Nexus Improvements: Factions, Aspects, Bugfixes and More

[Kandarin]

The dev team has been hard at work making improvements to the game. Building on the success of previous patches, the team has turned our attention to improving a broad range of game features, with a special focus on the experience of leading and interacting with factions and a hard sweep of most remaining user-visible bugs. Work is ongoing on the upcoming new Breath and further improvements as needed.

The updates in the latest patch are:

Customization:
● Custom Aspects may now be bought via the Credit Store instead of having to manually go through an admin. You may now type in whatever aspect description you want (limit 500 characters) as your new aspect.
● Because we are no longer selling admins' time, the cost of custom aspects has been reduced from 600 credits to 400 credits.
● As with character avatars, if you purchase a custom aspect for your character you may thereafter use the credit store to edit it for free. Characters who bought custom aspects through an admin prior to this update will also be able to edit those characters' aspects for free.

Factions:
● Faction safes now have an additional set of Advanced options that break out the safe by category. You may view and withdraw items from your safe from the following categories: Ammunition, Weapons, Armor, Clothing, Components, Potions, Spellgems, and Other (all items not in the other seven categories). This is in a secondary pane under regular stronghold options; the legacy interface for accessing the safe remains in place for those that prefer it.
● Safe upgrades are now worth 20 additional safe space per upgrade (increased from 10). This applies retroactively, and factions that have purchased safe upgrades in the past will also get this increase to their existing upgrades.
● The capacity of Nexus safes has been set to 100 plus safe upgrades, effectively granting all safes 100 additional points of capacity. This means that new factions begin play with a 100-point safe and may raise it to 120 for 1 renown, to 140 for 2 additional renown, etc.
● New factions now begin play with a Leader-rank Bulletin Board.
● New Temporary Upgrades. These upgrades cost 5 Renown to purchase and 5 Renown per day to maintain. They are visible in the stronghold of factions that have them, and may be canceled at any time to eliminate the benefit and upkeep cost. Once bought, the benefit will last until it is canceled or the faction runs out of Renown to maintain it. The time that upkeep is deducted is set at 24 hours after the upgrade is purchased. Upgrade options include:
- Forge: Crafting and repairing that would require a Factory may be done in the stronghold.
- Gunsmithing Table: Guns may be repaired and guns and ammo may be crafted in the stronghold.
- Medical Bay: Healing actions in the stronghold will heal 5 points more than they otherwise would. This bonus is only applied to healing done with a First Aid Kit, Healing Herb, Stygian Bone Leech or Surgery.
● Faction Chatboxes now show the most recent 100 messages instead of 10. Talking in a Faction Chatbox now consumes Speech Points as per normal speech instead of Action Points, as long as you have Speech Points remaining.
● The five-faction limit on faction friendliness has been removed. Faction leaders may now set their factions as friendly to as many factions as they want.
● The faction levels required for a faction's stronghold location to be publicly visible have been lowered. Factions of levels 4 and above will now display the exact location of the stronghold. Factions of levels 2 and 3 will display the district and plane of the stronghold. Factions of level 1 will display the plane only.
● If your faction gets raided and 24 hours pass without recapturing your flag (at which point you may set a stronghold again) you will receive a message notifying you that your faction may now set a stronghold again.
● Faction flag collections now only display flags of factions that still exist and have not idled out. The information is still stored; if an idled faction returns, its flag will become visible once more.
● Likewise, Faction Politics pages will only show your faction's friendliness or hostility to factions that still exist and have not idled out. If an idled faction returns, it will reappear in the Faction Politics pages of factions that are friendly or hostile to it.
● The Homing Beacon short-term upgrade (which has never worked) has been removed.

Mechanics:
● Attacks with Spellgems now get familiarity bonuses for knowing spells of the same element as the gem, identical to the bonuses granted to spells cast from memory.
● Attacks now no longer have a random 1% chance to fail regardless of rolls and modifiers. The similar mechanic where all attacks have a random 1% chance to hit regardless of circumstances remains.
● The Wyrm Master's Acid Blood now grants immunity to Acid damage.
● All Pets are now on Defensive stance when summoned, with the exception of Imps summoned by a Wyrm Master with Interpose Thrall and Aethersprites, which remain Passive by default.
● Ghouls and Zombies raised by a kill by another Ghoul or Zombie and Skeletons raised with Infectious Blade now rise with their stance set to Aggressive to Hostiles rather than Defensive.
● Under circumstances where Aethersprites would attack, they now have a 20% chance of healing their master instead of attacking. This was previously a 10% chance.
● Users of skills and spells that deal damage to attackers now gain Kills (including Angel Kills and Demon Kills, if relevant) if a player character is killed by their ability. This includes aura skills and spells, spell turning, Acid Blood, and others.
● The damage type change granted by Harbinger of Conquest now applies to swords and melee weapons in addition to bows, much like the other Harbinger skills.
● Changing pet stances or dismissing a pet no longer unhides the master. Summoning or rejuvenating a pet still unhides the master.
● Blood Ice healing has been doubled from 10 to 20 HP.
● Soul Ice regeneration has been doubled from 5 to 10 MP.
● Demons are no longer exempt from the lingering power of Defiler Poison.
● The lingering power of Defiler Poison now wears off on your third respawn if you've been sufficiently unlucky as to not be able to heal it before then.
● Defiler Poison no longer halves the damage of the attacks that it is attached to.
● Enchanting items now increases the Items Repaired stat by one.
● Phylacteries now cost (Character level / 3) AP to use, identical to regular Lich respawns.
● Lava terrain now only doubles movement cost for ground travel; it can be flown over at the same AP costs as flight over regular terrain.
● Berserk Frenzy no longer blocks players from canceling Bloodlust.
● Unlocked an area-of-effect attack with Wing Shards. This attack deals base 8/80 (boostable with damage boosting skills) Piercing damage for 4 AP/10 MP.
● Stepping of the Stone cost has been revised to 3AP and 20MP (was 4 AP and 15MP).
● Bloodlust no longer has a Defense penalty.

Quality of Life and Interface:
● If you have Spellcraft, when browsing spellgems in the faction safe the gems will now be ordered by the name of the spell, not by gem color. This applies only to spellgems in the Spell category of the new Advanced safe pane.
● The game's anti-farming records of which character last fixed/broke power at a tile now expire every 24 hours instead of persisting forever.
● When your damage aura deals damage to a character or pet that is attacking you, you are informed of this and told how much damage your aura did.
● When a new character enters the Nexus, other characters in their location receive a notification that they have newly arrived in the world.
● Enchanting actions now tell you how much XP you gained for enchanting, what type of item you enchanted and what type of enchantment you placed on it.
● Guild rank displays have been made a bit more clear.
● Character message logs now store the most recent two weeks of a character's life (previously one week).
● Liches with Phylacteries and Conduits with Nexal Marks may now remove them at will, like Void Walkers can with Stones.
● Void Walker Stones are once again not consumed on use.
● The mention of a tile type in a location description is now a link to the wiki page for that tile type.
● Divine Heralds using Eye of Demon Tracker are now informed of how many (if any) of the demons they have detected are in a Stronghold.
● Eye of Demon Tracker now gives you a list of names and links to the demons that you have detected.
● Umbral Sword may now be used to write on rocks and walls.
● From character levels 1-3, search actions will be calculated as if it is daytime and (if the location is inside a building with toggleable power) as if the building has power.
● Masterless pets (such as Shambling Zombies) no longer have a chance of causing armor decay.

Major Bugs:
● Supplemental damage now works correctly vs. wards, fortifications, glyphs and doors. Affected mechanics include Martial Spellcraft, Tainted Bond, Aura spells, Cloak of Holy Radiance, Cloak of Inferno, Dread Gaze, Harbinger of War, Sulphurous Cloak and Magma Slam.
● Area-of-effect combat mechanics now correctly factor in and alter morality, fixing a bug that allowed Archons to lose morality for using Song of the Word.
● Fixed a bug that kept Illuminated from reducing defense by 10%.
● Fixed a bug that allowed Verdant Sling ammo to drop on the ground when fired at a door, ward, glyph, fortification or target.
● Petmasters joining factions now correctly bring their pets into membership in the faction with them.
● Landing on water while using flight skills no longer kills you and instead behaves as if you had moved into a water tile normally.
● Harbinger of Death, Harbinger of Conquest and Harbinger of Judgement now correctly change damage types when the target is a ward.
● Cloak of Holy Radiance now correctly changes damage type to Holy when attacking a ward.
● Characters who were both Invisible and Hidden now remain Hidden when Invisibility expires.
● Master Marksman now works correctly.
● Characters Hunted By a Revenant cease to be tracked if the Revenant successfully finds them and kills them.
● It has been long enough since the patch in which this change was implemented that we can say with a reasonable level of confidence that the bug that allowed Advocate Blessing and other area-of-effect status effects to frequently miss has been resolved. Please let us know in the bug reporting forum if you observe this bug again.
● The Dark Trick damage aura now works against pets.
● Cloak of Magma's Magma Blood lesser aura now works against pets.
● Forceful Punishment now works on wards, fortifications, doors and glyphs.
● When giving away, removing from a safe or removing from a footlocker individual pieces of ammo (single arrows, pistol rounds, etc) these now correctly combine into quivers and clips. However, for reasons that we have not yet been able to identify, you will not receive a notification when this happens.
● Fists of Holy Resolve now works against doors, fortifications, glyphs and wards.
● Cloak of Flame, Cloak of Water and Cloak of Holy Radiance now correctly allow ammoless archery vs. doors, wards, fortifications, glyphs and targets.
● The "Aggressive to Non-Allied" pet stance now correctly targets factionless characters and pets.
● Avatar uploading now works again. In addition, the avatar size limit has been increased to 300 KB.

Minor Bugs:
● Fixed a bug in which owners of named items (which cannot be destroyed) were regularly told that those items had been destroyed.
● Revenant transformations now tell you your correct current form when prevented from shifting forms by a current transformation.
● Angelic and demonic spellcasters now lose access to their spells when they fall outside of their moral range.
● Dark Heart attacks now inform the attacker and defender if the attack came with Defiler Poison or another form of charged attack.
● Manabiting a Potion of Planar Protection now grants the effect for 30 minutes.
● Holy Bulwark now correctly prevents MP drain caused by Focused Attack.
● Hex of Nullity and other spell-damage-boosting skills now boost the damage of autohit spells vs wards, fortifications, glyphs and doors.
● Factionless users of Scream of the Banshee and Channelled Trail may now target other factionless characters with these debuffs.
● Stepping of the World Gate no longer incorrectly makes guild shrines cost zero MP.
● Renamed Mystic Mail and Mystic Shield spells now correctly unlock Durability enchants just as learning the base spell does.
● Corrected a bug that allowed players to create factions while not logged into a character.
● Added additional checks that should correct a bug that caused some characters to be charged double AP to respawn.
● Mystic Mail now displays the correct soak values in activation text.
● Attack dropdowns now correctly show the MP costs for Agony Curse, Blood Curse, Cut the Silver Cord and Touch of Corrupted Loyalty.
● Healing characters through Sorcerers Might now informs you when you have cured the effect, instead of saying that you have reduced it by 0 minutes.
● Way of the Fast Hands now reloads Poison Pistols.
● Fixed a bug that caused credits sent to released characters to vanish into the void.
● If you are raised as a shambling zombie or a skeleton on a kill, the death message now says that this happened after you died, not before.
● Weapon Breaker no longer deletes weapons with a weight of zero.
● There no longer exists a nonfunctional button to demote faction Initiates.
● Fixed a bug in which admins editing a character sometimes accidentally deleted their personal description. The cause of the bug that sometimes tells character owners that their description was changed when it actually was not remains a mystery to us.
● Glyph Erasures no longer appear in the pulldown of spells that can be cast on oneself.
● The Tap Ley Line button now only appears in the interface if a Ley Line is present.
● Releasing a character now correctly despawns that character's pets.
● The button to activate Blood Frenzy now only appears if you do not already have Blood Frenzy active.
● Magma Slam now correctly applies supplemental damage.
● Unholy Strength works against wards.
● Defilers are no longer penalized in AP, MP and reduced damage for (uselessly) attaching Defiler Poison to an attack on a ward, door, fortification or glyph.
● Corrected a bug in which characters immune to a damage type were told they were damaged by an AOE of that damage type when they actually did not take damage.
● Illuminated now correctly prevents hiding and invisibility.
● Corrected a bug that caused Arcane Wells and other area status effects to have (non-existent) HP totals displayed if the status effect was in the same location as Glyphs.
● Corrected a bug that caused Cloak of Water to not give its hiding bonus.

[Nayru]

big!

[Sweedee]

@__@ Sweedee.
_________________
"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."
Albert Einstein

[Azure]

300kb Avatars Time for everyone to spruce up their avatars.
Also lol at more Redeemed bugs being fixed
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A Stinky Hobo (id=9592)|| METTATON (10068) || Tamamo (10358) || Feely (9584) || Goat Wizard (void 9585)

[oath2order]

I wish I had known about the faction safe upgrade two weeks earlier I just spent a load of renown to upgrade. We're now at 2300 so that's nice.

How much does the leader-rank bulletin board cost?

I absolutely love the temporary upgrades.

Very solid update, I quite like it.

[Kandarin]

[Telp]

[Nayru]

yeah, it's stepping of the stone ku

[Fremen]

Very nice, guys. Thank you!
_________________
Clara Barton | Bizarro Superman |
The Green Arrow | Tommy Lee Bones |
Katana | Dr. Strange |

[oath2order]

[Sweedee]

I note that Runeswords have dropped a point of damage. Why is that?
_________________
"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."
Albert Einstein

[Teksura]

[Dissident]

Somehow I didn't notice it but Azure oriented me to the most awesome thing this patch brought to the nexus.