Patch Notes for Build 110
February 29, 2008
Here are the patch notes for Build 110, otherwise known as The Heave:
New Quests
51 new quests have been added to the Embercore. Enjoy!
A special event has been added to Townston. Help Shivery the Incorrigible Snowman get his dungeon back. This special event ends in a couple of weeks, so hurry up and do it!
New Dungeon
A new dungeon named “Balzack’s Burrow” has been added to the game. You will find this dungeon off of Shadow’s Embrace. It is designed for levels 55 and up. This dungeon has a bunch of new creatures and a sweet new boss fight. Can you show Balzack that you’re the master of his domain?
New Skills
We’ve added a bunch of internal support for summoning skills. This build has the first pass of summoning skills for the game! We will continue to roll out new summoning skills in future builds.
- Build a Snowman: This level 30 ice-based active skill summons a melee snowman named Chill Bill to fight for you. Rank this skill up to increase the level of Chill Bill. You can also heal him by hitting him with ice projectile spells.
- On the Rocks: Activate this skill when Chill Bill is nearby to instantly freeze him in a solid block of ice. The air surrounding the ice cube is so cold that it causes all enemies within 6 meters to move and attack more slowly while they remain within that proximity. Their Attack Speed and Movement Speed are slowed by an appropriate amount. Rank this skill up to increase the strength of the slowing effects.
- Snow Globe: With all the Dungeon Warming going on these days, it's best to give Chill Bill a fighting chance. If Chill Bill is not too far away, your snow globe can be activated to provide a sudden Max Health increase of 100% that will last for 60 seconds. Be sure to pump him up with your Ice Bolts once you have activated this skill! Melee attackers also get slowed when hitting Chill Bill while under the effects of this skill. Rank this skill up to further increase his health bonus.
- Nippy Twigs: Activate this skill when Chill Bill is nearby to boost his feeble little twig hands with Ice Magic! Every time he strikes an enemy his attacks will dish out additional ice damage that is roughly 350% more powerful than his normal attack damage for 60 seconds! But wait, there's more! Each successful frigid hit also slows the target's Movement Speed and Attack Speed by 10% for 2 seconds and has a chance to knock the opponent down.
Skill Changes
Many skills have received an audio pass. This means more unique sound effects have been assigned to more skills.
- Righteous Stomp: Stomp now knocks your enemies down as well as knocking them back. The cooldown for this skill has been increased by 5 seconds to compensate. The effective radius has been reduced a bit as well.
PvP Changes
We’ve made a few changes to the PvP experience for this build:
- PvE Allowed on the PvP World: You can now access all of the PvE content while on a PvP world.
- Pwnston Moved: To access Pwnston, look for the teleporter near the graveyard in Townston. You cannot activate this teleporter on a PvE world.
- Matchmaking Adjusted: The matchmaking system has been adjusted to help make matching a bit fairer. The old maximum attribute total system has been re-enabled. The tolerance for matches has been increased to 500%. This means that it may a take a little longer to find a match, but when matched you’ll have a better battle. It also means that level 1s won’t be matched against level 20s.
New Items
- We’ve added two-handed rifles to the game. Rangers rejoice!
- We’ve added two new fighter armor sets to the game.
- Class-specific King’s Coin vendors have had ring and amulet generators added to them. No more pulling the lever 50 times in the hopes of getting a ring or amulet for your class.
- Another pass has been made on the mythic item generators – tons of new mythics have been added. Ice mage gear, anyone?
- We've added our first marketing-oriented item to the game. Be on the lookout for our new "Ten Ton Hammer". This item is a great two handed weapon that also has a web link to www.tentonhammer.com on it.
Permanent Waypoints
A new permanent waypoint system has been added to the game. Throughout your travels you will come across “Waypoint Compass” objects. Use these like you would a “Waypoint Scroll” to easily recall yourself to any dungeon level. The beautiful thing about this is that you can save your favorite level even if you’ve traveled through other zone portals. Only one zone compass can be active at a time. Activating another one will overwrite the last one you used. Compasses only remember the level you were on, not the exact layout or monsters killed.
UI Improvements
A few UI improvements have been made this build:
- Link Opening Gives Better Feedback: When clicking on a link that would take you out of the game, a window pops up telling you so. The game also minimizes more quickly if your computer is slow to process the link request.
- New Obelisk Teleport Interface: The UI for the Obelisk teleport interface has been upgraded. Each Obelisk that you can teleport to is now sorted in the order they appear in the dungeon, not the order you got them in. Also, we’ve separated the three possible saved places to allow you to easily access them: Active Waypoint Scroll, Recent Zone Portal and Active Waypoint Compass.
- In-game Banner Ad Adjustments: The in-game banner ad now adjusts its size based on your screen resolution. At higher resolutions, the banner ad takes up a smaller percentage of your screen. The in-game banner ad also now rotates out every 30 seconds instead of every 15 seconds.
Bug Fixes
- A rare server crash bug related to going “/busy” has been fixed.
- A rare client crash related to shooting projectiles off of a map has been fixed.
- A sync error related to using Monster Bait and resistances has been fixed.
- Animation blending has been turned off when using ranged weapons. This stops the unsightly shooting at the ground visual bugs that were in the game previously.
- The code that aims for projectile skills and weapons has been adjusted to more accurately reflect your aiming intention.
- Using SHIFT click to fire a weapon or skill at a location will always target that location, regardless of if a friend or monster is under your cursor.
- We’ve added an upgrade to your DirectX installation as part of this build. This helps set the stage for future graphics engine enhancements that are taking place now.
- Your preferences for group invite mode and difficulty are now stored on your character – not locally on the client.
- PvP rebalancing no longer breaks horribly for characters in their high 90s.
- Overhead quest indicators now properly update when an NPC dies.
- Skill tooltips no longer clip improperly when looking at a skill trainer window.
- Our server connection code has been reworked to play nicely with firewalls like Zone Alarm. If a firewall tries to block the game when connecting to the server, our game will automatically minimize to give you access to the “Allow / Deny” access window.
- Tab names in various UI screens will now draw properly if you go between windowed and full screen modes.
- You will no longer get stuck moving forward if you click on a banner ad while moving.
- Tabbing through the various controls on the login screen now works properly.
- A terrible issue with full-screen color cursor support on older graphics cards has been resolved.
- A bug that caused the game to minimize randomly has been fixed.
- When the game is not your topmost window, it now slows down processing to free up CPU resources for other tasks.
- Idle animations have been fixed for several NPCs in the game.
- Radial sound nodes have been fixed. This means that torches and obelisks will play their sounds again.