthropy is one of the oldest skills in the game, existing since "pre-pre-alpha". It's changed many times over the years of early development. (It went through a "tons of loot-activated combos" phase for a while, and a "super-fast-Bite" phase, and a "corpse-eating gives infinite healing" phase ... Good times!) But after our last batch of changes (way back in 2017!) we switched our attention to other skills.

Returning, finally, to Lycanthropy, we've found that it has some overpowered damage combinations, but also had a bunch of crufty stuff. Some of that crufty stuff was left over from previous versions of the skill (like one Piercing ability in a skill that's now focused on Crushing/Slashing/Trauma), or abilities that were prototyped in the 2017 revision but didn't pan out like we'd hoped (like See Red, which just ended up being a random mishmash of buffs and heals). Other problems were due to engine limitations that are now fixed -- the new version of Shadow Feint is much closer to what was originally imagined, but couldn't be implemented at the time.

So there are a bunch of changes here which will take some time to get used to. These changes do nerf the most common damage combination currently in max-level use, but despite that, we expect this will not feel like that big of a nerf after players adjust to the new skill. (And in many cases will be a buff.) It's also simply more fun to play than before.

General:

Sanguine Fangs damage changed from Piercing to Crushing.
"Sanguine Fangs suddenly deals 280 Trauma damage after a 12-second delay" => 8-second delay
Sanguine Fangs base direct damage increased. Some treasure effects revised as a result.
Blood of the Pack has a faster animation.
"Werewolf Claw, Double Claw, and Pouncing Rake Damage +22%" => " Werewolf Claw, Double Claw, and Pouncing Rake Damage +50"
"All Werewolf attacks have a 31% chance to deal 64 Trauma damage over 8 seconds" => 47% chance
"Double Claw deals +114 armor damage" => "Double Claw deals +88 damage"
"All Werewolf attacks have a 31% chance to deal 64 Trauma damage over 8 seconds" => "Werewolf Max Health +35"

Skulk:
Skulk's base damage boost was too high, and some of its loot was also too powerful.

Skulk: The "next attack" bonus damage is reduced significantly. (For example, Skulk 4 now gives +223, instead of +359.)
"Skulk grants you +35 Mitigation against all attacks" => +24 Mitigation
"Skulk causes your next attack to deal +70% damage if it is a Crushing attack" => +43% damage
"When Skulk is used, you recover 52 Health and all enemies within 10 meters are taunted -1375" => taunted -700
Skulk now has a faster casting time and a different in-use particle

See Red:
See Red had some treasure that was a little overpowered, but most of its treasure (and its inherent buff) were underwhelming. Since werewolves already have several other nice 30-second-reset abilities, See Red just felt a little out of place.

So in this update we've tried something new. The ability has been entirely re-envisioned: instead of a self-buff, it's now a melee attack. Its treasure still provides a broad range of utility, though, and with the shorter reset time (10 sec instead of 30), it's more versatile.

See Red is now a Trauma attack with a 10-second reuse timer and a lower Power cost.
See Red no longer buffs Piercing/Slashing damage.

All treasure effects revised:

"See Red restores 132 Armor" => "For 8 seconds after using See Red, all other Lycanthropy attacks deal 116 Trauma damage over 8 seconds"
"See Red grants you Melee Evasion +18%" => +14%
"See Red increases the damage of your next attack by +260" => +95
"See Red restores 54 Health and costs -20 Power" => "See Red deals +36 damage and Power cost is -16"
"See Red heals you for 85 health" => 38 health

Because the ability is now an attack, it needed more ability tiers than when it was a buff. The ability previously went up to See Red 4, and now goes to See Red 7. Sanja trains up to See Red 5, and the last two are taught from the Altar of Norala. If you had the old See Red 3 or 4, you still have them, but they are now for a lower level than before; you will need to obtain the new tiers.

Shadow Feint:

Shadow Feint: This ability is now a toggle. Use it once to enter "feint mode." You will see a small indicator showing where you will teleport back to. Use again to teleport back. The range of the ability has decreased from 40m at all levels to 30/35/40m. Teleport time window shortened.
Shadow Feint Has faster animation, and the 1-second channeling delay was removed.

All Shadow Feint treasure effects were overhauled:

"After using Shadow Feint, your Lycanthropy Base Damage increases +36% for 30 seconds or until you are attacked" => "Shadow Feint raises your Lycanthropy Base Damage +36% for 20 seconds or until you trigger the teleport"
"After using Shadow Feint, your Sprint Speed increases +3 for 15 seconds and your next attack deals +120 damage" => " Shadow Feint boosts the damage of your next attack +144 if it is a Lycanthropy ability" (note that the old version also only buffed Lycanthropy abilities; it just didn't say so)
"Shadow Feint heals 130 health and 130 armor when you teleport" => "When you teleport via Shadow Feint, you recover 70 Health"
"Shadow Feint boosts your In-Combat Armor Regeneration +35 for 20 seconds" => "When you teleport via Shadow Feint, you recover 50 Armor and your Sprint Speed is +3 for 10 seconds"

Beast Metabolism:

Werewolves no longer need to be "out of combat" to eat corpses.
Inherent recovery-per-level from corpses is a little higher.
Previously, raising the Beast Metabolism skill only increased the duration of the recovery buff. It now also slightly increases the amount of healing and power recovered (per tick). This can be further boosted by treasure effects.

Norala Altar Buffs:

Boosted potency of Max Health buffs from +10/20/30/40/50 to +10/20/35/50/75 and added a sixth tier that goes to +100.
Boosted potency of Corpse Eat Healing buffs from +4/7/10/12/15/18 to +4/8/12/16/20 and added a sixth tier that goes to +25.
The fifth tier of Max Power buffs is reduced in cost from 3 tokens to 2.
The fifth tier of Physical Mitigation is reduced in cost from 2 tokens to 1.
Clarified labels to indicate that "Werewolf Damage Boost %" increases Base Damage.

Training:
It costs fewer altar points to learn abilities and raise your level cap at the Altar of Norala. This is still the primary way you're expected to raise the skill level cap. (Keep in mind that the altar lets you buy level-cap increases before you reach your max level.) If you don't want to wait until a full moon, you can now also train with Sanja in Kur. This is VERY expensive, however!

Sanja also temporarily teaches the new tiers of See Red, to help existing werewolves adapt to the changes. She will stop training these in the next update after the full moon -- they are normally learned from the Altar of Norala.

Other Skill & Ability Changes

Bard: "All bard songs restore X Health [or Armor] to YOU every 4 seconds" => fixed bugs that allowed these treasure mods to get applied multiple times when switching songs.
Bard: Fixed a bug that caused some song-oriented treasure effects to apply themselves for 60 seconds after you had manually toggled the song off.
Priest: The ability Invigorate claimed to restore Power but restored that amount of Health instead. Now it restores Power as intended. (Treasure effects were already correct, only the base Power healing from the ability was wrong.)
Spider: Due to changes to the game engine, the treasure effect "Web Trap sets a teleport spot. If you are hit 6 times within 30 seconds you'll automatically teleport back to that spot. (Must be within 40 meters of teleport spot.)" no longer worked. Since it was really not very useful, we didn't try to make it work and just replaced it. It is now: "While you are near your Web Trap, you recover 4 Power per second".
Treasure effects that boost Spore Bomb, Stake the Heart, Fish Gut, and Crossbow attacks are more potent.
Many pieces of equipment that innately boost a damage type by a percentage (e.g. Spring Fairy Shoes, which have inherent bonuses to Nature and Electricity damage) have been buffed.

Monster Balance Changes

Monsters' critical hits were dealing too much damage when their Rage Attacks critically hit, potentially killing a player instantly. This was most prevalent in Elites, but a few solo-oriented monsters were also too dangerous.

We're adjusting things a bit: now when monsters' Rage Attacks critically hit, they no longer deal +100% damage, but instead deal +50% damage and also heal the monster for 25% of its Max Health. If the monster is an Elite or Boss, Rage Attack crits also heal 100% of the monster's Armor.
Non-Rage-attack crits continue to boost +100% damage as before.

Note that this change also automatically applies to any pets that have Rage Attacks (such as Necromancy minions).

Rage and Crit Bug Fixes
While working on critical hit damage for monsters' Rage attacks, we encountered and fixed some other bugs related to critical hits and Rage.
Due to a data-processing bug, abilities that are supposed to generate extra Rage in enemies had stopped doing so. This was broken for a fairly long time (over 6 months), but is now fixed. Affected abilities should once again show this info in the ability info window.

This affects:

Most Fire Magic abilities
Battle Chemistry's Toxin Bomb
Mentalism's Mindreave
Archery's Fire Arrow
Priests' Flamestrike and Righteous Flame
Shambling Corpses' health-reaping attacks
Skeleton Mages' fire attacks
Pet Fire Walls' attacks
The melee attacks of fiery pet rats

In addition:

Several Psychology abilities were not correctly marked as receiving critical hits from Phrenology; this is now fixed.
Crossbow abilities now gain the same chance to "critically hit" that bows do, based on your Anatomy skill and the target's anatomy type. Crossbows gain a +50% damage mod when they crit. (This isn't a bug fix, it's a small power-up.)
Several monsters did not deal full intended damage with their Rage attacks: Worghests, Gazluk Elite Tacticians, Ratkin hammer-users

Gazluk-Only Balance Change:
Gazluk Keep continues to be our testing ground for changes to high-level group content, since it's the highest-level group dungeon at the moment. We believe high-level group monsters need a large increase in Max Health to make group combat play out as intended, so we're experimenting with that in GK.

Elite monsters in Gazluk Keep now have between 3000 and 4000 extra health, and bosses have up to 6000 extra health. This is an interim step -- it's probable that group monsters need even more health than this, but other changes are probably needed before we crank it all the way up. So this is an experiment so we can gather feedback and see what the ramifications are.

Other Changes and Fixes

Desert Environments: If you are entirely out of hydration in the desert there is now a small chance every second that you will die of dehydration. Stay hydrated! Going into a NPC's building, such as Arlan's shop or Makara's tent, will stop dehydration. In fact as a convenience, being anywhere within the city walls of Amulna prevents dehydration.
Fixed a bug with Crafted Nimble Boots and Crafted Nimble Pants, which evaded much more often than the listed times.
The tailoring recipes that add +1% damage of a particular type to shirts and pants have been changed to add +2% damage instead. This change is retroactive. (Note: there was a "round off" bug which could cause these recipes to effectively add +0.9% instead of +1%. This bug has been fixed for new uses of the recipe, but unfortunately it could not be fixed retroactively. So if your old gear added e.g. +5.7% damage, it now adds +11.4% damage, not +12% damage as you might expect.)
You can no longer use Practical Summoning to summon items that have less than 100% durability. (In other words, you can summon a pristine firkin, but not one with 70% durability remaining.) This is a temporary limitation. Previously, summoning partially-used items magically repaired their durability, which was unintentional.
You can no longer use the "Reuse Liquor Barrel" or "Reuse Beer Keg" recipes on NPC-brewed liquor (such as Spiked Egg Nog or Burn-Throat).
Brewing results that raise Max Armor for a particular race were incorrectly labeled as raising Max Health for that race. These now correctly say that they boost Max Armor. (Just to clarify, there are ALSO brewing results that raise Max Health for a particular race, and these are unchanged. The bug was that the armor-boosting ones were labeled as health-boosting.)
You can now right-click raw fish in your inventory and choose "Fillet Fish" to quickly bring up the appropriate fillet recipe. (Assuming you know how to fillet that type of fish, of course.)
Breaking down Treant Wood now requires Carpentry 50 instead of Carpentry 20.
Swapped the icons for Sunstone and Morganite to better match the gem descriptions, and the dye color they create.
Fixed a bug where malachite attuned to the Rabbit skill did not work correctly in recipes if the malachite was placed in the second gem slot.
Torgan correctly appreciates gifts of Awesome Metal Slabs.
Lady Windsong's favor "Escaped Snail Meat" bestows a special druid ability Rotflesh, but if you were not eligible for the ability (generally because you didn't yet know Rotskin 6, its prerequisite), you did not learn the ability. This is fixed retroactively, so if you've completed the quest the ability is now in your list. (But you still have to learn Rotskin 6 before you can actually use it!)
The Amulna residents Falkrin Overstrike and Alravesa the All-Hunter are still not fully written, despite having important roles to play. They can now be found in the dining area above Selaxi's shop, where they can at least have a drink while they wait.
The Guardian Rhino's curse "Gored Pockets" changed from -10 Inventory to -5 Inventory. Players who had the old curse will find they are magically cured; this "free cure" is just a side-effect of an internal version number change, and not something we typically need to do when tweaking a curse. But hey: free cure! You're welcome.
Sentient tornadoes are now more dangerous. They gain innate Projectile Evasion and Melee Evasion, and they a different set of resistances and vulnerabilities than before. However, they are very vulnerable to Burst attacks.
Fixed a bug that prevented Ice Cocks from breaking more than one toe at a time. (It was supposed to stack to x9 originally; it now stacks to x3 because 9 is too much.)
The "Slaughterer of Spiders" behavior badge was tied to generic animal killing, not spiders. (Meaning it was the same as the Slaughterer of Countless Animals badge.)
Made it easier to maintain the "Slaughterer of X" badges -- they no longer require you to have killed more of that monster type than other kinds of monster. (They still have the requirement that you have killed 1000+ in your lifetime, and 500+ in the past 30 days real-time or 24 hours game time. Meaning that they "wear" off and you lose them if you stop murdering that type of foe.)
If you attempt to use an ability but the server doesn't think the reset timer is up, the game client is updated to show the ability's remaining time needed, rather than showing the ability as having been just-used.
Improved the performance of "floaty numbers" (damage and healing numbers). Lots of floaty numbers could cause framerate lag.
Also, floaty damage numbers for your character now float overtop your character's head, like they do for other characters. Previously they floated down from the "portrait box" in the top-left corner, but it was very hard to notice them. If you prefer the old format you can enable it in Special Settings by typing the word PortraitFloaties into the text box.
Fixed bug where changing the font size of "Size of Combat Numbers (Self)" did not get saved to preferences.
Fixed map issues in Gazluk Keep (such as weird pointer direction and lack of map fog).
Optimized memory usage and loading times in Gazluk Keep. These changes should help people whose computers crash when loading into this area. Note: it's now a VERY bad idea to use the "NoCull" Special Setting while in Gazluk Keep, because the Keep now relies very heavily on occlusion culling for performance.
Updated the contents of the Live Event Reward Chests (located behind the Serbule inn) so that newer types of equipment have a chance of being found in them.
Command /shop opens a web page to the Gorgon Shop.

Feb 20, 2019

Update Notes: February 20, 2019

Project: Gorgon - Sims

Welcome to another large Project: Gorgon patch! This is a dense update with a lot of moving parts, including balance changes, new powers and abilities, and a large new dungeon. And these are some really long update notes... so let's get to it!

Rahu Sewers

This update includes a new solo-oriented dungeon, the Rahu Sewers. This dungeon hides many secrets and is home to new types of level 60 creatures. Some of these monsters pose new challenges to overcome, and the dungeon itself holds various tools to help you overcome them. (Along with the many tools that already exist in the game!)

The sewer is balanced around players who have decent level 50-55 equipment. We know that it can be difficult for solo players to get gear in the level 50-55 range -- that's something we'll be working on in a future update! If you don't feel that your equipment is up to par, you might consider some pick-up duoing with another player in the short term. (And remember: being in a group boosts the XP you both earn, too!)

While the dungeon is intended for solo (or duo) play, there are also a few Boss monsters tucked away as challenges for pick-up groups. They aren't pushovers, though. If you run into a boss warning screen, don't get complacent: the boss curses here are real!

A few NPCs in Rahu have favors connected to the sewer, although you need to meet certain requirements before those favors are accessible.

Game Balancing Changes

There are quite a lot of changes in this update that touch on high-level game balance and underlying damage formulas. This section gets really dense, so feel free to skip ahead if your eyes start to glaze over. (If you do skip ahead, just remember: There may be bugs. If it seems weird, report it!)

We want to get you up and running with these changes quickly in order to help us gather data and feedback, and to find the less obvious bugs. So for the next week(-ish), transmutation tables will not consume enhancement points when you transmute an item. This will give you a chance to re-configure your equipment a bit more quickly and easily.

In conjunction with these changes, we've also reduced the health of all Elite/Boss monsters by 12% to 30% (depending on the level and tier of Elite/Boss). This adjustment is really just an initial estimate on our part, though; there have been a large number of combat changes, so it's difficult to predict how much damage player groups will be able to deal at top level. This is one of the areas where we'll be gathering feedback, and we will buff or nerf monsters as needed.

Percentage-Damage Treasure Rebalance
Treasure effects that boost a specific ability (such as "Finishing Blow Damage +25%") are now a bit weaker. A typical ability that had two percentage-based treasure buffs will be reduced in damage by about 8%. But it's difficult to talk about a "typical ability" in this game! The exact impact will depend entirely on what treasure buffs you use. (And the other combat changes described below will affect it further.)

To give a feel for what this change means, here are some examples from the Sword skill. Other skills have changed in a similar fashion. (Note that the numbers used here are for level 80 treasure effects, which cannot yet be found in-game. That's the worst case scenario, so the actual change for you will be a bit less than you see here.)

Example changes from level 80 Sword treasure:

"Debilitating Blow Damage +66%" => "Debilitating Blow Damage +55%"
"Decapitate Damage +55%" => "Decapitate Damage +47.50%"
"Finishing Blow Damage +53%" => "Finishing Blow Damage +44%"
"Flashing Strike and Hacking Blade Damage +33%" => "Flashing Strike and Hacking Blade Damage +29%"
"Parry and Riposte Damage +54%" => "Parry and Riposte Damage +49%"
"Precision Pierce deals +188% damage but its reuse timer is increased +4 seconds" => "Precision Pierce deals +145% damage but its reuse timer is increased +3 seconds"
"Parry and Riposte Damage +24% and Power Cost -8" => "Parry and Riposte Damage +20% and Power Cost -8"

Damage-Type Calculation Changes
This update also changes how damage-type-specific buffs are calculated. Previously, these were added very late in the calculation process. This meant that a flat damage-type buff such as "Slashing Damage +5" would indeed add 5 to the damage, but the +5 wouldn't get multiplied in with other ability multipliers. This is different from most flat bonuses which are added in before multiplicative bonuses. On the other hand, percentage damage-type buffs such as "Slashing Damage +10%" benefitted from this setup, because they were a separate multiplier piled on top of everything else.

Damage-type-specific buffs are now calculated exactly the same way as other buffs: flat boosts are added to the ability's damage first, then all multiplicative boosts are added together before multiplying by the flat amount. This means that flat damage-type boosts ("Slashing Damage +5") are more effective, since other ability multipliers now include them. But percentage damage-type buffs ("Slashing Damage +10%") are weaker because that percentage buff is now lumped in with other percentage-damage buffs.

Whether this is a "nerf" or a "buff" depends on the particular treasure and abilities you use. Treasure like "Double Hit causes your next attack to deal +100 damage if it is a Crushing attack" is more potent, but treasure like "Piercing Damage +16% when Animal Handling Skill Active" is weaker. We didn't make this change specifically to nerf or buff anything -- we changed it so that it'd be easier to understand and remember, for both players and developers! (In fact, many of the existing treasure effects were designed with the assumption that it worked this way already, because we'd misremembered how damage-type calculations worked. Hence the programmer mantra: "Having fewer special cases is better!")

We've made some changes to specific abilities and skills as a result of this change -- as described in the lengthy notes below -- and we will make additional revisions in future updates as necessary.

Base Damage Changes
Base Damage Multipliers are one of the few special cases we intend to keep around. Base Damage Multipliers increase your ability's damage, but they aren't supposed to be multiplied by anything else. In theory, if your Sword attack does 100 damage and you have "Sword Base Damage +10%" treasure, the treasure should never add more than 10 damage, no matter what other bonuses you may have. But due to the way the game engine worked, some bonuses multiplied the base damage: damage-type bonuses (such as "Fire Damage +5%" equipment) and damage-type vulnerabilities (such as when monsters are inherently weak to fire).

Since we were fixing damage-type calculations, this seemed the best time to also fix the base-damage calculations. Now, Base Damage Multipliers will no longer get multiplied by anything else. (Theoretically -- bugs are always possible! Did we mention that you should report any bugs you see?)

There's an upside to this change: every combat skill except Animal Handling has a treasure effect that boosts base damage for that skill. For Sword skill, this is "Sword Base Damage +26%", for Unarmed it's "Unarmed Base Damage +26%", etc. These effects needed a bit of a boost, but the system change needed to happen first. Now that that's done, these treasure effects can scale up:

All combat skills: Highest tier of "Skill Base Damage +X%" changed from +26% base damage to +40% base damage.

We intend to use Base Damage in more interesting ways in the future.

(A note on terminology: there used to be a related concept called "Base Damage Bonuses", which were flat bonuses such as "Sword Base Damage +5". These bonuses would get added to damage after certain other multipliers were already applied. We removed this special case several updates ago. Those bonuses are now just regular bonuses, like "Sword Damage +5". They get added in with all other flat bonuses first, before any multipliers. This change was made a while ago, but some treasure effects still used the old labels. We've cleaned up the game's terminology to be more consistent.)

Ability Damage Formula Recap
As of now, here's how ability damage is calculated:

Start with ability's base damage.
Add all additive (a/k/a "flat") damage buffs (universal damage boosts, skill-specific boosts, damage-type-specific boosts, boosts just for Kicks or Bombs, etc.).
Now sum together all percentage buffs (universal multipliers, damage-type-specific multipliers, multipliers for a specific ability, multipliers for Epic Attacks, etc.) and multiply by the previous step.
Now multiply by target's vulnerabilities and resistances (universal vulnerability, damage-type-specific vulnerabilities).
Now add in bonus damage from Base-Damage Multipliers (reduced if the target is resistant to the damage type).
Now reduce damage by the target's Mitigations (armor mitigation, universal damage reduction, damage-type-specific mitigation, etc.). If mitigation is negative, they take that much extra damage instead

This gives a general idea of how it's supposed to work. If it seems complicated, well... it is. But it was a lot more complicated before this update!

There are literally hundreds of ways to get boosts and buffs, though, so there's lots of space for mistakes or omissions. If you find problems, especially problems where the ability tooltip wildly disagrees with the actual damage done, please assume these are bugs and report them!

Remember to report the gear, abilities, and buffs involved, plus the monster you're attacking -- the monster is very important since it can have vulnerabilities and resistances. You can 'attach' an item to a bug report, which is handy, but we don't yet have the ability to include screenshots in your in-game reports. So if you want to include a screenshot, please make an in-game report and then also e-mail the screenshot to support@projectgorgon.com, or post the screenshot to the forum. Thanks!

Fire Magic
One of Fire Magic's core combat abilities was pretty irrelevant: Fire Bolts simply didn't have much purpose anymore, given the availability of better area-effect attacks. After some prototyping a replacement, we ended up with ... an ability that's pretty much exactly like the Shield ability "Fire Shield". But it's more potent, and hey - it stacks with Fire Shield! (... which also received some improvements in this update. See below.)
- The ability Fire Bolts has been replaced with a new ability, Molten Veins. All equipment that affected Fire Bolts has been revised to affect Molten Veins -- albeit in different ways, since the abilities are entirely different.

Other Fire Magic changes:

Wall of Fire costs less Power, and treasure effects that boost Wall of Fire are more potent.
"25 seconds after summoning a Fire Wall, you regain 77 Health" => "You heal 10 Health per second when you are near your Fire Wall"
"All fire spells deal up to +36 damage (randomly determined)" now has a much higher random boost (+115).
"Scintillating Flame and Scintillating Frost stun and deal +100% damage to Vulnerable targets": This effect was previously found on three gear slots: Hands, Head, and Main-Hand Weapon. It is now only found on Hands. (This was done to make room for new treasure effects, since the stun didn't stack anyway.) If you had gear with this effect on Head or Main-Hand Weapon, the item has become Legacy and will need to be replaced with the "Legacy Item Replacer" golem in Serbule.

Druid
Healing Sanctuary, intended to be one of the most potent tools in the druid's arsenal, was finnicky and annoying to use. And due to technological limitations of pet-buffing -- which have since been fixed -- the treasure effects were mostly kinda dumb. So:

The requirement for the Healing Sanctuary itself to be "in combat" (meaning that it could detect an enemy nearby) has been removed.
The requirement for the healing recipient to be "in combat" has also been removed.
"Healing Sanctuary immediately restores 80 health to you upon summoning" => "Healing Sanctuary restores 16 Power with each heal"
"Healing Sanctuary immediately restores 115 armor to you upon summoning" => "Healing Sanctuary restores 40 Armor with each heal"
There are also new treasure effects for Healing Sanctuary.

Other Druid changes:

Brambleskin deals more damage to enemies, especially at higher levels.
"Brambleskin heals you for 82 health" => "Brambleskin deals +96 Nature damage to melee attackers"
"Cloud Sight and Delerium Damage +X%" => significantly reduced percentage (bug fix)
Pulse of Life is now fully marked as a Minor Heal ability. (Some minor-heal buffs already applied to it, but not all.)
Rotskin's damage debuff is more potent (-48 mitigation vs -22) and treasure can further improve the debuff. However, multiple Rotskin debuffs no longer stack. (If multiple druids cast Rotskin on a target, only the strongest debuff is used.)
"Rotskin hits all targets within 10 meters and deals X direct health damage" => "Rotskin hits all targets within 10 meters and further debuffs their mitigation -X"

Shield
Since we were adjusting the damage-reflection abilities of Druid and Fire Magic, we also adjusted Shield's damage reflection ability, Fire Shield.

Fire Shield now deals more damage when melee attackers hit you. Reset time is 20 seconds instead of 60. Power cost is increased.
A new treasure effect increases the potency of Fire Shield's reflection; other Fire Shield treasure effects tweaked.

Other Shield changes:

"Shield Team grants all allies X% evasion of burst attacks for 10 seconds": The higher-level versions of this effect were the same as the level 50 version; they now grant higher percentage evasion.
"Shield Team grants all allies +8 mitigation of all physical attacks (Crushing, Slashing, or Piercing) for 20 seconds" => +16 mitigation

Other Skill & Treasure Changes

Various: A number of abilities have slightly adjusted base damage and power costs; their treasure effects have been revised as a result.
Various: A dozen or so treasure effects that restore health or armor were buffed to heal 5-20 more health or armor. (formula change)
Various: Several treasure effects of the type that 'generates no Rage, and reduces Rage by X' have slightly reduced Rage reduction numbers. (formula change)
Various: An assortment of treasure effects had higher tiers that were identical to lower tiers. These have all been fixed.
Various: Numerous treasure effects gained a skill prerequisite that they were missing. For example, the Giant Bat mod "Sonic Damage +X%" is now "Sonic Damage +X% When Giant Bat Skill Active". (bug fix)
Healing Sigils' AI was changed to work similarly to the druid's Healing Sanctuary: they can now heal without needing to have line of sight to a nearby enemy.
Animal Handling: "Sic Em causes your pet's attacks to generate -X Rage for 10 seconds" has improved rage reduction. (bug fix)
Archery: "All Archery attacks deal +52 damage but cost +4 Power" => "Archery Damage +70"
Giant Bat: "Screech has a 60% chance to deal +X% damage": Higher-tier versions now have a significantly lower damage percentage number. (bug fix)
Hammer: Reckless Slam removed less than the amount of armor listed in the ability description. This has been fixed.
Lycanthropy: "Taunt from Attack Damage -33%" => "Taunt from Attack Damage -27.5% while Lycanthropy skill active" (formula change, plus fixing missing skill requirement)
Rabbit: Treasure effects that boost Carrot Power are more powerful. (formula change)
Shamanic Infusion: "Signature Debuff abilities restore X Power" => "Signature Debuff abilities cost -X Power"
Shamanic Infusion: Added missing earlier-tier prerequisites (e.g. the third tier of a recipe is supposed to require you to already know the second tier, etc.).
Shamanic Infusion: You now receive bonus synergy levels in Shamanic Infusion when you reach Alchemy 42, Animal Handling 32, Battle Chemistry 41, Mycology 55, Anatomy 50, and Anatomy 70.
Sword: "Precision Pierce deals +X% damage but its reuse timer is increased +4 seconds => " ... reuse timer is increased +3 seconds" (side-effect of formula change)
Sword: "Sword Damage +16" => "Sword Damage +70"

Belt Changes

Belts that you find in loot now have a chance to be Uncommon rarity -- green tier, that is, with one treasure effect. The effect is always a generic power that isn't tied to any particular skill.
Any belt-creation recipe that requires a trophy skin also now generates Uncommon belts.
Recipe for Great Hardcore Belt was changed to require a trophy skin (to generate Uncommon belts).
"Lucky Belts" for specific classes are now just called "Belts" (e.g. "Lucky Belt of the Swordsman" is now just "Belt of the Swordsman"). These belts once affected random-loot generation, but that was long ago. Now they boost damage, so the "lucky" terminology seemed weird.
All formerly-lucky belts increase Base Damage Multipliers a bit more than before (10% for single-skill and 7% for double-skill).
Belts that actually affect treasure in some way are still called "Lucky".
Added missing belts/recipes for rabbit and priest belts.

Quest-Item Fixes
"Quest Items" are items that are only needed for a certain quest. (Their icons have a thin red border.) If a special monster drops one of these items, each player that can loot the monster is supposed to be able to pick up their own copy of the quest item -- or, if the monster only has a chance to drop the quest item, each player has their own separate chance. A few monsters didn't behave this way: "Mr. Squeaky", James Eltibule, and Mudtusks. These monsters now drop quest items per-player as intended.

Another problem was that solo-oriented quest monsters could be buried or eaten by the first person that looted them, thereby preventing other players from looting their quest items. So quest-item-dropping monsters can no longer be buried or eaten.

Spawn Precognition
There are new rituals (recipes) that allow you to detect where a newly-spawned enemy will appear a few seconds before it actually arrives. Ashk in Rahu teaches two of these rituals. The first, allowing you to see respawning monsters 3 seconds before they appear, can be learned if you've completed the Eye of Fate favor and have Meditation 25 or Shamanic Infusion 25.

Other Changes

Added "Accuracy Boost" stats to the Miscellaneous Enchantments tab of the persona screen. (Only shown if you have any accuracy buffs.)
Shamanic Infusion now requires much less XP to level, and recipes earn more XP. Now the first-time completion of a recipe (of your current level) will always raise your level by at least 1, and usually raise it by 2. (Existing skill levels are unchanged.)
The drug Sharpen has been revised so that it is significantly more potent. However, the higher tiers of Sharpen now have Survival Instincts requirements.
Cooking: Recipe "Tart Applesauce" has been changed to actually use tart (green) apples.
Necromancy: skeleton mages no longer flee to create distance between themselves and melee assailants.
Fixed recipe for "Amazing Cloth Pants (Max-Enchanted)", which incorrectly required Maximized Sardonix x2, among other problems. It now correctly requires Vervadium x1 like other level 70 crafting recipes.
Fixed some work order scrolls whose level requirement (to read the scroll) did not match the actual work order's level requirement.
Replaced the weird yellow "sewer rat" model with a different model (which is also temporary, but much less terrible in the meantime).
Fixed a small (100 m square) chunk of the Ilmari desert where nothing could be selected.
Fixed various monsters whose combat sounds were too loud (because they were not using 3D positioning, so were always at max volume regardless of distance).
Fixed a bug that caused fire walls to make combat sounds repeatedly when not in combat. This also fixes some Sigil-Scripting sigils that had the same problem.
The "Proto-Druid" and "Proto-Wolf" titles can no longer be earned. (They were actually supposed to stop when alpha ended.)