Happy Thanksgiving! It's harvest season in Alharth and you know what that means: turkeys are hiding in all the bushes, and there's classic fall foods to eat. High-level crafters should visit Ricatu in Povus to learn to craft some new kinds of food! We also have many fixes and improvements for you.

Are you on a new Mac? Is the screen opaque? Scroll down to "MacOS Visual Fog Bug" below.

• Povus ratkin drop more cheese mold, especially root-tenders and miners.
  
• Povus nightly quest "Undead Surprise" has been revised.
  
• Povus nightly quest "Warmaster Brukal" more reliably has the necessary elite orcs.
  
• Fixed Povus buildings that could have frogs spawn trapped inside the ceiling.

• There are two new chat commands to let you see login screen information while you are in-game: /events will display upcoming events, and /news will display login news.
  
• Improved the clarity of genetic-info tooltips in the genome-view window:
  
  • H, S, and V are now shown as "hue", "saturation", or "intensity".
    
  • If both the dominant and recessive behaviors boost the same attribute (but to different amounts), only the more potent behavior is listed.
• VIP players now see a "Save" button on the Genome View window. This saves the genome as a .txt file in the user's "reports" folder. (The format is subject to change based on your feedback, so let us know what you'd like to see here!)
  
• Abilities in the Skills and Abilities window that are different levels of the same ability will now sort correctly. For example, Blocking Stance 5 no longer sorts before Blocking Stance 4.
  
• Sub-skills are now sorted alphabetically in the Skills and Abilities window.
  
• Recipes that share cooldown timers, such as Mushroom Recall and Mushroom Un-Recall, will now all display the appropriate timer in their recipe.
  
• Closing the corpse window too quickly after performing an action will no longer cause the loot window to pop right back up again.
  
• The show/hide effects UI is now handled properly when player doesn't have sufficient anatomy skill level.
  
• It's possible to drag the "NPC talk" window far enough left on your screen that the left-side menu doesn't show. New players often do this by mistake because the first few NPCs they talk to have no side-menu. Later when they're talking to NPCs with side-menus, they have no idea what they're missing. To fix this, the left-side menu on an NPC's talk window is now prevented from going off the left side of the screen. (If you really want to drag the sidebar off-screen for whatever reason, you can use special setting, AllowSideMenusOffScreen.)

Tab-targeting will sometimes target something far away rather than something that is right next to you. This is because we take the monster's "hated target" into account -- for example, an archer who is attacking you from far away will be selected before a docile monster that's closer to you. We believe this is usually desirable behavior, but some players have found it confusing or inappropriate for their needs, so we've added a special setting, RemoveHateFromTabTargeting, which causes tab-targeting to completely ignore monster-hate and sort targets solely by distance. Give it a try (by adding that word to the "Special Settings" box in the Settings window) and let us know if the new behavior is useful!

• Knockdowns are considered stuns for purposes of dispelling them. This applies to both player and monster knockdowns.
  
• Fixed a bug with NPC_Errruka that prevented some dye recipes from showing up in her barters.
  
• "Analyze Arthropod Genes" ability was incorrectly making a skill-check against the Arthropod Anatomy skill instead of the Arthropod Genetics skill.
  
• "Proclamation" note in Serbule is targetable again.
  
• You can no longer sit in a chair that you are already sitting in.
  
• All instances of the name "Davlos" should now correctly use "Dalvos" instead. Just for you, Beta Notus!
  
• Some archery abilities were missing the text "(or better)".
  
• Many typos have been fixed.
  
• New bandwidth improvements to networking protocol. This will not be detectable during gameplay except to players with VERY poor networks -- it's mainly intended as a feature for players on metered or limited bandwidth, so that the game uses less bandwidth overall.

Non-cheese food items have been buffed to also provide direct damage mitigation. The numbers we're using here are very preliminary -- we're not as focused on the exact balance of the idea as much as figuring out if this idea is useful. We want both cheese and non-cheese foods to be valuable, and we'll also need to accomodate one more planned food-making skill, Baking, in the future. All this food should have uses or at least niches where they're valuable. So expect more iteration on food buffs!

We're aware that certain MacOS users (mainly those with the latest laptops) can't play the game because the 3D world is opaque. We're unable to reproduce the problem. Our guess is that it's a video driver problem for specific macs, but since we don't know if/when Apple will update their drivers, we'd like to find a work-around. Since we can't reproduce it, we're taking the "shotgun approach": we have three potential work-arounds, and hopefully one of them will help.

While in-game, open the Settings window and find the Special Settings tab. In the text box, type the words MacHack1 MacHack2 MacHack3 and save your settings. This will enable all three hacks. The effect should be immediate: you'll instantly either be able to see stuff... or you won't. If none of these work, we'll try some more hacks soon!

If the hacks DO help, please let us know which one(s) are needed. You can remove each of the words in the settings box to turn off the corresponding hack. Remove MacHack3 first and see if the problem comes back; if not, try removing MacHack2 or MacHack1. It may be that several combinations of hacks remove the problem -- that info would also help us narrow it down.

These hacks are VERY hacky. They disable major graphical systems (like the entire weather system!). The game will definitely be uglier with these hacks on, but hopefully the game will be playable. And once we know of a hack that helps, we can start refining the hack with less-aggressive mini-hacks. Once we have some clues to start with, we may reactivate the Steam "beta" channel to iterate on the problem more quickly. Thanks for your patience!

We're back with another update! This one's a little earlier than expected because we wanted to fix a Halloween-event bug (the quest "Skeleton Dance?"). The Halloween event will run for another week or so, into November, so there's still plenty of time to finish the quest lines!

But this isn't just a bug-fix update -- there's also major changes to the Povus nightly quest system, plus a new UI feature.

Some nights in Povus, the quests are worth more. This happens every 4-8 game days (which maps to 8-16 real hours, which means this happens an average of 2 times per realtime day). On Bonus nights, each quest earns the town +100 additional town XP, plus additional item rewards for participants.

The town signpost has an indicator if the upcoming night's quests will earn bonuses. In addition, at the signpost you can "join Tremmond's pigeonmailing list" to receive notifications the game-day before a bonus night. (These notifications are sent to currently-online players every game-hour during the game-day, so you may not be notified if you're offline at the wrong moment. If in doubt, just check the signpost!)

Note that at this time, "Bonus Nights" aren't actually any harder than regular nights. They're just bonusier. Some of the in-game flavor text suggests that nastier things are coming, but they're wrong. We might change this in the future as we continue to evolve Povus.

When the "Light the Lamps" quest is completed at night, local merchant Ishiko will stop by the Povus docks at 10am game-time the next day to buy crafted metal armor. Each piece of armor you give her earns Town XP for Povus, helping it level up. But the cash payout is very poor, so this is primarily a way to donate armor to improve Povus.

There's an additional quest added to the end of the Povus nightly quest-line. This one's for those nights when there are LOTS of players in Povus. Starting the quest requires a whopping 16 players.

When you complete a Povus nightly quest, you can now earn storage slots as part of the reward. The first few slots are earned just by completing one or two quests, but later slots require more quest-completions. Eventually you can have up to 80 slots in the Povus storage chest. (This is technically a bug fix, but since it didn't work at all before, it's also a new feature!)

• Increased the number of players needed to start Povus nightly quest stages. Tiers previously required 1,2,3,4,5,6 players; now require 2,3,4,6,9,12 players. This should better match the actual quest requirements.
  
• Fashnagar the Prognosticator's post-bath prognostications now have a kernel of truth: many of his lines now accurately hint at how soon the next Bonus Quest Reward night is coming. (Previously they were entirely random.)
  
• Made sure enough Invincible Ratkin Skeletons spawn for the quest "Bone War!"
  
• Fixed the spawn rate of Enchanted Mega-Scrays during quest "Povus Safety: Ranalon Assault"
  
• Reduced the kill-requirements of most higher-tier Povus quests a little bit (e.g. kill 35 flapskulls instead of 40)
  
• The second-highest-tier Povus nightly quests now earn the town 200 XP instead of 100
  
• The highest-tier Povus nightly quests now earn the town 300 XP instead of 100

You can now see active buffs/debuffs on targets and party members. They are customizable via settings under "GUI > Features > Effects Display", and some of the options are available by right-clicking the party or target displays. They follow the usual Anatomy level requirements, so you need to have level 25 of the appropriate Anatomy skill to view them, even on party members.

• Fixed a bug that caused Spawn Premonitions to be permanent, instead of having a 5% chance to dispel on death as intended. As part of this fix, all existing spawn premonitions were erased, so you will need to reapply them!
  
• Also reduced the 3-second universal spawn premonition to a 2-second premonition, and the 5-second universal premonition to 4-second
  
• Summoned deer are now correctly unsummoned when player leaves Deer form
  
• Frostbite & Rib Shatter stuns now remove Ghosts' nigh-invulnerability
  
• Now treat /em custom emotes as chat messages, so they are affected by /ignore, moderator gagging, etc.
  
• Polish Hammer animations
  
• Fixed a "click really fast" exploit with Genetics XP
  
• Properly loop stun animation for NPCs
  
• Reduce crouching of female elves with realistic foot placement turned on
  
• Fix sideways-sitting chairs in New Prestonbule and Serbule
  
• Skeleton dancing is functional again
  
• No longer send endless undeliverable messages for pigeon messages with no items attached
  
• Place bulwark shield particle correctly on Skeleton Mages
  
• Play animations (invisibly) when in first-person mode. This fixes some subtle bugs
  
• Prevent auto-selected targets from interfering with tab-targeting

Halloween is here! Zhia Lian, the demanding god of Whimsy, has new higher-level tasks for you to take on. The Halloween event now has over 90 quests! So get out there and see what whimsical random things she wants now! Just remember the first rule of the Cult of Zhia Lian ...

In addition to new quests and rewards for Halloween, this update also includes a bunch of fixes and improvements.

• Added auto-repeat back into crafting, for use primarily with recipes that don't always consume their ingredients.
  
• Skills and sub-skills are now properly listed in alphabetical order in the abilities window.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented area-specific loading-screen tips from showing when you logged into the game. (They could only be seen when you teleported to other areas.)
  
• The search bar is now cleared when opening the recipe window from the "More Info" context menu.
  
• Changed "Virility" to "Fertility" for female pets during direct pet inspection.

• Players can move their characters a small amount even when they are performing "locked" combat animations. In other words, players can slide around while their feet are doing other things. This is an experiment in our ongoing animation work, as we continue to try to balance graphics quality with gameplay benefits.
  
• Players sit better on chairs.
  
• Birds sit properly on bird perches.
  
• Deer have a jump animation.
  
• Animal forms now display Bulwark Shield correctly.
  
• Skeleton archer animations play correctly.
  
• Smoothed out movement/rotation of equipment during animations.
  
• Many, many animations have been polished, including: Archery (and crossbows) animations; dance animations for Butterfly, Deer, & Owl; Psychology animations; animations for playing harp & fairy chimes; and others.

• We've reverted earlier Povus change that allowed monsters to auto-despawn even if players were near them. This was intended to be beneficial to players, but proved detrimental, because it could despawn corpses that you wanted to loot. For now, Povus event monsters no longer auto-despawn if any player is within 20 meters of them. (We'll revisit this idea soon, as we continue to evolve the Povus nightly event system.)
  
• Fixed genetic equipment breakage rate, from 50% to 5%.
  
• Gestation time is now properly modified by the special-event that's supposed to cut it in half. (For the next time we run that special event.)
  
• Ghostly creatures that spawn during Povus invasions now correctly have the anatomy type Incorporeal.
  
• Glajur now teaches individual Phrenology skills instead of the overarching Phrenology skill.
  
• Dog Ear actually wants insect meat now.
  
• Eltibule treasure map treasures will no longer generate out of zone bounds.
  
• Goats now spawn in Gazluk instead of sheep. The availability of wool and mutton has not changed.
  
• Ratkin Root-Tenders (and their servants) can drop wood as loot.
  
• Ratkin Miners can drop ores as loot.
  
• Swapped north/south east/west in Povus surveys.
  
• Fixed the Zukelmux World Boss Portal to actually teleport players to the Fae Realm rather than back into Gazluk Keep (for next Attack of the World Bosses event)
  
• We now display accurate damage of Song of Discord when a damage mod like Bulwark Shield is active.
  
• Having Giant Bat form no longer slows your jump or renders you unable to make the lift jump in Wintertide.
  
• Fixed typo in Murky Tunnel in Povus.
  
• Fixed Latent Charge typo.
  
• Added a check to prevent players from dropping items if there are already 20 entities within 5 meters. (This is to prevent players from dropping 100+ items in very close proximity, which breaks Unity's physics engine.)
  
• Reduced intensity of fogginess on foggy days. Most areas are dramatically less foggy; Povus is still notably foggier than other areas (but still half as foggy as last update).
  
• Fixed brightness changes to indoor areas, such as from "Brighter World" and "Echolocation".

Today's update is a big one. There's a new high-level zone, several new skills to find, and a metric tonne of UI fixes and improvements. Please keep in mind that with as many changes as are in this update, we are really relying on you for feedback to help us identify problems and bugs. Thank you!

Povus is a new high-level outdoor area for players with combat skills from 75 to 85. (We haven't raised the level cap past 80 yet, but you can reach 85 with synergy bonuses.) The town in this area has an event every night where they need your help! Monsters invade from 8pm to 7am game time (NOT real time!). But a series of quests can help put things right.

As you complete these town quests you'll help "level up" the town, unlocking more NPCs and amenities as you go. Visit the bulletin board in town for more information. This is an experimental design that we'd like your feedback on!

There are other somewhat-experimental game mechanics in Povus which we invite you to discover. There are also a couple of mysteries to solve. (And there's a few unintentional red herrings: places on the landscape where we intend to add content, but haven't yet. But we're confident you'll figure everything out quickly enough!)

There are also some new non-combat skills to discover in Povus, but since they're integrated into the area's quests, we'll leave them for you to find.

Of course, with this added complexity comes the added chance for bugs. There's sure to be some to find, so please report them and we'll get them fixed.

Povus is conceptually west of Rahu and north of Gazluk, and can be reached from those two areas. The temporary portals that previously connected Gazluk to Rahu now connect these areas to Povus. (This makes the portal location in Rahu a little weird, since it's on the southern edge of the map, instead of the western edge -- we'll address this when we do the Rahu art revamp in the future.)

One new skill you can learn in Povus is Animal Husbandry. This skill lets you breed the pets in your stables to create new baby pets. Once you have the skill, speak with a qualified stablemaster to begin breeding. You'll receive an in-game document giving you more information on how it works.

Note that there's a limit on the number of pets you can breed at once, and this limit is per-account, not per-player, similar to limit on player workorders. (The limit increases as you raise
Animal Husbandry, but the total across all your characters can't exceed this character's current limit.)

One of the fun things about breeding pets is selling or giving away the babies to interested parties. For this reason, we've added a way to "store" pets, turning them into items which can be given to other players. These players can then use the item to add that pet to their stable.

But there are caveats! First, only pets that were born in your stables can be sold. Pets that you capture in the wild can never be sold to others. (This means, for instance, that you can't capture and resell Hissy.) Second, you'll need to obtain a Pet Cage item -- and this will require a gadgeteer player who knows the recipe. And lastly, pet cages can't contain a pet forever! Each type of pet cage has a maximum lifespan. If the pet isn't taken out of the cage (and put into somebody's stable) before that time runs out, the pet escapes and is lost forever. (In other words, the cage item self-destructs.)

Also in this update we've started our rollout of pet genetics. Right now, only bees and wasps have a genome, but we'll be adding genomes to the other animal families (bears, cats, rats) in the future.

We simulate the pets' genome using simple Mendelian genetics. (If you don't remember that from high school, you might want to google it!) Their simulated genome has hundreds of genes that control their appearance as well as seven new pet traits: Ferocity, Toughness, Ruggedness, Friendliness, Enthusiasm, Intelligence, and Virility. They range from 1 (abysmal) to 100 (perfect) and affect things like your pets' health, damage, and so on.

The seven pet traits can be viewed on each pet in your stable, provided you have moderate skill in Animal Handling. Rather than explain all these traits here, we'll direct you to an in-game document. You'll receive this document when you learn Animal Handling. Players that already know Animal Handling can get this document by talking to Gisli in Serbule. (Ask him for tips on animal handling, then ask him to explain combat stats.) Once you have it, you can find the document again in the Books and Lore tab.

Also note that we no longer model the Happiness of your pet -- we just assume the pet is pretty happy all the time. The stuff Happiness used to affect (such as XP-earning rate) is now controlled by the aforementioned seven genetic traits.

If you had a pet bee or wasp in your stable -- surprise! It probably looks different now. In the past, each type of bee or wasp had a fixed appearance, but now that's determined by their genes. Your pet's stats are also probably different, too. But to avoid too much heartbreak, we've used a mulligan system for existing pets: if any of their genetic traits came out below 30, or if more than 3 traits came out below 40, we re-rolled the genes a few times to try to get better stats. This means pre-existing pets are probably better than average, and at the very least, they're definitely "playable" in quality -- they have no devastatingly low trait scores.

We also use this mulligan system for fairy starter pets, to ensure that they have nice stats. But we have another concern here: since fairies get free pets, and you can generate as many fairy characters as you like, it would be too tempting to re-roll hundreds of fairy characters to get good pets for breeding. To alleviate this problem, all starter fairy pets are marked as "Dormant". The in-game fiction is that these fae creatures are so ancient that they've entirely forgotten about sexuality.

We may add a way to make dormant pets breeding-ready in the future, if there's demand for that feature. However, it will require a high-level item and/or quest to complete, and it will only work after your pet is at least a real-world year old. That means fairy characters created today would need to wait a year before they could breed their starter pets. (But we've back-dated pre-existing starter pets to be the age of your fairy character.)

Sages say that there's a way to peer into the genetic code of a creature, to "read" it, and to partially understand what each gene does. And the sages are right! But we'll leave it to you to discover this well-kept secret.

Bees/wasps are the first pet with genetics, but we realize that not every Animal Handler uses them. To help us test Husbandry, you can get a free male and female insect added to your stable. Here's how it works: first, learn Animal Husbandry. Second, have at least two slots free in your stable (one for each free pet). Then view your Redemptions in-game (there's a button on the Persona window.) You'll see choices for two males and two females. You can pick one of each, and they'll be added to your stable. These free bees have been given "mulligans" on their genetics to ensure their stats are pretty decent.

Note that this redemption is per account, not per character. The free bees will be available until the end of this year, so you have a few months to unlock Husbandry and claim them.

In this update we've avoided making changes to the Animal Handling skill, or to individual pets' abilities and base stats. Our focus has been on genetics specifically. It's much easier to understand how it works (and make sure it's working right) if we don't change too many things at once. We DO plan to make changes to Animal Handling in the future: it needs a treasure revamp and probably a new ability. But for now we've made only minimal changes:

• Fixed a data problem that gave AH pets two opportunities to perform a critical-hit. This caused high-level pets to crit more often than we desired.
  
• AH pets no longer gain automatic crit-damage boosts as they level up.
  
• One treasure effect directly changed the pet's Enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is now controlled by genetics and can't be meaningfully enchanted, so we've replaced it with an effect that is vaguely similar to the old one. We'll revisit this effect when we make deeper revisions to AH.
  
• "Animal Handling pets have +80 Enthusiasm (which boosts XP earned and critical-hit chance)" => "Animal Handling pets deal +20% damage when they critically hit"
  
• Pet bears whose Special Trick dealt crushing damage actually dealt slashing damage. This has been fixed.

We've revised Psychology a bit in this update:

• "Psychoanalyze restores 143 Health to you after a 15 second delay" => after an 8 second delay
  
• "Psychoanalyze restores 224 Armor to you" => 212 armor
  
• "Psychoanalyze causes the target to take +20 damage from Psychic attacks for 60 seconds" => +78 damage for 15 seconds
  
• Soothe ability now deals a small amount of direct Health damage.
  
• Soothe ability is now eligible for phrenology critical hits.
  
• "Soothe, But I Love You, and Cause Terror Damage +86" => damage +205
  
• "Inspire Confidence / Positive Attitude Healing +83" => +98
  
• The effect "Inspire Confidence increases all targets' Accuracy +20 for 10 seconds" now stacks with itself.
  
• "Inspire Confidence restores +205 Health after a 25 second delay" => restores +150 Armor to all targets
  
• "Soothe Damage +128" => Soothe and Psychoanalyze damage +167 and range +5 meters
  
• "Ridicule deals +57 health damage and taunts +525" => Ridicule taunts +800 and target's next attack has a 25% chance to automatically miss
  
• "Mock deals +125% damage and taunts +500, but reuse timer is +2 seconds" => Mock deals +125% damage, taunts +500, and hits all targets within 20 meters, but reuse timer is +1.5 seconds
  
• "Strike a Nerve deals +168 armor damage" => 236 armor damage
  
• Some Psychology treasure effects did not correctly scale past level 80; this has been fixed.

There are some werewolf skill/treasure changes in this update:

• "Future Pack Attacks to the same target deal +100 damage" => +610 damage
  
• "For 8 seconds after using See Red, all other Lycanthropy attacks deal 148 Trauma damage over 8 seconds" => Effect now lasts for 10 seconds after using See Red.
  
• "Sanguine Fangs deals +280 trauma damage over 8 seconds" => +360 trauma damage
  
• New treasure effect: Chest/Feet: "Pack Attack deals +100 damage and causes target to be 12% more vulnerable to Trauma damage for 10 seconds"
  
• "Sanguine Fangs suddenly deals 350 Trauma damage after an 8-second delay" => 450 trauma damage
  
• "Sanguine Fangs causes the target to take +15% damage from Slashing attacks for 15 seconds" => +18% damage
  
• New treasure effect: Legs: "For 10 seconds after using Sanguine Fangs, all other Lycanthropy attacks deal 180 Trauma damage over 8 seconds"
  
• "Werewolf Claw, Double Claw, and Pouncing Rake Damage +62" => +81
  
• Replaced treasure effect: Legs: "Double Claw Power Cost -21" => "Double Claw deals +40 damage and reuse timer is -2 seconds"
  
• "Pouncing Rake deals +220 Armor damage" => 304 armor damage
  
• Some werewolf treasure effects did not scale past level 80; this has been fixed.

• Crafted Werewolf armor has been rebalanced to have less Armor and more offensive buffs. It also has a potent new sidebar ability that can be used when wearing a full set. (Equip a chest-piece to learn the ability.)
  
• The recipes to craft Werewolf Armor are no longer Blacksmithing recipes. They're Armorsmithing recipes now. If you previously had any of these recipes, you still have them, but you'll need to earn the appropriate level of Armorsmithing skill before you can actually use the recipe again.
  
• Solgribue in the Fae Realm now trains the recipes for level 80 wooden cowshoes and deershoes.
  
• Added level 80 versions of various other animal armor (but the recipes must be found).
  
• Revised Werewolf Armor recipes: high-level versions now require slightly fancier ingredients.
  
• To make Werewolf Armor work like the other prestige metal armor sets, you now need to forge it in a spot consecrated to Norala. There is a new forge for this purpose in the Kur wolf cave.
  
• Recipes and stats for crafted Snail Armor, Cow Barding, and Cow Champrons have changed.

We're still evaluating the efficacy of the defensive combat skill changes made earlier in the year. We aren't ready to evaluate their use in solo combat (because solo monsters may still become more powerful in the future) but they definitely seem overpowered in terms of Elite monsters. One culprit is that we gave out too much percentage-based Elite invulnerability, so we've nerfed/replaced some of those effects. We'll continue to evaluate these skills as we move forward.

• "Blocking Stance costs -20 Power and mitigates +10% of physical damage from Elite attackers for 30 seconds" => "Blocking Stance increases your Max Health +63 for 30 seconds (and heals you for 63)"

• Bulwark Mode 3 previously granted +27% direct invulnerability => now +17%

• "Max Power +37 and Vulnerability to Elite Attacks -10% when Cow skill active" => now -5% vulnerability

• Players gain a new bonus level to Shamanic Infusion when reaching Psychology 70 and Skinning 70.
  
• Fixed bug that prevented players from gaining the intended synergy levels to Sushi Preparation when reaching Fishing 55 and Knife Fighting 60.
  
• Gain a new synergy level of Sushi Preparation upon reaching Fish Anatomy 31.
  
• Gain new Mining synergy levels by reaching Hammer 24 and Hammer 46.
  
• Gain new Surveying synergy levels by reaching Calligraph 35, Calligraphy 55, and Nonfiction Writing 25.
  
• Gain a new Calligraphy synergy level by reaching Nonfiction Writing 15.
  
• Gain new synergy levels in Gardening when reaching these levels: Flower Arrangement 57, Nature Appreciation 55, Plant Anatomy 20, Carpentry 45.

• Fixed bugged Knife treasure effect: "When wielding two knives, all Knife Fighting attacks have a 33% chance to restore 41 Power". This did not work at all.
  
• "Signature Debuffs deal +29% damage and also deal 156 Armor damage" => 220 armor damage
  
• "Many Cuts deals +172 armor damage" => 236 armor damage
  
• "Wind Strike and Heart Piercer deal 164 armor damage" => 224 armor damage
  
• "Unarmed attacks deal +42 Armor damage" => 52 armor damage
  
• "Tundra Spikes deals 290 armor damage and taunts +750" => 380 armor damage
  
• "Marking Cut deals +80 armor damage and does not cause the target to shout for help" => 146 armor damage
  
• "Blast of Fury deals 200 Armor damage and restores 43 Armor to you" => 276 armor damage
  
• "Spit Acid deals +240 armor damage" => 360 armor damage

We consolidated our camera-FX stacks, so now all areas use the same camera system. And this camera-stack has new color tuning and other features which hopefully make the game look better.

We are also using a new sky system in most zones. Each area has its own weather setup ranging from clear skies to heavy clouds to fog (although never rain or snow).

Again, please report any bugs or weirdnesses you see with these new systems!

We've added our first gift specifically for VIP members: the recipe "Dye Making: Dye My Rabbity Fur Blue". You don't need to actually log in and claim this reward immediately -- as long as your account has VIP at some point (from now until the end of October), the redemption will be available any time. This is a cosmetic recipe only: you must be a rabbit already to dye your fur blue. It requires blue dye.

This special appearance will become available to non-VIPs in the future (via a learnable recipe), after a period of VIP exclusivity.

• We no longer randomly remove your "Who's Online" status.
  
• The display of active buffs on other players would often disappear when changing zones. This is now fixed.
  
• In the Friends panel, long quotes will no longer overlap other fields.
  
• The volume of quest sounds can now be controlled separately from other types of sounds.
  
• Items in locked inventory folders will no longer be affected by the 'Stow' commands.
  
• We now handle character turning via mouse during large framerate drops better.
  
• Using mouse-look, you can now look vertically when both left- and right-mouse buttons are clicked simultaneously.
  
• There is now a search bar on the recipe panel. You can search by name ("baked potato"), by type ("meal", "snack", "instant-snack"), by level ("L 10" for level 10 items), or by some combination of those.
  
• You can now specify how many times you'd like to craft a recipe.
  
• Headers in the quest list now indicate when one of that area's quests is being tracked, to more easily locate tracked quests.
  
• We've added a search bar to the list of skills.
  
• Non-integer effects now display their real value, so "+0.5" instead of "+0".

• The number of unread notes you have waiting for you in your player shop is now included in the text of the "Read Notes From Customers" button.
  
• You can now reserve items to be bought only by members of your guild. This requires a minimum guild level of 5.
  
• You can now mark items in your shop "Accepting Offers", which prevents the item from being purchased and instead allows shoppers to "Make Offer" and leave a shop note with the owner, indicating the price they are willing to pay.

• Many animations have been fixed or improved.
  
• Many ability particle effects have been fixed or improved.
  
• There is a new Graphics setting called "Realistic Foot Placement" which improves animation quality in exchange for a small performance penalty.
  
• When you take damage to Health, the screen now only flashes red if you have below 25% health remaining.
  
• When you take damage to Armor, the screen now only flashes yellow if you have below 25% armor remaining.
  
• Fixed a bug where an ability's particle was not played on the target if they didn't take direct damage from the attack.
  
• Sometimes a creature with a 'crown' quest would display their own texture over their head instead of a crown. This has been fixed.
  
• Deer now consistently fall over when killed.

• You can now raise the Cheesemaking level cap to 80; see Bendith in the Fae Realm.
  
• You can now raise the Blacksmithing level cap raised to 80; see Solgribue in Fae Realm.
  
• The level cap of several other skills can be raised by NPCs in Povus.
  
• Bard instrument recipes that require a Perfect Conch (meaning "Great Musical Conch", "Amazing Musical Conch", and "Astounding Musical Conch") are now guaranteed to have a minimum rarity of Exceptional, and have improved chances for higher rarity. (This only applies to newly-crafted items.)
  
• The level 45 item "Great Arachnid Harness" has been nerfed from +8 inventory slots to +6. There are new higher-level arachnid harnesses with increased buffs up to +10 inventory slots. (The toolcrafting recipes drop as rare scrolls.)
  
• The recipe ID for the obsolete recipe "Legacy Bat Belt" has been reused. If you had this old alpha recipe, congratulations: you now know how to craft the "Amazing Arachnid Harness" (but you can only use the recipe when you have the necessary Toolcrafting level).
  
• Fixed some recipes that were supposed to require a Forge but didn't, including: various utility knives, armor stakes, and tool hammers. (Note that metal throwing knives are intentionally omitted from the forge requirement.)
  Improved the error messages when you try to use a recipe but aren't in the right place. e.g. "You must be near a TanningRack" became "You must be near a tanning rack."
  
• "Gazluk Plate"-type armors are now dyeable (up to 2 colors). If you were wearing Gazluk Plate when you logged out, your character will show up incorrectly in the character-select screen the first time. This is normal, and will fix itself when you log in.
  
• Moving, jumping, and Escape all cancel recipes with a crafting time.
  
• You can now summon partially-used items from storage.
  
• Items that cannot have work orders can no longer be sold in player shops, and now have the tooltip: "This item cannot be sold to other players." If you have an item like that in your shop, you'll get a notification to remove it.
  
• An internal numbering problem requires us to change the ID for Firkins of Sour Cream. If you had any of these in your inventory or storage, they are now marked as "Firkin of Sour Cream (OBSOLETE)". Please use these ASAP as they will disappear in the next update.
  
• The recipe for gold dye has changed.
  
• "Snail Plate Armor" is now Organic armor, like other snail armor.

• Certain skills are now explicitly marked as "umbrella skills". The max level for these skills is 0, so the only way to earn levels is via synergy bonuses. The following skills are umbrella skills: Anatomy, Phrenology, Performance, Augmentation, and Genetics. Players who had inadvertently earned XP in these umbrella skills (through content bugs in alpha) have had their levels recalculated.
  
• Goats (regular goats, not scapegoats!) have a new AI profile and use knockback attacks.
  
• Revised all non-Elite healing monsters so that their heal amounts are more meaningful (typically about 15% of their max health, but it's not actually a percentage-heal, so the amount varies per monster). This change was done individually per monster, so some monsters may have been missed. If you notice a monster that heals for a negligible amount (like a monster with 1000 max health healing for 50) please report it as a bug!
  
• Increased the damage of scray monsters' acid attacks, and higher-tier scray acid needs higher-tier First Aid to dispel.
  
• You no longer earn Gourmand XP for eating additional raw cantaloupe or fairy nuts beyond the first consumption. (It previously earned 1 and 2 XP respectively.)
  
• The results of treasure maps, such as motherlodes, should now correctly spawn on top of the ground and not embedded into it.
  
• The debuff "Spore Coating" used by certain fungal enemies no longer keeps you in-combat. Using First Aid 2 or higher now removes one stack of the debuff.
  
• Jace Soral now succumbs to his nature when the moon is full.
  
• Item Dispensers and Item Rafflers are no longer subject to premature item-cleanup. They will last for 2 hours starting when they are placed in the world, or until they run out of items/tickets. High-end rafflers can have explicit durations up to 2 hours (instead of 90 minutes).
  
• Previously, wild deer had junk genetics for testing. They still have junk genetics for testing, but it's different junk now. They should be less Evasive overall.
  
• Changed "Tremor"'s boss curse: instead of permanently disabling Basic Attacks, it now gives the attacks a 15-second reset timer. As a side-effect, players with the old version of the curse will be automatically cured.
  
• A few monsters (that are supposed to be extremely evasive) are slightly more evadey.
  
• The world now goes gray when you are dead.
  
• The 'Stuck Report' is intended to get your character free of being stuck in something like a tree or cow. It is not to be used for free transportation. There is now a highly visible warning when you file a Stuck Report making that very clear for those players who have been using it for teleportation. Don't worry if you get stuck a few times; just don't use Stuck reports dozens of times a week!
  
• We've added the ability to use '/e' or '/em' to perform custom emotes (no animation, you supply the text). You can also use '%t' to include the name of your target. Emotes display in their own chat channel, so you can decide which chat tabs you want to include them.
  
• Guild quests now display in the guild audit log when they are started, canceled, or completed.
  
• Flying enemies will now stay at roughly the same elevation as their target, to prevent being unable to attack them with melee.

We've rolled out some quick-fixes for bugs that arrived with yesterday's major update. (A couple of these were fixed last night, consolidated here for convenience).

• Recipes with no ingredients (such as some teleportations) can be crafted again
  
• You could get multiple notifications for completing Povus night quests
  
• Fixed Grakelsput's quest "Cleanup Duty: Triceratops"
  
• Povus lamp logic no longer considers player pets to be "monsters"
  
• Augments can once again be sold in shops
  
• Swamp Gourd item tooltips now have a line indicating whether they've been eaten before
  
• Changed an additional Psychology treasure effect: "Inspire Confidence restores +151 Health after a 15-second delay" => restores 104 Health after an 8-second delay
  
• Fixed error in ability-tip text for Psychoanalyze's delayed-heal buff
  
• Fixed typo in names of "Hexameat Wraps" and "Superb Parchment"
  
• Corrected the start time in Povus instructions (it starts at 8pm, not 7pm)
  
• More orcs spawn in the Povus orc camp
  
• Correctly limit the reassembly of [redacted] to Povus
  
• Fixed Povus vegetation that had no collisions
  
• Arianna Fangblade no longer tries to sell you a stable slot when you ask for a hot betting tip
  
• Could not correctly train Armorsmithing from Tremmond in Povus
  
• The nightly Povus invasion system was bugged and did not correctly advance to harder quests

We'll be back soon with more fixes and improvements!

We've got a quick and dirty update for you today -- a smorgasbord of bug fixes and improvements that we've put together in the background while we continue to work hard not only on Animal Husbandry, but on a whole new high-level zone! But while those features are in active development, they aren't ready yet -- and we didn't want to wait any longer on fixing these annoying bugs. Here's the list:

Animations

• Improved locomotion animations of both flying and non-flying creatures.
  
• Female humanoids slouch less. (But more tweaks still to come, especially for rakshasa females.)
  
• Updated Sword ability animations.
  
• Updated Shield ability animations.
  
• Updated Bard ability animations.
  
• Tweaked Archery animations. In particular, all Archery animations should now aim toward their target.
  
• Bard abilities no longer have a delay before their damage or healing is applied.
  
• Fixed animation problems with Deer that caused certain attacks to take a very long time to trigger.
  
• Changing gear, then flying, no longer causes your character to use walking animations instead of flying ones.
  
• Limited how far your character will crane their head while looking at something.
  
• Disabled headlook while dead.
  
• Sword slash particles now face toward the attacker and not the attackee.
  
• While loading into a zone, you will no longer appear to other players as if you were falling.
  
• Ghosts now float again.
  
• /cry cries. Improved many other emote animations also. Note that some animations, such as /wave, have become full-body emotes for now, meaning that you cannot move while waving. We plan to make them upper-body-only emotes again in the future, so that you can e.g. walk while waving.
  
• Wings should now stop flapping when a fairy dies.
  
• More improvements to sitting and lying animation sequences.
  
• Hags in the character introduction screen are still creepy, but no longer 'sink into the ground' creepy.

UI Improvements

• Player Vendor UI Improvements:
  
  • Items can be moved up & down with buttons instead of right-clicking.
    
  • Items can be moved to the top & bottom of the list via right-clicking.
    
  • Saving an item will no longer revert unsaved changes of other items.
    
  • Text colors change to indicate whether item is or is not currently shown in shop.
• Loadouts can now be renamed.
  
• If an NPC likes a gift but you don't know that yet (because they only share that info at higher Favor levels), they will now show up in the "Item Info" -> "Gifting" window as a "person who hasn't told you they like it." For example: "This item is a good gift for 2 people you haven't met yet, plus 1 person who hasn't told you they like it."
  
• Current vs. required favor levels are now taken into account when showing gifting highlights. In other words, if your character couldn't "know" that an NPC likes an item, the item doesn't show with a purple border as a gift.
  
• Gifting an item to an NPC no longer causes the highlights of other items to disappear.
  
• Selecting group members via nameplate in the mini-group UI will no longer intermittently fail.
  
• If you are the last remaining player in a group, you will no longer receive an extraneous "You are now the leader" message right before being disbanded.
  
• GUI window resizing now properly responds to locking the GUI with a hotkey.
  
• Better resizing of Quest Rewards when the Quest Log is tiny.
  
• Replaced the inventory folder lock icon with an outline around the bag instead, in order to let the bag itself to be more visible.
  
• Buff durations in tooltips now update in real-time when you leave the mouse over the effect icon.
  
• Map pin labels now place above their respective pins instead of overlapping.
  
• NPC shops could show the wrong price for certain multi-buy items like Salt, Flour, and Sugar. This has been fixed.
  
• Tooltips should no longer occasionally get stuck to your cursor.
  
• Combat numbers and speech bubbles should no longer appear in the wrong place.
  
• If you're disconnected to the main menu with the cursor hidden -- for example, while holding right-click -- your cursor should now properly reappear.
  
• Tweaked the item-pickup floating animation to be quicker & no longer centered on the player. There are two new Special Settings to control the floating start point: PickupItemsStartX & PickupItemsStartY

Other Changes

• When examining a corpse, if you have an autopsy kit and no chance to fail the autopsy, the corpse is instantly auto-autopsied.
  
• Deposit All will now only attempt to store stackable items and not, for example, non-stacking items like equipment that shares the same name.
  
• Added the word "unlocked" to Deposit All wording, to clarify that items cannot come from locked inventory folders.
  
• Stow Items now works properly for the Warden Chest when in Kur Mountains.
  
• Mobs will no longer knock you into the air if you are very close to them.
  
• When at negative max HP -- for example, due to anti-regeneration -- the player can no longer: Respawn, Eat items that require you to be dead (Eternal Greens, etc.), or be affected by abilities that require the target to be dead (Resuscitate, etc.). This brings gameplay behavior in line with our intention: if you lose literally all of your Max HP due to debuffs, you can't come back to life until those effects wear off. The main way this can happen is by consuming too much deadly iocaine powder, and we recommend that you don't do that!
  
• Lycans should now be able to survey at the bottom of water.
  
• Fixes bug where player sinks to bottom of water when interacting with something.
  
• Polished a number of projectiles, most noticeably the "darkness ball" used by several necromantic abilities and necro-monsters.
  
• Fixed bug in particle from Death's Hold: it could leave behind orphaned zombie arms.

We'll be back soon with more bug-fixes and new content!

This update has a lot of different stuff. In it we've added... wait, let's just do a bullet list. That'll be easier. In this update, we have:

• Soft-launched our long-awaited VIP program.
  
• Added lots of UI features -- like the ability to lock the UI!
  
• Bumped up the difficulty of high-level solo monsters.
  
• Revised the Unarmed skill.
  
• Added a new crafting skill, Non-Fiction Writing.
  
• Introduced a new player messaging service: Pigeon Mail.

This update introduces our new VIP Membership program. We've been talking about VIP for years -- all the way back to the Kickstarter campaign -- so we are very excited to get it going!

VIP is an optional monthly subscription plan that helps players support the game's development while getting useful benefits in return. The most notable benefits are extra slots: more character slots, inventory slots, and transfer slots. Read all about the VIP plan, and the reasons for it, in our blog post (see the news links above these patch notes for a button that jumps to the blog post.)

As of this patch, the VIP Program is "soft-launched". We're still waiting on final Steam store-page approval, so it may be a week or two before it's possible to subscribe via Steam. But if you have VIP time as part of a backer package, or if you own a VIP Token, you can access VIP now.

If you have a backer package, you can redeem your time from the redemption window -- look for the icon on the bottom right of the Persona window.

If you have a VIP Token, just use that item in-game to receive 30 days of time.

A note about "package upgrading": in the past we've often been able to help players upgrade their backer packages (e.g. by paying more to switch to a fancier package). We can still offer this service in some cases, but keep in mind that if you Redeem any features from the package (such as VIP time), it will definitely not be possible to swap it for a better package.

You can now send mail to other players via 'pigeon mail' -- hard-working and well-trained carrier pigeons that can fly all over the world delivering messages. And you can even attach an item to your message! The mail will be delivered in about 60 seconds if the player is online, or the next time they log in if they are offline.

Speak with Irkima in the Red Wing Casino to send a pigeon. The cost to starts at 100 Councils, and increases if you send multiple messages too close together. (The birds get tired!) Attaching an item costs an additional 100 Councils, but Irkima will waive the fee for his Close Friends. If an item isn't delivered after 7 days, it is returned to you.

You can't send messages to people who are ignoring you, of course, and you can turn off receiving mail entirely if you prefer in the 'Social' window, under 'Restrict'. ('Social' is the icon on the right-hand bar that looks like three little people.)

We've talked in the past about various potential changes to the Unarmed skill, but now that we've taken a closer look, it doesn't really need a major overhaul: it's got a good mix of tanking, damaging, and controlling abilities which lets it pair successfully with multiple skills, and there are some interesting choices to make when building Unarmed loadouts.

So there aren't many huge changes here. Mainly, we've added new options to make some build styles work better. There's also a few damage changes (both up and down). After these changes there are still a few underwhelming treasure effects, but most of those, like the damage-over-time effects, are earmarked for future game-mechanics changes, so they've been left alone for now.

The following changes use numbers from (currently hypothetical) level 100 gear.

• Changed treasure mod: (Head, Chest) "Infuriating Fist generates no Rage and instead reduces Rage by 910" => "Infuriating Fist damage +73 and for 10 seconds all Elite attacks deal -8% damage to you."
  
• Changed treasure mod: (Head) "Bodyslam deals +47% damage and slows target's movement speed by 45%" => "Bodyslam deals +100 damage and grants you immunity to direct damage for 3 seconds"
  
• Changed treasure mod : (Head, OffHand) "Slashing Strike and Claw Barrage boost damage from Epic attacks +98 for 10 seconds" => "Slashing Strike boosts your Melee Evasion +5.25% for 5 seconds"
  
• Changed treasure mod : (MainHand, Necklace) "Slashing Strike deals +150 Trauma damage over 6 seconds" => "Slashing Strike and Claw Barrage deal +150 Trauma damage over 6 seconds"
  
• Changed treasure mod: (Hands, Necklace) "Hip Throw deals +286 armor damage" => "Hip Throw deals +200 damage, plus Armor-specific damage equal to 15% of the attack's total regular damage"
  
• Changed treasure mod: (Head, Off-Hand) "Mamba Strike Damage +67%" => "Mamba Strike Damage +59 and Reuse Time -1 sec"
  
• New treasure mod: (Necklace): "Cobra Strike Damage +100"
  
• New treasure mod: (Chest, Feet): "Claw Barrage Damage +147"
  
• Adjusted treasure mod: "Barrage costs -14 Power and restores 31 Armor to you" => now -16 power
  
• Adjusted treasure mod: "Kick Damage +78" => now +100
  
• Adjusted treasure mod: "Mamba Strike and Front Kick Damage +100" => now +84

For several patches we've been working toward being able to upgrade solo monsters' stats. We're finally ready to start doing that! In this update we've changed the health and armor of all creatures over level 40.

Previously an "average" level 70 solo monster had 1163 armor and 2373 health (total of 3536 health+armor). That "average" creature would now have 1588 armor and 2922 health (4510 health+armor). So an average level 70 creature gained about 1000 health+armor.

Since group monsters are implemented as superpowered solo monsters, they are also affected by this change. (An "average" level 70 group monster would also have 1000 additional health+armor.)

This is just the first pass, and although it's definitely a noticeable change (at high level), the numbers still probably need to go higher. But before we increase these numbers further, we need to play with these changes and get feedback on what skills are breaking down, what's (still) insanely overpowered, what's newly frustrating, etc.
In the future we'll be making more changes to solo monsters: we'll (probably) raise their health and armor even more, and we'll also be taking a look at individual monsters' special attacks, XP values, Max Rage, and damage-type vulnerabilities. We're also considering some mechanics changes (such as revisions to DoT damage), and possibly new AI combat tactics to react to perching and AoE-camping. And, of course, we'll also be revising player combat skills and loot effects in tandem with these changes. In other words, there's lots more balancing work to do! Your feedback has been and will continue to be extremely valuable.

One of the benefits of the VIP program is the new Autodidacticism skill, which lets players slowly earn XP while offline. This is done by performing a Hangout with a textbook instead of with an NPC. This isn't a fast way to earn XP compared to just playing the game, but it's useful for players who can't play often, or who want to level an "alt". As you can imagine, there are many limitations to this skill, and one of them is that VIPs must find the necessary books to hang out with.

And where do these textbooks come from? The new Non-Fiction Writing skill! There are new NPCs in Rahu (Hirochi and Wintria) who can help you unlock the skill, provided you have at least level 50 in Calligraphy. Non-Fiction Writing is done via offline hangouts, each of which takes two real-time days. The resulting books can then be used by VIP players who meet the requirements of the book.

Each textbook is for a certain skill and a certain level range. To write the book, your level in the book's skill needs to be 25 higher than the book. In addition, your level in Non-Fiction Writing has to be at least as high as the book's level. So to write a level 11-20 Sword book, you'd need level 11 in Non-Fiction Writing, and level 36 in Sword.

Because of this requirement to be 25 levels higher than the book, it won't be possible to create the highest-level books right now. Most skills don't go higher than level 80 or 85-ish (depending on how many bonus levels are available for each skill), so the highest textbooks would be for level 55 or 60. This limitation will naturally disappear as we raise the level cap.

If you aren't a VIP, you won't be able to use the books you create, but you can gift them to NPCs or sell them to other players. (Remember to check the player work-order boards for book requests!) Books lose durability when used in Autodidactic hangouts, and are used up after 20 days of use.

Tips on rarity: your first books will probably be terrible, and will have crappy stats (namely a penalty to earned XP). But as you level up in the skill, it's possible to create higher-rarity books which have XP bonuses. These range from Uncommon (green) books with a 5% XP bonus, all the way up to (extremely rare) Legendary books with a 25% XP bonus. Your chance of a bonus is based in part on your Non-Fiction Writing level: the higher it is above the book's level, the better, capping out at 25 levels above the book's level. It's relatively easy to create Uncommon and even Rare books (with a +10% bonus) but higher-rarity books require both high skill-level and random luck.

Limited book options: in this first launch of Non-Fiction Writing, we've only implemented books for a few dozen skills. This is just due to the sheer amount of data-wrangling involved -- we'll add textbooks for the other skills when we're more confident that we've got the XP numbers right. Right now, you can write books for any combat skill, as well as for any auxiliary combat skill (such as First Aid), and a small number of crafting skills (like Carpentry).

To figure out what books you're able to write, just use Hirochi's Non-Fiction Writing Table (after learning the skill). This table will list all the books you're eligible to write given your skill levels (and which books have been implemented).

If you've just enabled VIP, all of the features will be pretty obvious, with one exception: Autodidacticism. This is a new skill which only VIPs can use. It allows you to earn XP while you're offline. (With many caveats, such as a limit of two characters on your account at once -- see the blog for all details. Key restrictions are also explained in-game.)

You don't need to explicitly unlock Autodidacticism - you can automatically use the skill while you're a VIP. However, your level in the skill will start at zero, so at first you'll only be able to read beginner's books -- books for the lowest levels of a skill. For instance, if you've never leveled up the Sword skill, you can buy the "Sword Levels 0-10" book from Hirochi. It requires Autodidacticism 0, so you can read that book. To do so, use Hirochi's study nook. This will begin a Hangout lasting for a specified number of days. Once that many days of offline time has elapsed, you can log in and receive your XP.

But what if you are a long-time player and have already leveled every skill? You can't use the "Sword Levels 0-10" book if your Sword skill is higher than 10. How do you earn Autodidacticism XP? Hirochi comes to the rescue! Hirochi has a sequence of hangouts which will give you Autodidacticism XP. You can repeat these hangouts as often as necessary.

Hirochi sells books for many combat skills, up to level 30. Wintria Irasce sells books for a few non-combat skills. All other books have to be created by players using the new Non-Fiction Writing skill.


The recently-added experimental optimizations seem stable, so we're enabling these optimizations by default for new installations. If you already had the game installed there is no change, although we recommend you go and manually turn on these optimizations if you haven't already done so. (It's in the Settings window, Graphics sub-section, "Experimental Optimizations" checkbox. The optimizations won't fully kick in until you log out or teleport to a new game area.)

These optimizations give a noticeable framerate upgrade for most computers, but there is one visual side-effect: creatures more than 100 meters away are not rendered at all. If you find this limiting, you can just disable the Experimental Optimizations checkbox in the settings, or you can change the max-distance with a custom setting: in the Settings window, click on "Special", then add the line AppearanceRange=200 to the text field. This will render creatures up to 200 meters away, which is usually plenty far.

We've added a button to the bottom right of the storage UI labeled 'Deposit any items that are already stored'. Clicking this button checks to see if any items in your inventory are also in the storage (stacks of apples, for example) and if there is room for those items to fit in the storage -- and if so it deposits all the items for you. It first tries to fill up any partial stacks that are already in the storage, then uses empty storage slots.

In addition to this new feature, there are other improvements:

• Any items in your inventory that could be deposited with 'Deposit any items that are already stored' will be highlighted in your inventory with a green border.in your inventory.
  
• Shift-clicking an item while the storage UI is open now deposits/withdraws a specific amount, instead of just splitting the stack.
  
• While the storage UI is open, you can also now right-click an item to split a stack into or out of storage.

And many bug fixes:

• Ri-Shin Shrine Storage is now accessible from other storage NPCs in Kur.
  
• Bookshelves now allow direct access to nearby storage selections (like other storage NPCs do).
  
• Summoning items via practical summoning will now update the "More Info" menu properly.
  
• When withdrawing an item from storage, the tooltip will now update properly.
  
• Storing items after summoning a stack of another item will no longer cause visual weirdness.
  
• When using Practical Summoning, and the storage that you're summoning from is open, stack numbers will now update properly.

Many other areas of the UI also received attention in this update:

• You can now promote a member of your party to be party leader.
  
• There is now an option to lock your UI windows in place. You can find it in the Settings window, on the GUI tab, in the Features section. There is also a hotkey.
  
• There are 3 new settings to control the display of tooltips: "Tooltip Delay", "Instant Tooltip Duration", and "Use Tooltip Animation". You can find these in the Settings window, on the GUI tab, in the Features section.
  
• There's a new option on that screen as well, under the "Chat Behavior" section: "Close Chat With Hotkey".
  
• The "Jump to Recipe" functionality now extends to work orders and quests.
  
• You can now give NPCs an item by single-clicking instead of dragging.
  
• It's now harder to accidentally close an official admin message. And if you do, there's also a line in chat to explain how to see it again.
  
• You can now collapse and expand the list of quests for an area in the Quest window.
  
• (Most of) the rewards for a quest are now displayed as part of the quest in your quest log.
  
• Made some improvements to the quest tracker presentation.

And of course many UI bugs needed squishing:

• You can (once again) select your target's target.
  
• Players can no longer receive friend requests when their friends list is full.
  
• Note: you can now have a maximum of 150 friends (up from 100).
  
• Quotes in the friends list will no longer disappear after relogging.
  
• Players with long names in the friends list will no longer screw up the display formatting.
  
• The first time using an item on the hotbar now updates its stack size properly.
  
• Opening the recipe window will no longer sometimes show the incorrect required number of an ingredient.
  
• The pet information screen no longer has overlapping text and icons.
  
• Text in vendor shops is now correctly sanitized of HTML tags (no more color codes)
  
• When using Automatically Select Chat Channels, the channel you change to will now persist when changing zones.
  
• Backspacing after using chat shortcuts with Automatically Select Chat Channels on no longer leaves the shortcut in chat.
  
• Placing unusable gear in persona window will no longer cause it to show an empty slot.
  
• Better updating in general of entered social texts, such as your friend status or party name.

• We've revised how "knockback" works (which also covers "pull forward" attacks such as Snare Arrow or Grappling Web). The effect happens faster and is more accurate, knocking enemies in a more predictable direction.
  
• Slowed down the respawn rate of golems in the goblin dungeon's "red room" crystal encounters.
  
• "Live Event Token" items are being replaced with a new pseudo-currency, "Live Event Credits". Tokens can be converted to Credits by using them. Riston in the Casino now sells items for credits instead of tokens.
  
• You no longer need to hold the Dive Down key while surveying underwater, you only have to be at the sea floor.
  
• Fire Magic's Cold Protection ability no longer hurts you when you use it.
  
• All of the mods for Triage and Shadow Feint will now display on the ability tooltip.
  
• Clearing an inventory slot will no longer disable Bulwark Mode.
  
• Frostball is now cold & snowy instead of electric.
  
• Added missing animations for main-hand knife attacks.
  
• The option for a Hot Tip will no longer disappear on NPCs in the Casino.
  
• In Match-3, 'Possible Moves:' text will no longer show up when it's not unlocked.
  
• Percy Evans will no longer accept your Barter item for an Animal Nexus key if you already have one.
  
• Fixed a bug where right-clicking an object to auto-move to it would never actually reach it. You would just run around the entity in circles.
  
• Added a troubleshooting command /zapgolemprogram which erases your current golem program. This is to help players who, for instance, program their golems to "Self-Destruct: Always", making it difficult to reprogram the golem since it instantly self-destructs.
  
• The performance in Gazluk Keep has improved.
  
• Birds and Crickets in Serbule and Serbule Hills are now properly affected by the Ambient Sounds volume slider.
  
• The selection boxes for things like a Fire Wall should no longer jump around.
  
• Fixed non-animating water textures in Eltibule's waterfall.
  
• Improved the behavior of the camera during bad FPS dips. (This is especially noticeable in areas with many players.)
  
• Sitting in chairs works somewhat better.

Monday's game-patch will launch the Project: Gorgon VIP Membership program! This program gives players extra benefits while they are a VIP member. The intent is to give players another way to support the game's development while getting useful benefits for doing so -- kind of like becoming a Patreon patron. First, we'll discuss how to become a VIP. Then we'll cover the benefits.


You can gain VIP membership in a variety of ways:

• Purchasing a Steam subscription
  
• Claiming VIP time from a backer-package you purchased
  
• Using VIP Tokens in-game

Steam Subscription: You will (soon) be able to buy a VIP Membership subscription from Steam. Due to Steam's approval process, subscriptions will not be available immediately on Monday -- it may be a week or two before they can be purchased.

We'll have several price points depending on whether you pay monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually. Here's our planned pricing:

Backer Plans: Many of our backer plans, such as the Kickstarter backer plans or the plans we sell on our website, include VIP time. Players who have this benefit can use the Redemption window in-game to claim the included VIP time. (Look for the button on the bottom right of the Persona window.)

Once you've redeemed the VIP time, it will start ticking down daily. (So if you want to save your VIP time until the game is out of beta, just don't redeem the VIP time until then!)

This VIP time is non-transferable: only the account who has the special package can claim the VIP time from the backer package they purchased.

If you purchased a backer package and don't see a redemption (after Monday's update): don't panic, we can fix it! We probably need a bit of info from you to connect your account to your package. Email us at support@projectgorgon.com and we'll figure it out.

VIP Tokens: These tokens are in-game items that can be consumed by a player to claim 30 days of VIP membership time. The tokens themselves can be used on your own account or given to others. VIP tokens can come from various sources in-game.

Overlap: What happens if you have VIP time from several sources? What happens if you have a Steam subscription *and* time from a VIP token? Do the days from your VIP token keep counting down? Can you lose any time? (Short answer: No.)

When using up your VIP membership time, Steam subscriptions are counted first. While you have a subscription, you are not using time from any backer packages or VIP tokens that you may have claimed. That VIP time will be applied if your subscription lapses.

An account with an active VIP plan gets the following:

• Four extra character slots -- for a total of 8!
  
• 15 extra inventory slots -- for each character!
  
• 25 extra slots in each item-transfer chest! There are four such chests now (100 extra slots) and two more coming (for a total of 150 extra slots).
  
• Access to offline advancement via the Autodidacticism skill! (You can read all the details about this benefit below.)
  
• Access to special in-game reports, such as a "character sheet" that lets you view all your character's stats in a simple spreadsheet.
  
• Extra saddlebag slots for mounts (when mounts are implemented) (mount not included).
  
• And more benefits to come! We're exploring ideas like giving VIPs custom chat colors, unique emotes, and monthly gift-redemptions that give out amusing trinkets.

With a VIP membership, you gain access to all sorts of slots: character slots, inventory slots, and item-transfer-chest slots. Those extra slots are not permanent, so if your VIP plan ends, they go away. But you never lose stuff permanently! If those slots were in use, they become "overflow" slots, meaning that you can't access them, but they're still there. As you free up space, they become visible.

Inventory: if your VIP plan ends and leaves your character carrying too much, you'll be "overburdened". (This is exactly the same as if you had drunk a potion of inventory-expansion, and it wore off while you were carrying extra items.) You'll be able to access the normal number of items, and the rest will be hidden until you make space. As you drop, sell, or otherwise remove items from your inventory, the "overflowing" items appear automatically.

Transfer slots: just as with regular inventory, if your VIP plan ends and leaves your transfer slots overflowing, you will only be able to see the regular number of items in the chest -- the rest will be hidden. As you remove visible items, the hidden items reappear one by one. (You cannot add items to a chest while it's overflowing, so all you can do is remove items until it stops overflowing.)

Character slots: if your VIP plan ends and leaves you with more than 4 characters, only the 4 most-recently-played characters will be accessible. The others will be hidden. If you choose to delete any of those characters, one of your hidden characters will appear in the now-empty slot. (In Monday's patch we've revised the UI to make it obvious which characters are in "regular" slots and which are in VIP slots. So if your VIP is going to lapse, you'll be able to easily plan and organize which characters should stay visible.)

Summary: You never permanently lose access to your extra items or characters. They're still hidden in the background until you make room for them -- or until you have a VIP membership again!

Autodidacticism - in addition to being a hard word to spell - is a new skill available only to VIP members that lets you gain XP while offline. It's intended to help players who can't play as often as they'd like, or who want to slowly level "alt" characters.

Of course, we're worried about this skill giving VIP players too big of a gameplay advantage over non-VIP players. We don't expect that to be a problem due to the many limitations and restrictions on the skill (see below), but even so, we'll keep an eye on the rate of advancement. We want Autodidacticism to be a "secondary" way to level skills, so if it ends up feeling like the easiest or most efficient way to level a skill, we'll fix it.

Autodidacticism is a non-combat skill. To use the skill, you basically hang out with a book. You can visit an in-game library -- in Rahu, and eventually Statehelm -- where there are study tables to hangout with your chosen textbook. This is a real hangout, so you cannot hangout with an NPC at the same time -- it's one or the other.

You can choose whether to hang out for one, three, or five days. But the duration isn't too important, since -- just like a regular hangout -- you can interrupt these without penalty: the hangout timer will stop while you're logged in, and resume when you log out again.

So where do you get these textbooks? Well, NPCs sell books for some skills, but books for most skills (and most level ranges) come from players who write them. There's another new skill called Non-Fiction Writing which is used to make these books.

Non-Fiction Writing
Non-Fiction Writing is not a VIP-specific skill. Any player can learn this skill and create textbooks, provided they have at least 50 levels in Calligraphy to unlock the skill. (And they need time, since writing a textbook is done via a multi-day hangout as well.) But the resulting textbooks can only be used by VIPs.

Each textbook is for a certain skill and a certain level range. To write the book, your level in the book's skill needs to be 25 higher than the book. In addition, your level in Non-Fiction Writing has to be at least as high as the book's level. So to write a level 11-20 Sword book, you'd need level 11 in Non-Fiction Writing, and level 36 in Sword.

Because of this requirement to be 25 levels higher than the book, it won't be possible to create the highest-level books right now. Most skills don't go higher than level 80 or 85-ish (depending on how many bonus levels are available for each skill), so the highest textbooks would be for level 55 or 60. This limitation will naturally disappear as we raise the level cap.

Limitations to Keep in Mind
There are other wrinkles to using Autodidacticism:

• Autodidacticism is a skill that has to be leveled up! You can't read a textbook for a skill level that's higher than your Autodidacticism level, so you'll need to practice by studying low-level books first.
  
• Only two characters on your account can participate in Autodidacticism hangouts at a time.
  
• With few exceptions, you can't unlock skills via Autodidacticism. For instance, if you don't know the Knife Fighting skill yet, you can't read the newbie Knife Fighting book. You must unlock the skill normally first.
  
• You still need to raise your level cap in the normal way: you need to unlock level caps at level 50 and every 10 levels thereafter.
  
• You need to obtain the books themselves, and as explained above, very-high-level books won't be available for a while.
  
• Books lose durability when used in autodidacticism hangouts. Most books will last for about 20 days of offline hangouts before disappearing.
  
• At first launch, only a subset of skills can have textbooks. This is just due to the sheer amount of data-wrangling involved -- we'll add textbooks for the other skills when we're more confident that we've got the numbers correct.

The amount of XP you earn depends on the skill. At low level, the books are very efficient, but as you level up (and the XP curve gets steeper), books become less efficient. In general, combat skills earn XP faster than non-combat skills, much like they do in-game.

In fact, you can easily out-level the low-level books: it might only take one 5-day session to raise your Sword skill from 0 to 10, so your skill will be higher than the book's level-range before the textbook is used up. (You can then sell it, give it away to someone else with VIP, or use it with another character.) Whereas for high-level textbooks, 20 days of offline time may not be enough to out-level the book's range: in some cases you may need multiple high-level textbooks for the same level range.

These skills are brand new, and as with all new skills, you should expect changes while we experiment with them. Again, the goal is to make Autodidacticism a useful auxiliary leveling mechanism... but not TOO useful, and not TOO annoying to use, either! We'll find the sweet spot eventually, though it may take some iteration.

VIP players can access special reports, including:

• Character Sheet: generates a .csv (comma-separated-value) text file of all your character's stats. This file can be loaded in any spreadsheet app.
  
• Inventory Dump: lists every single item that one character possesses (including the stuff in various storage chests) as a text file. This file can be loaded into any word processor.
  
• Combat log: records every hit your character takes or deals to others in a text file. This text file is too verbose ("spammy") to be useful to most players, but it's being provided as a way for 3rd-party tools to generate new kinds of reports.
  
• With more reports added in the future!

These reports are actually available to all players right now, VIP or not, so that we can test them and gather more feedback about them. They will continue to be available to everyone for another patch or two, and then they'll become VIP-members-only.

Releasing the VIP service is a huge milestone for us, because it represents a new stage of the game's development.

We've talked about the VIP plan for years, but didn't want to implement it until we were in a solid place technically, where we could leave the "prototype" stage and enter the "production" stage. And we're finally ready to enter that stage! That's super exciting for us, and hopefully for you!

We've been extraordinarily careful with the funds we've earned from backers and purchasers, and it's let us develop the game slowly for many years -- and in fact we can continue to make the game at our current rate of development indefinitely.

But we're finally in a place where it makes sense to hire several more people and widen our production capacity. This is incredibly exciting: we're talking about better graphics, more content, and lots more polish. (We're honest with ourselves and know this will never be as polished as a "AAA" game... but we can eventually come pretty close!)

Not Mandatory But Useful
In terms of game systems, we have two goals for VIP:

• Although we talk about it as "patronage", the benefits of VIP should be worthwhile. We aren't asking for charity here, so VIP should be useful!
  
• But it needs to be entirely optional -- we expect most players won't be VIPs, and that's fine. VIP should never feel "mandatory" at all.

These goals are somewhat in conflict, so our first attempt at the VIP feature-set may not work out. If we don't meet both of these goals initially, we'll keep working on VIP until we do.

Thank you for everything you do to help us make this crazy game. We'll have more details about VIP (and book-writing) in the patch notes of Monday's update.

This is a quick bug-fix patch to address some issues in the March 25 update:

• NPCs will no longer appear to be dancing even after they have stopped.
  
• The Redemptions window will no longer tell you about redemptions that you are not eligible for.
  
• Your mouse cursor will no longer sometimes stay locked and hidden after you change zones.
  
• The Quest Tracker will no longer refuse to remove certain quests after they are completed.
  
• The Trade window will no longer fail to disappear after a trade.
  
• Sandstorms no longer use the new distance optimization, meaning they can once again be seen from more than 100m away.
  
• Fixed animation issues when interacting with things that have a usage delay (such as mining, meditation, and chopping lumber).
  
• Fixed bugs with head-look when looking at certain in-scene entities (such as wells, item workbenches, and inscription tables).
  
• Tweaked movement animations a bit.

Lastly, a reminder: enable Experimental Optimizations in the Settings->Graphics window to turn on a significant new optimization! (Even if you had enabled Experimental Optimizations before, you will need to re-enable it, because you are "opted out" of new experiments.)

Welcome to another exciting Project: Gorgon update! This one has been in development for longer than usual - we usually aim for an update every month. But we've been working on bringing our animation system into the modern day and that took a bit longer than planned.

This update includes our work on the animation system, as well as a potluck collection of new features and bug fixes. So let's dive in!

The old animation system had to go. It severely limited our ability to add new animations or replace old ones. So we've replaced it!

More specifically, we've replaced all the code in the system. Most of the actual animations are the same, for now. Our goal is to get this new system working at least as well as the old one did; then we can start improving things in earnest.

That said, there are definitely improvements to be found already, especially in how animations are blended. But there's also a lot of stuff that still needs tweaking, tuning, and fixing. You'll see bugs. You'll see weirdness. And you'll probably see some very silly things.

You'll also see some new animations, here and there. There are several new dance moves in this update, and now that we have the ability to add more, you can expect to see animations play a bigger role in the game in the future.

So please report all the silly, strange, or broken animations you see! The sooner we get those worked out, the sooner we can start pushing on new animation features. (And we'd really love to hear about the silliest animation bugs you run into! We're thinking about offering an in-game prize for the best 10-second video clip.)

Certain NPCs in the world now have unique dance moves! If they choose to dance, they'll perform their move. If you dance along with them (and your Interpretive Dance skill is 10 or higher) you will eventually learn their dance move. The amount of time it takes to learn the move is random, but usually pretty quick.

NPCs have gotten a little more picky about music, though - they now require a robust musical performance before they'll start dancing. (That's at least 3 performers.)

Your Interpretive Dance level cap also increases by +5 for each new move you learn. There are 12 new moves, so the max level cap of Interpretive Dance is now 70.

Note: animal forms still only have six unique dances. You can learn and use the other dance moves as an animal, but your character-model will just use the old animations for the new dances.

You can gain new synergy levels by raising the Interpretive Dance skill:

• Holistic Wellness - 19, 49
  
• Performance - 30, 50, 70
  
• Bard - 35, 65
  
• Endurance - 39
  
• Unarmed - 59

You can now find a VIP tab in the Settings window. Nothing on this panel actually requires that you be a VIP member yet - we're testing out some of the features before we launch the VIP program and we'd like to get your feedback. (Just remember that these features will eventually become VIP-only.)

In the " Special Reports" section of the VIP panel, you can export a lot of information about your character and the items you have in storage. There are a couple of reports and formats depending on what you need, including:
• a spreadsheet (.csv) of every item in every (non-shared) storage vault
  
• a JSON file with similar information about your storage (for programmers)
  
• a JSON file with information about your character

In the "Combat Logging" section of the VIP panel, you can enable and configure combat logging. When this is enabled, details about combat will be displayed in the 'All' chat tab. There is also a new "Combat" channel which you can enable in any chat tab. This combat info will also be recorded into the chat logs if you've enabled chat logging (also in the VIP panel).

Note that this is a first-pass attempt at combat logging and is fairly primitive. We may do another more complicated version that only writes to file -- writing every single point of DoT damage to the in-game chat log is far too spammy to ever be useful.

You can also configure chat-logging and book-logging in the VIP panel. These previously used the special settings LogChat and BookSaveToFile. Those settings have been retired; you can safely remove them from your Special Settings window.

Please explore these new features and give feedback! But be aware that these features will eventually become VIP-only.

We are excited about our newest performance optimization! This one will be especially dramatic on lower-end PCs, but all players should see at least a small improvement.
This is still experimental, so it's off by default. To enable it, open the Settings window. In the Graphics section, check the "Experimental Optimizations" box, then click save, then logout and back in.

Details:

• The optimization won't fully turn on/off until you switch to a new area, or logout and log back in.
  
• The old "experimental optimizations" have stopped being experimental. The checkbox has been turned off for everyone, so you'll need to turn it on again!
  
• This optimization works by unloading some of the assets for entities that are more than 100 meters away from you. As a side-effect, those distant entities won't be visible... even if you've set the entity-render distance higher than that!
  
• If you have a high-end PC and like to fly at high distances (or like to travel at light-speeds), you may want to increase this range. You can do so with a new special setting. In the Settings window, Special Settings area, add the words AppearanceRange=200 to double the range. (The minimum range is 100, the default setting.)

Some players found it unintuitive that the mouse-cursor was repositioned in the center of the screen after dragging the camera with a mouse-drag. We've fixed this issue, but unfortunately the fix is only available on Windows so far. (But we are optimistic that this will be possible for the other OSes eventually.)

We've been testing this for a while now and it's worked well, but let us know if you discover problems. If you need to turn it off (or if you just like the old behavior better): open the Settings window in-game, find the Special Settings section, and add the word RecenterCursor to the settings box. (Note that this only does something on Windows OSes; other OSes are always in recenter-cursor mode.)

Previously if you transmuted a Fairy Magic power on an item, you would always roll another Fairy Magic power. And if you re-rolled a Mentalism power, same thing, you would always re-roll a different Mentalism power. This made it impossible to replace Mentalism powers with Fairy Magic powers, or vice versa.

Now, if you have an item that originally had a Fairy Magic power on it, transmutation will randomly choose between both Fairy Magic and Mentalism powers for all replacements on the item. This allows you to add more Fairy Magic powers, or to remove Fairy Magic powers.

This works by using a hidden attribute set on the item during its creation. If the item was originally created with at least one Fairy Magic power, it'll always be possible to transmute Fairy Magic on/off the item. But if the item didn't originally have a Fairy Magic power, transmutation can never roll Fairy Magic powers.

(But what if you want to add Fairy Magic to an item that doesn't have it? For now, we've added a "back door" way to activate this. If you add a Fairy Magic augment to a Mentalism item, it'll be eligible for Fairy Magic transmutations. You can remove or replace the augment when you're done transmuting.)


Project: Gorgon now supports 'head-look' - your character can turn their head to look toward the thing you have selected. It's still a little rough; this is the "first gen" version of the feature. (Also, it only works for bipeds so far, sorry animals!)

This feature is enabled/disabled by default based on your graphics quality level. For graphics levels below Good, head-look is off by default. For Good and Great graphics levels, it is on by default but only applies to the local player - you will only see your own head movements, no one else's. For Amazing and Ultra, head-look is on for all bipeds - including other players and humanoid monsters like orcs. (Note that most NPCs don't yet use this tech.)

You can change this setting in the Advanced Options section of Graphics in the Settings menu.

The "super res" screenshot feature had stopped generating high-res screenshots due to an incompatibility with the newest Unity camera post-processing system. For now we have disabled post-processing for high-res screenshots, so they won't have all the bells and whistles, but at least they'll generate correctly! We'll review this workaround when Unity next improves their postprocessing system.

Screenshots that you take are now saved in a dedicated screenshots folder. You can see where that folder is, and open it, in Settings->GUI->Features.

• The flash you see on your screen when you are being hit ('screen flash') is less obtrusive. If you had it turned off via Special Settings, you might try it out again.
  
• The Graphics "Brighter World" option will no longer uncheck itself after the client is restarted.
  
• The Graphics setting "Resolution in Full-Screen Mode" no longer has multiple duplicate options.
  
• Pet particle effects are now correctly disabled by /particlespam and the NoParticleSpam Special Setting.

• The Recipes UI will no longer jump when crafting items at the bottom of long list of recipes.
  
• The Recipes UI will no longer scroll to a selected button that is already visible.
  
• Improved functionality of "Back" button in the Work Order board.
  
• Fixed a bug where closing out of certain menus also canceled the recipe you were crafting.
  
• The casting bar will now remain open when stopping interactions that are not directly tied to the casting. Note that standing up from a chair will cancel casting, no matter what.
  
• The Quest Tracker will no longer display as a grey dot when no quests are being tracked.
  
• Quests will no longer linger in the quest tracker after switching characters.
  
• Action button cooldowns will also reset properly when switching characters.
  
• The cursor could sometimes get stuck in a mode (like the interact hand). That should no longer happen.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause the top ability slot on the sidebar to clear itself.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause dragging an item in your inventory to drop an item.
  
• Certain items that required metabolism, or which were broken, would flash rapidly when placed on the sidebar. This will no longer happen.
  
• At certain screen resolutions, it was not possible to see the text menus for configuring shop items. Now you can!
  
• Character generation options with no choices - for example, there is only one human male face at this point - no longer display as options in character generation.
  
• Improved formatting of the fight and fight result windows in Monsters and Mantids.
  
• Fixed some display issues with the Settings menu options.
  
• Prettied up the Redeem menu. Previously you accessed this via /redeem, but now you can also use the handy button in the Persona window.
  
• In addition, we've added two new redemptions this update! Both of them are time-limited; click that new Redeem button in the Persona window for more details.

• Sigils, traps, fire walls, crystals, turrets, and other stationary objects are now immune to Fear. (It was adorable watching crystals flee in terror, but too exploitable.)
  
• Treasure that added damage-over-time to Deadly Emission was twice as effective as listed (it fired every second instead of every other second).
  
• The ability Fish Gut now requires (and can consume) an actual Skinning Knife. Previously it could use (and potentially consume) any knife that could skin animals.
  
• Fixed some Animal Handling pet commands that could break due to a bug in the targeting logic.
  
• Fixed a skill-check that was using the wrong skill when performing a butchery on a dead corpse (specifically, using your Skinning skill when rolling to get "bonus meat").
  
• Fixed the displayed base damage for Warden's Stun Trap abilities. (The actual damage did not change, just the displayed amount.)
  
• Moo of Determination 4 no longer shows up twice on Raul's training menu.
  
• Hammer abilities have new icons.
  
• (Looking for the Unarmed changes? Rebalancing of the Unarmed skill was postponed due to the animation system changes, but should be included in the next major update.)

• Added a lot of exciting new event content and tech. Stay tuned for dates and times!
  
• Fixed a large number of bugs with unreachable spawns, monsters walking through walls, bad collision, etc. in: Serbule, Kur Mountains, Ilmari, Rahu, Winter Nexus, Animal Nexus, and the Labyrinth. Possibly others!
  
• Vendors would sometimes lie and tell you that they could afford to buy an entire stack when they were actually too low on money! Now, instead of lying about it, they will do their best to figure out what they *can* afford, and present that information to players.
  
• Fixed exploit scenarios where a character could change between animal forms mid-conversation to gain access to unintended dialog options.
  
• Quest dings and warning screens are slightly less obtrusive.
  
• A number of creatures, including spiders and horrors, and a number of abilities, are a bit quieter and can no longer be heard from across the world.
  
• You can now quit out of the game directly from character generation.
  
• Durstin Tallow in Serbule Hills will no longer rent a room for 100 councils as many times as you ask.
  
• Gisli in Eltibule no longer displays the wrong stable slots number when he offers to sell you one. (He was off by one.) This was a display problem only.
  
• Cows now strafe correctly.
  
• Fixed a very rare bug that could cause players to be unable to log in after a game patch (which previously required administrator assistance to fix).
  
• It is now possible to bind 'Escape' through the Keys menu.
  
• Thanks for reading and don't forget the time-limited gifts!

It's time for holiday festivities! In addition, there are big changes to Elite and Boss monsters in this update. There are also revisions to the Ice Magic and Deer skills. And, of course, various other things as well. Read on for more info.


The holidays are upon us! While Alharth doesn't celebrate Christmas, it does celebrate Ri-Shin Day, and New Years' Day. Townsfolk who are your Friends will offer you gifts when you speak with them. (Make sure to have your favorite combat skills active in case they give you a piece of randomly-generated gear!)

There's also a Ri-Shin festival waiting to happen in each city and township in the land, but they will need your help getting their trees assembled. Look for townsfolk in festive red Ri-Shin hats to get started.

This year, there's also a new way for the community to work together. This is an experiment -- we've never tried anything like this before. You'll receive an introductory quest for this part of the event after you've assembled a few Ri-Shin trees. (If you're a Druid, you'll be briefed immediately upon login.)


As mentioned in the last patch's notes, we're working on making high-level combat take longer. This will eventually include both solo and group combat, but we're focusing on group combat right now. Some of the big-picture details are in flux a bit as we experiment and see what's going to work (e.g. "how many Elites is a tank supposed to be able to handle at once?" answer: "we're not sure yet").

We've been improving the "tanky skills" in preparation for these longer fights, but it's been hard to get good tanking data because most high-level Elite monsters simply haven't needed a tank: a group of players could blast them to death in seconds. So it's time to make Elites live longer and see what happens!

In this update, Elite/Boss monsters have a lot more health and armor, and Bosses deal less damage. We'll be watching your feedback (and our combat data logs) to try to figure out where to go from here. We may need to temporarily revert these changes, reduce them, increase them, or add more systems into the mix to address specific problems.

Bosses (but not Elites) also deal less base damage than before. The actual amount varies by boss-tier and the bosses' personal stats, so it's hard to generalize, but at level 80 an "average boss" deals about 25% less base damage.

Both Elites and Bosses deal less damage with their Rage attacks, also. The median reduction in rage-bonus-damage is about a 40%, but again it's hard to generalize too much.

Here's some more details about the implementation.

• Prior to level 35, elites/bosses have about the same overall health+armor, but some of their health has been switched to armor as a side-effect of the formulaic changes. This will make them a bit harder, so be careful!
  
• Starting at about level 35, elites/bosses gain more health and armor than before. This increases fairly gradually until level 50, then it starts going up more quickly. By level 80, the total health+armor of most elites and bosses has almost doubled! (And a lot of that increase is in armor, which means the monster has more mitigation for longer.)

We've also added some additional rewards for killing Elites/Bosses. When you loot an Elite, you'll now automatically "find some Councils" on the corpse. The amount is based on the monster's level, with some random variance. Bosses also drop extra money in the form of Council Coinpurses. (And bosses with curses drop more money sacks.) Finally, the most deadly tiers of bosses have a higher chance to drop high-rarity gear.

(These quick generalized changes were made because we didn't want to revise every monster's custom loot table just yet. But hey, maybe it's fun enough to remain permanent. Let us know what you think after you've had some time to try it out.)


Ice Magic is supposed to be a versatile wizarding toolkit: it can provide exceptional crowd control, potent survival tools, and decent damage, depending on which abilities you use. Its crowd-control abilities were already top-tier, so we've focused on other aspects of the skill in this update. There's a few nerfs and a lot of buffs.

The biggest nerf to Ice Magic is actually a change to a Fire Magic treasure mod:

• (Chest, Hands) "Calefaction causes target to take +45% damage from Cold for 12 seconds" => now +16% damage

We realized this mod was overpowered shortly after it was introduced, but it was a "let's wait and see if this is actually a serious problem" scenario. A lot of accidentally-overpowered treasure turns out to be fine, and sometimes an accident like that can really make everything "click" and help define a skill. But not this time. It was hamstringing our ability to make Ice Magic more powerful on its own, so it had to be reduced to a more reasonable level. (And it's still probably the most powerful cross-skill synergy mod in the game.)

Cryogenic Freeze needs to take its rightful place in the Ice Magic survival toolbox. It has TREMENDOUS mitigation, and it's intended to be something of a "freebie" for Ice Mages: it's useful without needing to invest lots of treasure mods into it. The only cost is that you have to make room for it on your ability bar. (And treasure makes it more versatile and useful.) Of course, Cryogenic Freeze has the extreme down-side that you are completely frozen and cannot move. But now instead of a forced 10-second lockdown, you can control the duration precisely.

• Cryogenic Freeze now lasts 20 seconds or until dispelled by using the ability again. The reuse timer is 20 seconds, which begins as soon as Cryogenic Freeze ends.
  
• Power cost increased; all treasure effects recalculated in potency

Ice Armor has been buffed up a bit. We've also worked to make Ice Veins and Shardblast more useful. You can now use either one to reset Ice Armor's timer, allowing you to immediately put your armor back on. Which, in turn, allows you to take advantage of Ice Armor's healing mods again!

This "Ice Armor loop" technique can be very powerful but requires a lot of treasure mods to reach full potential. It's also possible to use Ice Armor in a more passive role, and there are mods to support that style also (such as the ones that boost Cold damage).

• Ice Armor: highest tier of ability has slightly higher mitigation (+27 vs crushing, slashing, piercing, and ice), and all tiers now grant extra mitigation from Elites (+54 additional at highest tier)
  
• Ice Veins: power cost and base damage increased. All treasure potency recalculated
  
• "Ice Armor restores 80 Power over 30 seconds" => "Ice Armor costs -19 Power and restores 51 Power after a 6-second delay"
  
• "Ice Armor restores 170 Armor over 30 seconds" => "Ice Armor mitigates +16 Physical and Cold damage, and mitigates +32 more against Elite attacks"
  
• "Ice Armor boosts Cold attack damage +34" => +50
  
• "You regain 44 Health when using Ice Nova or Shardblast" => "Ice Nova and Shardblast deal +61 damage and cost -12 Power"
  
• New treasure (off-hand): "Ice Veins heals +16 Health and resets the timer on Ice Armor (so it can be used again immediately)"
  
• "Ice Veins heals 120 Health over 10 seconds" => 180 health over 10 seconds
  
• Ice Veins is now marked as a Minor Heal ability (making it eligible for equipment that boosts Minor Heals).
  
• New treasure (head): "Ice Armor instantly restores 80 health"
  
• "Shardblast resets the timer on Ice Armor (so it can be used again immediately)" => "Shardblast deals +X% damage and resets the timer on Ice Armor (so it can be used again immediately)" *

Cold Sphere's old Rage attack (at high level) was a 10-second root. This was too much of a good thing and it's now a 5-second root at all levels.

We've tried to make Cold Sphere useful in two different scenarios: for Ice Mages who are using a different skill as their primary damage source, they can invest in Cold Sphere mods to get a bit of extra damage on the side (plus its innate root is always handy).

For players who ARE using Ice Magic as their primary damage-dealer, Cold Sphere's damage-boosting mods are often not worth using, but there's a new mod that gives it a Cold-vulnerability debuff. This makes Cold Sphere an interesting (but not mandatory) option for any Ice Mage.

• Cold Sphere: increased base damage-boost of all pets level 50+. The "root" effect from their rage attack is reduced from 10sec (!) to 5sec
  
• "Your Cold Sphere's attacks deal +34 damage and taunt -65%" => "Your Cold Sphere's attacks deal +50% damage and taunt -25%"
  
• "Your Cold Sphere gains 156 Armor" => "Your Cold Sphere gains 90 Health"
  
• New treasure (chest): "Your Cold Sphere's attacks deal +24 damage and cause the targets to suffer +12% damage from future Cold attacks (non-stacking)"
  
• New treasure (head, hands): "Your Cold Sphere's attacks deals +170 damage, but their Max Health is -80"

Added a bit more damage overall. Nerfed one of Frostbite's mods, but don't be misled: it's still an extraordinarily good debuff. (And it will only become more powerful as combat duration increases! In fact, we may need to tone it down some more later.)

• Ice Nova: power cost and base damage increased. All treasure potency recalculated
  
• Frostbite ability: ability base damage increased slightly
  
• "Blizzard deals 328 armor damage and generates -120 Rage" => "Blizzard Damage +255"
  
• "Frostbite deals +154 damage and raises the target's Max Rage by 79%, preventing them from using their Rage attacks as often" => "Frostbite deals +176 damage and raises the target's Max Rage by 33%, preventing them from using their Rage attacks as often"
  
• "Freeze Solid resets the timer on Ice Spear (so it can be used again immediately)" => "Ice Nova deals +110 damage and reuse timer is -2 seconds" *
  
• "Freeze Solid restores 161 armor to you after a 15 second delay" => "Freeze Solid restores 112 armor to you"

You may notice a couple of asterisks above. Those are treasure mods that previously only had one "tier" of effect. The revised versions add more tiers to each mod, allowing the mods to become slightly more powerful at high level. This resulted in a slight quirk: pre-existing items with these mods are still stored as having the first tier of the mod. This means even high-level items will have the lowest-tier version of these mods.

This isn't really a huge deal in terms of potency, but if you want to fix it, you can Transmute the mod off the item and then Transmute it back on -- it will be the appropriate tier when it's re-added. (And this month, Transmutation is cheap for the Ice Magic and Deer skills.)


The earliest animal forms were all experimental designs, and Deer was originally the prototypical "off-tank" skill. Then we decided that off-tanks weren't useful in a game without raids, so Deer was revised in a few other directions. But the most recent revision made Deer fairly tanky again, so let's build on that. Here's a fresh idea: what if Deer was like an "off-tank"?

In old-school MMO terminology, an off-tank can act as a tank for an elite enemy (or multiple solo enemies), but may have trouble tanking some bosses -- although dedicated healers can help there. What makes them unique, though, is an ability to take over aggro for anyone... including a tank! (Hence the name "off-tank", because they can pull monsters off the tank.)

We'll try to give Deer that ability and see what it's like. There's new treasure that gives you a new sidebar ability "Feign Injury", which "temp taunts" a target. Temp taunting works like regular taunting, except it decays at a rate of 20% per second. So a temp taunt of +10,000 would be 10,000 Taunt at first, then a second later would be recalculated as 8,000, then a second later as 6,400, etc. So this ability should help Deer get aggro from anyone, anywhere... at least for a few seconds.

An off-tank should also have solid taunting and survivability, and deal decent damage. So that's what we'll try to do here. In addition, the Deer skill has always had incredible mobility (which is what makes them an interesting off-tank), and we want to keep that too.

Deer players can summon an ally deer to aid them. Previously these deer had an innate 300% taunt multiplier and were intended to be sort-of off-tanks themselves, sharing tanking duties with the player deer. We recently gave these summoned deer the benefits of our experimental genetics system, which could randomly give these pets incredible health and armor. Better for tanking! But yet... at high level, a well-equipped player deer can easily out-taunt and out-tank a pet deer. This just feels like an unwieldy design.

We've dropped the idea that these pets are tanks, and focused them on damage. They no longer have an innate taunt bonus or souped-up genetics. However, they have higher base damage, and the pet's taunting-related treasure effects have been changed into a damage boost.

There are also new treasure mods that summon additional deer for a few seconds at a time. This makes for a fun solo build, although it's somewhat mod-intensive and also pretty chaotic. But a fun kind of chaotic! (For those who don't want chaos, we've also bumped up Deer's more traditional murder methods.)

It's useful to know that every attack your pet deer makes is considered a "deer kick". This is relevant for one specific treasure mod:

• (Hands, Necklace) "Deer Kick implants insect eggs in the target. Future Deer Kicks by any deer cause target to take 310 Nature damage over 5 seconds"

This mod is unchanged, except that it no longer stacks more than four times: twice for each piece of equipment it can show up on. (That's *not* a limit of 4 stacks of damage, it's 4 stacks of the debuff that applies the damage!) Also, we've reworded the effect to clarify that pet deer can trigger the damage.

We've tried hard to avoid breaking existing equipment by repurposing obsolete Deer effects with new ones. However, in one place this was impossible. A head-slot mod was removed without any replacement. If you had this mod on a piece of head gear, that item has become "Legacy", meaning it will stop working after a month. You can fix this by using a Transmutation table to remove the mod off of your helm, or you can speak to the Legacy Golem in Serbule to receive a randomly-generated replacement item.
(Transmutation of Deer treasure is much cheaper this month, to help you adjust to these changes.)

• Doe Eyes: Power cost increased. Ability now resists more physical damage, especially against Elites, and lasts for 24 seconds instead of 10. (At level 77 it now gives 36 mitigation, plus 72 more vs. Elites)
  
• "After using Doe Eyes, your next attack deals +169 damage" => "Doe Eyes reuse timer is -2 seconds, and after using Doe Eyes your next attack deals +190 damage"
  
• "Doe Eyes restores 95 armor" => "Doe Eyes mitigates +16 physical damage (Crushing, Slashing, Piercing) for 26 seconds. Against Elite enemies, mitigates +32 more"
  
• "Doe Eyes heals 80 health" => "For 10 seconds after using Doe Eyes, you mitigate +36 from all attacks, and a further +72 from Elite attacks"
  
• Ability "King of the Forest": base damage and Power cost increased slightly; all treasure stats tweaked slightly as a result
  
• "King of the Forest gives you +15 mitigation of any physical damage for 20 seconds" => this effect was available on two slots, but only applied once. This was intentional at the time, but now we're trying to make all treasure mods stack together when possible. New (stacking) version: "King of the Forest mitigates +14 physical damage (Crushing, Slashing, Piercing) for 10 seconds. Against Elite enemies, mitigates +28 more"
  
• "Cuteness Overload heals you for 114 health" => "Cuteness Overload Damage +270"
  
• "Combo: Deer Bash+Any Melee+Any Melee+Deer Kick: final step hits all enemies within 5 meters and deals +100 damage." => deals +240 damage
  
• Summoned Deer no longer have the benefits of the experimental genetics system, but have higher base damage
  
• Summoned Deer no longer have an innate 300% taunt bonus
  
• Summoned Deer can randomly be male or female
  
• "Summoned Deer Taunt +X%" => "Summoned Deer Rage Attack Damage +Y"
  
• "Antler Slash has a 50% chance to restore 48 armor" => this effect has been replaced with an entirely unrelated effect. (head, chest): "You can use the Deer ability Feign Injury, and it temp-taunts +11300. (Equipping this item will teach you the ability if needed.)"
  
• (Hands, Feet) "Deer Bash deals +120 damage and knocks the enemy backwards" => "Deer Bash has a 15% chance to summon a deer ally for 30 seconds"
  
• New (ring): "Cuteness Overload deals +160 damage and knocks the target backwards"
  
• New (Head, Necklace): "Pummeling Hooves deals +45 damage and has a 8% chance to summon a deer ally for 30 seconds"
  
• "Antler Slash deals +X% damage" => "Antler Slash hits all enemies within 5 meters and taunts +Y". NOTE: this effect used to be available on two slots, Head and Hands. It is now only on Hands. See above about Legacy items.
  
• "Psychic Mitigation +34 while Deer skill active" => "Psychic and Nature Mitigation +34 while Deer skill active"
  
• "Nature Mitigation +34 while Deer skill active" => "Burst Evasion +8.5% while Deer skill active"
  
• "Deer Kick Damage +85" => "Deer Kick Damage +45 and grants you -10% Fire Vulnerability for 10 seconds"
  
• New: (main-hand) "Combo: Forest Challenge+Any Melee+Any Melee+Any Epic Attack: final step deals +150 damage and summons a deer ally for 30 seconds."

We've revised some of Riston's special prizes so that they use abilities instead of items. For those that have already purchased a Vendor Fox in a Box or the Small Box of Space, the summoning item in your inventory has been converted to a skill book that will teach you the new ability. This skill book can only be used once, so use caution if you must transfer this skill book to another character on your account. Also with this change, you will have to purchase these items per character now if you wish to have it on more than one character on your account.

• Once you learn the Vendor Fox in a Box ability, the ability requires you to have some type of crate in your inventory. Any crafted storage crate and most pet crates (when Animal Husbandry is released) will work to allow use of the ability. The crate will not be consumed. The cool down timer on the ability will reset in 2 real-time hours, but you still need to spend 2 hours in-game before you can use the ability again. (You can see that timer in your effects bar under the effect 'Boxed Fox'.)
  
• Once you learn the Small Box of Space ability, there are no other requirements. Just use the ability to summon your storage box. The cool down timer for this ability has been extended to 90 minutes (from 60 minutes). The cool down timer on the ability will reset in 90 real-time minutes, but you still need to spend 90 in-game before you can use the ability again. (You can see that timer in your effects bar under the effect 'Spaced Out'.)

As time goes by, we will slowly be adding more and more items, abilities and services to the game that will require Live Event Tokens. For this update, we have added a new 50 token prize! Find Riston in the Red Wing Casino to check it out!

• Bug fix: Rabbit: "Bun-Fu Blast deals +80 damage and restores 44 Power after a 9-second delay" => this did not add damage to Bun-Fu Blast as expected
  
• Bug fix: Rabbit: "Bun-Fu Blast deals +78 damage and hastens the current reuse timer of Bun-Fu Strike by 3 seconds" => this did not add damage to Bun-Fu Blast as expected
  
• Rabbit: added Astounding Familiar Controllers (level 80 ice magic tiara) to loot
  
• Flight in-combat: the Power penalty for flying while in combat now has a much higher cap (meaning flying while in-combat for more than a few seconds costs more Power than before)
  
• Added a "quit" button to the login and character-select screens
  
• Fixed AI bug that caused monsters to hate the first attack that hit them more than intended
  
• "Carbon-form Scrutinizer Array" only gave a +5 pathology bonus instead of intended +10 bonus
  
• The visual appearance for Winter Court Murder Armor (level 80 Hardcore armor) did not glow as intended
  
• "Rubgag's Dancing Shoes": sprint buff now only works out of combat
  
• Worked around Unity shader bug that could cause treants to turn into nightmarish blobs of polygons
  
• Fixed bugs that caused "corpse stink" particles to continue emitting after the corpse was closed