Discord
Changelog
-Welcome to Thay, land of the Walking Dead! This HUGE update focuses heavily on the undead, starting with the long awaited ability for a PC to become a lich. This brand new feature comprises over 1000 new lines of code and hundreds of hours of development work and testing by the staff. See the Lichdom thread for complete details
-To become one of the Walking Dead, a character may potentially become a lich *or a vampire now* by starting a new quest from an existing questgiver, if you can find him. PCs as low as level 7 may begin the quest, however note the following points
1. The theme of this entire quest is all about sacrifice and a taste of the danger you'll experience as an undead. Not the least of which ends with the sacrifice of your PCs 'life' if successful. This is not a decision to be taken lightly as your PC will be asked to demonstrate just how serious he is by giving up quite a bit before even getting the opportunity to lay down his life as the ultimate sacrifice
2. If you start this quest and your PC is not willing to do the first thing the questgiver asks, or you need to take another quest to get what he wants, you may decline the quest with no notoriety loss
3. Part of the overall quest is a dangerous trial in which your PC cannot escape (no portal stones!). If he dies during this trial, while he may be able to return to Thay at a safe location, he cannot go back to the location of its death and/or retrieve its items. You need to be very certain you are willing to risk this before opening the doors (literally) that take you to this extremely dangerous location, since DMs will not intervene to return people to their stuff if they die there!
4. Those who do not wish to become undead, or cannot because they already have another special PC, can still brave the initial part of this undead trial and receive a powerful and unique item, with properties never before seen in the Thay PW, for surviving it
5. Important: PCs who are aspiring to become liches must have at least half their levels in a spellcasting class to take the path in this quest to become a lich. So for those who don't pick up caster levels until later in your career, you'll want to wait to open the doors on this quest
6. Important: PCs much higher than level 8 *cannot* take the path to become vampires through this quest. This was a game balance decision so we don't all of a sudden get a bunch of high-level vampires who did not have to survive the very real dangers of 'growing up' a vampire in Thay
7. Important: PCs who do manage to become vampires through this quest are not free vampires. They are, by a vampiric bond that cannot be overcome, subservient to a powerful NPC elder vampire and part of his coven. Therefore, those who become vampires through this quest must obey their coven's laws and any of their master's commands until either freed, or the master is destroyed (good luck with that!)
-The Walking Dead edition of Thay would not be complete without zombies, of course! Therefore, the Long Portage is now available by ship from Eltabbar. There you'll find the Guild of Portagers, who long ago ran afoul of the Tam family, and now serve as zombie porters shambling up and down the Long Portage
1. While travel beyond the Long Portage is currently restricted, skilled adventurers sometimes test themselves in the ancient spirit and monster-infested Rashemi Halls of the Forsaken
2. A shrine dedicated to the god of the dead is there offering healing services but, more importantly, helping convert new corpses to the zombie 'guild'
3. The Surthay legion has barracks here, and the legion can be joined by speaking to the Master sergeant within
4. Rumor has it a new questgiver may occasionally be found in the vicinity of the Long Portage as well
-Stones of Recall have changed to Portal Stones so the pretty 'Manipulate Portal Stone' item property is used to set and activate the stones. As a result, Stones of Recall are being deprecated and any you may possess are being automatically converted to Portal Stones when you login with a PC who carries them. Please note that this auto-conversion is only going to last for another month before I remove the auto-convert code to ensure our scripts remain clean. Make sure you login with all your PCs that have old Stones of Recall and pick up old Stones of Recall you have in storage within the next real-time month, or they will no longer work!
-Two more planes of existence can be accessed through Dillomat's Tower - Arvandor and the Astral Plane
-There is a new bardic questgiver who moves around the outskirts of Thay and can only be found in certain locations on certain days. The reward he gives will be well worth the effort to find him in a new location or wait for him to return to an old one
-The Knock spell is no longer invincible over all locks. Now, if a lock DC is over a certain threshold, the Knock spell will do a d100 roll vs. the lock DC and, if the roll is lower than the DC, the spell will not be able to open it - at least for several in-game days. However, no matter how complex a lock, there is always at least a 10% chance the Knock spell can open it. The primary intention of this change is to make player houses much more secure (but not impregnable) if investments have been made to door locks, but also to increase the value of becoming a truly skilled rogue
-When bashing a door for a time within a house/town/city/castle, there is an ever-increasing chance the noise you make alerts someone who calls guards on you. Door hardness plays a big part in this because the hardness will absorb more of the damage and cause you to take a longer time to bash it open
-If a PC respawns on a caravan, ship, or boat journey they will actually be saved by the NPC caravan/ship members and awake at their destination. However, they lose XP from the trauma of nearly dying, and notoriety as words spreads that others had to save them from certain death
-The Appraise skill now plays an important part when determining the maximum purchase price a merchant will give for an item. As a reminder, store inventories and gold reset after certain amount of time if an area is empty of PCs. It is to your benefit to seek out merchants who are off the beaten path as they'll likely be able to buy more items from you more often than those in Tyraturos, for example
-Static questgivers are no longer solely level dependent. Other unseen factors now go into their decision to when they will ask someone to take on their quest
-The price of several expensive/exotic pieces of furniture has been considerably reduced at the stores - in some cases by more than 10000 gold
-Personal space and pathfinding has been disabled for PCs not engaged in combat with hostiles, and non-hostile NPCs. This means you can 'walk through' other PCs or NPCs. While this make lessen a bit of the realism, ultimately it should make for a much easier time getting around or through tight spaces when you are not in combat
-After receiving a certain amount of XP from slaving, there is now a cooldown period (similar to player awarded XP and combat dummies) before more will be awarded. Gold will still be paid for new slaves regardless of the cooldown period, however due to an overadundance of new slaves recently brought to market, the laws of supply and demand may dicate lower batch prices...at least for now
-For game balance decisions, the permanent Freedom item property is being automatically replaced with the Cast Spell: Freedom 2 uses/day property on all items in-game that possess it. Perma-Freedom was originally only placed on magic items due to a design oversight which was fixed some time ago only after a handful of these items were created by the random treasure system
-The following bugs have been fixed:
1. Issue with subraces earned by notoriety not being persistently set is resolved. If you haven't recently, go back and check your subrace availability with your longest-term PC to ensure the subraces available to you are permanently stored in the database
2. Portal Stones can be used to leave caravans and ships, but they cannot be set to a caravan or ship
3. Transferring ownership of your house to another through the use of your building key will work as expected again
4. A looping check has been put in place to ensure that tiefling, drow, lycan, lich, and vampire PCs will always equip their creature properties or bite/claw
5. Medium chairs placed in player houses will have PCs sitting on them facing the correct direction
6. New characters whose players have a slow login to the server should no longer temporarily 'forget' what languages they selected on their second login
7. Weather patterns have been fixed so that temperatures in Thay will be more temperate (warm) in most regions. Snow should be virtually unheard of now except in the hills, mountains, or far northern reaches of Thay
8. Rank 1 members (initiates) of a faction can be successfully marked for promotion by a DM or ranking member of their faction
9. PCs with a monster appearance, such as transformed lycans, vampires in mist form, or people polymorphed or disguised to monster appearances will not have any NPCs talk to them. This includes being unable to speak to caravan masters, ship deckhands, merchants, and virtually all other NPCs
10. Divine spellcasting PCs who have fallen from grace will be able to use items that cast divine spells (potions, staves, etc)
11. Tents, bedrolls, and campfires can no longer be setup in 'civilized' areas like towns and cities.
12. The player merchant system has been revised to allow PCs and/or players with long names to use them. This has resulted in the loss of any existing player merchants if you did not fire them prior to this update. For players who have fired their existing merchants, it is now safe to rehire/replace them
-To become one of the Walking Dead, a character may potentially become a lich *or a vampire now* by starting a new quest from an existing questgiver, if you can find him. PCs as low as level 7 may begin the quest, however note the following points
1. The theme of this entire quest is all about sacrifice and a taste of the danger you'll experience as an undead. Not the least of which ends with the sacrifice of your PCs 'life' if successful. This is not a decision to be taken lightly as your PC will be asked to demonstrate just how serious he is by giving up quite a bit before even getting the opportunity to lay down his life as the ultimate sacrifice
2. If you start this quest and your PC is not willing to do the first thing the questgiver asks, or you need to take another quest to get what he wants, you may decline the quest with no notoriety loss
3. Part of the overall quest is a dangerous trial in which your PC cannot escape (no portal stones!). If he dies during this trial, while he may be able to return to Thay at a safe location, he cannot go back to the location of its death and/or retrieve its items. You need to be very certain you are willing to risk this before opening the doors (literally) that take you to this extremely dangerous location, since DMs will not intervene to return people to their stuff if they die there!
4. Those who do not wish to become undead, or cannot because they already have another special PC, can still brave the initial part of this undead trial and receive a powerful and unique item, with properties never before seen in the Thay PW, for surviving it
5. Important: PCs who are aspiring to become liches must have at least half their levels in a spellcasting class to take the path in this quest to become a lich. So for those who don't pick up caster levels until later in your career, you'll want to wait to open the doors on this quest
6. Important: PCs much higher than level 8 *cannot* take the path to become vampires through this quest. This was a game balance decision so we don't all of a sudden get a bunch of high-level vampires who did not have to survive the very real dangers of 'growing up' a vampire in Thay
7. Important: PCs who do manage to become vampires through this quest are not free vampires. They are, by a vampiric bond that cannot be overcome, subservient to a powerful NPC elder vampire and part of his coven. Therefore, those who become vampires through this quest must obey their coven's laws and any of their master's commands until either freed, or the master is destroyed (good luck with that!)
-The Walking Dead edition of Thay would not be complete without zombies, of course! Therefore, the Long Portage is now available by ship from Eltabbar. There you'll find the Guild of Portagers, who long ago ran afoul of the Tam family, and now serve as zombie porters shambling up and down the Long Portage
1. While travel beyond the Long Portage is currently restricted, skilled adventurers sometimes test themselves in the ancient spirit and monster-infested Rashemi Halls of the Forsaken
2. A shrine dedicated to the god of the dead is there offering healing services but, more importantly, helping convert new corpses to the zombie 'guild'
3. The Surthay legion has barracks here, and the legion can be joined by speaking to the Master sergeant within
4. Rumor has it a new questgiver may occasionally be found in the vicinity of the Long Portage as well
-Stones of Recall have changed to Portal Stones so the pretty 'Manipulate Portal Stone' item property is used to set and activate the stones. As a result, Stones of Recall are being deprecated and any you may possess are being automatically converted to Portal Stones when you login with a PC who carries them. Please note that this auto-conversion is only going to last for another month before I remove the auto-convert code to ensure our scripts remain clean. Make sure you login with all your PCs that have old Stones of Recall and pick up old Stones of Recall you have in storage within the next real-time month, or they will no longer work!
-Two more planes of existence can be accessed through Dillomat's Tower - Arvandor and the Astral Plane
-There is a new bardic questgiver who moves around the outskirts of Thay and can only be found in certain locations on certain days. The reward he gives will be well worth the effort to find him in a new location or wait for him to return to an old one
-The Knock spell is no longer invincible over all locks. Now, if a lock DC is over a certain threshold, the Knock spell will do a d100 roll vs. the lock DC and, if the roll is lower than the DC, the spell will not be able to open it - at least for several in-game days. However, no matter how complex a lock, there is always at least a 10% chance the Knock spell can open it. The primary intention of this change is to make player houses much more secure (but not impregnable) if investments have been made to door locks, but also to increase the value of becoming a truly skilled rogue
-When bashing a door for a time within a house/town/city/castle, there is an ever-increasing chance the noise you make alerts someone who calls guards on you. Door hardness plays a big part in this because the hardness will absorb more of the damage and cause you to take a longer time to bash it open
-If a PC respawns on a caravan, ship, or boat journey they will actually be saved by the NPC caravan/ship members and awake at their destination. However, they lose XP from the trauma of nearly dying, and notoriety as words spreads that others had to save them from certain death
-The Appraise skill now plays an important part when determining the maximum purchase price a merchant will give for an item. As a reminder, store inventories and gold reset after certain amount of time if an area is empty of PCs. It is to your benefit to seek out merchants who are off the beaten path as they'll likely be able to buy more items from you more often than those in Tyraturos, for example
-Static questgivers are no longer solely level dependent. Other unseen factors now go into their decision to when they will ask someone to take on their quest
-The price of several expensive/exotic pieces of furniture has been considerably reduced at the stores - in some cases by more than 10000 gold
-Personal space and pathfinding has been disabled for PCs not engaged in combat with hostiles, and non-hostile NPCs. This means you can 'walk through' other PCs or NPCs. While this make lessen a bit of the realism, ultimately it should make for a much easier time getting around or through tight spaces when you are not in combat
-After receiving a certain amount of XP from slaving, there is now a cooldown period (similar to player awarded XP and combat dummies) before more will be awarded. Gold will still be paid for new slaves regardless of the cooldown period, however due to an overadundance of new slaves recently brought to market, the laws of supply and demand may dicate lower batch prices...at least for now
-For game balance decisions, the permanent Freedom item property is being automatically replaced with the Cast Spell: Freedom 2 uses/day property on all items in-game that possess it. Perma-Freedom was originally only placed on magic items due to a design oversight which was fixed some time ago only after a handful of these items were created by the random treasure system
-The following bugs have been fixed:
1. Issue with subraces earned by notoriety not being persistently set is resolved. If you haven't recently, go back and check your subrace availability with your longest-term PC to ensure the subraces available to you are permanently stored in the database
2. Portal Stones can be used to leave caravans and ships, but they cannot be set to a caravan or ship
3. Transferring ownership of your house to another through the use of your building key will work as expected again
4. A looping check has been put in place to ensure that tiefling, drow, lycan, lich, and vampire PCs will always equip their creature properties or bite/claw
5. Medium chairs placed in player houses will have PCs sitting on them facing the correct direction
6. New characters whose players have a slow login to the server should no longer temporarily 'forget' what languages they selected on their second login
7. Weather patterns have been fixed so that temperatures in Thay will be more temperate (warm) in most regions. Snow should be virtually unheard of now except in the hills, mountains, or far northern reaches of Thay
8. Rank 1 members (initiates) of a faction can be successfully marked for promotion by a DM or ranking member of their faction
9. PCs with a monster appearance, such as transformed lycans, vampires in mist form, or people polymorphed or disguised to monster appearances will not have any NPCs talk to them. This includes being unable to speak to caravan masters, ship deckhands, merchants, and virtually all other NPCs
10. Divine spellcasting PCs who have fallen from grace will be able to use items that cast divine spells (potions, staves, etc)
11. Tents, bedrolls, and campfires can no longer be setup in 'civilized' areas like towns and cities.
12. The player merchant system has been revised to allow PCs and/or players with long names to use them. This has resulted in the loss of any existing player merchants if you did not fire them prior to this update. For players who have fired their existing merchants, it is now safe to rehire/replace them