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Patch Notes: 1.1.00

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epitaph
epiphany
eidolon

One Point Freaking One

April 12, 2015

Ambiance System

  • Room chats have had something of a rework and are now represented by our new Ambiance System, which is room chats++.
  • As part of the new ambiance system, room chats will now be pooled more effectively across the entire game.
  • Room chats are now more dynamic, with more moving elements in the text to create greater variability.
  • As part of the room chat reworking, shopkeepers will now intermittently check the security of storerooms and safes.
  • As part of the room chat reworking, some chats will indicate commerce occuring in shops. When this happens, the money in the shop will be adjusted, and the safe/storeroom will lock.

Art And Culture

  • When 'greet'ing an NPC, you will now be given a free attitude adjustment based on the appropriate cultural skill for the NPC. If you fail this, you may find yourself on the wrong side of the NPC, but if you pass you'll find yourself on the right side. If you don't want the risk, don't greet them. This stacks with the bonuses obtained by the normal attitude adjustment commands.
  • Novels now also come with a cultural assignment and a cultural difficulty. Reading a novel will now give you a TM chance in the appropriate skill.
  • Hacking remote terminals will now give a chance at an appropriate culture TM, depending on the TLD of the address. For example, .au refers to an australian server, which will give a chance at Oceania culture.

Balance

  • All players will now start with a budget of 250 command and knack points from day one. These are 'free points', added to your overall total. If you've already got command and knack points, you will find you now have more.
  • The money NPCs will pay for a blackmail dossier has been increased.
  • Shipping containers will now spawn with less food, and will often spawn with nothing in them at all.
  • The energy cost of scavenging has been increased slightly.
  • The XP calculation has been adjusted considerably, offering much less XP at higher levels, but more at lower levels. Overall XP rewards are much lower, since at higher levels and complexities the amount of XP being given out was ridiculous.
  • Burial XP has been removed, since the increase of XP at lower levels should compensate for this.
  • Reputation awarded for missions has been increased.

Bug Fixes

  • Various small bug and typo fixes.
  • The foraging command now uses ag.lo.fo instead of ag.ga.ha, as originally intended.
  • Non-loading phones will now load once more.
  • The 'boards' command will now actually link back up to the web boards.
  • Finger will no longer show blank lines for social media information if these haven't been set.
  • Weather chats will now appear, as they should have in the first place.
  • The grit bin in Alphabet Street should now remain visible.
  • Scavanging should be back up and running once again.
  • Second winds will no longer be used up if you go unconscious before they trigger.
  • The way in which auto loading works has been changed for inventory objects, handling them all on call_outs. This means that containers full of things will take a while to fully load, but it also means that auto loading should no longer be a source of lag.
  • Several stabbing weapons were using some sharp attacks, and vice versa. This has been fixed.
  • Snack machines will now give out food once again.
  • Praying to Maestro while in the void is now free, as was advertised.
  • Free upgrades will no longer count towards the upgrade limit on items.
  • An issue with the reporting of the time and day has been fixed.
  • Clancy in the Dark Carnival is now a token receiver as indicated by the factions command.
  • The missionary faction will now provide tinkerer tokens as a favour, as per the other factions.
  • It's now possible to sell incriminating dossiers to NPCs other than the target, as was originally intended.
  • Throwing cards now have the name 'deck' rather than 'pack', and their weight has been fixed.
  • Wrestle and Pin no longer share a cooldown.
  • Diane in the Winchester will now once again accept bottles of delicious water.
  • The cultural inculcation favour will now properly move your faction as intended.
  • Hollis is now properly a trainer for the Regulators.
  • Pinkerton is now properly amission giver for the Regulators.
  • Clan achievement progress should now be properly adjusted again.
  • Helgen is now a favour granter for the Dark Carnival, as the faction command indicated.
  • You'll no longer be accused of burglary if you take items from the shop room itself. Storeroom is still off limits.
  • The command lag on a number of commands has been synchronized better.

Crafting

  • Over 500 new armour schematics added, favouring those who work with metal, bone and cloth.
  • Over 800 new clothing schematics added, favouring those who work with cloth
  • Over 1700 new jewellery schematics added, favouring those who work with stone, wood and metal.
  • Over 300 new melee weapon related schematics added, favouring those who work with stone, wood and metal.
  • Over 200 new crafting books added - most contain 20 of the new patterns.
  • A new command has been added - 'scrutinize'. It consumes schematic patterns in exchange for an 'inspired' buff. The inspired buff increases the chance that your next crafting effort produces an enhanced item.
  • The 'research' command has changed its functionality. It is now used to attempt to memorise any schematic that you don't otherwise have access to. You can research any schematic in the game unless they've been set as being 'special'.
  • 20 new gem related materials.
  • Stone and metal veins will now sometimes result in a gemstone being produced as a byproduct. These are used in some of the new shaping schematics outlined below.

General

  • NPCs will now respond to the 'job' keyword when you ask them - this will prompt them to tell you what their role is, if they have one.
  • The 'alternative medicine' quest has been returned to the game - it now works through the crafting system.
  • The poultice craftable can be used to refill first aid kits.
  • > 700 new hackable IP addresses have been added.
  • Browsing the internet on a local system will now give you a random accessible website (and perhaps IP address) instead of a rumour. Some hackable remote sources will now give those rumours out.
  • For those with the SSH command, a new faction mission has been made available.
  • For those with the repair command, a new faction mission has been made available.
  • Flipping the breaker in the Winchester will now cause the jukebox to come on and start playing music.
  • Resolve has been removed as a vector of wellbeing. It's now handled via mercurial moods. See the section on mercurial for more details.
  • A keep_alive ping has been added for those who need constant information coming from the MUD to keep a connection You can enable it through 'options mud_output keep_alive = '. The text will never vary, so you can mute it in your client.
  • The counsel command has been removed - all points spent on this command will be refunded. The reassure command has been modified to apply a positive mood boost rather than wellbeing impact. It also gets rid of the 'scared to live' debuff.
  • Approximately 5% of doors in the game are now 'creaky', which means they'll make a noise if you just walk through them without taking the care to open them first.
  • Attempting to go through a locked door will give an inform to the other side that someone has jiggled the handle. This also generates a small amount of noise.
  • A good mood boost is now one of the things you might get as a login gift.
  • You can no longer actually die in the newbie area.
  • The base cost of the Regulators has increased to $2000, and the price will go up every time you place a contract.
  • The price of placing a contract on a specific person goes up the more that they have been contracted themselves.
  • Performing actions on a computer such as browsing, mail, and so on will drain extra power - the extent of the extra power drain will depend on your skills.
  • All containers will now come with a 'The inventory is still being generated' inform when you look at them while auto loading is going on.
  • Combat will now be less spammy in situations where you're blocked from hitting an enemy by an obstacle.
  • If you hear a conversational keyword, it will now only be MXP linked if you're in the same room as the NPC chatting.
  • You can no longer put items with a biometric lock into a communal saving location. At least directly. The problem with this was that once it went into a container, nobody but the person to who it was locked could remove it. Now, if you want something biometrically locked to go into a communal saved location, put it into a container. That way people who don't want it there can still remove it.
  • Rat Maze has been removed from the list of quests required to complete 'Nobody Does It better'
  • 'achievements legacy' will now award you achievement progress towards any quests you may have completed before the associated achievement was put into the game.
  • Corpse bits have undergone a bit of a redesign. You can no longer chop all the various individual parts out of a corpse - that was always very buggy and never used properly, and created a whole mess of problems when adding in new races and the like. Instead, corpses now contain 'heads', 'tissue samples', 'bones' and 'internal organs', and you can butcher these out. This isn't just an aesthetic thing, this will also support stuff we want to do for a later patch.
  • Survival knives can now be used for skinning.
  • Shove now uses its own cooldown, rather than the usual 'engage' and 'disengage'
  • Clips which contain no bullets can now be refered to as 'empty' clips. Clips that have full loads of ammo can now be refered to as 'full'. So, 'drop empty clips' or 'put full clips in backpack'.
  • Various cans and packaged drinks are more likely to be scavenged from kitchens.
  • Headlamps are now available through scavenge.
  • Nationalities have had a little bit of an internal revamp, and there will be many more of these available for you to choose from.
  • Skills and moral requirements for the Regulators have been changed.
  • Crafted puppets now weigh less.
  • The output under 'commands cost' is now sorted by name.
  • Clothes on zombies and corpses will begin in significantly worse condition.
  • Rats have been added to the sewer underneath the church.
  • Some more dynamic hepl has been added here and there.
  • Items left unattended will now be automatically cleaned up on a regular basis. Not while you're still in the room, but periodically the game will simply get rid of trash.
  • Clothes can now be referenced by 'worn' and 'unworn'. Worn clothes is what you happen to be wearing, and 'unworn' is clothes in your inventory that you aren't wearing.

Interface

  • A searching system has been added to the game - this is currently active on the schematics browser (both in-game and on the web)
  • Searching works on the title of things, and will be added to more parts of the game as they come up.

Items

  • Several new novels have been added.
  • USB thumb drives are now scavengable in the game. You can use these as a destination for remotely downloaded files.
  • A new classification of object has been added - media players. These add positive and negative moods to NPCs as the media upon them indicates. The jukebox in the Winchester has been converted over to this system.

Mercurial System

  • A new system for NPC moods, interactions and attitudes has been added, which allows for NPCs to communicate with each other, and players to communicate with NPCs. All interactions are performed through the 'influence' command.
  • Players also have access to Mercurial moods, and these will impact on your resolve. This offers a more flexible system of resolve management than the previous wellbeing system would allow.
  • Your new 'mood' command allows you to see what your overall mood is, and what your current resolve is. It has a resting value of 50, which is then modified by your mood values.
  • The new 'interactions' command will allow you to see all the interactions available to you, and the various configuration details that define them.
  • The interaction system obsoletes the soul system - the standard soul syntax, such as '/grin' will work in the new system. You can interact remotely with other players as before, but all other interactions must be done within the same room. A * may be used in place of a distinct soul argument to give a randomised response.
  • Charm, Intimidate and Bribe have changed their functionality - they now act as personality modifiers. If you charm an NPC, they will temporarily be more responsive to friendly interactions. If you intimidate, they'll be more responsive to threatening interactions.
  • Charm and Intimidate are now bought commands.
  • Bribe now has a five minute cooldown.
  • NPCs now have a limited sleeping cycle - they will take naps every so often when they get tired. You can wake them up with noises, or just asking them questions. While asleep they won't notice you sneaking around unless you wake them.
  • NPCs now also have a limited 'personal stuff' cycle - they'll occasionally wander off to take care of the necessaries, leaving shops and the like briefly unattended.

Skills And Stats

  • A new stat has been added - 'charisma'. This is to help underpin our new social interaction system. As part of this, everyone will have their stats set back to the default (at no rearrange cost) so as to distribute their stats again according to the new setup.
  • A new skill tree has been added - 'social'. Some of the mental skills have been moved into this tree. Your skills will be automatically remapped when you login after the patch.
  • Several new skills have been added, tied primarily into the new mercurial system and crafting expansions.

Web

  • A random quote has been added to the bottom of the main index page.
  • Pagination has been added to the schematics browser.

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Epitaph Black Ops - Epiphany v1.2.15 [development]. Copyright © Imaginary Realities Ltd 2009 -