Vanguard Patch Notes 1/31/2007

[Cobalt Katze]

GAMEPLAY NOTES

- A level component has been added to your chance to stealth, sneak and hide. This makes gaining skill much easier.

- The stealth, sneak and hide skill gain rate has been significantly increased.

- Melee AE attacks have had their costs slightly increase.


ADVENTURING

- The Druid, Necromancer and Psionicist have had there nuke damage increased.

- Bard – Invisibility song components are no longer maintained.

- Bard – Slightly lowered the movement increase for Tynen’s Components.

- Psionicist - Thought Pulse now has a 4 second refresh timer.

- Psionicist – Mirage is no longer a maintained ability.

- Shaman – Removed two abilities from the Rakurr (wolf) pet that were not intended.

- Shaman – Skin of Rakurr now grants 8% chance to crit instead of 108%.

- Shaman – Skin of Rakurr should now modify chance to crit for auto attack, too.

- Shaman – Skin of Rakurr’s movement speed bonus should no longer stack with other movement speed buffs.

- Shaman – Skin of Tuurgin now properly raises auto attack damage.

- Shaman – You should no longer be able to be in patron form while you have a summoned attendant.

- Shaman – Removed the + spell damage from Skin of Rakurr and lowered the melee damage mod by 2%.


CRAFTING NOTES

- Added harvesting tools to the General Goods Vendors.

- The outpost locations for the level ten crafting outpost quests have been changed for most starting cities.

- A few artificer and outfitter recipes that were missing from certain Thestran basic trainers have been added.

- Attuning dusts have been added to utility vendors.

- Outposts now give double the continental artisans faction of regular cities and towns.

- Outposts now give artisan faction for the city they trade heavily with (if any).

- Outposts now give normal city faction for doing work orders in an outpost that city trades heavily with. If you do enough work orders and gain enough faction with them, hostile cities may become more tolerant of you, allowing access to content inside the city.

- The outpost quest in each city now has directions to get there safely in addition to the already present waypoint.

- Some obsolete recipes have been removed from game.

- Erron in Leth Nurae will now properly switch your trade if asked.


DIPLOMACY NOTES

- Players should find much less frustration parleying with Sylwen, Prince Dargand, Keyvan Minoo, Getzin the Gnome, and Hubert Ringsworth.

- “Dreamspeaker” now fails correctly when the timer runs out.

- Deck transmogrification continues.

- Some alterations to the Civic Diplomacy levers in many cities.

- There is now an alternate source of Diplomacy experience in the form of a group of soldiers that need your diplomatic skills! Speak with your local racial trainer to get the lowdown. This content is available only for players below 40 skill.


WORLD POPULATION

- Uvela should now properly direct players to the various shrines.

- Altered a roaming (potentially) KOS npc who would sometimes path near the corpse altar in Qa Riverbank.

- Fixed several NPCs that erroneously had Khal faction assigned to them

- Added increase to Upside Alliance for slaying Ksaravi Rat Men

- Decreased the amount of faction required to gain to become “Not Killed On Sight” in various starting areas and the few outposts that are hostile

- NPCs that drop coin will no longer do so at a 100% rate its still quite a high rate, but it was out of whack with other forms of money making

- Many outpost NPCs in Jalen’s Crossing are now on the Students of Lao’Jin faction, the students are much more understanding than other inhabitants of the continent

- Challenge Rating on many NPCs in the Ksaravi Gulch dungeon have been modified allowing more diverse groups of players to experience the content

- Entrepreneur Nargix setup his General Goods shop at the Tracker Camp within the Wildgrowth Forest.

- Increased the number of spawn points of Pod Tree Sprouts within the Wildgrowth Forest associated with the quest “What’s in the Pods?”

- Uvela now knows about how many wisp corpses are needed to repair the shrines

- Foruil Gladesworn now knows the location of the Imperial Poacher

- wildlife in the northern plains of Thestra is generaly slightly less dangerous now

- Verdant Lurkers are less likely to notice when their friends are being killed

- Verdant Lurkers are generally less dangerous people than they used to be

- the quest “Breaking The Mindbreaker” is now properly listed as Group

- Mihdi Khadim is now (appropriately) female.

- Martok - Put dot on the map for Port of Martok.

- Rindol Field - Some quests in Rindol Field were incorrectly marked as ‘Solo.’ They are now correctly marked as ‘Group.’

- The Ksaravi Hostage should no longer aggro surrounding mobs.

- Rindol Field - In the quest, “Take Back the Mill,” the waypoint to the Storehouse Mill has been updated.

- Tursh - Added a waypoint to Shimmerleaf Lake for the quest, “No Fish for Tursh.”


- Bind Stone Additions

- Additional bindstones added to the continent of Martok.

- Additional bindstones added to areas surrounding the Village of Three Rivers

- Bindstone added in the general vicinity of the Upside Defense Garrison on Skrilien Point

- Atlar added in the general vicinity of the Upside Defense Garrison on Skrilien Point

- The entrance to Kalendra's Coven should no longer have bunched up mobs.

- Bindstones added to

- Hathor Zhi

- Tanvu

- outpost on side of island

- blighted land outpost

- Leth Nurae

- Northern Plains

- Hilsbury/Misthaven

- River Valley

- camp/tents outside the valley

- small village inside the valley

- Kurashasa area

- arena

- Qa Riverbank


CODING

- Fixed a bug causing the value of max expertise from one item to not show up in the Equipment Expertise tooltip.


~The Vanguard Team

[Sigurd]

Definately alot of hurtin' on Rakurr Shaman and a decent general reduction in fun of all Shaman (but we expected them to limit the form/pet thing since it was stated by beta persons that the devs said they didn't want both pet and form.

Prob is, with the reductions in melee, speed and in removal of spell damage (I thought wolf was hybrid? a little more melee dmg and a little more spell dmg than in human form - vs the lot more spell dps of hayatet (and high DPS pet!) and the alot more form melee dmg (and high AC/hp/tanking pet!)) of the Tuurgin.

I mean, where do the devs now envision the Rakurr to fit? We all can cast a speed buff... we will not likely be using the wolf form to travel since without stacking it isn't likely to be much faster than horse (if it IS faster) and you won't have a pet if jumped by a high level to throw at it /wink or fight with if beatable.

Are there any plans in the works to give some love to the Rakurr just in a different 'balanced' way?? I'd love a reason to assume that form... and if I have to pick one or the other - makes me wish I picked one in which it helps to have the pet in the party (since I don't solo really) - the Hayatet.

Anyone tell me from Hayatet line - if I should just abandon my love of the Lupine family and go Phoenix (GREAT art on that btw guys!!!)

Post here:
http://www.vanguardspheres.com/forum...html#post24317

[FEDS-91]

I'm thrilled they adjusted our stealth/sneak/hide stuff.

I'm pissed they nailed us with the 30% hit on our snare. From 70% down to 40%. I don't mind it being 'toned' down, but thats a huge hit.