Post Shadowlands updates

Client and server updates following the Shadowlands upgrade. Last updates shown on top.




Server side only update Wednesday October 8th 2003

Non-Player Characters and monsters

- Supply Master Eel will give out the correct reward for services rendered.

- Smokey Willy should finally be helpful again to Fixers looking for access to the Fixer Grid.

- The Trash King missions handed out by Alvin and Dodga should have a bit more helpful instruction text now.

- Helpful individuals will show up to assist people who seek to enter Adonis City. (These will have to be spawned by GMs, and may not be present immediately when the servers open up, and might be gone for a while if the server is restarted.)




Update Thursday October 2nd 2003

Quests

- The final stage of the Elysium Sanctuary Key quest now works properly.

- The Soldier of IPS should now recognize Visions of the Tempestuous for what they are, and thus be able to hand out the Yellow Glyph on Enel.

Items

- Players were having trouble finding the monsters that drop Omni Shade Tattoos. These will now drop more frequently and off more monsters than before.

- It is easier and quicker than before to collect blueprint components.

Technical

- When choosing to stick with your affiliation permanently to start earning Shadowknolwedge, the option to turn the question on or off is removed from your options panel.




Update Thursday September 25th 2003

Nano Programs

- Fixer run buffs for Shadowlands should now work properly.

- Having a 2-Handed Edged skill of less than 1000 should no longer stop the Keeper's Fury program from creating the special attack.

Perks

- Fixed the recharge time on Ethereal Touch. It should have been 38 seconds, not 10 minutes.

- The Directorship perk line now gives all its correct bonuses.

World

- Enel Statue should now work with the Key to the Garden of Enel.

- In an attempt to battle Inferno as the most hostile land in Shadowlands, Penumbra has grown even colder.

Non-Player Characters and monsters

- Some new nasty sharks have decided to avenge their lesser brethren. Watch out.

- Creatures from levels 50 to 130 in Shadowlands have had their damage and skills tweaked to the players' advantage.

- Creatures from levels 50 to 135 in Shadowlands have had their health lowered. This will also affect creatures as low as level 25 and as high as level 195 somewhat.

- Enemies will no longer be able to heal players.

- Professor Dedlock should now properly hand out the Jobe-Chipped Cyberdeck to male nanomages.

Items

- Rubbery Resin is now available, if you know where to look.




Update Friday September 19th 2003

Game Mechanics

- Fixed a problem with roots and teleport.

- Some organisation commands that were acting weird have been corrected.

- You can now allow your friends to enter your Jobe luxury apartment. The requirements are that they have the Shadowlands expansion, are in your team, and that you're already in your apartment when they walk through the door. A side effect is that you can't acquire an apartment of your own while you're in a team.

- The faction system has been tweaked a bit.

- Pressing TAB to target creatures should now work as before, except that all team-mates are considered friendly regardless of side.

Nano Programs

- Fixer Shadowlands run speed buffs should now work properly.

Perks

- An error preventing people from training the second level of the Outdoorsman perk line has been corrected.

- The perk specials Nano Shakes, Strip Nano and Annihilate Notum Molecules now have proper descriptions.

Non-Player Characters and monsters

- Several NPCs have either been made non-attackable or moved to areas with 100% suppression gas, to avoid them being killed. The items found on some of these when killed can now be found on other NPCs.

- Finding Serenity should now be present, and conduct trading properly.

- Creatures inhabiting certain dungeons are now unfriendly with all intruders, even those of the same faction.

- Outdoor creatures will no longer attack based on faction if they're much lower level than their target.

- Monsters living at the Brink and in the transition areas between the playfields will now be aggressive to everybody, regardless of faction.

- Certain NPCs had mixed up the sides / factions, and would thus respond incorrectly. Through extensive use of Omnifiers and Clanalizers we've set them straight now.

- Some NPCs were cursing themselves instead of their opponents. We've removed the Drain Intelligence program from their NCU, and they should now shower you with the proper insults and threats. Enjoy.

- Ergo has received an upgrade to his software, and should hopefully behave correctly in all situations now.

- Ecclesiast Cama was a bit jumpy, attacking players at a whim. We had a talk, and he promised to calm down and be nice.

- Creatures will now only assist each other if they can see each other. This is due to some new dungeon sections having internal walls, and we don't want creatures "hearing" their friends through these.

Items

- The items wanted by Finding Serenity are no longer Unique, so you can carry (and deliver) more than one at a time.

- An Adventurer nano crystal that caused a game crash has been fixed.

- Fixed a problem with the 4 gems Arul Saba bracelet using the Infinite Moebius gems.

- Exiting your Yalmaha should now leave you at ground level, not two feet above ground.

- Spirit Siphons can now be looted properly.

World

- Planet map coordinates have been corrected, and the marker should now properly show where you are.

- The planet map now shows several important locations.

- Some portals between Shadowlands playfields were not working properly. This has been fixed.

- Certain areas caused an unintended movement reduction. This has been removed.

- The population values of Rubi-Ka playfields have been tweaked. The playfields should now be better populated.

Technical

- Some crash bugs related to missions have been nailed down and shipped off-planet.

- Removed effects from some Shadowlands creatures. They should no longer put up light shows that make people go blind.

- We've done some tweaks to avoid people getting stuck in geometry.




Update Friday September 12th 2003

Game Mechanics

- We've tweaked the Shadowknowledge (SK) system a bit. The SK rewards should now be a bit bigger.

- The faction system has been slightly tweaked. Note that you won't gain faction from killing creatures with low faction rating (e.g. low level creatures) if you already have some faction rating.

World

- The teleporter from Jobe Harbour has had its level requirement removed.

Interface

- Removed a bug where you could terminate nano programs not showing in the NCU Window by right-clicking below the window.

Non-Player Characters and monsters

- Tweaked some creature behaviour.

- Hypnagogic Urga-Lum Thrak now checks on the correct faction.

- The Milliner will no longer cause Adonis to crash when handing out the letter for the Village Chief.

- Ergo has been tweaked a bit here and there.

- Professor Dedlock now explains why he can't improve your NCU any further.




Server side only update Thursday September 11th 2003

Non-Player characters

- All vendors should now respond properly to right-clicking them.

- Ergo in Wailing Wastes will now warp all players eligible for it. Ergo was a bit confused with the people having access to Jobe luxury apartments, thinking they might not be worthy.

- Ergo in Wailing Wastes will now return the correct ring to level 200 players when they deliver the requested items.




Update Monday September 8th 2003

Game Mechanics

- Roots will no longer block teleporting.

Items

- An issue with the Unique item system has been sorted out. The Hack Grid Data Stream programs should now provide you with Data Receptacles even if you had one sometime before version 15.0.1.

Technical

- Running 16-bit mode with a GeForce II card will no longer crash the client.




Update Sunday September 7th 2003

Game Mechanics

- The cap on jumping height has been increased, by quite a bit.

Interface

- Closing the Options menu will now re-open any windows it replaced on the right-hand side of the screen when opened.

- You can now open and close the Options Menu in the new GUI by clicking the Actions Menu, then clicking the Options button.

- The Perk button on the menu is now only available if you have installed the Shadowlands expansion pack.

- Your friends list is now limited to 1000 entries. This is to fix an issue with the chat server.

- Added notification about needing to restart Anarchy Online to activate some changed settings.

- Chat feedback about not being able to level by trade skills has been disabled for level 200 characters. They don't level by XP anymore anyway.

Pets

- Pets and morphed characters of large size should no longer have issues with passing through doors.

- Meta-Physicist pets whose attacks "confuses and clouds the mind" will now follow the same player versus player level restrictions as other pets.

Social

- It's no longer possible to use /follow while in lounge mode (/lounge).

Items

- Omni Carbonum Plate Helmet is again reserved for Omni-Tek employees.

- New Agents should now get their full start-up package, including rifle and nano crystal.

- All Cluster Bullets now work properly again.

Nano Programs

- The Adventurer nano program Robust Treatment will no longer cancel out the Doctor nano program Superior First Aid.

Monsters and NPCs

- We have told NPCs not to spam when players walk close to them, you have to understand that some of them are talk sick when they've been standing there all alone for a while.

- We've tweaked the effect sitting down has on monster's hatred towards you. This effect is now both lesser in effect and predictability.

- We've also reduced the effect of monsters' fighting-frenzy, an effect that activates when the monster is much higher in level than the players it's fighting, and when the monster is afraid of dying (i.e. has low health). Originally this frenzy made the monster attack faster, normally making any initiative debuffs useless against it. Now they instead hit harder, through added attack skill, and initiative debuffs might play a big role in reducing its damage output. The amount of extra attack skill was a bit high though, and we've reduced it by more than 50%.

Performance

- Got rid of a few server crashes.