Five on Friday - August 31, 2007
"I have Bushido, and I'm having trouble controlling and/or bonding with my Lesser Hiryu. What's up with that?"
First of all, the bonding issue. Wilki looked into it, and turns out it was actually bugged before - you could bond with the lesser hiryu even if you didn't have the skill to control it. That's not good. However, by fixing that issue, we actually changed it so you can't bond with it unless you meet the taming requirements - Bushido isn't taken into account. That's not good, either, and we're considering that a bug at the moment.
As for control chance, we aren't seeing issues with it so far. If you have 90 Bushido, you have a 60% chance to control the lesser hiryu, and it scales up to a 90% chance at 120 adjusted skill, or 95% at 120 real skill (no jewelry.) Even at 120 real skill, you'll probably want to keep some food on hand in case your lesser hiryu refuses an order - you don't want its loyalty to drop too far!
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"Is mining skill gain affected by the resource changes?"
Yes and no. No, because skill gain by actual mining is not difficulty-based - it doesn't matter what ore type you're digging up, you have the same chance for gain, so changing the ore types won't affect the rate of gain there. Yes, because smelting IS difficulty-based, and if you're getting less of the higher-level ores, you'll have fewer chances to gain skill by smelting.
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"The Skill page for Spirit Speak seems to say that the max possible healing from channeling your own energy is around 5 points - that's obviously not right. What's going on here?"
Basically, we slipped a digit - multiply the "Spirit Speak" value by 10 - so if you're a GM, use 1000 - for both of those formulas. Otherwise the calculation is correct. (And will be changed shortly on the page :))
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"How does poisoning affect Necromancy?"
Sounds like there's a rumor going around - or possibly memory of an old interaction that's long since gone. Poisioning does not affect necro spells at all.
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"How is damage determined for Chain Lightning and Meteor Swarm?"
Wilki says:
"Ok, so magery spells do damage based on their spell level. Circle seven spells do between 52-56 damage. (Plus any other damage modifiers like your intelligence, skills, etc).
For Chain Lightning and Meteor Swarm, if you only hit one target, the target takes that much damage. If you hit more than one target, the damage amount is doubled, and then divided amongst each target evenly.
(If the damage numbers seem high, it's because eval int is actually a negative modifier below 90 skill.)"
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"Can you give us any more hints about what we'll be getting for the 10th Aniversary?"
Two words:
Virtue. Armor.
And to clarify - the 10th anniversary celebrations will be free to all. We are not selling a box or codes for the stuff we're talking about here - everything we are doing will be free to our players. (Although that doesn't mean you won't have to fight for some of it...) It's a party, and we're not charging money at the door!
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"When will the blessed items actually be removed from Siege?"
TC4 has been opened up with a copy of Siege and the blessings removed - please hop on and make sure that a), everything is unblessed, and b), items that are unblessed can still be turned in to the turn-in NPCs. Assuming there are no unfixable issues, we'd be looking to roll this change out live with the 10th Anniversary publish on approximately September 25th.
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Town Hall: Austin
The Austin Town Hall is going to be a bit different than usual - we'll show off a few things, and do some short Q&A, but we want to spend the bulk of our time celebrating our anniversary. Come out prepared to socialize, meet your fellow players, and reminisce about the last ten years!
If you're planning on coming out, please RSVP now!
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Fansite News
From UOForums.com:
"Hi all,
We've got two great interviews back from EA, for both Cathat and GrimmOmen. You can read each interview in our interview area:
Cathat interview
GrimmOmen Interview
Thanks all!
Adam"
Also, UORadio.com will be broadcasting live from the Austin Town Hall! They are also sponsoring three solid days of partying on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday - check out UORadio.com for all the details!.
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I'll be out of the office for much of next week, so there will not be a FoF next Friday. Hopefully the stories from the Austin Town Hall will make up for it!
- Jeremy