* The "Purchase Skills" page will now display the option to "Buy Back" skills already purchased. This mechanism works as follows:
- When you elect to "Buy Back" a skill, you are electing to earmark future XP earned toward the "Buyback." The amount of XP you must earmark is equal to N times the CP cost of the skill where N is equal to 5 if you are under level 10, N is equal to 10 if you are under level 20, and N is equal to 15 if you are level 20 or above.
- Only one skill may be earmarked for buyback at a time.
- Instead of your normal "XP meter" with a note for XP to level, you will instead see "XP to complete Buyback"
- If you have purchased a "child skill" of a given skill, it is not eligible for Buyback (you must buy back all children before buying back the parent).
- When you complete the buyback of the skill, it will be automatically removed from your character by the Hand of Fate and the CP spent on the skill will be returned.
- The "free" class skills (e.g., Prayer for Shepherds) are not eligible for Buyback.
- If you have learned any spells, Spellcraft and Tattoo of Sorcery are not eligible for Buyback. (The ability to buy back spells is planned for a future update).
* Likewise, should you attempt to purchase a Tier 3 class skill or restricted spell and have not spent 250 CP on Tier 1 and Tier 2 skills/spells, you will be prevented from doing so until you have spent at least 250 CP on them.
* Last Rites will only display people eligible to receive it. If there are no characters eligible for Last Rites present, the dropdown will not appear at all. Since it is no longer needed, the dropdown will no longer specify that some bodies need rites.
* "Any" is no longer an Alchemy research option.
* Imp Guides and Aethersprite Guides are now simply Imps and Aethersprites.
* Bone Trinkets now tell witnesses nearby that a Bone Guardian was summoned.
* Throttle message (only) now pops a "floating div" in the middle of the screen (so other elements should no longer be moved around by its appearance). The message will automatically disappear after one second and can be dismissed earlier than that by clicking anywhere on it.
* Defilers with Life Vampire or Soul Vampire can detect the nature of Blood Ice or Soul Ice (whichever they have the skill for) even without Sense Magic.
* The status effect bar on the top of the page starts at the height of one line of text, to keep buttons from jumping around when something you did switches you from zero to nonzero status effects.
* Stygian Overlords on their own territory get a vague message in the tile description telling them if their claim strength on their domain is strong or weak. This is a measure of the amount of time you could spend outside of your domain without losing Overlordship.
* Revenants can now activate a different form (bat, wolf, dust) while transformed into another form, rather than getting error messages until they take an extra click to deactivate the old form. Activating the new form still takes MP as normal.
* Item search rejection can be used to reject specific writing items and specific Potions, though we can't imagine the latter condition will be used much.
Skill Rebalancing
* The damage bonus for each step of a Combination Attack (from the free Myrmidon skill) has been decreased by one point. Improved Combination now costs 20 CP. Improved Combination has been refunded for all players (at its previous 40 CP cost).
* Combination attacks no longer lose a combo step on a miss. This was leading to some strange situations where missing in the middle of your combo was more beneficial than hitting in terms of overall damage done.
* Bone Trinket now costs 2 AP and 10 MP (was 5 MP) to create.
* A Lich is limited to a number of extant Bone Trinkets (in all characters' inventories) equal to the level of the Lich, similar to the Dark Oppressor's limit on Scriven Pacts.
* Bone Guardians default to Aggressive vs Hostiles rather than Defensive stance.
* Necrophage now starts with 13 slash/9 death primary/secondary (scaling up to 20/16), its base MP has been increased to 60, it now regains +1 AP/MP on hit (like wheel/wraith) and only character kills count for damage scaling.
* Servitor of the Grave now costs only 1 AP/5 MP, reduced from 3 AP/5 MP. Servitor removes the identity of the summoned corpse, which means that a corpse Relic cannot be summoned.
* Divine Vessel is now factored in before Devout Supplication's doubling of Intermediate and Greater odds, not after.
* Structural Engineering is required to build barricades.
* Animus of the Bat no longer allows viewing of hidden or invisible people on the 5x5 world map.
* Demon Tracker has been reverted to B4 functionality
Game Mechanics:
* Surgery skill now costs 3 AP (was 5). Using this skill in a hospital no longer reduces the AP cost but increases healing efficacy by 5 points. The weight of Surgeon Kits has been increased to 10.
* Leather Cuirass now has an inherent +1 hardness like suits of LBA/ME armor do.
* Using a Boon of Tholaghru, Boon of Ahg-za-Haru or Boon of Tlacolotl lowers Morality by 1 for Transcends/Mortals and 4 for Angels.
* The +10 search boost from tile power now works outside the tile as well. def didn't do this to fix fire adept cough
* Aethersprite healing will now improve the morality of the summoner as if the summoner had healed directly.
* If a tile in Elysium or Stygia has been infused to an alignment besides that of the plane for 50 points of infusion or more, infusion damage is weaker on that tile.
* Pledge Vassals no longer factors in the relative levels of liege and vassal, to avoid players who joined later being locked out of this mechanic until max level.
* There are more spellgem harvest sites scattered throughout the Nexus - always somewhere thematically appropriate for the school of magic in question. Go find them!
* Fonts now show a "Sacrifice" action when they are recharged. The Font will reject attempts to set bars or traps based on "Sacrifice" events (these events should not generate the opportunity to set traps/bars though they will show on the activity log when the Font or Ley Line is tapped.
* Cultivate Ground - The creator of a Font is immune to Spelltraps/Bars set on that Font.
* Cultivate Ground - a character with this skill that has created a Font now has the ability to see current and maximum depth of Fonts they created no matter where they are (visible in the pet pane), though they must still tap into the Font (or a Ley Line) to discover activities that may have taken place at the Font.
* Fonts of impact/piercing/slashing/arcane aspects now also have aligned potions - guess which! arcane s'prol bit obvious
* Spellgem Affinity from Prayer now requires the ability to cast spells and a <3 charge of the corresponding spellgem, otherwise it will roll major MP regeneration.
* Transcend Spellgem from Prayer now requires the ability to cast spells, otherwise it will roll greater MP regeneration.
* Transcend Spellgem requires knowledge of, and a >0 charge gem of, a spell that costs significant MP and that the caster would want to stack up and use a lot of:
** Transcend-eligible spells are buff spells and glyph spells.
** Transcend-eligible spells do not include dispels, Reveal and Shadow Wrap.
Major Bugs:
* Characters can no longer spend font MP from empty fonts that don't actually have MP to offer.
* Angelic pet retaliation for killing Angels (regardless of the presence or absence of Hand of Zealotry) is no longer triggered if the reason for the targeting was the very same Angelic pet retaliation mechanic.
* Fixed an issue where Wolves and Hellhounds cost no MP.
* Seraph AOE attacks from Wing Shards and Incendia Conicio should actually work now.
* Cloak of Steadfastness, which was always supposed to be 30 CP, is 30 CP. No one bought it yet (probably because it was overcosted) so no refunds should be needed.
* Electrified Blade now actually takes MP to use.
* You now cannot perceive the Blessing dropdown of Advocates who are invisible or hidden and unfound by you.
* Necrophage is now a Necrophage rather than a Ghoul that forgot how to heal. (fixed damage/max hp increase+heal)
* Fixed an issue where under some circumstances kills by a Vassal's pets did not grant Dark Power to a Dark Oppressor liege.
* Fixed + re-enabled poison/concealment enchant layers. actual arcanery which is a term apparently
* Font MP is now able to be used for alchemy research, as it is for alchemy production.
* Way of the Fast Hands now properly reloads after an area attack.
* Ghouls now properly consume corpses to summon.
* Fire magic's capstone effect now works properly against Barricades.
* Fixed Blood Magic causing coder eyebleeds/triggering off movement + other nonsense. actual mystical voodoo jungle
* Mantle of Vrykolakas now correctly allows Fangs damage conversion to Arcane.
* Ex-Defiler Redeemed (who pay for spells with HP) are no longer blocked from casting spells if they are out of MP.
* Fixed an issue where under some circumstances it was possible to heal someone who was no longer in your location.
* Fixed Master of the Lashing Kick erroneously giving +3 damage to Soft Strike and Cobra Strike.
* Fixed claiming overlord-ship over a domain costing an extra 20 AP instead of 20 MP.
* It is now possible to claim a Blessing from an Advocate while hiding.
* Ex-Defiler Redeemed now see their real spellcasting costs (in HP) in casting dropdowns.
* Fiddled with pet tick optimization.
* Resolved a problem that was keeping Prayer results specific to one Tier 3 Shepherd exit class (Archon, Advocate or Lightspeaker) from happening at all. This should significantly expand the de facto depth of Prayer.
* Revenants in basic Bat Form can now attack with (only) Feeding Fangs, as intended.
* Sniper of the Creeping Chill now applies its bonuses against targets and structures.
* Whip of Torment now applies its bonus against structures.
* Fixed an issue where achievement badges weren't counting toward rank totals.
* Pacts should be able to properly grant buff spells now.
* Pacts should be able to grant Dark Heart, Life Vampire and Soul Vampire to nonevils now - not that you'll have an easy time staying nonevil after selling your soul.
* Manually desecrating a corpse no longer interferes with its ability to be undeadified by a Lich.
* Skills and Spells granted by a Dark Pact should now correctly unlock any Enchanting capabilities that they should unlock e.g. Fire spells unlocking Fire enchants.
Minor Bugs:
* Fixed an issue where Void Walkers couldn't autohide on their last AP.
* For characters with Ranks, the login page now displays your actual Rank instead of one Rank higher.
* Daily Dark Power decay works correctly now.
* Daily restoration of unusual tiles works correctly now.
* Lethargic alchemy research result nerfed to no longer affect the character's memory. NO MORE BUG REPORT AUGH
* Bopped a very silly bug where if you killed your Dark Oppressor liege as a Vassal, thereby breaking free of them, you still got a Desecration roll as if you were still a Vassal.
* Strangulation no longer bizarrely tells the defender that they're doing the attack.
* Fixed an issue where restricted-use portals that are hidden on the map from some characters, such as Angel-only portals in Elysium, still showed ineligible characters the button to use them.
* Aethersprites and Crystal Guardians granted by Advocate blessings should more consistently have the traits of the recipient.
* Added a regular daily tick check to remove blank items that are sometimes granted by searching tiles with blank search tables for badges.
* Child of the Elements healing is now impacted by Sorcerers Might and Blood Curse.
* Tamped back the chaotic nature of Boon of Tholaghru which now actually uses itself when used. among other things
* Factionless characters no longer see faction-specific pet stances in the dropdown to shift all their pet stances.
* Adjusted Last Rites and Paragon of Death respawn math a little to follow the advertised numbers more consistently.
* Revoking a Dark Pact no longer claims an AP cost it doesn't really have.
* The Pets sidebar count of how many pets you have now shows the correct amount and does not exclude pets that are absent from your location such as Tentacles and Bone Guardians.
* Resolved (hopefully) an issue where it was possible to rename a Soul Thrall, thus severing its link to the dead soul in the void from which it was made.
* Fixed an issue where prayers granted by an Advocate could apply close-quarters Offense results if the Advocate had close-quarters combat skills, even if the recipient did not.
* Alchemy Incenses grant the correct bonus to Items Crafted stats now.
* Good characters are able to request a Blessing from an encumbered Advocate.
* Item weight visibility for multiple items of the same kind should stack properly now.
* Clockwork Cannon no longer feedback damages a Seraph when attacking structures.
* Harbinger of Judgement no longer activates to apply Judging to the Harbinger if the Harbinger does something that lowers morality.
* Stepping of the World Gate no longer requires at least 10 MP if the destination is Stygia.