Server 105 has now been up for a year, and it’s time to do our biggest update yet. This past year has seen an incredible amount of work done to the game, both in player-facing additions (the new patching system, joining Raza to the mainland, the XP system and unbound energy to name a few) and behind the scenes changes (new 3D room editor, significantly increased server performance, more extensible game code) and it is now time to begin building on the existing lore and progressing storylines. This mini-expansion adds a new dungeon to Brax and some hints as to what is to come in future updates, and includes a new item that can only be obtained by completing the dungeon. A historical museum has been added in Cor Noth showcasing information and graphics from the early versions of Meridian 59, and players now have access to historical cities (including the original Streets of Tos). As always, feedback on the update can be posted on the forums or in-game newsglobe.
General Changes
- Unbound Energy gain is now disallowed for 4 minutes after engaging in PvP.
- Unbound Energy is now removed when a player teleports (Rescue, Elusion, Death Rift).
- Revenants will no longer spawn in survival arena.
- Death Rift now shows the player’s bound location in the spell description.
- Arena trophy contents are now saved over updates.
- Changed the name and description of several pupil quests to show the NPC’s name (e.g. Maleval) rather that only one of several spells the NPC sells.
- Rewrote/refactored several areas of the codebase (radius enchantments, arena-related code, living statues) to fix bugs and allow future features to be added more easily.
Spell Changes
- New spell, Holy Blaze, in Shal’ille level 4. Will either heal or damage the target, depending on the target’s karma. Does slightly more damage than Shocking Fury, but less than the other blast spells. Sold by Miriana.
- New spell, Martyr’s Grace in Shal’ille level 6. Heals all allies in line of sight, removing health from the caster (down to a minimum of 10% health). Spell cannot fail, refunds mana based on health sacrificed and has a 5 second post-cast cooldown. Can only heal players not attackable by the caster.
- Discordance now checks whether the caster can attack the caster of the room or radius enchantment before removing it. Players can no longer discord spells cast by rooms.
- Warp Time now actually has an effect – the description was correct, but the spell previously did nothing. Will increase the amount of time required for focus spells, and has a reagent cost of 2 diamonds (Invigorate is free to cast so Jala still has one reagentless spell).
- All radius enchantments will now stay with the caster when they move between zones. However if moving from a PvP to a non-PvP zone, PvP spells will cancel.
- Lower spellpower radius enchantments are now overridden by a higher spellpower one, except for the source of the lower spellpower enchantment.
- The hitroll and damage bonuses of Mirth and Melancholy are now spellpower-dependent rather than flat effects.
- The resistance increase from Umbrella is now factored into all attacks on players affected by the spell, to give it a flat effect and make it worth using. The defense bonus still only applies if the attack comes from outside the range of the spell.
- Adjusted training point cost of some Jala spells.
- Added a new item, wooden shield. Lowest tier shield, available from Raza and Marion blacksmiths.
East Tos
East Ende has been renovated to match the style of the Streets of Tos, and to add the entrance for the new Arena of Death.
Death Arena
An outcast from the island of Ko’catan has set up shop in the disused storehouse underneath the Arena of Kraanan and converted it into an underground arena. The rules and match styles are the same as the arena above it, except the deaths are real. Players killed in this arena won’t lose items, but will take other death penalties. Players do not gain outlaw or murderer status from using the arena, though being killed as an outlaw will remove that status from the victim. Combatants logging off during a fight will be killed after a 30 second grace period. Death messages are broadcast to the server.
Home of the Mollusks
The mollusk creatures have migrated away from The Great Ocean to a more secluded place deep in the Forest of Farol, north of Jasper. They now live in and around the new cave in the forest, and the Ocean now has slimes and fungus beasts (similar to Sandy Shores).
Cor Noth
The city of Cor Noth has been revamped with new textures and a few new buildings. Most importantly, it now contains the Meridian 59 Museum, where players can go to see relics from previous versions of the game, and visit historical towns.
Cor Noth Museum
The new Meridian 59 Museum contains some historical information on previous version of the game, and has some items on display from the first two versions (Internet Quest Begins and Vale of Sorrows). The museum curator, Mychel, will sell you a scroll of teleportation allowing you to use the portals in the museum to visit the historical cities. More information is available on the sign next to the portals in the museum. PvP is disabled in historical cities for now, but may be enabled in the future.
Activity in Brax
The ruined city of Brax contains a newly excavated area, including a dungeon containing a necromancer’s experiment. Players can obtain a new item here, the daemon helm:
This item is dropped by the necromancer who will show up to defend his experiment. Currently the necromancer shows up 50% of the time, but this may be lowered as daemon helms go into circulation.
Bug Fixes
- Living statue soldiers now get the correct description.
- Human monsters can now wear items with lighting effects, and have the lights show up.
- Colored shields now show the correct color in the player’s window (i.e. the back of the shield).
- Shields now add their defense bonus to human monsters wearing shields.
- Human mobs won’t block or parry now unless they have the equipment to do so.
For Developers
- Kod compiler now catches invalid constant comparisons (e.g. &Class = @Message). Also catches duplicate settings in calls to Send, Post, etc.
- Added new branching instructions that combine a goto with a null check, speeding up all cases of ‘if (var = $)’ or ‘if (var <> $)’ by ~20%. This also improves the performance of foreach loops by ~40%.
- Build process now checks for invalid entries in kod makefiles, and prints a warning.
- Combined a lot of adjacent AddPacket calls, resulting in ~40% less calls during user logon and improved performance in general when the clients require updated data.
- Moved date/time handling to C, simplifying the handling of dates and clock time in kod (one call to GetDateAndTime retrieves all date and time data).
- Removed a lot of unused or incomplete classes from the codebase, as they can be accessed via source control if we need to use them in the future.