Nexus Improvements: Game Balance and Player Information

[Kandarin]

The dev team has still been busily working through the game code and making improvements. With less of a load of remaining serious bugs, we've been able to put attention toward the game's balance. We've applied what we've learned from the history of 3.5 gameplay to adjust the price or power level of many skills to be more appropriate to their costs and the needs of the game.

In addition, we have put attention toward the experience of the game and the information available to players. There are many pieces of information critical to your characters that players were required to clue out through meta participation, calculation, extensive notekeeping or careful attention to the wiki, which we believe that the game interface itself should simply give to you. This set of revisions makes many such things more clear.

We still have many improvements in mind, and plan to deliver at least a fourth patch between now and the launch of the Fifth Breath. However, the dev team will shift gears somewhat to new Breath content soon, and there will likely be a significantly longer time period between this patch and the next than there was between it and the last. We are still always interested in hearing about bugs or frustrating aspects of the game that we may improve them.

Changes in this latest patch include:

Skills and Mechanics: 

● The Void Walker's Stepping of the Corner no longer synergizes with Ether Stepping. Corner stepping from building to building now always costs 1 AP and cannot be halved. Ether Stepping only halves movement cost if a character is outside or in the Sewers. 
● The Infernal Behemoth's innate skill Hulking Brute now grants 2 points of HP regeneration per AP tick in addition to its existing benefits. 
● The Fallen may now use Bond of the Mechanical to reload Bullhorns. 
● The Void Walker's Stepping of the Stone now costs 4 AP and 15 MP to use. Stepping Stones are now consumed when used. 
● The Dark Oppressor's Agony Curse and Blood Curse have had their duration modified from 12 hours to 30 Status Ticks. 
● The cost of the Advocate's Holy Transfer has been reduced from 5 AP to 2 AP. Holy Transferred spells have double the duration of spells cast on oneself. 
● The Shepherd's Magic Prayer results "Spellgem Affinity" and "Transcend Spellgem" now grant 5 MP as per a Lesser Magic result in addition to their existing effects. 
● Within the Circus Carnivorous, anyone of any class or morality may use Explosive Murder as if they had the skill, including the 50% chance to explode on death if killed in the Circus. In addition, Pariahs with the actual Explosive Murder skill have a 100% chance to explode on death if they die within the Circus. 
● Accuracy enchants now increase weapon accuracy by 5% per enchant (increased from 3%). 
● Ghouls no longer steal HP on a hit. 
● The secondary damage type of Wheels of Righteousness has been changed to Piercing. 
● Mystic Mail now provides six points of physical soak and functions like armor soak, stacking with fortifications and other forms of non-armor soak. 
● Zombies summoned by the Sect of Maevel now do not target factionless characters of level 9 or below, or all characters of level 4 and below. 
● Judgemaster base accuracy has been increased by 10%. Soldiers of Might now changes their secondary damage type to Impact as we are taking away their swords now and giving them hammers of justice instead.
● Wights now cost 20 MP to summon or rejuvenate. Summoning Wights no longer requires a corpse. 
● Skeletons summoned by Liches with Bone Seeker have been revised thusly: 
- Hit Point total changed from 30 to 40. 
- Accuracy changed from 65% to 70%. 
- Primary attack changed from 11 Slashing damage to 13 Cold damage. 
- Added a 10 Slashing damage secondary attack. 
● The damage bonus from Strength potions now stacks with the damage bonus from casting Conjure Sinews. The are now two separate, if functionally identical, status effects and thus using one no longer stacks status effects with the other. 
● Speech point costs for speaking have been halved. Speech point regeneration per tick has been doubled. Halving of costs includes costs reduced by Blue Rose guild membership; however, this guild will not be returning in the next Breath as this update effectively grants its main benefit to all players. 
● Damage resistance granted by Affinity potions has been reduced from 100% (full immunity) to 75%. 
● Targeting of attacks on glyphs in the same tile as you has been expanded from only glyphs that affect you to glyphs one moral step away from you. Good and Evil characters may target Glyphs vs Neutral and Neutral characters may target all Glyphs. Good characters still cannot attack Glyphs vs Evil, nor may Evil characters attack Glyphs vs Good. This only applies to Glyphs on your location; it remains the case that only Protection glyphs against your alignment may be targeted from a distance. 
● While under the effects of Spellgem Affinity, the AP cost of recharging a spellgem is reduced from 3 AP to 2 AP. 
● When creating a custom spell in the credit store, there is no longer an option to make the spell findable. 
● Previously findable custom spells have been removed from the search tables and will no longer be findable. The dev team is looking into methods for custom spell buyers to acquire gems of the spells that they have bought in the future. 
● The list of demonic debuffs removable with Absolve Suffering has been expanded to include additional debuffs: Acid Burn, Choking, Doomblight, Drained, Exposed, Frightened, Lethargic, Phantasmal Terror, Plagued with Doubt, Weakness and Wytchfire. 
● Killing pets with defensive auras now counts toward the Pets Killed stat. 
● Within a Euphoria Asylum or Dark Sanitarium, characters with remaining Memories of a Past Life are now able to exchange them for new renames. 

Quality of Life and Interface: 

● When healing a character with Sorcerers Might active, the game now tells you how many minutes of Sorcerers Might they have left after the heal. 
● Characters may now view the current HP total of local Glyphs. 
● The targeting pulldown for attacking Glyphs now tells you how much damage Glyph Erasure spells will do to a Glyph. This does not yet extend to erasure spells cast from gems. 
● The skill and class buying screen now tells you how much CP you've already spent, so you don't have to calculate how much you have left to spend to be eligible for a higher-tier class. 
● Evil-aligned Tier 2 Angels (potential Fallen) and Good-aligned Tier 2 Demons (potential Redeemed) get an additional counter that tells them how much CP they have spent on their Tier 2 side's skills. 
● Shepherds with Absolve Suffering and Dark Oppressors with Curse skills may now view whether a character is Agony Cursed or Blood Cursed. 
● Characters with First Aid and Defilers with Poison may now view if a character is Defiler Poisoned. 
● Characters who lack Absolve Suffering but have First Aid and Sense Magic may now view if a character is unhealable due to Blood Curse. 
● Characters with First Aid may now view if a character is unhealable due to Sorcerers Might. 
● You may now see when another character in the location is Flying. 
● The Character page now displays how much Lore a character has found. 
● As a result of the Glyph targeting expansion, the attack pulldown now tells you the morality of the Glyph you are targeting. 
● The Shepherd's Prayer pulldown now defaults to praying for Magic. 
● Revenants using Eye of Death and other skills that use the Eye of Death pane are now notified if the characters they track are within a Stronghold. 
● Building fortifications is now an act broadcast to everyone in the room if done during a raid (more specifically, if done while the ward is not at maximum strength) 
● Destroying the last of a stronghold's fortifications is now an act broadcast to everyone in the room. 
● Stronghold safes and footlockers now show which items within them are enchanted. 
● All references to Orthodoxy have been removed from the game. 
● When viewing the character page of another player's character, you may now see their current melee and ranged Defense values if you are in the same location as them. Attack, Soak and Damage bonuses remain hidden for characters that you do not own. 
● When creating a character, you are now given the option of selecting your new character's gender. 
● When creating a character, you are given the option of being randomly assigned to a Faction, and given a choice between Good, Evil and Unaligned Faction alignments. You may also choose to be randomly assigned a Faction while not selecting an alignment. Factions are randomly selected from Open, non-morality-restricted factions of level 4 or above with a standing stronghold in Valhalla in which you do not already have a character. If you choose to start the game in a faction you will begin play inside the Stronghold of that faction. 
● When starting play as a new character, you will receive a piece of starting advice, the content of which depends on your choice of starting skill. 
● When starting play as a new character, you will receive a brief introduction to the world of the Nexus. Your choice of faction alignment and whether or not to start play in a faction will impact the wording of this message. 
● Finding a Potion now tells you what type of Potion it is if you have Sense Magic. 
● Characters with Enchant Item may view a list of enchantments on an item by mouse hovering over its name in the inventory. 

Bugs: 

● Eldritch Bond, Word of the Holy Light, and Steadfast Resolve now have activation messages, which they previously lacked. 
● Fixed a bug that allowed Void Walkers to go into negative AP setting stepping stones. 
● The game no longer erroneously displays "and a here" in the descriptions of strongholds that lack flavor upgrades. 
● Corrected a bug that caused Spiked Knuckles Piercing damage to override the Holy damage applied by Fists of Holy Resolve. 
● Reveal now correctly communicates to the formerly invisible person that they have lost their invisibility. 
● The Archon's Word of Recall now no longer brings your swimming or flying status into the stronghold. 
● The Infernal Behemoth's Bloodlust now correctly stacks duration instead of capping at 15 ticks when used with Rage Strike. 
● Corrected a bug that caused Horrid Tentacles to have a far higher defense value than they ought to. 
● Food and booze no longer display item quality in safes and footlockers. 
● Cups of Tea and other drink-based food items now show that they are beverages to be drunk, not eaten, and have correct use text. These items remain Food items in all other ways. 
● Wrathful Smite now works correctly against wards, doors, fortifications and glyphs. 
● Using forbidden damage types (e.g. Unholy as an Angel or Electric as a Demon) now correctly applies penalties to attackers when used against doors, wards, glyphs and fortifications. 
● Corrected an issue that allowed Monks of the Unbound Mind to extend the duration of Sorcerers Might and many other debuffs. 
● Corrected an issue that prevented Darksoul Cabal from offering its chance to prevent debuffs against many common debuffs. 
● Fixed a bug that allowed Sadistic Glee users to bypass aura damage. 
● Fixed a bug that allowed players to send credit messages anonymously by sending them while logged into an account but not a character. Credit messages sent without a character logged in now identify the account name of the user that sent the message. 
● Stepping of the Stone users in the Darksoul Cabal now correctly receive the Cabal's MP cost reduction when using Stones. 
● Resolved a bug that kept you from being notified when a glyph on your tile was dispelled by a character on a neighboring tile.

[Kylinn]

[oath2order]

[Kylinn]

[tremor3258]

[sithbob]

Good stuff!

[Shadok]

I knew this was coming and I'm excited to see it

Forgot it was due to come out so soon.
_________________

"Oh, sorry, thought I was in a Vault of Enlightenment, not someone's booze cabinet." -Kharn

[Nayru]

[Santril]

Hi everyone! I just wanted to bring you all down and say I'm really sad about custom spells being gone. As a natural freeloader, I never plan to donate - you can’t punch me through the screen, neener neener, neeeener - so I get super-excited at finding custom spells. I collect them.

A thing I do is give my alts specific projects, so I can feel like they're influencing Nexus history. If you've used the sewers, you might have seen my map. Santril is perpetually trying to fill a pad with the current - and past - locations of every stronghold I can find. My latest project was to catalogue variant spells.

If I find one I don't know, I use it on my guild mates, then compare it's stats with information on the wiki. That's how I learned Demonology was Thunderstrike! I also looked up the profile of every magic user I've encountered since I began playing, to see if they knew variant spells. If none of that worked, I just taught the spell to my wizard. It was really, mega-a-lot-of super-duper-ultra fun! I figured out Decapitation, Aurora Blast, Wall of Metal, Shooting Star, Hasheen Euthanasia, Sterlings Soccerball(sic), Dance of Misery, Silent Battlecry, L Wha Pwen G Nak Kata, Spider Lash, Thunder Rod, Spacial Rift(sic), Cursed Patient, etc.

And now the effort feels sort of . . . wasted. I know it was always going to get reset by the next breath, but still. As soon as I saw this announcement, I taught my wizard Demonology, to ‘preserve’ it for a while. Knowing I’ll never see another variant spell gem, I plan to teach my wizard all the variants I have.

Sorry for wasting so much space with this stupid post. Uhhh . . . The End.

[Kandarin]

The reason why it was possible to make custom spells findable was so that people who spent credits making custom spells would be able to get their special spells again after a breath reset. This is still a need, and we're looking into a number of possible approaches for making variant spellgems attainable for people who actually want them. We have no specific estimate on when that'll happen, but it's on our radar. Flooding the search tables of players who already have to memorize a complex and varied spell system was not the correct way to go about it.

An additional issue made it necessary to make this change, beyond the confusion of finding unidentifiable spells. Upon digging into the code, the dev team figured out how spell finding odds work. Every spell has a certain search weight that is factored in when finding gems, and some are more common than others. A weak, common spell might have a weight as high as 12 while a powerful, rare spell might have one as low as two.

Unlike how variant spell finding was thought to work, creating a variant spell inserted a new spell with a find weight of one. When enough variants were bought, this could a) significantly alter the odds of finding certain spell types and b) make it more likely to find a variant than a base. Thanatoid Gaze, for instance, had a weight of two (as the most powerful Death combat spell) and four player created findable variants. This meant that player manipulation was able to triple the odds of finding Thanatoid Gaze, and that you were twice as likely to find a player created Thanatoid Gaze variant as you were to find the base. This is not something that players should be able to spend money to do. To make spells usable, it was necessary to remove variants from search possibilities.

[RaelCleap]

I remember talk of; adding in tthe abillity to rename our attacks /spells in the upcoming Breath as a default function / option.

Is this still something that could happen?
_________________
“I'm a man of simple tastes. I'm always satisfied with the best.” ~Oscar Wilde
"Everyone loves to hate a good villain!" Dr. Cleaver

[Badziew]

[MerlintheTuna]

Bahahaha, very pleased to see the Circus and Bullhorn changes. I think I'm only half-sarcastic when I say that you're keeping your eyes on the important stuff. Because honestly, those little flavor bits are at least as important as the proper "balance" shenanigans at this point. The chassis is nice and stable these days.

The potion change is an interesting one. I was going to request some eyes on the ES's Master Marksman since the current bug of not working with enchanted weapons makes it deeply pointless for what a gun ES's theoretical capstone ability. But now that potions don't make you immune to damage types, it's really just for ignoring NCs or if you really want to kill an IB with a flamethrower. Which... *goes deep into thought*

But in general, immunity does seem like a thing that should be rare, and it's neat to see changes rolling out. Thanks again for all the hard work!

[Whytemeet]

The potion immunity patch is also impacting the HC cloak immunities
_________________
He-Man{6080} Spawn{6093} The Man In Black{6108} Michael Myers{6199} Alucard{6278} Whytemeet{6837} Nico Bolas{6980} The Dark One{7146} Batman{7310} Dralnu{7671} Yoda{9448} The Question{9618}

[Nayru]

you weren't in watercloak at the time you were tanking lich pets

as a note to merlin, when i tested it, master marksman wasn't working on adaption at all (let alone letting partial damage through)

luckily there was actually good and working bypass mechanics literally just below it, so it'll work as advertised soon