Publish 41

General Characteristics

Doesn’t engage in combat
Passable, so it can’t be used as a block/shield
Will not block line of sight, targeting, etc
Invulnerable
Attendants will have no backpack space (they are not extra inventory slots)
No Follower Slot usage
Only one Personal Attendant in use, anywhere, at a time
Contract cannot be stolen
Upon a player's death, the Personal Attendant will re-deed itself and go into the player's backpack
Anytime the character exits the world, the NPC will re-deed into the player’s backpack
NPCs will have a persistant name randomly chosen from a list on creation from the contract

Obtaining a Personal Attendant

Players will receive a token which, when double clicked, will present the player with a contract for a Personal Attendant
When this contract is used, the player will then select the type of Personal Attendant they want to place in the world

Types of Personal Attendants

Guide
- Helps players find services and merchants in towns:
  - List of locations for each town in the game
  - Player can select nearby shops/locations
  - List will dynamically populate based on the characters current location, and shopkeepers available in the city
    - Will lead the player to the specified location
- When double-clicked, the Guide will:
  - If the player is not in a city, the Guide will tell the player they are not in a city
  - If the player is in a city, the Guide will present the player with a list of locations in the city
- If the player disconnects when en route, the guide (like all NPC Attendants) will re deed to the backpack. The player will have to bring the guide out and select the destination again.
Fortune Teller
- Always Female
- The Fortune Teller's functionality is accessed through the context menu
- Tells your fortune via Tarot cards:
  - The player will ask the Fortune Teller a Question
  - The Fortune Teller places three cards on the table gump, representing the past, the question and the future.
  - The gump will contain three cards in a traditional layout (Note: The cards currently are represented with placeholder art, and will be replaced before the feature is published.)
  - The cards will be selected randomly (or are they?)
  - There will be Inverted Cards chosen at random
  - The gump will also have a text area below each card that will display the card's meaning
  - The interpretation of the cards will be left to the players
Lucky Dealer
- The Lucky Dealer's functionality is accessed through the context menu
- A gump will display the choices of dice to choose from:
  - Dice sets are d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, d100 (up to four)
  - You also choose the number of dice to be rolled
- The Die Roll will be barked out by the Lucky Dealer, and will appear in the journal as well
- Each die will have its roll displayed, separated by commas
Herald
- Herald can be placed in a player's house
- Will greets people visiting your home
- Can be placed in both public and private houses
- Only the house owner may place a Herald
  - Conforms to any legal placement rules for a single tile object (on steps etc..)
- If house if traded or demolished, Herald will re-deed to the players inventory (or bank if inventory is full)
- When placed in the house the Herald will not re-deed when the player logs out or disconnects
- When not placed in a house, the Herald will follow the player as any other attendant.
- The Herald will make announcements periodically
- The player will be able to set the Herald's messages by entering the greeting and announcement text in a gump
  - the gump will be accessed by using the Choose Messages option in the context menu.
  - The gump will contain two text entry fields marked In House Greeting and Herald’s Announcement.
    - Each text entry will be filtered through the Profanity filter before being validated for use.
  - If the text is not valid, the gump will return an appropriate error and ask the player to enter a new line of text

NOTE: The personal attendants are a feature that will be introduced in Japan as part of a boxed SKU and in North American as a digital sales item. More info will be released on them soon.

Other Fixes

Fixed a bug that was causing certain items that had been changed in the past to not fix themselves. This may have an affect on certain items such as the Aegis of Grace
The Aegis of Grace can now be equipped by humans
Fixed Elven Dressers facing south. These items were being placed in 2 sections
Imprisoned Dogs will no longer take items players accidentally drop on them
Imprisoned Dogs no longer change shape while stabled
Players will no longer get The Shattering book in their Bank Box

Updates

Update 1

The following is a list of changes deployed as Publish 43 on July 12, 2006 during each shard's maintainence.

Red bank checks that were changed into a bag with 1 coin in them have been fixed
Fixed the guard zone outside of Wind to change it back to the size it was before Publish 41
Fixed an issue that could cause Personal Attendants to de-spawn
Players who had their Personal Attendants de-spawn will recover them in the form of a contract in their pack
Heralds placed inside of a house will no longer go invisible when their owner goes invisible. This will also fix Heralds that were already in this state.

Update 2

On August 18, 2006, the following was published:

Removed Skara Brae's Justice region in Tram so that players can cast area effect spells
Pushed back the no-recall zone at Serpent's Hold to not include player housing
All moongates during the moongate invasion should only have a dozen or so Ophidians
Ophidian Healer require more of their mana to cast healing; can only cast on allies when they can be seen