Nexus Clash

THIS IS A SIGNIFICANT UPDATE!

Dev Team Additions
We are excited to announce that three new members have been added to the dev team! In alphabetical order, Lychwood, Plum, and Rinkou (RKBBQ on the forums) are now part of the development team!

Game Mechanics
We wish to note here that some of the changes seen here are reflective of the team feeling that for the most part, the major bugs are out of the system and we can now shift our focus to mechanics and gameplay. The changes below are the very start of that project and if you don't see something for your favorite class, please be patient as we work through the volume of stuff we want to get done.

• Barricades have been removed from the game. They were somewhat interesting during Tier 2, but were not meaningfully serving their intended purpose of territory control in the mature game state so it was time for them to go.
• Offensive spells have been increased in MP cost by 1 MP (except for the T3 autohit spells).
• Tier 2 spells that use the spell combat tree (Noxious Globule, Snowblind, Necrotic Ray, Cloudburst, Sunflare, Rain of Stones, Skewer, and The Hundred Lashes) have had their damage increased by 2 points.
• Touch attacks (including spells and things like Dark Heart, Agony Curse, etc.) now use the greatest accuracy among your character's hand-to-hand accuracy including all buffs, melee accuracy including all buffs, or a flat 70% as your attacking chance prior to accounting for the defense of your target.
• Spellgem charging costs have been reduced to 1 AP and 1*MP cost of the spell (was 2 AP and 2*MP cost of the spell).
• Spellgems no longer "dissolve" when you trigger the final charge if you do not have the Pattern Weaver skill (they ARE still consumed when you use a spellgem to learn a spell or consume them in other ways such as Manabite).
• The "Reveal" spell's cost has been reduced to 3 MP per cast. It now only dispels invisibility but does not reveal the locations of hidden characters to the caster. A character that is both "invisible" and "hidden" will have their invisibility dispelled (no announcement to the tile, character will receive an announcement) but will remain hidden.
• Implemented new spell, "Sixth Sense." This spell costs 10 CP to learn, 7 MP to cast, and reveals the locations of hidden characters to the caster but does not dispel invisibility. The position of a character that is both "invisible" and "hidden" will be silently added to the character's list of known hidden characters so if invisibility is later dispelled the character will know where the hidden character is.
• Casting both spells against a "hidden and invisible" character will reveal their position to the caster, though no announcement will be made to the caster on the first spell cast. Only when the second spell is cast will the caster be told the target is in the tile.
• "Cosmic Affinity" is now a Tier 2 skill available to Defilers, Shepherds, Sorcerers, and Heretics. The skill's cost is unchanged at 30 CP (yes, this is a break from the normal T2 skill costing). If your character has already purchased the skill, it has been shifted to the appropriate class.
• Tier 3 skills that were children of "Cosmic Affinity" no longer have a prerequisite.
• Implemented a new Pilgrim skill, "Profane Resilience." This skill grants +15 HP. When a Defiler becomes a Pilgrim, if they had purchased Cosmic Affinity it will convert to "Profane Resilience." A Shepherd that becomes a Heretic retains the "Cosmic Affinity" skill.
• Implemented new Prayer option for Shepherd, "Detect Evil." This tells the shepherd how many evil characters are in the location (if the character has Hand of Zealotry, it will include neutrals in this count.)
• Implemented new Paladin skill, "Detect Evil." Cost is 1 AP, 5 MP. This tells the paladin how many evil characters are in the location (if the character has Hand of Zealotry, it will include neutrals in this count.)
• Implemented new Oathbreaker skill, "Veiled Essence." An Oathbreaker with this skill is not counted among "evil" characters when the Detect Evil skill/prayer is used on an area.
• The Myrmidon's "Enhanced Senses" skill no longer auto-reveals hidden occupants in a tile. Instead, if you "Search" a location and at least one person you don't know about is hiding there, you have a 100% chance to find that person (if 3 people are hiding, you only find 1, you have to search 3 times to find all three). This behavior extends to status effects that grant Enhanced Senses such as the Revenant's Shadow of the Wolf ability.
• Player-controlled pets no longer have Enhanced Senses - the petmaster must be aware of a target in order for pets to target a hidden character; if a petmaster searches and finds a character, that character should automatically be added to his pets' hate list (if the target qualifies based on factional affiliation/pet stance). Pets with the ability to detect and attack invisible characters retain that ability, though they will not attack "Hidden" characters unless the petmaster is aware of the target's location.
• Notwithstanding the above, pets should continue to track characters that they have *already* added to their hate list even if the target later uses the "Hide" action on the tile the pets are standing in. (Note that it is possible for a Void Walker with the "Adept of the Shadow" skill to move to another tile, hide, then move back to the tile where the pets are deployed in safety since movement does not remove the Void Walker's hidden status in this case).
• Added a new pet modification/stance, "Paralyzed." A paralyzed pet does not attack and its stance cannot be changed until it is rejuvenated.
• The Archon's Prayer Beads can now raise the user to higher than maximum MP, like all other core MP gain mechanics.
• The Lich's Death Touch skill now starts at a base damage of 5 points and reaches a cap at 15 points of damage. MP recovered is now random - between 1 and 3 MP per hit.
• Characters of level 9 or lower killed by a Lich's Zombies/Ghouls no longer rise as zombies/ghouls themselves. Similarly, Necrophages cannot feed on such characters; Hashaa refuses to bring such neophytes into her domain without effort. (Mortal corpses can be raised as undead and Bonesword attacks still convert mortals to undead upon death).
• The "Hellspawn" skill has been replaced on the Penitent and Pilgrim skill trees with "Empyreal Bond." All Penitent/Pilgrim characters who had the "Hellspawn" skill have received the "Empyreal Bonds" skill instead; when you abandoned your demonic nature, you were rejected by the Dark Powers and taken in by the Good Powers.
• The "Empyreal Bond" skill has been replaced on the Heretic and Oathbreaker skill trees with "Hellspawn." All Heretic/Oathbreaker characters who had the "Empyreal Bond" skill have received the "Hellspawn" skill instead; when you abandoned your angelic nature, you were cast out by the Good Powers and taken in by the Dark Powers.
  
• Searching and Harvesting are now disabled while you are inside your own stronghold. The magic that creates the stronghold's protective ward alters your perception of reality so you can see your faction's safe and take advantage of your faction's upgrades; the downside to this transformation is that the tile's "underlying" nature is masked to you. (If you are in **another** faction's stronghold, this does not apply to you; you can still Search and Harvest normally). -- THIS CHANGE HAS BEEN REVERSED AND IS NO LONGER IN PLACE
• A character that spends 4 consecutive AP ticks outside their stronghold and alive gets an additional 1 AP of regeneration on the fourth tick.

Quality of Life and Interface

• You can always open your own stronghold door even if it's locked. It's your stronghold and presumably you have a key.
• Characters of level 9 or lower always spawn within 4 tiles of their stronghold if it is standing.
• When triggering combat spells from spellgems, if you run a spellgem out of charges and you have at least one other gem with the same spell encoded and at least one charge, your attack dropdown will auto-select another gem containing the spell and will prefer the gem with the most charges.
• The button to "use" a grenade in your inventory now says much more clearly what it really does (blows it up in your hands). This has been a running joke in the community for years, but it's bad for the new player experience.
• Failing to lockpick a lockpick because your alt locked the door now just directly tells you that the alt mechanics are why instead of a weird in-character message about fumbling.
• Petmasters always see a health bar on their own pets even without the First Aid skill, as the petmaster has this information anyway elsewhere.
• If you have the "Heal Others" or "Lay on Hands" skill you get to see exact HP totals of Good characters (as though you had the First Aid skill). For angels that do not have Hand of Zealotry, this ability extends to Neutral characters as well.
• Stygian Brutality now broadcasts a message when it gets a kill... or two. Double kills get a doubly brutal brutal broadcast message, for the lucky IB who manages such feat!

Major Bugs

• New users were not able to register an account on the forums.
• Fixed an issue where devs editing items sometimes wiped atypical information assigned to an item since the editor updated all values no matter what, thus introducing issues like Boon of Tholaghru being booze, and thus introducing a lot of issues over the years.

Minor Bugs

• Wytchfire deaths were not properly creating a corpse nor triggering a death degrade sequence.
• An additional check has been added to keep characters from starting play in the Heavenly Host or Legions of the Abyss, a circumstance that should never have happened but apparently did to someone lately.
• Fixed a few bugs on Stygian Brutality relating throwing hidden characters, or auras not getting applied.