2009 Patch Notes

Archived patch notes from 2009.

Patch Notes - 12/15/2009

Guestlock

The Guestlock security feature has been implemented! If you let other people play your characters, you'll probably want to see this thread for details. The relevant commands can also be found under /cm help normal. This is probably also a good time to say that guestlocking a character that doesn't belong to you is grounds for a banning, so exploiting the freshness of guestlocking to play a prank on someone is not a good idea. Other than that, bask in the theft security!

Other things of note:

• Fixed Permanent Illusions.
• Fixed a bug with the Reflect mob ability that allowed it to block spells even when did not trigger.
• Fixed a minor bug that was causing pets above level 44 not to set their delay properly; such pets should now have slightly more melee power as a result.
• Removed Haste penalties from Charmed pets. We hope to make a habit of making overpowered charm mobs immune rather than nerfing charm altogether in the future.
• Improved Ranger track at level 65.

- Zaela

Patch Notes - 12/11/2009

It Comes...

On February 7th the boats shall open and Kaezul will know the wrath of Dalaya - 18 zones, hundreds of quests, thousands of monsters and a whole new continent to explore. The first installation of Ikisith is coming and will prove to be the greatest challenge Dalaya has known.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 12/09/2009

The Quest for High Trader Commences!

Hey Silvercrown folk. Tired of your Trader pips? Well openings are available to become a High Trader if you're industrious enough...

- Cyzaine

Patch Notes - 12/07/2009

Control Enhancement

Attention raid-level Shamans and Enchanters and maybe some other people! The Charm Enhancement focus effect has been expanded and changed to Control Enhancement.

In addition to granting +1 tick to charm spell duration per rank, it now also adds 10% to mez duration and +2 to slow spell percentages (versus +5 from Swarm Mastery) per rank. To account for increased usefulness, Control Enhancement has been added to a few select items throughout the raid tiers.

Don't worry, high-end shamans! Your mask hasn't suddenly become completely redundant. In fact, you may find someone interested in your mask in a shamanly place...

In other news, procs on wrist items should no longer trigger from improper spells.

- Zaela

Patch Notes - 11/18/2009

A few minor updates

Just a nice heads up on the patches of the last couple days. Lots of backend stuff going in but two things of note

• Wiz's simple T-map fix is now live! https://forum.shardsofdalaya.com/showthread.php?t=19189
• The first of hopefully many tradeskill updates, headed up by our very busy GM-Tao, the hack of all tradeskills.

The latter has many 'minor' changes to Jewel Crafting, including

• 1) Minor grammar changes to Cat's Eye Jewelry
• 2) Adjusted trivials, specifically fixing the star ruby, regular ruby trivials
• 3) 96 new necklaces (48 enchanted, 48 non-enchanted) recipes, filling in all the holes where you used to be able to use a gem to make a ring, but not a necklace.

Jewel Crafting is the first of what should be many tradeskill adjustments. If you see GM-Tao thank him for the ludicrous amount of work it took to make this happen!

- Cyzaine

Patch Notes - 11/03/2009

Site Redesign

We have just finished a minor redesign of our website. Enjoy the new functionality and prettier package! Thanks go to our very own GM-Rari and Dev-Pugsley for this one.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 10/30/2009

Hacker Ban Fest '09

About six months ago we found an exploit in one of the biggest cheating programs used on our server. We have been using this exploit for these past six months slowly detecting the cheaters who regularly play on SoD. Last Tuesday we went through the entire list of confirmed cases and banned their mains or any characters they played as their main for more than a few months. The evidence used is extremely specific and enough redundancy was used in each case for a beyond a reasonable doubt conclusion that the cheating program was used.

Now although we are almost completely sure that each and every one of those IPs caught were indeed running the cheating program (and the appeals process has only confirmed this so far) there may be some instances of somebody playing someone elses character and getting them banned (when IP addresses were muddy.) Because of this we are taking appeals *even though you are supposed to be responsible for your character* if this is the case with you. Keep in mind that there are many appeals pending and it may take some time to get to you - thats basically what you get for loaning your toon out to a cheater.

If you feel like you were banned wrongly for other reasons we are also accepting appeals. I will be happy to show you what evidence we have against you but understand that the chances of a successful appeal without an extremely good reason is low.

We had a lotto in celebration of the purge - if you were a winner be sure to check the forums for your reward! Also the entire server is on a 20% exp bonus for the next week. Enjoy!

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 10/20/2009

Knights and the phallic symbols they hold dear.

In a fairly major itemization shift, knight-only 1-handed weapons have had their damage/delay ratios reduced to be on par with those of other 1-handed weapons throughout the game. This should have several effects:

• Creating a trade-off for knights to benefit from the enormous defensive bonuses of using a shield.
• Giving knights a reason to actually consider using 2-handed weapons in some situations, rather than doing effectively 2-handed- or dual wield-equivalent dps while benefiting from said enormous bonus of shields.
• Giving knights more weapon options. Knight-only 1-handed weapons will still tend to have superior defensive statistics, but some non-knight-only weapons here and there will be entirely valid tanking options in every sense, (Valor, Blade of Enthann comes to mind, among others!), and lower level knights will have far more good weapon options.
• Related to that, it will allow for some more flexibility in designing tank weapons in the future, with less pigeonholed "effectively warrior-only" tank weapons rotting after the first drop.

To make 2-handed weapons a little more attractive for knights, the 2 Handed Bash AA has been change to 2 Handed Mastery, offering a significant damage bonus while wielding 2-handed weapons along with the usual Bashing capabilities.

Also, some poor code ordering that was causing the universal 5% damage bonus to 2-handed weapons to be slightly less than 5% has been fixed, thereby giving 2-handed weapons a slight damage increase across the board.

- Zaela

Patch Notes - 10/07/2009

Patch Notes

• A new version of the patcher has been released. Windows 7 and Vista compatibility has been increased. The patcher auto updates when you run an older version. (XP users may find less bugs as well - so says the code team)
• Some SK recourse spells have been rebalanced to be more useful.
• Item prices in Eldenal's Castle have been rebalanced.

[CYZAINE NINJA EDIT]

• The Halloween Masks no longer drop from ANY mob. You can no longer be more than 20 levels higher than your target to receive a mask. Drop chance is otherwise the same.
• Part 2 of the quest most people have found people have found is live! The other holiday quest chain remains undone.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 10/02/2009

The Month of Terror Begins!

What nightmares haunt those who craft dreams? Only time will tell...

- Cyzaine

Patch Notes - 09/25/2009

Arcane Echo

Reimburses Wizards 25% mana cost of the last spell they cast if they let it tick the duration. Woldo wants you to know it was his idea. Jerk.

- Cyzaine

Patch Notes - 09/10/2009

The Big Bug/Exp Patch of '09

Been a busy month. Alot of these bugs are things that we've heard for awhile and are finally fixing. See we do listen eventually.

• Fixed a bug concerning halfling death save racial not working ever
• Fixed a bug concerning codex of death save-ness not working ever
• Fixed a bug concerning /shield on targets not using shields and it not working ever
• Fixed a bug concerning Procs not occurring while casting when they should (a bard while twisting, anyone's BP proc going off while casting, etc)
• Fixed a related bug concerning Arcane Echo interrupting subsequent casts
• Fixed an unintentional nerf to Slaariel. The intentional nerfs are still in place however.
• Fixed a bug where +skill modifiers were not working if you didn't have the skill to begin with. This primarily affects tanks and +block skill.
• Tomes are now subject to the new area bonus system.
• AA's and Tomes old area penalty now reset after enough total exp is gained, post 65.
• Added a new system to allow us to properly award exp on an individual mob basis. Expect some of the tougher bosses, encounters, and wings to get a nice exp boost in the near future, to compensate for their challenge.

This patch is now live!

- Cyzaine

Patch Notes - 08/13/2009

Lil' update

Haegra Malath lag/time tweaks (this will be updated if more occur):

• Praetors will now only summon assistance if there are three or more candidates present in the zone, and the number summoned is equal to the number in the zone - 2.
• Edit: EXCEPT THE ICE PRAETOR. The ice praetor summons adds normally! Beware!
• Respawn time of misc. zone trash increased to a bit over a half-hour.

- Thinkmeats

Patch Notes - 08/12/2009

Bonus Experiance Week!

Over the last week players of all class and level have been participating in our yearly August account drive. This years drive has been a huge success with around 45% more unique log ins than normal.

Therefor as promised there is currently a week long 45% experience bonus on every single zone on the server! Enjoy folks - you earned it.

Be sure to pat the people who helped with the account drive on the back if you are just mooching the exp! Or you could always redeem yourself by joining the account drive a tad belatedly!

The bonus experience ends on Wed the 19th of August.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 08/01/2009

Account Drive 2009

We are trying a new twist on our normal account drive! Check out this thread for details.

EDIT: The bonus exp starts at 5:00 PST on August the 12th.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 07/25/2009

Small update

• Titan summoners have discovered the secret of preserving their elemental guardians even when their elemental barrier is breached by a group of six.
• Denizens of the deep have surfaced in the darkest parts of Lake Starfall, forcing the goblins to relinquish their hold on the sacred place.

- Thinkmeats

Patch Notes - 07/18/2009

Gradalsh Quest and Rogue Traps!

The ever illustrious Dev-Cyzaine has released the Gradalsh Deity Quest. Trust me when I say - this twisted little gem is one you will want to not try and reproduce at home. What did you expect worshiping a god of entropy?

Secondly after long hours of balancing, coding and scripting the new rogue trap system is live! Not only do rogues now have a much expanded repertoire of trapping abilities but the new system also allows for much easier addition of new (Hint Ikisith Hint) traps by the development team.

Rogues past level 20 can learn these new traps at Rogue Guilds throughout Dalaya. Just don't go blowing yourselves up now... (Notice the Easter Eggs in the trap masters?)

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 07/07/2009

Woldo Fixes Things Too!

Pariahs are no longer killed on sight in the Plane of Lore.

(Foolra might have helped... a little bit...)

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 07/07/2009

Tyrsell Fixes Things

(Tyrsell did all this stuff but I went through his update notes and edited out the horrible jokes. I think I did the server the better service.)

• Fixed Enhanced Control zone crash bug
• Fixed crash bug when disarming in a duel
• Backend of Rogue poison revamp (Ammo slot procs). Effects coming soon.
• Fixed some bugs regarding Mind Shield, and added a message when it goes off
• Increased the chance of working of the cleric AA Eternal Benevolence from .02/.04/.06% to 2/4/6%
• Reworked the backend for Rogue traps! The new system should be in fully next patch.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 07/06/2009

Lil patch

Changed the Drakes and Gongoerth encounters slightly in Prison Sanctum

Removed the blinding strike from the fungusaurs

- Thinkmeats

Patch Notes - 06/21/2009

Haegra Malath

Haegra Malath is now live, featuring 6-char (cmal4+), raid (tier 8ish-9ish), and group content. It's accessible off of Goblin Skull Mountains. Good hunting!

- Thinkmeats

Patch Notes - 06/13/2009

The Deepshade

The Deepshade has had its trash loot dropping rates increased substantially. This should bring its reward in line with its current difficulty.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 05/26/2009

Jayla

Worshippers of Jayla now have access to their deity's quest line. Finally something you don't have to share with the unlearned heathens. See the forums for the official quest thread if you find any bugs or issues.

Happy questing!

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 05/25/2009

Blind Aggro

After reviewing how all the tanks aggro scales we are changing the way blind aggro is calculated slightly.

As of now aggro generated by a blind spell of any level scales upwards the more hit points an NPC has. This means that while other tanks have spells that scale with level, gear influence and spell set blinds continue to gain aggro even when the aforementioned avenues cut off.

Now this has a very minimal effect on anything but high end raid/group encounters since the HP scaling was balanced when hit points were almost always proportional to level. When you start to throw in huge undercons is when you begin to have problems.

As such we as are going to be scaling the aggro based on a more realistic measure of mob strength. As things are now a blind on a raid mob can do a very large amount of aggro when compared to a hate spell or proc. These changes will level out the aggro on NPCs that have extremely high hit points for their level.

What does this mean for a paladin under level 65? Nothing

What does this mean for a paladin who does not partake in mid-high end raiding? Nothing.

What does this mean for a paladin who tanks mostly in groups? Very little unless you hang out a lot in Emberflow.

What does this mean for a high end paladin? Your aggro will stay the same on 95% of all NPCs. On the other hand you will no longer be winning aggro-off competitions versus Shadowknights on single targets. If it takes more than a few minutes to kill an NPC then expect your aggro to be lessened.

In all honesty at the tiers this change will effect I doubt many players will notice any difference unless they are putting a Paladin and Shadowknight head to head fighting for aggro on a raid mob. This was a relative balance issue that we decided to fix even though in nominal terms the changes will be hard to notice.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 04/25/2009

Lil' update

• Reduced the difficulty of The Szasz Queen
• Removed the 'bardbuster' effect from Melek Taus
• Added some 6-character content for highish tier 65s somewhere to the game world

And now:

• Increased the effectiveness of the Ancient Fae skill, altered droprate and increased convenience of relevant monsters.
• Altered the cast time of the effect on Hrata's Wages.

- Thinkmeats

Patch Notes - 04/14/2009

Easter Weekend Lotto!

The Easter Lottery went off without too much of a hitch yesterday! The population hit *730* making for a new SoD record! The only hiccup was when 600 people all tried to look up Kazael on fomelo at once crashing it for about ten minutes!

The winners include:

Fame Points

• 100 - Yenna
• 200 - Ayudos
• 300 - Gropglor
• 400 - Chagi
• 500 - Dekkio
• 500 - Vytal
• 500 - Mixtli

Platinum

• 500 - Keyla
• 1000 - Deitpa
• 2000 - Kaily
• 3000 - Izzo
• 4000 - Naenia
• 4000 - Dracke
• 5000 - Meyers

Items

• Pouch of Rodentiary Might - Morven
• Box of Angry Halflings - Marchie
• Digested Hexdoll - Kinster
• Lucky Charm of Power - Kazael

Special Prizes

• Ikisith Item Namesake - Raoden
• Ikisith Item Namesake - Krugz

Congratulations to everyone who won and for those who did not I hope you had fun regardless!

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 03/22/2009

Spawn Timer Changes

Because of the huge influx of new content to the mid level raid content of Shards of Dalaya we have decided to raise the spawn timers on the following zones:

• City of Mercy
• Plane of Air
• Plane of Earth
• Plane of Entropy
• Plane of Nightmare
• Plane of Torment
• Plane of Valor
• Plane of Water
• Sepulcher of Darkness

The increase is moderate and should stop people from farming one of the zones and ignoring the rest in the tier. This change will be monitored and adjusted accordingly - we are not trying to starve guilds for raid mobs.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 03/18/2009

City of Mercy

After over three years of delay.

After three months of being a place for followers only.

After passing through the hands of at least three developers.

Shards of Dalaya is proud to bring you Dev-Cyzaine's sophmore effort.

The City of Mercy

• 2 Wings of raiding goodness (Courtyard and Inner City)
• Spans from tier 4-6 (Mirrors Plane of Nightmares)
• Eight tricky and challenging encounters care of Cyzaine and Woldo
• Over 70 new items care of Zaela

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 03/05/2009

Warrior Stance Changes

We have maneuvered warrior class stances to allow high end warriors more of a choice as to which stance to use. Each of the three stances are now as follows:

Living Shield (Level 45)-

• Stamina Cost: Large
• Damage: -10%
• Aggro Modified: 170%
• Mitigation: 15%

Unyielding Stance (Level 55)-

• Stamina Cost: Low
• Mitigation: 23%

Vindicator's Stance (Level 65)-

• Stamina Cost: None
• Mitigation: 13%

This now gives a warrior a "neutral" stance of 13% mitigation while giving them the option to either gain a short burst of aggro with 15% mitigation in the interim or use their much longer term 23% mitigation stance.

Yay for choices!

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 03/01/2009

Plane of Lore

Jayla, The Keeper of Lore has begun welcoming adventurer's to her home plane, The Grand Athenaeum. Please be courteous to fellow players and do not spoil any quest information or answers. The Jayla worshipper quest is not yet ready, but should be shortly.

This release signifies Dev-Brendell's first major content available to the server and as such he has been promoted to full developer status! Congratulations Foolra (Brendell)! The server should look forward to seeing much more of his quality content in Ikisith.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 03/01/2009

Style Changes

The following style changes are in game as of this posting.

Warriors-

• Living Shield now does *much* more in terms of aggro amplification. This should make this a legitimate choice versus Unyielding Stance in situations where good aggro is essential. It has also had its rate of stamina drain decreased slightly.
• Unyielding Stance has had its mitigation increased very slightly. This is to help accentuate the choice between mitigation and high aggro generation.

Paladins-

• Guardian Stance has had its stamina drain increased significantly. The potency of the stance has also been decreased slightly.

Coming Next Patch-

Melee aggro is being changed so that weapon delay is not directly responsible for aggro.

More tank changes - albeit not as severe as the above.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 02/22/2009

Congratulations are in order!

In the depths of the Shards of Dalaya dungeon/server room there live a brave few who call themselves "Web Devs." These elusive server gurus ply the depths of the Shards of Dalaya webservers making sure that everything is stable and able to perform for our player base. They script applications allowing maintenance, updates and patches to occur. Basically without them the developers would simply not be able to develop.

So why am I boring you with all of this? Because after almost three months of non stop work Miitru has been cleared from his trainee status and is now a full member of the SoD staff.

Web devery can be pretty thankless so be sure to congratulate Miitru and give him a pat on the back for all of his hard work when you see him! Grats Miitru!

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 01/20/2009

The Clamml Memorial Patch

Enchanters

• The Charm Enhancement focus now works as intended. You get one assured extra tick of charm per increment of the focus.
• The Shared Mind AA is now operational! Combat and casting abilities now are imparted upon your group while magical resistances are imparted upon your raid. Check the in game effect description for more details! (Be sure to pat Dev-Cyzaine on the back for this one - it was a real pain to get working).
• The Dire Charm AA has been replaced by Enhanced Control. Casting Enhanced Control on a charmed mob instantly increasing the charm duration by a fixed percent. We will release the exact numbers of this AA once we decide if they are where we want them but be assured that its significant.
• Charm Daze is now in effect. After a charm fades the previously charmed mob is now under the effects of "Charm Daze". Charm Daze is a combination of a full cripple as well as a ~40%ish slow which should help enchanters keep control of the mob between charms. Charm Daze fades from a mob after 6 to 12 seconds.
• Bard songs (such as Psalm of the Four) are now dispelled from a charmed mob the moment charm breaks. This should get rid of the problems with recharming a mob that has its resists inflated by bard songs.

Druids and Necromancers

• The Dire Charm AA has been replaced by Enhanced Control. Casting Enhanced control on a charmed mob instantly increasing the charm duration by a fixed percent. We will release the exact numbers of this AA once we decide if they are where we want them but be assured that its significant. The effect of Enhanced Control is mitigated by a half when a Druid casts it on a non animal or a Necromancer casts it on a living mob.

Bards

• In true Robin Hood fashion we have decreased the amount of resists given by the multi element bard songs in response to the enchanters new resist giving role. On the other hand the single resist upping bard songs retain much of their potency giving an overall buff if both Bard and Enchanter decide to stack a single resist.

Plane of Lore

• Diligent work and back end has been going into the Plane of Lore. Jayla followers will be excited to know that this plane shall be seeing the light of day soon! Completely credited to our recent Dev-Trainee Brendell this will be the first quest centric zone on the server and will give an unseen window into much of lesser published lore of the world.

Traps

• Gunder has fixed traps! They now respawn normally after being disarmed.

Emberflow

• The tomes in Emberflow have been distributed throughout the three bosses of the zone. You can no longer get all of the tomes from any one of these bosses. This includes both discovered and undiscovered tomes.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 01/03/2009

Donations

The economic downturn has been readily visible here at Shards of Dalaya as we have seen quite a few donations canceled with messages akin to "Laid off" or "Can no longer afford". This along with the normal cancellation of donations during the holiday period has put the server funds in a bad position.

If you have enjoyed the server and always planned on donating this is the time. Also know that I (Woldaff) have taken over donation flagging from our extremely busy patriarch meaning that if you donate your accounts will be flagged within a day or two maximum.

When this donation drive is finished and funds are back where they need to be expect a fun account drive.

- Woldaff