New Vorpal Functionality

Verghazrin was kind enough to host a battle royale PK quest last night which was a great testing grounds for the new functionality we gave vorpal.  It generated a fair bit of discussion both last night and this morning, but some of the suggestions or criticisms seem to be rooted in misconceptions on how vorpal weapons now work.  So as to make it unambiguous, here's how everything is laid out:

Class	Recharge	Spell	Relative Damage	Damage Potential
Mage	2	acid blast	10	5.0
Cleric	2	smite	8.3	4.2
Monk	3	lightning bolt	1.3	0.44
Warrior	4	fireball	2.7	0.66
Barbarian	5	N/A	N/A	N/A
Psionicist	2	mind blast	8.3	4.2
Druid	2	natures wrath	7.1	3.6
Ranger	5	lightning bolt	1.3	0.26
Rogue	3	N/A	N/A	N/A
Bard	3	deathsong	7.1	2.4
Wildmage	2	wildfire	4.9	2.5
Warlock	3	ravage	7.1	2.4
Necromancer	2	decay	6.3*	N/A
Templar	3	flamestrike	4.6	1.5

Recharge is the time (rounds of combat) it takes for the vorpal to "recharge."  Once a vorpal weapon is recharged, it will discharge (cast its spell) on the next hit, then recharge again.
Relative Damage is a figure of merit expressing how much damage each class's vorpal spell will do.  The higher this number is, the more damage a single vorpal discharge will do.
Damage Potential is the Relative Damage divided by the recharge time.  It gives you an idea of how much damage a class's vorpal spell will do over time.  Necromancers' Damage Potential is a bit trickier to calculate since their spell does damage over time.

Whenever a vorpal weapon discharges (mind you, "discharge" is a term I just made up now), it casts your class's vorpal spell at the level of the weapon and won't discharge again until the recharge time is up.  However, this recharge time is attached to the character, not the weapon, so a dual-wielding ranger will not get double discharges, and swapping out vorpal weapons very quickly in combat will not let you get a bunch of free spell casts.  Incidentally, a side-effect of these new vorpal spells is that other special weapon properties (chill, flame, shock, poison, and others) are now also limited by each class's recharge time.  This side-effect will be removed soon so that chill/flame/shock/poison/etc work the way they used to.

We are fairly confident in how this new vorpal is working for the time being and we do not consider the feature to be still in the testing stage.  We aren't looking for unsolicited feedback on what classes should get what spells or recharge times or anything like that; however, we will be keeping an eye on how vorpal weapons get used and, if necessary, can tweak things.

With that being said, we are considering tweaking necromancers after last night's quest.  One of the leading suggestions was to make necromancers' vorpal be like judgment but with necro spells instead of maledictions.

Wednesday Night Quest!

Verghazrin is holding a Battle Royale PK quest on Wednesday night (April 18) at 8pm Standard Time.

This quest will test out the shiny new Vorpal flag for quest weapons, which is designed to be the equivalent for magic classes what Sharp is for fighter classes.

Stop in, grab a weapon, and join the fun!

Love,
the staff

A few new changes

We've got a stack of new changes going in, but we have opted to delay rolling out the new changes (and any possible bugs included with them) until after the big event that's happening tonight happens.  So as to not let anyone who follows our Dark Risings twitter feed feel like we've been leading anyone on, I figured it would be appropriate to reiterate that big new changes are going in.  Here's a taste of what's going to happen:

1. Poison will no longer break sleep, but pinch/haunt will now always work.  There are a bunch of auxiliary changes accompanying this too.  For example, we are working to replace all current poison-giving items (moldy bread, vial of the undead) with pinch/haunt equivalents, sleep's duration is now much shorter, and things of that nature.
2. People were complaining about protection of peaches being undispellable, so we've made it possible to dispel, but not quite as easily as sanctuary.
3. Monks will now get divine focus (the templar ability) at level 15.  This is in addition to their frenzy spell, so it should give monks a nice boost.
4. Lots of changes have been made to the prompt.  You now have to manually color %h, %H, %m, %M, %v, and %V, %l will now show the exact number of seconds left in latelog, %f will now show the exact seconds left in fightlag (this is pretty huge!), and some other stuff.
5. Ticks will have randomized lengths to curb unfair practices that certain script-happy pkers have been abusing.

There are a lot more intermediate changes going in too; the brawler board will be sorted now, various code has been added to support the new tradeskill we'll be putting in, and a lot of (mostly) transparent bug fixes are going in.  For example, sand spirits and desert scorpions should no longer be holding hundreds of fossilized shells, the 'info' command will now work properly in creation, and harm touch will now depend on your skill% in it.

The complete details will be posted as a change in the game once the new code is actually in play.  Hopefully they are received well!