Alter Aeon Recent Changes and Additions

Recent code and server updates can be found in this changelog.  Only the
last 20 changes are listed.  For a complete list, click here.

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---- Sep 02, 10 [1100]
Fix minor bug with pk rank for clan wars.
Curse saving throws have been adjusted.
Minor adjustments to turn undead damage.
Revenge now has a small movement boost when triggered.
Prevent unfearable mobs from being feared by turn undead.
Fix 'loss of aggro' bug with confusion and a few other situations.
The channel 'private' flag is now available to mortals.
Fix targetting bugs in poison cloud/choking cloud.

The 'who' command on player channels is now once again restricted to
people who can use the channel.  We keep flip-flopping on this as I
forget why we had it the various ways. This way seems right for now.

---- Sep 01, 10 [1099]
Fix bogus flags bug in clan room create.
Fix minor (null) spell bug for some players on the practice list.
Fix more minor send issues with confusion.
Fix eternal youth spell targetting, as well as a few other spells.

Minor curse improvements for players:
 - saving spell now helps resist them
 - weaken and clumsy no longer stack
 - weaken is now capped at -6 for players
 - fix bogus recurse success strings

---- Aug 31, 10 [1098]
Display channels on web pages in forward order, with timestamps.
Lots of spell system tweaks to try to sanitize incoming new spells.
More improvements to http board reading.
Undo spell lag lowered.
The weaken curse now affects hitroll as well as strength.
Maxload now shows on mortal object identify.
Confusion is now a bit easier to land.
Minor mass confusion string updates.
All gods are now automatically removed from clans on login.
Autoassist now triggers after rescue/tank/protect/flee.

---- Aug 30, 10 [1096]
Farsee can now be cast to find friends.
Lower tick timer on chill touch.
Make reading boards on the web easier.
The money market now has a per-player sale log.
The money market is no longer in debug mode and has higher limits.
The 'spell find' command can now be used to find teachers for spells
and skills.

Massive rework to curse spells, with probably more to come:
 - remove curse is only annoyance if it would remove equipment
 - curses now show up as Curse instead of Spell on score/affects
 - curses cannot be dispelled using dispel magic
 - remove curse is much, much stronger
 - remove curse can be cast in combat
 - curses stick much more easily (except for famine)
 - curses last a much shorter period of time (except for famine)
 - curses are considered annoyance spells (except for famine)

From Locane:
Minor send cleanups in brag practice.
Fix wear location bug for holdable two wield weapons.

---- Aug 27, 10 [1094]
Add achievements for killing sprees in clanwar arenas.
Add achievements for clanwar participation.
Add achievements for freak turn undead.
Add a few minor hidden achievements.

From Locane:
Give some indication of remaining priestless conversion time.
Minor priestless conversion bugfixes.
Fix timestamps on channel/clan replay.

---- Aug 26, 10 [1092]
Minor bug fixes in clan war trophy awards.
Add money market graphs, other minor graph updates.
Fix minor visibility holes in private clan rosters.
Private notes on boards are no longer highlighted.
The 'board set' board number now saves.
Add killing streaks to pk arenas.
Add 'who -arena' option to see score in currently running arenas.
Dump player stats on completion of clan pk arenas.

A credits/gold money market has been added.  You can access the market
using the 'mmarket' command.  See 'mmarket help' for syntax and details.
Note that this is a very new command and is likely to be buggy.  The
market limits are set very low for initial testing.  Note that money
market offers are condensed by default to reduce duplicate spam.
Please report any bugs or problems to Dentin.

---- Aug 24, 10 [1090]
The 'xp' channel is no longer autoconnect for newbies.
Minor formatting cleanup in email read.
Fix typo in 'credit buy firecolor' text.
The new 'group' spell targetting has been added to 'prayer for the dying'.
Add strings for swimming when leaving a room.
Fix movement lag bug in swimming.

Looking at boards now by default shows only the last 20 messages.  You
can get more by using the keyword 'all', or giving a number.  For
example, 'look board 33' or 'look board all'.  Private messages also
now show up in the board list.

The new 'board' and 'boards' commands have been added.  These allow you
you read and write on boards from afar, without having to go to the
board room in person.

Clan elders now have a 'clanset flags' option which can be used to turn
on or off the public roster for the clan.  This prevents clan members
from being found via finger or the web page roster lists.  New clans by
default have private rosters.

Massive change to experience from turn undead, largely having to do with
group/area turn.  Area turn now partially divides down the exp, and to
compensate there should be a bit more exp given on mob death.  This will
probably take a while before we get the balance right on it.

You can now buy extra aliases using credits, though it seems odd that
someone would be able to use up the huge number you get by default.  The
default has been set down to a more reasonable 120.  Existing characters
have been grandfathered and should not notice a difference.

Clan creation cost is now 250k gold, to make it easier for low level
players to create clans.  The maintenance costs remain the same.

The thief 'knife throwing' weapon skill has been modified.  The overall
damage is lower, but now more dependent on strength and skill.  There
is also a new armor piercing calculation, which is dependent on skill
level, thief level, and dexterity.  The current settings may require
tweaking, so don't expect this to be the final version.

Fix gold bug causing newbies below level 30 to get less gold than they
should.  This will affect high level gold for a week or two, until the
gold offset stabilizes again.

---- Aug 18, 10 [1088]
Raise chance of getting better at dodge/parry/defend/unarmed.
More fixes to mid level mob exp.
Fix healer trophy bug in clan wars.

Backstab against low level mobs now generates less exp and has less of
a chance of getting freak multipliers, but the allowed level range before
this kicks in is -much- wider, allowing mid-level mobs to be used for
backstab practice and freak production.

The practice percent of the various monster lore skills was changed from
8% to 20%.  Everyone who learned it at the lower rate has been refunded
the difference in practices to compensate.

---- Aug 17, 10 [1087]
It is no longer possible to fish in clan areas.
Clan pk rank is now only calculated from official clanwar results.
Player pk rank now slowly ticks down over time.
Trophies should now be automatic in clanwars.
Thwack backstab exp if mob level is too low, raise notify damage limit.
Backstab now triggers shocking grasp and burning hands.
You can now buy practices with credits.  The price is 250 credits each.

Price change on weightless container expansions - the rate is now
100 pounds per 500 credits.

Fire spell colors (including fireball, greater fireball, fireweb,
firefield, and a couple of incidentals) have been changed, and can now
be purchased using the 'credit buy' command.  The default color for all
these is now yellow, and a new color (white) has been added as an option.
The cost is 1000 credits.  See 'credit buy firecolor' for details.

---- Aug 16, 10 [1085]
Fix permission bug in 'set room terrain'.
Change the display of board messages on the web page interface.
Players will no longer catch thrown weapons when player killing.
If you fail second wind, you have to wait a tick to try again.
Fix abbreviation bug in resurrect spell.
Area refresh now has a per-target cap at around 4 times the casting level.
Cleric confusion and area refresh have had their levels swapped.  Area
refresh is now level 23, confusion is now level 22.
Added level 30 cleric skill, 'waypoint lore'.
You can now be the owner of three user channels instead of two.
An arena option has been added to make joining players start with half
stats and no spells.  This is now the default for clan wars.

---- Aug 13, 10 [1084]
Change the display cutoffs for group ratings to spread them out more.
Fix failure strings displaying in remote rooms for groupcast.
Minor size change on dclient stat window.
Add a 'harvest' command for future necromancer use.
The 'auto' command can now be used while sleeping.
Fix minor bug in alignment check for equipment trade.
Add a '1000 potion brews submitted' achievement.

EXPERIMENTAL - the way that exp is calculated on mid level mobs has been
changed.  In particular, the point where 'this mob is too high level for
you to receive full experience' triggers has been changed.  On some mobs
it may be quite a bit lower.

The point of this change is to give mid level players (up to around total
90) more options for experience, and to make experience in mid level areas
more consistent without requiring manual tweaking in all of them.  It's
possible that this change will have undesirable side effects, so it may
be revoked or modified in the future.

---- Aug 09, 10 [1081]
Improvements to siteban code.
Fix minor replay weirdness with user channels.
Haste spell moved from level 15 mage to level 17 mage.
Teleport spell moved from level 15 mage to level 17 mage.
Fix rounding bug in gold splitting.
Improve tanking and protect with multiple tanks and protectors.
Clean up more residual ppk code.
Continual lightballs now vanish when their owner dies/logs off.
Magic mushrooms are now level dependent.
Minor changes to bot detector.
Fix bug in event based move regen, where negative move was set to zero.
Fix minor holes in siteban code.
Minor tweaks to a few damage spells when used in pk.
'who classname' now shows players of that class sorted by level/idle.
Pagebreaking added to the 'credit' command.

Add a hidden 'birthday party' achievement, for those who happen to see
their birthday message while playing.

Auction now has a minimum bid increment of 20, to help speed up low
cost auctions.

Area refresh now has a limit to how many movement points it can restore
across the entire group.

A new spell cast target, 'group', has been added.  This works with only
a few of the spells that are normally cast on others in groups.  Examples
would be armor, sanc, bless, and fly.  If no-one in your group needs the
given spell, it won't be cast and you won't risk losing mana.

Below primary level 15, your second class must be 7 or fewer levels
behind your primary.  For example, levels 12/5 are allowed, but you
won't be able to bring your primary up to 13 without leveling your
secondary to 6.  You can bypass this restriction using the -force flag.
This change is intended to force newbies with preconceived notions to
think differently about how multiclassing is done here.

---- Jul 22, 10 [1080]
More infrastructure work in preparation for new classes.
Change player event logs to only hold last 8 login/logoff events.
Add more stats to who -level.
More pk arena fixes.

Optimization and reorg of the 'mob aggro' routines. This rework randomizes
aggro targets, preventing the player at the top of the list from always
getting attacked first.

---- Jul 21, 10 [1079]
Universal movement lag for walking between rooms has been added.
Fix 80% casting bug in grandfathered spells.
More bugfixes and improvements to pk arena clanwars.
Minor improvement to detect poison.
Fix minor pagebreaking bug in socket code.
Start adding infrastructure for necromancer teeth skills and spells.

Various minor cleric class updates:
Remove and cure poison improved.
Clumsiness curse improved.
Holy weapon and spirit hammer improved.
Reveal curse mana cost lowered.
Clumsiness changed from level 17 to level 10.
Monitor skill raised from level 4 to level 19.
Charm spell raised from level 15 to level 16.
Enchant armor raised from level 16 to level 20.
Spirit hammer is now part of the 'divine aid' spellgroup.
Faerie fire raised from level 4 to level 5.
Ward good raised from level 23 to level 25.

---- Jul 20, 10 [1078]
Group recall cast in your recall no longer recalls you again.
Various minor improvements to the automatic pk arena code.
Add support for member/elder addition and removal to clan log.
Improve knock spell.  It should work on objects now.
Minor cleanup to staffcast targetting.
Allow summon to work across greater distances.

The mage spells 'feeble mind', 'weaken', 'clumsiness', and 'lethargy'
have been moved to cleric and installed into the new cleric 'curses'
spellgroup.  All of these spells are grandfathered, so if you had
already learned them, they will continue to be usable.

---- Jul 17, 10 [1077]
Minor bugfixes to arena code and automatic arena clan wars.
Add support for grandfathering spells when they switch classes.
Fix carry bug in candle spell.

---- Jul 16, 10 [1075]
Minor updates to bot detector, and new bot detect stats added.
Weightless containers may now be merged for 1000 credits, see FAQ 2.10.
Minor updates to the object composite for builders.  You may see
some changes in enchantable items and objects with spell resistance.

Updates to pk arenas, especially in regard to the 'clanwar' setting.
Addition of basic 'arena event' code, which allows arenas to be run
automatically.

---- Jul 14, 10 [1073]
Updates and improvements to pk arenas.
Fix up minor parsing bug in clan 'set door'.
Fix minor ignore bug for spam flagged players.

---- Jul 13, 10 [1071]
Add code to track spell usage in pk.  This should help us balance pk
combat as we see which spells are overpowered and underused in pk.
Enchanted equipment should no longer have RELIC/EPIC/etc flags.
Add pk arena option to disallow scrolls/potions/staffs/wands.
Various minor multiplaying checks.

---- Jul 11, 10 [1069]
Allow class specific display of spells and skills on web pages.  For
example, http://alteraeon.com:8080/spells/mage
Improve rounding of last term in timestamp display.
Autobrief now works when climbing.
Fix missing send when darkening an already dark room.
Fix damage/level bug in leap attack.
Make farsee an annoyance spell and reduce saving throws against it.
Minor bot detector improvements.
Improve eloquence filter to include extended ascii transforms.

Add object identify flags to show remarkable/exceptional/epic unique items,
as well as old style antique/relic flags.