Publish 2

The following is a list of changes deployed as Publish 2 on January 24, 2000.

Escort Changes

Escorting will be balanced to bring it more in line with other gold generating methods.

• You may only have one escort at a time. Townspeople requesting escort will not travel with someone who is already escorting.
  • If you attempt to escort a second NPC, you will be told, “I see you already have an escort”.
• You will have to wait approximately 15 minutes between each escort.
  • If you attempt to escort an NPC before this time passes, the NPC will tell you, “You should rest from your last escort before we set out on this journey.”
  • Escorts will let you know approximately how much time you must wait before you can take another escort again.

Taming Changes

Changes to taming animals and monsters will be made to fix some outstanding issues.

The Taming changes include the following:

• A fix for pet commands including the “pet friend bug”.
• Saying “stop” to your pet will clear any previous commands.
• Pets will remember who their previous owners were. Previous owners are defined as anyone who tames the pet or has the pet transferred to them.
  • The more previous owners a pet has had, the more difficult it will be for other players to tame it if it goes wild. This also means that players who were not a previous owner to the pet can tame the pet for skill gain.
  • Any previous owner may retame the pet regardless of their skill.
• Pets that go wild will become more difficult to control. This change will affect both previous and new owners.
• If line-of-site is broken during the taming process, the attempt will automatically fail.
• When transferring a pet to another player, the previous owner and the new owner will now receive the proper confirmation messages.
• Pets will now only guard their owner’s corpse.
• Fixes for various messages with relation to pet commands. Tamers who give commands to their pets that the pet does not follow will find that their pets will go wild faster than previously

House Placement

A new system has been created to ensure that houses are not placed outside of the house placement rules. The system will do thorough checks when attempting to place a house.

The house placement system includes the following:

• Various checks to ensure the house meets the housing requirements, including whether it is on level ground.
• Provides the ability to preview an area with the deed to see if the area is valid.
  • Once a position is chosen, you will be told whether the area is a valid location or not.
  • If the area is valid, you will be asked if you wish to place the house.
  • If the area is not valid, you will be given a message telling you why not and you will not be able to place the house in that location.
• The following plants will not block the placement of a house:
  • All mushrooms
  • All small flowers
  • Poppies
  • Red poppies
  • Orfluer flowers
  • White flowers
  • Foxglove flowers
  • Campion Flowers
  • Snowdrops

Skill and Stat Advancement Changes

Advancement in “non-difficulty” based skills at higher levels and advancement in stats will be improved. The effect of this change will result in fewer required uses of the skill to advance it at high levels and better, more evenly curved stat gains.

The following skills will be affected by the modification to skill advancement:

• Anatomy
• Animal Lore
• Item Identification
• Arms Lore
• Begging
• Evaluate Intelligence
• Spirit Speak
• Hiding
• Tracking
• Camping
• Cooking
• Musicianship
• Lockpicking
• Mining
• Lumberjacking
• Peacemaking
• Provocation
• Enticement
• Cartography
• Fishing

Stat advancement will now raise at a more constant, consistent rate. All skills will raise their appropriate stats (including combat skills) and you will be able to gain stats consistently regardless of the level of the skill, rather than only when reaching a high level in that skill.

Each skill will raise its appropriate stats. For skills that raise multiple stats, some stats are weighted more heavily than others. Therefore, stat gains from skills such as these will be based on how much weight is given to the individual stats. For instance, Anatomy will raise INT more often, though it still has a chance to raise STR and DEX.

Pack Animals

Pack horses and pack llamas will have their carrying capacity increased from 400 to 1,600 stones. If a pack animal goes wild, it will eventually drop whatever it is carrying if it is not retamed.

Land Surveying Too

This tool will allow players to check land without have to buy a house deed, thus allowing multiple people in a group to search different locations. To use the tool:

• Double-click the surveying tool.
• A window will appear listing the different house types. Click the house type you wish to check.
• A small description of the house type and the number of lockdowns it can hold will appear.
• To evaluate the area, click the “E” in the window.
• The house type you selected will appear in front of you. Move the house to the location you want to test and singe-click.
• You will receive a message telling you whether the area can hold that house type.
  • If the area is acceptable, a temporary house of the type you selected will appear for approximately 10 seconds to let you see what a house would look like in that location.
  • If the area is not acceptable, then you will simply receive a message telling you that the house type will not fit.

Various Issues

• A fix for the exploit involving banning summoned pets or creatures so they will attack passersby.
• An issue with trading and using ingots through trade windows will be resolved.
• You will not be able to snoop pack animals inside a house, while the animal was outside.
• You will no longer be able to use the stealing skill to determine if someone is “perma-gray”.
• Players who are not in the Thieves Guild will not be able to steal from other players at all.

Pre-casting

The bug involving the ability to “pre-cast” spells and then use or take items will be fixed. After casting a spell, the targeting cursor will disappear if the player does any of the following:

• Equips or unequips an item.
• Takes an item.
• Drags an item from their backpack.

Monster and Animal Spawn

Untamed monsters and animals in invalid or unreachable locations will “die” after a certain amount of time. These monsters and animals will be eligible for “death”, within a given amount of time, under the following circumstances:

• If the monster/animal is not targeted.
• If the monster/animal does not receive or deliver damage.

In order to support IGM events and quests, this change will not affect monsters/animals in houses at this time. However, the current rules regarding trapping monsters and animals in houses still apply. In a future update, we do plan on making untamed monsters and animals “die” in this manner regardless of whether they are in a house or not.

Clean Up Britannia (Phase III)

The final phase in the Clean Up Britannia program will be the implementation of item decay in houses. The decay rate will be the same as with items outside.

Once in effect, house item decay will affect all items that are not:

• Placed in a secure container.
• Locked down.
• A house add-on (such as an anvil or a loom).
• Placed by an IGM or GM.

Item Decay on Boats

We will be activating decay for items left on the deck of a boat. These items will decay at the same rate as items left on the ground outside.

Only items left on the deck of a boat will decay, items in the hold of a boat will not be subject to decay.

Updates

Update 1

On February 11, 2000, the following was published:

• Distribution of Valentine’s gifts
• Fix to repair a guild-reporting issue that was causing incorrect information to be reported to the UO website
• Disable the ability to create storage kegs