Project: Gorgon News

Welcome to another exciting Project: Gorgon update! This one has been in development for longer than usual - we usually aim for an update every month. But we've been working on bringing our animation system into the modern day and that took a bit longer than planned.

This update includes our work on the animation system, as well as a potluck collection of new features and bug fixes. So let's dive in!


The old animation system had to go. It severely limited our ability to add new animations or replace old ones. So we've replaced it!

More specifically, we've replaced all the code in the system. Most of the actual animations are the same, for now. Our goal is to get this new system working at least as well as the old one did; then we can start improving things in earnest.

That said, there are definitely improvements to be found already, especially in how animations are blended. But there's also a lot of stuff that still needs tweaking, tuning, and fixing. You'll see bugs. You'll see weirdness. And you'll probably see some very silly things.

You'll also see some new animations, here and there. There are several new dance moves in this update, and now that we have the ability to add more, you can expect to see animations play a bigger role in the game in the future.

So please report all the silly, strange, or broken animations you see! The sooner we get those worked out, the sooner we can start pushing on new animation features. (And we'd really love to hear about the silliest animation bugs you run into! We're thinking about offering an in-game prize for the best 10-second video clip.)


Certain NPCs in the world now have unique dance moves! If they choose to dance, they'll perform their move. If you dance along with them (and your Interpretive Dance skill is 10 or higher) you will eventually learn their dance move. The amount of time it takes to learn the move is random, but usually pretty quick.

NPCs have gotten a little more picky about music, though - they now require a robust musical performance before they'll start dancing. (That's at least 3 performers.)

Your Interpretive Dance level cap also increases by +5 for each new move you learn. There are 12 new moves, so the max level cap of Interpretive Dance is now 70.

Note: animal forms still only have six unique dances. You can learn and use the other dance moves as an animal, but your character-model will just use the old animations for the new dances.

You can gain new synergy levels by raising the Interpretive Dance skill:

• Holistic Wellness - 19, 49
  
• Performance - 30, 50, 70
  
• Bard - 35, 65
  
• Endurance - 39
  
• Unarmed - 59
  

You can now find a VIP tab in the Settings window. Nothing on this panel actually requires that you be a VIP member yet - we're testing out some of the features before we launch the VIP program and we'd like to get your feedback. (Just remember that these features will eventually become VIP-only.)

[h2]Special Reports:[/h2]

In the " Special Reports" section of the VIP panel, you can export a lot of information about your character and the items you have in storage. There are a couple of reports and formats depending on what you need, including:

• a spreadsheet (.csv) of every item in every (non-shared) storage vault
  
• a JSON file with similar information about your storage (for programmers)
  
• a JSON file with information about your character
  

[h2]Combat Logging:[/h2]
In the "Combat Logging" section of the VIP panel, you can enable and configure combat logging. When this is enabled, details about combat will be displayed in the 'All' chat tab. There is also a new "Combat" channel which you can enable in any chat tab. This combat info will also be recorded into the chat logs if you've enabled chat logging (also in the VIP panel).

Note that this is a first-pass attempt at combat logging and is fairly primitive. We may do another more complicated version that only writes to file -- writing every single point of DoT damage to the in-game chat log is far too spammy to ever be useful.

[h2]Chat Logs & 'Book' Mode:[/h2]
You can also configure chat-logging and book-logging in the VIP panel. These previously used the special settings LogChat and BookSaveToFile. Those settings have been retired; you can safely remove them from your Special Settings window.

Please explore these new features and give feedback! But be aware that these features will eventually become VIP-only.


We are excited about our newest performance optimization! This one will be especially dramatic on lower-end PCs, but all players should see at least a small improvement.
This is still experimental, so it's off by default. To enable it, open the Settings window. In the Graphics section, check the "Experimental Optimizations" box, then click save, then logout and back in.

Details:

• The optimization won't fully turn on/off until you switch to a new area, or logout and log back in.
  
• The old "experimental optimizations" have stopped being experimental. The checkbox has been turned off for everyone, so you'll need to turn it on again!
  
• This optimization works by unloading some of the assets for entities that are more than 100 meters away from you. As a side-effect, those distant entities won't be visible... even if you've set the entity-render distance higher than that!
  
• If you have a high-end PC and like to fly at high distances (or like to travel at light-speeds), you may want to increase this range. You can do so with a new special setting. In the Settings window, Special Settings area, add the words AppearanceRange=200 to double the range. (The minimum range is 100, the default setting.)
  

Some players found it unintuitive that the mouse-cursor was repositioned in the center of the screen after dragging the camera with a mouse-drag. We've fixed this issue, but unfortunately the fix is only available on Windows so far. (But we are optimistic that this will be possible for the other OSes eventually.)

We've been testing this for a while now and it's worked well, but let us know if you discover problems. If you need to turn it off (or if you just like the old behavior better): open the Settings window in-game, find the Special Settings section, and add the word RecenterCursor to the settings box. (Note that this only does something on Windows OSes; other OSes are always in recenter-cursor mode.)


Previously if you transmuted a Fairy Magic power on an item, you would always roll another Fairy Magic power. And if you re-rolled a Mentalism power, same thing, you would always re-roll a different Mentalism power. This made it impossible to replace Mentalism powers with Fairy Magic powers, or vice versa.

Now, if you have an item that originally had a Fairy Magic power on it, transmutation will randomly choose between both Fairy Magic and Mentalism powers for all replacements on the item. This allows you to add more Fairy Magic powers, or to remove Fairy Magic powers.

This works by using a hidden attribute set on the item during its creation. If the item was originally created with at least one Fairy Magic power, it'll always be possible to transmute Fairy Magic on/off the item. But if the item didn't originally have a Fairy Magic power, transmutation can never roll Fairy Magic powers.

(But what if you want to add Fairy Magic to an item that doesn't have it? For now, we've added a "back door" way to activate this. If you add a Fairy Magic augment to a Mentalism item, it'll be eligible for Fairy Magic transmutations. You can remove or replace the augment when you're done transmuting.)



[h2]Head-Look:[/h2]
Project: Gorgon now supports 'head-look' - your character can turn their head to look toward the thing you have selected. It's still a little rough; this is the "first gen" version of the feature. (Also, it only works for bipeds so far, sorry animals!)

This feature is enabled/disabled by default based on your graphics quality level. For graphics levels below Good, head-look is off by default. For Good and Great graphics levels, it is on by default but only applies to the local player - you will only see your own head movements, no one else's. For Amazing and Ultra, head-look is on for all bipeds - including other players and humanoid monsters like orcs. (Note that most NPCs don't yet use this tech.)

You can change this setting in the Advanced Options section of Graphics in the Settings menu.

[h2]Screenshots:[/h2]
The "super res" screenshot feature had stopped generating high-res screenshots due to an incompatibility with the newest Unity camera post-processing system. For now we have disabled post-processing for high-res screenshots, so they won't have all the bells and whistles, but at least they'll generate correctly! We'll review this workaround when Unity next improves their postprocessing system.

Screenshots that you take are now saved in a dedicated screenshots folder. You can see where that folder is, and open it, in Settings->GUI->Features.

[h2] Other graphic-y things:[/h2]

• The flash you see on your screen when you are being hit ('screen flash') is less obtrusive. If you had it turned off via Special Settings, you might try it out again.
  
• The Graphics "Brighter World" option will no longer uncheck itself after the client is restarted.
  
• The Graphics setting "Resolution in Full-Screen Mode" no longer has multiple duplicate options.
  
• Pet particle effects are now correctly disabled by /particlespam and the NoParticleSpam Special Setting.
  

• The Recipes UI will no longer jump when crafting items at the bottom of long list of recipes.
  
• The Recipes UI will no longer scroll to a selected button that is already visible.
  
• Improved functionality of "Back" button in the Work Order board.
  
• Fixed a bug where closing out of certain menus also canceled the recipe you were crafting.
  
• The casting bar will now remain open when stopping interactions that are not directly tied to the casting. Note that standing up from a chair will cancel casting, no matter what.
  
• The Quest Tracker will no longer display as a grey dot when no quests are being tracked.
  
• Quests will no longer linger in the quest tracker after switching characters.
  
• Action button cooldowns will also reset properly when switching characters.
  
• The cursor could sometimes get stuck in a mode (like the interact hand). That should no longer happen.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause the top ability slot on the sidebar to clear itself.
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause dragging an item in your inventory to drop an item.
  
• Certain items that required metabolism, or which were broken, would flash rapidly when placed on the sidebar. This will no longer happen.
  
• At certain screen resolutions, it was not possible to see the text menus for configuring shop items. Now you can!
  
• Character generation options with no choices - for example, there is only one human male face at this point - no longer display as options in character generation.
  
• Improved formatting of the fight and fight result windows in Monsters and Mantids.
  
• Fixed some display issues with the Settings menu options.
  
• Prettied up the Redeem menu. Previously you accessed this via /redeem, but now you can also use the handy button in the Persona window.
  
• In addition, we've added two new redemptions this update! Both of them are time-limited; click that new Redeem button in the Persona window for more details.
  

• Sigils, traps, fire walls, crystals, turrets, and other stationary objects are now immune to Fear. (It was adorable watching crystals flee in terror, but too exploitable.)
  
• Treasure that added damage-over-time to Deadly Emission was twice as effective as listed (it fired every second instead of every other second).
  
• The ability Fish Gut now requires (and can consume) an actual Skinning Knife. Previously it could use (and potentially consume) any knife that could skin animals.
  
• Fixed some Animal Handling pet commands that could break due to a bug in the targeting logic.
  
• Fixed a skill-check that was using the wrong skill when performing a butchery on a dead corpse (specifically, using your Skinning skill when rolling to get "bonus meat").
  
• Fixed the displayed base damage for Warden's Stun Trap abilities. (The actual damage did not change, just the displayed amount.)
  
• Moo of Determination 4 no longer shows up twice on Raul's training menu.
  
• Hammer abilities have new icons.
  
• (Looking for the Unarmed changes? Rebalancing of the Unarmed skill was postponed due to the animation system changes, but should be included in the next major update.)
  

• Added a lot of exciting new event content and tech. Stay tuned for dates and times!
  
• Fixed a large number of bugs with unreachable spawns, monsters walking through walls, bad collision, etc. in: Serbule, Kur Mountains, Ilmari, Rahu, Winter Nexus, Animal Nexus, and the Labyrinth. Possibly others!
  
• Vendors would sometimes lie and tell you that they could afford to buy an entire stack when they were actually too low on money! Now, instead of lying about it, they will do their best to figure out what they
• can* afford, and present that information to players.
  
• Fixed exploit scenarios where a character could change between animal forms mid-conversation to gain access to unintended dialog options.
  
• Quest dings and warning screens are slightly less obtrusive.
  
• A number of creatures, including spiders and horrors, and a number of abilities, are a bit quieter and can no longer be heard from across the world.
  
• You can now quit out of the game directly from character generation.
  
• Durstin Tallow in Serbule Hills will no longer rent a room for 100 councils as many times as you ask.
  
• Gisli in Eltibule no longer displays the wrong stable slots number when he offers to sell you one. (He was off by one.) This was a display problem only.
  
• Cows now strafe correctly.
  
• Fixed a very rare bug that could cause players to be unable to log in after a game patch (which previously required administrator assistance to fix).
  
• It is now possible to bind 'Escape' through the Keys menu.
  
• Thanks for reading and don't forget the time-limited gifts!
  

It's time for holiday festivities! In addition, there are big changes to Elite and Boss monsters in this update. There are also revisions to the Ice Magic and Deer skills. And, of course, various other things as well. Read on for more info.



The holidays are upon us! While Alharth doesn't celebrate Christmas, it does celebrate Ri-Shin Day, and New Years' Day. Townsfolk who are your Friends will offer you gifts when you speak with them. (Make sure to have your favorite combat skills active in case they give you a piece of randomly-generated gear!)

There's also a Ri-Shin festival waiting to happen in each city and township in the land, but they will need your help getting their trees assembled. Look for townsfolk in festive red Ri-Shin hats to get started.

This year, there's also a new way for the community to work together. This is an experiment -- we've never tried anything like this before. You'll receive an introductory quest for this part of the event after you've assembled a few Ri-Shin trees. (If you're a Druid, you'll be briefed immediately upon login.)



As mentioned in the last patch's notes, we're working on making high-level combat take longer. This will eventually include both solo and group combat, but we're focusing on group combat right now. Some of the big-picture details are in flux a bit as we experiment and see what's going to work (e.g. "how many Elites is a tank supposed to be able to handle at once?" answer: "we're not sure yet").

We've been improving the "tanky skills" in preparation for these longer fights, but it's been hard to get good tanking data because most high-level Elite monsters simply haven't needed a tank: a group of players could blast them to death in seconds. So it's time to make Elites live longer and see what happens!

In this update, Elite/Boss monsters have a lot more health and armor, and Bosses deal less damage. We'll be watching your feedback (and our combat data logs) to try to figure out where to go from here. We may need to temporarily revert these changes, reduce them, increase them, or add more systems into the mix to address specific problems.

Bosses (but not Elites) also deal less base damage than before. The actual amount varies by boss-tier and the bosses' personal stats, so it's hard to generalize, but at level 80 an "average boss" deals about 25% less base damage.

Both Elites and Bosses deal less damage with their Rage attacks, also. The median reduction in rage-bonus-damage is about a 40%, but again it's hard to generalize too much.

Here's some more details about the implementation.

• Prior to level 35, elites/bosses have about the same overall health+armor, but some of their health has been switched to armor as a side-effect of the formulaic changes. This will make them a bit harder, so be careful!
  
• Starting at about level 35, elites/bosses gain more health and armor than before. This increases fairly gradually until level 50, then it starts going up more quickly. By level 80, the total health+armor of most elites and bosses has almost doubled! (And a lot of that increase is in armor, which means the monster has more mitigation for longer.)
  

[h2]Elite/Boss Loot Changes[/h2]
We've also added some additional rewards for killing Elites/Bosses. When you loot an Elite, you'll now automatically "find some Councils" on the corpse. The amount is based on the monster's level, with some random variance. Bosses also drop extra money in the form of Council Coinpurses. (And bosses with curses drop more money sacks.) Finally, the most deadly tiers of bosses have a higher chance to drop high-rarity gear.

(These quick generalized changes were made because we didn't want to revise every monster's custom loot table just yet. But hey, maybe it's fun enough to remain permanent. Let us know what you think after you've had some time to try it out.)



Ice Magic is supposed to be a versatile wizarding toolkit: it can provide exceptional crowd control, potent survival tools, and decent damage, depending on which abilities you use. Its crowd-control abilities were already top-tier, so we've focused on other aspects of the skill in this update. There's a few nerfs and a lot of buffs.

[h2]Fire Magic Over-synergy[/h2]
The biggest nerf to Ice Magic is actually a change to a Fire Magic treasure mod:

• (Chest, Hands) "Calefaction causes target to take +45% damage from Cold for 12 seconds" => now +16% damage
  

We realized this mod was overpowered shortly after it was introduced, but it was a "let's wait and see if this is actually a serious problem" scenario. A lot of accidentally-overpowered treasure turns out to be fine, and sometimes an accident like that can really make everything "click" and help define a skill. But not this time. It was hamstringing our ability to make Ice Magic more powerful on its own, so it had to be reduced to a more reasonable level. (And it's still probably the most powerful cross-skill synergy mod in the game.)

[h2]Cryogenic Freeze[/h2]
Cryogenic Freeze needs to take its rightful place in the Ice Magic survival toolbox. It has TREMENDOUS mitigation, and it's intended to be something of a "freebie" for Ice Mages: it's useful without needing to invest lots of treasure mods into it. The only cost is that you have to make room for it on your ability bar. (And treasure makes it more versatile and useful.) Of course, Cryogenic Freeze has the extreme down-side that you are completely frozen and cannot move. But now instead of a forced 10-second lockdown, you can control the duration precisely.

• Cryogenic Freeze now lasts 20 seconds or until dispelled by using the ability again. The reuse timer is 20 seconds, which begins as soon as Cryogenic Freeze ends.
  
• Power cost increased; all treasure effects recalculated in potency
  

[h2]Ice Armor, Ice Veins, and Shardblast[/h2]
Ice Armor has been buffed up a bit. We've also worked to make Ice Veins and Shardblast more useful. You can now use either one to reset Ice Armor's timer, allowing you to immediately put your armor back on. Which, in turn, allows you to take advantage of Ice Armor's healing mods again!

This "Ice Armor loop" technique can be very powerful but requires a lot of treasure mods to reach full potential. It's also possible to use Ice Armor in a more passive role, and there are mods to support that style also (such as the ones that boost Cold damage).

• Ice Armor: highest tier of ability has slightly higher mitigation (+27 vs crushing, slashing, piercing, and ice), and all tiers now grant extra mitigation from Elites (+54 additional at highest tier)
  
• Ice Veins: power cost and base damage increased. All treasure potency recalculated
  
• "Ice Armor restores 80 Power over 30 seconds" => "Ice Armor costs -19 Power and restores 51 Power after a 6-second delay"
  
• "Ice Armor restores 170 Armor over 30 seconds" => "Ice Armor mitigates +16 Physical and Cold damage, and mitigates +32 more against Elite attacks"
  
• "Ice Armor boosts Cold attack damage +34" => +50
  
• "You regain 44 Health when using Ice Nova or Shardblast" => "Ice Nova and Shardblast deal +61 damage and cost -12 Power"
  
• New treasure (off-hand): "Ice Veins heals +16 Health and resets the timer on Ice Armor (so it can be used again immediately)"
  
• "Ice Veins heals 120 Health over 10 seconds" => 180 health over 10 seconds
  
• Ice Veins is now marked as a Minor Heal ability (making it eligible for equipment that boosts Minor Heals).
  
• New treasure (head): "Ice Armor instantly restores 80 health"
  
• "Shardblast resets the timer on Ice Armor (so it can be used again immediately)" => "Shardblast deals +X% damage and resets the timer on Ice Armor (so it can be used again immediately)" *

[h2]Cold Sphere Changes[/h2]
Cold Sphere's old Rage attack (at high level) was a 10-second root. This was too much of a good thing and it's now a 5-second root at all levels.

We've tried to make Cold Sphere useful in two different scenarios: for Ice Mages who are using a different skill as their primary damage source, they can invest in Cold Sphere mods to get a bit of extra damage on the side (plus its innate root is always handy).

For players who ARE using Ice Magic as their primary damage-dealer, Cold Sphere's damage-boosting mods are often not worth using, but there's a new mod that gives it a Cold-vulnerability debuff. This makes Cold Sphere an interesting (but not mandatory) option for any Ice Mage.

• Cold Sphere: increased base damage-boost of all pets level 50+. The "root" effect from their rage attack is reduced from 10sec (!) to 5sec
  
• "Your Cold Sphere's attacks deal +34 damage and taunt -65%" => "Your Cold Sphere's attacks deal +50% damage and taunt -25%"
  
• "Your Cold Sphere gains 156 Armor" => "Your Cold Sphere gains 90 Health"
  
• New treasure (chest): "Your Cold Sphere's attacks deal +24 damage and cause the targets to suffer +12% damage from future Cold attacks (non-stacking)"
  
• New treasure (head, hands): "Your Cold Sphere's attacks deals +170 damage, but their Max Health is -80"
  

[h2]Other Ice Magic Changes[/h2]
Added a bit more damage overall. Nerfed one of Frostbite's mods, but don't be misled: it's still an extraordinarily good debuff. (And it will only become more powerful as combat duration increases! In fact, we may need to tone it down some more later.)

• Ice Nova: power cost and base damage increased. All treasure potency recalculated
  
• Frostbite ability: ability base damage increased slightly
  
• "Blizzard deals 328 armor damage and generates -120 Rage" => "Blizzard Damage +255"
  
• "Frostbite deals +154 damage and raises the target's Max Rage by 79%, preventing them from using their Rage attacks as often" => "Frostbite deals +176 damage and raises the target's Max Rage by 33%, preventing them from using their Rage attacks as often"
  
• "Freeze Solid resets the timer on Ice Spear (so it can be used again immediately)" => "Ice Nova deals +110 damage and reuse timer is -2 seconds" *
• "Freeze Solid restores 161 armor to you after a 15 second delay" => "Freeze Solid restores 112 armor to you"
  

[h2]One-Tier Mods Changed (*)[/h2]
You may notice a couple of asterisks above. Those are treasure mods that previously only had one "tier" of effect. The revised versions add more tiers to each mod, allowing the mods to become slightly more powerful at high level. This resulted in a slight quirk: pre-existing items with these mods are still stored as having the first tier of the mod. This means even high-level items will have the lowest-tier version of these mods.

This isn't really a huge deal in terms of potency, but if you want to fix it, you can Transmute the mod off the item and then Transmute it back on -- it will be the appropriate tier when it's re-added. (And this month, Transmutation is cheap for the Ice Magic and Deer skills.)



The earliest animal forms were all experimental designs, and Deer was originally the prototypical "off-tank" skill. Then we decided that off-tanks weren't useful in a game without raids, so Deer was revised in a few other directions. But the most recent revision made Deer fairly tanky again, so let's build on that. Here's a fresh idea: what if Deer was like an "off-tank"?

In old-school MMO terminology, an off-tank can act as a tank for an elite enemy (or multiple solo enemies), but may have trouble tanking some bosses -- although dedicated healers can help there. What makes them unique, though, is an ability to take over aggro for anyone... including a tank! (Hence the name "off-tank", because they can pull monsters off the tank.)

We'll try to give Deer that ability and see what it's like. There's new treasure that gives you a new sidebar ability "Feign Injury", which "temp taunts" a target. Temp taunting works like regular taunting, except it decays at a rate of 20% per second. So a temp taunt of +10,000 would be 10,000 Taunt at first, then a second later would be recalculated as 8,000, then a second later as 6,400, etc. So this ability should help Deer get aggro from anyone, anywhere... at least for a few seconds.

An off-tank should also have solid taunting and survivability, and deal decent damage. So that's what we'll try to do here. In addition, the Deer skill has always had incredible mobility (which is what makes them an interesting off-tank), and we want to keep that too.

[h2]Rethinking Deer Pet[/h2]
Deer players can summon an ally deer to aid them. Previously these deer had an innate 300% taunt multiplier and were intended to be sort-of off-tanks themselves, sharing tanking duties with the player deer. We recently gave these summoned deer the benefits of our experimental genetics system, which could randomly give these pets incredible health and armor. Better for tanking! But yet... at high level, a well-equipped player deer can easily out-taunt and out-tank a pet deer. This just feels like an unwieldy design.

We've dropped the idea that these pets are tanks, and focused them on damage. They no longer have an innate taunt bonus or souped-up genetics. However, they have higher base damage, and the pet's taunting-related treasure effects have been changed into a damage boost.

There are also new treasure mods that summon additional deer for a few seconds at a time. This makes for a fun solo build, although it's somewhat mod-intensive and also pretty chaotic. But a fun kind of chaotic! (For those who don't want chaos, we've also bumped up Deer's more traditional murder methods.)

It's useful to know that every attack your pet deer makes is considered a "deer kick". This is relevant for one specific treasure mod:

• (Hands, Necklace) "Deer Kick implants insect eggs in the target. Future Deer Kicks by any deer cause target to take 310 Nature damage over 5 seconds"
  

This mod is unchanged, except that it no longer stacks more than four times: twice for each piece of equipment it can show up on. (That's *not* a limit of 4 stacks of damage, it's 4 stacks of the debuff that applies the damage!) Also, we've reworded the effect to clarify that pet deer can trigger the damage.

[h2]Removed treasure mods[/h2]
We've tried hard to avoid breaking existing equipment by repurposing obsolete Deer effects with new ones. However, in one place this was impossible. A head-slot mod was removed without any replacement. If you had this mod on a piece of head gear, that item has become "Legacy", meaning it will stop working after a month. You can fix this by using a Transmutation table to remove the mod off of your helm, or you can speak to the Legacy Golem in Serbule to receive a randomly-generated replacement item.
(Transmutation of Deer treasure is much cheaper this month, to help you adjust to these changes.)

[h2]Specific Deer Changes[/h2]

• Doe Eyes: Power cost increased. Ability now resists more physical damage, especially against Elites, and lasts for 24 seconds instead of 10. (At level 77 it now gives 36 mitigation, plus 72 more vs. Elites)
  
• "After using Doe Eyes, your next attack deals +169 damage" => "Doe Eyes reuse timer is -2 seconds, and after using Doe Eyes your next attack deals +190 damage"
  
• "Doe Eyes restores 95 armor" => "Doe Eyes mitigates +16 physical damage (Crushing, Slashing, Piercing) for 26 seconds. Against Elite enemies, mitigates +32 more"
  
• "Doe Eyes heals 80 health" => "For 10 seconds after using Doe Eyes, you mitigate +36 from all attacks, and a further +72 from Elite attacks"
  
• Ability "King of the Forest": base damage and Power cost increased slightly; all treasure stats tweaked slightly as a result
  
• "King of the Forest gives you +15 mitigation of any physical damage for 20 seconds" => this effect was available on two slots, but only applied once. This was intentional at the time, but now we're trying to make all treasure mods stack together when possible. New (stacking) version: "King of the Forest mitigates +14 physical damage (Crushing, Slashing, Piercing) for 10 seconds. Against Elite enemies, mitigates +28 more"
  
• "Cuteness Overload heals you for 114 health" => "Cuteness Overload Damage +270"
  
• "Combo: Deer Bash+Any Melee+Any Melee+Deer Kick: final step hits all enemies within 5 meters and deals +100 damage." => deals +240 damage
  
• Summoned Deer no longer have the benefits of the experimental genetics system, but have higher base damage
  
• Summoned Deer no longer have an innate 300% taunt bonus
  
• Summoned Deer can randomly be male or female
  
• "Summoned Deer Taunt +X%" => "Summoned Deer Rage Attack Damage +Y"
  
• "Antler Slash has a 50% chance to restore 48 armor" => this effect has been replaced with an entirely unrelated effect. (head, chest): "You can use the Deer ability Feign Injury, and it temp-taunts +11300. (Equipping this item will teach you the ability if needed.)"
  
• (Hands, Feet) "Deer Bash deals +120 damage and knocks the enemy backwards" => "Deer Bash has a 15% chance to summon a deer ally for 30 seconds"
  
• New (ring): "Cuteness Overload deals +160 damage and knocks the target backwards"
  
• New (Head, Necklace): "Pummeling Hooves deals +45 damage and has a 8% chance to summon a deer ally for 30 seconds"
  
• "Antler Slash deals +X% damage" => "Antler Slash hits all enemies within 5 meters and taunts +Y". NOTE: this effect used to be available on two slots, Head and Hands. It is now only on Hands. See above about Legacy items.
  
• "Psychic Mitigation +34 while Deer skill active" => "Psychic and Nature Mitigation +34 while Deer skill active"
  
• "Nature Mitigation +34 while Deer skill active" => "Burst Evasion +8.5% while Deer skill active"
  
• "Deer Kick Damage +85" => "Deer Kick Damage +45 and grants you -10% Fire Vulnerability for 10 seconds"
  
• New: (main-hand) "Combo: Forest Challenge+Any Melee+Any Melee+Any Epic Attack: final step deals +150 damage and summons a deer ally for 30 seconds."
  

We've revised some of Riston's special prizes so that they use abilities instead of items. For those that have already purchased a Vendor Fox in a Box or the Small Box of Space, the summoning item in your inventory has been converted to a skill book that will teach you the new ability. This skill book can only be used once, so use caution if you must transfer this skill book to another character on your account. Also with this change, you will have to purchase these items per character now if you wish to have it on more than one character on your account.

[h2]Other important notes: [/h2]

• Once you learn the Vendor Fox in a Box ability, the ability requires you to have some type of crate in your inventory. Any crafted storage crate and most pet crates (when Animal Husbandry is released) will work to allow use of the ability. The crate will not be consumed. The cool down timer on the ability will reset in 2 real-time hours, but you still need to spend 2 hours in-game before you can use the ability again. (You can see that timer in your effects bar under the effect 'Boxed Fox'.)
  
• Once you learn the Small Box of Space ability, there are no other requirements. Just use the ability to summon your storage box. The cool down timer for this ability has been extended to 90 minutes (from 60 minutes). The cool down timer on the ability will reset in 90 real-time minutes, but you still need to spend 90 in-game before you can use the ability again. (You can see that timer in your effects bar under the effect 'Spaced Out'.)
  

As time goes by, we will slowly be adding more and more items, abilities and services to the game that will require Live Event Tokens. For this update, we have added a new 50 token prize! Find Riston in the Red Wing Casino to check it out!

• Bug fix: Rabbit: "Bun-Fu Blast deals +80 damage and restores 44 Power after a 9-second delay" => this did not add damage to Bun-Fu Blast as expected
  
• Bug fix: Rabbit: "Bun-Fu Blast deals +78 damage and hastens the current reuse timer of Bun-Fu Strike by 3 seconds" => this did not add damage to Bun-Fu Blast as expected
  
• Rabbit: added Astounding Familiar Controllers (level 80 ice magic tiara) to loot
  
• Flight in-combat: the Power penalty for flying while in combat now has a much higher cap (meaning flying while in-combat for more than a few seconds costs more Power than before)
  
• Added a "quit" button to the login and character-select screens
  
• Fixed AI bug that caused monsters to hate the first attack that hit them more than intended
  
• "Carbon-form Scrutinizer Array" only gave a +5 pathology bonus instead of intended +10 bonus
  
• The visual appearance for Winter Court Murder Armor (level 80 Hardcore armor) did not glow as intended
  
• "Rubgag's Dancing Shoes": sprint buff now only works out of combat
  
• Worked around Unity shader bug that could cause treants to turn into nightmarish blobs of polygons
  
• Fixed bugs that caused "corpse stink" particles to continue emitting after the corpse was closed
  

With this update, the Halloween event comes to an end. But there is a silver lining: it's cranberry season! Also look for special seasonal recipes (they can drop as loot scrolls) throughout the month.

There are also some balance changes in this update, mainly for Shield, Staff, and Cow. You can read on to get an understanding of the longer-term goals, or just jump to the sections on each specific skill.

The changes will require players to adapt a bit -- especially high-level players -- so for the next few weeks all the affected skills are much cheaper to Transmute. This will help you convert your equipment as needed. Remember to report any bugs you find with the in-game bug report button, and thank you for helping us make Project: Gorgon!


One of our near-term goals for combat is to make high-level fights last longer (both solo fights and group fights). Combat will be more strategic and frankly more fun when each fight lasts a few seconds longer to allow for more decisions. One of the problems with this plan is that currently, most players would die if they had to stand toe-to-toe with monsters for much longer than they do now. So in the future, we'll be experimenting with some new game mechanics to increase player survivability.

Before we make big systemic changes, though, we need to review the existing tools for survivability, namely skills, abilities, and treasure. So in this update, we aren't doing anything to actually lengthen combat yet. We're doing a review of the "tankiest" skills in the game: Staff, Shield, and Cow. (We'll look at other skills with defensive aspects, such as Unarmed, Ice Magic, and Deer, in a separate update.)

Some of Staff and Shield's abilities have been changed pretty dramatically to help support longer combats. We'll use Staff's ability "Blocking Stance" as an example of how we've changed things. This ability could be explained as: "for 10 seconds out of every 30, you don't take physical damage (slashing/crushing/piercing)". This ability was jaw-droppingly powerful... a third of the time. The rest of the time you just had to wait (or die). This ability could be really fun, but it wasn't a great fit for our plan to lengthen combat duration. And due to its extreme potency, there wasn't much for the ability's treasure to do: it was already so powerful that treasure couldn't go much further. Hence boring loot.

The new version of Blocking Stance has flat physical mitigation that lasts 30 seconds (meaning you can sustain it indefinitely), and the treasure effects are more directly beneficial to survival. We've tried to keep some of the ability's original "use it at just the right moment" flavor too by keeping 3 seconds of invincibility (instead of a whopping 10).

Two other combat abilities were similarly changed to work better in longer fights with less downtime: shield's Elemental Ward and staff's Deflective Spin. Beyond that, we've done a bunch of balance tuning-up for all three skills, buffing a bunch of treasure (and nerfing a few), adding some new treasure effects, and for the Shield skill, trying out a new combat ability. Some of these changes are a little experimental, in the "hmm, maybe this will be interesting, let's find out" kind of way. So we'll be awaiting your feedback.

These changes will definitely mess up high-level players' builds. So to help you get back up to speed, we've dramatically reduced the Transmutation costs for these skills for the next few weeks. Visit an Item Workbench to see the effective costs for your items.



Shield is intended to be a super-versatile survival skill, able to pair with all sorts of other skills to help keep you alive. One notable weakness was that it wasn't great at tanking Elite bosses, so we've added some new options to help you build for that job.

Bulwark Mode:
The ability "Vigorous Defense" has been completely replaced. New ability: "Bulwark Mode". This toggled ability reduces your damage output and sprint speed in exchange for damage mitigation. The highest version (at level 75) reduces your damage output by 50%, reduces sprint by 15%, and reduces all direct damage you take by 27%. It can be turned on and off at will with no Power cost.

• If you already knew Vigorous Defense, you now automatically know Bulwark Mode instead.
  
• Treasure change: "Vigorous Defense Restores +48 Power" => "While Bulwark Mode is enabled you recover 13 Armor per second"
  
• Treasure change: "Vigorous Defense boosts your Sprint Speed +7 for 15 seconds" => "While Bulwark Mode is enabled you recover 10 Power per second"
  
• New treasure (Legs): While Bulwark Mode is active all your attacks taunt +50% and restore 17 Health to you
  
• New treasure (Head, Main Hand): "While Bulwark Mode is active all your attacks taunt +50% and restore 26 Armor to you"
  

Elemental Ward:

• Changed the Elemental Ward ability to: "Reduces elemental damage (Fire, Cold, or Electricity) by 35 for 30 seconds, and for the first 3 seconds, provides complete immunity to elemental damage." [This is the level 75 version.]
  
• Treasure change: "Elemental Ward mitigates 45% of all Poison damage for 10 seconds" => "Elemental Ward mitigates +54 Darkness damage for 30 seconds"
  
• Treasure change: "Elemental Ward mitigates 45% of all Trauma damage for 10 seconds" => "Elemental Ward mitigates +55 direct Trauma damage for 30 seconds"
  
• New treasure (Chest, Ring): "Elemental Ward mitigates +32 elemental damage (Fire, Cold, and Electricity) for 30 seconds"
  

Other Treasure Changes

• "All types of shield Bash attacks restore 16 armor" => 21 armor
  
• "Stunning Bash deals X Trauma damage over 12 seconds" did not apply to Emergency Bash, but now does
  
• "Finish It Restores 62 Health" => this treasure effect was bugged and did not work. Also, healing changed from 62 to 68 (@ level 80)
  
• "Disrupting Bash deals +40% damage and taunts +460" => "Disrupting Bash causes the next attack that hits you to deal 29 less damage"
  
• "Infuriating Bash generates no Rage and lowers Rage by 725" => "Infuriating Bash reduces the Power cost of melee attacks by 10 for 6 seconds"
  
• "Direct Acid Mitigation +24 and Indirect Acid Mitigation +4 while Shield skill active" => "Max Armor +36, Direct Acid Mitigation +24, and Indirect Acid Mitigation +4 while Shield skill active"
  
• New treasure effect (Feet): "All Shield attacks have a 22% chance to conjure a force-shield that mitigates 10% of all slashing, crushing, and piercing damage for 30 seconds (or until 100 damage is absorbed). Stacks up to 5 times
  
• New treasure effect (Hands): "All Shield attacks have a 22% chance to conjure a force-shield that mitigates 10% of all direct nature, darkness, demonic, and acid damage for 30 seconds (or until 100 damage is absorbed). Stacks up to 5 times
  
• New treasure effect (Chest, Legs): "Fight Me You Fools deals +18% damage and restores 96 Health over 8 seconds"
  

Staff is another extremely defense-oriented combat skill. It was already pretty good at that role, although its Elite-tanking options were a little limited. As explained above, the skill's two signature defensive abilities, Deflective Spin and Blocking Stance, were heavily revised. This will take some getting used to, but will hopefully end up being more fun in the long run. (With good gear, of course! These abilities now benefit more directly from their treasure.)

Deflective Spin

• Ability Change: At max level the protective buff changed to 13% universal mitigation for 15 seconds. Base damage increased.
  
• Treasure: "Deflective Spin heals 108 Health over 60 seconds" => 270 health over 15 seconds
  
• Treasure: "If you have less than half of your Health remaining, Deflective Spin heals you for 31% of your Max Health" => "Deflective Spin restores 66 Health instantly and provides +50 Mitigation from all Elite attacks for 15 seconds"
  
• Treasure: "Deflective Spin restores 54 Power after a 20 second delay" => "Deflective Spin costs -9 Power and mitigates +11 damage from each attack for 15 seconds"
  
• New Treasure: (Ring): "Deflective Spin gives you +18% Projectile Evasion for 15 seconds"
  

Blocking Stance

• Ability changes: "For the next 10 seconds, you suffer no physical damage" => "Reduces any physical damage you suffer for 30 seconds, and for the first 3 seconds you are immune to physical damage" (base ability @ level 77 mitigates +34 slashing/crushing/piercing from regular enemies, and +68 more against Elites). Ability cost increased.
  
• Changed Treasure: "Blocking Stance restores 50 Power to you" => "Blocking Stance costs -16 Power and mitigates +10% of physical damage from Elite attackers for 30 seconds"
  
• Changed Treasure: "For 30 seconds after using Blocking Stance, your Mentalism Base Damage is +14.5%" => "Blocking Stance boosts your Psychic Damage +6.75% for 30 seconds"
  
• Changed Treasure: "Blocking Stance boosts your Direct Cold Damage +19.5% for 30 seconds" => "Blocking Stance boosts your Cold Damage +6.75% for 30 seconds"
  
• New Treasure: (Head, Necklace): "Blocking Stance mitigates +12 physical damage (Crushing, Slashing, Piercing) for 30 seconds. Against Elite enemies, mitigates +24 more."
  

Other

• Lunge: ability's internal "power category" was increased, increasing Power cost, base damage, and potency of treasure effects. (All Lunge treasure was affected at least slightly; for brevity only significant changes are listed here)
  
• "Lunge hits all enemies within 5 meters, but deals -8% damage and reuse timer is +2 seconds" => "Lunge hits all enemies within 7 meters and deals +175 damage to health and armor, but reuse timer is +2 seconds"
  
• "Lunge deals +121 armor damage" => "Lunge causes the next attack that hits you to deal 29 less damage"
  
• "Double Hit costs -16 Power and makes the target 10% more vulnerable to Slashing for 15 seconds" => "Double Hit costs -16 Power and makes the target 10% more vulnerable to direct Fire and Cold damage for 8 seconds"
  
• Smash, Double Hit, and Heed The Stick Damage +69 => +125
  
• "Pin boosts Core Attack and Nice Attack Damage +68 for 7 seconds" => +98 for 15 seconds
  
• "Phoenix Strike deals +36% Fire damage to melee attackers, and ability reuse timer is -7 seconds" => +36 becomes +41%
  
• Headcracker and Strategic Thrust deal +16% damage and reuse timer is -1 second => +22%
  
• "Lunge deals +39% damage to health and armor" => +43%
  

No huge changes here, but some new treasure. Many of these are mix-and-match tools for tanking high-level Elite enemies. Since Cow is a true "tank" skill, properly prepared Cow players should obviously be able to tank Elite monsters... but we also recognize that not all cattle dream of leading a herd into battle. So we've tried to combine the new Elite-specific buffs with buffs that are useful for solo play.

For technical reasons (to avoid "breaking" any existing equipment), some treasure effects had to be shuffled around a bit, e.g. treasure that lowered an ability's Power cost may have switched to a different slot. So your existing equipment may have unexpected buffs. (But at least they won't be marked as Legacy Items.) Remember that Cow gear can be Transmuted cheaply for the next few weeks!

• "Chew Cud increases your mitigation versus all attacks by Elites +14 for 10 seconds" => now +34. Also, this treasure effect was bugged and did not work before
  
• "Tough Hoof has a 66% chance to deal +86% damage and taunt +800" => "Tough Hoof costs -26 Power and mitigates +11% of all Elite attacks for 8 seconds"
  
• "Tough Hoof deals +51% damage and taunts +800" => "Tough Hoof deals +51% damage and reuse timer is -1 second"
  
• "Cow's Bash restores 33 Power to you" => "Cow's Bash deals +80 damage, taunts +800, and reuse timer is -1 second"
  
• "Indirect Nature Damage +40% when skill Cow active" => "Indirect Nature Damage and Indirect Trauma Damage +40% when skill Cow active"
  
• "Deadly Emission Deals +255 Nature damage over 10 seconds and Taunts +400" => 255 to 415
  
• "You regenerate +20 Health per tick (every 5 seconds, in and out of combat) while Cow skill active" => "While Cow skill is active, you regenerate +32 Health every 5 seconds and resist +16 damage from Elite Crushing, Slashing, or Piercing attacks"
  
• New treasure (Feet): "Cow's Bash costs -33 Power"
  
• New treasure (off-hand): "Deadly Emission Deals +170 Nature damage over 10 seconds and reduces targets' next attack by 35%"
  
• New treasure (ring): "Clobbering Hoof deals +35% damage and if target is Elite, reduces their attack damage 10% for 10 seconds"
  
• New treasure (chest, hands): "Max Power +31 and Vulnerability to Elite Damage -8% when Cow skill active"
  
• New treasure (hands): "Tough Hoof deals +132 damage and taunts +950"
  

Rabbit isn't a tanky skill, so this is a bit off-focus for the rest of the skill changes, but there's a rabbit-themed live event coming up soon, so we've made some changes to make high-level builds a little more fun and impressive, whether combined with Unarmed or Ice Magic.

• Ability change: Carrot Power: Base chance to consume carrot changed from 33% to 10%. Tweaked wording to make it clear that Rabbit Treats act as Carrots for purposes of this ability
  
• Ability change: "Bun Fu Blitz" is renamed "Bun Fu Kick", and is now considered a kick for purposes of effects that boost kicks. ("Thump" also continues to be a kick.)
  
• Treasure change: "Bun-Fu Blast deals Cold damage (instead of Psychic). Reuse timer is -1 second and damage is +68" => "Bun-Fu Blast deals Cold damage (instead of Psychic), and Ice Magic attacks boost the damage of Bun-Fu Blast by 16% for 60 seconds (max 20 stacks)"
  
• Treasure change: "Carrot Power restores 144 Health after a 12 second delay" => 240 health after an 8-second delay
  
• Treasure change: "Carrot Power boosts the damage from all kicks +124 for 10 seconds" => +192
  
• Treasure change: "Bun-Fu Strike deals Cold damage (instead of Crushing) and deals +112 damage " => additional feature: "... and hastens the reset timer of Bun Fu Blast by 2 seconds"
  
• New treasure effect (Chest): "Love Tap boosts your Melee Evasion +11.5% for 15 seconds"
  
• Rabbit gear can be transmuted cheaply at Item Workbenches for the next few weeks
  

Just bug-fixes this time around. The fox's treasure tables aren't completely full yet, so there's room to add more special treasure effects, but we haven't decided what yet. (Perhaps we'll add tools to synergize with another skill... what skill pairing would you like to see?)

• treasure that boosted Paradox Trot only lasted for a maximum of 20 seconds (not 60 as intended)
  
• treasure that boosted the stats of summoned Trick Foxes did not work
  
• "Blur Step provides +N% Burst Evasion for 20 seconds, and Paradox Trot boosts Sprint Speed +1": this treasure effect is available on two item slots, but having both did not stack
  
• "Blur Step provides +N% Ranged Evasion for 20 seconds, and Paradox Trot boosts Sprint Speed +1": this treasure effect is available on two item slots, but having both did not stack
  

These crafted garments triggered too often and have been toned down. (This is actually a reversion of a buff from a while back. Nimble gear isn't intended for tanking, and the shorter reset times ended up being too good.)

• Crafted Nimble Coat: Every 15 (or 12) seconds, automatically Evade the first Melee attack aimed at you => triggers every 30 (or 25) seconds
  
• Crafted Nimble Pants: Every 15 (or 12) seconds, automatically Evade the first Ranged attack aimed at you => triggers every 30 (or 25) seconds
  
• Crafted Nimble Shoes: Every 15 (or 12) seconds, automatically Evade the first Burst attack aimed at you => triggers every 30 (or 25) seconds
  

Certain abilities prevent a monster from shouting for help. For instance, if you mesmerize a monster, it does not call for backup. A handful of crowd-control abilities have this feature, and a few surprising abilities have it also. We've been considering how this feature might evolve in the future, and suddenly realized this info wasn't actually visible in-game anywhere. So it is now!

The following abilities now indicate that they prevent the target from shouting for help. Remember that this is only a display change; these abilities already did this.

• Unarmed: Front Kick, Barrage, Hip Throw, Claw Barrage
  
• Fire Magic: Defensive Burst
  
• Psychology: Tell Me About Your Mother, Cause Terror
  
• Pig: Pig Punt, Squeal, Harmlessness
  
• Deer: Deer Bash
  
• Cow: Cow Bash
  
• Staff: Redirect, Suppress
  
• Necromancy: Deathgaze
  
• Archery: Snare Arrow
  
• Spider: Gripjaw, Terrifying Bite
  
• Shield: Stunning Bash, Emergency Bash
  
• Hammer: Leaping Smash
  
• Ice Magic: Freeze Solid
  
• Bard: Entrancing Lullaby
  
• Rabbit: Play Dead, Love Tap
  
• Miscellaneous: Horrifying Screech, Visage of Kajich
  

A few other abilities gain this power from treasure effects, namely Werewolf's Sanguine Fangs and Knife Fighting's Marking Cut. In those cases, it was already displayed.

• Players receive new bonus levels in Cooking by reaching level 70 in Gardening, level 49 in Knife Fighting, level 30 in Shamanic Infusion, level 35 in Alchemy, and level 60 in Skinning
  
• Tweaked cow porkpie hat visual positioning
  
• Removed physics collision from some deployable candles
  
• Fixed significant framerate drop in Serbule and Serbule Hills during certain hours of the morning, when the camera was facing certain directions. (The "fix" involves making the sun not cast shadows too early in the morning. It's not exactly an elegant or permanent fix, but it'll do for now. The "real" fix will probably involve replacing the sky system again.)
  
• The Ilmari Desert has undergone graphical renovation. This is mainly a test of a new system for terrain decoration. Theoretically, you should have about the same framerate as before, even though the desert now has thousands more decorative elements (mainly boulders, but also clumps of trees, grass, etc.)
  
• Fixed bug with certain Graphics Settings sliders that incorrectly rounded a fractional number to the nearest whole number, even if that made the value invalid. E.g. when a slider was supposed to have a minimum value of 0.1, it got rounded to 0.0. (You can still type in "invalid" numbers manually, but they will be capped to the intended min/max the next time you move the slider.)
  

The Halloween event is live! This year it's much longer than before. If you encounter problems with any of the new quests, please remember to bug-report them.

• We've modestly increased the Power cost of most abilities. (We'll use level 80 abilities as examples since the changes are most noticeable at high level.) A typical high-damage level 80 ability costs 4 or 5 more Power than before. E.g. Barrage 7's cost changed from 48 to 52. A few abilities (ones in the highest "Power tier", an internal measurement) were increased more dramatically. Most dramatic is probably "You Were Adopted 6": its cost changed from 90 to 110 Power.
  
• We've revised how quickly bosses respawn. Most bosses now respawn 5-10 minutes faster, with an average speed up of seven minutes. The exact change depends on how complex the boss's scripting is, and how easily we could revise things to be faster (without having to re-engineer the whole encounter). If you run into problems with this new respawn rate, please report them. (An example problem is if the boss's sidekicks respawn much faster or slower than the boss themselves.) NOTE: one of the ways we sped up boss respawns is by hastening the rate at which their corpses decay. Most boss corpses decay 2 minutes sooner than before.

• Added lighting to Hogan's Basement
  
• Added lighting to Goblin Dungeon
  
• Treasure bug fix: giant bat Sonic Burst combo effect accidentally also boosted Giant Bat Base Damage for 10 seconds (which comes from a different combo)
  
• Tweaked cow eyeballs
  
• Nishika in Rahu has new hangouts that can teach you how to turn mountains of cheap meat into small amounts of low-quality animal fat
  
• Tweaked spawn density in Hogan's Basement
  
• Slightly tweaked game performance in some dungeons

Bug fixes/tweaks:

• Fixed a bug that disabled several framerate optimizations (such as Culling Distance Multiplier)
  
• Fixed label problem on candles: they said they lasted 45 minutes, but actually last 90
  
• Fixed bug that let you place 2 buffing candles at once (this is mainly a sanity-check mechanism since players can only have one candle buff at a time anyway)
  
• Fixed bug that let you place 6 decorative tealights instead of 5 (which was wildly exploitable)
  
• Ultashk now demands Filthy Animal Fat instead of Candle Stumps to get past his gate
  
• Some rats had gained the ability to fly; this is fixed
  
• Winter Court Frostmakers didn't advance quests requiring you to kill Winter Court troops in the Fae Realm
  
• Made Fae Ensigns' consoles opaque for purposes of line-of-sight checks (which also means they can't shoot through them)
  
• Some Fae Ensigns were unable to hear calls for help
  
• Fae Ensigns are more susceptible to mesmerisation
  
• Coldfeather is a bit tougher
  
• Captain Evergloam is a bit tougher
  
• Fixed some more treasure buffs that kept working after switching combat skills
  
• Fixed coloring on named grimalkin "Hissy" and "Chopjaw" (this is a temp patch until animal genetics are enabled, at which point each instance of these creatures will have a slightly different color chosen by their genetics; for now their coloration is always max-intensity)
  
• Improved the new "Alarmer" behavior, which is used by Captain Evergloam (and entourage), as well as by security aboard the Wintertide. (Creatures with this behavior will have "Alarmer" listed in their portrait tags when selected.) Previously, Alarmers called for help whenever they used an ability. Now, they call for help as soon as they enter combat and every 4 seconds during combat, except when stunned, mezzed, or feared. (Note that this change makes Fearing an Alarmer creature very dangerous: they won't actually shout for help while fleeing, but they will shout as soon as they return to normal combat. So watch out for that.)
  
• Changed which animals can drop animal fat. (The intent is that mammalian-type animals will drop fat as an organ.) Some creatures such as bees and dinosaurs were dropping fat, and no longer are. Other creatures such as fae bears and entourage panthers did not drop fat, and now do. A few creatures have changed what type of fat they drop. (The type of fat is based on the level and the general role of the creature; meat animals such as cows, goats, and deer will have the best fat drops for their level.)