Patch Notes - 9th of June

[photek]

General

    * By popular demand we have added a new "Level up" sound effect.
    * Player Building tooltip displays correct predecessor information now.
    * Fixed some randomness in when you would see the tutorial popup flags.
    * Trading with another player will no longer cause traded items to appear in the incorrect inventory tab.
    * Removed the commandline to setting hotkeys since it was only intended to debug hotkeys before the GUI was there
    * The "usable items only" checkbox with traders should now work as intended.
    * The facemarking 'Freckles' should now work for new characters.
    * Minor issue with tradeposts and setting up items for auction has been resolved.
    * Corrected several animations for mobs as well as NPCs during cut scenes.
    * Increased the xp gained from group normal mobs and group bosses.
    * Players will now be able to experience the destiny event in the Field of Chiefs.
    * New voice over for some of the events in the Capture The Skull minigame.
    * More client and server crashes resolved.


Combat

    * Evadebonuses are now applied when you are being attacked from behind.
    * Players with Shield of the Risen will not be affected by secondary effects from combos.


Chat

    * If you drag a chat window with only one tab in it over the tab-bar of another chat window it will now be added as a tab to that window (inserted before the tab that the mouse is over in the "target" window).
    * When pressing enter the input focus will by default go to the last active chat tab rather than the selected "default tab". The previous behaviour can be achieved by checking the "Default Window" menu entry for one of the tabs.
    * Tweaked the areas you click to resize the chat window to make them easier to use.


GUI

    * Guild Feats: It should now show a scrollbar.
    * Buff icons no longer get stuck on after teleporting or talking to an npc.
    * Resolved a GUI related crash when clicking on the bank (broker).
    * Fixed an issue causing buffs placed outside the currently visible area of shortcut bars to still flash when ending cooldown.
    * Whisper replies now always go to the chat tab you sent the original message from, in addition to the tab that is subscribed to the "Tell" channel.
    * Added some missing class icons used by the team/raid GUI.
    * Raid leaders now have an orange name in the raid GUI.
    * Removed an unused hotkey (Show chat config).


Items

    * The weapons should now always appear sheathed in the character selection screen.
    * Potions: Fixed an issue with the stamina potion 'Old Redrouse', it will now get consumed when used.
    * The 'Nemedian War Flail' has been renamed to 'Nemedian Mace'.
    * The Rending Strike and Rupturing Strike proc from some equipment will no longer linger on the target indefinitely.


Tradeskills

    * Gemmed items should now work (giving bonuses) and viewing them should no longer crash the client.
    * Becoming a Woodcutter should no longer erroneously tell you that you've learned the 'Evading Roll' combo.
    * Harvesting: Script now keeps track of the persons that are using a resource node. This prevents the user from trying to use it twice and thus not harvesting anything at all.


NPC

    * Monsters 4 levels or higher will now correctly have increased evade and immunity chance.
    * Resource gathering npcs will now display the '?' over their heads when you have the goal and items to return to them.
    * Princess Akivasha now attacks back when attacked in Sanctum of the Burning Souls.
    * The encounters in the Armsman's Arena should be less chaotic.
    * Demonic Pict will no longer try to cast spells at players without being able to do so.
    * The Quest NPC's for the Frost Swamp, Imerian Ravine and Oasis of Zaara have been shuffled around in the Resource and Building playfields to make it easier for players to spot them amongst all the other tradeskill NPC's


Pets

    * Movement speed of pets have been increased both in and out of combat.


Playfields

    * The Armsman's Arena is now a private instance.


Archetypes

Mage

    * Contract of Protection, Protection of Set, and Runed Flesh now have 1 hour cooldown. While any of the three is active, the player will temporarily receive a 'Weakened Protection' debuff indicating if the maximum amount of absorbed damage has been expended until the shield refreshes.
    * The maximum damage Protection of Set and Runed Flesh can absorb before failing has been increased by 50%
    * The Archmage feat has been moved to the 2nd tier of the Mage general tree

Demonologist

    * The base splash damage inflicted by Fires of Gehenna has been increased from 10% to 30%
    * The base splash damage inflicted by Shockstrike has been increased from 15% to 20%
    * The base column radius of Hellfire Stream has been increased by 1 meter
    * Hellfire Stream and Shock have received a minor damage increase
    * Inferno of Amher and Shockblast have had their cooldown reduced by 0.5 seconds
    * The splash damage bonus of Discharge Shockstrike has been increased to 100%
    * Swift Shockstrike now additionally increases the damage of Shockstrike by 1/2/3/4/5%
    * Shock now has 35% splash damage, up to 3 targets and 3 meters from the primary target
    * Shockstrike and Shock have had their base chance to crit increased
    * The scaling of the Shock spell has been corrected, leading to a damage increase at most levels
    * The bonus of the Lingering Flames feat on the Incinerate effect has been increased from 30% to 250% at maximum rank
    * The casting time of Detonation has been reduced from 3 seconds to 1.5 seconds
    * Living Thunderstorm and Living Firestorm now correctly use a percentage-based manacost
    * Living Thunderstorm should now correctly appear in the hostile spells tab
    * The casting time of Infernal Knowledge, Diabolic Insight, Mark of Dagon, Shield of Infernal Flames, Abaddoron Warrior, Mystic Suppression, Cursed by Hell, and Cursed by the Heavens have been reduced by 50%
    * The beneficial effect of the Pact of Earth Walking spell has been increased from 200% to 400%
    * Pact of Earth Walking is now instant cast


Necromancer

    * Fixed a bug causing the available pet point indicator in the pet list GUI to sometimes show 0 points available rather than the actual number.
    * Spellweaving can be cast and cancelled normally now.


Dark Templar

    * 'Mystical Bane' combo: The damage dealt by the Incinerate Ether component of Mystical Bane combos will now correctly deal 50% of the mana burned to be consistent with other power burn effects.


Priest of Mitra

    * Revivication Feat: The healing effect granted by the Revivication feat will no longer fail to trigger if the Priest is level 65.
    * Condemnation now receives a partial cooldown if the spell does not complete channelling.
    * Purification procs will no longer incorrectly apply a cooldown to Condemnation.


Barbarian

    * Barbarian's should no longer be unable to attack or move directly after performing any rank of their 'Savage Rage' combo.
    * 'No Escape' combo should now always give you a cooldown when used and you will always get disarmed.


Herald of Xotli

    * 'Fire Lance' combo now only needs 3 attacksteps to execute so it can be triggered faster. The combo now also hits targets a bit further away than before making it more effective.


Conqueror

    * Combo 'Throat Slash' has been corrected to be a spear attack instead of a ranged attack.


Tempest of Set

    * Mark of Set now has the correct casting animation and effect for all ranks.

Quest

    * Updated quest journals of "Phoenix of the East" to reflect new position of NCP General Tatius.
    * Fixed animation problem where Arias could not decide to sit or stand during conversation.
    * Ninus and Si-Khu will reliably spawn when logging out near the Temple of Mitra.
    * The access quest for the Armsman's Arena revamped.
    * The Phoenix of the North: Resolved an issue with Mithrelle not standing up if not viewing the small cutscene.
    * Resolved an issue that forces quests to not update on zoning.
    * Wagon Wreck: Revamped with a new quest goal.
    * The Poisoned Cup: Revamped with more interaction with the objects in the quest.
    * The Curse of the Werewolves: Slight enhancement on quest targets.
    * Wolf Hunt: Slight enhancement on quest targets.
    * Greater Prey: Slight enhancement on quest targets.
    * Death to the Vanir: Slight enhancement on quest completion.
    * Finding Safe Passage: Revamped with a new quest goal.
    * Captives of the White Hand: Revamped with a new quest goal.
    * The Cheiftains Vengeance: Revamped with a new quest goal.
    * Wolves at our Throats: Revamped with a new quest goal.
    * Bartholomo's Wife will respawn more often, if you happen to kill her before required to by the quest 'The Awakening III'
    * It should be easier to deal with Renton's Corrupt Friends when doing the quest Awakening II
    * Sanctum of the Burning Souls: The boss drop 'Bloodtainted Hoop' will no longer end up in the quest inventory.
    * Field of the Dead: 'Fur of Bloodclaw' will no longer end up in the quest inventory.
    * Tarantia Noble: Improved these quests: Bloodroot, Concealing the Chinks, Purging the Fallen, Source of Contagion.
    * The Lurking Horror: The Area marker is now set on the map
    * Pool of Black Blood: Quest now updates when you kill the Lesser Black Ones as well.
    * The Slave Rebellion: Replaced radius with a fixed waypoint for one of the goals.
    * Fetching Fungi: A waypoint will now lead the way to Sanctum, and to the mushrooms inside.
    * Lifting the Curse: Waypoint will now lead you to the Sanctum of Burning Souls.
    * The Sinister Sepulcher: Orb is now destructible, and all the Undead Thralls in the area will update the quest.
    * The Black Skulls: Corrected some wrong waypoints.
    * Fleet of Mouth: Cycaelus has upped the difficulty. You now need to beat his record on half the time you needed before

----------------------------

General

    * Party members CONTINUE to show on the map after party disband


Tradeskills

    * Resource nodes become unresponsive if you are interrupted in gathering, either by being attacked or moving
    * Silk will not show up at the Trader, making you unable to buy/sell it. The same goes for Duskmetal, Feldspar and possibly other resources.


Game Options & Technical (Visual/Audio)

    * Some characters experience a weird animation bug when they stop running, as if the character doesn't animate the stop properly but flicks to the end sequence immediately. Swinging a weapon seems to fix this
    * If the Video setting 'Remove Foliage around character' is unchecked, it removes all the leaves on trees. Checking the box restores the leaves. Confirmed with: HD2600XT, X1950 Pro {Driver/OS unknown}, 8800 GTS 640MB (G80) {Vista Ultimate 64 SP1, driver XG 175.63}
    * Some players seem to experience being 'frozen' in-game, where their immediate environment will think they are at a null location or similar. May be related to game updating player location slowly and then 'catching up', or game thinking player is at an invalid location and NPC AI refusing to pursue (See posts by wolfheart & pigeyejames, page 15)


Player Characters

Necromancer

    * Mark of the Devourer now broken. Persists on target even after your death, causing you to res with aggro and be ganked by mobs at the spawn point


Undocumented features as of 09/06/08
General

    * The bug that prevented any type of mount from correctly adjusting your speed once mounted has been fixed. However there was no adjustment to the speed itself as the data containing that modification didn't make it through testing on time
    * As mounts are now moving at their appropriate speed the footsteps will also appear more often compared to what they did last patch
    * Rhino and Mammoth taunt/mating sounds only play once instead of twice
    * There have been no changes to how easy it is to get forcibly dismounted; however it is on the top of Sharum's agenda for today so rest assured that this is one issue FunCom is currently looking into. (Quote: Sharum, See later pages)
    * Party members now show on zone maps
    * Summon to Instance is now enabled
    * Experience to level has been slightly reduced
    * 'Crouch' ability added, allowing you to slowly move through others
    * Dance ability description in Skills & Abilities tab clarified
    * Tooltips are more friendly about not hopping off screen. It does, however, still occur occasionally
    * Hyborians now have underwater goggles (Read: Underwater swimming vision is now clearer)
    * Resting while afflicted by a DoT effect now properly sets you back into Rest position after taking damage from the DoT
    * Hyborians have all attended their annual rock climbing course, and no longer stop to ponder whether a pebble is too dangerous to climb


Game Options & Technical (Visual/Audio)

    * 'Ambience' sound slider in Audio Options removed.
    * Sound sliders in Audio Options changed from 0-100%, to 10-step sliders.
    * Particle Detail option added to advanced graphics at the bottom of the page
    * Bloom has been optimised to no longer cut performance as much (Need confirmation)
    * LOW settings seem to have been optimized; many users running low settings have experienced a positive FPS jump since last patch (In the order of 8 - 15 cirka).


Playfields

    * Caenna Village ressurection point now has a name, instead of a blank entry.
    * Some of the Hyborian Foliage has taken a vacation.
    * Line of sight issue in Atzels Fortress improved/partially fixed.
    * Some flora & fauna now appears gradually and not in chunks, for your viewing experience.


Items

    * Immunity values on items previously displaying 0.00% have been changed.


Player Cities

    * You no longer fall through the Guild City gates
    * The Barracks building no longer shows "Gate" as a requirement, displaying the correct requirement of "Library"
    * The Library building no longer shows "University" as a requirement, displaying the correct "Temple"


Tradeskills

    * Trade skill resource stacking has been improved


GUI

    * TextColors.xml in \Customized is no longer ignored by the game, meaning you can change text color.
    * Alt + Clicking on a Skill displays the amount of coin needed to reset it.


Archetypes

Soldier

    * Stance change incurs a 3 second cooldown.


Player Characters

Assassin

    * Soulshards now remain for a longer period of time.


Ranger

    * Leg hold trap symbol when placed is now red.
    * Rangers are immobilized for a brief moment after executing a combo. This only occurs after the final shot has finished charging; cancelling the combo before that moment will not immobilize you.


Herald of Xotli

    * Fire Lance reduced in stamina cost, damage and to clarify is now a 2-step combo (The patch notes state 3-step; this is still correct, as it requires 3 steps (1 - Initiate combo, then 2 hits). Reduction in damage seems to be ~25-40%


Guardian

    * Overreached reduced in power to be in line with intended behavior (120%) from being too powerful (200%).

[schild]

Despite the absolutely disturbing lack of guild city shit, I have but one thing to say.

WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING WITH LEATHER AND SILK?

Otherwise, this is good.

Oh, and this little problem:

The sun shines, birds fly, and assassins still can't wear light armor.

[NiX]

There's always Thursday!

[photek]

Holy crap! Invisible walls are removed and you can now walk down mountainpaths where previously you would have to jump and get debuff. Awesome.

[Alkiera]

Wait... did they Nerf the mage defensive rune spells?

'Cause, I know everyone was complaining about how uber hard mages were to kill.

[Pennilenko]

Wait... did they Nerf the mage defensive rune spells?

'Cause, I know everyone was complaining about how uber hard mages were to kill.

from what i can tell they improved em.

[Mrbloodworth]

Looks like a large chunk of the demo stuff went in.

Necros didn't get much love this time yet...i suspect thats for Thursday. To bad ill be up north for a business trip =(

[Rasix]

Wait... did they Nerf the mage defensive rune spells?

'Cause, I know everyone was complaining about how uber hard mages were to kill.

Remember who you're dealing with.  I think they just wrote the patch notes poorly. 

The change is that all of the mage defensive spells now have a 1 hour duration, 50% more to the total amount of absorption, and will indicate via debuff if the spell has run out due to absorbing the maximum amount of damage.  I'd be in the market for a mod that makes that debuff icon fill my entire screen.

The demo changes are a good start. But they're just a start.  The conflag tree is a much better just due to the splash damage increase, but that line still lacks some good "get this shit off me" style crowd control.  And if you're going to get wicked bolts, you're pretty much giving up your license to burniate.

[Alkiera]

Wait... did they Nerf the mage defensive rune spells?

'Cause, I know everyone was complaining about how uber hard mages were to kill.

from what i can tell they improved em.

I was mostly refering to this first bit here...

Mage

    * Contract of Protection, Protection of Set, and Runed Flesh now have 1 hour cooldown. While any of the three is active, the player will temporarily receive a 'Weakened Protection' debuff indicating if the maximum amount of absorbed damage has been expended until the shield refreshes.

Contract of Protection has a 5 minute duration, and a cooldown somewhat shorter than that.  On my HoX, I'm recasting it constantly, due to being a tissue tank.  Giving it a one hour cooldown means I'll have it for 5 minutes of every hour.  That would make it even less useful than my 25 seconds of slightly improved damage every 2 minutes in demon form.

Remember who you're dealing with.  I think they just wrote the patch notes poorly. 

The change is that all of the mage defensive spells now have a 1 hour duration, 50% more to the total amount of absorption, and will indicate via debuff if the spell has run out due to absorbing the maximum amount of damage.  I'd be in the market for a mod that makes that debuff icon fill my entire screen.

I hope you're right.  I'm not seeing the point in the mages so far... Apparently they decided to make magic-users rare by making them utterly craptastic.


In other news, my Ranger seems to have escaped this patch with no changes.  Yay.  Finally out of tortuga, and got some pretty nice equipment from the final quest there.  Cimmeria seems to have a pretty severe wolf overpopulation problem.

--
Alkiera

[Miasma]

Despite the absolutely disturbing lack of guild city shit, I have but one thing to say.

WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING WITH LEATHER AND SILK?

Otherwise, this is good.

Oh, and this little problem:

The sun shines, birds fly, and assassins still can't wear light armor.

As far as I can tell they don't like to acknowledge their dumbest mistakes and will just fix them without telling people, I am hoping it will be fixed this time.  And I thought the plan for assassins would be to have special silk armour for them, that would be cooler than light IMO.  It would have a bunch of +evade to make up for low armour value.

Note that the official post has been updated to indicate that gems, in fact, are still broken...

[Brogarn]

And I thought the plan for assassins would be to have special silk armour for them, that would be cooler than light IMO.  It would have a bunch of +evade to make up for low armour value.

I also find it pretty damn cool and hope that it is in fact the case.

[Miasma]

A thread trying to document all the hidden changes...  If the group's "summon to instance" thing actually does work that would be great.

[Lum]

I was mostly refering to this first bit here...

Mage

    * Contract of Protection, Protection of Set, and Runed Flesh now have 1 hour cooldown. While any of the three is active, the player will temporarily receive a 'Weakened Protection' debuff indicating if the maximum amount of absorbed damage has been expended until the shield refreshes.

Contract of Protection has a 5 minute duration, and a cooldown somewhat shorter than that.  On my HoX, I'm recasting it constantly, due to being a tissue tank.  Giving it a one hour cooldown means I'll have it for 5 minutes of every hour.  That would make it even less useful than my 25 seconds of slightly improved damage every 2 minutes in demon form.

These spells all recast their damage ablative shield (yes that's a technical term!) every 30 seconds, so that means you should only see the "weakened" debuff when it gets overloaded in combat. It'll refresh again in 30s. The biggest benefit of this spell (at least for necromancers, I suspect HoXs get a weaker version) is the defense value. Trust me, YOU KNOW when it drops as a Necromancer. Because you die. SPLAT.

I'm also 99.9999% sure that they are referring to a 1 hour duration, not cooldown, given that one of the chief complaints of the mage players was recasting their shields every 5m/having them drop in the middle of combat.

I'm a bit miffed that my Harold of Xotli didn't get a buff to his damage shield other than the duration, but I'll deal. I *might* go back to my necromancer, but... it's fun killing things with fire and a really big sword. Oh, and fire. Although reports have it that the IWin HoX button (fire lance) got an undocumented 25%-40% damage nerf along with the documented fixes. Oh well, not like anyone didn't see THAT coming.   

In other news, they also made it even easier to level. Oooookay then.

[apocrypha]

A thread trying to document all the hidden changes...  If the group's "summon to instance" thing actually does work that would be great.

We just tried that and still couldn't make it work.

However something has changed with movement and scenerey - getting stuck on molehills a lot less often now and also seem able to climb over mountains and hills that were impassable before, e.g. it's now easy to climb over the mountains between the south river and Zelata in the Wild Lands 

[Brogarn]

e.g. it's now easy to climb over the mountains between the south river and Zelata in the Wild Lands 

 

[cevik]

Contract of Protection has a 5 minute duration, and a cooldown somewhat shorter than that.  On my HoX, I'm recasting it constantly, due to being a tissue tank.  Giving it a one hour cooldown means I'll have it for 5 minutes of every hour.  That would make it even less useful than my 25 seconds of slightly improved damage every 2 minutes in demon form.

I'm sure they meant 1 hour duration (as per the demo/necro buf notes).

[vex]

It looks like they fixed helmet hair color.

[Abelian75]

I think they fixed a bug that was really irritating me.  Not sure if this was happening to anyone else, but previously if I talked to an npc several times in rapid succession, or several NPC's very quickly, all the textures would appear to be dumped and have to reload.  It looked like ass seeing low-res textures all over the place anytime I needed to accept multiple quests from a dude.  It doesn't seem to be happening at all anymore since the patch.

Also, conceivably related, it seems like the NPC popup I was getting is drastically reduced.  Any of the packs of NPCs in the major cities always loaded extremely slowly for me, so every time I ran by one of these packs I'd clip against invisible dudes for several seconds before they actually appeared.  Now these packs of dudes seem to appear pretty reliably well before I get to them.

[rattran]

Gem socketing is still very broken.

[apocrypha]

New problem for me, if I play and then quit the game I have to reboot the PC before I can play again or else I get 2-4 fps :(

Could this be something to do with the shader cache that things like that launcher app let you delete?

[fuser]

Still no options resize(scale/etc) the group window 

[photek]

Updated with undocumented patch notes. Will edit once more are found.

[Miasma]

Their QA really is amateur hour over there.  It's as though even the dev who does the change doesn't bother testing it out under normal conditions.

They fixed that minor bug which prevented you from getting anything if you clicked on a resource node while you were already harvesting.  That's nice.  However, if you get spawned on and attacked while harvesting (which happens all the time) that node often becomes completely useless, you can't harvest from it even if it is 100% full.  By the time we get home I imagine virtually all the nodes will be broken unless you are lucky enough to spawn into a new instance.

[squirrel]

New problem for me, if I play and then quit the game I have to reboot the PC before I can play again or else I get 2-4 fps :(

Same here, have to reboot.

[Sir T]

Tempest of Set

    * Mark of Set now has the correct casting animation and effect for all ranks.

GODDAM NERFS!!!  

[schild]

Their QA really is amateur hour over there.  It's as though even the dev who does the change doesn't bother testing it out under normal conditions.

They fixed that minor bug which prevented you from getting anything if you clicked on a resource node while you were already harvesting.  That's nice.  However, if you get spawned on and attacked while harvesting (which happens all the time) that node often becomes completely useless, you can't harvest from it even if it is 100% full.  By the time we get home I imagine virtually all the nodes will be broken unless you are lucky enough to spawn into a new instance.

Boy am I glad I harvested til my eyes shut last night.

[Kirth]

Their QA really is amateur hour over there.  It's as though even the dev who does the change doesn't bother testing it out under normal conditions.

They fixed that minor bug which prevented you from getting anything if you clicked on a resource node while you were already harvesting.  That's nice.  However, if you get spawned on and attacked while harvesting (which happens all the time) that node often becomes completely useless, you can't harvest from it even if it is 100% full.  By the time we get home I imagine virtually all the nodes will be broken unless you are lucky enough to spawn into a new instance.

The leather/silk thing is a prime example of them fixing something they didn't mention. Heres my attempts at the sequence of events:
1) game launch, all weaver and skinner items are grouped into the same item drop code or whatever, except cotton that comes from a node. This was evident from getting like higher level leathers off of prey mobs in PLS.
2) they fix the drops by adjusting the items to unique codes or whatever, In the process they make ALL leather and cloth previous to this unusable in any recipe. However these items still display as normal tradeskill materials, so buying them off the trader is a crap shoot if its pre patch or post patch. Also make cotton nodes un-harvestable.
3)Fix for cotton comes in, but now there are 3 separate categories of leather that I can tell (I have 3 separate stacks of rough leather, only one is usable.)

The only thing from the above sequence that was mentioned in patch notes was the cotton node fix. It wouldn't surprise me if nerfs and fixes for imbalanced things never get mentioned in the hope that when the outcry occurs Funcom will shrug and say "what? It was always like that..."

Also

* Monsters 4 levels or higher will now correctly have increased evade and immunity chance.

Is a pretty big leveling nerf since at the mid to late 50's your only questing options involve killing things 4+ your level.

[Kirth]

Also 2 minor things. One, I wish they broke the notes up into "Enhancements" and "Bug Fixes" and two being able to read the forums and not post while at work is killer!

[Miasma]

The leather/silk thing is a prime example of them fixing something they didn't mention.

Did they fix the old leather/silk being unusable?  I haven't found anything on that yet.

[schild]

Grey quests no longer give experience. IMO, this should've come with a warning so people could clear out their logs.

[Kirth]

The leather/silk thing is a prime example of them fixing something they didn't mention.

Did they fix the old leather/silk being unusable?  I haven't found anything on that yet.

Yes it is fixed. 

[Rasix]

Grey quests no longer give experience. IMO, this should've come with a warning so people could clear out their logs.

This change is ass.  Of course, apparently there is a 15% reduction in total exp needed to level kicking in (based on feedback from Kirth and Rattran) at some level, so maybe it won't hurt as bad. 

I got some good exp from mowing through gray quests in Khemi.    Going to have to be a bit more careful in going between Wildlands and Khop.  I don't care what they did to Connal's.  I'm not making that goddamn run between Connarch and the settlement unless I really have to.

[Venkman]

Grey quests no longer give experience. IMO, this should've come with a warning so people could clear out their logs.

Apparently there's some inconsistencies with this. Maybe it's the level of gray? Like a level 50 player won't get XP from a level 10 gray quest but still can from a level 30 gray quest? (just making up numbers to ask the question).

Regardless, I agree, it is ass. There's no point to it. So what if someone grinds to the endgame then does the quests?

Another question: there aren't any quests that require XP right? Like, could you still do your Destiny stuff even if the first X of it is gray?

[photek]

Undocumented notes updated :

General

    * Party members CONTINUE to show on the map after party disband


Tradeskills

    * Resource nodes become unresponsive if you are interrupted in gathering, either by being attacked or moving
    * Silk will not show up at the Trader, making you unable to buy/sell it. The same goes for Duskmetal, Feldspar and possibly other resources.


Game Options & Technical (Visual/Audio)

    * Some characters experience a weird animation bug when they stop running, as if the character doesn't animate the stop properly but flicks to the end sequence immediately. Swinging a weapon seems to fix this
    * If the Video setting 'Remove Foliage around character' is unchecked, it removes all the leaves on trees. Checking the box restores the leaves. Confirmed with: HD2600XT, X1950 Pro {Driver/OS unknown}, 8800 GTS 640MB (G80) {Vista Ultimate 64 SP1, driver XG 175.63}
    * Some players seem to experience being 'frozen' in-game, where their immediate environment will think they are at a null location or similar. May be related to game updating player location slowly and then 'catching up', or game thinking player is at an invalid location and NPC AI refusing to pursue (See posts by wolfheart & pigeyejames, page 15)


Player Characters

Necromancer

    * Mark of the Devourer now broken. Persists on target even after your death, causing you to res with aggro and be ganked by mobs at the spawn point


Undocumented features as of 09/06/08
General

    * The bug that prevented any type of mount from correctly adjusting your speed once mounted has been fixed. However there was no adjustment to the speed itself as the data containing that modification didn't make it through testing on time
    * As mounts are now moving at their appropriate speed the footsteps will also appear more often compared to what they did last patch
    * Rhino and Mammoth taunt/mating sounds only play once instead of twice
    * There have been no changes to how easy it is to get forcibly dismounted; however it is on the top of Sharum's agenda for today so rest assured that this is one issue FunCom is currently looking into. (Quote: Sharum, See later pages)
    * Party members now show on zone maps
    * Summon to Instance is now enabled
    * Experience to level has been slightly reduced
    * 'Crouch' ability added, allowing you to slowly move through others
    * Dance ability description in Skills & Abilities tab clarified
    * Tooltips are more friendly about not hopping off screen. It does, however, still occur occasionally
    * Hyborians now have underwater goggles (Read: Underwater swimming vision is now clearer)
    * Resting while afflicted by a DoT effect now properly sets you back into Rest position after taking damage from the DoT
    * Hyborians have all attended their annual rock climbing course, and no longer stop to ponder whether a pebble is too dangerous to climb


Game Options & Technical (Visual/Audio)

    * 'Ambience' sound slider in Audio Options removed.
    * Sound sliders in Audio Options changed from 0-100%, to 10-step sliders.
    * Particle Detail option added to advanced graphics at the bottom of the page
    * Bloom has been optimised to no longer cut performance as much (Need confirmation)
    * LOW settings seem to have been optimized; many users running low settings have experienced a positive FPS jump since last patch (In the order of 8 - 15 cirka).


Playfields

    * Caenna Village ressurection point now has a name, instead of a blank entry.
    * Some of the Hyborian Foliage has taken a vacation.
    * Line of sight issue in Atzels Fortress improved/partially fixed.
    * Some flora & fauna now appears gradually and not in chunks, for your viewing experience.


Items

    * Immunity values on items previously displaying 0.00% have been changed.


Player Cities

    * You no longer fall through the Guild City gates
    * The Barracks building no longer shows "Gate" as a requirement, displaying the correct requirement of "Library"
    * The Library building no longer shows "University" as a requirement, displaying the correct "Temple"


Tradeskills

    * Trade skill resource stacking has been improved


GUI

    * TextColors.xml in \Customized is no longer ignored by the game, meaning you can change text color.
    * Alt + Clicking on a Skill displays the amount of coin needed to reset it.


Archetypes

Soldier

    * Stance change incurs a 3 second cooldown.


Player Characters

Assassin

    * Soulshards now remain for a longer period of time.


Ranger

    * Leg hold trap symbol when placed is now red.
    * Rangers are immobilized for a brief moment after executing a combo. This only occurs after the final shot has finished charging; cancelling the combo before that moment will not immobilize you.


Herald of Xotli

    * Fire Lance reduced in stamina cost, damage and to clarify is now a 2-step combo (The patch notes state 3-step; this is still correct, as it requires 3 steps (1 - Initiate combo, then 2 hits). Reduction in damage seems to be ~25-40%


Guardian

    * Overreached reduced in power to be in line with intended behavior (120%) from being too powerful (200%).

[Slayerik]

Yeah, thats lame about the grey quest thing..  Reasoning...maybe they want to keep guys way high for an area out of the lower level dudes' way? With the amount of XP needed per level this isnt so bad really, but not sure how it will effect me in the 50s.