It should be said that our patch notes contain only the most noteworthy updates to the game. They cannot contain everything we've done or everything that we're working on. The patches are substantial enough that we don't need to add every little thing to make them seem bigger. There are hundreds of smaller fixes and additions that we don't mention here but this is not all we've accomplished since the previous patch. During the week we also do a lot of work on things for future patches and updates. One of the most important and time consuming phases in incorporating an update to the live game is testing. We have many updates developed which are still in testing. If we haven't addressed a standing issue, it obviously doesn't mean that we're not going to, so please don't assume that we won't / can't / or aren't aware of it. In most cases we're already working on it.

Here are this week's patch notes:

New Quests

New Quests for the Factions have been added:

MIRDAIN FACTIONS:


THE SERENE SPIRE

* Areas of Bad Magic
* Inside the Crystal Green Tower
* Hidden Secrets
* Flesh of the Guardians


THE ARROWHEADS

* Gray ork Mercenaries
* Hidden agents of Melek
* The Melechar Report
* The Mission
* Stealing their Faith


THE EMERALD THRONE

* Bad Magic
* A Historical Monument
* Mercenaries
* Nairath the Mage
* Ingedients for Nairath
* Teeth of the Beast
* Between Mages


DWARVEN FACTIONS:

VOICE OF YMIR

* Aegin's Hall
* Lords of the Frozen Hall
* The Demon's Scepter
* Nidstein the Mage
* The Amulet of Eiradan
* The Shadows of Nithron


Visual Updates

There have been many visual updates including to:

* Vegetation
* Water mills
* Wells
* Benches and chairs
* Various trees
* Human capital
* Market stands
* Clan mines
* Metal statues
* Ovens
* Fireplaces
* Mahirim and human doors
* Palisades
* Signs
* Most wood textures
* Misc. props

Optimizations

There have been many optimizations as usual including:

* Updates to the servers to better handle situations where thousands of players participate in sieges



Area / World-Building

Area / Worldbuilding updates to these areas:

* Bluefield
* Broadherne
* Darkmouth
* Bloodscar
* Qattenhal
* Mar Shral
* Hawkmoore
* Thorndale
* Hithe
* Thangruk


Monster Updates

There have been several updates to monsters along with the following specific changes:

* Demon has been rebalanced
* Devil has been rebalanced
* Baradron has been rebalanced


Monster loot has been updated in these monsters:

* Bonecrew Captain
* Demon
* Hill Giant Clobber
* Icejarl
* Nahdruk Heretic

Monster A.I. has been updated

Crafting Updates

* Scale boots now available to crafters
* Scale helmet now available to crafters
* Greataxe transmutation recipes have been added
* Durability of monster loot items is reduced compared to crafted items


Weapon / Armor Updates

New axes have been added:

* Cleaver
* Gloomblade
* Orthus
* Sagaris
* Scorpio
* Serpent's Kiss
* Terror
* War Pick


New Great Clubs have been added:

* Einherjar
* Grief
* Oathbreaker
* Outlaw
* Thorgrim
* Thunderpick
* War Maul
* Wild Hunt

Servant of Malaut armor has been rebalanced

Magic Updates

* Armored Casting has been rebalanced
* Frostbite has been rebalanced
* Reagent requirement have been added to Launch
* Reagent requirement have been added to Explosion


Bug Fixes

There have been many bug fixes, including the following noteworthy ones:

* Fix for enchantment to prevent duplicate enchantments on an item.
* Fix to mule skill so that when your skill increases your maximum carrying weight will be updated immediately.
* Fix so that you can't use magic while mounted.
* Fix so you can't "fall through" water and walk under water.
* Clan guard towers have been fixed to work on all policy settings.
* Fix to ignore lists, where a player that was ignored would not show up in the ignore list


Additions

* A Trade channel has been added. Use by /trade . This will go out to all of the racial alliance
* Fighters Guild NPCs in Clan Cities now teach spirited archer


Gameplay

* A player will lose his invulnerability shield when running/spawning into a clan city/hamlet, unless he is a member of the clan owning the location.
* When a player leaves or is being kicked/banned from a Clan there will now be a timer of 45 minutes before he actually leaves the clan.
* Minimum time period between changing policies towards a Clan have been changed to 20 minutes.
* Alignment boost for killing or ganking an evil or enemy player has been reduced to 1 point.
* Ship cannon rate of fire has been balanced
* Unsummon / unspawn timers for warhulks and ships have been increased



Party and alignment:

* Parties will now follow standard rules for killing and ganking.
* If you kill/gank a friendly player in a party he/she will get the opportunity to forgive the killer.
* You will never get an alignment boost by killing a party member.


Enemy standing on the HUD:

You will now have the names of the players you target colored according to their standing towards you and your clan.

* Members of the same Clan as yours will have their name displayed in BRIGHT GREEN
* Members of Clans that you are at WAR with will have their name displayed in DARK ORANGE *
* Members of Clans that you are ALLIED with will have their name displayed in GREEN
* Opposing Racial Alliance will have their name displayed in DARK RED
* EVIL Racial Alliance players will have their name displayed in RED
* ROGUE Racial Alliance players will have their name displayed in GREY
* GOOD Racial Alliance players will have their name displayed in BLUE


These rules will follow in the order of: Clan Status, Opposing Racial Alliance, Same Racial Alliance.

Examples:

* An EVIL player of the same race as yours but a member of a clan that you are at WAR with will always show in DARK ORANGE
* A GOOD player of an Opposing Racial Alliance that does not have an affiliation with your Clan will always show in DARK RED
* An EVIL player of the same race as yours but a member of a clan that you are ALLIED with will always show in GREEN
* A GOOD player of the same race as your but a member of your clan will always show as BRIGHT GREEN