Game updates/2016-04-13

April 13 Update

Vendor Stalls

In the enclosed part of the keep in Serbule there are now many vendor stalls available.

- A new NPC can teach you the skill necessary to hire a vendor -- it's pretty cheap if you have Industry 25, and expensive if not.

- Each day that you hire the vendor, the cost goes up a bit. (It uses a 30-day window so after a month the cost goes back down.)

- You can only have one vendor stall active per account -- NOT per character, per account! So if you've paid for one with one character, you can't rent one with another character until the first one runs out.

- Actually, I'll skip the other details because the rest needs to be self-explanatory. I need to know what's confusing and what needs to be explained more. So please try it out and if you have problems -- either bugs, or just not understanding something -- let us know.

- This feature involved lots of new code and despite a lot of testing, the chance of bugs is relatively high. In case of bugs, don't panic, just report!

Player Library Ratings

Players with Calligraphy skill can now rate the books in the user book libraries. The book list is ordered based on their ratings and their age.

- If your Calligraphy skill is 25 or higher, you will be prompted to rate each book after you read it. You can choose not to, but you shouldn't, because these books need to be rated!

- Only the 100 top-rated books in each library are displayed. The other books aren't lost, however, and when the new GUI system is done we will hopefully have a way to view all books since the dawn of time (maybe via an archivist skill? Hmm)

- Right now the books are unrated, so they will be sorted by approximate age and then alphabetically by title. But that will change automatically as players rate them

- If your Calligraphy skill is the same as (or higher than) the author's Calligraphy skill at the time they wrote the book, you have two benefits. First, you can see the book's average rating. Second, your rating of the book will have much more weight than reviews by people with lower Calligraphy scores.

- You can only have one rating per book per account; re-rating a book will replace your old one

- You cannot rate your own book -- it will allow it but discard your rating

- While the book's rating isn't affected by time, its sorting on the bookshelf is. Every few weeks, the book will drop down the sorting list. However, if the book continues to receive positive reviews, that will override the effects of age and keep the book on the shelf

Graphics Engine Update

Upgraded from Unity 5.1 to Unity 5.3. There should be few differences (aside from bug fixes). Depending on your graphics card and settings you may get slight framerate increase or decrease -- hopefully increase! One known issue: the "player transformation" animation is missing. (The one where you shake your head and get down on all fours before becoming an animal.) Turns out Unity 5.3 crashes on that one animation. Sent in a bug report to Unity, so hopefully the animation will work again soon. In the meantime we're using a different animation there.

Other Changes

- More fixes to aggro. All known aggro bug reports are now closed... which doesn't mean there's no more bugs, it means if you find anything wrong, please report it! Or RE-report it if you did so in the past!

- Sand Seer's barter menu option was not available (this was fixed in a hotfix earlier)

- Amutasa has favors

- Ichin the Ice Master didn't actually like ice-magic items as he said he did

- The craftable item "Mesh Grate" had an invalid internal ID number and behaved erratically. All existing mesh grates will have disappeared (because their ID number changed) but new mesh grates should behave correctly. Note that "Thin Mesh Grate"s are unaffected, only "Mesh Grate"s changed

- Fixed an exploit bug that could let you craft equipment with only one gem consumed

- Group leaders can now kick group members even if they are in a different area

- If you changed config settings while in Serbule and you had maximal graphics level, the screen would go black and/or the game would crash.

- Desert Rhinos no longer respond to help-shouts from undead, and no longer shout for undead to help them

- Various healing animals have better scaling of their heals. Perhaps most notably, this enhances the healing of tamed Fey Panther Groupies when they're leveled to 50

- Hard-Boiled Egg is now a prepared food (for gifting purposes)

- Lakrea's quest to make cheese only counted cheese from firkins. Now it only counts cheese NOT from firkins. (And she mentions not to use a firkin.)

- Nishika no longer trains Cat Stew Cup -- it is supposed to be learned from a hang-out with her

- The "Bury Canines" quest no longer advances when you bury non-canines

- Azalak no longer sells the higher-tier versions of drugs

- The recipe for Enhanced Cranium Powder is less expensive (causing the powder itself to be less valuable as well, but not a worse gift for those with a predilection)

- Kelim in Amulna has a new way for high-level gardeners to make fertilizer

- If you had treasure that gave Fast Talk a heal, that heal was incorrectly enhanced by any existing Pep Talk mods

- The negative side-effect of Thunderclap Potions ("grounded") didn't actually work, so there was no down side

- Braigon did not give out the barrels etc. that he claimed he was giving you as a reward for higher favor levels

- Animal Handling pets were not correctly loading their stats from the stables, which meant that they were always fully healed when summoned (unless they were dead)

- Lemons have their own icon

- Raw Chicken is now counted as a raw meat. (This fixes various issues such as butchering chickens not incrementing Pennoc's butcher quest.)

- The work order for broccoli actually required beets, not broccoli

- Fixed login code to keep you from getting stuck in the roof of low-ceilinged buildings

- Removed storage chest from cave in South Serbule (it is actually on Anagoge Island)

- Shambling Corpses - fixed issues with negative-regeneration not working: shambling corpses did not bleed out

- Shambling Corpses - fixed errors with the scaling of the shambling corpses' inherent self-blood-loss. The lowest-level shambling corpse takes about 80 seconds to bleed to death, but the highest-level shambling corpse took about 15 minutes to bleed out. (That's before it was bugged and they didn't bleed at all.) The intention is for all levels of shambling corpse to quickly bleed to death if not continuously healed. So now the highest-level shambling corpse will bleed out in about 110 seconds if not healed.

- Added fireplace to the Tapestry Inn in South Serbule

- Added cooking fire to Nishika's restaurant in Rahu

- Fixed inaccurate labels on some abilities (e.g. Claw Barrage said it did DoT damage for some reason, but does not do DoT damage)

- The storyline quest "Unlocking the Crystal Lattice" now gives 500 XP to your active combat skills, rather than giving you 500 Fire Magic XP

- Fixed geometry issues in Kur (some rocks that could be walked through, some places you could get stuck, etc.)

We've got a lot more in the works! Coming soon: the last few combat skills will be revised and have their level cap raised. When all the existing skills go to 60, we can begin the process of adding level 70 and 80 content.

PS - Remember, there's not a lot of players online. So if you encounter a bug and think "somebody already reported this bug", you're probably wrong. Every week we receive reports of bugs that are VERY GLARING, which a hundred or more players must have noticed, but only one person bothered to report. Some serious bugs stay unreported for months, and, of course, we can't even START fixing them until they're reported. If a bug is pissing you off, please report it. This is an indie alpha, so there are lots of bugs, and there are no magic bug-reporting fairies. Well, actually, YOU are the magic bug reporting fairies.

To the people who have sent in bugs and feedback, thank you!

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