Server Downtime and Patch Notes 5/21 (Build 75)

The servers are being reset currently to apply Build 75. The expected downtime is two hours.

Here are the patch notes:

New Features

• A new package system has been implemented. This system takes all of the 16,000 or so files that make up the game and put them into a custom high-speed compressed database. The upside is that the game starts in a few seconds now, instead of 2 minutes. The downside is that the patch for build 75 is approximately 400MB.
• Our new classless RPG system has been implemented with this build. This means that you aren’t stuck as a mage, fighter or ranger. Indeed, you can now mix and match your skills more easily to build the class that you want. Specifically:
  • All traits have been removed from the game and new passive skills have been added in their place. All characters, both existing and new will have passive skills placed in their skill book as well as in slots 7 and 8 of their skill tray, based on their chosen class. The new passives are called: Gym Freak, Bookworm, Couch Potato, Average BMI, Mental Prowess, Trigger Happy and Way of the Roo. These passives are available for purchase at the skill trainers in Townston.
  • A new title system has been implemented! Your character’s title is no longer limited to “Mage”, “Fighter” or “Ranger”. Indeed, your character’s title is now a function of your level, attributes and skill selection. There are literally hundreds of possible titles to discover!
  • A new re-spec system has been added to the game. This system will allow you to re-spend your attribute points for a nominal amount of gold. The gold cost for this feature increases with your character’s level. Once activated, a 15 minute timer is started. While the timer is active, you are allowed to add and remove points as you see fit on the character sheet. Hold down SHIFT while spending attribute points to add or remove up to 5 points at a time.
  • We have added three new skill slots to the skill bar. Feel free to keep your new passive skills on the bar, or experiment with more active skills!
  • The character sheet has received an overhaul. It now shows more detailed statistics about your attributes as well as handling the new re-spec system.
• We’ve added links to account creation to the login screen. Simply click the “New Account” button to be taken to our account creation website.
• A new referral link has been added to the main screen for members. Click this link to begin the process of referring a friend to Dungeon Runners!
• The default status for groups is now “closed” instead of “open”. Right-click your name and choose “Open Group” to allow folks to join you uninvited. This should help with confusion encountered by many players when folks join their group unannounced when using the “Find Group” feature.
• The number of players you can have on your friends list has been increased to 100.
• The number of players you can have on your ignore list has been increased to 5,000.

Balance Changes

• The AI has been given an optimization pass which changes the monster behavior slightly. You will notice that monsters may hesitate a bit when you are fighting them. This improves your ability to kite monsters if the need arises. It also reduces the server CPU load by quite a bit.
• The newbie experience has been given an overhaul for difficulty. All new players start with a stack of 20 special soul-bound healing potions that may not be sold. Also, Dew Valley Forest has been extended by one level and all of its encounters have had their difficulty drastically reduced. Algernon’s minimum level has been set to 3 and a new quest exists at the entrance to Algernon that encourages low level players to return to Dew Valley.
• Attack rating and defense rating numbers have been adjusted. The defense rating of monsters has been increased to give more meaning to attack rating of players. The amount of defense rating received from items has been increased. Magical bonuses for defense and attack rating have been adjusted across the board.
• Many monsters have received new skills.
• Whisker Shamans have increased movement speed.

World Changes

• Agrock has been fired and his dungeon has been shut down. All quests related to Agrock’s Gauntlet have been canceled and replaced with a special “Return to X to get a King’s Coin”. Algor’s Terror-dome has been moved into the place of Agrock’s Gauntlet.
• A new dungeon called “Frump’s Misfortune” is available… including an all-new boss fight!
• Many dungeon obelisks have been moved into a shared space between the surrounding dungeons. These shared spaces are generally placed at the midpoint of their related dungeons. This will help reduce the number of levels that you must travel to get to any specific level in a dungeon. In some cases, quest return locations have been moved into these shared spaces to make finding them much easier. We will continue to move quest return locations into these shared spaces in the future.

General Changes

• Many creatures have received new artwork variations and beautification.
• Three new armor sets have been added to the game.

Bug Fixes

• Bugs with monster de-spawn and re-spawn should be resolved. This fixes both the annoying “Where’s the Boss” and “I can farm Heroes” bugs.
• An issue with the cache server has been resolved. This bug caused some characters to get locked out of the game occasionally.
• A crash bug related to using Monster Bait has been fixed.
• Some rendering artifacts that occurred when using XRay vision have been resolved.
• The skill tray hotkey display no longer displays hotkey information for the left and right mouse button mappings. Also, when you remap the hotkey for a skill, it reflects properly in the tooltip for that skill.