DragonRealms Updates (1998)

Changes to the game during the 1998 calendar year.

March

• Aether Lance and Dinazen Olkar released.

April

• Shield and Parry stance settings will have more effect. 0 stance will almost negate the ability to use it.
• Stances under 40% will negatively effect learning.
• Point will now display the location of the item pointed at.
• Ability to BUNDLE skinning items added.

May

• KISS, HOLD, RUB added to the AVOID options.
• KISS changed to allow specifying a body location, and removes the kisser from hiding/invisibility.
• Chain Lightning, Shadowling, Heroic Strength, Heart Link, Nissa's Binding, and Aesandry Darlaeth added.
• Hypnosis spell is merged with Calm spell and released as Hypnotize spell.
• Mental Blast now requires full prep time.
• Mental Blast full prep time removed and higher mana requirement added.
• Mental Blast has variable minimum mana, 5 for a full prep, 10 otherwise.
• TARGET will now default to faced target if not specified.
• Spider Climb can now be cast on other players.

June

• Fire Rain and Shadow Servant announcement made.
• Attack verbs now default to faced opponent if not specified.
• Changes to how skins weight are tested.
• HARNESS WARN, VERBOSE, QUIET, SPELL RECOGNIZE added.
• Heal Wounds, Heal Scars, Shadow Servant, Bond Weapon, Cheetah Swiftness, Fire Rain released.
• Targets found by Eye of Kertigen can now be pointed out.
• "STOWing, PUTting, DROPping or WEARing Crossbows will now end aiming."

July

• Creature retreating logic updated. They will now take into account all engaged and in the area and more worried about closer opponents.
• RETREAT will now check for being stunned, webbed, etc., and allow for retreating while hidden.
• Multi-opponent code changed, resulting in danger increasing for multiple creatures.
• DRAW changed to reflect intended damage. It is intended "to cause extra slice damage by drawing the weapon across the body of your foe. It is a very poor way to cause puncture damage or impact damage."
• "Balance and rountime penalties have been reduced slightly for partial and relatively poor parries. This will marginally improve the benefits of favoring parrying over evasion."
• "Shield bonus to facing/flanking tweaked! Pole range now applies a percentage bonus to blocking for facing and flanking attacks. This bonus is to stance. The higher your shield stance the the higher the bonus."
• "A small amount of fatigue will now be applied to firing weapons."
• "When you attack and miss, the penalty for missing has been reduced slightly. Your balance will be affected less and your roundtime will not be as hard hit."
• Y'ntrel Sechra released.
• Hands of Lirisa duration bug fixed.
• Multiple Ethereal Shields no longer reveals stalkers.
• Ice Patch no longer awards experience when cast at other players or on creatures which aren't standing.
• Spirit Healing may now be self-cast, though no experience is earned from doing so.
• Fire Rain no longer affects non-corporeal undead creatures.
• Arc Light no longer gives experience for casting at other players.
• "Cleric power perception now allows them to see the number of favors a dead person has without using APPRAISE. If they have no favors it reveals whether they've made a habit of going without them."
• Tingle no longer gives experience for casting at other players.
• "There is now a forced delay between casts of Shadow Scribe, to help prevent people from scrolling it."
• "Protection From Evil offers some protection against spells cast by certain evil creatures."
• "Moon Gate has always drained the caster's harness while it's open. Now, it also drains anyone in the caster's group who is sharing mana."
• "Rising Mists will no longer work in neck-deep or deeper water. However, water up to that depth will decrease the amount of mana required to cast."
• "Frostbite now properly affects Swarm."
• "Frostbite will now be much more effective against creatures if Rising Mists has been cast in the room."
• "Static Discharge will now kill any hornets attacking you (Swarm)."
• "Zephyr will now regenerate more fatigue if cast at higher power."
• "Sure Footing will now provide a more constant benefit to balance, as well as aid in staying afoot when Tremor is cast."
• "Tremor has been completely re-written, and should be more useful in combat situations."
• "Thunderclap and Tremor will now have a bonus to resist if you see the spell being prepared."
• "Thunderclap has been re-written to use more realistic formulas."
• "Divine Radiance has been updated to allow a new cast to replace a previous cast."
• "The prep time modifier to casting is now linear rather than curved. Most people probably won't notice the difference, but if you're casting spells on the edge of your ability, you may have to wait a couple more seconds."

August

• "Power Perception messaging has been updated. Again, this only affects the messaging you see when you PERCEIVE (or, for Moon Mages, when you PERCEIVE ). This will NOT affect the amount of power available to you."
• "Non-self-cast spells (such as Arc Light and Mental Blast) now select the creature you're facing, if any, when you just use CAST without specifying the target."
• "Dinazen Olkar now works properly on cursed creatures."
• "Adaptation of existing spells to properly handle deep water areas is progressing. You may have noticed some differences in Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning. In shallow water they have a much less devastating area effect than they did previously."
• "Static Discharge no longer grants experience when there are no creatures in the area."
• "The Raise Power spell now has a cap on the amount of Life mana it will add to an area. It's still enough to raise a room from no mana to "pulsating streams" but no longer an insane amount." "Also, more Harness skill is required than before to efficiently convert fatigue into mana."
• "Phelim's Sanction will no longer award experience for casting unless there is an undead or evil creature in the room. However, it will also award more experience, rather than the small amount it previously awarded."
• "Lightning Bolt has always boosted (if necessary) its minimum damage amount so that it always causes bleeding. Unfortunately, the method it was using meant that tougher creatures would take MORE vitality damage than weaker ones when hit with this spell.

The method has been changed so that vitality damage is not increased along with the injury. Lightning Bolt is still a powerful attack spell but you can no longer rely on it to always cause an instant kill at minimum mana.

This also applies to Chain Lightning."

• "The formula which estimates the distance between a planet and the sun has been corrected. While the maximum and minimum are unchanged, the average distance is somewhat smaller now, which should result in more planetary mana when averaged over each planet's year."
• "Primary Magic experience from casting is now using a different, more reasonable formula. There is much more potential for learning than before, although in some ranges of skill and spell difficulty, you may earn a bit less experience than before. If that's the case, either try using more mana or just tough it out and console yourself with the fact that once you get through it, you'll be earning more experience than was possible before."

September

• Ability to APPRAISE an item SHOWn to you, added.

October

• "The "Spell vs. Agility" formula, which applies to certain resisted spells (such as Ice Patch and Harawep's Bonds), now includes creatures' evasion skill and takes into account whether the creature is stunned. In addition, the target's balance has more effect."
• "The mana difficulty rating for Harawep's Bonds has been reduced, to balance this spell in light of the change to the SVA formula."
• "A smoldering ash cloud is now visible in the area when the Fire Rain spell is in effect."

November

• "A bug in the Courage spell allowed the duration to accumulate with multiple casts. Eventually the duration would overflow and be reset to 5 minutes by the system. The bug has been fixed, and the maximum duration per cast increased somewhat to compensate."
• "Ice Patch has been altered in the following ways:◦ it is somewhat less likely to produce a fatal result

there is an intermediate point where the target "struggles to maintain his footing"; this means combat balance is being affected. If balance is reduced enough, the target will still fall over.

it can now be cast on dead people to make dragging easier."

• "A new version of the Aesrela Everild spell will soon replace the current version. The new version is a held-mana spell which fires at the target every few seconds, taking 4-5 mana from what you're holding. It continues until you run out of or release your held mana or the target dies. Unlike the current version, each "shot" awards normal Targetted Magic experience." "The new version of the Aesrela Everild spell mentioned above is now live. Enjoy!"
• "The bug which caused Swarm to fail to recognize Sphere/Zone of Protection has been found and fixed."

December

• "The TIP verb, which was undergoing the final stages of preview and testing, has been removed indefinitely due to a variety of problems encountered with it."
• "Spells which are successfully cast, but have no effect (for example, casting attack spells at dead creatures) are not supposed to award experience. We have been fixing these as they are found or reported. If you know of any examples, please let us know.

Healing spells cast on a body part that is already healthy, repeat castings of Bless on a blessed weapon, casting certain Paladin spells with a corrupt soul, and a couple of others have been fixed."

• "An error in the formula which calculated the distance between Elanthia and other planets has been corrected. The error had caused the distance to seem to fluctuate as power perception skill increases. The difference in mana was slight enough to be unnoticeable."

However, you may have noticed Ismenia entering and leaving your perceptual range as your skill increased. It has a long comet-like orbit, but its mass is small enough that it contributes very little mana anyway."

• "Bond Weapon no longer interferes with weapon lodging."

Unknown

• Generic worn items limited to 30.
• TAIL command added for S'kra Mur.
• Inverse fatigue bug for swimming skill fixed. Higher skill will now reduce fatigue.
• AVOID applied to DANCE.

Thanks to http://www.oocities.org/timessquare/realm/7260/news-2-6-98.html for archiving.