Five on Friday - October 3, 2008

"I'm red/green colorblind - is there a way for me to tell the difference between colors of granite?"

Yes! In Publish 56 we'll be adding the name of the granite type (shadow, valorite, etc) to the tooltip.

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Publish 56 Bug Fix Roundup

Here are some more tidbits that look likely to make Publish 56:

Young players will now be attacked in Ilshenar dungeons (they will also get the warning gump as they enter, so they're not taken by surprise.)
Abandoning an escort via the quest gump will no longer prevent you from picking up a new escort
The Virtue Armor suit will no longer sometimes lose its self repair property after logout

One clarification as well - last week I mentioned the "weapon switch" macro working with spellbooks - this was terribly unclear. The macro that will work with spellbooks in Pub 56 is EquipLastWeapon.

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Skill Jewelry and Form-Changing Spells in Publish 56

I didn't have a version of the question handy, but this has come up a number of times. Currently, if you use skill jewelry to increase your skill, cast a form-changing spell (such as Necromancy's Vampiric Embrace) then remove the skill jewelry, you remain in that form.

This will be changing in Publish 56. What will happen is if you lower your skill past the threshhold to be able to cast that particular form-changing spell, (whether by removing items, using a soulstone, or even using the Test Center set skill command) you will revert to your normal form. This will affect not only the various forms available with Necromancy but Magery (Polymorph,) Ninjitsu (Animal Form,) and Spellweaving (Reaper Form.)

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"You've hinted at more faction-related stuff coming up - is this in Publish 56?"

Yes! The next round of content adds completely new rewards and incentives for Factions. Amongst them are many new items, a few of which we can tease about below.

Faction Equippables: A set of enhanced Artifacts. They will be available for purchase via a collection box in your Faction Stronghold (later on, silver collected this way will benefit your faction, but that will be in a future publish.) These items will have several restrictions:

Bound to the character that purchases them - they won't be tradable or equippable by anyone else
Durability has been added to many of them, requiring repairs as they're damaged
Can only be repaired with the new Powder of Perseverance, a faction-only item. (Powder of Fortification will not work on them)
Available only to certain ranks; if you lose your faction rank you will no longer be able to equip an item of that rank.

We'll release the full table of items in the notes when the publish goes to Test Center, but here are a few examples so you can see what we mean by "enhanced":

Rank 1: Rune Beetle Carapace with additional +3 to all resists
Rank 4: Crimson Cincture with additional +5 Dexterity
Rank 7: Spirit of the Totem with enhanced resists (instead of the linked resists, this version has Phys 20% and 10% in each of the others)
Rank 9: Folded Steel Reading Glasses with additional +10 DCI
Rank 10: Ornament of the Magician with additional Mana Regen 3

There are a total of nineteen new artifacts spread out across the various tiers.

Faction Consumables: In addition to the new artifacts, a number of new consumables will be available for purchase with silver. Anyone in the faction will be able to use the items (they are freely tradable) but there will be a cooldown on many of the items, based on rank. Examples of the consumables include:

Stronghold Rune: One-use item that will teleport you to your faction HQ (standard criminal flagging rules apply)
Shrine Gem: One-use item that can be used to teleport your ghost to the nearest shrine
Powder of Perseverance: A variant of Powder of Fortification that can be used on the new faction items.
Enhanced bandages that also remove curses
Two new types of potions

There will also be a new item for sale that allows Human players to equip Elven items.

Start stocking up your silver, and when this goes to Test Center we look forward to your feedback and bug reports!

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More Stacking Info

The following items have all been made stackable in Publish 56 - QA still needs to check through them, and we'd LOVE for y'all to spend some time on TC breaking them, but here's what we have so far:

granite
sand
tribal berries
enchanted apples
smoke bombs
green tea
wasabi clumps
sushi rolls
all chocolate ingredients
oil cloths
arcane gems
dough
pans of cookies
cakes
baked pies

Here are some more that we're working on but may or may not make it in 56:

savage kin paint
unbaked pies

There are a few caveats - for example, exceptional and non-exceptional components won't stack with each other - but this should start to make things easier in a number of areas. We still have quite a few more items on our list, but we're moving right along!.

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What's To Come:

Publish 56 is still on track to go to Test Center the week of the 13th. As you can see from the things mentioned above, it's pretty big! We'll most likely be running a few special testing events on TC to get lots of attention to the various parts of the publish, so stay tuned.

Also, the Chicago Town Hall is coming very soon - October 18th! Leurocian and I are looking forward to talking in much more detail about some facets of Stygian Abyss, and we'd love for you to join us. Check out the details here, and we'd appreciate it if you RSVPed.

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House of Commons Chat Log Available

Thanks for Stratics for hosting a great House of Commons - if you missed it, you can read the transcript (and see some pictures of the team!) here.

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Fansite News:

[Sonoma]

Sonoma kicks off Fall...

UO TRIVIA CHALLENGE!

The Peoples Army of Sonoma [PAS] invites players to participate in a fun for everyone UO TRIVIA Challenge starting at 6pm Pacific (8pm Central, 9pm Eastern) at Karns Vendor Shop located inside Luna town (SW corner). Free entry, great prizes and a fantastic JACKPOT question reward. CLICK HERE for more details.

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FALL-O'WEEN Home Deco Contest

Grab those deco kits ... rake those leaves .... cut those vines ... pull out the old cauldrons ... stuff those scarecrows and scatter those bones ... let the creative juices flow as it is time for Sonoma's FALL-O'WEEN Home Deco contest!! It's easy to participate... Decorate your Sonoma home in a Fall or Halloween theme. Entry home must be opened to public from Oct. 26th - Oct. 31st for viewing by judges. Entries accepted until Saturday, Oct. 25th at 5:00m Pacific.

Contact Queen Mum by PM or at ICQ 168-812-018 to enter and for more details click here.

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[Lake Superior]

Lake Superior Community's weekly event Schedule

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Community Meet'n Greet

Date: Monday, October 6th

Time: 7:30PM Central

Location: Skara Brae Community Center - located next to the bank

Hosts: Airmid / Sabina Nikolai

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Doom Gauntlet Run

Date: Tuesday, October 7th

Time: 8:00PM Central