Next reset:

• Ships are now spottable 2 tiles away, instead of 1
• Spotted ships are now also shown on the map; if you press down Left Mouse button their name will also appear

From Starfish:
A few weeks ago I mentioned that I would consider outsourcing help for the next big fishing update. Here it is:
viewtopic.php?f=37&t=46428

Give it a read if you're interested, and if you still feel like contributing after reading the wall of text then you are most welcome to do so.

From Twohand

CORDOR

• Added a boat connecting the northern outskirts with the city docks.
  • It is restricted to the Cordor Navy.

SURFACE

• Added a doorbell to the gate of the Church of Bane.

From Kuma, Hadals, Eira, & Peachoo
(your benevolent...ish writing team)

==============

It's some time coming and quite late but I finally wrangled some verdicts out of us for the DEITY BOOK WRITING CONTEST!

We have some phenomenal work in there that I'm extremely pleased with, and many many MANY of them will be included in the module as actual books you can stuff into your own libraries, book bags, and mouths (barring at least one or two I've had to disqualify)!

So, the winner of our MAJOR AWARD is HRAGLI for their incredible work on the Morndinsamman (dwarfish pantheon), THE DIVINE TETRALOGY!

For our GREATER AWARD the winner is ITIKAR for multiple wonderful submissions on the DARK SELDARINE (drow pantheon)!

And Irongron has been kind enough to let me squeeze a few more winners in the NORMAL AWARD category: SECOND BREAKFAST (MASK: A Scoundrel's Beatitudes); THE VANDALS OF ROME (The (nearly) Complete Book of Lords of the Golden Hills); ZCR (Singing Butts and Giant Squirrels: A defense of my time with Nathair)!

I am also pleased to say that all the authors of all the books that actually will end up in game will receive a Minor Award as further gratitude for their talent, effort, and skill - but that's going to take me a bit longer to work through. Y'all wrote too much.

Next reset:

Ship ticks reworked to take the overflow time from a heartbeat update (6 seconds) and apply that to ship voyage progress.

So if 2 rounds take 18 seconds (instead of 12) due to lag or whatever, you'll actually progress those overflow 6 seconds on your current voyage for the next tick.

While at it I also made sure that any overflow progress you made on your current voyage that crosses over to the next quadrant will be carried over for the next quadrant's progress.
I had to tweak the duration it takes crossing quadrants (straight & diagonally) a little bit for this.

As usual, bit experimental, so will see how it goes.

Also fixed some bugs and lowered the cooldown for ship speed burst and overheat.

Ship weapons will also only work for ships that are 1 tile or less distance away from you. Can still spot them 2 tiles away, no change there.

Also addressed the Longship issue. Apparently two different NPC ships were called "Longship", which lead to confusion about them spawning too often.

From Aellowyn

Added two new heads
Female elf without a spider #44
Human female with long hair #95

From Ice

Misc

• PGCC: The -setup command now accepts level parameters to quick-type the intended level, like "-setup 15" will immediately lower/raise you to level 15.
• Lowered the sell value of Acid Grenades, Fire Grenades, and Spell Components.

Fixes

• Fixed scribe scroll on Shadow Plague creating Sustain scrolls
• Fixed Rice Wine not properly blocking poison damage
• Fixed an issue that was causing spiders spawned from the Widow's Kiss poison to be friendly to the their mama. I mean, target, host target.
• With Backlands - Fixed Elementalists not receiving their elemental language.
• Fixed teaching bard songs randomly skipping some valid targets.
• Fixed Stonefinger poison not going into the trapper's box
• Fixed an issue with Parry AC not properly updating when unequipping weapons
• Fixed Harbinger's black blade description. Other bugs regarding the Black Blade are currently being investigated.

From KenC

Darkness Bugfix

• An experimental fix for the Darkness spell has been implemented to address visibility issues. This update will undergo a trial period on PGCC before being deployed to the live servers.

From Twohand

Cordor

• Added a butler and customizable guards to the noble estate on Saddler's Row in the Cultural District.

Brogendenstein

• Minor visual update for the Ironhelm; it now looks like an actual metal ship.

From the team

Some changes will be rolling out regarding scrying to make cooldowns and what can be scried more consistent. The changes are as follows:

• The scry cooldown will now start from the moment a scry attempt begins and will be 2x whatever scry length is being used to a minimum of 4 minutes.

  • If you are scrying for 1 minutes, cooldown will be 4 minutes (1 during the scry, 3 after the scry).
  • If you are scrying for 4 minutes, cooldown will be 8 minutes (4 during the scry, 4 after the scry).

• A failed attempt will have a cooldown of 1x the attempted length of scry.

• Resting no longer removes the scry cooldown.

• If a scry is interrupted the cooldown will be for the full 2x length, this can be considered IC as "mind shock".

• When scrying module baked protected areas and DM set scry protection will now interrupt scry attempts when entered. Player placed wards, buffs, or otherwise will not interrupt ongoing scrying. These module baked protected areas were not intended to allow scrying in any way.

Bugfix

=========

• A bug was discovered during these changes leading to longer than expected scry lengths from rituals. Scry time from these is now 2x for divination specialization and pure shamans (28+ levels) and + 50% for epic divination as intended.

NOTE

=========

We are aware of an issue with scry timers being longer than expected. A logic error in the updated code resulted in our maximum always being hit for cooldowns. A fix for this should be in as of next reset

From Sincra:

Pickup Fixture & Fixture NUI

Fixes

• Now respects and uses the cooldown associated with the - command.
• I am aware that some numbers have changed on the NUI, this was in preparation for some future adjustments but I will look at adjusting them back.

From Ice and Sincra

###Appraise Changes

• Removed all RNG components of the appraise checks.
  -- Merchants may still have a little 'mood' variance each day that marginally modifies the final price.
• Fixed a small bug that caused the script to fail to select the best seller in the party.
• Hard appraise points are valued slightly more than soft appraise points when calculating sell value.
• The formula for appraise sell value was slightly tweaked. The following factors will considerably increase or decrease sell value:
  -- Matching race
  -- Beating the merchant in a Vs Appraise check.

From Starfish

• 3 new staff appearances under type 7. This should make navigating the staff appearance menu a bit easier also.

From Starfish

• 8 new staff top appearances across types 12 and 13

From Ice and Twohand

Planes and Banishment

Dismissal

• Removed the increased +6/+3 DC.
• Fixed a good chunk of the spell that was not doing what it was supposed to.
• Updated spell description
• This spell will no longer target friendly summons
• This spell will have no effect on non-summoned creatures
• Fixed a bug that caused it to obliterate planar PCs
• - Banished creatures do not give any experience.
  Fixed a bug that caused the spell to only affect 1 creature at the time

Banishment

• Updated spell description accordingly.
• Banished creatures do not give any experience.
• Increased the HD pool of this spell to use three times Caster Level from two times Caster Level.
• This spells will no longer affect friendly creatures.
• Fixed a bug that caused this spell to obliterate planar PCs
• This spell will no longer target friendly creatures
• Fixed a bug that caused the spell to only affect 1 creature at the time
• Banishment is now capable of exiling all creatures back to their home plane - so any random elf caught in Mechanus is now a valid target to be banished back to the Material. NPCs will never be seen again, PCs will be (usually!) safely extracted to their home plane - this usually is somewhere in the Surface or Underdark based on race or Outcast status. As a rule of thumbs, if a race has an element in their name or receives a Planar language (Ignan, Aquan, etc), they consider that plane and their quasi and paraelemental unions a Homeplane and are not subject to be banished from there - this includes such things as genasi, giants, elementalists, deep gnomes, etc.
• The Shadowplane is a notorious exception to the rule; transitory planes do not have extraplanar creatures and thus nobody is vulnerable to be Banished away from it.

Misc

• Characters with either Greater Divination Focus or Greater Conjuration focus will be able to discern what plane they are in when using the -area command.
• Ward teleport will prevent all planar traffic, and prevent creatures from being ejected from the plane. However, they will be struck with Portal Shock, and be rendered stunned for 30 seconds in the case of dismissal, and 45 seconds in the case of Banishment. PCs struck with Portal Shock are only stunned for 9 seconds. This stun bypasses immunity.

From Ice

###Appraise 2: Shill Out Harder

• The system will use either matching race OR matching nation when determining your sell value.
• The amount of mood variance of each merchant was lowered from a d20 to a d10.
• The gold multiplier penalty for failing to meet the race/nation was reduced from -1 to 0
• Changed the appraise vs - beating the merchant's score by 15 will increase the multiplier by +1. Failing under -15 will reduce the multiplier by -1.
• Added a more broad race check to identify subraces as part of their base race when it comes to matching race.
• The merchant reaction feedback text will more accurately represent whether you are achieving a positive, negative or neutral multiplier.

These changes were made both with the intention to fix old issues with the system, and to slightly, emphasis on that, lower the income and gold influx in the game. Mathematically, the difference for a full appraise value character is around -70GP as it was before.

Race and nation, while part of the previous system, only contributed to the favorability of the merchant to a very small degree. Since they are now a fundamental part of the calculation, matching either of these requirements is necessary to achieve similar values as those pre-update. Otherwise, the difference in gold income can vary by as much as 100~ GP per transaction.

Apologies for the weekend updates, some important stuff going in that couldn't wait!

As of next reset/some are in already:
From Ice

Additions

• Added basic nation information to the -area command.
• Added Shadow Ghostly Visage to the -dispel quickhand (-dispel sgv)
• Tweaked some hidden variables of the appraise system that were modifying prices. These values are now static for all characters.
• Merchants under the Charm effect will now consider any customer a matching race.

###Fixes

• Fixed some epic spells being dispellable - specifically summon epic spells.
• Fixed a tiiiiiiiny teeny bug in the appraise system that allowed for infinite gold multiplier stacking for every additional party member.
• Fixed an issue with the Damask Main Gauche not having the same Parry property as the swordbreaker and the regular main gauche that grants them parry benefits. Old Main Gauches will be automatically updated.
• Extended Elementalist's Overcharge refocus window by 2 seconds to catch a last spell that could have been falling off the timeframe.
• Reduced the immunity timeframe of Elemental Annihilation by 1 second, as it was messing with the intended spellcasting 'rhythm'. Keep in mind not all spellcasting has the same exact speed so there may be some variation.
• Fixed Rogue's Cunning not being Extendable

From Kalopsia

• Yuan-ti should no longer bug out or get horse-related notifications using their innate appearance shift. Please report any un-snakelike behavior

From Twohand

Some quarters and guildhouses with shop and/or quarter signs within their boundaries (that is, located past a locked quarter door, in a private location) were not mechanically linked, despite what the area layout would imply.

This could cause issues, such as the guildhouse inheritance system not triggering because the interior quarters were not actually connected to the guildhouse, or DMs needing to be called because someone bought the shop sign inside your quarter, and you couldn't evict them.

I believe this update fixed all quarters affected by this issue, but if I missed one, please let me know! For reference, these are the quarters updated:

Andunor

• Underdark (Andunor) Greyport (Buildings)
• Underdark (Andunor) The Hub (Inner)
  • Quarter in the West Wheel with two shops.

Bendir Dale

• Bendir Dale (Riverbank)
  • The walled farm guildhouse.
• Bendir Dale (Trader's Route) Gnomish Workshop
  • All four quarters.

Cordor

• Cordor (Farmlands) Farm Buildings
  • Two quarters with interior shops.
• Cordor (The Walled City) Mesmer Walk (Guildhouse)

Sencliff

• Sencliff (Cove) Crew House
  • All four guildhouses.
• Sencliff (House)
  • The quarter near the stairs to the cove with an interior shop.

As a bonus, Bendir's riverbank farm, the guildhouse on Mesmer Walk, and two noble-only estates in Cordor's Cultural District have received butlers and guard NPCs that will defend their respective quarter owners. The farm didn’t get a butler, though. Sorry!

From The Team:

Scrying

Fixes

• Fixed scry teleporting the user again to their starting location if their scry is stopped prematurely.
• Fixed module scry-protected areas not blocking follow-through scrying.
• Fixed teleport warding blocking scrying.
• Abjurer's ward will now terminate following scryers if they enter a location with a ward placed.

From Ice:

###Fixes and Stuff

• Fixed LMs failing to learn from ambassadors/tinker before meeting their actual language cap
• Add Haste (has) Blur (blu) Flame Shield (fls) Frost Shield (frs) and Shadow Ghostly Visage (sgv) to the -dispel quickhand
• Doors can now only have a maximum of 5 pinned messages. This is tracked and logged, so kindly don't spam.
• Fixed Eagle Sight not actually applying its blind immunity effect
• Mass Charm will now also affect non-hostile NPCs. PCs must still be hostile.

from sk

Dirge of Terror:

• Now applies a Stun effect instead of a generic, unblockable paralyze on a failed save, similar to Terrifying Rage.

Notes: Of course, this does mean that some monsters and even players will now be immune to this part of the effect. This exception was causing some strange interactions and preventing certain counter-actions from functioning. This was also done because the ability in general doesn't behave like a normal Frighten, so this should bring the ability more in line with others.

From Starfish

###Staff Tops

• Filled out missing staff top 104 with a rainbow protoshape, perfect for chaotic mages and illusionists or even just lovers of colour spray.
• Edited staff top 103 (Orb with blue aura) to have a white aura, as I feel it better matches the theme of the piece.
• More to come...

From Ice

###LM languages

• Fixed the previous fix - loremasters should now be able to learn languages through tinkers/ambassadors.

Starfish is aware that the recently added rainbow proto shape staff top does not currently work and a fix is being worked on.

From The Team:

Spirit parrots and their skills:

Changes

Hard ranks in skills have been adjusted:

• Open lock reduced. (Was 35, now 0)
• Disable trap reduced. (Was 35, now 0)
• Hide reduced. (Was 25, now 15)
• Move Silently reduced (Was 25, now 15)

Rationale:
The ability to use the spirit parrot as a means to open containers was unintended, this change aims to rectify that.
Hide and Move silently have been reduced as the parrot was effectively more skilled than most players.
For those unaware, these come from a sailing item known as the Spirit Parrot Chalice to some or The Grumpy Parrot Chalice from the file.

From Twohand

• Added a small house quarter to the bottom left corner of the Sharps.
• Added a source portal to the Stairwell Guildhouse in the Underdark.
• Fixed the Kenku sitting animation; they'll no longer become one with their seat.
• Spriggans gained their lore ability to grow very large at will, though they’ll only use this ability in combat.
  • Kudos to Ice for fixing my script and actually making this happen!

From Ice, Kenji

MONK PGCC Testing

• A bunch of changes have been pushed for monk to gather data. PGCC Only. Keep in mind that these changes are experimental and they may not reflect the final state of the class. This update will only be available in the PGCC for about a week.
• A bunch of changes from Zaphiel that precede me from the previous iterations of the new monks.
• Increased Skills/Level From 4 to 6
• Reduced Mastery feats required from 3/6/9/12 to 0/1/2/3. Level requirement still in place.
  -- Masteries are no longer automatically gained. Instead, you will have to select them manually using mastery points. A mastery point is gained every 3.5 monk levels and has to be assigned using the -discipline (-disc) command. IE: -disc body. Use -disc ? for more info.
• All the monk feats should now have an updated description. Bar the mastery feats. If any is missing or incorrect, please report it.
• Flurry of Blows has been added back to the level progression, at level 9.
• Uncanny Dodge has been added back to the level progression, at lvl 12.
• Fist feats are no longer selectable for monks. Instead, taking the Ki Strike feat will add fist-based feats to their progression.
  At level:
  1: Improved Unarmed Strike
  2: Deflect Arrows
  4: Brawler
  5: Stunning Fist
  9: Pugilist
  15: Quivering Palm
• Monk Fist damage progression
  Changed damage progression for medium and small monks from-to:
  Small:
  1d4>1d6
  1d6>1d8
  1d8>1d10
  1d10>1d12
  2d6>3d6

Medium
1d6>2d3
1d8>2d4
1d10>2d6
1d12>2d8
1d20>2d10

From Ice

Mehnks - PGCC only

• Fixed the UBAB/APR weirdness.
• To clarify exactly - this is what it SHOULD be doing:
  -- Monks should gain attacks as per normal non-UBAB scaling: One extra attack at 6/11/16 BAB
  -- Brawler grants an extra unarmed attack at 4/9 BAB, for a total of 6.
  -- FoB can be toggled to allow an extra attack, at a general -2 AB penalty, for a total of 7.
  -- Haste [repetitive screeching] for a total of 8 APR, yielding 4 main hand attacks and 4 offhand attacks.

-Fixed wrong requirements for mastery feats (was 1/2/3/4 - should have been 0/1/2/3). In theory.
-A number of descriptions have/will be fixed, but this (probably) won't be displayed during the PGCC testing.
-Empty body is incorrectly tagged as monk 18 in the description (it should be a general class feat that you can take as soon as you get your first monk bonus feat).

• Fixed?!?!?! Pugilist not applying 1.5 damage. Do not trust the character sheet, smack something and see what the combat log thinks.
• Fixed some issues with the Meridian feats failing to provide a bonus to the correct CL. Added some feedback readouts for better testing

Note: This may be causing some issues in the main server. If you notice your character missing the Brawler APR, don't worry, it'll be fixed in a couple of days.

From Twohand

Great Grotto of Brogendenstein

• In the Grotto's upper area, the fixture limit was increased from 210 to 360, and the buying price of the house quarters was significantly reduced.
• Added a new building to the Deep Gnome Village called the Amaratha Hollow, which includes three small, cheap quarters inside.

From Ice

Monks

• The monk PGCC testing has come to an end. Please leave any feedback you may have in the forum thread - specifically here viewtopic.php?f=91&t=41766&start
  A huge thanks for everybody involved that is pulling overtime to number crunch and test this class, and to Hoodoo that helped to set up the PGCC testing

From Starfish

###OCEAN FISHING CHANGES

• Ocean fishing has been updated to match the new ocean map
• Each ocean region now has it's own climate, matching one or more of the already existing ocean combinations
• Some regions have a combination of climates
• The shores of Arelith are considered shallow ocean and their climate is influenced by whichever region of the island is closest
• This is a big change, please report any bugs

Other changes:

• Reverted unannounced giant spider texture change, sorry about that!
• Reverted staff top 103 to be more blue once again
• Tweaked the rainbow staff top 104 model and shader, hopefully it works as intended now

From Twohand and Kuma

• Added three new deities in the Eldritch Patron category, representing evil fey powers that a player character worships, has bartered with for power, etc. For inspiration, these can range from Ragewalkers, Hoary Hunters, Verdant Princes, and other powerful fey, depending on player discretion. They serve the same function as the three generic Demon Lord entries in the deity list:

  • Wicked Fey Patron (Witchcraft): Magic, Nature.
  • Wicked Fey Patron (Bloodshed): War & Destruction, Nature.
  • Wicked Fey Patron (Trickery): Trickery & Deceit, Nature.

• Renamed the Unseelie Fey summoning stream to Dark Fey.

  • Fey can be cruel, evil, and villainous, but this does not necessarily mean they serve the Unseelie Court. Therefore, this summoning stream has been adjusted to give them more nuance.

• Replaced the Yeth Hound summon with a Jermlaine.

  • Yeth Hounds are Outsiders, not Fey.

From Twohand

Surface

• Visually tweaked the exterior areas of Red Dragon Isle to match the surrounding sea areas.
  • Light-sensitive races should no longer be cooked alive when visiting the dungeon.
• Connected the bedroom and shop signs with the main quarter sign in the top left quarter inside the Radiant Heart.

Underdark

• Blocked teleportation in the prisons inside the Greyport Port Authority and the Devil's Table District House to match the Sharps'.
• Fixed an issue with Aelfmaer in the Boreal Keep not selling some of the new spell scrolls.

Distant Shores

• Added new spells to the inventories of scroll vendors in Sibayad and Skal.
• Water, beer, spirit, and wine vendors in Sibayad and Skal should no longer sell bottles incompatible with crafting recipes.
  • Unless I missed someone, no NPCs on all five servers should sell incompatible drink bottles anymore. Let me know if I missed any.
• Connected the sign of the Sibayad Outskirts quarter with that of its interior quarter.
• To enter the Tower of the Unsealed, players now need to interact directly with the door instead of the Masked Guard.
  • Old restrictions still apply and have been expanded to the interior quarter signs as well.