f13.net forums - Release Notes

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Of Special Note
There’s been a major re-write of monster pathing. AI should now be much better at navigating obstacles. More path planning improvements to come!
New Quest Iconics have been created to help distinguish between regular/hard quests and normal/epic quests
Epic Quest Rings are on fire
Hard Epic Quest Rings are on fire and have an eye floating above them
Normal Quests are as before
Hard Normal Quest Rings smoke
Class-specific quests have been added for each Class - speak to a trainer at Level 15 for details!
Gameplay
The distance that monsters chase players before giving up has been slightly reduced.
Activating Craft-resource tracking skills will no longer break a player out of stealth.
Reduced the amount of item wear many of the Burglar and Hunter skills will cause. In some cases, skills which should not have caused wear did, and this has now been addressed.
Monsters who would not attack you if you were not stealthed will no longer turn toward you if you are sneaking nearby.
Skills
Made the following revisions to the Captain’s skills:
The description for “Command: On Guard” now reads: "You command one of your companions to be on their guard, increasing their chances of parrying attacks. A Captain can only issue one Command to a companion at any given time."
The description for “Command: Relentless Attacks” now reads: "You command one of your companions to attack relentlessly, allowing them to critically wound with their attacks more often. A Captain can only issue one Command to a companion at any given time."
“Command: Make Haste” has been renamed to “Make Haste”
“Hands of a Healer” has been renamed to “Escape from Darkness”
“Revealing Mark” now returns 15% of the damage dealt to the target to the attacker as morale.
“In Harm’s Way” now functions as described.
The description for “Muster Courage” now reads: "You are able to renew the courage of your nearby companions, removing all existing fear effects from them."
The descriptions for all of the Captain’s Cry skills now make reference to “a worthy foe” as opposed to just an “enemy,” since defeat response events do not key off of trivial monsters.
Some Guardian skills are now granted at different levels
Vexing Blow moved to Level 6
Whirling Evansion moved to level 14
Bash moved to Level 10
Induction Changes have been made to compensate for faster monster attacks:
Setback from Hits has gone from 1sec to .7sec
Setback from CritHits has gone from 1.5sec to 1sec
Setback from Parry/Block has gone from .25sec to .2sec
Your weapons will now stay sheathed when you use the following skills
"Track Mines"
"Track Crop"
"Track Wood"
Hunter's Rain of Arrows skill has a greater cool down time.
The magnitude of the Burglar's Trick 'Disable' debuff increased significantly and its duration decreased. Recovery times on Tricks were also increased slightly.
The Burglar's skills, such as Surprise Strike and Cunning Attack, that are enhanced when made while Sneaking will now enable auto-attack. However, they will only do so if they successfully execute. Previously, this was disabled to prevent accidentally breaking out of Sneak unintentionally.
Skills that aren't supposed to aggro monsters will no longer do so when you miss or they resist the effects.
Guardian skills that use a shield for attacks should now be showing the correct damage and damage type in examination, e.g. "Shield Blow".
The stealth provided by the Burglar skill "Hide In Plain Sight" is no longer broken by damage.
Executing a harmful skill that doesn't require a selection will no longer redirect to select nearest foe, e.g. Guardian "Sweeping Cut."
Fixed a bug that was preventing some area-effect skills from correctly acquiring all valid targets.
Traits/Accomplishments
Killing trolls in the Misty Mountains will now give you credit for the Troll Slayer accomplishment.
Fixed a bug that was allowing the client to show Characteristics and/or Traits that were removed from the game. This was resulting in odd behaviors when trying to slot/unslot Traits.
Ruins of the Trollshaws accomplishment is now completable.
Ost Crithlac now only shows one map note
Bug Fixes to several class accomplishments:
Shield Expertise does not advance nor bestow when Shield Blow is used.
Deflected Blows now gives the correct instructions to advance the Accomplishment.
Two of the Burglar's Class Accomplishment's were misnamed; this has been fixed.
The Cunning Wound Accomplishment will now tally and can be granted.
Only the three Lore skills "Burning Embers," "Cracked Earth," and "Gust of Wind" will now bestow/advance the Advanced Lore accomplishment.
User Interface
Result text when adding and removing players from friends and ignore list is more informative.
The maximum number of targets and recovery time of a skill are now accurately displayed in tooltips. Previously, benefits from traits were not included.
Some effects were not displaying the effect of traits in their tooltips. That is now fixed.
Tooltips of skill items now shows details about the skill.
You can now inspect other players by selecting the "inspect" option from the player context menu.
Added rotation buttons to the inspect and dressing room UIs.
You can now rotate your character in the character journal.
You will now see people's LFG and Roleplaying status in the tooltip over their avatar.
Fixed a bug where examining certain traits/skills could crash your client.
The walk key now works as a toggle.
The shift key now splits stacks. Hold shift and drag the item to split the stack. This resolves the conflict with the dressing room key (control).
The toggle quantity button works once again in the stack UI.
Stable Masters will now show up on your mini-map.
Selecting the nearest fellow member has been remapped (from HOME to F8) and selecting the nearest player has been remapped (from END to F9). These mappings are temporary until our final keymapping cleanup pass.
Dungeon maps now have a nicer overlay and the fog of war has been re-enabled on many dungeons.
Skill cooldown durations are more consistent with timer countdown durations.
Bankers now have map and radar icons!
NPC and item usage icons reflect their true use (instead of always being "the hand".) Please note: Turbine was never telling you "talk to the hand"... some data was just set up wrong
Opponent vitals won't display "0/0" anymore.
ESC closes a lot more panels now.
New improved social panel with resizing. All lists have similiar information...
Chat
Choosing "Start IM Session" from an avatar CSM (on the opponent panel or after the player is selected in the 3D world) will actually start an IM session with that player.
You can no longer create or drag chat windows off the screen.
With the new integrated chat, we've removed the hotkeys for "Chat Window 1", "Chat Window 2" and "IM Panel"
Toggling the options for IMs from the options panel now creates or destroys the IM tab in the chat window.
Global channels are now separated based on which instance of the zone you are in (i.e. you are no longer able to talk to post-raid Archet visitors while being a pre-raid Archet player).
Crafting
You now keep your common professions when changing vocations. If you were an Explorer with Prospecting tier 4 and you change to a Jeweller, you will keep your Propecting tier 4.
Added a number field next to the make button on the crafting panel. This is how many of the item you would like to make. It defaults to the max number you can currently make based on the ingredients available.
Campfire Materials are now sold at the craft provisioner.
Mid-level rare craft tools no longer grant the 20% crit chance increase. Added higher lever versions of rare craft tools which offer increasingly better crit chances when crafting. The very best (high level) craft tools are the only versions that allow for the 20% crit chance.
Old tier 5 recipe scrolls have been removed from vendors and new recipes have been added in their place.
Added tier 2 to tier 5 tailor recipes to vendor.
Cooking: All crafted foods now have minimum level requirements for useage.

Tier 1 - minimum level of 1
Tier 2 - minimum level of 10
Tier 3 - minimum level of 20
Tier 4 - minimum level of 30
Tier 5 - minimum level of 40
Scholar: All crafted scrolls can now be stacked in inventory (Maximum stack quantity: 20)
Scholar: Updated the descriptions on many crafted lore scrolls to more closely match the effect they produce.
Scholar - Metalworking, tailoring, weaponsmithing, and woodworking lore:
Changed tooltips to display the effect as a percent rather than a decimal.
Changed duration on all scrolls to 60 seconds.
Adjusted the critical chance %'s for all tiers. The increases to critical chance %'s are now:
Tier 1 - 2%
Tier 2 - 5%
Tier 3 - 7%
Tier 4 - 15%
Tier 5 - 20%
Farmers:
Fixed spelling error with "Roper's Twist Field"
Corrected naming issue with "Yellow Onion Seed"
Cooking: Corrected the display name of "Vegetable Medley"
Prospecting: Changed category for While Gold Ingot recipe to "Refining."
Forestry: Added descriptions to the five forestry resources found in the world.
"Mallorn Wood," and all Mallorn ingredients, items, and resources, have been changed to "Black Ash Wood."
"Mithril Ore," and all Mithril ingredients, items, and resources have been changed to "Ancient Iron Ore."
The Oven craft facilities now have physics.
Items
All yellow and purple items should have icons now.
Bows now exist for Hunters which will lower the threat generated by damaging monsters with range skills.
Fixed some instances where clothing was not appearing correctly on Hobbits.
New headwear added: Brimmed hat and Cowl
Greatly reduced the cooldown timers on potions. Also reduced the usage action induction time.
Renamed the Curing potions to be lore appropriate.
Uncommon and rare bows that shorten the induction time of some hunter skills have been introduced into treasure.
Neekerbreekers no longer drop hides.
Map Home is now sold at the provisioners until a better solution is introduced in a later update to the game.
Deft Gauntlets & Peerless Gauntlets were incorrectly classified as headgear. They are now properly identified as gloves, and equip to the Hands inventory slot.
Money on corpses now appear as lootable items for all those people who want to click on their money earned off the blood of others
Hard-earned blood money is now shared among fellowship members within the same range as experience sharing.
Graphics/Animation
Water Surfaces have gotten a major upgrade. In addition to base visual improvements, water now has multiple levels of reflective quality: Off (standard refractive water), Low (reflect sky only), High (reflect sky, landscape, and objects up to a certain distance), Very High (reflect sky, landscape, and objects at a far distance), Ultra High (reflect sky, landscape, all visible objects, and take advantage of anti-aliasing).
Ambient Trout now animate correctly.
Avatars will no longer play random emotes when swimming.
2-handed axes should now sheath properly. Please report the name of the weapon if you find your weapon not sheathing properly!
Sheathing Animations have been hooked up for the remaining races.
Updated the Horse network animations
World
Many, many places where players could get stuck or pass through walls have been fixed.
Exploding Walls in Barrows should now stay open properly when the player leaves the area and returns.
Boars in the Eastern Lonelands are now a little tougher.
Players should be able to ride a horse now from Michel Delving to Hobbiton.
Added vendors to the alliance camp in the Trollshaws.
You should no longer be able to jump on steep uncontrolled surfaces.
Large maps (like the Great Barrows) will appear in the map panel once again.
Modications have been made to the Earthkin Camp in southeast Nan Amlug East to mitigate camp aggro issues. In addition to these changes, the Earthkin living in the hills surrounding this camp no longer threaten before attacking.
A new Orc POI has been added to the ruins of Meluinen. Quest targets that originally sent players to the Kingsfell Orc camp from Lin Giliath have been moved to this new location.
The radar maps for the eastern areas of the North Downs have been updated.
The heightmap near the ruins of Glirost in the Fields of Fornost has been modified to prevent players from getting trapped beneath them.
The number of available treasure chests in the Great Barrow instance has been reduced.
Rubble in the Meluinen Troll Cave has been moved to prevent players from getting stuck in the dungeon.
Various locations in the terrain that allowed players to scale over and beyond area impassables have been modified to prevent this.
Character Creation
Miscellaneous changes to the look of chargen.
When picking a race, press the new button to play a movie!
Naming Guidelines have been added to Character Generation. These are based on Race, Gender, and Nationality. These guidelines are intended to encourage names that "sound" like "real" Middle-earth names, not actually generate "real" names.
New skin, eye, and hair color choices for all avatars are available according to their nationality.
Miscellaneous
You can no longer "sit on" people with /sit. It was so rude!
Some lower level monsters have had their aggro ranges reduced or have been changed to not aggro at all.
Friendly combat-capable guards have been placed in a few towns in Bree-land and the Shire, as well as at Ost Guruth and Trestlebridge. These guards are intended to prevent trains from entering safe areas.
Orc Rope bridges (like those found at the western pass into Nan Wathren) should no longer ignore player cameras.
Quests

General:
Added a Show History button to the Quest UI. You can now see the past objectives of any selected quest.
The Ready To Complete checkbox should be the same in the quest tracker and in the quest journal.
When a quest is trivial, the radar will no longer show an icon for that quest.
Specific quests:
Picking up the sand, gypsum or stone for the "Sprung a Leak" quest causes the item to disappear.
Candaith has been paid for his efforts on Weathertop and will now escort the players along their path up the grand hill.
The “Orc Thieves” quest in the arc that follows the trials of the Ranger Candaith is now set to level 19 for difficulty.
The shade referenced in “Cursed Men of Cardolan” is now correctly identified as Baradrhoval in the quest and on landscape.
Crebain eyes dropped as part of the quest “Terror in the Sky” are now correctly referred to as Gore-crow Eyes
Killing Jagger Jack will no longer tell you that you have found some poison. You already knew that.
“A Dwarfs Duty” now only requires you to collect Dwarf Axes. You were already going to need to kill off the Dwarves anyway.
Following the story of Golodir is now automatically bestowed as you pass through the quests.
The quest “Reclamation” should no longer display the words "Fix Me:" in their quest text...cause we...fixed that.
Updated a tooltip on the necklace found as part of the quest for Daegwalt.
War Master Uzzor is still eager to fight, but he takes a bit longer to gather himself back to the battlefield.
There were a handful of objects on Weathertop that said, "delete me"; these items have been deleted.
An orc was saying something along the lines of <stringtableerror toke:=0X09734kh0h>. We didn't get it either, so we made him stop.
Orcs of the Blood Mountain is now a fellowship suggested quest. That is all.
“Elders in the Shadow” was terribly, horribly broken. Those responsible for breaking the quest have been sacked.
The poison used in the “Greater Responsibility” arc no longer has a description that it is false.
It will no longer rain when you run up Weathertop...that is only meant to happen in the instanced space.
There will no longer be a floating cloud of smoke at the top of Weathertop. If you didn't see this before the change...whew!
The quest to retake Weathertop should no longer display any Fix Me text. See...we fixed it.
The tooltip on the letter you get from Thomas Thistlewool now references Falster Fox...as it should have all along.
Quests have been updated to reflect new monster names.
The quest text of “Terror in the Sky” now refers to the proper monster.
The quest text in the Epic book 2 was updated to reflect the correct monster name.
Garjarpan will only spawn one at a time now.
Fixes to the Red-maid Altar in Garth Agarwen.
Fixed several problems in “Stopping the Siege” quest.
There was an extra set of dialogue for Men in Jon Brackenbrook's completion dialogue for Assault on Archet that contained errors. This has been removed.
You no longer will have two "False Poisons" when you start the "A Critical Strike" quest.
The Trollshaws and Misty Mountains quests now have quest loot.
Made a pass on quest rewards for low level characters.
Removed some invisible barriers from “Frodo's Burden.”
“Blackwold Valuables” is now properly gated by completion of “Treasure in the Web.”
“Touch of Corruption” is now properly listed as Fellowship-recommended.
Certain quests in the Shire Epic Prologue now properly give XP and money rewards.
The Ancient Emblem should now properly drop as part of 'The Will of the Iron, Part II'
Fixed a problem with some Fellowship quests showing up under the Solo filter in the quest journal.
Stopped Quest Items from disappearing while in combat (again). Quest Items should always be glowing if you have an active quest event for them.
The respawn rate of mushrooms in the Old Forest for the “Wood-cutter's Tale” quest has increased.
“Question the Prisoner:” Billberries? There's no such thing as Billberries. They're called Bilberries.
Halbarad in the “Defence of Trestlebridge” is a man, not an elf.
Changed respawning behavior for lilies in the quest “Lily's Secret.”
Quest event text for “Arthedain's Lost Brethren” and “The Shattered Past” quests have been standardized with item counts.
Fixed the odd ... associated with the Aurochs Fur in the “Preparing for Winter” quest.
Injured and sleeping NPCs in Ost Guruth should no longer turn to the player who clicks on them.
Book 3 chapter 5 now makes it much more clear that a fellowship is required for the quest.
The quest “Provisions for the Glade” was missing a fellowship-recommended icon. Aurochs are dangerous beasts, so let's be careful out there.
The Spider-gems quest in the North Downs has been updated so that the cocoon can only be opened once to obtain the gems.
Colbert the Mad at Amon Raith is now a vendor of general provisions.
The Trollshaws quest “Heavy Bear-hide Armor” has been renamed Bear-hide Armor because after all, you know, it's not heavy -- it's my brother.
The Riddle-master quest has been reduced to challenge-level 36 and made a solo quest. Arwen's Legacy now has actual art.
A rogue apostrophe in the tooltip on Sprigley's Dead Farmhand had us possessing the run that Sprigley and his wife made away from their farm. This is now just a plural form of their flight.