Last month we had the Feast of the Sacrifice event, which went off without a hitch!  The event was even extended a couple of days as per popular demand.  While we don't have an event planned for September, next month will see our biggest event of the year, Halloween Havoc.  Details about this upcoming event will be provided in our next monthly update!

In August, we added a lot of code!  General changes include:
- Additional prompt tags (%%php, %%pmn and %%pmv) for tracking the  percentage of one's own hit points, mana and movement, respectively.
- We got the Smiths' Guild up and running.  You can join at forges in most major settlements.  Progression is dependent on how many mastercraft items you forge.  The higher rank you have in the Smiths' Guild, the greater discount you get when forging.  Joining requires forging just one mastercraft item and nets you a 5% discount!
- A new condensed format has been devised for identifying weapons.  This should make finding the right weapon for fighting particular enemies easier.  Also, obviously terrible weapons will have an ugly JUNK flag show up on identify.
- The 'mystic armament' spell now works on flexible weapons of all types.  Whip it good!
- You can now target a worn body slot with identify. For example, if you want to id the equipment on your feet, you can type 'id feet'

Crafting improvements:
- Help pages for spells now include an autogenerated line of what consumable items they can be added to, such as brewed potions, tinctures, scribed scrolls and spellstaffs.
- Leathercrafted armor will have lower armor class (AC), but a greater chance of adding large amounts of hitpoints and movement.
- Added forged studs and spikes on leathercrafted armor now more heavily favor adding damroll, hitroll and attacks to leathercrafted equipment over other stats.  The type of metal used is also more important.
- Skinning and butchering should work on much smaller animals now.  Don't expect to get much, though.

Forging improvements:
- Forging mastercrafts should be easier with lower-level characters and less dependent on luck now.
- Weapon dierolls have been re-calibrated to land higher and mastercrafted forged armor should gain larger armor class bonuses.
- The time for smelting ores has been halved.
- All forging costs, including profession point costs for hone weapon, balance weapon, customize weapon and reinforce armor, have been lowered, and this is on top of the discount from the Smiths' Guild.
- The speed differences between forged weapons with grips vs. ones with handles (one-handed) and ones with hafts vs. ones with poles (two-handed) should be more pronounced.

Job updates:
- The job and quest commands are now more intuitive and mirror one another better so that it's easier to learn and use both.  As part of this, some new options were added to the job command.
- Retrieval jobs will favor targets from the same sector, and will pay more if they choose an item from a different sector than the jobgiver.
- Jobs will favor targets from solo areas, and even when they choose from a group area, they will choose targets from lower level areas that the player should be able to handle alone.
- Numerous fixes to specific jobs types, such keeping a pilgrimage target within a level range of the player, having the gold required from almoner jobs be more fair and broadening the range of items acceptable for jeweler and seeker jobs.
- Jobs will save and load across reboots now!

In September, expect even more updates for crafting and jobs!  Also, the Assassins' Guild in the works!
For more information, please listen to our August update on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBlk6xtCzFA