Project: Gorgon News

This update has a lot of different stuff. In it we've added... wait, let's just do a bullet list. That'll be easier. In this update, we have:

• Soft-launched our long-awaited VIP program.
  
• Added lots of UI features -- like the ability to lock the UI!
  
• Bumped up the difficulty of high-level solo monsters.
  
• Revised the Unarmed skill.
  
• Added a new crafting skill, Non-Fiction Writing.
  
• Introduced a new player messaging service: Pigeon Mail.
  

This update introduces our new VIP Membership program. We've been talking about VIP for years -- all the way back to the Kickstarter campaign -- so we are very excited to get it going!

VIP is an optional monthly subscription plan that helps players support the game's development while getting useful benefits in return. The most notable benefits are extra slots: more character slots, inventory slots, and transfer slots. Read all about the VIP plan, and the reasons for it, in our blog post (see the news links above these patch notes for a button that jumps to the blog post.)

As of this patch, the VIP Program is "soft-launched". We're still waiting on final Steam store-page approval, so it may be a week or two before it's possible to subscribe via Steam. But if you have VIP time as part of a backer package, or if you own a VIP Token, you can access VIP now.

If you have a backer package, you can redeem your time from the redemption window -- look for the icon on the bottom right of the Persona window.

If you have a VIP Token, just use that item in-game to receive 30 days of time.

A note about "package upgrading": in the past we've often been able to help players upgrade their backer packages (e.g. by paying more to switch to a fancier package). We can still offer this service in some cases, but keep in mind that if you Redeem any features from the package (such as VIP time), it will definitely not be possible to swap it for a better package.


You can now send mail to other players via 'pigeon mail' -- hard-working and well-trained carrier pigeons that can fly all over the world delivering messages. And you can even attach an item to your message! The mail will be delivered in about 60 seconds if the player is online, or the next time they log in if they are offline.

Speak with Irkima in the Red Wing Casino to send a pigeon. The cost to starts at 100 Councils, and increases if you send multiple messages too close together. (The birds get tired!) Attaching an item costs an additional 100 Councils, but Irkima will waive the fee for his Close Friends. If an item isn't delivered after 7 days, it is returned to you.

You can't send messages to people who are ignoring you, of course, and you can turn off receiving mail entirely if you prefer in the 'Social' window, under 'Restrict'. ('Social' is the icon on the right-hand bar that looks like three little people.)


We've talked in the past about various potential changes to the Unarmed skill, but now that we've taken a closer look, it doesn't really need a major overhaul: it's got a good mix of tanking, damaging, and controlling abilities which lets it pair successfully with multiple skills, and there are some interesting choices to make when building Unarmed loadouts.

So there aren't many huge changes here. Mainly, we've added new options to make some build styles work better. There's also a few damage changes (both up and down). After these changes there are still a few underwhelming treasure effects, but most of those, like the damage-over-time effects, are earmarked for future game-mechanics changes, so they've been left alone for now.

The following changes use numbers from (currently hypothetical) level 100 gear.

• Changed treasure mod: (Head, Chest) "Infuriating Fist generates no Rage and instead reduces Rage by 910" => "Infuriating Fist damage +73 and for 10 seconds all Elite attacks deal -8% damage to you."
  
• Changed treasure mod: (Head) "Bodyslam deals +47% damage and slows target's movement speed by 45%" => "Bodyslam deals +100 damage and grants you immunity to direct damage for 3 seconds"
  
• Changed treasure mod : (Head, OffHand) "Slashing Strike and Claw Barrage boost damage from Epic attacks +98 for 10 seconds" => "Slashing Strike boosts your Melee Evasion +5.25% for 5 seconds"
  
• Changed treasure mod : (MainHand, Necklace) "Slashing Strike deals +150 Trauma damage over 6 seconds" => "Slashing Strike and Claw Barrage deal +150 Trauma damage over 6 seconds"
  
• Changed treasure mod: (Hands, Necklace) "Hip Throw deals +286 armor damage" => "Hip Throw deals +200 damage, plus Armor-specific damage equal to 15% of the attack's total regular damage"
  
• Changed treasure mod: (Head, Off-Hand) "Mamba Strike Damage +67%" => "Mamba Strike Damage +59 and Reuse Time -1 sec"
  
• New treasure mod: (Necklace): "Cobra Strike Damage +100"
  
• New treasure mod: (Chest, Feet): "Claw Barrage Damage +147"
  
• Adjusted treasure mod: "Barrage costs -14 Power and restores 31 Armor to you" => now -16 power
  
• Adjusted treasure mod: "Kick Damage +78" => now +100
  
• Adjusted treasure mod: "Mamba Strike and Front Kick Damage +100" => now +84
  

For several patches we've been working toward being able to upgrade solo monsters' stats. We're finally ready to start doing that! In this update we've changed the health and armor of all creatures over level 40.

Previously an "average" level 70 solo monster had 1163 armor and 2373 health (total of 3536 health+armor). That "average" creature would now have 1588 armor and 2922 health (4510 health+armor). So an average level 70 creature gained about 1000 health+armor.

Since group monsters are implemented as superpowered solo monsters, they are also affected by this change. (An "average" level 70 group monster would also have 1000 additional health+armor.)

This is just the first pass, and although it's definitely a noticeable change (at high level), the numbers still probably need to go higher. But before we increase these numbers further, we need to play with these changes and get feedback on what skills are breaking down, what's (still) insanely overpowered, what's newly frustrating, etc.
In the future we'll be making more changes to solo monsters: we'll (probably) raise their health and armor even more, and we'll also be taking a look at individual monsters' special attacks, XP values, Max Rage, and damage-type vulnerabilities. We're also considering some mechanics changes (such as revisions to DoT damage), and possibly new AI combat tactics to react to perching and AoE-camping. And, of course, we'll also be revising player combat skills and loot effects in tandem with these changes. In other words, there's lots more balancing work to do! Your feedback has been and will continue to be extremely valuable.


One of the benefits of the VIP program is the new Autodidacticism skill, which lets players slowly earn XP while offline. This is done by performing a Hangout with a textbook instead of with an NPC. This isn't a fast way to earn XP compared to just playing the game, but it's useful for players who can't play often, or who want to level an "alt". As you can imagine, there are many limitations to this skill, and one of them is that VIPs must find the necessary books to hang out with.

And where do these textbooks come from? The new Non-Fiction Writing skill! There are new NPCs in Rahu (Hirochi and Wintria) who can help you unlock the skill, provided you have at least level 50 in Calligraphy. Non-Fiction Writing is done via offline hangouts, each of which takes two real-time days. The resulting books can then be used by VIP players who meet the requirements of the book.

Each textbook is for a certain skill and a certain level range. To write the book, your level in the book's skill needs to be 25 higher than the book. In addition, your level in Non-Fiction Writing has to be at least as high as the book's level. So to write a level 11-20 Sword book, you'd need level 11 in Non-Fiction Writing, and level 36 in Sword.

Because of this requirement to be 25 levels higher than the book, it won't be possible to create the highest-level books right now. Most skills don't go higher than level 80 or 85-ish (depending on how many bonus levels are available for each skill), so the highest textbooks would be for level 55 or 60. This limitation will naturally disappear as we raise the level cap.

If you aren't a VIP, you won't be able to use the books you create, but you can gift them to NPCs or sell them to other players. (Remember to check the player work-order boards for book requests!) Books lose durability when used in Autodidactic hangouts, and are used up after 20 days of use.

Tips on rarity: your first books will probably be terrible, and will have crappy stats (namely a penalty to earned XP). But as you level up in the skill, it's possible to create higher-rarity books which have XP bonuses. These range from Uncommon (green) books with a 5% XP bonus, all the way up to (extremely rare) Legendary books with a 25% XP bonus. Your chance of a bonus is based in part on your Non-Fiction Writing level: the higher it is above the book's level, the better, capping out at 25 levels above the book's level. It's relatively easy to create Uncommon and even Rare books (with a +10% bonus) but higher-rarity books require both high skill-level and random luck.

Limited book options: in this first launch of Non-Fiction Writing, we've only implemented books for a few dozen skills. This is just due to the sheer amount of data-wrangling involved -- we'll add textbooks for the other skills when we're more confident that we've got the XP numbers right. Right now, you can write books for any combat skill, as well as for any auxiliary combat skill (such as First Aid), and a small number of crafting skills (like Carpentry).

To figure out what books you're able to write, just use Hirochi's Non-Fiction Writing Table (after learning the skill). This table will list all the books you're eligible to write given your skill levels (and which books have been implemented).


If you've just enabled VIP, all of the features will be pretty obvious, with one exception: Autodidacticism. This is a new skill which only VIPs can use. It allows you to earn XP while you're offline. (With many caveats, such as a limit of two characters on your account at once -- see the blog for all details. Key restrictions are also explained in-game.)

You don't need to explicitly unlock Autodidacticism - you can automatically use the skill while you're a VIP. However, your level in the skill will start at zero, so at first you'll only be able to read beginner's books -- books for the lowest levels of a skill. For instance, if you've never leveled up the Sword skill, you can buy the "Sword Levels 0-10" book from Hirochi. It requires Autodidacticism 0, so you can read that book. To do so, use Hirochi's study nook. This will begin a Hangout lasting for a specified number of days. Once that many days of offline time has elapsed, you can log in and receive your XP.

But what if you are a long-time player and have already leveled every skill? You can't use the "Sword Levels 0-10" book if your Sword skill is higher than 10. How do you earn Autodidacticism XP? Hirochi comes to the rescue! Hirochi has a sequence of hangouts which will give you Autodidacticism XP. You can repeat these hangouts as often as necessary.

Hirochi sells books for many combat skills, up to level 30. Wintria Irasce sells books for a few non-combat skills. All other books have to be created by players using the new Non-Fiction Writing skill.



The recently-added experimental optimizations seem stable, so we're enabling these optimizations by default for new installations. If you already had the game installed there is no change, although we recommend you go and manually turn on these optimizations if you haven't already done so. (It's in the Settings window, Graphics sub-section, "Experimental Optimizations" checkbox. The optimizations won't fully kick in until you log out or teleport to a new game area.)

These optimizations give a noticeable framerate upgrade for most computers, but there is one visual side-effect: creatures more than 100 meters away are not rendered at all. If you find this limiting, you can just disable the Experimental Optimizations checkbox in the settings, or you can change the max-distance with a custom setting: in the Settings window, click on "Special", then add the line AppearanceRange=200 to the text field. This will render creatures up to 200 meters away, which is usually plenty far.


We've added a button to the bottom right of the storage UI labeled 'Deposit any items that are already stored'. Clicking this button checks to see if any items in your inventory are also in the storage (stacks of apples, for example) and if there is room for those items to fit in the storage -- and if so it deposits all the items for you. It first tries to fill up any partial stacks that are already in the storage, then uses empty storage slots.

In addition to this new feature, there are other improvements:

• Any items in your inventory that could be deposited with 'Deposit any items that are already stored' will be highlighted in your inventory with a green border.in your inventory.
  
• Shift-clicking an item while the storage UI is open now deposits/withdraws a specific amount, instead of just splitting the stack.
  
• While the storage UI is open, you can also now right-click an item to split a stack into or out of storage.
  

And many bug fixes:

• Ri-Shin Shrine Storage is now accessible from other storage NPCs in Kur.
  
• Bookshelves now allow direct access to nearby storage selections (like other storage NPCs do).
  
• Summoning items via practical summoning will now update the "More Info" menu properly.
  
• When withdrawing an item from storage, the tooltip will now update properly.
  
• Storing items after summoning a stack of another item will no longer cause visual weirdness.
  
• When using Practical Summoning, and the storage that you're summoning from is open, stack numbers will now update properly.
  

Many other areas of the UI also received attention in this update:

• You can now promote a member of your party to be party leader.
  
• There is now an option to lock your UI windows in place. You can find it in the Settings window, on the GUI tab, in the Features section. There is also a hotkey.
  
• There are 3 new settings to control the display of tooltips: "Tooltip Delay", "Instant Tooltip Duration", and "Use Tooltip Animation". You can find these in the Settings window, on the GUI tab, in the Features section.
  
• There's a new option on that screen as well, under the "Chat Behavior" section: "Close Chat With Hotkey".
  
• The "Jump to Recipe" functionality now extends to work orders and quests.
  
• You can now give NPCs an item by single-clicking instead of dragging.
  
• It's now harder to accidentally close an official admin message. And if you do, there's also a line in chat to explain how to see it again.
  
• You can now collapse and expand the list of quests for an area in the Quest window.
  
• (Most of) the rewards for a quest are now displayed as part of the quest in your quest log.
  
• Made some improvements to the quest tracker presentation.
  

And of course many UI bugs needed squishing:

• You can (once again) select your target's target.
  
• Players can no longer receive friend requests when their friends list is full.
  
• Note: you can now have a maximum of 150 friends (up from 100).
  
• Quotes in the friends list will no longer disappear after relogging.
  
• Players with long names in the friends list will no longer screw up the display formatting.
  
• The first time using an item on the hotbar now updates its stack size properly.
  
• Opening the recipe window will no longer sometimes show the incorrect required number of an ingredient.
  
• The pet information screen no longer has overlapping text and icons.
  
• Text in vendor shops is now correctly sanitized of HTML tags (no more color codes)
  
• When using Automatically Select Chat Channels, the channel you change to will now persist when changing zones.
  
• Backspacing after using chat shortcuts with Automatically Select Chat Channels on no longer leaves the shortcut in chat.
  
• Placing unusable gear in persona window will no longer cause it to show an empty slot.
  
• Better updating in general of entered social texts, such as your friend status or party name.
  

• We've revised how "knockback" works (which also covers "pull forward" attacks such as Snare Arrow or Grappling Web). The effect happens faster and is more accurate, knocking enemies in a more predictable direction.
  
• Slowed down the respawn rate of golems in the goblin dungeon's "red room" crystal encounters.
  
• "Live Event Token" items are being replaced with a new pseudo-currency, "Live Event Credits". Tokens can be converted to Credits by using them. Riston in the Casino now sells items for credits instead of tokens.
  
• You no longer need to hold the Dive Down key while surveying underwater, you only have to be at the sea floor.
  
• Fire Magic's Cold Protection ability no longer hurts you when you use it.
  
• All of the mods for Triage and Shadow Feint will now display on the ability tooltip.
  
• Clearing an inventory slot will no longer disable Bulwark Mode.
  
• Frostball is now cold & snowy instead of electric.
  
• Added missing animations for main-hand knife attacks.
  
• The option for a Hot Tip will no longer disappear on NPCs in the Casino.
  
• In Match-3, 'Possible Moves:' text will no longer show up when it's not unlocked.
  
• Percy Evans will no longer accept your Barter item for an Animal Nexus key if you already have one.
  
• Fixed a bug where right-clicking an object to auto-move to it would never actually reach it. You would just run around the entity in circles.
  
• Added a troubleshooting command /zapgolemprogram which erases your current golem program. This is to help players who, for instance, program their golems to "Self-Destruct: Always", making it difficult to reprogram the golem since it instantly self-destructs.
  
• The performance in Gazluk Keep has improved.
  
• Birds and Crickets in Serbule and Serbule Hills are now properly affected by the Ambient Sounds volume slider.
  
• The selection boxes for things like a Fire Wall should no longer jump around.
  
• Fixed non-animating water textures in Eltibule's waterfall.
  
• Improved the behavior of the camera during bad FPS dips. (This is especially noticeable in areas with many players.)
  
• Sitting in chairs works somewhat better.

Monday's game-patch will launch the Project: Gorgon VIP Membership program! This program gives players extra benefits while they are a VIP member. The intent is to give players another way to support the game's development while getting useful benefits for doing so -- kind of like becoming a Patreon patron. First, we'll discuss how to become a VIP. Then we'll cover the benefits.



You can gain VIP membership in a variety of ways:

• Purchasing a Steam subscription
  
• Claiming VIP time from a backer-package you purchased
  
• Using VIP Tokens in-game
  

Steam Subscription: You will (soon) be able to buy a VIP Membership subscription from Steam. Due to Steam's approval process, subscriptions will not be available immediately on Monday -- it may be a week or two before they can be purchased.

We'll have several price points depending on whether you pay monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually. Here's our planned pricing:


Backer Plans: Many of our backer plans, such as the Kickstarter backer plans or the plans we sell on our website, include VIP time. Players who have this benefit can use the Redemption window in-game to claim the included VIP time. (Look for the button on the bottom right of the Persona window.)

Once you've redeemed the VIP time, it will start ticking down daily. (So if you want to save your VIP time until the game is out of beta, just don't redeem the VIP time until then!)

This VIP time is non-transferable: only the account who has the special package can claim the VIP time from the backer package they purchased.

If you purchased a backer package and don't see a redemption (after Monday's update): don't panic, we can fix it! We probably need a bit of info from you to connect your account to your package. Email us at [email protected] and we'll figure it out.

VIP Tokens: These tokens are in-game items that can be consumed by a player to claim 30 days of VIP membership time. The tokens themselves can be used on your own account or given to others. VIP tokens can come from various sources in-game.

Overlap: What happens if you have VIP time from several sources? What happens if you have a Steam subscription *and* time from a VIP token? Do the days from your VIP token keep counting down? Can you lose any time? (Short answer: No.)

When using up your VIP membership time, Steam subscriptions are counted first. While you have a subscription, you are not using time from any backer packages or VIP tokens that you may have claimed. That VIP time will be applied if your subscription lapses.


An account with an active VIP plan gets the following:

• Four extra character slots -- for a total of 8!
  
• 15 extra inventory slots -- for each character!
  
• 25 extra slots in each item-transfer chest! There are four such chests now (100 extra slots) and two more coming (for a total of 150 extra slots).
  
• Access to offline advancement via the Autodidacticism skill! (You can read all the details about this benefit below.)
  
• Access to special in-game reports, such as a "character sheet" that lets you view all your character's stats in a simple spreadsheet.
  
• Extra saddlebag slots for mounts (when mounts are implemented) (mount not included).
  
• And more benefits to come! We're exploring ideas like giving VIPs custom chat colors, unique emotes, and monthly gift-redemptions that give out amusing trinkets.
  

With a VIP membership, you gain access to all sorts of slots: character slots, inventory slots, and item-transfer-chest slots. Those extra slots are not permanent, so if your VIP plan ends, they go away. But you never lose stuff permanently! If those slots were in use, they become "overflow" slots, meaning that you can't access them, but they're still there. As you free up space, they become visible.

Inventory: if your VIP plan ends and leaves your character carrying too much, you'll be "overburdened". (This is exactly the same as if you had drunk a potion of inventory-expansion, and it wore off while you were carrying extra items.) You'll be able to access the normal number of items, and the rest will be hidden until you make space. As you drop, sell, or otherwise remove items from your inventory, the "overflowing" items appear automatically.

Transfer slots: just as with regular inventory, if your VIP plan ends and leaves your transfer slots overflowing, you will only be able to see the regular number of items in the chest -- the rest will be hidden. As you remove visible items, the hidden items reappear one by one. (You cannot add items to a chest while it's overflowing, so all you can do is remove items until it stops overflowing.)

Character slots: if your VIP plan ends and leaves you with more than 4 characters, only the 4 most-recently-played characters will be accessible. The others will be hidden. If you choose to delete any of those characters, one of your hidden characters will appear in the now-empty slot. (In Monday's patch we've revised the UI to make it obvious which characters are in "regular" slots and which are in VIP slots. So if your VIP is going to lapse, you'll be able to easily plan and organize which characters should stay visible.)

Summary: You never permanently lose access to your extra items or characters. They're still hidden in the background until you make room for them -- or until you have a VIP membership again!


Autodidacticism - in addition to being a hard word to spell - is a new skill available only to VIP members that lets you gain XP while offline. It's intended to help players who can't play as often as they'd like, or who want to slowly level "alt" characters.

Of course, we're worried about this skill giving VIP players too big of a gameplay advantage over non-VIP players. We don't expect that to be a problem due to the many limitations and restrictions on the skill (see below), but even so, we'll keep an eye on the rate of advancement. We want Autodidacticism to be a "secondary" way to level skills, so if it ends up feeling like the easiest or most efficient way to level a skill, we'll fix it.

Autodidacticism is a non-combat skill. To use the skill, you basically hang out with a book. You can visit an in-game library -- in Rahu, and eventually Statehelm -- where there are study tables to hangout with your chosen textbook. This is a real hangout, so you cannot hangout with an NPC at the same time -- it's one or the other.

You can choose whether to hang out for one, three, or five days. But the duration isn't too important, since -- just like a regular hangout -- you can interrupt these without penalty: the hangout timer will stop while you're logged in, and resume when you log out again.

So where do you get these textbooks? Well, NPCs sell books for some skills, but books for most skills (and most level ranges) come from players who write them. There's another new skill called Non-Fiction Writing which is used to make these books.

Non-Fiction Writing
Non-Fiction Writing is not a VIP-specific skill. Any player can learn this skill and create textbooks, provided they have at least 50 levels in Calligraphy to unlock the skill. (And they need time, since writing a textbook is done via a multi-day hangout as well.) But the resulting textbooks can only be used by VIPs.

Each textbook is for a certain skill and a certain level range. To write the book, your level in the book's skill needs to be 25 higher than the book. In addition, your level in Non-Fiction Writing has to be at least as high as the book's level. So to write a level 11-20 Sword book, you'd need level 11 in Non-Fiction Writing, and level 36 in Sword.

Because of this requirement to be 25 levels higher than the book, it won't be possible to create the highest-level books right now. Most skills don't go higher than level 80 or 85-ish (depending on how many bonus levels are available for each skill), so the highest textbooks would be for level 55 or 60. This limitation will naturally disappear as we raise the level cap.

Limitations to Keep in Mind
There are other wrinkles to using Autodidacticism:

• Autodidacticism is a skill that has to be leveled up! You can't read a textbook for a skill level that's higher than your Autodidacticism level, so you'll need to practice by studying low-level books first.
  
• Only two characters on your account can participate in Autodidacticism hangouts at a time.
  
• With few exceptions, you can't unlock skills via Autodidacticism. For instance, if you don't know the Knife Fighting skill yet, you can't read the newbie Knife Fighting book. You must unlock the skill normally first.
  
• You still need to raise your level cap in the normal way: you need to unlock level caps at level 50 and every 10 levels thereafter.
  
• You need to obtain the books themselves, and as explained above, very-high-level books won't be available for a while.
  
• Books lose durability when used in autodidacticism hangouts. Most books will last for about 20 days of offline hangouts before disappearing.
  
• At first launch, only a subset of skills can have textbooks. This is just due to the sheer amount of data-wrangling involved -- we'll add textbooks for the other skills when we're more confident that we've got the numbers correct.
  

The amount of XP you earn depends on the skill. At low level, the books are very efficient, but as you level up (and the XP curve gets steeper), books become less efficient. In general, combat skills earn XP faster than non-combat skills, much like they do in-game.

In fact, you can easily out-level the low-level books: it might only take one 5-day session to raise your Sword skill from 0 to 10, so your skill will be higher than the book's level-range before the textbook is used up. (You can then sell it, give it away to someone else with VIP, or use it with another character.) Whereas for high-level textbooks, 20 days of offline time may not be enough to out-level the book's range: in some cases you may need multiple high-level textbooks for the same level range.

These skills are brand new, and as with all new skills, you should expect changes while we experiment with them. Again, the goal is to make Autodidacticism a useful auxiliary leveling mechanism... but not TOO useful, and not TOO annoying to use, either! We'll find the sweet spot eventually, though it may take some iteration.


VIP players can access special reports, including:

• Character Sheet: generates a .csv (comma-separated-value) text file of all your character's stats. This file can be loaded in any spreadsheet app.
  
• Inventory Dump: lists every single item that one character possesses (including the stuff in various storage chests) as a text file. This file can be loaded into any word processor.
  
• Combat log: records every hit your character takes or deals to others in a text file. This text file is too verbose ("spammy") to be useful to most players, but it's being provided as a way for 3rd-party tools to generate new kinds of reports.
  
• With more reports added in the future!
  

These reports are actually available to all players right now, VIP or not, so that we can test them and gather more feedback about them. They will continue to be available to everyone for another patch or two, and then they'll become VIP-members-only.


Releasing the VIP service is a huge milestone for us, because it represents a new stage of the game's development.

We've talked about the VIP plan for years, but didn't want to implement it until we were in a solid place technically, where we could leave the "prototype" stage and enter the "production" stage. And we're finally ready to enter that stage! That's super exciting for us, and hopefully for you!

We've been extraordinarily careful with the funds we've earned from backers and purchasers, and it's let us develop the game slowly for many years -- and in fact we can continue to make the game at our current rate of development indefinitely.

But we're finally in a place where it makes sense to hire several more people and widen our production capacity. This is incredibly exciting: we're talking about better graphics, more content, and lots more polish. (We're honest with ourselves and know this will never be as polished as a "AAA" game... but we can eventually come pretty close!)

Not Mandatory But Useful
In terms of game systems, we have two goals for VIP:

• Although we talk about it as "patronage", the benefits of VIP should be worthwhile. We aren't asking for charity here, so VIP should be useful!
  
• But it needs to be entirely optional -- we expect most players won't be VIPs, and that's fine. VIP should never feel "mandatory" at all.
  

These goals are somewhat in conflict, so our first attempt at the VIP feature-set may not work out. If we don't meet both of these goals initially, we'll keep working on VIP until we do.

Thank you for everything you do to help us make this crazy game. We'll have more details about VIP (and book-writing) in the patch notes of Monday's update.

This is a quick bug-fix patch to address some issues in the March 25 update:

• NPCs will no longer appear to be dancing even after they have stopped.
  
• The Redemptions window will no longer tell you about redemptions that you are not eligible for.
  
• Your mouse cursor will no longer sometimes stay locked and hidden after you change zones.
  
• The Quest Tracker will no longer refuse to remove certain quests after they are completed.
  
• The Trade window will no longer fail to disappear after a trade.
  
• Sandstorms no longer use the new distance optimization, meaning they can once again be seen from more than 100m away.
  
• Fixed animation issues when interacting with things that have a usage delay (such as mining, meditation, and chopping lumber).
  
• Fixed bugs with head-look when looking at certain in-scene entities (such as wells, item workbenches, and inscription tables).
  
• Tweaked movement animations a bit.
  

Lastly, a reminder: enable Experimental Optimizations in the Settings->Graphics window to turn on a significant new optimization! (Even if you had enabled Experimental Optimizations before, you will need to re-enable it, because you are "opted out" of new experiments.)

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