2010 Patch Notes

Archived patch notes from 2010.

Patch Notes - 12/10/2010

The Patch that the Music Died

Bards:

We have tweaked around multiple bard Relics in the name of balance.

• Psalm of the Four no longer has an AC or DS component. We hope this makes the spell more situational instead of almost permanently run.
• Relic: Hymn of the Saviour has had a pulsing disease and poison counter added to it. The healing increment effect will also now stack with all other healing increments (including cleric self buffs.)
• Relic: Melody of the Shield has been reduced in efficacy to 15% and given a mana cost to the bard. Moderate AC has also been added to the song.
• Runic: Anthem of Command has had its recast increased.

Be aware that the numbers for the bard spell changes may be tweaked in the coming days. We are also in the process of tweaking specific 6 man encounters that are heavily AE damage reliant down to make up for the bard change.

Enchanters:

• Nejax's Sapping Curse is now Nejax's Dampening Curse. When cast on an NPC this new spell will reduce any and all spell damage emanating from that NPC by 15%.
• The Berserker line of rune spells (Berserker XXX, Bedlam and Rampage) has been changed to the Misdirection line of spells. This new line features a fast casting reagent-less rune that procs an aggro reducing spell on the mob who breaks it.

Wizards/Druids:

• Succor and Evacuation spells now completely wipe all hate on landing. Negative mana effects have been increased to avoid exploitation of this wiping effect.

AAs:

• Enhanced Control now adds more to charm duration. Enchanters get a 100% increase on all mobs. Druids and Necromancers get a 100% increase on animals and undead respectively and a 50% increase on any mob type. Enhanced Control now also gives you an estimate time of control left over your charmed mob on cast.

Cmds:

• /cmd refresh zone time has been cut in half! Instead of zoning to The Nexus and back a player needs only rezone into his current zone. You should notice that this new refresh process should be 60-70% faster than the old one. Thank Secrets from eqemu for this little gem.

Next patch:

• Magicians are likely receiving a 10% spell mitigation buff that hits only Cold, Fire and Magic. I am calling it "Trine" in my head but as it turns out every other dev thinks that Trine is a horrible name. Stay tuned!

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 11/14/2010

Hello Dalaya! Here is what interesting things made it into this patch:

1 - Admin-Tao's long-awaited fletching revamp is now LIVE. Experience new heights of arrow-making rapture.

2 - All the remaining racial changes are now live. Refer to previous news post to see what you get from being who you are.

3 - Mansion of Portals changes now more complete. be sure to talk to the wizard standing guard over an entrance portal for the low-down on what to expect!

4 - Some new content and various minor bug fixes (nothing earth-shattering here).

- Slaariel

Patch Notes - 11/12/2010

New Racial Abilities

We have revamped the innate abilities of each race in the game. We are hoping this change will make things a bit more interesting and balanced (no more supergnomes!) Be aware that numbers may change in the future as we get everything situated!

HUMAN:

• +5% Experience Gain
• +10% Skill Learning Rate Excluding Tradeskill
• +5% Increase to all positive faction hits.
• -5% Magic Type Damage Received.
• +1% Haste
• -10 Resist Adjust to all Cast Spells

BARBARIAN:

• Slam
• +2.5% Experience Gain
• -30% Duration to Fear targeting the player
• -30% Duration to Stun targeting the player
• +1% Critical melee chance.
• -2.5% Decrease to all negative faction hits.
• -5% Cold and Magic Type Damage Received.
• -10 Resist Adjust to Cold and Magic spells

ERUDITE

• +2.5% Experience Gain
• +10% Skill Learning Rate Does not affect tradeskill
• -30% Detrimental Mana Effects
• +1% Spell Critical Chance

WOOD ELF

• Infravision
• Friendly To Animals
• +8% Increased Movement Speed while in Forest.
• +2% Critical Spell and Melee while Outdoors.
• +1% Parry Chance during the Day.
• -20% Duration to Mezmerization targeting the player.
• -20% Duration to Charm targeting the player.
• 50 or +10% after 50 to Forage
• 50 or +10% after 50 to Hide

HIGH ELF

• Infravision
• -50% Duration to Mezmerization targeting the player.
• -50% Duration to Charm targeting the player.
• -10% to Spell Fizzle Rate
• +2% Evocation Skill
• +2% Conjuration
• +2% Alteration
• +1 Mana Regeneration

DARK ELF

• Ultravision
• -20% Duration to Mezmerization targeting the player.
• -20% Duration to Charm targeting the player.
• +2% Critical Spell and Melee at night.
• +1% Riposte Chance at night.
• 50 or +10% after 50 to Hide

HALF ELF

• Infravision
• -10% Duration to Mezmerization targeting the player.
• -10% Duration to Charm targeting the player.
• +2.5% Experience Gain
• +2.5% Skill Learning Rate [Does not affect tradeskill
• +2.5% Increase to all Positive Faction Hits.
• +0.5% Parry Chance during the day.
• +0.5% Riposte Chance at night.
• -2.5% Magic Type Damage Received.
• -5 Resist Adjust to all Cast Spells
• +1% Movement Speed.

DWARF

• Infravision
• -30% Duration to Fear targeting the player.
• -30% Duration to Stun targeting the player
• +1% Critical Spell and Melee while Drunk.
• +2% Critical Spell and Melee Underground.
• +1% Melee Mitigation when Underground.
• +10% to all stats gained from drink.
• 50 or +5% after 50 to Mining

TROLL

• Infravision
• Slam
• Regeneration (Much Higher than Before)
• -35% Duration to Fear targeting the player
• -35% Duration to Stun targeting the player
• -10% Skill Learning Rate [Does not affect tradeskill
• +15% to all regeneration effects.

OGRE

• Infravision
• Slam
• Consumes Food Faster
• -25% Duration to Fear targeting the player
• -25% Duration to Stun targeting the player
• -15% Self Inflicted Damage
• -12.5% Stamina Drain

HALFLING

• Infravision
• Consumes Food Faster
• Innate Death Save
• +1% to Melee and Spell Dodge
• +10% Death Save Spell Effect
• +10% to all stats gained from food.
• +3% Movement Speed
• 50 or +10% after 50 to Sneak
• 50 or +10% after 50 to Hide
• 50 Baking

GNOME

• Infravision
• +2% Movement Speed when Indoors.
• +3% to Proc Rate.
• +1% Evocation
• +1% Alteration
• +1% Conjuration
• 50 Tinkering

IKSAR

• Infravision
• Natural Armor
• Regeneration
• -2.5% Experience Rate
• -10% Skill Learning Rate [Does not affect tradeskill
• 50 or +10% after 50 to Forage
• -5% Fire Type Damage Received

FROGLOK

• Ultravision
• Improved Swimming
• Improved Lung Capacity
• +2% to heals landing on self.
• +5% Critical Spell and Melee underwater.
• +5% Critical Spell and Melee while raining.
• +10% Skill Learning Rate [Does not affect tradeskill

VAH SHIR

• Infravision during day, Ultravision at night.
• Consumes food faster
• 50 or +10% after 50 to Safe Fall
• 50 or +10% after 50 to Sneak
• +2% Healing Ability at night.
• +2% Haste at night.

PS from Cyzaine - Fully implemented deity quests (Marlow, Jayla, Tarhyl, Sihala, Althuna, Gradalsh) now have new loot dropping for the mid point event and finale event portions.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 11/09/2010

Druid Heals, Trainee Quests and Cyrtho Malath

Druid Heals:

• Druidic healing has been overhauled with the new addition of the Soothe healing over time line. Specific changes are as follows:
• The spells Soothe (L19) and Greater Soothe (L44) have been added to Druid spell vendors.
• Circle of Soothing (L63), a group heal over time, now drops from appropriate monsters throughout the game.
• Ancient:Nature's Soothing is now a heal over time spell in the Soothe line (meaning it does not stack with other Soothe spells).
• Relic: Sihala's Empathy is now a heal over time spell in its own line (meaning it stacks with all other heal over time spells).
• Revitalize and Chloroshock have been increased in efficacy in response to the loss of heal per second caused by the change to the Druid relic and ancient listed above.
• A single target druid buff is in the works for next patch that will further a druids single target healing abilities - albeit much less so than these changes.

Cyrtho Malath:

• Dev-Marza has gone through and revamped Cyrtho Malath to make its risk versus reward more up to date with the current norm in the game. Be sure to check it out! (Note that the final encounter of the zone was not changed.)

Trainee Quests:

• Dev-Trainee-Nowaij has added in a new quest to Oggok that may make the city a bit more accessible.
• Dev-Alexxis added some new sorely needed intrigue into Everfrost that is worth checking out.
• Dev-Supreme shows that living up in a tree is not all it is cracked up to be with some new additions to Greater Faydark,
• GM-Rari has been traipsing around Goblinskull and Kaladim. It turns out that a silver crown corporal and a blackscale raider are both having troubles with the ghosts in deep Kaladim. Who will you help?

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 10/21/2010

Developer Recruitment

WE, the SoD development team, are looking for a number of brave souls to journey into the dark and murky waters of content creation OR hard-core C++ coding and web-tools development!

Have you ever thought about making new mobs and quests for an MMO? Alternately, are you a fully qualified C++ programmer with some spare time to kill? Head on over to the Recruitment Thread and ask questions or submit an application! This could be your break into the big-time!

- Slaariel

Patch Notes - 10/16/2010

Couple mage tome things plus

• Mages who know Words of Power for their pets may now view and activate them via /s.
• Empowered Flock should now work without crashing zones.
• Shadow Knights who know Servant Training techniques can now also activate them via /s. (This won't interfere with your current Style setting).

- Zaela

Patch Notes - 10/09/2010

Little Things

• Tomes involving group healing effects should now work correctly and also display healing messages.
• Tomes involving Necromancer pets mimicking lifetap spells should now work.
• Added /cm itemexpmessages [on/off] command to toggle Expable Item experience messages.
• Made a slight change to how Adventure Bands split exp between Band members who are in the same group and zone at the time of a kill. Details HERE. It works.

- Zaela

Patch Notes - 09/29/2010

Expable Adept Loot

Read for more info.

- Zaela

Patch Notes - 09/13/2010

Marza Update

• Prison Sanctum - Drakes and Eyes fights revamped, Essence of the Mother fight tweaked.
• Newport Sewers - Cult Priest (newbie cleric) quest line extended.

Thanks Marza!

- Thinkmeats

Patch Notes - 09/12/2010

Lil' Update

• The Fae now have treasure urns in which they keep their belongings, and of course the royalty have the finest things of all...
• A new subspecies each of fungusaurs and rogue dreadnaughts has evolved in Hmalath.
• The Sporeborn Rex and the Kye-Kye Hives have withdrawn temporarily, racing each other to be the first to complete a new system of navigation for their minions, which promises to put significantly less stress on their mental processes. Time will tell how effective this development is, but preliminary tests show a 40% drop in required brain tissue.

- Thinkmeats

Patch Notes - 09/08/2010

Pets and those who love them Patch I

Our first foray into some pet class related rebalancing. As with any patch like this, everything is subject to change.

1) Soulbonded buffs on pets.

Not quite real soulbond, this implementation makes your pet buff himself with any soulbonded buffs that you have cast on you. The pet casts them on himself on zone or summon. The buff itself is NOT really soulbonded, so can be overwritten by better buffs. However if he dies, he'll get whatever you have soulbonded at the time of his resummon. This change affects all pet owners, but only their primary pet. Swarm pets of all kinds are excluded.

Please report any oddities related to buffs, be they stacking concerns or missed SB buffs (/pet report , lets you see the buffs remember!)

2) Mage Elemental Form changes.

Nicely summed up in the wiki.

Air I, Air II, Air III

Earth I, Earth II, Earth III

Fire I, Fire II, Fire III

Water I, Water II, Water III

Elemental forms now cast on both the caster and the pet, you both get full benefits. Procs have been added to many forms, proc rate increases as the form level does. Forms should change what the pet looks like, but it doesn't change your base pet at all. Forms do not stack and should overwrite each other.

Report any bugs with the elemental forms right away. Stacking is the biggest potential culprit.

On an unrelated side note, the clicky Concealing Strikes was very likely acting like a 75% slow for the last few years... we've adjusted it so it should actually help you now, but report any unusual behavior with it.

- Cyzaine

Patch Notes - 08/17/2010

Administrator Tarutao

Everyone be sure to congratulate Admin-Tarutao on his promotion to GM Administrator! I have no doubt that he will do an awesome job. Expect to see some GM hiring soon!

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 08/06/2010

Some Dread News

A couple changes/additions to the Dreadlands refuge area worth noting!

• After a long absence, the Logistician (if that's a real word) is finally available! Not all classes have tomes available there yet, but enough do to warrant release. A limited Logisitican will be making an appearance in Murk in the next couple days.
• The faction requirement for the DL gate neck has been lowered. A new ally reward is incoming in it's place.
• A new tome is available for pure melee characters! Have fun with it.

Report any issues with the tomes you may encounter to Cyzaine asap!

- Cyzaine

Patch Notes - 07/24/2010

Parser's Delight

Added some damage visibility!

If you have:

• "Dot Damage" filter set to ON, and
• "Spell Damage" filter set to All,

DoT damage will be broadcast as non-melee hits. The old private DoT damage messages will still be around whether you use this or not.

If you are an Enchanter and have:

• "My Pet Misses" filter set to ON,

damage gained from Gift of the Giantkin spells you cast will be displayed to you as non-melee hits in the form of "Yourname empowers Name's attack for X points of damage."

If you are the target of Gift of the Giantkin and have:

• "My Pet Misses" filter set to ON,

you will see the same messages as above, but only as they affect your own melee damage.

If you are anyone in standard range and have:

• "My Pet Misses" filter set to ON,
• "Others Hits" filter set to ON, and
• "Spell Damage" filter set to All,

you will see all of the above Gift of the Giantkin messages for any nearby Enchanters.

Enjoy.

- Zaela

Patch Notes - 07/13/2010

Little Runic Stuff

Made some tweaks/improvements to a handful of first tier Runic spells. Particularly notable:

• SK Runic is currently a completely different spell; this is subject to change, but for now have fun with something that at least works.
• Druid Runic has a different/new/experimental functionality. We'll have to see how with works out in practice to see if it needs any tweaking of its own or if it works out at all.

In any case, have fun with these, you few people who are affected! And make sure to patch!

- Zaela

Patch Notes - 07/01/2010

Another SK change

It's certainly a good day to be an SK. The second of three changes discussed here, is now live. The important points of the change include:

• All terror spells cost 3x more mana
• All terror spells have faster refresh time
• All terror spells linger for 3 ticks after you cast them

This should allow SK's alot more flexibility during combat, while still maintaining the highest aggro levels of the tanks. We'll be watching these changes closely in case they need to be tweaked. We have a third change in mind that hasn't been discussed yet, but for now it's time to observe.

Coming Soon:

• A logistical solution
• A change to artifact gatherings
• Quest for the People II: This time it's personal

- Cyzaine

Patch Notes - 06/29/2010

SK SCS AA

The Spell Casting Subtlety AA now increases spell aggro for Shadow Knights rather than decreasing spell aggro as it does for other classes. No more permanent innate shooting yourself in the foot! The in-game description will be updated to reflect this change soon, but for now it is confirmed to be working right, at a rate of 2.5/5/10% increase to spell aggro.

- Zaela

Patch Notes - 06/25/2010

The past week in SoD

Lots of little things over the last 7 days or so, so here's a little recap!

Ikisith re-balancing continues!

• Citadel of the Claw was reopened, with a huge revamp from our Dev-Marza. If you haven't checked it out yet, your in for a very pleasant and challenging surprise.
• Dreadlands quest drops have been adjusted. You should find hunting the flora and fauna of the area A LOT less tedious.
• Beat Hatesfury A? Turned in the Captains Log? You are now eligible for a nice new award. A certain someone is more than happy to upgrade your Seeker Augment for doing such a difficult task. If you already have the 5th seeker augment, you should see it is much improved. If you already turned in the Captain's log, just turn it in now to get your reward.
• You may find runic spell components in some different locations...
• A small outpouring of newbie quests has begun from our new dev trainees. To date Greenmist has gotten a bit of love with more expected for Newport, Halas, Surefall and elsewhere.

In other news, a new Shadow Knight line of spells has been introduced, and is in need of some testing and feedback. You can join the conversation here.

- Cyzaine

Patch Notes - 06/01/2010

Ikisith Balancing

Ikisith Balancing Mark 1!

Currently Live:

Hatesfury:

• The two so called "bottleneck" pulls have been toned down.
• Total HP throughout the zone has been scaled back slightly. This should ease the restrictions imposed by the timer.

Bloodquarry:

• Increased experience modifiers have been added to the Yclistinite, Scelerium and Stonemite wings.
• A certain named doggie has had his loot returned to him. Runic spell parts now drop more frequently throughout the zone.
• The chance of getting a special rockling from rockling traps and rough golems has increased substantially.
• Lorry the Crippled now gives the appropriate rewards for her quest.
• The Bone Carvers and Slave Skinners now drop their appropriate rewards.
• Prime Ritualist Ofgats has returned! He is now a 6 man tier 9ish encounter.
• Neltalia is now awaiting rescue - and has rewards appropriate for the task!
• New lore rich items and messages have been added throughout the zone. I hear the slave rebellion will buy any information on Kaezulian movements...

Tears of Elael:

• Increased the zone experience modifier from 18% to 25%
• Quest mobs have been added throughout the zone (that had mysteriously been missing... oops!)
• Loot throughout the zone has been upgraded to reflect the difficulty of the zone.
• You can now bind at any friendly outpost in the zone.

Prophets Landing:

• Baldakan NPCs have had their exp modifiers substantially raised.
• Baldakan NPCs now drop tomes and other loot.

Spells:

• Fury of the Wild has been changed to Bitter Cold. Bitter Cold is a direct upgrade to Harsh Winter doing more damage and 10% more damage over time improvement while the spell is running.
• Channel Essence has been given a 1000 point instant heal on top of its previous healing over time. Its cast time has also been significantly lowered. It is still the only no aggro heal, long distance heal in the game.

Next Patch:

Class Based Tomes:

• Will finally be implemented! Includes new styles for Casters and Melees as well as new class abilities both passive and active! You will however notice that these tomes are now dropping (Albeit non functioning).

Spells:

• Arcane Acuity will actually make your next spell cast unblockable. Sorry about that!
• Runic: Agent of Kaezul will summon the appropriate pet!
• Runic: Quiver of the Legion will have its negative effects tones down.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 06/01/2010

Lifetap Over Time Changes

Lifetap over time spells no longer have recourse buffs associated with them. Instead, the healing portion is applied directly every time the DoT damage ticks on the target, making it more like a regular lifetap each tick. This will have a couple of effects:

• The healing from lifetap over time spells now scales directly with damage dealt. Previously, the healing portion would not increase from its base value at all.Some higher-level Necromancer lifetap over time spells have been decreased in damage slightly to make up for this enhanced healing.
• Lifetap over time spells no longer take up a buff slot. As a consequence, the healing effect will now end if the damaging effect is removed or if the target dies.

That's basically it. Note that although there is no recourse, the caster of a lifetap over time (or their pet) can still only be affected by the healing portion of one lifetap over time at a time. On the other hand, if the currently-healing lifetap over time ends while another lifetap over time is running on another target, the remaining one should immediately take over healing.

- Zaela

Patch Notes - 04/11/2010

The Good Patch

Lets preface the good patch by saying EVERYTHING in it is experimental. It is all subject to change or removal if it turns out to not work on a bigger scale then the devs on test server. That being said...

• Death Fatigue no longer drains mana, but it does give a limited silence effect. You can med the duration
• Resurrection bug is a thing of the past. You may now rez people at any time, offline, online, zoning whatever.
• Due to the above, exp debt is now stored on your corpse. You must loot your corpse in order to get the exp debt cleared. Debt is otherwise unchanged
• The Keyring is implemented! To use the key ring, simply click on the door with the appropriate key. The key will remain in your inventory, but you will no longer need to have it, and it may be safely deleted. This ONLY works with actual keys that interact with actual objects. This will hopefully be expanded to key like objects in the future. Use /keys or /cm listkeys to ensure it worked before deletion! No Rent and Tradeable keys will NOT go in the key ring.

The coding team has worked VERY hard for a VERY long time to make all this a reality, so love it or hate it, be sure to give props to dev-zae, dev-meyers, dev-slaar, serverdude-xardon and the rest of the staff!

- Cyzaine

Patch Notes - 04/01/2010

Auto Range Attack

Over the years we have had many people ask for an Auto Ranged Attack button. After weeks of attempting to code this into the game we have found no good way to incorporate it into our client.

Because of this we have decided to take away the Melee Auto Attack system instead utilizing the "Beg" button in a One Click One Swing system. This is only a temporary solution until we find a legitimate and well integrated way for Auto Range Attack to be implemented.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 03/18/2010

Casting Skill Mods

Skill Mods for spell casting-related skills (i.e., Skill Mod: Alteration +5) have been given effects beyond their very minor fizzle-chance reduction. The bonus effects are as follows:

• Alteration: small increase to healing spell amounts and lifetap damage per point over 250.
• Evocation: small increase to nuke damage per point over 250.
• Conjuration: small increase to DoT damage and pet melee damage per point over 250.
• Divination: slight increase in the chance to overcome your target's resistances per point over 250.

Abjuration and Channeling currently do not have any bonus effects, though this may change. Also, the exact effects and the amounts of the bonuses are subject to change, as are pre-existing casting skill mods on items. Ultimately, the purpose of this change is to make casting skill mods useful, but not as powerful as weapon skill mods are for melees.

- Zaela

Patch Notes - 03/15/2010

Stability Month

For the rest of the month we will be aggressively hunting down as many zone crash bugs as we can find. So do your part, and report in as much detail as you can, circumstances that cause crashes, things you were doing when a zone came down, and any other such thing. If we claim to have fixed something, and you find that not to be the case, report that as soon as you can as well!

Todays patch should have fixed these three dears:

• Enchanter Shared Mind related crash bug
• Pet Invis related crash bug
• Pet Death related crash bug (as seen in ToT flare fiends)

But if you think a crash is still being caused by either, report it!

- Cyzaine

Patch Notes - 03/10/2010

Fomelo 1.6

Finally, all the new tomes of power will show under Fomelo. Tomes show up at the top now instead of in the accordion. Click on Tomes, then hover your mouse over General, Archetype, or Class. (currently, the tomes are being moved around, so don't be surprised if everything is under Class next week.)

Flowing Thought is fixed. Armor Class is mostly fixed. It's a lot more accurate now than in version 1.5, as it's using the same formulas as the game code. Currently it's off a max of 2 points. Yes, the AC shown on your client is wrong. We can't fix the client.

A few minor fixes with the other numbers as well. It will only add an * to the number if you are over the cap. Previously for some numbers, it showed it even if you were at the cap.

Thanks to Rari for creating a few buttons as well.

Update: also, all ancient, runic, and etc, spells now show on fomelo.

- Miitru

Patch Notes - 02/14/2010

Stuff

Couple things.

• 1. Pets will no longer poof when their owners become invisible. Invisibility spells will drop if one's pet attacks something, however.
• 2. The Bard Singing Mastery AA has been changed. Now, this AA will reduce casting time for songs while you are using a real instrument of the song's type, i.e. Wind songs will cast faster while using a Flute if you have this AA.

The descriptions aren't updated yet but they will be. Singing Mastery will be renamed to Instrument Mastery, and the AA currently called Instrument Mastery will be renamed to Song Mastery in order to prevent/cause confusion. The AA formerly known as Instrument Mastery now grants .2 mod per rank regardless of whether you have worn instrument mods, too.

- Zaela

Patch Notes - 02/10/2010

Tomes of Power

Tomes of Power have been changed to increase abilities by 4% down from 5%. The numbers are still under review.

Rationale here.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 02/04/2010

Ikisith Phase One

Click for detail!

After two years of development Ikisith: Secrets of the Razad is released!

Zone Developers:

• Brendell
• Cyzaine
• Marza
• Slaar
• Tyronia
• Woldo
• Zae

Support Developers:

• Priim
• Pugsley
• Xar

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 01/27/2010

Misc.

Some little things.

• Added a command to display your Pet's equipment inventory: /cm petinv. (And now we know that the Haste slot is a bit fickle; haste items summoned directly onto a pet won't auto-equip, they have to be handed off. Also, items in the Haste slot seem to poof upon zoning. These will hopefully be addressed in the future!)
• Worn item Haste should now work for Pets.
• Improved resist adjusts for several newer Shadow Knight spells.

- Zaela

Patch Notes - 01/16/2010

Backstab!

Attention Rogues!

Backstab is now dependant on the RATIO of your mainhand piercing weapon, rather than just the DMG. This means that, yes, a 4dmg/6dly (~0.666 ratio) dagger would backstab harder than a 18dmg/30dly(0.6 ratio) dagger.

Raid-level daggers have had their ratios adjusted to be more in-line with other 1handed weapons of the same tier. Also, while a serious effort was made to keep dagger backstab performance throughout the game close to where it was with the old system, ratios have a much smoother progression than weapon DMG, so some daggers will certainly perform worse than they used to, and some better. Improved ratios will probably make up for any lowered backstab damage, though.

Keep in mind that more daggers may be tweaked in the coming weeks to adjust to the new system.

In other news, the new SK reverse DS spells should now have their damage scaled with Specialize Energy/Defense, Affliction Enhancement, Elemental focuses, and tomes.

- Zaela

Patch Notes - 01/11/2010

A little evil lovin'

A new line of offensive spells has been added for Shadow Knights! The first spell in the series can be learned at level 30. Check your regular Shadow Knight spell vendors for them.

Being a new set of spells utilizing an as-yet unused effect on SoD, feedback is welcome, and adjustment of the numbers involved is very possible if they don't seem quite on-par.

- Zaela

Patch Notes - 01/03/2010

Runes, Holy Days

Some minor changes to announce this time!

First off, the code behind Runes has been revamped. This should fix any old bugs associated with Runes becoming non-functional or fading prematurely. In addition, if a character has multiple Rune spells running on them, they will now fade one at a time as soon as they are worn through individually, starting with the most recently-applied Rune, rather than fading in one big glob as they did before. (Of course, a sufficiently big hit will still be able to eat through multiple Runes at once and all that.)

Fairly minor change, but enjoy!

Secondly, in-game Holy Days have been expanded--see this thread for details. Also, a bug that was preventing messages related to in-game Holy Days from displaying has been fixed; it should now be much clearer when a Holy Day is happening.

- Zaela