Assorted Updates (3/16 - 3/24/07)

Sleep Spellcraft (from Fern)
Sleep spellcraft will tick off your target and you'll get attacked, if
the spell you've cast on them doesn't actually make them sleep.

Sphere Declaration Sac Guideline Table (from Fern)
Use information in help favor sacrifice table to guide you on the date
and alignments of sacrifices, as well as the impacts of doing so.

Small Score Addition (from Aelius)
You will now see a series of asterisks in your 'score' screen, on the
same line as your society membership information, which gives a graphical
representation of how much roleplaying fame/points you've accumulated.


New organization command: (from Aelius)

- "rankdel". Delete an organization rank, as long as there's nobody
assigned to that rank. Finally, get rid of all those "unused" or blank rank
slots.

- To remake a rank of the same number as the one you delete, use the rankset
comment: "rankset ". That will re-insert the rank
number and give it the specified name. All of rankset's other capabilities
still exist.

Some magic-related things: (from Aelius)

- Lowered the multicast penalty. You'll notice the stacked effects in a
multi-effect spell being more effective now, especially as you train
multicast higher.

- Use the "cancel" command to cancel spell affects that you have casted on
yourself. For example, if you cast reduce damage and want to cancel it,
"cancel reduce damage" will do the job. You cannot cancel effects cast on
you by others.

- Shield room works differently now: the number of points used to scribe the
spell will determine the mobs that can pass through, which is based on the
mob level. Higher mob level means more points in shield room are needed.

- You can no longer beacon into private (org-owned, etc.) Areas

Small modification to shops: (from Aelius)

- "sell list" when at a shop to see the item types that the shopkeeper will
buy. In a room that has more than one shopkeeper, "sell list".

Reduce Damage vs Elemental Shields

(from Aelius)

A change to the mechanics of reduce damage and elemental shields:

- Casting reduce damage on a player (or yourself) who already has an
elemental shield effect (with a spell as the origin) will no longer cancel
that effect. The reduce damage spell will fizzle out. The reverse is also
true: casting an elemental shield on someone with reduce damage (or on
someone with a shield of an opposing sphere) will cause the spell to fizzle,
rather than cancelling reduce damage.

The Favor of Chrona

An elderly man paused as he entered the town square, looked around with a
glint in his eye, then began to preach the glories of Chrona with a loud
voice that quavered with age.

"Declare this day your loyalty to the sphere of air, that Lord Chrona's
benevolence protect you from the ravages of stone, earth and clay! Avow
your fealty, forsake your affiliations and garments of Loximtr, and step
with the lightest of hearts into Chrona's sphere!"

A curious crowd began to gather, young and old alike, listening to the words
of the frail priest. Eventually a tall warrior stepped from the crowd and
nodded to the elderly man in agreement.

"Men, women, elders, yes, the venturers of you and more. Let your sons and
daughters grow into their decision in good time, but you - you who know your
minds, follow me and declare this day!"

Beaming, the man began to hobble west, leading his new converts to Chrona's
temple where they would make their formal declarations.

-=-

OOC: help favor for syntaxes, considerations, support commands. This is the
first stage of the Favor module. Naturally, this is available for all spheres, not
just Chrona...

Region Rename

The regional rename, stage 1, is completed. On the next world reset, you will be able to fly to the region's new names, as shown in help region rename. Website is next stage.

NO EXISTING KINGDOM NAMES ARE IMPACTED BY THIS CHANGE.

Organization Rosters

(from Aelius)

Any player can now view the roster for any non-hidden organization; you don't need to be a member to view a roster anymore (only members may view a hidden org's roster).

(as a side note, by this point, all the disabled prior updates have been rolled back in except nloot, coming back soon)

Ligeia's Creed

(from Muirdach)

Ligeia's Creed has had a little touch-up, and is now ready and waiting for those in the 400-ish level range. As always, please bugreport anything that I may have missed.

Wilderness mobs; training/scribing; drop/get/put

(from Aelius)
Some assorted changes:

- The way in which wilderness mob levels are calculated has been altered slightly, but not too dramatically.

- You can now access help files (using the normal 'help topic' format) while scribing a spell or training.

- Finally (and, in my opinion, most handily) you can now use the drop, get, and put commands with item types instead of item names. So in other words, 'drop weapon' will drop a weapon (if you have one in your inventory). 'Get container' will get a container that's on the ground. 'Put armor backpack' will put a piece of armor (the first one in your inventory list) in your backpack. Etc. Hopefully it'll make dealing with large amounts of objects easier.


(from Fern)
To help things out during this time of transition, the Waylander Society has hired hundreds of reliable lads to act as bankers. You may now safely deposit your spare coins at any nearby Waylander Rest, and they will be cared for.

Money Weight, auctions, banks

(from Aelius)

OK, a biggish change concerning carry weight and money:

- The weight of on-hand silver and gold (i.e. the money) has been increased rather dramatically. Now, don't fret: you'll still be able to carry a decent amount. But the totally unrealistic amounts have been cut down. Honest feedback is appreciated. Banks are your friends.

- On that note, a change to auctions that concern banks: if you don't have enough on-hand money when bidding on an item, the money will be taken out of your bank account instead. So no more running to a bank when an auction starts.

- Also in that vein, and to ease the stress of on-hand funds, you can use the new 'AutoDeposit' toggle to control where your auction winnings go. If you sell an item via auction with AutoDeposit toggled ON, the money will go to your bank. If it's OFF, it'll just go to your on-hand funds as usual. View the status of this toggle with 'config advanced'.