Upcoming Content:Both Sarthin and I are in the middle of new Tier content, Tiers 12 & 13 respectively. We have been tied up pretty heavily with real life commitments, though progress continues to be made. I have been working on the hard mode system, which will allow players to select for themselves whether they want an easier experience, with appropriately inferior items, or if they want to challenge themselves and get the upgraded versions of items. This system may not be used in every Tier going forward, but once it is operational, designing content to use it is not much more time intensive than normal, and should decrease the barrier to entry into new tiers.. Should you decide to work through part of the zone in easy mode, there is nothing to stop you from switching to hard mode and getting the upgraded pieces, it just allows more access to smaller groups, or less efficient players who may not enjoy the struggle of difficult content. Neither of us have a set date in mind, though my Tier (tentatively Tier 12), Vex Thal is making use of the NPC's previously in place, and once hard mode is fully functional, should move fairly quickly.
Recent Changes:Since not everyone follows the changelog, or the server Discord, here's a list of some recent changes (not sure when I did this last, so might be some overlap).
[September 22nd 2024] [Draca] [Spells] Entire line of Incisor of the Unholy has been changed, as well as specific changes to it's use in ToFS.
This spell was never well tuned for the level of player it was used against, and it's duration was absurd.[October 18th 2024] [Draca] [Misty Thicket] Misty Thicket's spawn rate for loot bosses has been increased 25&PCT;
[October 18th 2024] [Draca] [Misty Thicket] Zangorath will now drop more randomized loot, and less SMR's
Misty is, and was designed to be a fairly limited use zone. It should be fairly equivalent in time to the traditional camps for the Guild quests, so some changes were made to that end.[October 18th 2024] [Draca] [Wings of the Angel] Buffs provided by Wings of the Angel will now be more in line with the level of the recipient of the buffs.
Wings of the Angel is an overpowered spell that I would prefer to remove outright, but instead of that, or the previous idea of charging people who cast it on low level players, it was made
to simply provide level appropriate buffs to 4 different level ranges.[October 27th 2024] [Draca] [Airplane] An NPC now has the rare chance to spawn on boss deaths. RNGesus will always have an item that a player in the zone needs.
[November 3rd 2024] [Draca] [Airplane] RNG**** has been renamed to Nick_Saban (Roll Tide), as well as had it's spawn chance reduced.
[November 3rd 2024] [Sarthin] [Halls of Honor] T3 bosses from Airplane has a chance to spawn when killing NPCs in Halls of Honor.
It was well noted how bad RNG could be during the Airplane boss summoning for Tier's 3 & 4 armor loot, so we made a few quality of life changes to help offset any really bad RNG.[October 27th 2024] [Draca] [Class Augments] Epic Vendor will now replace lost class augments. This bases the replacement solely on level, so in some cases you may receive a class augment 1 level behind what you had....it's better than nothing.
[November 12th 2024] [Draca] [Pets] Corrected issue where pets would not automatically re-arm themselves after zoning.
This may remain an issue, any reports on this would be great.[November 12th 2024] [Draca] [Level Up Wench] Corected grammer issue.
[December 2nd 2024] [Draca] [Hills of Shade AA's] Keeper of the Ages will now accept Hills of Shade 20k and 50k AA gems (one at a time).
[December 13th 2024] [Draca] [Items] Some items now stack beyond 1000. Essences and Zone Pulls have been increased to 30000 stack size.
Server code was updated to allow stacking beyond our previous cap of 1000, so items were made to stack higher.[December 13th 2024] [Draca] [Items] Powerless Ring of the Ages is no longer lore.
[December 16th 2024] [Draca] [Spells] Some spell combines have been corrected
[December 16th 2024] [Chieftan] [Wiki] Items - all tier armor, both molds and completed items have been added to the Wiki.
[December 16th 2024] [Chieftan] [Wiki] Spells - all spell recipes have been gone through and corrected in the Wiki.
These were all primarily the work of Chieftan, who spent many hours going through screenshots, cropping, adding to Wiki and giving me corrections where needed.[December 27th 2024] [Draca] [Instances] '/say current instance' or selecting 'Current Instance Information' from the Instance menu will provide some useful information on your current instance.
This was added to give people information on which instance they are in, to make it easier to move characters to where loot is etc. [December 28th 2024] [Draca] [Items] Several high value 'plat bag' type items have had their sellable value replaced by a right click effect that directly adds the platinum to your character. There is a new spell file for this, however it will add the platinum regardless.
Following stacking changes, I increased the stack size of a lot of items, including platinum bags and other sellable loot items. However, it was possible to dupe platinum from vendors due to an issue during selling and buying stacks of these items, so I just made them right-clickable expendable items, and it directly adds the platinum to your inventory.[December 29th 2024] [Draca] [Old Commons] Slightly reduced the required kills for the hill giant to spawn. This should prevent NPC's that die to other NPC's from preventing the hill giant from spawning in a full zone clear.
This is very minor, almost not noticeable, but should help players who find themselves with an empty zone, but no hill giant.[January 3rd 2025] [Draca] [Pets] Pets can now be renamed through the #renamepet <petnamehere> command. This persists through zoning, and re-summoning. Use #renamepet clear to revert to automatic pet naming. Abusive names will result in suspensions.
This is just for fun. Someone had asked if they could rename pets, which I thought was possible, but turns out is a GM command. So I did some quick work to allow players to rename their pets. Thank you to everyone for a great 2024! Personal thanks to Sarthin who put out a big blast of content earlier in the year, with both Kael Drakkel and Fear Itself being awesome additions to EZ's content. As some people are aware, my Mom has been waiting for almost a year for a lung transplant. In order to be closer to the hospital, she has been living 2 hours away, and required help getting both her, and my Dad to appointments around LA, which between normal day-to-day things, and work, really chewed up my time this past year. I am happy to report though, that on December 28th, she received her long awaited transplant, and is doing well. Will still have some appointments, but will be much less time intensive, so work should begin to progress more steadily from my end. To an awesome 2025, hope this finds everyone well after the holiday season.For Akkadius, Sarthin and all those before us who made EZ Server what it is,
and the enthusiastic and passionate community of nerds we do this for...Happy New Year
-Draca
