04) 28th March

Publish – March 28, 1999

The following was released as the March 28th Publish on March 28, 1999.

Blue PK Changes

• We are slowly phasing in changes to the reputation system to reduce antisocial behavior. In this update, we have some changes that will push blue PKs to being red.
• A new long-term counter will be added that tracks murder counts.
  • This counter will go up when you are reported for murder, like the current murder count.
  • This counter will decay at the rate of 1 every 40 hours (the current counter goes down 1 every 8 hours).
  • While this counter is five or more, you will highlight red, and will be vulnerable to attack.
  • Stat loss will still depend on the standard murder counter.
  • Another new counter we term “pingpong” will be added.
  • This counter increases each time you go red.
  • If this counter reaches five, you will be permanently red (meaning, you will be attackable. You will not suffer stat loss unless your murder count is also high).
  • This counter does not decay.
• Murder will seriously affect your karma.

Skills

Fishing

• Fishing has received a major overhaul. There are yet more changes planned for fishing in future updates.
• Based on your skill level, you now have a chance of pulling up the following (listed in increasing difficulty order)
  • One of any of several types of boots
  • Fish, as always
  • Magical fish, which can boost stamina, strength, intelligence, or dexterity.
  • Treasure maps
  • Messages in bottles
  • Sea serpents (on failure)
  • Deep sea serpents (on failure, and if deep in the ocean)
• Fishing for sunken treasure:
  • Double-clicking on a message in a bottle will extract a waterstained SOS.
  • The SOS will have sextant coordinates on it which will be somewhere in the ocean.
  • Fishing at the location given will try to recover the sunken treasure, as long as the SOS is at the top level of your backpack. You may recover bones, artifacts from the sunken ship, or the treasure itself.
  • You can keep fishing until you get the treasure, at which point the message disappears.

Carpentry

• New items have been made craftable.
• These items require tailoring to make.
  • Small beds
  • Large beds
• Ballot boxes
  • The first person to use the ballot box becomes the owner of the box.
  • The owner of the box can set topics for the box. When they do so, the votes are zeroed out. As the owner types in the topic, it will present to them the full topic thus far in the bottom corner.
  • The owner of the box can also zero out the votes at any time.
  • Non-owners can use the box, see the current yes/no votes, and vote yes or no on the topic.
  • A given character can only vote once on a topic.
  • You can chop them up to make them go away.
• Dartboards
• Water troughs (yes, these work as water sources)
• Musical instruments, which require musicianship to craft:
  • Lap harp
  • Standing harp
  • Drum
  • Lute
  • Tambourine
  • Tambourine with tassle

Tinkering

• New items have been added to tinkering.
  • Jewelcrafting. Crafting jewelry requires you to target a gemstone to add to the jewelry.
    • Necklaces
    • Earrings
    • Wedding rings
      • These items say “a wedding ring” on them.
    • These items are “newbiefied” and will remain with your corpse when you die.
  • Globes
  • Pewter mugs
  • Keyrings
  • Iron keys
  • Hatchets
  • Mortar and pestles
  • Candelabras
  • Forks
  • Spoons
  • Goblets
  • Lockpicks

Hiding

• You can no longer hide while casting a spell.
• Using hiding sets the number of stealthy steps you can take to zero.

Stealth

• Shoving past someone while stealthy will reveal you.
• Snooping will reveal you.
• You cannot stealth while riding a horse.
• It will become substantially more difficult to start stealth when in the vicinity of other players.
  • The more players, the harder it will be.
  • They have to be within 10 paces to count against you.
  • Only players affect this, not NPCs.
  • This only affects when you start stealthing, not while you walk stealthed.
• The number of steps you can take while stealthed has been halved.

Detect Hidden

• Friends of a house will be able to detect hidden in the house and instantly reveal everyone.

Magery

• Elemental summoning in towns will be disabled.
• The average damage of flamestrike has been raised. The maximum damage remains the same.

Other Changes

• Problems with the exit from the ice dungeon will be corrected.
• You will be able to declare guild wars via new menu option that lets you just target a member of the opposing guild.
• New options have been added to the disguise kit.
• Optimizations were done to improve guildstone performance.
• The blacksmith’s guild will list the correct guild name when you attempt to join the blacksmith’s guild.
• Architects will now buy back house deeds.
  • When you come near an architect, if you have a house deed in your backpack, the arhcitect will offer to appraise it or buy it.
  • If you say “appraise” to the architect, you will get a targeting cursor so you can target the deed you want appraised. The arhictect will tell you what he would pay for that deed.
  • Dropping the deed on the architect will sell the deed to him. The money you get will be placed in your bank box automatically.
• A major optimization was done to houses and boats. You will no longer receive the objects that are on or in houses and boats until you step on them.
  • You will still be able to see monsters, animals, or players.
  • You will still be able to see things that are on the steps.
  • This will significantly improve your connection when around buildings that are full of stuff.
  • This will also cause a noticeable pause when you step onto the step of a building, as the contents of the building are downloaded to you.
  • You will still receive the contents of the last building you set foot in, as long as you are within update range. This means that stepping on and then off and then on the step again will not cause repeated delays.

Updates

Update 1

On March 28, 1999, the following was published:

• Sea Serpents:
  • Sea Serpents can only be found in really deep water.
  • A small percentage of Sea Serpents will be Deep-Sea Serpents.
  • Sea Serpents will return to deep water after 5 minutes if not attacked.
  • Sea Serpents will now immediately attack the fisherman that brought them from the deep.
• Fishing:
  • All special items found from fishing can only be found in deep water.
  • Other than boots, special items such as treasure maps, SOS’s, and magical fish are more rare.
  • When fish aren’t biting, skill doesn’t increase.
  • If you are hidden, fishing will now unhide you.
• Pets:
  • For right now, pets are unable to guard corpses.
  • Nightmares:
    • Flying for nightmares has been removed to prevent a house break-in exploit.
    • Stats have been modified to better balance them.