2019-08-10 05:05:39

We are proud to announce our event for this month, the Feast of the Sacrifice!  This event will begin on Monday, August 12th and end on Friday, August 16th.  The event will feature special Eid themed quests, and it will be for players of all levels!

Important updates in July:
- Additional runes have been added to channel casting, ranging from decreasing casting lag to using shadows to do increased damage to angels (which requires shadow mastery).
- There have been improvements made to scribing scrolls, so you will be able to scribe a scroll using spellcomps that have an affinity for the spell, not just an affinity for its spellgroup (if that spell can be added to scrolls, of course).
- We also added two new spellcomp affinities: shadow and force fields.
- Crafting skills now all use a unified system for calculating movement point cost.
- Metal constructs made from metal with spell resistance or absorption stats will gain corresponding saving throws.
- The Cartographers' Guild is now active. Guild advancement is dependent on explorer points. Higher guild rank allows access to private guildhalls which stock caches of minor but useful supplies.  (We now have an answer when newbies ask us, "What are explorer points used for?")
- We've made a number of improvements to jobs to have them make more sense, such as keeping newbies within an appropriate level range and locking high level players out the newbie islands entirely.  This is in addition to the efficiency updates to stop job construction from lagging the game.
- Sea boarder encounters are now active.  This means that when you are sailing, strange sea creatures may board your vessel!  Some have friendly intentions, but most are hostile. Some encounters only happen during the day or the night, and certain ones may be limited to specific sectors of the world.

Upcoming coding and building updates:
- Sea border encounters can be built live in the game, so expect more to be steadily added throughout the coming months.
- As for guilds, look for an Assassins' Guild to be set up next.
- We have plans for a livery skill, based on tailoring, for making decorative items of clothing. This skill should be ready for October and is intended to help players design costumes for Halloween Havoc.
- Work continues on the new Nightmare Planes zones and other event areas in preparation for Halloween Havoc.
- We've have been working on making sense of all the Ralnoth quests and figuring out a good layout for the aforementioned quests.  The goal is to have guide players to appropriate level areas to complete quests.
- We plan on adding many more job types, including jobs for the various crafting skills.
- We plan on improving the spell metadata readouts, so that spell help pages will have a line at the bottom telling what player crafted items can have them, such as potions, tinctures or druidic spellstaves.

Later this month an interview will be conducted with the world builder Draak using the question-and-answer format used previously with Dentin and Morpheus.  More information about this and other updates can be found in our August Youtube audio presentation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sQDJHIOVf0

2019-08-12 16:33:49

just wondering exactly what you mean by keeping higher-level players off the lower-level islands altogether with jobs. Does that mean that jobs will never send us to the easier islands or does it mean that we will be physically incapable of traveling back to those islands even via portals and such?

2019-08-12 16:58:02

It's likely the former, since the latter would lock so many players out of newbie island quests if they missed them and omg I hate it when some muds do that.

2019-08-13 00:20:53

I certainly hope so. I don't want to gank new players or be a jerk and take everything. But when there is a new area on a lower-level place, I like to go there just for fun and do it before getting back to my own thing that I'm doing wherever I am. I try to do everything that is available on an island before going to the next (I'm only on Kordin but have out-leveled the island and have done fewer than half the zones on it as quests give you crazy xp if you stop and do them all)

Again, I don't want to crowd out new players but when new stuff is added to places like Sloe, Kordin and Archase, I'd like to visit them just to do the quests and stuff there once.

2019-08-13 12:24:49

Can pretty safely say that if they start level-locking the newbie islands so you can't get back there at all, ever, after x level, I will probably quit and not come back. Like the previous user, I really appreciate doing everything on an island, even if it means coming back at level 33 or 34 in order to pick up what I missed because new content wasn't available when I was on the islands. It's sort of unlikely that gear there is going to wow me, but I still want to do the quests and deeds and all that. And hell, a lot of places on the islands are instanced anyway, so I don't even see the harm. Just make some of the quest givers have a nokill flag so that they're always available, and call it good.

My suspicion, though, is that this isn't the plan at all, and we have nothing to worry about.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2019-08-13 20:07:42

Shadowfax made it so jobs from the mainland and up will never direct players back to any objects, mobs or places on the islands, that's all.  We have no plans to level lock areas.

A.K.A. Draak - talk to me about any Alter Aeon questions or concerns!

2019-08-13 20:57:11

See, that's kind of what I was thinking. And that makes a lot of sense, honestly. If it's only jobs, and only then done in a way that just makes it so you're not being asked for stuff on the first three islands, that's cool.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1