Delta 293 - Winter Festival

[Liseth]

Of all the presents, the blue is the hardest to find. Only ever find 2 to 6 when flying over the entire lesser aradoth region. Genevia, maybe 2 to 4 for the whole island. Need to be more blue spawns. Green haven't been easy to find either.

Why not add blues to spawn on a few of the old starter islands? New Vassarack could add blue spawns. New Brommel add all 5 tiers.

they do in fact spawn in the old islands as well, all aside from skalkaar, spirit isle and memorial isle. (and the copy islands, as there's no easy way to get there for most)

[Kerech]

I was up near Spire Trail, getting Bright essence (where the Maple treants are) and saw a bunch of green presents mixed in with a bunch of purple.

I also saw a lot of green between Dalimond and Chiconis yesterday

[Guaran]

I found some blue spawns on new brommel. About 8. So not too bad, but not great either. Could use some more

The spawns are really sloppy though. I know they were rushed, but some of those spawns are on the sides of really tall mountains. I know one that I found is only reachable by flight. I was able to get it, but peds would be out of luck on that one. I guess the spawns were just laid out automatically or something? But there does seem to be a large quantity that spawn on walls. Festival Grounds (boo that they took out the crypt there) has half the spawns on the walls, which are kinda tall. Some of those will be out of range from the ground, ped's can't fly. What happens is over time, you get all you can in range, and the respawns build up in the out of range places. You definitely will want to do the hunting on an adult/ancient dragon for now, but a bit of tweaking to the spawns wouldn't hurt (if possible). If that isn't possible, then perhaps add a few spawns to areas' where we know the zone is mostly flat, to help avoid the respawn buildup that occurs on really tall walls.

Loving re-exploring all of Istaria to see it snow covered, it came out really beautiful

One last suggestion, perhaps add a bit of combat function to the present pets? Maybe +100 frost resistance, +100 Ice skill, or something theme-appropriate, without being too much since they have some capacity. They are really cute, but I am afraid they will be left in the undesirable category when compared to combat pets that grant an ability.

Maybe give them an ability, a tiered "Blizzard" ability, that does ice damage, slows, and -5% chance to hit on incoming ranged melee/spells ? (Originally wanted a new banner tech made that does this, and uses the ice-imbued-orbs, but nothing ever came of that)

[Smaug]

Ive only ran into a few that I couldn't reach with my bow and drag em down so could loot. One the lower tiered ones just have to be careful you get them down on the ground before you kill em.

[LOVWYRM]

STATUES
wonderful, awsome, artistic ICY STATUES
found them yesterday by accident.
THAT was an additional gnomekindle present for me.
Love them soo much
Thanks a lot for that (frosthide?)!!!

[Terao]

The blue presents are much too rare. In one hour I could only find 5 of them (Order Server), I have been searching on Lesser Aradoth, the resorts islands... that's no fun.

[Frosthide]

STATUES
wonderful, awsome, artistic ICY STATUES
found them yesterday by accident.
THAT was an additional gnomekindle present for me.
Love them soo much
Thanks a lot for that (frosthide?)!!!

Happy Holidays from the Art Team.

[Liseth]

Due to the nature of the next patch we won't be able to increase the spawns for the blue presents, however, I've notified my fellow event GMs to promote the population of blue presents whenever they can

[Malicore]

all bugs aside.. this patch turned out a lot better than I expected. nice content, neatly planned for appearances.. Makes for a little less boredom. Love the new look to the landscape, though it throws me at times, forgetting where I am on the map

[Kerech]

Love the new look to the landscape, though it throws me at times, forgetting where I am on the map

It's amazing how different everything looks. I've lost count of the times I've been chasing a line of presents... only to look up and see a place I recognizes... then go "how did I end up clear out here?"

[Ming]

I get lost also in the snow and my hooves and toes are freezing! But such fun! The most blue presents I've seen were on New K
when I was looking for the Winter Festival and got lost.....
Any hint as to where those ice statues are?

[Tilithia]

I get lost also in the snow and my hooves and toes are freezing! But such fun! The most blue presents I've seen were on New K
when I was looking for the Winter Festival and got lost.....
Any hint as to where those ice statues are?

New plot items. Gnome,dragon and fiend.

[Malicore]

It's amazing how different everything looks. I've lost count of the times I've been chasing a line of presents... only to look up and see a place I recognizes... then go "how did I end up clear out here?"

Spent 2 or 3 hours chasing presents last night starting in Morning Light with a friend.. only to look up and see a fiery red bridge.. to my map, I ran. Quickly open it to find we were at Fire Island bridge.. *scratches his head feathers*

[Kerech]

The snow seems to be missing now... but the presents are still there. What's going on?

[Liseth]

The snow seems to be missing now... but the presents are still there. What's going on?

The changing of the year seemingly broke the file structure we had for the event, it should be all good again, if not, try a full scan.
Snow will last, like the full event, till February.

[gkoster]

It could be that the snow has been repaired for a day but its gone again.

[gkoster]

and also the mimics has gone.

[gkoster]

Sorry about that there were just over hunted.

[NaturalMage]

I'm really enjoying the snowy world for event. It's a great change! Is there a way though to disable the event music though and just use the regular area based musics?

[Sarsilas]

It could be that the snow has been repaired for a day but its gone again.

Thank you, we're looking into this. I'm not sure what caused the snow to break again, but hopefully it'll be up and running again soon!

I'm really enjoying the snowy world for event. It's a great change! Is there a way though to disable the event music though and just use the regular area based musics?

Yes, but you have to edit a few files and, as the winter progresses, you might have to re-edit them a few times. In this folder:

\Istaria\resources_event\hours_of_frost\winterizin g\definitions

There are a few definition files. Open them and you'll see this line right near the top:

        string regionMusic	= "mus_event_gnomekindle"

Change that regionMusic to mus_default or whatever you want. The names of the files in this folder match the originals here if you want to compare that line:

\Istaria\resources\definitions\regions

I'm not entirely sure of what they were before it was updated.