2013 Patch Notes

Archived patch notes from 2013.

Patch Notes - 12/13/2013

Zone Experience Bonus Change

• Starting next patch, the total amount of experience required to reset zone penalties will be slashed by ~1/3. Happy hunting!

Also, a third raid encounter within the Temple of Elael goes live next patch.

- Slaariel

Patch Notes - 11/22/2013

Pariah Augmentation Quest

The quest for those who are not sworn to any gods (Pariahs) have had their augmentation quest added to the game!

Can thank GM-Nowaij for this one!

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 11/20/2013

Thanks to Haynar, we now have 1925 spell descriptions. Look for the new descriptions on items or by Alt clicking on a spell gem. Bug fixes:

• In a whirlwind of debugging, I've found and fixed two nasty bugs as well as optimized some code. The first is mostly applicable only to newer content which uses the custom AE mechanics.
• Fights with custom AEs will perform considerably better and should no longer cause zones to freeze for seconds at a time.
• Fights with random NPC teleportation will no longer potentially cause the zone to permanently hang until manually rebooted. Additionally, the code for this has been optimized significantly.
• Both Blazewind and Custodian's scripts have been streamlined a bit to reduce the number of packets being sent to clients which should alleviate some lag.

- Jumbers

Patch Notes - 11/07/2013

HALLOWEEN HAS ENDED!

This patch most includes dev-side changes (new items, NPCs, mechanics, and so forth).

Here are some changes that were apparently not announced loud enough last patch:

• SOME low-level loot has been added and moved around. Some items were moved FROM some zones (for instance, Cesspits) TO some other zones (for instance Oggok Mines, Shrouded Isle, and Warrens) coinciding with the debut of several new low-level targets for new adventurers. Happy hunting!
• Spells that were erroneously using Environmental Effects as spell particles have been fixed! So if you have been playing with Environmental Effects off to stop the visual spam from these spells, you may now turn all the campfires in the world back on without fear.

- Slaariel

Patch Notes - 11/04/2013

Amnest_

Whenever someone picks a particularly terrible last name, or picks a bad last name multiple times in a row, the staff of SoD routinely replaces their last name with an underscore to prevent them from picking another last name.

Every few years we wipe all underscores and give anyone who has received an underscore the opportunity to pick a new last name. Today is that day! If you have been underscored in the past, feel free to log in and pick a new (and not horrible) last name.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 10/31/2013

Feeling the post Account Drive blues?

Join us this Monday, November 4th at 8pm EST (don't forget to set your clocks back in the U.S.) for some GM Events! This is in honor of the 10.5 year anniversary of Shards of Dalaya's earliest recorded raid on May 04, 2003. Anticipated events include Dice of Misfortune and Amnest_, possibly more!

- Olive

Patch Notes - 10/31/2013

Patch Notes 10/22 - 10/29

The patch on the 22 was partially reverted due to a bug with pets. All these changes are now live:

• Some Enchanter Spells now have new SoD related lore names, but the effects remain unchanged
• Swarm Pets have gotten a cosmetic overhaul with our first global scripts!
• Young Mammoth Pelts are dropping again
• The Void Worm has had minor damage output tweaks
• The quest to open The Temple of Elael has been adjusted and should no longer require 200 farmed items.
• The proc on Rat-Claw has been changed back to Envenomed Bolt by bewildering popular demand.

- Olive

Patch Notes - 10/19/2013

EQMac Closing

The last day, there has been a bit of a confusing bump of people asking about playing SoD on a mac via Wine and Crossover. Unfortunately, I recently found out that it stems from the closure of EQMac. From a community that knows what it is like to pour yourself into a game community and character - we are sorry for the closure.

We would like to extend a hand of welcome to any of the EQMac community who might wish to try out Shards of Dalaya. We are in the midst of an account drive bonus week, which means that experience is doubled, groups are easier to find and more staff and GM events are happening. Because of the closure, we are going to extend this exp bonus by four days. Also, on the eve of the actual EQMac server closure, we shall be running another bonus week specifically to welcome in anyone who moves over.

Finally, be sure to include "EQMac - YourCharacter" as your reference in your account creation window. We hope to have a bit of a surprise lined up for refugees, and this should let us keep track of who is who. If you already have an account, feel free to shoot us an email ([email protected]) and we will manually flag your account as coming from the closure.

You can find the starting guide here: http://wiki.shardsofdalaya.com/index.php/Starting_Guide. Also, we have people standing by live in IRC willing to help walk you through installation or answer questions about the game here: https://shardsofdalaya.com/cgi-bin/irc.cgi.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 10/02/2013

• This year's Halloween Event is now live!
• The Block skill mod now affects shield Block
• Riposte procs will now affect the primary target only
• Horok proc will now stack properly
• The Althuna quest aug event may now be attended by Althuna sworn characters
• New fame reward swarm pets are live!
• New scores on the Leader Board!

- Olive

Patch Notes - 09/26/2013

Server Q&A and Patch Notes

For the first time in over 6 years, we're doing a question night tomorrow, Friday September 27th at 8:00PM EDT. We'll be taking about the lore of the world, long term plans, as well as general questions about the server as a whole. It will be both a fun and informative night!

For those of you who won't be able to be on during the Q&A, you can submit your questions in advance to the following temporary email: [email protected] After the night has concluded, we will be posting the full transcript on the forums.

Patch Notes Sept 26th:

• The name filter for character creation has been totally redone. A lot of poor automatic filtering was removed. The naming policy remains the same and can be found here.
• Exp bonuses for zones should now reset properly.
• Spells from the last patch should now be on the patcher for people to download.
• There was a bug in the resetting of new area exp bonuses. They have not been resetting properly for the last two weeks or so. This has been fixed, and bonus resets should again be working properly.
• Weapons no longer proc on a successful riposte. Our rational is below:

Procs on ripostes put huge restrictions on the kind of procs we can put on items. This is the exact reason why live ended up taking them out too, by the way. Every time we make an item, we have to say to ourselves "sure this proc is fine when the guy is meleeing, but can he pull a bajillion mobs and become invincible?" That is a problem, and leads to less fun items being made. And there have been multiple examples of this being a problem with lifetap, AE and stun procs in the past.

So what does this change mean? More interesting and powerful procs in more situations in the long run.

We added a flat aggo bonus on riposte to compensate warriors for the loss of procs (since that class depends heavily on procs for hate.) We are also going to be parsing the (albeit marginal) loss of DPS this has caused, and will be raising proc rates across the board on all items to compensate. If there are specific weapons that were balanced around proc ripostes (which reems unrealistic, but hey) we will happily lower their delay or change them as needed by next patch if they are brought up in the balancing discussion thread on the forums.

- Jumbers

Patch Notes - 09/24/2013

Account Drive and Patch Notes

It is that time of year where the community of Shards of Dalaya reaches out and invites new players to give our game a try! For current players, you can find out how to participate in the drive here.

For new players, Welcome! Please feel free to check out the webpage and see what we are all about. You can also find a great installation and starting guide on our Wiki here and a collection of starting city guides here.

So be sure to check out the post about our upcoming festivities and bonus period, and enjoy the festivities!

Patch Notes

• Somatic Bond will now stack with other proc buffs.
• Blood Ritual self-damage will only fire once on AE spells (ha ha).
• Halfling swarm pet damage increased.
• Non-halfling swarm pets released in the near future.

- Slaariel

Patch Notes - 09/23/2013

Upcoming Server Question Night

For the first time in over 6 years, we're doing a question night on Friday September 27th at 8:00PM EDT. We'll be taking about the lore of the world, long term plans, as well as general questions about the server as a whole. It will be both a fun and informative night!

For those of you who won't be able to be on during the Q&A, you can submit your questions in advance to the following temporary email: [email protected] After the night has concluded, we will be posting the full transcript on the forums.

- Jumbers

Patch Notes - 09/20/2013

ACCOUNT DRIVE 2013!

It is that time of year where the community of Shards of Dalaya reaches out and invites new players to give our game a try! For current players, you can find out how to participate in the drive here.

For new players, Welcome! Please feel free to check out the webpage and see what we are all about. You can also find a great installation and starting guide on our Wiki here and a collection of starting city guides here.

So be sure to check out the post about our upcoming festivities and bonus period, and enjoy the festivities!

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 09/07/2013

Here are the Leaderboards Congratulations! You've got the HIGH SCORE in Dalaya! HOORAY! Boards will be added and rotate eventually over time. Some boards are initially populated, others will populate when players take action (kill Traekoth to get on the Adepts board, for instance). Y O U W I N ! !

- Slaariel

Patch Notes - 09/01/2013

• A huge memory leak every time a pet was spawned has been fixed which should dramatically reduce how often zones like Athica or Tears of Elael crash. (You're welcome)
• A new Shaman tome has been added

- Jumbers

Patch Notes - 08/28/2013

Druid Change: All swarms MAY be cast Indoors (but they are way better Outdoors). Paladin Change: ALL Paladins have a new innate ability: DIVINE REFUSAL

• Divine Refusal is a guaranteed death save vs. undead enemies every 3 days. That means every 72 hours, you have a guaranteed bounce-back if a skeleton punches you to death.

New Shaman Tome: BLOOD FEAST New Paladin Tome: Divine Radiance Other uninteresting stuff happened also! Enjoy the game!

- Slaariel

Patch Notes - 08/23/2013

Shards of Dalaya 2.5 Beta

We have gotten our client side upgrade stable enough to start accepting small groups of people to help us sniff out bugs. If you are willing to help us test things out, and are happy and excited to share your experience with other players, shoot an email to [email protected] with your account name (NOT PASSWORD), other friends who are applying (so we can group people together on acceptance) and what sort of play hours you can commit to.

Experience gained on beta will be transfered back to your live character, but most items will not be. We will be doing our absolute best to keep you compensated for time you spend in beta, but understand that some bugs may preclude things transferring over.

We hope to have this beta up for as short a time as possible before moving live over to the new client, so please apply only if you play a few times a week!

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 08/23/2013

• Three Class Tomes Added.
• Huge upgrade on the server side that makes me, personally, very happy.
• New scripting commands available for developers.
• New NPCs and a few new quests.

Enjoy your day!

- Slaariel

Patch Notes - 08/06/2013

Love is Blind and also Blindness is Aggravating

Thanks to the participants in the Hater Nation mini-competition over the weekend, we were able to gather info and test a new technology for aggro-generation.

The way that debuffs (including but not limited to: blinds, stat debuffs, snare, root, mez, slow, stun) generate aggro has been tweaked very slightly on the server-side. The cap has been raised and scaling introduced that will cover all monsters added to the game from now on and should be a permanent solution to this area of combat mechanics.

This affects everyone who ever casts a debuff on anything, but it should be most noticeable to Paladins, strangely the premiere debuffing class on Shards of Dalaya!

Enjoy!

- Slaariel

Patch Notes - 08/06/2013

Inventory Troubles August 5th, 2013

We experienced a small problem with our database that resulted in a few dozen characters who played on August the 5th, 2013 to have their inventory rolled back a few hours.

We were able to reimburse the majority of items looted during the rollback period directly through the mail system. So if you see your fomelo and think it looks wrong, check your mail in game before freaking out!

If you still have a quest, raid or other important item missing please /petition in game and reference the rollback. We will have an increased GM presence for the next few days while we sort everything out.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and are working to make sure this does not happen again!

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 07/17/2013

Most of the Dev Team remains focused on the new client upgrade, otherwise known as SoD 3.0. We are making good progress on database and script conversion! Other work is being done by veterans of the team as quick side projects or by newer members of the team for practice. Many bug fixes and server updates also went in this week. New projects include:

• Greater Faydark area - Kelethin has gotten major quest updates. Fearstone Keep is undergoing a revamp including bug fixes, new quests, and updated loot.
• Sadri Malath area - Many new quests in Sundered Mountains.
• Centaur Hills and Stingers Bog - Several new quests

Bug fixes:

• A small oversight in the drop rates of Spires Class Bracers has been corrected. Rejoice, druids, enchanters, and rangers!
• The number of disease counters involved in the The Void Worm encounter has been lowered by about 1/3. An uncommon issue with the AE from The Void Worm hitting players twice has been corrected.
• Several item and dialog fixes from recently added newbie quests. Be sure to visit this thread or petition if you encounter bugs in new quests.

Monk Style Change:

• Monk style 8 has been changed from a missile avoidance stance to a construct dis-empowering stance. When active, the monk will break the shield on any Construct and allow him/herself and other melees to score critical hits against it.

Other:

• Necessary updates to server software. This took longer than anticipated but should be worth it.
• Don't forget we now have an official web-based spell parser! You can find it at "spells.shardsofdalaya.com."

- Olive

Patch Notes - 06/21/2013

Lots of good quests news!

• This thread has its first implemented quest. Look for it in Sadri Malath.
• Newbie quests for all classes added to Sundered Mountains, Centuar Hills, Kelethin, Fearstone and Halas.
• Newbie Paladins and Clerics have a new quest in North Newport.
• Newbie Beastlords of all races will now be welcomed by Primalist Vylva, faction permitting. Drop rates and rewards for this quest were updated.
• Those who have already finished Primalist Vylva's quests will find additonal quests in the 20-35 level range.
• Quests for Sundered Mountains in the 20-30ish range.
• Rewards for the Halls of Misery class specific quests have been overhauled and upgraded!
• The drop rate for Gleaming Ingot of Valorium has been increased significantly.

In addition:

• Added light sources to over 300 items.
• Beastlord Skunk pets should now animate properly in all zones.

- Olive

Patch Notes - 06/04/2013

Class Guild Factions

Some class guild factions throughout the game have had their default faction modifier towards other races lowered. As an example, the Caster Guild in Newport no long hates Trolls or Ogres more than Halflings. This primarily effects Newport, Sadri Malath and Underhill.

Modifiers based on class are unchanged. For instance, Cleric guilds still hate Necromancers.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 06/4/2013

• A quite elusive zone crashing bug was fixed, so there will be less zone crashes
• The relatively new Dev-Taryth has bestowed upon you /cm blessed so you can check blessed zones without having to log out
• I'm drinking some bottled water right now

- Jumbers

Patch Notes - 05/20/2013

New Donation System and Spell Parser!

Donation System:

After many months of effort by our resident coder Taryth, we now have a completely automated donation system! Utilizing a secure third party payment company, we can now take all major credit cards directly through our donation portal. Further, since it is all handled in house now, your accounts are flagged for donation rewards instantly! Expect a donation/account drive coming down the pipe soon that will utilize this further!

Spell Parser:

We also have a brand new official web-based spell parser! You can find it at "spells.shardsofdalaya.com." This handy tool is also brought to you by Taryth.

Expect us to incorporate the webpage theme into both tools in the near future. Further, if you are someone who is great at webpage design and think you could help us incorporate all our new shiny tools into the webpage, let us know!

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 04/15/2013

Beastlord Pet Change

This change does not go live until late tonight! You can preflag but will not see the pets correctly until the patch.

We have been looking into fun ways to make beastlords closer to their warders as partners instead of just being a spell they cast like a magician or necromancer pet. After all, they are called "Warders" and not "pets" for a reason. While we are still working on some aspects of this, we have a fun aesthetic change that happened to be completed early.

When a Beastlord hits level 9, they will now be able to choose the beast they will bind with. Each Beastlord race now has three warder options that, once chosen, stick with the beastlord throughout their entire career.

The idea is that a beastlord's warder is not a collared beast, but instead an expression of the beastlords inner self channeled symbiotically into the beast and vice versa. This means synergistic abilities involving shared health and abilities between the beastlord and their warder make sense. It also means that there should be some sort of connection between the personality and strengths of the beastlord and the choice of pet. How can you feel like you and your warder buddy are special teammates when every other Iksar has the same scaled wolf as you.

Ever see a Barbarian beastlord and think to yourself, "His inner spirit is really a snow bunny, not a wolf"? This has been remedied.

Ever wonder how some dumb ogre is able to control a grizzly bear that is actually smarter then he is? Well, skunks are pretty dumb, right?

Beastlords, ever want to ride your best warder buddy around East Badlands? Well, you still can't. You will just have to pretend.

If you are already above level 9, then you will be summoning a temporary pet until you pay a visit to your starting city guild master. We are undecided regarding whether the temporary pet is going to be permenent, or if at some point we will switch all old beastlords to the "No pet till you decide" system.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 04/10/2013

Small Rogue Trap Change

• The cool down on rogue traps have been lowered substantially. The preparation time has also been lowered on the second tier trap kit. A third tier trap kit with very low preparation time is being planned for an upcoming patch.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 04/09/2013

Bane

• In addition to the Bodytype changes of a few patches ago, we have now added worn Bane damage to around 175 items throughout the game.
• A few things still need to be done, and will happen next patch. We will be removing all bounty augs and reimbursing with tokens so that they can buy a new one of their choice.
• A few items that had bane damage prior to the patch still need to maneuvered over. If you have an item that used to have bane, hold tight for now.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 04/09/2013

Do you hate buffs? YEAH ME TOO!!! They said it couldn't be done, but it has been done!!! Well now there's a solution for you to block those buffs you really can't stand. Just type /cm blockbuff and all your dreams will come true. All you need to know is the spell ID of the spell which you're looking to block, which can be found in your current buffs list with the /char command. Rejoice for never having to get Call of the Predator ever again.

- Jumbers

Patch Notes - 04/04/2013

Tur`Ruj Modifications

The Tar`Loc tribe in Tur`Ruj is no longer a complete pushover. At the same time, the Ju`Bor tribe is no longer nigh impossible.

Hurray for balance!

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 04/01/2013

Advertisements

EDIT: April Fools! This was our 2013 April Fools prank. The staff went out onto the interwebs, and found the worst advertisements we could get our hands on. Then we went and put those advertisements into all the game music and spell effects. I also made a flock of birds that spelled out "Folgers Coffee" in the sky in Athica.

On the bright side the playerbase of SoD has many, many less worms.

Until next year, folks.

Due to the recent widespread item, class, archetype, tome, spell, stance, experience and money drop nerfs we have had a hard time keeping donators. In fact, so many donators have dropped out that we have had to take drastic measures.

We have decided to implement short and barely noticeable audio advertisements throughout the game. We ask that you please keep your game sound on in order to support the server, and allow us to continue to bring you the excellent lag and bug free game play everyone has come to expect.

We hope to soon implement more advertisements throughout different parts of the game. Also, within the next few days we will be editing the client files to make playing without sound impossible.

We appreciate everyone's understanding and hope you all had a great Easter.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 03/26/2013

Traps:

• Traps are still not ready! We hope to finish this up later in the week.

Rogue Hide:

• We have made about 4,500 less NPCs see Rogue invisible. Sneaky sneaky!

Bodytypes:

• The new Bodytypes have been distributed throughout the game. Read the previous post for more information! Unfortunately, the Bane damage changes are not yet in. We are being very methodical in adding Bane to items throughout the game, and have not yet finished. Expect the new Bane system to go live later in the week.

Fletching:

• Arrows have been changed to reflect the new Bodytypes. Be sure to check your quiver before plinking away!

Bonus Encounter Experience:

• As of this patch, whenever you kill a difficult monster or encounter for the first time you will receive an experience boost. As of first implementation, this will add around 65 million bonus experience throughout 6, 12 and 18 man encounters. Just a quick and fun little bonus!

Mansion of Portals:

• The Crags of Tarhyl now has its own shiny new Travel Portal. Also, wisps in the Mansion of Portals will no longer cast Portal Contagion on players under level 20.

Jayla's Insight:

• The bard ability "Jayla's Insight" has been changed slightly. Hopefully it should be more legible. As well as the format change it will now filter under "skills" in your chat window. This will allow players to change the color of the text.

Thazeran's Tower:

• The person who began each Deacon event may now manually reset the timer/event by interacting with the Deacon at the beginning of the event. This should allow guilds who have had a bad start to reset the encounter instead of having the timer make the encounter undoable. This option goes away after a boss in the wing dies.
• We have also moved the tome drop chance from the first to the second boss of each wing. Both used to have a chance, but now only the boss has a (much greater than before) chance. We have left archaic fragment pieces on both.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 03/13/2013

Upcoming Bane and Trap Changes

Bane:

In the next (hopefully!) patch, the following Bane changes shall go live.

First off, we have consolidated the old body type categories, and updated around 11,000 NPCs to the following:

• Humanoid Monster: Unintelligent things in a generally humanoid shape. Examples: Sivakians and Paw Cats
• Humans/Orcs/Ancients (These are the ancient races of Dalaya. This includes Humans, Orcs, Lodrish and any other race that has been on Dalaya since soon after the Great War. The one exception being Iksar.)
• Undead: All undead, including sentient undead like vampires
• Giant/Trolls/Ogres: Giants...trolls.... and ogres. Also cyclops!
• Construct/Clockwork: Constructs like golems and clockworks.
• Chaotic/Corrupted: Chaotic beings like Akhevan and Earth Terror and corrupted creatures like Badland's animals.
• The Young Races: Elves, Erudite, Barbarian, Halfling, Gnome. All races that came from Humans.
• Lesser Elemental: Lesser world elementals, and trash in the elemental planes.
• Reptiles/Amphibeans: Iksars, Frogloks, Basalisks, Snakes, tadpoles, etc.
• Magical: Wisps, torrents, other things obviously held together by magic.
• Sylvan/Animal: Pumas, Flowers, Fungus men, Tigers, Bats, Birds, Fairies Etc
• Insect/Arachnid: All insects like mosquitos and spiders!
• Monster: Monsterous beasts like griffons, manticores, centaurs. Anything half animal, half

something else.

• Planar Elemental/Elemental Gods: Bosses in the planes, and other elementals tied directly to the gods.
• Dragons/Dragonkin: Dragons, Wyverns, Wurms, etc.

We are hoping that this consolidation will help make each bane type relatively useful instead of having one or two bane types rule the roost.

Be sure to read the post below to find out about the new way non-primary/secondary worn bane will work. We are going to be putting much more worn bane on thematically and balance appropriate gear throughout the game. Expect the majority of this to be in next patch, and more to go in shortly after! (Thats a lot of items for us to go through!)

Expect possible slight changes to these groups in the next few months. We are doing our best to get it perfect the first time, but we all know how that goes.

Traps:

Next patch (hopefully) will bring about a revamp of the trap system.

First, we have gone through and changed about 2300 NPCs to not see rogue invisibility.

Second, we have split the sense trap skill into two parts. First, a general sense trap that is available to all classes. Second, a specific sense trap that is available to Rogues and Bards.

When any player walks near a trap that is within their sense skill, the trap will appear as a visible model. The size of that model will depend on your sense trap as related to the skill trivial of the trap. This should allow any class to, when paying attention, identify and avoid traps throughout the game world - most specifically when dungeon crawling.

Since a trap will appear larger in size relative to your sense trap skill, rogues, bards and rangers will allow for much more ease of trap identification. The sense trap caps are tentatively set as follows: Rogues 250, Bards 120, Rangers 100, Other Melees 75, Casters 50.

Rogues and Bards will also be able to specifically sense traps. Using the sense button forces the trap model larger, and keeps it from dissappearing again for many minutes. We have drastically lowered the chance of a critical trap failure, and are possibly planning to add beneficial effects when certain traps are disarmed. Rangers will also be able to sense outdoor traps and disarm them from afar with their bows. We are also considering to give rangers some limited ability to disarm indoor traps.

A sprung trap will respawn in about 20 minutes. A disarmed trap will stay down for an hour or more - depending how much higher your skill is as compared to the traps trivial. Most raid or group traps will be down for a period of time that one disarm of each trap should be efficient.

We have removed some trash from most raid zones where we have implemented the new traps. You should, on average, have shorter clears with smart rogues and bards, but longer clears if you just blindly run into all the traps.

Of course, we will be monitoring this change and tweaking as needed!

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 03/11/2013

Just a quick warning and note...

You may notice that traps have been added to a few high end raid zones. Specifically;

• Thazeran's Tower
• Tower of Tarhyl
• Plane of Frost
• Spires of Saitha
• Sepulcher of Darkness
• Caverns of Darkness
• Plane of Entropy
• Plane of Air
• Plane of Torment
• Tur`Ruj

We currently have these traps only triggering generally ignorable things. They are just an early implementation of an upcoming change to the trap system as a whole. Do not expect them to stay ignorable for too long!

Also, rogues may notice a drastic shift downward in the amount of raid mobs who see through their sneaking and hiding abilities...

More news to come!

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 03/06/2013

Thazeran's Tower-

The first part of the new revamped Thazeran's Tower has been released! We are trying something a little new as far as raid schemes go, and have split the lower wings into distinct events with timers. We also have increased the difficulty and reward of the zone significantly as compared to its previous incarnation.

One thing to note while going through the new Thaz is that it is the first major zone to be scripted in our entirely new and robust scripting language (Thanks Zaela!), so expect to see things that may not have seemed possible in older content.

We hope everyone will enjoy the new Thaz, and appreciate your patience while we balance everything. Given the new scripting and the relatively novel event scheme, expect a bit more tweaking at the beginning than usual.

Environmental Effects-

A few spells and procs had been incorrectly classified as environmental effects instead of spell effects. We have tried to track down the worst offenders, and have changed them to not be environmental effects. This should make running with environmental effects on show only what it should - particle effects on weapons and the environment. Please be sure to inform us via /bug or the forums if there are any incorrectly marked spells we missed!

We are hoping to continue with this trend, and to start taking out spell effects from procs and pets to make playing with spell effects a little more realistic without the game looking like a 1990's Japanese cartoon.

NEXT PATCH:

Bane Damage-

Bane Damage has become a problem recently. What used to be a small and fun toy has, with the relatively recent advent of wearable bane, become an effect that incentivizes inter-tier gear stacking. We never intended to incentivize a Tier 13 toon to equip a bunch of Tier 4-5 gear in order to do Tier 14 damage. We had a lot of discussion on how to fix this, keeping in mind the new expectations regarding Bane damage.

Our solution is thus: instead of Bane forever stacking with itself, now only the highest Bane level being worn in a non weapon slot will be counted. This means if you are wearing a Dragon Bane 2 belt, and a Dragon Bane 4 mask, your bane for Dragon will be 4 plus any bane you have in your primary or secondary.

In addition to this change, we have gone throughout the tiers and attempted to add bane damage where it makes sense. We are hoping this will make Bane damage both easier to find, and less overpowered en masse. We also have went through most raid and 6 man content and made sure bodytypes are listed as what they should be.

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 02/12/2013

Item Changes:

• Ranger has been removed from the item March to Strife. If you are a ranger and you have this item, petition to either pick another loot from Rujik's loot table or to transfer the March to Strife to a guildmate of your choice who has done the encounter.
• The Glowing Shards augmentation was incorrectly tagged as undestroyable. This has been changed to be destroyed on removal. Because of the error, we have de-auged all existing Glowing Shards to allow players to utilize the augment knowing of its new fragility.
• Many items from the old Thazeran's Tower zone have been changed. This is preliminary item work for the pending reincarnation of the zone. We hope to release the new Thazeran's Tower in the next few weeks. Further, we hope that it will help ease the current congestion in the Yclist/Spires raid tier.

Spells:

• The Druid and Ranger "Swarm" line of spells have been overhauled. These spells now have two parts. First, the original damage over time portions have been strengthened considerably. Second, an actual swarm of bees now attacks the target of the spell, causing extra damage. The downside to this is that the spells are now outside only. We hope this will help reinvigorate the spell line while giving Druids further niche power in outdoor environments.
• Absolution and Celestial Shield have been constrained to be usable only in the Prison of Admyrzza. These spells were always supposed to be primarily for the final fights of Prison, yet they were put in without constraint due to what was assumed to be their only niche value. Unfortunately, when combined with other item effects and lower content, the spells were very overpowered in the situations where they were useful at all.

Pending Changes (Likely Next Patch):

• The Beastlord AA Spirit Speed will be changed to a new activatable ability. We think that a permanent haste spell is a waste of what could be something neat and interesting for the class. We will be increasing Beastlord pet attack rates to compensate for the loss of spell. Have a good idea for the new AA? Be sure to post it! We are still pondering.
• We are looking to add in a raid wide pet spell rune. This should allow pets a bit more survivability in raid situations without increasing their power in soloing, tanking and other areas. We are still hammering out the details of what this will replace and which class needs the new tech love. Hopefully this can make for some interesting interclass synergy.

Spire of Saitha:

• Bracers no longer drop 100% off of every single raid mob. Further, bracers are now distributed throughout the zone evenly.
• A few of the encounters that were too easy (I.E. Experiment) have been changed to be a little less gimmicky in nature. The awesome gimmicks are still there - they just are no longer the entire fight!

- Woldaff

Patch Notes - 02/05/2013

• Dragging of NPC corpses is now fully functional
• Companion Health and Companion Strength focuses have changed somewhat. The intention of these focuses was always to only apply while worn, however due to the way pets worked, they worked just by having them in when summoning. These two focuses have been changed to only work while equipped as was always intended.

In anticipation of this change, a large number of items throughout the tiers have been given Companion Health and Companion Strength.

- Jumbers