• Creatures that were within 5 levels of a higher difficulty band will have the wealth level of their loot increased. Some creatures have had the “quality” property added to their loot, and some group-oriented creatures will drop more loot.

• In addition to the three new types of armor, the spread of all armor in loot will be adjusted.

• The wield requirements on Covenant armor will be in bands similar to the wield requirements on weapons, and Covenant armor with magic defense requirements may be found.

• Attack and Defense modifiers will appear more frequently on weapons.

• Mana Conversion modifiers will also appear more frequently on casters, and the average Mana Conversion modifier will be adjusted upwards.

• You will be able to find Melee Defense modifiers on casting items, and Missile Defense and Magic Defense modifiers on all weapons and casting items.

• Casting items will have the ability to generate with Defender due to the above change, and will also have the ability to generate with the Hermetic Link spell or cantrips for any of the spells that can be found on them.

“Second-class” Weapon Upgrades

In the past, some weapons within a weapon class were just plain undesirable. For example, if you were a Mace user and you wanted maximum damage, there was no reason to look at anything other than a Morningstar. You turned up your nose at a Kasrullah.

In April, we’ll be making changes to bring the low-end damage weapons closer to par with the maximum damage weapons in each class. This is similar to the changes we made to bows and crossbows last year; however we are not necessarily giving all weapons within a class the same maximum damage. In many weapon classes there will still be weapons that have a lower maximum than others, but the difference will be much smaller.

No weapon class is having its maximum damage increased, and some classes are being changed more than others. For example, all three types of Unarmed Combat weapons had the same maximum damage, so they will not be touched. Weapons that are considered to be a “secondary damage type” – Rapiers, Spiked Clubs, Naginatas, and Warhammers – are not being changed, and we are taking into account the differences between hiltable and non-hiltable Swords and Daggers.

Buffing Improvements

The Buffing Changes article provides information on all of our planned buffing improvements and how they fit together. The first of these, faster self-buffs, is planned for April.

In April, all Creature and Life Self buffs will cast at the same speed as a level I spell, no matter what their level. This should cut down on the amount of time spent preparing for battle for players who cast their own buffs.

Fellowship Spells

As we have hinted in the past, we are introducing spells that can be cast on all members of a fellowship simultaneously. The first of these spells that can be cast by players are planned for April. We are taking it slow with these – they are only attribute buffs, and no more powerful than existing spells.

Vendor Buy-Sell Rates

Ever since the creature spawn changes, there have been some disparities between the difficulty of hunting around certain towns and the buy-sell rates of the vendors inside those towns. In April, we will be adjusting the vendor buy-sell rates in several towns.

The new buy-sell rates will be based on the difficulty of the surrounding content. You can see the difficulty breakdown in our Creature Distribution Map. The three capital cities – Cragstone, Hebian-To, and Zaikhal – were given special consideration.

In addition, to give each town some unique flavor, each town will have at least one vendor who has better buy/sell rates than the rest of the town.

These tables show each town’s new values along with its old values.

Newbie Towns (1 – 20)

Town Name	Old Buy Rate	Old Sell Rate	Old Max Buy	New Buy Rate	New Sell Rate	New Max Buy
Al-Arqas	90%	135%	10,000	90%	135%	25,000
Bluespire	40%	200%	100,000	90%	135%	25,000
Greenspire	40%	200%	100,000	90%	135%	25,000
Holtburg	90%	135%	10,000	90%	135%	25,000
Lytelthorpe	90%	135%	10,000	90%	135%	25,000
Martine’s Retreat	70%	190%	10,000	90%	135%	25,000
Nanto	90%	135%	10,000	90%	135%	25,000
Redspire	40%	200%	100,000	90%	135%	25,000
Rithwic	90%	135%	10,000	90%	135%	25,000
Samsur	90%	135%	10,000	90%	135%	25,000
Shoushi	90%	135%	10,000	90%	135%	25,000
Tufa	90%	155%	10,000	90%	135%	25,000
Underground City	90%	155%	100,000	90%	135%	25,000
Xarabydun	90%	155%	10,000	90%	135%	25,000
Yanshi	90%	135%	10,000	90%	135%	25,000
Yaraq	90%	135%	10,000	90%	135%	25,000

Capital Cities

Town Name	Old Buy Rate	Old Sell Rate	Old Max Buy	New Buy Rate	New Sell Rate	New Max Buy
Cragstone	90%	155%	100,000	90%	145%	100,000
Hebian-To	90%	155%	100,000	90%	145%	100,000
Zaikhal	80%	170%	100,000	90%	145%	100,000

Low Towns (20 – 40)

Town Name	Old Buy Rate	Old Sell Rate	Old Max Buy	New Buy Rate	New Sell Rate	New Max Buy
Al-Jalima	90%	155%	100,000	90%	155%	100,000
Ahurenga	40%	200%	100,000	90%	155%	100,000
Arwic	90%	155%	100,000	90%	155%	100,000
Baishi	80%	170%	100,000	90%	155%	100,000
Eastham	90%	155%	100,000	90%	155%	100,000
Glenden Wood	80%	170%	100,000	90%	155%	100,000
Khayyaban	90%	155%	100,000	90%	155%	100,000
Kryst	80%	170%	100,000	90%	155%	100,000
Lin	90%	155%	100,000	90%	155%	100,000
Mayoi	80%	170%	100,000	90%	155%	100,000
Oolutanga’s Refuge	90%	155%	100,000	90%	155%	100,000
Sawato	90%	155%	100,000	90%	155%	100,000
Tou-Tou	90%	155%	100,000	90%	155%	100,000
Uziz	90%	170%	100,000	90%	155%	100,000

Mid Towns (40-60)

High Towns (60 – 80)

Town Name	Old Buy Rate	Old Sell Rate	Old Max Buy	New Buy Rate	New Sell Rate	New Max Buy
Candeth Keep	80%	170%	100,000	80%	180%	100,000
Fort Tethana	90%	155%	100,000	80%	180%	100,000
Stonehold	80%	170%	100,000	80%	180%	100,000

Extreme Towns (80+)

At the moment, there are no 90+ or 100+ towns.

Applesauce and Potion Changes

In response to player issues regarding money macros, we will be adjusting the value of some items to decrease the effectiveness of these macros. These changes will also make it cheaper for players to purchase Mana Draughts, Mana Potions, Health Draughts, and Health Potions.

Dispel Spells

For information on the Dispel changes in April, please see the full-length Dispel Spells article.

The feedback on the suggested dispel timer for PK/L was very mixed. There was no clear majority either for or against. With that in mind, we’ve gone ahead with the changes that we feel best improve majority of PK/L combat: we’ve decided to implement the PK/L timer on dispels. If you have been in a PK/L action within the last 20 seconds, you will not be able to:

• Use a dispel gem.
• Use a dispel potion.
• Use the Awakener or Attenuated Awakener on someone else.
• Cast any dispel spell on yourself.
• Cast any dispel spell on someone else.

Once these changes are in place we will be monitoring them and their impact on PvP play.

House Purchase Timer

An issue that has resulted in a great deal of feedback is that of players camping houses solely for the purpose of resale and a profit. We’ve discussed two possible solutions in feedback threads within the last few weeks, and chosen to implement this one.

In April we will be introducing a one month timer on purchasing cottages, villas, and mansions. Residential Quarters will be exempt from this timer. This timer is per account, not per character. The timer does not extend across worlds. After reading through your feedback and discussing the engineering and social aspects of all of your suggestions, we’ve decided that this is the best solution currently available to us.

What does this mean? Once you purchase a house, you must wait 30 days before you can purchase a new one. If you own a house, your housing panel will tell you when you purchased it and when you can purchase a new one. If you do not own a house, your housing panel will tell you when you can purchase a new one.

It is important to note that this has nothing to do with when you lose a house, either through @house abandon or failure to pay maintenance. If you have owned a house for several months and abandon it, you will be able to purchase another house immediately. What you cannot do is purchase a house, abandon it less than 30 days later, and then purchase another house immediately.

Apartments in the Residential Quarters are completely unaffected by this timer. Buying an apartment neither checks the timer nor sets it.

Live Lore Events

Recently Morningthaw saw a live lore event, in which Antius sought out several players who had completed the Blackmire Temple quest. This was the first of a new type of live event. While we will rotate through the worlds for these events, each individual event will take place on only one world. These events will be described in lore articles on our website.

Content Revisions

We are revising two towns and two quests in April. Holtburg will be revised in the same way that Shoushi and Yaraq were previously. The portal drops and Lifestone locations will be made more convenient, and the surrounding content will be adjusted for balance.

The second town that we are revising is the Lugian fortress of Linvak Tukal. It will be getting a Lifestone and direct portal access, without the need to fight through the entryway.

Along with Linvak Tukal, we are revising the Arm, Heart, Mind quest. Confusing aspects of the quest timing will be fixed, and the quest rewards will be adjusted.

The second quest to be revised is the Little Green Seeds quest. Terese’s interactions and the Swamp Garden will be revised, and new types of seeds for higher-level creatures will be introduced. This doesn’t mean new colors of dye, however.

Envoy Policy Changes

The Inscription and Name Change policy changes will go into effect immediately. The Marketplace policy change will go into effect as of the April event.

• Inscriptions. The Envoys will continue to remove inscriptions which violate the Code of Conduct. Please use the Urgent Assistance button in your options panel to report these inscriptions. These requests will be low priority, so please be patient. Urgent Assistance should not be used to report inscriptions that do not violate Code of Conduct – requests reported in this way will be refused.
  
  Removal of other inscriptions will be done by Envoys when they are visiting a world. You will know that an Envoy is “visiting” if the Envoy is not wearing a helm and has a particle effect around him or her. If you see an Envoy visiting, feel free to ask him or her to uninscribe any of your items. In addition, the Envoys may schedule “Uninscription Parties” to be held in town Meeting Halls. These parties will be announced in advance on the Asheron’s Call forums.
  
  At these times, any inscription will be erased on request – the inscriptions will not be reviewed for content. We have read your concerns regarding this process but in the end have decided that the good outweighs the potential harm.
  
  In all cases, uninscribing items will be a lower priority than other Envoy tasks.
   
• Name Changes. Players of any level who feel that their name is in violation of the Code of Conduct can request a one-time name change at our Customer Service site. Only names that violate Code of Conduct will be changed. This program will last until June 1, 2004.
  
  After June 1, characters with offensive names will be investigated. Characters that are level 20 or greater will be referred to the Customer Service link above. Characters that are level 19 or below may be required to be deleted.
   
• Marketplace. Starting with the April event, we ask that all players move to a vendor stall in one of the outlying rooms. Players offering buffs or tinkers should move to a vendor stall or to the second floor of one of the outlying rooms. This is intended to improve Marketplace visual performance for all players. Envoys will have the authority to move players that do not follow these guidelines. This can include moving them out of the Marketplace into special rooms where they cannot interact with others.
  
  It is important to remember that the speech of all characters must abide by the Code of Conduct. This includes any text messages displayed by any unattended characters – Tradebots, Buffbots, and the like.

In Development

(These are the game changes that we are working on for the May event. None of these items are guaranteed to be added for May, as scheduling and priorities can change. Your feedback on these topics is particularly valuable.)

Content Focus

In recent months we have made a number of game systems and game balance changes. Now that we’ve finished many of these changes, May will see an increased focus on new game content – dungeons, quests, and items!

Allegiance Improvements

We’re investigating a number of improvements to Allegiances in general. Some of these include better controls on who can and cannot enter an allegiance (such as account bans) and allegiance officers with ban, boot, and message of the day abilities. Expect to see more information on this after the April event.

Treasure Changes, Phase 4

Very little of phase 4 will be visible to players – it is primarily back-end work in preparation for higher wield-req weapons. Please see the Treasure article for details

Content Revisions

In May we plan to revise town portal drop and Lifestone locations across Dereth. These changes will be similar to the changes you’ve seen in Yaraq and Shoushi so far.

We also plan to revise the Palenqual’s Living Weapons quest. This quest will be revised for balance and fun.

In Concept

(These are the game changes that we are thinking about for June and beyond. We cannot guarantee when – or even if – any of these changes will be added to the game, as scheduling and priorities can change. Your feedback on these topics is particularly valuable.

If not mentioned elsewhere in this Letter, topics listed as In Concept  in the March Letter to the Players Follow-Up have not changed status.)

Spell Stacking and Dispels

The feedback that we’ve received on our previous articles about Dispel changes has convinced us that we should look at changing the way multiple instances of the same spell “stack” on players. Should we and can we change this system?

If this system is changed, we may revisit the Dispel changes implemented in April.

Settlement Portals

After discussing several proposed changes, we have decided not to make any change to the Settlement Portals in May. We will still consider changes for the future, but will ask for your feedback before any implementation.

Content Revisions

In addition to the content revisions mentioned in the March Follow-Up, we have added the Gaerlan quest to our list of quests that we would like to revise. We added this to our list primarily due to player feedback and questions regarding various aspects of this quest.

There you have it – details on our plans for April and beyond. As always, we value your feedback on these topics.

In Development Follow Up  - From the Turbine Site

In our our April Letter to the Players, the In Development  section listed a number of changes that we are working on for May. We’d like to take this time to provide further details as well as describe some additional changes that we’re working on. We know you haven’t even had a chance to see the April event yet, but we’d like to start getting feedback on these topics while we’re still early in the May development cycle.

It’s important to remember that these topics are currently in development and not guaranteed for the May event. It’s quite possible that, based on your feedback or other factors, some or all of these topics could be delayed or removed altogether.

Allegiance Tools

We’re planning to give allegiances a number of new tools in May. Most of these are intended to make managing an allegiance easier. Here’s what we’re working on:

• Allegiance account boot: A command to boot all characters on the same account from an allegiance. The player running this command would most likely be informed of the number of characters booted, but not their names.
   
• Allegiance account ban: A command to ban all characters on the same account from swearing into your allegiance. Note that this would only ban them from swearing in, not automatically boot them. To permanently remove all characters on an account from your allegiance, you would need to do an account boot and an account ban.
   
• Allegiance chat kick: A command to temporarily remove a character from the allegiance chat room. This wouldn’t be a permanent removal – the character could get back in simply by toggling allegiance chat back on – but it would get across the point that the player’s behavior isn’t appropriate for your allegiance.
  
  We are currently working on general improvements to the chat system which, when implemented, will allow for better controls on the allegiance chat system. This is intended to provide some of that functionality until the larger changes go in.
   
• Allegiance officers: Allegiance officers would be initially designated by the monarch, and would have the power to run any existing monarch command: all of the broadcast and message of the day commands, @allegiance info, the ability to designate or remove other officers, and all of the boot, ban, and kick commands. They would not have the ability to change allegiance mansion or villa guest or storage lists. Allegiance officers also will not be able to boot the monarch.
  
  Allegiances would be able to have two allegiance officers. The allegiance officer position would replace the existing allegiance speaker position. For the sake of security, existing allegiance speakers would have their position removed during the May event.
   
• Allegiance house storage: All allegiance members would be able to open the storage in their personal homes to the members of their allegiance in one command, similar to the ability to add their entire allegiance to the house guest list.

Allegiance Bindstones

This is part of the Allegiance improvements, but deserves its own topic. There’s also a feedback thread focused specifically on this idea.

The idea is very straightforward: Allegiance monarchs would have the ability to tie to a stone in town in the same way that players tie to a Lifestone. Once the monarch has tied to the Bindstone, all members of that monarch’s allegiance could recall to the town through a chat command. We currently plan to place these Bindstones in or near town Meeting Halls, and we are going to move several Meeting Halls closer to the center of town. We don’t expect that all towns would initially have these Bindstones – most likely we will start with a small number of towns and increase them over time.

There are two goals driving this idea. We want to encourage players to gather in towns, and we want to provide monarchies that do not have a mansion or villa with a central meeting spot.

There’s one aspect of this plan on which your feedback would be particularly valuable. We would like to gauge whether monarchies that currently gather at their mansions or villas would start spending more time in towns if they had an additional gathering spot. If this is not a feature that would encourage housing-owning allegiances to congregate in towns, then we are more inclined to limit this functionality to those allegiances that do not own mansions or villas.

To help us resolve this issue, we’ve opened up a feedback thread here. It would be most helpful if you could answer the following questions:

• How do you decide where to socialize with your fellow allegiance members?
• If you could choose between gathering at your mansion and gathering in town, and both were an equally easy recall, where would you gather?
• In your opinion, how valuable is the central recall location feature of allegiance housing, in comparison to the other features of allegiance housing?

As of this writing, it is quite possible that this feature will not be ready for May.

Treasure Revisions, Part IV

In the April Letter to the Players, we stated that the Treasure work for May would be back-end and not visible to players. This is no longer true – we’ve found ourselves with the opportunity to improve treasure selection in several places.

Art Items, Casters, and Coins
We’re moving “art items” (mugs, plates, and the like) and casters into several loot tables where they previously did not exist. This will result in both being found in places where you could not find them before – for example, in May you’ll be able to find casters in the casino golden chests. This will make casting items – as well as certain types of salvage – easier to find.

In addition, we are removing pyreal coins from several loot tables, and replacing them with other items from the tables.

“Mundane” Items
This category covers all the “other” things found in loot – spell components, mana stones, healing kits, lockpicks, and potions. These categories of items have not changed much since the early days of Asheron’s Call, and the treasure revisions have only highlighted this.

To improve the situation, we will be adding new types of mana stones and potions, and low-level healing kits are being improved and renamed. Then we’ll be redistributing all mundane items across different levels of treasure.

Just as an example, here’s how the changes would affect the types of items you could find in wealth rating 5 treasure, intended for level 80+ characters.

In general, we’ve made existing items show up sooner and created new items to fill the gaps at the high end. You’ll note that there are no new lockpicks yet – don’t worry, we’re working on some ideas for interesting high-end lockpicks.

Ranged Attack Changes

We have two proposed changes for ranged attack users. One of these was previously mentioned as In Concept in the March Letter to the Players Follow-Up, the second is an idea that has been discussed but never officially added to the development schedule.

Speed / Accuracy Slider

Currently, the Speed / Accuracy slider for Bow, Crossbow, and Thrown Weapons allows the player to decide whether to attack more quickly at the expense of accuracy, or more accurately at the expense of speed. At the far left of the slider, the attack is fastest but incurs a 50% penalty to the player’s attack skill. At the far right, the attack is slowest but gives a 50% bonus to skill.

We would like to improve ranged attacks, particularly in PvP combat, by decreasing the penalty at the far left side of the slider. Our current plans are to lower the 50% penalty to only 40%. The entire slider would then scale evenly from -40% to +50%. Player feedback and further playtesting may cause this to change, watch for further details.

Projectile Physics

Another issue that we’ve seen for ranged weapon users is that their projectiles are quite narrow. For example, the size of the physics object on an arrow is currently about the circumference of the shaft. It is fairly easy for monsters or other players to dodge incoming attacks by moving a very small distance.

We are investigating increasing the size of projectile physics objects to make these attacks hit more frequently. We do not expect this change to be very large, but it should improve the ability of Bow, Crossbow, and Thrown Weapons users to physically hit their target. For example, we are considering increasing the size of the physics object on an arrow to be about the circumference of the base of the arrowhead. This would approximately double the width of the physics object. The calculations of evading due to Missile Defense will not be changed.

Negative Spell Timers

Currently there is a disparity in the length of negative spells across different levels. Level VI negative spells last for 8 minutes, while level VII negative spells only last for 4 minutes. We’d like to change all negative spells to the following times:

We are considering using these times for Life and Item negative spells only, and making all negative Creature spells last exactly 2 minutes, regardless of level. Negative Creature spells can be particularly annoying when cast by creatures, and do not directly increase damage when cast by players. We’d like to hear your feedback on this topic.

Healing Spells

Currently the Heal Self/Other and Revitalize Self/Other spells are in our opinion slightly weaker than they should be for their levels. We’d like to tweak them upwards slightly, as shown by the tables below:

Heal Other / Heal Self – Amount Restored

Revitalize Other / Revitalize Self – Amount Restored

Please note that these changes are only for these four spells, not for any other Life Magic spells.

Town Revisions

In the April Letter to the Players, we mentioned that we would be moving Lifestones and Portal drops closer to the center of towns. We’ll also be moving several Meeting Halls closer to town, as part of the Allegiance Bindstone content. In addition, we will be making the following changes to town vendors:

• Distribution of mundane items – see Treasure Revisions above – will be based on the level of the town’s surrounding content. The greater the level of the town’s surrounding content, the better the items that the vendors will sell.
• The scriveners in several towns will be changed such that the scroll levels that they sell are appropriate for the surrounding content.

Thanks for taking the time to read about some of our planned changes for May. As was already said, none of these changes are guaranteed for May. It’s entirely possible that they could be altered or delayed.

Please note that there is a specific feedback thread for the Allegiance Bindstone questions here.

Give us your feedback on these topics.