Five on Friday - October 19, 2007
"Why did mage cast times get nerfed with this patch?"
So, the change was this: instead of rubberbanding when you try to move when you're casting (as in, your character moves a couple steps then "snaps back" to its original spot) you actually stay in one place for the duration of the cast. This is purely a client-side change - the server has always handled casting this way. You're now just seeing what's actually happening, rather than what your client guesses might be happening before the server tells it otherwise.
It will take some getting used to for mages, certainly, and it's possible that certain applications of low-cast-time-spells might be slightly affected, but overall this is a step in the direction of making the movement code less susceptible to certain types of attacks.
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"Does the new house storage increase stack with the ML increase, and how?"
It does stack, and it's an additional 20% of your ORIGINAL house storage. For example, say your house used to hold 100 items. You get ML, now it holds 120 items. You get the new additional storage, it will hold 140 items (NOT 144 items.)
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"Does Luck affect the rewards from the Heartwood quests?"
No, the Luck stat has no effect. It's purely random.
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"What is the effect of the Bushido skill Lightning Strike? Is it affected by the HCI cap?"
From Wilki:
"It gives a bonus of 50 HCI, and a critical strike chance ranging from 0-20 based on Bushido skill. It is affected by the cap."
Which gives rise to a different question - namely, if the HCI cap is 45, why does Lightning Strike give a bonus of 50? Well, it does potentially offset Hit Lower Attack - if you've been hit with HLA, your Hit Chance has been lowered to -25%. Lightning Strike will raise your Hit Chance by 50 - all the way to +25% if you're under the effect of HLA. So even though the effect of the skill is capped under normal circumstances, that extra 5% hit chance can still be useful.
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"What does the Body Sculptor do?"
The Body Sculptor will enable players to change their face in KR to one of the other available faces. (We promised it, and here it is!)
There will be further sets of faces to choose from, available through various different methods. The first set is a promotion related to the Japanese 10th Anniversary box. For the first little while, those faces (and bodies! CatHat has been busy!) will only be available to people who have bought that box. Afterwards, they will be opened up to everyone.
CatHat just can't wait to show y'all his work, so check out the new male and female face/body options!
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If Rainz from the UO beta is still around... sir, a gauntlet has been thrown. *giggle* (If you have no idea what all that's about, Wikipedia has a good summary. Basically, Fire Fields are more dangerous than you might have thought :P)
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Have a great weekend, everyone!
- Jeremy