Any and all suggestions and feedback is appreciated. I'm especially unsure about the way I categorized the news as well as the layout of the post. I know it's messy and I could really use some tips. Let's just say I dislike phpBB and I'm not very good at using it :)
Some of the early 2008 news are missing time stamps because 'last news' doesn't actually show all the news, only the first 500 or so.
- Gameplay Changes and Tunes
January-March
[Psionicist] Belannaer: Last subguild on caster side of Infecti has now 10 levels less.
[Mage] Belannaer: Damage type subguilds in Mage guild now have 7 levels each instead of 10.
[Mage] Belannaer: Players with old guild levels are entitled to free reincarnation.
[Coven] Zaltaiz: spell 'kinetic spike' is again available in the current coven guild structure, it can be found somewhere from the mastery levels.
[Mage] Zaltaiz: Mage spell damage was throughly tinkered with, the previous huge differences between damage types are now ancient history, and in process the overall damage went up. Hooray for mages!
[Monster] Moraq: The effect of stun on prestigious monsters was considerably lowered.
[General] Ginjeet: Explore now scores more exp than before.
[General] Ginjeet: Size now matters less when calculating stun resistance. On the other hand, high CON and determination help more to avoid stun completely.
[General skills] Belannaer: Leatherworking may now produce items with darkness on them.
[General skills] Moraq: Draw weapon should work better now.
[General skills] Belannaer: Changed formula for successful attempt in skinning to work better and less randomly at higher skill levels.
[Monk/General skills] Belannaer: Meditation now scales with player's own regens. Monks gain additional regen from hp and epregens, Infecti from pspregen and others from spregen.
[Monk sec]Belannaer: Players with levels from Requiem order now get small bonus from their epregen while meditating based on the amount of levels they have in the guild.
[General] Ginjeet: Maximum party size is now 9
[Ranger] Belannaer: Hold animal is now less effective on prestigious monsters and bladesinging drain less sp to upkeep it. Also fixed magic endurance blessing to work fully with it.
[Shapeshifter] Belannaer: Gaesati can now be vice-leaders in parties. If party leader is not a shapeshifter the vice-leading gaesati will act as pack leader in order to use pack tactics. Requires quit/re-enter for shifters and creating a new party to work.
[Army] Belannaer: Army vice leaders will now get party leadership if current leader dies and the vice leader is alive. Requires quit/re-enter.
[Archer] Belannaer: Bowery has now a low chance of making bows with magical stats.
[Psionicist] Belannaer: Melee branch of Psionicists has now max level of 60. You are entitled to free reincarnation if you have levels from the last subguild.
[Shadowdancer] Moraq: The guild of shadowlapdancers now has a maximum level of 60. Members of 'death from darkness' or 'nighthawks' can request a free reinc.
[General] Ginjeet: Diving just became considerably more deadly. You have been warned.
[General skills] Misrobo: consider now gives you an idea how hard a monster is compared to your best solo kill... maybe.
[Wilder] Misrobo: Wilders has been reduced to 60 levels. Wilders above level 20 who wish to remain wilders are entitled to a free reinc.
[Air Priest/Monk sec] Moraq: Blocked air priests from joining teh requiem order. It was supposed to be like that.
[General] Misrobo: "name" and "unname" now let you use the standard object selection syntax
[Combat/Weapons/General skills] Belannaer: Changed things around a bit in combat code, which aren't final yet. Wielding a weapon in 2+ hands gains now somewhat bigger bonus, small and medium weapons do not gain bonus damage from hit speed anymore and spears and polearms gain more damage bonus from riding.
[General] Belannaer: Alchemist potion drinking cooldown is now 5 minutes.
[General] Belannaer: Tell command now works while sleeping and meditating.
[General] Belannaer: Elder titles are now pretitles. If you have one and want it changed to pretitle drop me a tell.
[Templar] Belannaer: Staying too long idle in guard duty will now give you penalty to your total guarded time.
[General] Belannaer: "ICQ #:" in finger info has been changed to "Additional contact:".
[Coven] Belannaer: Coven dreams from secondary guild are now less effective.
[General] Belannaer: Sleeping indoors gives a small bonus now, although not as high as having a good camp and campfire.
[General skills] Belannaer: Help skill and spell now shows real ep/sp/psp cost values.
[Hive] Belannaer: Hive_cmd info now offers more exact info about the effects of the mutations. Requires quit&relog to work.
[General] Belannaer: There is a new road near Vaerlon and removed some obsolete ?'s from worldmap.
[Psionicist] Belannaer: Infecti should be now able to dispel inertia bubble from other people if they have probed the one to be dispelled. This can be performed even from range and even if you aren't the original caster of that discipline.
[Psionicist] Belannaer: Infecti can now join Requiem Order.
[General] (Tue Mar 18 2008 00:30) Conversion of 2008 on 3rd of May [http://www.icesus.org/Forums/viewtopic.php?t=1500]
[Monk] (Sat Mar 29 21:00) Belannaer: Monk guild item now has a lot higher armour that also scales with level. Requires quit/re-enter to work.
[Army/Ranger/Monk] (Sun Mar 30 13:16) Belannaer: Strike, Whirling blades and Motion of combat now cost less ep to use.
[Shadowdancer] (Sun Mar 30 14:57) Belannaer: Shadow strike now also takes less ep to use.
[Monk] (Sun Mar 30 15:32) Belannaer: Motion of combat now does more damage and loads runes faster, Offensive flow now causes smaller penalty to defence, Hand and feet maneuvers do more damage and hit faster, Monks now have caster version of haste.
April
[Monster] (Mon Apr 7 20:22) Belannaer: Monk npcs should now do same level of damage as they used to before monk uptunes.
[General] (Mon Apr 7 20:56) Belannaer: Maximum party size is now 15. This is meant to ease handling larger than 9 man eqparties until proper methods are implemented in conversion. You are only allowed to have 9 active party members in combat at any given time. Trying to circumvent that will be punishable. Requires re-creating a party to work.
[General] (Wed Apr 16 04:03) Moraq: Certain spooky place in the northeastern part of the valley finally got its explorable rooms.
[General] (Wed Apr 23 14:01) Belannaer: Number of prestigious kills is now listed in "kill list".
[Army] (Wed Apr 23 14:21) Belannaer: Passive natural armor bonus from shields now only applies to main guild army members. Effective after reboot.
[General] (Wed Apr 23 20:53) Belannaer: Marks will be visible in ranged weapons after boot.
[Mage] (Fri Apr 25 02:18) Belannaer: Mage spells now cost less sp to cast, a lot less, to bring them more in line with other guilds. Fully effective after reboot.
[Templar/Earth Priest] (Sun Apr 27 02:15) Belannaer: Divine rain of judgement now does sp rain when cast on psionicists. Sp rain also gives psp to psp users now. Essence of the nether now gives psp when it previously would have only given sp.
[Sorcerer] (Mon Apr 28 13:21) Zaltaiz: torment of marrow gained noticeable uptune, the effect now pierces all four elemental resists, the effect for one in right phase is also greater now
[General skills] (Tue Apr 29 20:22) Belannaer: Fishing and camouflage can be learned through use to up to 100% now.
[General] (Tue Apr 29 20:56) Belannaer: Pets and minions now report offensive area spells on alert channel.
[Mage] (Wed Apr 30 00:13) Belannaer: Suppress magic flow now allows mages to prevent critical fumbles.
May
[General] (Thu May 1 14:00) Belannaer: New gameinfo (Conversion details) [http://www.icesus.org/Forums/viewtopic.php?t=1511]
[Sorcerer/Earth Priest] (Thu May 1 19:58) Zaltaiz: unification guild no longer has dark elf requirement, and the requirements were made more humane thorough the guild
[Items] (Thu May 1 20:04) Zaltaiz: old celestial wraths no longer have the oldscool outdated alignement requirement, same will probably apply for the new gettable counterparts too laterz
[Sorcerer/Earth Priest] (Fri May 2 14:32) Zaltaiz: cost of phantasmal shroud was cut to almost half
[General] (Fri May 2 17:17) Belannaer: Resize cost now caps to 5 million. If paid with credit the credit tax is added to the cap cost.
[General] (Sun May 2 16:39) Game open again! [http://www.icesus.org/Forums/viewtopic.php?t=1515]
[Riding] (Mon May 5 18:06) Moraq: Mounted marksmen got a new skill. If you already have levels there and are unable to train it you can try whining to me.
[General] (Mon May 5 18:07) Belannaer: Typoing "join as profession" will give an error message instead of taking normal level after boot.
[General] (Mon May 5 22:34) Belannaer: Surnames will be visible in short description after boot or quit/re-enter. You can turn off your surname with set.
[General] (Mon May 5 23:01) Belannaer: Spells resulting in no message or effect are failures. Message is just bugging because of mage failure changes I did earlier. Will be fixed after boot.
[General] (Tue May 6 14:37) Belannaer: There is now a temporary 20 million training cap with single train/study to prevent a bug with high training costs.
[Ranger] (Tue May 6 14:47) Belannaer: Ranger lords now only require 2 of the 5 level subguilds completed, Protectors of Grahm now requires 3 of the 5 level subguilds completed.
[General] (Tue May 6 23:50) Belannaer: Herbs will no longer survive over boot if they aren't inside a herb container.
[Sorcerer] (Fri May 9 15:50) Zaltaiz: spell costs, casting times and training costs for all torment-type spells were lowered, and some slight changes to the formulas about how they work were made (no downtunes, just changes). All thank Fratom for the tunes.
[Coven] (Fri May 9 16:01) Zaltaiz: tinkered with coven main guild's spell maxes, you can now get higher % of fleeting images and weave dreams
[Sorcerer/Sorcerer sec] (Fri May 9 16:20) Zaltaiz: sorc masteries now work fully with secondary sorc abilities
[Sorcerer] (Fri May 9 16:35) Zaltaiz: sorc's ethereal form now gives a slight hp max bonus, similar to share blood, but not that big
[Wilder] (Fri May 9 20:10) Belannaer: Wilders no longer suffer penalties to healing.
[Mage] (Fri May 9 20:45) Belannaer: Ciloss mages now get Dorwyan dabus instead of dagger.
[Psionicist] (Fri May 9 22:14) Belannaer: Melee side of Infectis now gets strike from combat momentum if they are member of militia. Requires quit/re-enter.
[Psionicist] (Fri May 9 22:21) Belannaer: Melee side of Infectis now gets shadow strike from combat momentum if they are member of Gathering of assassins. Requires quit/re-enter.
[General] (Sat May 10 18:28) Moraq: Smith and channeler services should be around 33% faster now. Fully effective after reboot.
[Air Priest] (Sat May 10 19:09) Zaltaiz: for all you non airpriests too: rebalanced amber cradle and gravensong, also amber cradle now heals poisons if there is any such present, masteries also help a lot
[Earth Priest] (Sun May 11 14:02) Belannaer: Fixed my fuck up with earth priest guild levels at conversion. This results in most earth priest unable to train properly in first and last subguilds. Those people who can't are entitld to free reinc with lost df repaid.
[General skills] (Sun May 11 20:11) Belannaer: Trapping learnable max is now 100%.
[Wilder] (Mon May 12 17:18) Belannaer: Wilders should now get mortal blows from combat momentum. Requires quit/re-enter.
[Monster] (Mon May 12 17:56) Belannaer: Harpies near monk guild no longer notice sneaky low level players walking through the pass.
[General skills] (Tue May 13 22:14) Belannaer: Learnable max of skills is now visible in their help.
[Water Priest] (Fri May 16 19:14) Belannaer: Added new option to prompt that allows water priests to see the amount of drained life energy. Requires quit&re-enter.
[Psionicist/Monster] (Sat May 17 20:56) Belannaer: Certain prestigious undeads are now probeable since they definitely have a sentient mind that can be affected.
[Combat/Weapons] (Sat May 17 23:13) Belannaer: Using shields is now less effective if you have less defence points than attack points.
[Psionicist] (Sat May 17 23:29) Belannaer: Undead players are now always probeable.
[Psionicist] (Sun May 18 00:39) Belannaer: Infecti have a new mastery called 'Enforce entwined minds'. This mastery causes your critical psionic attacks to leap from probe to probe damaging all probed opponents when you crit one of your spells. Multiple criticals each cause their own leap. Require quit/re-enter.
[shapeshifter] (Sun May 18 14:20) Belannaer: Gaesati can now cast spells requiring somatic components while shapeshifted even if he's wielding weapons.
[Sorcerer] (Mon May 19 21:42) Zaltaiz: forgot to say, rebuild the way pierce effects were calculated in torment spells in case of prestigious mobs
[Archer] (Fri May 23 15:54) Belannaer: Shooting at wounded slots now considerably increases archery damage that scales by seriousness of the wound. Also increased effectiness of skills a bit.
[Coven] (Sat May 31 18:10) Zaltaiz: covenites now get slight percentages of 'magnetize' and 'delirium' at the last level of the mainguild
June
[General] (Sat Jun 7 19:28) Belannaer: Setting blind_access now stops you from entering water by giving you first a message that you are about to enter water after which you can enter it by going to that direction again.
[Army/Army sec] (Mon Jun 23 15:58) Belannaer: Rallying cry should work again after relogging or reboot.
[Air Priest/Items] (Sat Jun 28 16:46) Moraq: Downtuned gravensong, pthuule's iron wings and ancient chains of magik
July
[Psionicist] (Fri Jul 4 15:06) Belannaer: Psionicists can again join Militia of Graemor. Training at melee psi guilds were changed which might make you unable to train some of the skills there. If you can't train contact a wiz for free reinc. If some training maxes look odd let me know.
[General] (Fri Jul 4 16:41) Moraq: You can now set custom level for wimpy, by percent of health. See help for details.
[Monster] (Sat Jul 5 14:39) Belannaer: Monsters are a bit less resistant to physical damage now.
[Coven] (Mon Jul 7 19:36) Zaltaiz: coven changes: the old existing dream-branch content was merged with the current available structure, and ungettable skills and abilities are no longer trainable, the construction of dream branch will be on hold for now on. Some other content changes and balancing tunes were made thorough the guild, as well as new race bonuses were introduced, also avans gain spezial hidden (but very noticeable) bonus to dreamweaving. All current members will gain a free reinc.
[General] (Mon Jul 7 19:42) Zaltaiz: Also that was probably my last administrative task for foreseeable future, I will still be here and idle furiously, but for any daily administrative tasks, you should contact other wizzards. Tho if I ever find some free time, I might still do some suff "behind the scenes", as to speak.
[Monster] (Sat Jul 12 21:01) Belannaer: Green dragon's breath should now work properly with new resistances.
[Combat/Weapons] (Sat Aug 9 21:14) Belannaer: You can now actually counter-attack with two-handed weapons.
August
[Monk sec] (Wed Aug 13 12:25) Moraq: Monk secondary runes now take considerably less meditation to activate.
[Earth Priest] (Mon Aug 18 01:08) Belannaer: Earth priests now have their last minion called Herald of death.
[Items] (Tue Aug 19 20:27) Belannaer: Vampire blade is now slightly better in proper hands.
[General skills/Coven] (Wed Aug 20 14:42) Belannaer: Meditation now raises while meditating instead of when you end it. Coven's touch od destruction mastery now raises when you actually use the touch, not when you cast it to your wristbands.
[Psionicist/Monser] (Fri Aug 22 17:21) Belannaer: Fixed prestigious check in psychic probe that was bugging with some eq mobs.
[Mage sec] (Mon Aug 25 23:09) Belannaer: Elementalist's armor's healing effect does not work anymore for people who have it from secondary guild.
[Coven] (Tue Aug 26 16:43) Zaltaiz: first of the many coven changes expected tonight, mastery progression is now more visible, in form of absolutely gazillion of new mastery adjectives
[Coven] (Tue Aug 26 18:50) Zaltaiz: new string of coven (up)tunes, stupf in second last mastery guild got new boosts & gimmicks, the stuff in the final guild level now actually works, spells illusory doom, diet of wasps, venom needle are now cheaper to cast, allure is cost now almost nothing to cast, some casting times were tinkered with, still to come: few new spells and features to two final mastery guild levels
[Coven] (Tue Aug 26 20:27) Zaltaiz: covens gained 3 new spells: 'necrotic fields', 'silent scream' and 'paralyze', also the mastery guild requirements changed a little to reflect the new adj's
[Coven] (Tue Aug 26 20:27) Zaltaiz: also, the skills in mastery levels increased a bit
September
[General] (Mon Sep 1 13:21) Belannaer: House chest now may contain maximum of 100 items regardless what they are or whether they are inside other containers in the chest. Fully effective after reboot. Starting next boot houses/lockers/inventories/etc. may and will be ransacked by administration without notification if they contain absurd amount of items.
[General] (Mon Sep 1 14:02) Belannaer: Incense cases are now being sold in Cenedoiss' general store.
[General] (Mon Sep 1 15:21) Belannaer: Raised the house chest item count max to 200.
[Psionicist] (Tue Sep 2 11:59) Belannaer: Psionicists may not join airpriest secondary anymore.
[Shapeshifter] (Wed Sep 3 16:08) Belannaer: Shapeshifters have a new combat momentum now called Primalist's fury that can be triggered through furious assault.
[Monk] (Sat Sep 6 20:06) Belannaer: Body of steel now gives natural armor instead of physical resistance.
[Monk] (Sun Sep 7 20:26) Belannaer: Monks are temporarily closed for renovation.
[Monster] (Sun Sep 7 21:47) Zaltaiz: certain dark elven gentleman got a new toy, and when he leaves home, he takes slightly different toys with him than before
[Monster] (Sun Sep 7 22:38) Zaltaiz: a certain sleepy, hooded chick also gained a new toy
[Mage] (Sat Sep 13 13:45) Belannaer: Fixed hiccup with mage masteries. If you notice something odd let me know.
[Air Priest] (Sun Sep 14 20:19) Belannaer: Purgation's effect has been moved to Lesser purgation. Purgation now attempts to remove magical diseases from the target. New magical diseases can be seen in score now also.
[Scion sec] (Tue Sep 16 22:04) Belannaer: Atrophy, Gangrenous eviscerate and Reave defences from Scion secondary now have zero ep cost when used as a momentum.
[Army/Army sec] (Sat Sep 20 14:33) Belannaer: You can now set default strike style for strike that will always be used if you don't specify any style when striking. You need to re-set it every boot though. Requires quit/re-enter. Also updated army_cmd status to show same effects as score -e does.
[Shapeshifter sec] (Sat Sep 20 14:58) Belannaer: Stun immunity from tree form in gaesati secondary now scales with constitution and skills instead of working 100% of time. Psychic phalanx now gives limited resistance against stuns.
[Ranger] (Sat Sep 20 15:31) Belannaer: Changed how barkskin works. It doesn't now increase armor value of leather armors but instead gives natural armor based on all armor pieces you wear that are made of "living" materials (bone, cloth, heavy cloth, fur, chitin, cuir-boulli, leather, chitinium silk, dragonscale, demonhide).
[Sorcerer] (Sat Sep 20 18:34) Zaltaiz: torment things are now slightly less abusable against prestigious mobs, axe was heaviest with phys torment
[General skills] (Sat Sep 20 19:33) Belannaer: Magical defences now actually reduces the incoming damage instead of increasing it when you have high hpmax or defences. It is also now a bit more effective in general.
[Templar] (Sun Sep 21 15:38) Belannaer: Templar tools stack again on melee weapons.
[Army] (Sun Sep 21 16:35) Belannaer: Weapon grandmasteries reduce opponent's chance to dodge and parry. Applies only to the main guild.
October
[General items] (Wed Oct 1 23:27): Belannaer exclaims victoriously '1 Black orbs will self-destruct after boot * #1'!
[General] (Thu Oct 2 00:51) Belannaer: More detailed prestigious kill information is now gathered from prestigious kills you do. 'prestige information' will allow you to view it. Old kills are not applied so you need to go kill them again. Fully effective after reboot when prestigious monsters get updated.
[General skills] (Fri Oct 10 01:43) Belannaer: Shield punch and rush now trigger special hits from the shield if it has one. Shield bash now increaes their damage.
[Combat] (Fri Oct 10 01:49) Belannaer: Players will now never hit normally with their shield, except in some special cases (bonus attacks etc.). Experimental tune.
[Air Priest] (Fri Oct 10 16:57) Belannaer: Mend spells now have a chance based on Secrets of cleansing to try to cure diseases/poisons/other bad stuff if the target is affected by one of those. You need to actually know those spells for the effect to happen though.
[General] (Wed Oct 22 17:47) Belannaer: Added some new code to equipment code which shouldn't affect anything in anyway yet but if you notice something odd let me know.
[Templar] (Sat Oct 25 17:27) Belannaer: Tool of hard and swift justice are now about 50% more effective when the weapon's user is a templar. Blow of justice now scales a lot better with weapon's damage. Shield of faith reduces now a slightly more damage.
[Templar] (Sat Oct 25 18:06) Belannaer: Templars have a new skill called sword and board that focuses on using a weapon and a shield by increasing amount of hits with the weapon and increasing chance and amount of parries with the siheld.
November
[General] (Sun Nov 2 16:57) Belannaer: Flying (mount/race/spell/etc.) now allows you to use normal walk directions to move around.
[Shadowdancer] (Tue Nov 4 23:14) Belannaer: Shadowdancer slice now comes automatically when combat ends.
[Templar] (Tue Nov 4 23:37) Belannaer: Channeling elemental energy no longer gives piety, you need to actually use the elemental energy now to raise it.
December
[Coven] (Sun Dec 21 20:49) Zaltaiz: tinkered with arc
). Hopefully at least 2009 before this week is over.