"It's coming soon, bitches!"
"OMG"
"drakkos"
"general"
"And we're off!"
"Open for closed beta"
"drakkos"
"general"
"In the DIY shop, you will now occasionally find acetylene torches. These are powered weapons - when activated, they will do fire damage and may, on occasion, set your enemy on fire. "
"Acetylene torches"
"drakkos"
"general"
"To go with the welding torches, you'll also occasionally find weed burners in the DIY store - these are low end flamethrowers that can be used ranged.
Enjoy!"
"Weed Burners"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Those of you with high faction standing in the Winchester will now find it impacts on wellbeing decay when you are in one of their rooms - your thirst and hunger will decay at half speed if you are liked, quarter speed if you are loved, and freeze entirely if you are exalted
This is only true in the Winchester at the moment, but will be rolled out to other factions too if it seems like a worthwhile system.
Thx
Drakkos
**s
help
quit
exit
help"
"Wellbeing in Faction Safehouses"
"drakkos"
"general"
"You are now able to dig up your very own remote controlled truck set in the toy shop, if you're a lucky little scamp, in a handful of exciting colours."
"RC Trucks"
"ploosk"
"general"
"A bugfix in setting levels for NPCs has reversed the difficulties in low level NPCs - you'll find for example children are a lot easier to kill, and normal shamblers a bit harder. It'll only impact on the two easiest tiers of NPCs, but be wary!"
"Difficulty changes"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Whittling now needs you to have something sharp in your floating inventory. Sewing needs you to have a needle. Forging requires you to be somewhere near a furnace. Such is life in the grim etc etc"
"Assembling commands"
"drakkos"
"general"
"I've added two more schematic books to the bookshop and library scavengables list, a metalsmithing book and an apocalypse survival guide.
This means you can potentially fashion your very own lobotomisers now, because more weapons is what you guys want, right?"
"More Schematics"
"ploosk"
"general"
"This isn't really 'game' news, but just in case anyone is interested - there is an Epitaph version of the various LPC for Dummies books you may or may not have seen on DW. It's not finished yet (it still needs its glossary expanded, as well as actual indexing beyond the point where I lost the will to live. And I guess I should proof read it at some point), but you'll find it at http://www.monkeys-at-keyboards.com/epitaph.pdf if you want to see how we put things together here. "
"Epitaph Survival Guide"
"drakkos"
"support"
"The planks that you get from milling can now be used as weapons"
"Planks for the memory"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Mops can now be scavenged up in the pound shops and catalogue stores, because apparently that's a thing you guys wanted too. "
"Clean of the Damned"
"ploosk"
"general"
"The blog command has had some MXP inserted into its welcoming maw."
"Blog MXP"
"drakkos"
"general"
"You can now 'cook' a primed grenade to shave a little time off its delay. Be careful though, misjudge it and it will explode in your sweaty little hands."
"Bang for your Buck"
"drakkos"
"general"
"The Winchester and the Dragoons have been upgraded to moderate factions, which means they'll teach you more levels of their skills than before."
"Factions"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Soldiers have been made tougher, and they will now also throw grenades back at you if you try to throw them in their room."
"Oliver's Army"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Some commands, because of an error in the command giver, may not have been granted to you at the start - as a temporary fix, you can use the 'commands award all' syntax to get all the skills for which you are currently eligible. If any of these seem unusual (as in, you think you should need skills to get them), plz to be reporting the commands directly"
"Commandz"
"drakkos"
"general"
"We're doing a little experiment with wellbing - a new measure, 'resolve' has been added. Zombies (once they've all updated through the game) will now moan, and that moaning will sap at your resolve in line with the number of zombies there are in the environment. In short, they'll become harder to resist and more damaging to your resolve the more of them there are.
As your resolve drops, it'll start to impact on your skills - the less resolve you have, the larger the penalty to your bonuses.
Resolve will regen over time, and if you kill a zombie you'll get some resolve back - it feels good, man, to kill the undead.
I'd appreciate all your feedback on this mechanic - it's only in a rough state at the moment, but the intention is to make crowds of zombies to be genuinely threatening no matter your level - you may be able to kill them one on one without breaking a sweat, but a crowd is a different thing entirely."
"Resolve"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Exercise machines have been made available in the gym of the Barracks. These give you a short term (two hour) boost of a point to a stat - you can only choose one stat, and upon getting the boost you'll be unable to get another for a period of a day. The syntax is simply 'exercise [with] '"
"Exercise and a diet that's wise"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Two new knacks - iron backbone and nerves of steel."
"Resolve Knacks"
"drakkos"
"general"
"In the Winchester you'll now find the first factional chalkboards - they're top ten tables, but for specific metrics in specific factions. It'll take a while for them to populate properly, but there they are! Look at them! Just look! Look! Why aren't you looking?"
"Chalk one up to experience"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Ring binders have now been added to the library and book shop scavenging lists"
"In a bit of a bind"
"ploosk"
"general"
"Basic CCTV kits have been added to the Pissy World scavenge list."
"I like to watch"
"garrion"
"general"
"You can now 'powernap' every hour to get a boost to your energy and your resolve. The standard command will just cause you to try to sleep wherever you stand. You can also 'powernap on ' if it is a thing you can position on. The latter is much more effective.
Don't sleep too long, or the zombies will eat you"
"The days are the nappiest"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A couple of new commands have been added - 'buffs' and 'debuffs' - they will list the things that are currently temporarily affecting you, as in anti-knacks, temporary knacks, effects, and so on.
If you find yourself being affected by something that doesn't show up in either of these commands, please regard it as a bug and report accordingly.
Thx"
"Buffer me"
"drakkos"
"general"
"When an enemy attempts to engage you, or generally push you around in the combat, it will now cost you a bit of energy to fend them off to symbolise the effort you need to go into to avoid yielding. "
"You want to dance? Let's dance"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Textbooks have been changed a little -
* They get generated from data files now, which may have implications for how they look and behave with regards to how you've seen them in the past. Please report any weirdness
* The lower the level of the book, the more levels it will give - the lowest level books should give you five levels, the journals that you find will only give you one.
They're less tedious to put in place now though, so you'll find more of them making their way into the game soon!"
"Textbooks"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Textbooks and journals for milling and smelting have been added to the usual places"
"While the miller told his taaaaaaale"
"drakkos"
"general"
"From Grimrak: I was, however, hoping we could use chocolate to help boost/regen our resolve. It's used to help treat shock in real life, after all.
So it now does. And drinking alcohol will also increase your resolve.
As will smoking a big fat doobie spliff reefer.
Drakkos"
"Ensuring our game is appropriate for teenagers"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Alcohol is now available in the Winchester shop, as well as pub cellars when the city is regenerated"
"Have one on me"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Digg integration has been added to the blog posts"
"We digg digg digg digg digg digg digg digg-digg the whole day through"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Sometimes, doors into buildings will be locked now. "
"You... shall not... PASS!"
"drakkos"
"general"
"I've put a placeholder for Morrison Hotel on Tucker Avenue.
I say this because it has Epitaph's version of the Genua murder mystery quest there, so you might want to check it out. :-D
It will eventually expand to an actual faction, albeit only a minor one."
"Morrison Hotel"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Ringbinders are now 120% more bitchin'
You can now 'list schematics' to see what schematics a binder contains
You can add more than one paper at a time
You can also see at a glance how many it contains with the 'appraise' command
thanks to Mercutio for the suggestions"
"The Ties That Bind"
"ploosk"
"general"
"The trickle effect of wellbeing has been made less serious - now if you no longer have the wellbeing to honour an adjustment, you'll have to pay 150% of the remainder rather than 300%."
"Wellbeing trickle"
"drakkos"
"general"
"In Morrison Hotel, there is now a Hoteliers faction - they work in the usual way, with a shop, a trainer, and a mission giver. In addition, completing the murder mystery quest will give you a pretty big faction rep bonus"
"Hoteliers"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A new quest has been added to the Osiris Headquarters. You'll receive it from Professor Bernstrom in Morrison Hotel... IF YOU DARE"
"Bitching Quest, aw jeah"
"drakkos"
"general"
"The blog informs (you do have those on, right??) will now generate MXP links when a post is made, to save you hunting it out yourself"
"Yo, I heard you like blogs, so I'm blogging about the blog so you can blog while you blog"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Resolve no longer trickles - when it's at rock bottom, it won't make your situation any more precarious when you take another resolve hit. This is an experimental change, to see how it plays. It's possible that there will be future penalties associated with your actions writing cheques your resolve can't cash"
"Resolve trickles"
"drakkos"
"general"
"In addition to costing teh ex peas, advancing at a faction trainer will now also cost you reputation."
"Your money is no good here"
"drakkos"
"general"
"New idea informs will now generate an MXP inform, in the style of the blog inform, if you have them switched on"
"Oracle MXPs"
"drakkos"
"general"
"PTs can now unset quests they have done using 'quests unset ', so you can test them again and again and again AND AGAIN"
"Unsetting quests"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Claymore mines have been made available in the barracks storeroom - the messages aren't all there yet, but you can 'turn' them to face a direction and then 'detonate' them to hit anyone who just came through that exit. Later on, they'll be possible to remotely detonate too.
Have fun, psychos"
"The Humble Scottish Claymore"
"drakkos"
"general"
"The Rat Maze quest has been changed a bit to make it more challenging:
1) There are now five zombies. One of these does not have a distraction
2) The geography of the maze has changed a little
3) One of the switches is a master switch. All the other switches must now be switched on *before* that switch
4) When all the criteria for the quest have been met, flipping the master switch will cause all zombies to speed up and home in on your location. They'll still honour distractions, but they'll move FAST if they're not being distracted.
ENJOY!"
"Rat Maze Readjustments"
"drakkos"
"general"
"No need to keep an eye on the 'new achievements' section of the webpage, because new achievements will now be autoposted to the recent developments blog."
"Recent Developments and Achievements"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A new quest has been added, this time to the barracks. You'll find it through the door to the clock tower on the third floor of the building. As with Rat Maze, it'll need tweaked and polished, but you'll be able to see how it's going to shake out."
"Tower defence"
"drakkos"
"general"
"The upper floors of the barracks have now been populated with undead,"
"Soldier boys"
"drakkos"
"general"
"You should now automatically be registered on a quest (without you needing to formally 'accept' it) if you completed any of the stages of it."
"Quest registration"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A simple quest has been added to the chemical factory. And by simple, I mean 'very simple'
Drakkos"
"Chemical factory quest"
"drakkos"
"general"
"The chemical factory has now been populated with zombies"
"Chemical castraction"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A new combat command has been added - 'subdue'. You can use this to knock a prone living opponent unconcsious with a non-lethal takedown. "
"Grimrak's Dating Tips"
"drakkos"
"general"
"An unpleasant new quest has been added in northern Dunglen. I hope those of you who complete it feel ashamed of yourselves."
"Slave Sheds"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A new faction has been added - the Caledonian Liberation Army. I would advise not trying to visit them until you've earned their favour a bit at the front gate"
"Caledonian Liberation Army"
"drakkos"
"general"
"To counteract the terrible quest I added this morning, I added in a second quest that is a little bit more noble. But alas, you'll need to do the terrible thing to make it safely to the good thing. Life is full of moral choices. :-/"
"Emancipation"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A couple of new practice obejcts have been made available in the game - a disconnected car alarm in Stephanie King's office, and a stuck jar available from most kitchens. The former teaches you el.ma.al, and the latter teaches you ph.co.fo. Enjoy!"
"Practise makes Perfect"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A new series of textbooks on horticulture have been added to libraries and book shops."
"Picking a prickly pear with the paw"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A new kind of item has entered the game - items with skill boosts associated. At the moment, this is only the climbing axe and the climbing boots. You'll scavenge them from the places you would expect.
Please try to break these, as there's a high level of abuse potential associated with this kind of thing"
"Skill boosting items"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A new schematic book, containing a schematic for a lockpick and a nailboard, has been added to book/library scavenge rosters"
"Crime Spree"
"drakkos"
"general"
"If you can get in well enough with them to avoid dying, the Caledonian Liberation Army will now sell an electric lockpick that is good fo almost any lock you'll encounter"
"Electric Lockpickaloo"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A new schematic book has been added to the Dragoon's quartermaster - a book of old world weapons, showing how to create quarterstaffs and spears."
"Friar Tuck? More like Triar fu..."
"drakkos"
"general"
"A book on butchering has been added to the textbooks available"
"An Illustrated Guide to Jack the Ripper"
"drakkos"
"general"
"My First Tanning Kit and My First Curing Kit (practise objects for tanning and curing) are now available on the scavenge table for the camping store"
"Shiny shiny, shiny kits for leather"
"drakkos"
"general"
"The 'skin' command has had its level requirement removed - you will be able to get it using 'commands award all'"
"Come on in, and take off your skin"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A new quest has been added to the chemical factory. It's available from Bernstrom in Morrison Hotel, and should have Rat Maze as a prerequisite (it is intentional that you are not able to progress this quest without doing Rat Maze first, so plz report if that's not the case)"
"New Quest New Quest A Quest That Is New"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A followup to the quest \"human trafficking\" has been added - it's available at the same place and done in the same way. They just want you to gather children for them now. Did you hear me? CHILDREN. I hope you can sleep at nights."
"Suffer not the little children"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A new command has been added - dye. You will need some dye vials, which you can find in various places such as bedrooms and other locations.
It lets you take a cloth item and then dye it to the colour of the dye vial(s) you happen to have"
"No mister bond, I expect you... to DYE"
"drakkos"
"general"
"As with dyeing, there is now a paint command - this one requires tins of paint which you will find in garages and the DIY shop, as well as a few other places.
It works on stone and wood rather than cloth or plastic"
"Paint me a word picture"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A new quest has been added to the Osiris building - it has Scientific Analysis as a pre-requisite. As usual, the messages are all rough and I don't know how hard/easy it is, but I'd appreciate comments and thoughts. :-D"
"Another Action Quest"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A new Maestro event, and a new quest have been added. The quest is 'manna from heaven', and the event is - well, it's the thing that makes the quest available to you."
"Manna from Heaven"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A makeshift directional antenna has been added to Stephanie King's office in the university. You can use it to get a directional reading on the last NPC radio broadcast you received."
"McGuyvering some Triangulations"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A new quest has been added to Morrison Hotel. You will probably recognise it, since I stole its design from Discworld. ;-P"
"Unbalanced"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A bet shop has been added to Sorkin Street, containing books on animal training and two simple (placeholder) companion objects. "
"Paws for Thought"
"drakkos"
"general"
"The 'tame' and 'instruct' commands have now beem made available.
Pets on Epitaph work like this:
* You can only have one out at a time
* You have to tame them yourselves, and to tame them you need both the command and a training object (two of these are available in the pet shop)
* The difficulty of training an animal is based on a compare skill check between your animal taming and their nerve. If you fail badly enough, they might attack
* When you have tamed an animal, you can use your training object to summon, dismiss and release (forever) your pet. You can also 'designate' a pet as non-combat (which means it won't be attacked by enemies)
* You can 'instruct' a pet to do one of (at the moment) three things - kill, follow and unfollow. More commands will eventually follow, probably things that you can end up training them yourselves.
It's been a while since I looked properly at this, but I think it works. I think...
Drakkos"
"Pet Sounds"
"drakkos"
"general"
"The unconceal command has been made available through the command giver."
"Unconceal"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A metal detector has been added to the consumer electronics stores - it will beep (after a delay) if there are buried metal items in the room of its wielder."
"Metal detectors"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A new quest has been added to the cathedral - it's available from Lucy in the main hall."
"Rings of power"
"drakkos"
"general"
"The emaciated cat achievement is now a quest. Co-incidentally, that brings us up to 100 QPs!"
"The emaciated cat"
"drakkos"
"general"
"I've changed the way repairing works a bit.
Items are now classed as either 'simple' or 'complex' in terms of their repairs. Simple means raw materials are enough to fix them (like a sword), and complex (such as, for example, an automatic pistol) means you need to canabalise spare parts from an equally complex item. The basic equivalence is that it needs to be the same item, but this can be overridden at the code level - ranged weapons for example need you to canabalise a weapon of the same basic classification (you can fix a double barrelled shotgun with other any kind of double-barrelled shotgun).
If you find items that are obviously too complex to be repaired with raw material but let you anyway, please to be reporting them thx"
"Repairing and ting"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Access to Channel 1251 (Radio Terra Libre) has been made contingent on completing the Radio Wall of Sound quest"
"When you love that music, you love that sound"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Oh, and there is a new quest, called Radio Wall of Sound. You'll find it in the (placeholder) Radio Dunglen building in northern Dunglen"
"You love that new channel you've found"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A followup quest to Radio Wall Of Sound has been added - it's called 'Dunglen Radio and the Big Beat'"
"It comes out of the Scottish Highlands cool and slow with a backbeat narrow and hard to master"
"drakkos"
"general"
"If you have completed the 'Dunglen Radio and the Big Beat' quest, you will now be able to see Twa Dugs in the radio station about 'transmit'ing a message to Radio Terra Libre - they will, on occasion, relay it back to everyone via the channel."
"Some call it heavenly in its brilliance"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Access to channel 1301 has now been made dependent on completing the quest \"are you there atuin\"."
"Are You There A'Tuin? It's me, Drakkos"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Oh, and as you can probably guess from the last blog post - there's a new quest. It's available from Twa Dugs in Radio Dunglen, and has Dunglen Radio and the Big Beat as a pre-req"
"One dug is too low, and three dugs is too many"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A new kind of item has been added to a few of the scavenge profiles in the game - it's a handheld game's console. There's also a sokoban game cartridge you can find. The consoles should be pretty straightforward - you can move them up, down, left and right, and press one of its two (count them!) two buttons. You can insert and eject cartridges, and reset it when you want to begin again from the start."
"This changes everything. Again."
"drakkos"
"general"
"A new quest, 'thinking rabbit' has been added. You will get it from a game console if it has a sokoban game installed"
"Thinking Rabbit"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A second quest, and a second game, have been added - it's a version of Snake in text. I'm not sure how playable it is, but if you can find the cartridge, give it a try and let me know."
"Snake Charming"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A third computer game has been added - boulderdash. It too has a quest associated with it, because that's just how we roll, bitches."
"Balderdash"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Guess what! Another new quest! This one is called \"great communicator\", and is available from Stephanie King in the university."
"Reaganing"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Another new quest has been added - this time it's in the barracks (available from Irving). It's called minesweeper, and... well, I'm sure you can guess what the quest involves. :-D"
"Minesweeper"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Another new quest has been added - it's called 'Swordfish' and it's available from Irving. You'll find the computer you need for it in the computer room of the barracks."
"The password is always swordfish"
"drakkos"
"general"
"The 'hack' command has been renamed to 'gut', so as to let me use the command 'hack' for something else."
"Hacking your Guts up"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A new adventuring command, 'hack' is now available. It's a generalised version of the swordfish quest added yesterday. At the moment there's only one hackable computer (in the barracks), but you should expect more of these making their way into the game - hacking them will reward you with XP, game story (a la fallout) and occasionally specific functionality otherwise unavailable. "
"Haxors"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A hackable computer terminal has been setup in the cellar of the Winchester"
"Winchester.com"
"drakkos"
"general"
"You won't be surprised by now I'm sure, but a new quest has been added! This one is available from the Concierge and it's called 'pipe dreams'. Anyone who remembers the old 'pipemania' game will be right at home. For everyone else, I'll give a short explanation.
The room with the pipes is south of the cellar in the hotel. To begin the quest, 'start plumbing', and then look at the pipes - that will show you the plumbing grid. The +++ symbols indicate where the water is going to come out, and the --- indicate where the water is going to go in. The shape of the symbol will show the direction of travel (it will travel in the direction indicated by the blank lines).
=
Underneath the grid you'll see your pipeline - these are the pipes you are going to be working with. You can rotate the first of these with the 'rotate' command, and when you have it in a way you want it you can place it with the 'place' command. Pipes will visibly connect to each other if they are aligned - if they are not aligned, water won't properly flow through your pipes.
You need to use a minimum of ten pipes to get the water from the source to the destination (explained IC as a macguyver attempt to reduce the pressure of the water through the pipes), and you're working against a time limit to do this (the time limit is five minutes, but that might change). At any time, you can 'turn stopcock' to start the water flowing. If you manage this, you'll get the quest.
Happy plumbing!
Drakkos"
"Pipe dreams"
"drakkos"
"general"
"Aaaand another new quest, this time in the widget factory. It's called 'For the Glory of Ohm'"
"Bonus points if you get the reference"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A new quest has been added to the cathedral - you can get it from Father Gaius. It's called 'for whom the bell tolls', and the bell tower you will need is available off the main entrance of the cathedral."
"It tolls for thee..."
"drakkos"
"general"
"To go with the Digg links on blog posts, I've added facebook like links. We already had those on the main page, but these will let you like specific blog posts."
"Like the blog"
"drakkos"
"general"
"A new quest has been added - it's called 'Epidemology' and it's available from Samantha Quirk in the barracks"
"The Game of Unlife"
"drakkos"
"general"
"The fortieth quest has been added - it's to kill the boss at the end of the ruined train instance, and it's called 'trained assassin'"
"Trained assassin"
"drakkos"
"general"
"It is the end of the closed beta! Thanks to those of you who helped out on it. Badges will be forthcoming in the near future!"
"This is the end... beautiful friend"
"drakkos"
"general"
"The placeholder for the Casino has been added to Darwin Street, along with a very simple new quest (Spin On This)"
"Casino"
"drakkos"
"game"
"Test
Test
Test?"
"Test"
"drakkos"
"general"