monday 16th patch notes

[Threash]

General

You should no longer do the loot animation while swiming.
The flame on the Torch of Eiglophian will now die after a while.
Now all spells can be casted with dagger and staff without problems.
When you train Basic or Advanced Riding, you will no longer be teleported
Fixed an alignment issue with quest indicators over quest NPC's heads.
Transition Quest Goal Markers have been updated to fit where the NPC's now stand.
Locking to raid instances have been fixed. All players participating in a raid will now be locked.
Fixed problem that would cause the resource manager to hang indefinitely if the client consistantly fails to download a resource.
Bonus spell damage now increases both minimum and maximum damage, instead of just maximum (average damage will remain unchanged).
Stat bonuses from items (strength, wisdom, dexterity and constitution) will now properly affect your character (Note that strength now directly affects your DPS, not your attack rating).

GUI

All Assassin abilities which stack multiple times now have a stack count in the buff GUI.
All Bear Shaman, Priest of Mitra, and Tempest of Set abilities which stack multiple times now have a stack count in the buff GUI.

Items

Hood of Jagged Barbs has been revamped.
Polearms should now be the intended size.
Added new purple rare drops to world loot.
Conqueror Spear should now look the right size.
Cimmeria hide light wrist should no longer clip with arms
Changed reference to Steelsilk to Gossamer Silk in the Full Trade Response.
Average, Fair, Fine and Superior Meat will no longer end up in the quest inventory.
Crafting Item: Renamed item "Bloodsilver-studded Boots" to "Bloodsilver-mail Boots"
The purchase price of vendor-bought alchemy reagents are now one third of what they were.
Hek'lar's Accursed Dagger will now appear with the correct icon in the player's inventory.
Fixed an issue with 'Darfari Armbands', they should be visible on female characters and have stats now.
Crafting Item: Skymetal-studded Wristbands and Bluesteel-studded Wristbands (rare) And should be different from each other.

NPC

Vistrix' Profanity debuff has been tweaked.
Ice Cave: Ice worms should now attack correctly.
Field of the dead: Dusk wolf should reset properly.
The Acheronian Warlord will drop bossloot armor again.
The trader in Lacheish Plains has been removed as intended.
Toirdealbach should now be a more fun and playable encounter.
The Catacombes: Necromancer Undead should now attack correctly.
The Champion of the Honorguard now uses its correct abilities again.
Ethi woke up with his height a bit smaller than what it was yesturday.
Villa Lentulus: Gurges the Nimble should react normally to players.
Yakhmar's Cave: Yakhmar should no longer get stuck if it cannot reach its target.
Kyllikki's Crypt: Kyllikki should reset properly when noone is in her hate list.
Khopshef Province: Freed Rogue Slave should now use his weapons correctly.

Mounts

Revamped translation so the blood is displayed relative to horse as well.
The targetting arrow should now be positioned correctly when targetting a horse, gorilla and Mtilator
You will half your chance of beeing knocked off the horse from the sides. You cannot be knocked off the horse if the attacker is standing in front of you
Monsters lower level than you will have a much lower chance of knocking you off the horse. Monsters higher level than you will have a much higher chance of knocking you off the horse.
Fixed a problem where advanced mount abilities were being given out by the basic training. Mammoth and Rhino owners - Please use /claim again. This will train the attack abilities associated with these two mount types.

Playfields

Purple Lotus Swamp: Ladders should now work correctly.
Tarantia Noble: Players should now be able to teleport into the arena by clicking on the door.
Tarantia Noble: The Arena in Armsman Tavern has been redone. If you are looking for challenging arena fights, you can do so either alone or as part of a group.

Player Cities

Player Cities will now have the Trader NPC now.
The stack-size of building materials has been raised to 1000.

Player Characters

Archetype

New buff counters were added to a number of mage and soldier effects.
All gathering feats should now have the correct proficiency suffix in their name.
The Goad ability can be trained and used on a NPC that does not have aggro on you. You must be in combat to use this ability.
The buffs from rogue general feats Concealment, Distraction and Mountaineer will now be removed from characters when they untrain feats.
You can no longer enter spellweaving when climbing or swimming. If you are hiding or crouching and enter spellweaving, you will leave that state immediately.

Assassin

Flesh Rot now applies a separate debuff for each player Lotus Weapons now now applies a separate debuff for each player.

Bear Shaman

Wreck Armor I+II+III combos now have improved visuals and sound.

Conqueror

You may now use Incite the Ranks if Fire Weave is running.
Throat Slash can now only be used with a melee weapon and not a ranged weapon.

Dark Templar

Soul Barrier's cast time has been reduced from 3 seconds to 1 second.
Changed the Cooldown of Unhallowed Blight III to 20s.
Changed the Unholy Debuff to be 5% on all combos. - Changed the duration of the debuff to last for 25s.
Reduced the Mana cost of the following spells by 50%:
Aura of Dread Fury (Ranks 1 - 4)
Aura of Infusion (Ranks 1 - 5)
Covenant of Pestilence (Ranks 1 - 4)
Covenant of War (Ranks 1 - 3)
Covenant of Death
Covenant of Invulnerability (Ranks 1 - 3)
Covenant of Vengeance
Drain Life (Ranks 1 - 5)

Demonologist

Waves of Flame now inflicts more damage each tick.
The animation for the Demonologist-spell Unholy Hate has been slowed down by 25%.
Resolved an minor issue with Demonologist spellweaving not affecting stamina potion effects.

Herald of Xotli

Resolved a issue with "Blood Pit" so it will always spawn if you successfully kill a minion with the "I Eat Your Heat" combo.

Necromancer

You no longer lose the Cannibalism spell when investing the second feat.
Vile Insight now gives the intended Unholy Specialization as reflected in the description.
Plauged Heart Curse will now correctly increase in damage with more feats trained.
Parasitic Soul Swarm now inflicts more damage each tick.
Pestilential Blast now has an additional skull visual.

Priest of Mitra

Revoled a problem with the priest of mitra spellweaving ability.
Repulse has had its base damage lowered slightly and contribution from bonus magic damage increased.
Cleansing Fire now has a slightly lower manacost and now scales correctly across all levels.
The damage bonus applied to Repulse, Cleansing Fire, and Lance of Mitra from Force of Will has been lowered to the correct amount.
The damage bonus from Improved Repulse has been significantly increased

Ranger

The buffs from ranger stances Shattering Stance, Piercing Stance, Fire Stance and Sniper Stance will now be removed from characters when they untrain feats.

Tempest of Set

Brutal Lightning Strike should no correctly increase the critical strike chance of Lightning Strike.

Tradeskills

Obsidian has been renamed to Feldspar.
Orichalcum has been renamed to Duskmetal.
Tigereye Gems will now end up in the resource inventory.
Skinning Trainer will now tell you were to get skins.
Your harvesting will no longer get interrupted by someone outside of the resource and building playfields.
Resource nodes can now always be harvested while their health is at 10%.
The Weaponsmith Trainer now gives the cooldown warning when the cooldown is in effect.
The dialogues of the Resource Gatherer Trainers and Crafter Trainers now check if the player has the appropriate feats set on them, in addition to quests. If the player has the quest to gather resources or craft, but has lost the feat that enables him to do so, the feat is now retrained (to the correct tier).

Quests

Dealing with Dila: Dila should now attack.
Hunting the Spider: Quest can now be completed.
The Lost Scouts: Waypoint to Dairmad was fixed.
Oasis of Zaara: Waypoints for quest were fixed.
In Defense of Beauty: Quest can be completed now.
Flowers of the Snow: The flowers way markers were adjusted.
Paetus and the Nemedian Crown: Waypoint for Armsman's Tavern was fixed.
Wanted posters should now give proper feedback if the player already has the quest or does not meet the requirements.
Rahim & Lord Camillus: had it's journal text modified, as he doesn't stand near the Armsman's Tavern.
Death to the Undead: Indicators for minimap were displaying to small. This has been resolved.
The Mark of Acheron: Players will now be able to experience the destiny event in the Field of Chiefs.
The Mark of Acheron: The Mark of Acheron is permanently removed when performing the Medallion Ritual now.
Soul Chamber: If you die in the soul chamber you now lose the tablet in your quest inventory.
Destiny Quest: The quest rewards 'King Conan's Tribute' & 'King Conan's Esteem' are no longer tradeable.
The Lost Bottles: Wine bottles will now have a blue flame indicating you can interact with them.
Tradeskill Quests: You can now delete all tradeskill quests but tradeskill progression quests.
Tradeskill Quests: Resolved various level requirement issues with the quests.


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[Venkman]

Stat bonuses from items (strength, wisdom, dexterity and constitution) will now properly affect your character (Note that strength now directly affects your DPS, not your attack rating).

Damn. No more roleplaying a Pict then.

[schild]

.....

I now have to rework every single one of my characters and their loot. Ironic since I just sold all my blue shit to wear crafted stuff. HUR HUR.

That said, I love doing that. So whatevs.

[Falconeer]

Player Cities

Player Cities will now have the Trader NPC now.

I should be happy, very happy.
But the double "now" makes me somewhat uncomfortable.

[photek]

Player Cities

Player Cities will now have the Trader NPC now.

I should be happy, very happy.
But the double "now" makes me somewhat uncomfortable.

Norwenglish.

I'm so glad I didnt throw away all my +wisdom gear, I knew they would fix it SoonTM 

[photek]

Just read through them again, fantastic notes. Spell stacking, stat fixing, minimum damage on spells affected by spell damage. Its all pro my lovely ToS !

[Lt.Dan]

"Bonus spell damage now increases both minimum and maximum damage, instead of just maximum (average damage will remain unchanged)."

Huh?

[schild]

SPECIAL MATH.

[Brogarn]

"Bonus spell damage now increases both minimum and maximum damage, instead of just maximum (average damage will remain unchanged)."

Huh?

Ok, good. I'm unfortunately at work due to an outage so I just figured I misread that... 5 times... due to being a bit worn down. I'm glad someone else went "Huh?"

[lamaros]

"Bonus spell damage now increases both minimum and maximum damage, instead of just maximum (average damage will remain unchanged)."

Huh?

2 to 4 + x = 2 to 4+2x

now

2 to 4 + x = 2+x to 4+x

Where x = 2

2 to 8, average 5.

4 to 6, average 5.

Ok?

[schild]

Yes, when you're working with such small numbers, that's how it is. But no one at high level works with numbers that low.

Now, this:

100 + 150, avg 125.

(100 + 40) + (150 + 40), avg 165.

Average changes.

[lamaros]

Yes, when you're working with such small numbers, that's how it is. But no one at high level works with numbers that low.

Now, this:

100 + 150, avg 125.

(100 + 40) + (150 + 40), avg 165.

Average changes.

Not good at maths?

100 to 150+80* Avg = 165.
100+40 to 150+40 Avg = 165.

* two times 40.

Of course the average changes when you add to the numbers...

[schild]

100 to 150+80* = 165.

See, having used items, it wasn't 150+80. It was 150+40. If they're adding that onto the min also, that's something else. But I'm fairly sure it was being done at half that.

[lamaros]

100 to 150+80* = 165.

See, having used items, it wasn't 150+80. It was 150+40. If they're adding that onto the min also, that's something else. But I'm fairly sure it was being done at half that.

Ah well, I haven't played it, I was just trying to post a reason as to how it could make sense given the patch note.

Put it this way then:

min to max +x = before

min + x/2 to max + x/2 = after

Edit: Whatever the case is, it makes sense as all they could be doing to changing the distription of the bonus between the max and min levels, not changing the bonus itself. They don't explicity state they are adding the full bonus to both parts where before they added it to one.

Of course, given other things, they might just suck as maths and be doing the latter without realising.

[Lantyssa]

 

You're arguing over Norwenglish.

[Kirth]

Player Cities

Player Cities will now have the Trader NPC now.

I should be happy, very happy.
But the double "now" makes me somewhat uncomfortable.

Sounds more hopeful then confidant...

[Abelian75]

I have a feeling that, one way or another, they suck at math.

[Tale]

Even gravity is different in Norway.

[photek]

I have a feeling that, one way or another, they suck at math.

No they fail at math.

Currently what THEY are sorta saying is that :

Default spell = 50-150. You get +20 damage, it goes 50-170. You get 100 damage, it goes 50-250. Which seems correct.

So they are saying minimum spell damage will be increased so it will be :

Default spell =50-150. You get +20 damage, it goes 70-170. You get 100 damage, it goes 150-250. This makes average damage increase, BUT then they say average damage won't change.

So that means they have to lower the maximum spell damage of the spell? This is MADNESS. 

EDIT: MADNESS?!? THIS...IS...NORWENGLISH!!!! *Funcom kicks subscriber base into pit of nothing and says "Find out yourselves motherfuckers, like everything else"*

[Venkman]

Did they get the math wrong or the grammar wrong?

[Viin]

I thought they were saying they'd decrease the min and increase the max by the same amount to get the same average damage. So you can hit harder, but you can also hit softer depending on how the dice rolls? Weird. That must not be right .. edit: it does say "increases both" so I would guess that 'same average damage' is incorrect and they meant 'same damage SPREAD'.

[photek]

I thought they were saying they'd decrease the min and increase the max by the same amount to get the same average damage. So you can hit harder, but you can also hit softer depending on how the dice rolls? Weird. That must not be right ..

No I think that's wrong. The thing now is spells like Lightning Strike at higher level have damage range for something like 369-953. So you often crit far lower than you sometimes hit and the solution is to up the minimum damage of spells so it will be more consistent damage range.

[lamaros]

I thought they were saying they'd decrease the min and increase the max by the same amount to get the same average damage. So you can hit harder, but you can also hit softer depending on how the dice rolls? Weird. That must not be right ..

No I think that's wrong. The thing now is spells like Lightning Strike at higher level have damage range for something like 369-953. So you often crit far lower than you sometimes hit and the solution is to up the minimum damage of spells so it will be more consistent damage range.

Ah well, I haven't played it, I was just trying to post a reason as to how it could make sense given the patch note.

Put it this way then:

min to max +x = before

min + x*y to max + x*z = after

Given they've said damage wont change overall then you'd assume that y+z=1.

"Increases" doesn't mean anything specific like what you guys are saying. If I have 100 spell damage and I add 99% to the lower end and 1% to the upper end then the spell damage increases both. Or I could add 3% to the lower end and 4% to the upper end. Or 100% to the lower end and 100% to the upper.

It's not necessarily bad maths or english, it's just entirely vague.

Which is not really a surprise given half the stuff they don't even mention in the patch notes?

It shouldn't be hard to test to see what they're actually doing to the numbers. Though given the large variance you've described you might need to do a bit of it if the tooltips aren't reliable.

[NiX]

Even gravity is different in Norway.

Hold the fucking phone here. They ALL do that annoying "Uhhhh" thing!? I'm never visiting Norway.

[Signe]

Even gravity is different in Norway.

Hold the fucking phone here. They ALL do that annoying "Uhhhh" thing!? I'm never visiting Norway.

Eh?

[Lakov_Sanite]

any word on undocumented changes?

[Mrbloodworth]

any word on undocumented changes?

They have yet to be documented, if ever. 

[schild]

any word on undocumented changes?

Necro tree was completely redone.

http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=88313

[Brogarn]

Necro tree was completely redone.

http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=88313

That kinda pisses me off.

[schild]

They really need to turn on free respecs.

[Brogarn]

Ya. Like, now.

[Morfiend]

Starting to really piss me off that HoX is averaging one half assed Feat fix per patch. We have so many feats that are broken. And at the same time ToS is just destroying everything in their path, and they got a buff this patch.

[Venkman]

Yeesh, they need to put back in pre-20 respecs at all. At least you have a path

But yea, even WoW gives free respecs when they partially, much less fully, redesign trees.

In other news, this patch is all sorts of slow-ass. I was hoping to do Final Battle before closing... bleh!

[Brogarn]

In other news, this patch is all sorts of slow-ass. I was hoping to do Final Battle before closing... bleh!

Bah! I hope that's not the case for me when I get home (nothing personal). This is the first time I didn't bother logging in remotely to patch from work because they're usually pretty fast. So, I didn't bother. Plus, my UPS is down and there were thunderstorms expected today and I didn't feel like risking it.

[Venkman]

Yea, I finally gave up. Will try again tonight. I'm sure it's just because it's patch day. Like, tomorrow it'll be fine (or after midnight).