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26th of June - Update Notes

Player Character

Archetype

* The bonus magical damage granted from Mystical Attunement has been doubled for Mages.
* Spells that were incorrectly receiving bonuses from increased magical damage will no longer scale with increased magical damage. This adjustment will only affect such spells that were not meant to have scaling with the increased magical damage bonus. This resolves issues with enhancement spells like “Pact with Set” where the health loss was too high for the trade off for the bonus to damage.

Barbarians

* An issue where Barbarians lose strength between the levels of 42 and 45 has been resolved. Please note that this is only between those specific levels.

Demonologist

* Infernal Knowledge and Diabolic Insight will no longer appear as hostile spells and will still persist after death.

Necromancer

* The bonus gained from magical damage has been increased on all damage-over-time (DoT) spells.
* Despoil the Soul duration has been substantially increased and is no longer removed on death.
* Frost Blast’s area-of-effect (AoE) has been changed to be a 90 degree cone in front of the caster.
* Shatter now additionally works on targets affected by Frost Blast and Ice Shackle.
* Dark Knowledge and Vile Insight will no longer appear as hostile spells and will still persist after death.
* Mark of the Devourer duration has been reduced to 60 seconds.

Ranger

* Raid-level bows and crossbows for Rangers have been corrected to add ranged DPS instead of melee DPS.

Combat

* Active blocking has been revamped to bring it back in line with the original design. Active blocking will now correctly display a buff in the debuff GUI to indicate the effect. You will now have an initial stamina cost upon activation and shielding bonus rather than evade chance. Attacks and heals performed while in “Active Blocking” will also have a reduced effect.
* Certain group buffs should no longer keep you in combat when your pets are also in the group.
* Melee pets will now do splash damage.

Items

* Bags that were not able to be equipped can now be equipped again.-
* The two-handed edged weapon Earthwrack has now received its visual appearance back.
* Exaltate’s Girdle, Exaltate’s Armbands, and Hellbreaker Hammer will now appear correctly.
* Javelins have been revamped based on player feedback. The length of all current javelins will now be of decent length. All javelins have also received some adjustments to the throwing and holding animations, as well adjusted so all characters correctly hold the javelin by the shaft.
* Polearms have been revamped based on player feedback. All polearms have been standardized to a new larger size.

NPC

* Solo monsters, minibosses and bosses have been adjusted to be more of a challenge than what they had been previously for level 70 and up. The adjustments will not affect grouped and raid monsters in any way as this will only affect solo monsters. The change will ensure that the game is both entertaining and challenging at higher levels.
* All players in a raid dungeon are now hated by the boss while the boss is under attack.
* There should no longer be multiple versions of Aquilus in the Armsmans Tavern.
* Champion of the Honorguard will now use his axe throw ability less frequently.
* The adds for Vistrix and Yakhmars have had their AI revamped.

Massive PvP

* Battlekeep owners should now be able to apply to attack other battlekeeps without any problems.

Mounts

* You should now once again be able cast spells while mounted. There will be some limitations on which spells and which type of spells you’re able to cast.

Playfield

* Raid playfields should now properly reset correctly.

The Black Castle

* This Kopshef Province dungeon has been completely redone. We encourage you to pay it a visit. Overcome the challenging new encounters along side with your companions and reap the rewards. This group instance is aimed for characters in the 30 - 35 level range.

Quest

* Kidnapping and Torture: You can no longer interact with the palisades while the NPC is burning. This should help make it clearer when the quest can be completed.
* Ante Up - Giants Approaching: When the timer expires you should be able to interact with the Rock to restart the event.
* Master of Gargoyles: Cha will now thank you for completing the quest.
* Bowls of Set: The quest should now properly display the goal names.
* The Honoured Dead of Cimmeria: This quest has been removed and revamped into 4 smaller quests with new rewards. The new quests are “The Honoured Dead I,” “The Honoured Dead II,” “The Honoured Dead III,” and “The Honoured Dead IV.”

Tradeskills

* Opening Alchemy Tradeskill book should no longer crash the client.
* All vendor-supplied tradeskill resources have had their max stack size set to 20, with the exception of city-building components from vendors which have the max stack size of 100
* Mages and Priest mobs will now drop an Alchemists Cache randomly, which contains random resources for the level-range where it was found. This will make it possible to obtain the resources that have not been dropping for alchemy.
* All crafted shields will now have gem slots.

General

* You may now limit particles to show on (All / Raid Members / Team Members / Self).
* Particle effects and banners for PvP building have been optimized.
* The client should now disconnect from the chat server after camping.
* Cimmerian and male Stygian dancers beware - dancing near the edges of tall cliffs may be fatal to your health.
* Characters will no longer slide when jumping and then moving as you’re landing.

Attack Rating, Defense Rating, Magic Rating (this includes specialized Magic Ratings) and Magical Resist are the “big 4″ stats in terms of comparing attackers to defenders in the game.

The opposing stats are, as may be obvious:

• Attack Rating vs. Defense Rating
• Magic Rating (+Specialized Rating) vs. Magical Resist

In normal combat, if the attacker’s offensive rating is lower than the defender’s defensive rating, the damage will be reduced. Likewise, if the attacker’s offensive rating is higher than the defender’s defensive rating, the damage will be increased.

When attack and defense ratings are equal, the damage dealt will be the “normal” value of the attack, spell, or ability.

Heroic rating works mostly the same; however it is limited in when it can apply. It only applies if that rating is lower than an opposing rating.

For example:

• Player A has 250 Attack Rating, NPC B has 300 Defense Rating, outcome is -50 for the Player
• Player A has 250 Attack Rating + 100 Heroic Attack Rating, NPC B has 300 Defense Rating, outcome is even
• Player A has 250 Attack Rating + 100 Heroic Attack Rating, NPC B has 400 Defense Rating, outcome is -50 for the Player
• Player A has 250 Attack Rating + 100 Heroic Attack Rating, NPC B has 200 Defense Rating, outcome is +50 for the Player

For specialized magic ratings, as with Demonologists and Necromancers, the specialized rating is added when using a spell of the school that one has specialized rating for. For instance, if one has 100 Magic Rating and 50 Electrical Magic Rating, the effective magic rating is 150 with Electrical spells and 100 with non-Electrical spells. (The Archmage feat in the Mage general tree will make the buffs apply to both schools for the class, so all spells will effectively be cast with 150 Magic Rating.)

—

The last point is simply, these 4 stats do not apply in PvP. Thus, in PvP positive or negative damage multipliers normally associated with offensive and defensive rating comparisons are completely ignored. This is to allow players of all levels to compete on a fairly level playing-field, and not have them dealing artificially reduced or increased damage due to rating differences.

All other stats work normally in PvP. It is simply that “scaler” functionality which is normally in place to dynamically adjust gameplay based on level differences (for instance, the fact that you will evade more against a lower-level NPC) is removed in PvP to allow for a fairer matchup of player skill and ability.

To answer the questions of “why heavy armor?” or others along that same line: all players of all classes have the ability to reach the “target” ratings for a given level. They are a way to control your “virtual level” when compared against NPCs, not to provide a specific advantage to certain classes. All classes should be able to reach, for instance, 317 in all 4 rating statistics at level 80.

Heavier types of armor have higher innate invulnerability ratings, greater resistance to knockback effects, and dramatically increased health modifications. (Heavy armor, for instance, has over 3 times as much health available compared to medium armor.)

—

As I mentioned in another post last week, we will be releasing a bit of a guide to statistics and their general functionality in the near future. We would like to make this and other information a bit more easily accessible than it is currently. Obviously, we will not go in too much detail about advanced parts of the system (for instance, the non-linear formula which controls the actual offensive vs. defensive rating multipliers) but we would like to see players having a greater understanding of how stats are intended to work.

Hopefully this was helpful.

Source

And now back to our regularly scheduled news…

in my patcher.log I noticed:

[2008-06-16 23:31:49,0] [Patcher] RDB/RDBHashIndex.bin has wrong hash (6091ccf8ff136df3a03acd487f7f6148 != 33a4dcafe01847d5297405c9c1c6c1f2)
[2008-06-16 23:31:49,0] [HTTPManager] Files:0/1 (0.0/0.0 MB) Idle
[2008-06-16 23:31:49,0] [HTTPManager] http://aoc-us-update.live.ageofconan…405c9c1c6c1f2: failed with error 302

So I deleted the RDB/RDBHashIndex.bin , and re-run AoC and it went and got it again, then it started patching…

Check your patcher.log (should be in root folder of AoC) and open it in wordpad and go all the way to the bottom and see what file caused the patcher to hang and delete it before running the updates.

Hopefully this helps any of you experiencing this error so you can get back to leveling your overpowered Tempest of Set or Priest of Mitra.

General
* Chain Kills seem to occur more often now.
* Trader NPC’s can now be found in Player cities.

Mounts
* Skewbald Pinto horse now gives -3% sprinting stamina drain instead of -8%.
* Reports of horse riding skills vanishing and being unavailable.

Playfields
* In fields of the dead a guard patrolling on roads formerly known as (45) has got his name back and doesn’t attack players randomly anymore.
* The water fountain in the Tarantia Noble District (one near the Armsman Tavern)has been filled with water and now works as king conan intended.

Items
* Ruby Silver has now been properly named “Black Silver”.
* “Rageflame Robe” uses a different robe art now.
* “Nadiral Circlet” was renamed to “Nadiral Cowl” and also had its model changed.
* Several “Scorpion Cave” loots that were previously missing their names have been fixed and now got proper names assigned to them.
* Reports of level 70ish+ robes haveing updated graphics.
* The dagger from the Lich in Catacombs is no longer invisible, it now has a sort of short-sword sized dagger graphic.
* The ‘Bloodseer Vest’ has drastically changed graphics into a dark blue robe. Still called ‘Bloodseer Vest’, so might have been an unintended change.
* Drawing Ink and Parchment have updated graphics.

Quests
* New quest for the 5th villa is available (Villa Camillus)
* Boosted exp from the other villas a lot (at least villa verde, to 33k)
* Some resource quests can’t be handed in.

Tradeskills
* Steelsilk Belt- Can’t craft the blue version of it. You will get fine steelsilk MITTS.
* Steelsilk Leggings- Can’t craft the blue version of it you get fine steelsilk BELT.

Classes

Priest of Mitra
* Force of Will is not increasing the damage of repulse at all. (supposed to increase damage by 90% according to forum mod)

Conqueror
* All Battle Shouts now have a Sound effect.
* When a lower level conq is grouped with a higher level one, the lower level Warlord takes precedence on all members of a group. The buff from the higher level conqueror should take precedence instead. (bug?)

Bear Shaman
* Bear Shamans do not have “Wreck Armor”, they have “Crush Armor” which has ranks I+II+III+IV. “Crush Armor” animation has no change, for this reason.

Guardian
* “Overreach” now has an addition to its animation.

Assassin
* “Kidney Shot” CD removed/missing. (Lotus Spec)

Necromancer
* Necros have had their feat trees rearranged in both Nightfall and Reanimation to quite some degree. No free respec for this change.
* Relating to the feat changes- Talent points stayed with their respective talents while being moved so it is possible to have a talent that you no longer have the required amount of points invested into the tree to have.(IE you can have an item available that requires 15 feat points invested when you only have 10 invested.)

Comfirmed and/or Ongoing Bugs
* Gems still do not appear on the Trader after being searched for.
* Guild members having problems stacking resources in the bank. These have to be removed, stacked in one’s own bag and then placed back into the bank
* Players that have previously completed the ritual to remove the Mark of Acheron still bear the mark.

Possible Bugs/issues- Need comfirmation
* Stats seem to only barely be affecting damage output, and appear still broken in other areas, mostly defensive characteristics of the stats are not being applied.(See dev response below)
* The bug with NPCs not becoming visible until you are right on top of them is back. It was a bug they fixed last monday.(need confirmation)

General

* You should no longer do the loot animation while swimming.
* The flame on the Torch of Eiglophian will now die after a while.
* Now all spells can be casted with dagger and staff without problems.
* When you train Basic or Advanced Riding, you will no longer be teleported
* Fixed an alignment issue with quest indicators over quest NPC’s heads.
* Transition Quest Goal Markers have been updated to fit where the NPC’s now stand.
* Locking to raid instances have been fixed. All players participating in a raid will now be locked.
* Fixed problem that would cause the resource manager to hang indefinitely if the client consistantly fails to download a resource.
* Bonus spell damage now increases both minimum and maximum damage, instead of just maximum (average damage will remain unchanged).
* Stat bonuses from items (strength, wisdom, dexterity and constitution) will now properly affect your character (Note that strength now directly affects your DPS, not your attack rating).

GUI

* All Assassin abilities which stack multiple times now have a stack count in the buff GUI.
* All Bear Shaman, Priest of Mitra, and Tempest of Set abilities which stack multiple times now have a stack count in the buff GUI.

Items

* Hood of Jagged Barbs has been revamped.
* Polearms should now be the intended size.
* Added new purple rare drops to world loot.
* Conqueror Spear should now look the right size.
* Cimmeria hide light wrist should no longer clip with arms
* Changed reference to Steelsilk to Gossamer Silk in the Full Trade Response.
* Average, Fair, Fine and Superior Meat will no longer end up in the quest inventory.
* Crafting Item: Renamed item “Bloodsilver-studded Boots” to “Bloodsilver-mail Boots”
* The purchase price of vendor-bought alchemy reagents are now one third of what they were.
* Hek’lar’s Accursed Dagger will now appear with the correct icon in the player’s inventory.
* Fixed an issue with ‘Darfari Armbands’, they should be visible on female characters and have stats now.
* Crafting Item: Skymetal-studded Wristbands and Bluesteel-studded Wristbands (rare) And should be different from each other.

NPC

* Vistrix’ Profanity debuff has been tweaked.
* Ice Cave: Ice worms should now attack correctly.
* Field of the dead: Dusk wolf should reset properly.
* The Acheronian Warlord will drop bossloot armor again.
* The trader in Lacheish Plains has been removed as intended.
* Toirdealbach should now be a more fun and playable encounter.
* The Catacombes: Necromancer Undead should now attack correctly.
* The Champion of the Honorguard now uses its correct abilities again.
* Ethi woke up with his height a bit smaller than what it was yesturday.
* Villa Lentulus: Gurges the Nimble should react normally to players.
* Yakhmar’s Cave: Yakhmar should no longer get stuck if it cannot reach its target.
* Kyllikki’s Crypt: Kyllikki should reset properly when noone is in her hate list.
* Khopshef Province: Freed Rogue Slave should now use his weapons correctly.

Mounts

* Revamped translation so the blood is displayed relative to horse as well.
* The targetting arrow should now be positioned correctly when targetting a horse, gorilla and Mtilator
* You will half your chance of beeing knocked off the horse from the sides. You cannot be knocked off the horse if the attacker is standing in front of you
* Monsters lower level than you will have a much lower chance of knocking you off the horse. Monsters higher level than you will have a much higher chance of knocking you off the horse.
* Fixed a problem where advanced mount abilities were being given out by the basic training. Mammoth and Rhino owners - Please use /claim again. This will train the attack abilities associated with these two mount types.

Playfields

* Purple Lotus Swamp: Ladders should now work correctly.
* Tarantia Noble: Players should now be able to teleport into the arena by clicking on the door.
* Tarantia Noble: The Arena in Armsman Tavern has been redone. If you are looking for challenging arena fights, you can do so either alone or as part of a group.

Player Cities

* Player Cities will now have the Trader NPC now.
* The stack-size of building materials has been raised to 1000.

Player Characters

Archetype

* New buff counters were added to a number of mage and soldier effects.
* All gathering feats should now have the correct proficiency suffix in their name.
* The Goad ability can be trained and used on a NPC that does not have aggro on you. You must be in combat to use this ability.
* The buffs from rogue general feats Concealment, Distraction and Mountaineer will now be removed from characters when they untrain feats.
* You can no longer enter spellweaving when climbing or swimming. If you are hiding or crouching and enter spellweaving, you will leave that state immediately.

Assassin

* Flesh Rot now applies a separate debuff for each player Lotus Weapons now now applies a separate debuff for each player.

Bear Shaman

* Wreck Armor I+II+III combos now have improved visuals and sound.

Conqueror

* You may now use Incite the Ranks if Fire Weave is running.
* Throat Slash can now only be used with a melee weapon and not a ranged weapon.

Dark Templar

* Soul Barrier’s cast time has been reduced from 3 seconds to 1 second.
* Changed the Cooldown of Unhallowed Blight III to 20s.
* Changed the Unholy Debuff to be 5% on all combos. - Changed the duration of the debuff to last for 25s.
* Reduced the Mana cost of the following spells by 50%:

o Aura of Dread Fury (Ranks 1 - 4)
o Aura of Infusion (Ranks 1 - 5)
o Covenant of Pestilence (Ranks 1 - 4)
o Covenant of War (Ranks 1 - 3)
o Covenant of Death
o Covenant of Invulnerability (Ranks 1 - 3)
o Covenant of Vengeance
o Drain Life (Ranks 1 - 5)

Demonologist

* Waves of Flame now inflicts more damage each tick.
* The animation for the Demonologist-spell Unholy Hate has been slowed down by 25%.
* Resolved an minor issue with Demonologist spellweaving not affecting stamina potion effects.

Herald of Xotli

* Resolved a issue with “Blood Pit” so it will always spawn if you successfully kill a minion with the “I Eat Your Heat” combo.

Necromancer

* You no longer lose the Cannibalism spell when investing the second feat.
* Vile Insight now gives the intended Unholy Specialization as reflected in the description.
* Plauged Heart Curse will now correctly increase in damage with more feats trained.
* Parasitic Soul Swarm now inflicts more damage each tick.
* Pestilential Blast now has an additional skull visual.

Priest of Mitra

* Revoled a problem with the priest of mitra spellweaving ability.
* Repulse has had its base damage lowered slightly and contribution from bonus magic damage increased.
* Cleansing Fire now has a slightly lower manacost and now scales correctly across all levels.
* The damage bonus applied to Repulse, Cleansing Fire, and Lance of Mitra from Force of Will has been lowered to the correct amount.
* The damage bonus from Improved Repulse has been significantly increased

Ranger

* The buffs from ranger stances Shattering Stance, Piercing Stance, Fire Stance and Sniper Stance will now be removed from characters when they untrain feats.

Tempest of Set

* Brutal Lightning Strike should no correctly increase the critical strike chance of Lightning Strike.

Tradeskills

* Obsidian has been renamed to Feldspar.
* Orichalcum has been renamed to Duskmetal.
* Tigereye Gems will now end up in the resource inventory.
* Skinning Trainer will now tell you were to get skins.
* Your harvesting will no longer get interrupted by someone outside of the resource and building playfields.
* Resource nodes can now always be harvested while their health is at 10%.
* The Weaponsmith Trainer now gives the cooldown warning when the cooldown is in effect.
* The dialogues of the Resource Gatherer Trainers and Crafter Trainers now check if the player has the appropriate feats set on them, in addition to quests. If the player has the quest to gather resources or craft, but has lost the feat that enables him to do so, the feat is now retrained (to the correct tier).

Quests

* Dealing with Dila: Dila should now attack.
* Hunting the Spider: Quest can now be completed.
* The Lost Scouts: Waypoint to Dairmad was fixed.
* Oasis of Zaara: Waypoints for quest were fixed.
* In Defense of Beauty: Quest can be completed now.
* Flowers of the Snow: The flowers way markers were adjusted.
* Paetus and the Nemedian Crown: Waypoint for Armsman’s Tavern was fixed.
* Wanted posters should now give proper feedback if the player already has the quest or does not meet the requirements.
* Rahim & Lord Camillus: had it’s journal text modified, as he doesn’t stand near the Armsman’s Tavern.
* Death to the Undead: Indicators for minimap were displaying to small. This has been resolved.
* The Mark of Acheron: Players will now be able to experience the destiny event in the Field of Chiefs.
* The Mark of Acheron: The Mark of Acheron is permanently removed when performing the Medallion Ritual now.
* Soul Chamber: If you die in the soul chamber you now lose the tablet in your quest inventory.
* Destiny Quest: The quest rewards ‘King Conan’s Tribute’ & ‘King Conan’s Esteem’ are no longer tradeable.
* The Lost Bottles: Wine bottles will now have a blue flame indicating you can interact with them.
* Tradeskill Quests: You can now delete all tradeskill quests but tradeskill progression quests.
* Tradeskill Quests: Resolved various level requirement issues with the quests.

There is often the comparison from the Age of Conan CMs to the World of Warcraft CMs. The CMs of WoW are posting daily on the forums updating the players on future updates and just making it known that they are there and that they care. Where is this in AoC?

LordOrion, the Funcom Product Manager, seems to be the only one communicating with the players. This is what he has to say about this issue:

There are over one hundred thousand posts every week on the forum, and our community team is unfortunately extremely overworked just maintaining it. They too answer questions and talk to you all, but the unfortunate fact is that it’s not nearly enough due to the very high number of people here.

I do not work with community, but I do check the forums from time to time and I quite enjoy communication with you when I can. However, my job is also extremely busy so I can really only do it once in a while — and I will!

Now, our aim is to have one large announcement every month (newsletter, basically) where we tell you about what is going to happen in the future. We will also try and answer some questions on a weekly basis once we get settled a bit and this first month after launch is over.

Trust me — we really want to keep you as close as we can!

LordOrion brings up a valid point. If I recall correctly, the current amount of communication in WoW was never as solid as it is now when it first opened up. The forums were flooded with complaints and the community felt like none of the questions were being answered. Doesn’t the AoC community just need to give the game and CMs a little more time to get the game off the ground? Granted, many argue that it never should have been released since it seems so “unfinished”, but some feel it is quenching their thirst for a new MMO.

What do you think?

It’s only been a short time since Age of Conan launched, but it has already seen some troubles. The newest edition of the game newsletter hints that good times are just over the horizon. Above and beyond bug fixing and regular patches, Funcom has announced they have a slew of new concepts and content ideas on the stove. Here are the highlights from the newsletter:

• Game director Gaute Godager answers a few questions we haven’t seen addressed anywhere else. Primarily involving guild systems and tradeskilling, the quickie Q&A shouldn’t take you long to read.
• The team is introducing a sort of alternate advancement system they’re calling Power Points. Points are similar to but not exactly like the “AAs” from games like EQ. You’ll earn them just by having an open account, and it sounds like down the road new content will drop specifically for characters with enought PP.
• A number of changes to guilds, guild housing, and the introduction of guild alliances are all discussed on the official site.
• The newsletter goes back over all the patches they’ve dropped since launch, particularly noting the addition of unique dances for each race.
• Funcom is completely revamping Age of Conan’s PvP. They’re adding PvP-specific leveling, consequences in the form of the ‘fugitive system’, and a number of tweaks and changes to the art of player on player war.
• A number of quests past level 20 are getting voice over elements added in. The website lists every one they’re working on, and in total this forms a specific storyline the developers want you to be sure to follow.
• A better interface for chat and guild management will soon be available.
• The Pyramid of the Ancients and Treasury of the Ancients in Khopshef Province will be getting bottom-to-top revamps.
• A whole new dungeon will be added to Thunder River. No firm details, but they did release some concept art - the same art that was ‘leaked’ to the US forums earlier this week.
• They’re also planning an all new outdoor area called Ymir’s Pass, which plans to fill a few holes in late-game leveling.

Be sure to check out the Age of Conan - Newsletter #17 for full details. Also check out the interview with Gaute Godager for some answers to questions the player base has been asking.

News Poster
Must be ready and able to post up-to-date news on Age of Conan, with updates based on Google Alerts, official websites or gaming news websites.

Content Developer / Article Writer
Our article writers and content developers will be required to come up with interesting articles, criticism or insights regarding the latest events and happenings in Age of Conan, such as what a blog author would do. Alternatively, the content developer can also produce either guides or other forms of content.

We are currently looking for:
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Please feel free to send me an e-mail if you’re interested in taking up any of the positions.