03) 24th February

Publish – February 24, 1999

The following was released as the February 24th Publish on February 24, 1999.

Skills

Stealth

• This new skill allows you to take steps while hidden.
• You have to be hiding when you start to use the skill.
• The more armor you are wearing, the harder it is to use Stealth.
• If you run, you become unhidden.
• Any of the actions which normally unhides you still will.
• The amount of steps you can take depends on how high your skill is.
• You use this skill off of the skills window.
• You cannot learn or use this skill until you have at least 80 in Hiding. Because of this, you cannot select it as a starting skill.
• The skill title associated with this skill is “rogue.”
• If you qualify for training in the skill, you can learn it from thieves and thief guildmasters. Use the keyword “stealth.”

Remove Trap

• This new skill allows you to remove traps found on containers, as well as disarm other sorts of traps, such as ones found in dungeons.
• This skill is used from the skills window. It will bring up a targeting cursor. Then target the trap to be disarmed. Of course, you need to be able to see the trap to disarm it.
• The skill title associated with this skill is “rogue.”
• You cannot learn or use this skill until you have at least 50 skill in both Lockpicking and Detecting Hidden. Because of this, you cannot select it as a starting skill.
• If you fail at using the skill, the trap will go off.
• Different traps have different levels of difficulty.
• Wearing gloves will make it harder to succeed. The heavier the gloves, the worse it is.
• If you qualify for training in the skill, thieves and thief guildmasters can train you in it. You can use any of these keywords:
  • disarm
  • disarming
  • remove
  • removing

Detect Hidden

• This skill has gained the ability to detect traps.
• It works just like now, examining a range around the location you target. As before, the range is scaled based on your skill.
• Some traps (freestanding ones in dungeons) are invisible until detected, and when found will become visible to all.
• At higher skill levels, merely coming close to simpler traps will result in “trap here” appearing over the invisible trap. Only the player with high skill will see these messages, though! The trap must be manually revealed for others to see it.
• The professional title for this skill is now “scout.”

Forensics

• Using this skill on a player will reveal their affiliation with the Thieves Guild, if they are members. The difficulty of this is based on the thief’s Stealing skill.
• If you have a certain level of ability in the skill, using it on recently picked containers will reveal who the lockpicker was.
• The professional title for this skill is now “detective.”

Stealing

• The more armor you are wearing, the harder it will be to steal.
• You will not be able to steal from other players unless you join the NPC Thieves Guild, or unless the target is an opponent in a guild war.
  • You can join the Thieves’ Guild the usual way, by finding a Guildmaster and asking him to join. It will cost you an entrance fee.
  • You cannot join unless your character has existed for at least one week.
  • The character may not have any murders to his name.
  • Being reported for murder whilst a member of the Thieves Guild will result in summary expulsion, and you will not be able to rejoin for at least one week.
  • You cannot join the Thieves Guild unless you have at least a 60 in the Stealing skill.
  • Members of the Thieves Guild have access to a special item, the disguise kit.
    • The disguise kit looks like a wig stand.
    • You can get one by asking the guildmaster about ‘disguise.’
    • It will cost you 700 gold.
    • He’ll only sell them to Thieves Guild members.
    • When used:
      • You can elect to change your hairstyle.
      • If you are a male character, you can also change your facial hair.
      • The hair will come out gray, but you can use hairdye on it as usual.
      • It will also randomly generate a name for you.
      • All changes will last for 2 hours.
    • The disguise kit will only work for Thieves Guild members.
  • Members of the Thieves Guild do not display professional titles on the paperdoll to anyone except themselves, regardless of skill level or fame.
  • Members of the Thieves Guild can be attacked with impunity, because they are not allowed to report anyone for murder.
  • In towns, it is still illegal to start fights, so Thieves Guild members are still safe from attack, as they can call the guards (unless of course, they just committed a crime).
  • Just as with any guild, you can leave the guild by finding the Guildmaster and tellng him you quit. However, the Guild does not let go easily–it will take one week for leaving the guild to take effect.
• Victims of thieves can feel free to attack them, as they will not go gray for attacking a thief who has stolen from them in the last two minutes.
• There will be four possible outcomes to stealing:
  • True success: you get the item and are not noticed.
  • Partial success: you get the item, but are noticed.
  • Partial failure: you do not get the item, but are not noticed.
  • Total failure: you do not get the item, and your attempt is noticed.
• The professional title for this skill is now “pickpocket.”

Lockpicking

• Wearing gloves will affect your success rate at lockpicking. The heavier the gloves, the harder it will be.
• The professional title for this skill is now “rogue.”

Tailoring

• A problem whereby you could not create the item because it stated that your pack was full was corrected.

Mining

• A bug with smelting success was fixed.

New Skill Titles

• The professional title for Inscription is now “scribe.”
• The professional title for Snooping is now “pickpocket.”
• The professional title for Herding is now “shepherd.”
• The professional title for Meditation is now “stoic.”
• The professional title for Mapmaking is now “cartographer.”
• The professional title for Hiding is now “rogue.”

Magic

• It will not be possible to learn magic resistance in towns.
• Some third-party exploits involving using items in the bank when not at the bank were fixed.
• The following spells have had their chance of resist and their effect adjusted:
  • Mana drain
  • Mana vampire
  • Paralyze
• Magic Trap scrolls will now be deleted after successful use.
• You will no longer be able to report people for murder after recalling away.
• Your magic resistance will now affect how much damage you take from spells. You can have up to half the damage removed by effectively resisting a spell.
• Your Evaluating Intelligence skill will affect how well your target resists a spell, thus affecting how much damage they take.

World

• Items will now spawn in chests and other containers.
  • The items within will depend on the location of the container.
  • These containers will be locked, with the lock’s difficulty being based on the value of the contents.
  • Some of these containers may be trapped as well. The power of the trap will also be scaled by the value of the contents.
• Traps will begin to appear randomly in dungeons.
  • These traps will be invisible to the normal observer.
  • They can be detected with the Detect Hidden skill.
  • Players who have a high level of Detect Hidden will be able to detect their presence by merely walking near them.

Some traps may be poisoned.

• Capability was added to have special event regions, to allow things like town invasions.

Items

• Trash barrels will be added.
  • Owners can add a trash barrel to your house by saying, “I wish to place a trash barrel.” It will appear at your feet.
  • Placing a barrel obeys the same rules as locking down items in houses: not by the door, not on steps, etc.
  • You can only have one trash barrel per house.
  • The trash barrel looks like a silvery barrel.
  • Owners and friends of the house can put items in the trash barrel. Three minutes after they do so, the item will be deleted. (This means you can change your mind and remove items if you need to).
  • The owner of the house can chop up the barrel to get rid of it.
• Some line of sight changes were made to prevent 3rd party exploits.

Treasure Map Changes

• Certain treasure maps that used to be distorted will henceforth be created correctly.
• The treasure is no longer necessarily at the center of the treasure map.
• Finished treasure maps will now say “a treasure map completed by (player name).”
• Some bad treasure locations were fixed.
• Sextants will no longer give coordinates. They will only give latitude and longitude.
• Carving stacks of fish should now work correctly.
• Using a healing potion will now place the empty vial in your backpack, instead of at your feet.
• A problem with putting tables over chests causing items to disappear was corrected. As a result, you can now freely stack chests and crates.

Creatures and NPCs

• You can no longer avoid a deadlier poison by taking a milder one, and getting hit by deadlier poison when already affected by a milder one will supercede the weaker poison.
• Pets now have ‘orneriness’ factors as far as obeying commands.
  • The harder the pet is to tame originally, the more ‘ornery’ it is. This means that it is more likely to refuse commands given to it.
  • The better the player is at Animal Taming, the more they can overcome the pet’s orneriness. This means that those with low animal taming will have great difficulty in controlling creatures such as dragons, draken, or nightmares. On the flip side, good animal tamers will be able to order around easy creatures such as cats and dogs, even when they are starving.
• Human NPCs will now immediately delete items they scavenge from the ground, rather than hanging on to them for a while. This was done because of items accumulating in the NPCs if deletion failed.
• Blacksmith Guildmasters should now give the correct guildname when you join their guild.
• Wandering mages and Mage Guildmasters are now able to teach the Meditation skill.

Updates

Update 1

On February 26, 1999, the following was published:

• House owners and friends will be able to instantly reveal anyone hidden in their house, regardless of skill level, on the grounds that they know their house better than any stranger. This will not cause the skill to go up.
• Cutting up fish will work correctly.
• Fixes for pets, hirelings, and summoned creatures not obeying commands will go in. In particular:
  • Hirelings will not be affected at all by your taming skill.
  • Summoned creatures won’t be either.
  • Pets will now function correctly. This is to say, higher level tamers will be able to order around powerful creatures easily, whereas lower level tamers will have difficulty getting them to obey orders.
• The time your character must exist before being allowed to join the Thieves Guild has been shortened.
• Adding items to a trash can past the container limit will cause the instant deletion of everything in the trash can.
• You will only be able to steal specific items from enemy guild members, instead of only being able to random steal from them.
• An exploit for getting slow weapons to hit faster has been fixed.
• The mana drain and mana vampire spells have had the chance of being resisted raised substantially.
• The stealth skill now will give a message when used successfully.
• A problem with gate travel scrolls was corrected.

Update 2

On March 19, 1999, the following was published:

• Corpses from all murderers will be red.
• Casting gate on an unmarked recall rune will no longer raise magery.
• Energy vortexes and blade spirits will function a lot like the field spells with regards to the reputation consequences.
  • They still attack victims normally, and the caster is completly responsible for their actions.
  • This includes being cast as a murderer should the blade spirit/vortex attack and contribute to the death of the victim.
    • However, merely running into a blade spirit or energy vortex will no longer be grounds for reporting the caster for murder. The caster will become criminal should someone take indirect damage from such a spell, but much like fire field, they will not be reportable for murder.