Spring 2012 Content Update

[Merrik]

Removed Technomancers and Bioscholars from the Greater Blight Anchor's spawn list outside of Delgarath. Lowered the maximum quantity of mobs Lesser Blight Anchors can spawn and removed the Wraith Lords from the list.

I have been successfully soloing these lesser anchors for months now. including their armies after the anchor has been killed. the wraith lord was an essential creature to the anchor, why was he removed from the anchors spawn? Anchor fighting will never be the same without the Wraith Lords.

I am sorry Mr. Wraith, you will be sorely missed by me. I really enjoyed battling with you during each Anchor fight

I have also helped lead 2 successful missions to the greater anchor. after i did some solo testing a few weeks prior to the Battles, and now many have received their Unsung Hero Badges and received their rewards.
I personally have not taken up the quest yet... i really need to get on that..

it appears i will now need to retrain myself for another new setup of anchors?

Or time to retire?

What about the problems with the Myloc Queen? or did i miss something in the patch notes?

Malicore - Order Shard

[Mensar]

"A massive update of the island of Lesser Aradoth was undertaken with this update. The goal of this change was to revamp the island to create a better flow for newer players that arrive from New Trismus. The player's experience on the island begins in Kion and progresses along a logical path down through Parsinia and Sslanis before ending at Lower Bridgeview and the link to the continent and Tier 2."

**Wow! That sounds like a ton of work. I'm looking at all the changes! I have to update my maps. Sounds very exciting!

[*]Sand Ogres and Pygmies are now known as the Agh'kuk Tribe. Sand Ogres are Agh'kuk Elite Warriors, Sand Pygmy Warriors are Agh'kuk Warriors, Grimey is now the Agh'kuk Chieftain, Dust Grinder the Agh'kuk Witch Doctor, Sand Pygmies are Agh'kuk Gatherers and Ogre Thieves are Agh'kuk Outcasts. Tech Comps, Trophies and Quests updated to reflect these changes. Agh'kuk Chieftain and Witch Doctor no longer spawn followers.

**I think the name changes are great. It shows they are working toward a more diverse game rather than letting it fester and die. Or something less miserable sounding, haha.

Mithril Canyons
A revamp of the Mithril Canyons region was undertaken in an effort to improve the consistency of resource and monster spawns as well as to remove the linked nature of all of the previous spawns. The canyon has been divided into sections - SW, S, SE, NW, N, and NE. Spawns between sections are not linked with one another.

**Excellent! It was always a search to find nodes depending on who had been there last. And all the nodes seemed to relocate to the southern reaches of the mountains. Glad to see this!
[*]Doubled the number of wisps and amount of residue that can spawn on Wisp Isle and also improved the respawn rate.

**SWEET! Maybe I'll go there now. They were so few and diverse, without the wisp color mod, it was a click fest. Or, actually it will be even MORE of a click fest. Any chance of getting these colored? Or did they do that already? I haven't seen more than Radiant since I've been back, haha.

[*]Vile Maggots are no longer patrollers. Lowered the maximum number of Vile Maggots that can spawn in Dralnok's Doom, but improved the respawn time.

**Is that good? I don't know it was kind of nice standing in one place to kill all the maggots at once. But I guess we have to share
[*]Boulder Golems now count as rich nodes for mining/quarrying (Bronze, Iron, Marble, Mithril, Obsidian, Platinum and Travertine).

**Very very good change! I love lining them up and harvesting them. Always wished I would get more for them though. Voila!
[*]Glowing Wisps now spawn in greater abundance than before.

**Wow, really? There were always tons next to my guild plot in Papa. I imagine they are going to take over now.
[*]The Spirit of Dralnok will no longer spawn followers.

**Argh! You do this after I died three times killing him for both the quests, haha. Good change though.. 3-5 adds is enough without him spawning another 3.
[*]Enlarged a majority of the plots in Harro. A few of the plots are too bound by other plots, mountain-sides, or roads to be expanded. And a few others are set at angles (instead of oriented north-south) which prevents them from being expanded properly.[*]Increased the size of plots in the communities of: Mahagra North, Frostwatch, Winter's Peak, Desert's Edge, Drift Point, Shelter Pass, Wolf's Paw, Aughundell West, Granite Hills, Old Oaks, Kion Shore, North Parsinia, Parsinia, Acul, Valley of Repose, Respose Mountain, and Katja's Shadow.[*]Resized plots in Guild: Nong, Guild: Surin and Guild: Sakon, Guild: Toku, Guild: Jambi, and the community of Pangai.

**I LOVE IT! Bigger plots, woohoo!
[*]Morrison has returned to his house west of Bristugo. In addition, he has decorated his house with furniture, an Essence Channeler and a Scholar's Desk.[*]Pale Essence Residue and Pale Wisps can be found outside of Morrison's House.

**Right outside my lair, nice. (pays the devs)
[*]The Empire has constructed outgoing teleport gates to the communities of Guild: Back Bay, Guild: Calm Waters, Guild: Moyo and Fabric Isle.[*]The Empire has constructed incoming destination pads to the communities of Guild: Moyo, Guild: Nong, and Guild: Immons as well as the Dragon settlements of Ga'pyr, Linakis, and Ota'fakag north of the Trandalar Rift.

**All win! It would be nice to have one at every guild community at some point. But this is a very nice list of additions.

I think this list is awesome. It really shows how much they've been working on the game. I don't know what all the negativity is about. Just update your maps and enjoy the changes

[Merrik]

in addition to the anchors spawn being smaller, have you fixed the casters ranged attacks? they were so bugged, at times i had been attacked up to 75-200 meters away. and i have some witnesses to that happening. no casting mob anywhere else in the game, has the abiliity to out-range me. yet the anchor spawns have a nasty habit of gaining aggro on you once, and even if you leave the area and return, they tend to come after you, like they've never lost aggro. including, while i was standing in middle of Harro with nothing in range of my targetting ability, getting smacked by a spirit bolt. or a perfect spell/multicast fire ball flying across the screen, hitting me from seemingly nowhere. sometimes a relog would fix the aggro, forcing them to drop the aggro on me, other times it didn't work either.

and to put out a special thanks to some of my friends who "did" come to my aid when i have needed help with some anchors. not to mention any names, right Hoberton? terrox and Mimir also... ooops...

[Mensar]

in addition to the anchors spawn being smaller, have you fixed the casters ranged attacks? they were so bugged, at times i had been attacked up to 75-200 meters away. and i have some witnesses to that happening. no casting mob anywhere else in the game, has the abiliity to out-range me. yet the anchor spawns have a nasty habit of gaining aggro on you once, and even if you leave the area and return, they tend to come after you, like they've never lost aggro. including, while i was standing in middle of Harro with nothing in range of my targetting ability, getting smacked by a spirit bolt. or a perfect spell/multicast fire ball flying across the screen, hitting me from seemingly nowhere. sometimes a relog would fix the aggro, forcing them to drop the aggro on me, other times it didn't work either.

and to put out a special thanks to some of my friends who "did" come to my aid when i have needed help with some anchors. not to mention any names, right Hoberton? terrox and Mimir also... ooops...

So.. call me naive about the anchors. But if you don't kill one what happens?

It stays there randomly spawning mobs to populate a small area around the anchor until the next maintenance? Or does it cause the ground to go black and grow black vines? Just curious why it's so important to kill them.

[Dhalin]

The name changes do get confusing, but if nothing else, keep a small "cheat sheet" near the computer, or a small notepad.

I can go to a store IRL and buy a 100-page notebook for $1 USD (.75 EUR).

It is small, and easily kept right next to the computer, and I write down various information (like Sand Beetles = Loricatus Beetles) that way when I need a "Loricatus Beetle Carapace" and I'm going "...wut?" I can just grab the notepad until it starts sticking in my mind.

Not everyone wants to buy a little notepad, and not everyone wants to bother writing this stuff down, but I'm just throwing out an idea. Istaria was always a game I needed notepads for anyways; there's just too much stuff to remember.

Also, it'd be nice if they expanded the functionality of the in-game notepad to save and open .txt files too, so that we didn't have to alt+tab to Windows Notepad (since Alt+Tab crashes the game 99.9% of the time if you run it full-screen).

[Mensar]

(since Alt+Tab crashes the game 99.9% of the time if you run it full-screen).

When I alt-tab in full screen the game doesn't go away, it just goes black like I just logged in (since I run it at native desktop resolution I'm guessing). I have to tab back to it then tab away from it again to actually get it to minmize so I can do other things (easier to just keep it in windowed mode, IMHO).

[Foxtrick]

We understand your concerns. I suspect that change is most likely the biggest contributing factor, rather than the name itself.

Ultimately, we have changed the names because in many cases these mobs have extremely dull names and we are trying to "spice" them up and make them more interesting.

Sand Ogre, Flame Ogre, Fire Ogre, Snow Ogre, Thunder Ogre, and so on are all extremely dull and very unimaginative. Combine that with Fire Wolf, Flame Wolf, Desert Wolf, Grey Wolf, Brown Wolf and then Sand Beetle, Ice Beetle, Frost Beetle, Fire Beetle, etc and you can see the pattern. IMHO they make the game feel extremely formulaic and not very creative.

As much as people have disagreed with the name change. It is a positive step. It doesn't have to be hideously obvious of a creatures primary element before even fighting them. Even if it doesn't apply to all creatures, the lack of imagination or at least complete over use and reliance on those prefixes is something that was worth changing.

[Mimir]

Not to add more issues than the ones known, but it seems the plot markers in the expanded plots in Harro are not on the edge of the plots.

[Image]

In Launcher: Istaria news Sprin_t_ Content update
Sprint! is that what we call a quick update now? ;D
Took me a sec to realize the typo....

all the name changes... mob movement... back to redrawing my map again!
I wonder how many times I've redone it in 7 years or is it 8 now...
getting too old to remember hehe
Amazing job again.

[Mensar]

Not to add more issues than the ones known, but it seems the plot markers in the expanded plots in Harro are not on the edge of the plots.

Heh, Mimir.. you were right. They did an old fashioned rollback.

Go figure, I was working T6 the whole time.. few disks full of T6 Slabs.. poof!

[Dhalin]

When I alt-tab in full screen the game doesn't go away, it just goes black like I just logged in (since I run it at native desktop resolution I'm guessing). I have to tab back to it then tab away from it again to actually get it to minmize so I can do other things (easier to just keep it in windowed mode, IMHO).

What happens with me (with 4 different computers, 3 different OSs: WinXP, Vista32, Win7-64bit) is this:

If I'm in full-screen, and I alt-tab, it works just fine. Istaria exists as a button on the taskbar and I'm capable of messing around in Windows just fine.

Then, when I click the button on the taskbar, I get that black screen you mentioned (OR a tiny black screen that only fills a quarter of the screen, about 50/50 chance).

This persists for about 2-3 seconds and then the game CTDs. The button disappears, the game closes itself, no error messages, nothing.

And I hate windowed mode. I do not play games in windowed mode unless I absolutely must (old games that do not support Widescreen resolution, basically).

[Image]

No update! Awww... too many delta at once curse strikes again...

[Ming]

I appreciate the work you do on the game and I'm really glad you took those bioscholars off the anchor but I have a few remarks about other changes:

More new names????? Oy, the names you tend to give things when you rename them have already given me headache. I can't even pronounce, let alone remember names like "B'ahalthtukishsk" or whatever crazy things you've done in the past to the ogres! And I speak Chinese as well as English and some Spanish so if I can't remember funny sounds, what does that say about it? Maybe calling a sand beetle a sand beetle isn't creative, but they're easy to remember and keep track of. And what about trophies, are the ones we have with the old names now useless??????

As for removing mithril from mines and leaving Platinum, there aren't that many uses for platinum so the mines are rather useless themselves. And I am not looking forward to more hardship getting mithril. Marble is already a nightmare.

How about a change like a gnome house? I could get with that!

Cixi
Gnome Extraordinaire
Order Shard
FREE RACHIVAL

[TheRock]

Well I guess the change at Mithril Anvil was only good for the devs and not us players
I just done a quick scan around and found the ML of mithril surrounded by boulder golems. We got too comfortable avoiding them and working mithril MLs in the mine. May as well seal that mine or wait for the spiders to take up residence and close it with a web
Not liking some of the changes.

[AmonGwareth]

Just in case folks missed it: http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...d.php?p=279345

Content Update has not been applied to the Live servers yet due to some issues we are working out.

[Kryodrache]

I don't mind the name changes, so long as the text in quests were changed to relate to it. I'm curious as to where the names came from, now, too... with the new names, it seems as though there might be a little more history regarding the mobs in question other than 'This is a beetle.' Loricath?(If spelled right) This gets me curious as to where they came from, what earned them that name, and if they are more than just a benign animal you can beat up

[Hoberton]

I don't mind the name changes, so long as the text in quests were changed to relate to it. I'm curious as to where the names came from, now, too... with the new names, it seems as though there might be a little more history regarding the mobs in question other than 'This is a beetle.' Loricath?(If spelled right) This gets me curious as to where they came from, what earned them that name, and if they are more than just a benign animal you can beat up

loricatus
Latin, meaning: wearing armor, armored.

So... They are going to be armored beetles.

[Kryodrache]

loricatus
Latin, meaning: wearing armor, armored.

So... They are going to be armored beetles.

Oh. Well... that sounds a little redundant.

[Garfonso]

And what about trophies, are the ones we have with the old names now useless??????

I suppose that they get renamed, too. In the past that is what happened with renamed creatures.

[Vaz]

And what about trophies, are the ones we have with the old names now useless??????

Where have you been every other time a creature has gotten renamed? No, trophies just get renamed too.