Asheron's Call, Update Notes

Update Notes – January 2000 – Dark Thaw

By Ellen Ripley, January 1, 2000

After his long journey gathering spell components, Kobo Taki hurried through his estate, barely pausing in the courtyard to greet his gardeners, who labored among puddles and dwindling humps of snow. Once in his study, he locked the door and, after a quick search, located the book he needed and scanned frantically through its pages for a particular passage: “If the crystal breaks, its scions will appear and shadows will well up over the earth.” Did this apply to the floating crystals and shadow creatures he’d seen on his journey? Finding no more information, he pulled a chair up to the window and gazed over the waterlogged fields. It was common knowledge that a band of heroes had dispelled the recent winter. After battling their way to the lair of undead necromancers, they had destroyed the giant crystal that sucked the heat from the land. Perhaps this crystal was the one in the text. If so, the heroes may have unwittingly brought down a terrible curse…

Kobo Taki confronted a throng of impassive Gharu’ndim as he finished his initial proposal to the Zaikhal council. They had all agreed that the strange crystal beings and shadow monsters demanded some concerted action, but as he suspected, they doubted the various rogue mages would ever cooperate.

“Let’s be frank,” said Asaina al-Arqis. “Mages guard their knowledge too closely. The most powerful ones will never form fellowships.”

Kobo smiled. “They already have. I represent a consortium of the Archmages.” A murmuring went up immediately as the council members turned to each other for corroboration. “Yes,” he went on, “they exist, and they’ve determined that the forces now gathering against humanity demand that magicians cooperate. Already they have finished an ambitious joint project: a series of magical robes. Each of the robes temporarily increases the wearer’s aptitude in a particular magic discipline; however, to achieve this effect, it also weakens the wearer in other areas of magic. A given robe is therefore a dangerous tool for a single mage, but a set of the robes may greatly enhance a well-balanced party.”

“This is indeed intriguing,” said Asaina, “but why have the Archmages not come forward themselves to make this announcement, and where can we acquire these robes?”

“My masters are occupied with their work,” he replied. “As for acquiring the robes, you must address them in person.”

“And where can they be found?”

Kobo smiled once again. “I do not know — they contact me when the mood suits them. They ask that we work together to seek them out.”


Dereth’s heroes have destroyed the Great Work, an artifact created by undead necromancers to drain the heat from the world. As a result, the snow has retreated to higher elevations, along with the enchanted snowmen, but grave new perils are stalking out to confront adventurers. Thankfully, new magic robes have been created just in time to address these threats. We urge you to avail yourselves of the robes and any other magical adjuncts and join forces. No one knows what these hostile new creatures may ultimately portend.

As the heat seeped back into the earth, snowlines receded. Patches of slush still dotted the landscape, but hints of green returned to most of the land. All was not well, however.

The enigmatic Shadow creatures began to walk the landscape openly, harassing adventurers and making travel through remote areas a dangerous proposition. In addition, floating Crystal Fragments appeared. While originally thought to be pieces of the Gelidites’ Great Work, the vast numbers of Fragments that soon swarmed across Dereth seemed to imply another origin.

Fortunately, the most learned mages of the land had taken to heart the dire prognostications of the recovered Gelidite scriptures. The Archmages Celdiseth, Fadsahil al-Tashbi, Nuhmudira, and Shoyanen Kenchu offered for sale Master Mage Robes of fine quality, while they allowed their Apprentice Mage Robes to be sold by the local mages of various towns.

Non-mages were not left without fashionable attire, however, as the traditional warrior garb of Ispar began to appear in Dereth. Celdon, Amullian, and Koujia Armor became visible signs of a warrior’s prowess.

  • Changes have been made to reflect the completion of the Frore quest and other happenings from the December event.
  • Winter is receding — not completely, but green is returning to the world.
  • Made changes to the treasure to rebalance magic items, and (most importantly) to add MORE TREASURE TO THE GAME! Whoo!
  • Olthoi have a couple more tricks in their arsenal, and Aurochs are more of a challenge.
  • Fixed item-loss-upon-death routines to deal with exploits.
  • Fixed additional cases of exploitable behavior linked to jumping.
  • Fixed a handful of locations where players could be trapped behind content.
  • Altered a number of exploitable locations, to minimize “unfair” camping.
  • Moved monster-encounters which were too close to certain lifestones.
  • NPC’s are no longer as easy to lead away from their locations.
  • Fixed problems with casting a spell when you have exactly enough mana.
  • Numerous usability changes and minor fixes to the client.
  • Several miscellaneous bugs were squished.

Detailed Notes for builds 2256-2264:
Frore Changes:

  • Specialty Cookbook updated with contest winner names.
  • Snowangel still emotes, but no particles (since snow no longer on the ground everywhere).
  • Other minor changes to Frore dungeon, and related locations.

Treasure Balance:

  • Changed monster loot formula mixes, generally improving loot across the board.
  • Updated the treasure systems modifiers to magic item spellcraft and thus difficulty ratings, so they won’t span beyond a new lower cap. (Some magic items produced by the treasure system had the potential to be unbalancing.)

Monster Balance:

  • Mosswarts and Golems no longer cast Defenselessness Other spells.
  • Olthoi high attacks now hit players exploiting dungeon pieces.
  • Aurochs are back in fighting condition.
  • Olthoi can open their Olthoi-cave doors.

Exploit Behavior Fixes:

  • You now can’t cast spells while in the air.
  • You now can’t change combat modes while in the air.
  • You now can’t jump when linking out of a non-jumping state (such as lying down or picking something up).

Exploit locations/Balance locations:

  • Creature Encounters at some locations have been removed because they were too close to lifestones.
  • Fixed some areas in the town of Colier and Colier Mine.
  • Fix for the Nevius Passage dungeon.
  • Removed/replaced some doors.
  • Upper exit to Mount Lethe dungeon is not summonable.
  • Destination of Olthoi Tunnels portal changed.
  • Ridge being exploited by players who shoot Lugians all day long — fixed the slope of the ridge to give the Lugians some traction.
  • Winthur Gardens — fixed a place where players could get trapped.
  • Objects in Fort Whitshire Dungeon were trapping players.

Content Additions:

  • Backpacks can now have colors just like the sacks in shopkeep inventories.
  • New emote: warm hands, warm up hands, blow hands, blow in hands, and blow on hands now cause you to blow on your hands, and a cloud of steam emerges.

Misc. Client Fixes:

  • INFINITY no longer showing up in some cases in the stats panel.
  • Confirmation now prompted when spending skill credits to train a skill in stats panel.
  • You can now do more than 32767 attacks without causing attack animations to stop playing.
  • The Delete Char “Are you sure” window now defaults to No when “Enter” is hit .
  • Sends a close window message to the fliphelp window when logging out (which should stop the bug when being booted, or hitting shift escape).
  • Lugians and boulder now degrade at 64m, which makes it easier to see it from tossing range.

Misc. Game Fixes:

  • Items flagged “always lose on death” will no longer count against the number of items you are supposed to lose on death. So, no more death-item-proofing yourself!
  • Negatively enchanted items reduced their spellcraft to 0 during spellcasting regardless of the spellcraft value specified in data, yielding 100% resistance for all players. Oops! Fixed.
  • Double-clicking on parchment in corpse doesn’t grab it as expected — fixed.
  • When a spell drains exactly your amount of mana from you, the spell will be cast.
  • Portals summoned on top of players will now be created. (Players will still need to double-click on these portals to use them, avoiding exploitability.)
  • AIs are now restricted to moving no more 5m when giving an item to someone.
  • Collectors now slide along edges, not fall.

Misc. Minor Changes and Fixes:

  • The Drunken Madmad and Gilhud the Hermit are now working properly again.
  • Vivaina of Stonehold buys gems and jewels.
  • Underground City updated — festival lights reverted. Broken link fixed.
  • Fixed a wrong statement when making fruitcake batter. It said you failed when you really succeeded.
  • Deleted extra space in the Writings of Jhong Mia.
  • Festival lantern halos now toned down somewhat.
  • RockyCrypt portal is green, not blue.
  • Pedestals in libraries aren’t ethereal now.
  • Fixed a minor typo in the Arwic Tailor shop string.
  • Can see through sections in some dungeons — Fixed.
  • Greater Frog Crotch arrows were mislabeled — Missing “Greater” from the name.
  • Dungeon Mount-Lethe updated.
  • Dungeon Ancient-Lighthouse — Two duplicate doors removed, torch light intensity reduced.
  • Dungeon Crater-Caves updated.
  • Guardian Crypt — changed the height of some candles in this dungeon. Also updated to fix the see-thru hallway bug.