Five on Friday - July 20, 2007
"How does Crushing Blow's damage increase work? Does the DI cap apply?"
It's a 50% increase on the base damage, and it stacks with other DI effects (Enemy of One, slayer weapons) up to the cap. So it is possible, if you're already at the cap, for Crushing Blow to make only a small difference, or none at all. (For a longer explanation of the DI cap, see this recent FoF.)
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"Shouldn't the Repeating Crossbow have Double SHOT instead of Double STRIKE?"
That would make more sense, wouldn't it? Unless you're really fast about thumping people over the head with your crossbow when they get too close... More seriously, though, the two special moves do exactly the same thing, they just have different text, and yeah, the Repeating Crossbow appears to use the wrong text.
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"Why don't dragon scales get the double resource bonus in Felucca?"
We're not sure, but we're counting this one as a bug. Hides do, wool does... scales should too.
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"What is the TOTAL cap on Mana Regen? (given that equipment cap is 18?)"
There is no other cap - you can only get up to 18 on your mana regen item properties, but meditation, focus, etc, can all be stacked on top and your regen will continue to increase.
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"What is this "PvP Focus Group" business? When are we going to actually see changes out of it?"
The PvP Focus Group has been evaluating our initial set of proposed changes, we've made some tweaks, and we're giving it back to them to play with for a little while longer. The current plan is to see how this build goes over, make any additional tweaks that seem to be needed, and publish the build for all to play with within a week or two. We'll give everyone a chance to hack at it and provide feedback before we push it out to the live servers.
We've been really happy about the quality and the focused nature of the feedback we've been getting with this setup, and we think we've got some good things coming out of it. Keep an eye out for the Test Center notes, and see if you agree!
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"I have an older Athlon and since the patch on May 31st, KR just won't start - after it finished patching the patcher window closes and I get a Windows error. What do I do?"
Thanks to Stratics poster Breanna Vallard, we have determined that this issue can be caused by an out-of-date BIOS - if you're experiencing this problem, check with your system/motherboard manufacturer for a BIOS upgrade. We're going to look into the changes we made to the code that trigger this issue, but it appears that, in some cases at least, there is a fix for it.
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KR Patch Status
We tried REALLY hard to get you your second patch this week, but we had to push it out til Monday. It will be a simple patch, unlike this past Monday's, plus a server build on Test Center. Here are a couple of highlights from the patch notes:
- Several new macros, including the full versions of the boat commands and pet commands we put art in for last patch
- Improvements to the freeform (legacy-style) inventory - items will be bigger and easier to place where you want them to go
- Fixed a number of crashes and memory issues
- Several improvements to the Chat UI, including selectable text color and the ability to hide the chat window entirely
Plus lots of polish, bug fixes, and other stuff!
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It has been one of those weeks, and I am going to follow the shining example of my mentor and go have a slushy. Or three. Have a good weekend!
- Jeremy