Loot/Loot System Updates

Updates to the Loot System

The Changing of the Ways

• Pyreals became weightless! It seems that while Aluvian smiths cannot change the laws o' physics, greed can. Dereth is full of wonders.
• Metal armors now weigh 1/3rd less, have 1/3rd less value, and have had their elemental protections increased.

Flesh and Blood

Dev Notes

• The treasure system is now able to generate “cantrips” on certain high-level armor and weapons. For more information see the January Letter to the Players.
• The treasure system is now able to generate additional spells on certain high-level jewelry. For more information see the January Letter to the Players.

Letter to the Players

Once upon a time, killing an Olthoi Noble was an extreme challenge and a source of unbelievably powerful treasure. Getting your Superior Helm was a milestone quest, learning portal spells was a significant accomplishment.

Times change. What once generated “oohs” and “aahs” now seems unworthy of acknowledgement. As players and their characters progress in skills and knowledge, in levels and social relationships, their perspectives change. The old pinnacle of items and dynamics slowly become known and mastered, and the cutting-edge becomes passe.

Such is the eventual process inherent in any persistent world. But that same persistence also allows us to occasionally liven things up--to introduce new pinnacles, new challenges. The Asheron's Call team has been working on a number of these dynamics for the last few months, and we begin to see the first sign of them here in January.

We began our focus on improving the elder game by overhauling our treasure system. While there are many treasure system changes still in the works, two of the major ones are being introduced in January: multiple spells on jewelry, stackable spells on armor and weapons.

First, the jewelry

At very high levels of treasure, players will occasionally see pieces of jewelry that have another endowment cast upon them. So be on the look out for that bracelet of Bludgeon Protection 5 and Strength 6. And at the highest levels of treasure, it will be possible to see jewelry with three spells. Any additional spells will add a partially random amount of Arcane Lore difficulty to the piece of jewelry.

Second, the stackable spells

Stackable spells are permanent bonuses that can be placed on items that add to, without overriding, existing spells. For example, a sword could have Strength 6 on it, for an additional 35 strength (with no economy bonus) for the user of the sword, as well as a Stackable Strength Spell that adds an additional 5 strength. This type of weapon is already in the game as the Spear of Purity, which has additional +10 bonuses to all of a player's attributes. Starting this month, high level treasure-generated weapons and armor will have a small chance of acquiring one or more of these stackable spells. Further, there is also a rare chance that these stackable spells will be the “Major” version. Major stackables have much more power and effect than their Minor versions.

It is important to note that these stackable spells are not castable. They can only be found on treasure-generated weapons and armor.

Again, while a wide range of high-level treasure sources generate these types of items, the highest level of treasure has the most chances of generating multiple stackables, and the highest chance of producing Major stackables. Each Stackable adds a very small, random amount of Arcane Lore difficulty to the item, depending on whether it's a Major or Minor version.

While we are excited about introducing these new dynamics into Asheron's Call we are also cognizant of the difficulties and potential problems that such dynamics can cause if not properly balanced. Therefore, we have erred on the side of caution with the availability of these items. So if you are not finding pieces of jewelry with two spells, or weapons with stackables each time you kill an Umbris Shadow, that is by design. As the dynamic progresses, we will always be reviewing the parameters of how often these special items are being generated and tweak as necessary.

The final note

These additions further deepen the rift between those characters with the lockpick skill and those without, and here's what we plan to do about it. Currently, treasure chests such as the Singularity Troves offer the most consistent source of highest-level treasure in the game. While lockpickers can give/trade Singularity Keys to non-lockpickers, we will be taking steps in the next few months to provide non-lockpickers with other ways of acquiring the highest-level treasure while still letting those with lockpick have some advantages in obtaining such treasure.

Persuasion

Dev Notes

• At the high levels of treasure, it is now possible to find swords with a range of max. damage up to 32, axes with a range of max. damage up to 30, maces with a range of max. damage up to 28, spears with a range of max. damage up to 26, and unarmed weapons with a range of max. damage up to 10 (although a 10-damage unarmed weapon is extremely rare). Further, there is also the possibility of the treasure system at the high levels generating swords, axes, maces, and spears with a tighter damage variance (so a higher minimum damage). For axes and swords, the tightest damage variance possible is .4 (previously .5), for maces it is .35 (previously .5), and tridents and swordstaffs .5 (previously.6 and .66 relatively), and for yaris and budiaqs it is .6 (previously .75).
• All weapons generated with either a damage bonus or a variance bonus will have a wield requirement in that weapon's skill of 250. If the weapon has both a variance and damage bonus, the skill requirement is 260. This is a raw skill requirement. Buffs or debuffs to either the skill or attributes feeding the skill or vitae penalty will not factor into whether a player can wield the weapon.
• There is now roughly double the chance of finding magical jewelry with either 2 or 3 spells on it compared to the old rate. The chances of Focus or Willpower cantrips landing on weapons have been reduced to almost nil, while Weapon Masteries and the 4 Item spells (BD, HS, D, SK) have been increased slightly.
• Shields no longer have a chance of generating: Bow, Crossbow, Mana Conversion, or the 4 magic school masteries cantrips.
• The types of weapons generated at the high levels of treasure have been revamped. The rate at which unarmed weapons appear at these levels has roughly quadrupled. Staves have increased slightly. Daggers have been reduced slightly. Atlatls now appear in the high-end treasure system (though not in the low or middle ranges, this will be fixed in April). Nayins, yumis, and longbows, heavy crossbows all appear more; Yags, shortbows, shouyumis, and light crossbows all appear a lot less. Random thrown weapons now appear a lot less. The higher damage swords, axes, maces, and spears now all appear more, their lower damage counterparts appear a lot less (although hiltable swords appear only somewhat less often).
• Gauntlets and sollerets can now be generated through the treasure system with Bow, Crossbow, and Thrown Weapons Masteries on them. These appear on the gauntlets/sollerets at roughly half the rate of the other weapons. Coordination now appears on the gauntlets/sollerets less, and UA, Dagger, and Staff masteries now appear slightly less, while Sword, Axe, Mace, and Spear appear at the same rate.
• The chances for various spells to appear on magical jewelry has been slightly altered. Attribute Masteries (Strength, Coordination, etc.) now appear slightly more often than before. Life Protections now appear slightly more than double the rate they used to. The renewals (mana, hps, stamina) now appear less than half the rate they used to. Armor now appears at less than half the rate it used to (although it is still the most common spell). This change affects all levels of jewelry.

Letter to the Players

Treasure Changes

Hand in hand with the weapon changes comes our second set of changes to our treasure generation system. Since we were tinkering with certain systems anyway (such as weapon and jewelry generation), now seemed to be the best time to look at the parameters of what was being generated, and tweak those parameters so that they more accurately reflected the current state of the higher level game in AC.

Hence, our changes to the percentages of how often certain weapons spawn at the higher levels of treasure in the game, and the changes in percentages to how often certain spells appear on jewelry.

First, the weapons. While I know many of you will miss the acid javelins being spawned so often from SIK chests and Singularity Troves, our goal was to make sure that the weapons people are most likely to use at the high levels for a given skill are indeed the weapons actually being spawned. This meant fewer shou-onos and light crossbows, and more longbows and morningstars.

We also seized this opportunity to balance out which types of weapons were being spawned. One of the more egregious imbalances of the system was the rate at which unarmed weapons were spawned at the high levels--roughly 2% of the time. This has been boosted to 8%. The snippet in the developers' notes covers the high level issues, but the basic idea is that the availability of the weapons are loosely tied to their skill costs.

As for jewelry, we noticed that the rate at which useful multiple-spell jewelry was being found and used was a little low. To address this, we both upped the chance that multi-spell jewelry would be found, and made it more likely for “useful” spells to be found on the jewelry. While it may have made sense initially for Armor to appear 30% of the time as the spell on a piece of jewelry, it no longer makes quite as much sense some 2 years into the game. We expect to make a change in the next couple of months that will make this dynamic available to even more players, at all levels.

Finally, a couple of design fixes to problems, one old and one new: The old one is the lack of missile masteries (TW, Xbow, Bow) on gauntlets/sollerets. Ultimately we decided that there was no real reason in today's AC to allow the melee skills to have all the fun with these armor pieces. The new one is when we implemented cantrips on armor, we didn't make shields a separate category from armor, which resulted in some useless items (shields with Bow Mastery cantrip, etc.). This has been all fixed now.

Hidden Vein

Dev Notes

• The rate at which dual and treble-spell jewelry drops have been doubled again. There is now also a possibility of finding dual-spell clothing.

Letter to the Players

Doubling of appearance in dual- and treble-spell jewelry, as well as the appearance of dual- and treble-spell clothing. Well, we said we wanted to do a rollout of these items slowly. With these changes, for all non-Singularity quality treasure, a dual spell piece of jewelry or clothing will appear 1 out of roughly every 50 magical clothing or jewelry appearances. For Singularity quality treasure, it will be 1 out of every 20 magical clothing or jewelry appearances. Also, treble-spell jewelry and clothing (the Dev Notes Notes mention only jewelry), will appear 1 out of every 400 magical jewelry appearances for Singularity quality treasure. We may investigate other changes for these items to make them more accessible to non-magic, or low-magic templates.

Appraisal Changes

One of the more frustrating dynamics in Asheron's Call is finding and picking up a piece of equipment off a fresh corpse of a marauding beast. . . only to discover you have no idea what it is or what it can do. Perhaps you started with 100 focus, or perhaps you're able to cast True Value at a high enough level to accurately identify the item. But ironically (some would say cruelly), those people who are most likely to be in need of the item--warriors, archers, or generally non-magic reliant players--are the least likely to be able to know what the item does.

While we felt that the theoretical idea of appraisal skills had a lot of potential in a game like Asheron's Call, we felt even more that their specific implementation from the start of the game had not fulfilled that potential. Rather than trying to radically alter the appraisal system so that it worked somewhat better than before, we decided to put the focus of these particular systems on where it should be: discovering different items of treasure and making educated choices about which items one wanted to keep or discard.

To that end, we decided to take two steps. The first step, seen this month, is the ability for all players, regardless of their appraisal skill levels, to identify the treasure items that they find. (Note that some special quest and monster items will remain unappraisable.) The second step, which we are planning on implementing soon (within the next few months), is a Tinkering system which replaces those Appraisal skills, and allows players to make their treasure that they find even more valuable and powerful.

While we know that this represents a significant change in the way players interact with and approach one of the major aspects of the game, we are excited at the doors this opens up for the majority of our players.

Repercussions

Dev Notes

• The entire weapon and armor treasure system has been tweaked. For details, see the July Letter to the Players.

Letter to the Players

Treasure System Changes

This month, we implement the final major step to our treasure system revamping begun back in January. (There will be some minor tweaks and additions in August or September.)

One change which may not be immediately obvious is the elimination of such treasure system oddities as a 6-11 sword with a 250 wield requirement on it. The existence of this type of weapon occurred because we had to use one type of treasure system to generate the basic weapon, and a different system to determine whether the weapon carried a damage bonus that demanded a wield requirement. We have now combined these systems so that all weapons have logical parameters for when they require a wield requirement.

Another result of this change will be the more frequent appearance of higher-damage weapons in all levels of the treasure system.

We also took this opportunity to increase the maximum damage of all weapons, and introduce a new discrete level for the wield requirement. Weapons which now reach their maximum damage potential will have a wield requirement of 325. Each weapon will still have a range of damage that produces a wield requirement of 250. The maximum damage potential (and variance ranges) are listed below.

Please keep in mind that these numbers represent the ranges for treasure found at high levels (e.g., from SIK chests and certain monsters such as Umbris Shadows), and the very highest levels of treasures, such as Singularity Chests and Crystal Lords. Generally, both of these levels of treasure have the same maximum limit when it comes to damage, but you will be more likely to find quality items from Singularity Chests then you will from SIK chests.

Weapons:

• Melee weapons now have a maximum attack and defense bonus of 15% (but only through Singularity Chests. SIK Chest-type loot can only reach a maximum of 12%).
• Swords now have a max damage capacity of 40. Their variance can shrink to .40.
• Axes have a max damage capacity of 36. Their variance can shrink to .40.
• Maces have a max damage capacity of 33. Their variance can shrink to .30 (and in some extremely rare cases, .25).
• Spears have a max damage capacity of 28. Their variance can shrink to .45. (These numbers really only apply to tridents.)
• Unarmed Weapons have a max damage capacity of 14. Rarely, their variance can shrink to .60 (and in some very rare cases, .50).
• Staves have a max damage capacity of 15. Their variance can shrink to .30 (and in some extremely rare cases, .25).
• Daggers remain unchanged for now.
• Bows and Royal Atlatls now have a max damage bonus of 130%. 130% and 120% bows/atlatls have a wield requirement of 250. 150% crossbows now also exist, along with a wield requirement of 250. As mentioned in the bottom section of this letter, missile launchers no longer have attack bonuses, but instead have defense bonuses.

Armor:

Generally, armor has the potential to have higher armor levels for each type of armor.

Atonement

Dev Notes

• A new wield requirement level has been added for melee weapons to provide an intermediate goal between the two existing requirement levels. We've also modified the wield requirements on the higher damage missile weapons to bring them more in line with melee weapons. These changes are fully explained in the Letter to the Players.
• The individual protection multipliers provided by armor are now capped at 2.0. Previously, these protection multipliers could be raised above 2.0 through Item Magic Bane spells.
• The descriptions of clothing and armor have been changed to reflect what areas they protect, not what areas they appear to cover. The Letter to the Players has more details on this change..

Letter to the Players

Armor Changes

Covenant Armor: This month marks the appearance of a new style of armor for players. In addition to being visually appealing, this armor is quite powerful, with protection values far beyond that of currently existing armor. However, this increased power prevents the armor from being tinkered, dyed, or even enchanted! Players looking for a suit of Covenant Armor will find it as treasure from higher-level treasure sources.

Tassets: We've had a breakthrough in armor technology. Players will now find upper leg armor, called tassets, as treasure at all levels of play.

Armor Coloring: Both the tassets and the Covenant Armor have unique abilities to allow players to customize their appearance. The Covenant Armor pieces have the ability to take on the color of the character's shirt and pants and use those colors as highlights. Players will be able to change the appearance of their armor simply by changing or dyeing their underlying clothing. Tassets also have the ability to take on another color, but in this case, they take on the color of the character's greaves. However, there is a restriction on this: the tassets only take on the color of the greaves if the tassets and the greaves are of the same type. If both pieces are metal, the tassets will take on the color of the greaves. The same is true if both pieces are leather, yet if the pieces are of different types, with one being metal and the other leather, the tassets will not take on the color of the greaves.

Areas Protected by Clothing and Armor: A long-standing issue in Asheron's Call has caused some confusion about what areas of the body are protected by various pieces of clothing and armor. When examining a piece of clothing or armor, a line of text detailing this item would appear in the examination panel. However, instead of stating what areas of the body this item protected, this was only a list of the areas of the character's body the item covered. For example, when examining a pair of boots, the examination panel would display that they covered the feet and lower legs. In reality however, the boots only provided damage protection for the character's feet. We have modified the examination panel for all pieces of armor and clothing so that it accurately displays the areas of the body these items protect.

Armor Protection Caps: Each piece of armor and clothing in Asheron's Call has seven protection modifiers that affect the amount of protection it provides. These seven modifiers correspond to the seven types of physical damage found in game. The armor value of an item is multiplied by the modifier, which results in a modified armor value for that particular type of physical damage. While these modifiers are actually stored as numbers, when the item is appraised in game they are displayed as descriptions. The following chart breaks down descriptors to numerical values:

Descriptor	Modifier
Poor	0.1 -- 0.4
Below Average	0.4 -- 0.8
Average	0.8 -- 1.2
Above Average	1.2 -- 1.6
Excellent	1.6 -- 2.0
Unparalleled	2.0

The Item Magic Bane spells modify these protection modifiers by increasing the multiplier and making the armor more resistant to that form of damage. In the past, these spells could increase the protection modifiers on some items far beyond the originally intended limit of 2.0. To address this, we've instituted a 2.0 cap on the protection modifiers. Any item that naturally or through spells had its protection modifier increased over 2.0 will now treat this modifier as though it had a 2.0 modifier.

Example: A piece of armor has a 1.3 protection (Above Average) against fire damage. Previously, casting Flame Bane 6 on this item would raise its protection to 2.8. Casting this spell now will only raise the protection to 2.0.

Wield Requirement Changes

Last month saw the addition of high-damage melee weapons with a 325 weapon skill wield requirement. After some thought, we determined that an additional level of skill-restricted weapon between the 250 requirement and the 325 requirement would be beneficial. That being the case, we have modified the treasure system to generate some melee weapons with a 300 requirement. Although these weapons will not have the maximum damage possible for that weapon type, these weapons would have come with a 325 requirement last month.

Also, we have added two new levels of wield requirements for missile weapons and adjusted the existing level of wield requirements to be more equivalent--in terms of invested experience--with the melee requirements. Missile weapons can now spawn with weapon skill requirements of 250, 270, or 290, depending upon their damage modifier.

Note that these changes only affect new weapons generated this month. Existing weapons will not be changed at all.

Verdict

Dev Notes

• Certain thrown weapons--such as throwing axes, clubs, daggers, djarids, darts, javelins, and shokens--will no longer appear as treasure. Worry not, though! The multitude of players who use these items will still be able to find a selection of such weapons on sale at the 9 Nexus town bowyers.
• Chests that require a Sturdy Iron Key to open should now provide slightly better treasure. Chests that provide level 7 scrolls, and require a Sturdy Iron Key, are unaffected by this change.

Festivus

Dev Notes

• Mana Conversion now provides additional benefits as the character's skill increases. To complement this change, the treasure system will now be generating casting wands that provide a percentage bonus to mana conversion.

The Hall of the Tusker King

Dev Notes

The treasure system has been enhanced in a number of small ways to make treasure more useful and "fun." Please see the Letter to the Players for more details.

Treasure Tweaks

In last month's Letter to the Players, we mentioned that we would soon be evaluating the treasure tables in order to reduce the amount of, well, useless junk is all we can call it, that is created by the system. The December update includes the first of these changes. The only item that was completely removed from the treasure tables was parchment (yes, you scribes are going to have to buy your parchment from shops now), but we did shape up the treasure tables in several other ways:

• Parchment no longer drops as loot.
• Creatures no longer drop their pitiful unmutated weapons.
• Missile weapon ammunition (i.e., arrows, crossbow bolts, and atlatl darts) no longer drops as loot.
• Foods now only drop at low treasure levels. At higher levels, food has been replaced with potions. This does not affect special food drops, like fire auroch meat or spices.
• More types of scarabs (e.g., lead, iron, copper) drop at lower levels of loot. At higher levels of loot, scarabs have been replaced with scarab peas.
• Weapon damage, variance, offense and defense modifiers, and speed now mutate more often. In addition, weapon burden can now mutate as well.
• The armor level and burden on armor mutates more often. In addition, the elemental protection of shields can mutate.
• Jewelry now has a chance to be generated with heritage requirements.

Discoveries

• Casino rewards have changed, and as a result the dealers have upped the cost to play their games!

The highest profile of loot, such as that found in Singularity Troves, has been upgraded in several small ways.

A Swelling Tide

• The Golden Chests at the casinos now give better treasure.

Reign of Terror

• Sturdy Steel Chests should provide slightly more loot.

Waking from the Abyss

• New types of leather armor can now be found in loot, such as leather long gauntlets and leather pants.

The Madness of Men

Treasure Revisions: Phase One

• The first phase of creature and chest treasure revisions has been implemented. Please see the Letter to the Players and the Rollout Article for details.

Rollout Article

As we mentioned in the Letter to the Players, we are in the process of rebalancing treasure in much the same way that we rebalanced creature difficulty and experience last year. Our goals are twofold: we want treasure to be 1) useful and 2) interesting. February is only the first stage of our rebalancing, and although some changes you will notice are obvious steps towards our goals, the value of other changes will only become clear as the process continues. In particular, here are some areas in which things are not yet perfect:

• Spell scrolls: The level of scrolls that you find on creatures is badly out of whack right now. Truthfully, it has been for awhile, but our other changes in February really emphasize this issue. We plan to have spell scrolls of appropriate levels dropping with the March update.
• Wield Req. Weapons: The distribution of weapons with wield requirements at extreme levels (80+) is not satisfactory. We will be working on this aspect of treasure over the next several months.
• Spells on Items: The distribution of item and creature spells on items at extreme levels (80+) is not satisfactory. We will be working on this aspect of treasure over the next several months.
• Chests: February concentrated on creature loot; March will concentrate more heavily on chest loot. So during the February update you may run across some chests that are not yet properly adjusted for the area in which they appear.
• Armor in general, and Covenant Armor in particular: We have some interesting plans for loot armor, but it is likely going to be many months before you see these plans come to full fruition.

So keep these factors in mind and remember that we're going to be working on treasure for the next several months. And enjoy the changes!

Letter to the Players

Treasure Changes

February will see the beginning of a rebalancing of the treasure system in Asheron’s Call, similar to the monster rebalancing that was done last year. Some of our goals for the treasure system include:

• Creatures in a particular level range should drop loot that is useful to characters in that level range.
• More creatures should drop items that have been modified in some way by the treasure system. There should always be a reason to check a creature’s corpse.

As with the monster rebalancing, this is a process that will take several months. This month, you will see small to moderate changes in the loot dropped by almost every creature, as well as that found in many special chests.

Across the Vast Divide

Treasure Revisions: Phase Two

• Phase two of the ongoing Treasure revisions has been introduced.

Treasure

Last month, we introduced the first part of sweeping changes to our treasure system, and we received a great deal of negative feedback.

One thing that the feedback made clear is that we failed to properly prepare you for both the long-term and short-term impacts of the change. In addition, your feedback has alerted us to a number of issues with the change that we are working to resolve.

What is the long-term goal of these changes? Essentially, it is to resolve a number of limitations in our loot system. The old loot system had a number of issues. There were four generic levels of loot that we could give to creatures intended for characters below level 50, but only two levels of loot for characters above level 50. This made balancing loot for the most uber characters very difficult almost anything that we added for the most difficult monsters would start appearing in monsters intended for all 50+ characters. This was the largest flaw, but there were other issues across the board.

Our goal is that creatures intended for a specific level range should be more likely to drop loot that is useful for that level range. For example, newbie characters should not find 325 wield req weapons that they can't use, and Uber characters should not find weapons with no wield req. Also, there should be no creatures that always drop "useless loot". There will always be a range of loot, but that range should be more reasonable than it has been in the past.

The first phase of our changes tied the six levels of loot directly to the six target levels of characters that have existed in the game for some time: Newbie (1-20), Low (20-40), Mid (40-60), High (60-80), Extreme (80+), and Uber (100+). Creatures intended for characters in a specific level range should drop loot appropriate for characters in that level range. This improved loot overall for many creatures many Tuskers are a good example but also decreased the average quality of loot found on other creatures such as many Olthoi. Many types of Olthoi had been given loot well above their target level. This was good for players who just wanted to loot a lot of peas easily, but was annoying for the players who were intended to fight these Olthoi. These low-level players tended to get weapons and items as loot that they wouldn't be able to use for some time.

How do you know where to find creatures for your level? The best place to look is at our Creature Distribution Map, which can be found on our Download page. This map shows how the creatures were laid out during the landscape redistribution last year. The levels given are suggested player levels, so that gives you a place to start hunting and see how it feels.

Now, just to be very clear about this AC is a skill-based game, not a level-based game. The ranges on that map are suggestions based on assumptions we have made about average skill levels and hunting styles. We suggest that you start with the range that that corresponds to your level and see how you like it. If you've pumped more XP into your combat skills, or if you like to live life out on the edge, you may want to go up a range and see how that feels. If you have spread your experience out more, or you're a more conservative sort, you may be happiest trying out the range below your actual level. Our goal with this map was merely to make some useful suggestions about where to start.

I cannot overemphasize the fact that the changes to creatures are not done yet. Due to the size and scope of these changes, it was not possible to make all of them in one month. As we mentioned in last month's Rollout Article, there are still a number of issues. Some of these issues will be resolved in this month; others are pending for April and later.

The following issues will be resolved in the March event:

• Spell scrolls: The scrolls dropped by creatures haven't been on-target for some time now, but the February changes really exacerbated this issue. For March, we have adjusted the scroll drops on creatures and in treasure you should now find scrolls that are appropriate for your level. Our goal is that you should be able to find most of your scrolls for your next level before you need to buy them.

• Does this mean that there is a chance to find level 7 scrolls on creatures and in loot?
  • Yes. Yes it does.

• Spells on items: As we said in the Rollout Article, spell levels on creatures intended for 80+ characters were out of whack. After receiving your feedback on this issue, we realized that the problem was more widespread. For March, we've adjusted the spells on items upwards for all creatures and chests intended for characters higher than 20.

• Does this mean that there is a chance to find level 7 spells on loot items?
  • Sorry, not at this time.

• Chests: Last month, we concentrated primarily on creatures. This month, we're turning our attention to chests. Chests should now, in general, spawn items useful for characters in the level range for which they are intended.

• In addition, some chests have been adjusted so that they have a chance of providing better loot than other sources within the same target level range. Runed Chests and the Virindi Troves are good examples of this.

• The Singularity Trove deserves its own comment. The Singularity Trove used to be in the class with the best possible loot in the game but the troves and keys could be found by characters at a lower level. The Singularity Trove is now in the 80+ target range of loot.

• At the moment though, the 80+ and the 100+ ranges have a lot of overlap. In addition, many of the issues that were reported with Singularity Troves in February such as scroll levels and weapon modifiers will be resolved this month.

• Offense and Defense Modifiers: In all cases, we've increased the average offense and defense modifier on melee weapons. We've also increased the maximum mod that can be found at each level except the top level, which was already the maximum possible. This change was made primarily as a result of player feedback.

The following issue should be resolved in the April event:

• Border Creatures: Right now, if a creature is intended for level 60 characters, it will have loot for level 40-60. This can make it very challenging to "break in" to the next level of creatures you can't fight stronger creatures without getting better equipment, but you can't get better equipment without fighting stronger creatures!

• Starting in April, creatures that are designed for characters within 5 levels of a difficulty break will have the treasure intended for the next highest difficulty. For example, creatures that are intended to be fought by level 36 characters will have loot intended for characters from 40 to 60.

In addition, some creatures that are completely outside the system will be brought in, and other creatures will be adjusted as necessary.

It is important to remember that a creature's level is not a direct correlation to the level of character that should be fighting it. In general, you should be able to take on creatures that are higher level than you are. When we rebalanced creatures last year we tried to line up the display level so that there is an obvious relationship between that and difficulty so that a level 110 monster is harder than a level 100 monster. However, some creatures are easier for one type of character mages, say and harder for another melee, say. So if you're a melee, a level 100 mage-oriented creature may be tougher for you than a level 110 melee-oriented creature.

The following issue will be resolved in a future update:

Armor: The type and qualities of armor found in the various levels of loot are out of whack. This is one of the reasons why you're finding AL20 leather at much higher creature levels than you would expect. We're aware of this issue and are working on it, but the changes will not be in March, nor are they likely for April.

• Does balancing armor include introducing new types of armor?

Probably, yes.

Another issue that has resulted in a great deal of feedback is the value of items many players have reported difficulty in making enough pyreals through hunting to pay for their components, mana charges, and other consumables. We are watching the situation closely, but at this time we have no plans to directly change the value of loot items. Many of the other changes that we are making both in treasure and elsewhere may change the situation considerably. In particular, the scroll changes may resolve the issues reported with mages not being able to afford scrolls that they needed.

We understand that a large number of you were very surprised and upset by these changes. We believe that this was caused by two main factors. The first is that the changes are not complete, and you are seeing an incomplete system at work. The second is that I personally did not properly explain the goals and phases of these changes I hope that this letter explains things to your satisfaction.

A New Threat

Treasure Revisions: Phase Three

Dev Notes

We've introduced part three of our ongoing Treasure Revisions.

• Three new types of armor can be found in loot.
• Oak chests have had their wealth rating increased. Both Oak and Mahogany chests should generate loot more quickly.
• Sturdy Steel Chests will now generate more loot.

Letter to the Players

• Treasure Changes, Phase 3

The treasure changes are described in great detail in our in-depth Treasure article. Here's a quick summary of the changes that are coming in April:

• Creatures that were within 5 levels of a higher difficulty band will have the wealth level of their loot increased. Some creatures have had the "quality" property added to their loot, and some group-oriented creatures will drop more loot.
• In addition to the three new types of armor, the spread of all armor in loot will be adjusted.
• The wield requirements on Covenant armor will be in bands similar to the wield requirements on weapons, and Covenant armor with magic defense requirements may be found.
• Attack and Defense modifiers will appear more frequently on weapons.
• Mana Conversion modifiers will also appear more frequently on casters, and the average Mana Conversion modifier will be adjusted upwards.
• You will be able to find Melee Defense modifiers on casting items, and Missile Defense and Magic Defense modifiers on all weapons and casting items.
• Casting items will have the ability to generate with Defender due to the above change, and will also have the ability to generate with the Hermetic Link spell or cantrips for any of the spells that can be found on them.

"Second-class" Weapon Upgrades

In the past, some weapons within a weapon class were just plain undesirable. For example, if you were a Mace user and you wanted maximum damage, there was no reason to look at anything other than a Morningstar. You turned up your nose at a Kasrullah.

In April, we'll be making changes to bring the low-end damage weapons closer to par with the maximum damage weapons in each class. This is similar to the changes we made to bows and crossbows last year; however we are not necessarily giving all weapons within a class the same maximum damage. In many weapon classes there will still be weapons that have a lower maximum than others, but the difference will be much smaller.

No weapon class is having its maximum damage increased, and some classes are being changed more than others. For example, all three types of Unarmed Combat weapons had the same maximum damage, so they will not be touched. Weapons that are considered to be a "secondary damage type" Rapiers, Spiked Clubs, Naginatas, and Warhammers are not being changed, and we are taking into account the differences between hiltable and non-hiltable Swords and Daggers.

Treasure Changes, Phase 4
Very little of phase 4 will be visible to players it is primarily back-end work in preparation for higher wield-req weapons. Please see the Treasure article for details.

Mired Hearts

Treasure Revisions: Phase Four

• We've introduced part four of our ongoing treasure revisions.

Letter to the Players

• Treasure Changes, Part IV

In the April Letter to the Players, we stated that the Treasure work for May would be back-end and not visible to players. This is no longer true – we've found ourselves with the opportunity to improve treasure selection in several places.

Art Items, Casters, and Coins

We're moving "art items" (mugs, plates, and the like) and casters into several loot tables where they previously did not exist. This will result in both being found in places where you could not find them before for example, in May you'll be able to find casters in the casino golden chests. This will make casting items as well as certain types of salvage easier to find.

In addition, we are removing pyreal coins from several loot tables, and replacing them with other items from the tables.

"Mundane" Items

This category covers all the "other" things found in loot spell components, mana stones, healing kits, lockpicks, and potions. These categories of items have not changed much since the early days of Asheron's Call, and the treasure revisions have only highlighted this.

Healing kits will also now provide more information regarding their effects. Healing kits can provide a bonus to your skill check, or a bonus to the amount you heal, or both. Now you'll be able to see which is which just by ID'ing the kit.

To improve the situation, we will be adding new types of mana stones and potions, and low-level healing kits are being improved and renamed. Then we'll be redistributing all mundane items across different levels of treasure.

Just as an example, here's how the changes would affect the types of items you could find in wealth rating 5 treasure, intended for level 80+ characters.

Item Type	Old Selection	New Selection
Spell Components	Pyreal Scarab, Iron Pea, Copper Pea, Silver Pea	Copper Pea, Silver Pea, Gold Pea
Mana Stones	Mana Stone, Greater Mana Stone	Greater Mana Stone, two new types of Mana Stone
Potions	Health Elixir, Mana Elixir, Stamina Elixir	Health Elixir, Mana Elixir, two new types of Health Potion, two new types of Mana Potion, three new types of Stamina Potion
Lockpicks	Good Lockpick, Excellent Lockpick, Superb Lockpick, Peerless Lockpick	Excellent Lockpick, Superb Lockpick, Peerless Lockpick
Healing Kits	Good Healing Kit, Excellent Healing Kit, Peerless Healing Kit	Excellent Healing Kit, Peerless Healing Kit, Treated Healing Kit

In general, we've made existing items show up sooner and created new items to fill the gaps at the high end. You'll note that there are no new lockpicks yet don't worry, we're working on some ideas for interesting high-end lockpicks.

Chests and Fishing Holes

One effect of the treasure changes is that a number of newbie and low-level chests had their treasure bumped up considerably. This resulted in many newbie chests generating treasure that no newbie could possibly use. We've adjusted the loot in many of these chests, and will continue tweaking additional chests in the coming months.

We've also adjusted the magical jewelry that could be generated by fishing holes in rare cases. After the treasure revisions, fishing holes were generating jewelry that was much better than intended. We'll be bringing them back into line in May.

The Calm

Letter to the Players

Higher Wield-Req Weapons

We've been teasing these for several months now and we're happy to be able to announce that the first tiers will likely be added to loot in the January event. These include new melee weapons with a 350 wield requirement, missile weapons with a 315 wield requirement and magic casters with 290 and 310 War Magic wield requirements.

The higher wield-req melee weapons will simply do more damage than existing weapons. The missile weapons and magic casters will gain a damage bonus based off a specific elemental type. For example, a 290 or 310 wield-req caster might receive a damage bonus to all fire-based War spells. For all other spells, it would act the same as a standard caster.

We'll be presenting more details on this in the near future, before the January Letter to the Players.

Assault

• New weapons with higher wield requirements have been added to the treasure system.

Infiltration

Dev Notes

• Two new tiers of higher wield-req weapons can be found in loot.
• Higher Wield-Req Weapons

Letter to the Players

Coming closely on the heels of last month's new higher wield-req weapons are two new tiers of weapons found in loot! These will include:

• Melee weapons with wield requirements of 370 and 400.
• Missile weapons with wield requirements of 335 and 360.
• Casters with wield requirements of 330 and 355.

These weapons will be found in the highest tier of treasure; this is the treasure found on creatures found in the Valley of Death, Singularity Caul and Withered Atoll; as well as the most challenging creatures in the West Direlands and the Obsidian Plains. This treasure can also be found in other ways as well, including some new surprises we've got for you in this month's event!

The missile weapons and casters will have elemental bonuses rather than increased base damage, similar to the weapons introduced in January.

Each additional tier of weapons has an average damage-over-time increase of 5% when compared to the preceding tier. To clarify, this is a comparison of damage-over-time, not base damage. DOT calculations take into account multiple factors such as speed of attack and damage bonuses from base attributes and (in some cases) attack skill. In addition, the 5% is an average across all weapons – some weapon classes may have a greater or lesser improvement depending on their current DOT.

Friend and Foe

Dev Notes

• New styles of weapons have been added to the treasure system.

Letter to the Players

New Loot Weapons!

For the August event, we're adding new styles of melee weapons, missile weapons and casters to the treasure tables! From new weapons like the Spine Glaive and Compound Bow to the return of old favorites like the Board with Nail, players will be able to find these new items in loot. They'll be fully tinkerable and imbueable and will be comparable to other weapons in their class, with higher damage wield-requirement and elemental bonus damage variants also available where applicable.

Treasure Improvements!

We plan to add some new loot items to the treasure system in September as well as upgrade existing items. These include:

• Crowns, hats, shoes and gloves that spawn with much higher Armor Level than can be found currently! Now you can wear that Major Strength crown into battle!
• Cantrips on jewelry and clothing!
• Level 7 spells on loot!
• Increase the damage on elemental wands through spells or tinkering! That high Melee Defense wand will no longer be the best wand in your arsenal!
• Improved elemental protections on Leather, Studded Leather and Scalemail armor, plus clothing!

Under Cover of Night

Dev Notes

• Crowns receive some love
• Hats, Shoes, and Gloves also receive some love.

Letter to the Players

• Crowns, Hats, Shoes, and Gloves spawn with much higher Armor Level can now be found.
• We've changed elemental wands so they can be tinkered to increase their elemental damage multiplier.
• Level 7 spells are now available as loot!
• In addition, several types of armor will receive modified base protections.

Ancient Powers

Dev Notes

New Loot Tier

A new tier of loot is now available to players. This new tier of loot will have a base wield requirement of level 150 and will have the potential to generate with level 8 spells and or Epic level cantrips. There will also be the chance that this new tier will be part of a greater set of armor. Pieces which are part of a loot generated set will have a base level 180 requirement in order for players to equip them. Spell components for the creation of level 8 spells will also be found in this new higher loot tier. This new level of loot will mainly be found as rewards from questing, but there will also be a chance for players to collect Mana Shards off some landscape creatures, which they can then use to purchase keys to gain access to this new tier of loot. In addition, we will be adding these keys to several of our older quests in the coming months, starting in September. Here is a breakdown of how players will get keys for the new tier of loot.

Basic Mechanics

• Get 10 Pristine Mana Shards via hunting.
• Bring the 10 Shards to the Shard Collector within one of the three Mana Forges in Cragstone, Hebian-To and Zaikhal, and get a key.
• Use key on the chest for the desired loot.

Hunting areas that Pristine Shards will be available:

• Graveyard of Despair
• Dark Isle
• Freebooter Isle
• Moarsman City

Alternate key mechanics:

• Society Rank Gateway Quests give Keys the first time they are completed.
• Society Trade Tokens can be used to purchase Treasure Writs, which can be turned in for a Key once every 2 weeks

Shifting Tactics

High yield chests should no longer drop dinnerware in their primary profiles though they still have a very small chance at dinnerware in their secondary profile.

• Weapons with new tier stats in 420 and 400 wield should be far more common.
• Armor sets now have a higher chance of dropping.
• All armor sets now have an equal chance of dropping instead of favoring some over others, now get out there and complete your sets!

Old Ghosts

• The higher tier of loot now drops from creatures on Moarsman Isle, Freebooter Isle, Graveyard and Dark Isle.
• Hiltable Daggers and Swords now drop from creatures on Moarsman Isle, Freebooter Isle, Graveyard and Dark Isle.
• [Cantrip] Banes will show up less often on armors in the highest tier of loot.

Picking up the Pieces

• New multi-strike weapons should now be able to be hilted after being tinked and hilting should no longer make the item attuned and bonded

Shedding Skin

• Loot should no longer spawn with Racial Requirements. Pieces that would have racial requirements are instead generated as “exceptional” pieces that have lower Arcane Lore requirements.

Celebration

• The new Haebrean Armor added and found in Tier VI-VII Loot.

Filling in the Blanks

• The new Knorr Academy Armor can now be found in loot.

Hidden In Shadows

• Sedgemail Leather Armor now found in loot.

Cloak of Darkness

• Cloaks can now be found in loot.

Master of Design

• Lightning proof sets will no longer appear more often than other sets from Casino chests.