2008-05-28 · build Update 5

135 notes.

Update 5

GAME UPDATE 5

Racial Mounts

We have added a unique racial mount for each race in Vanguard! The mounts can be attained through a series of faction based quests that can be started in each race’s home town. If you happen to like another race’s mount better than your own though, worry not! With the appropriate faction, players will be able to complete any of the quests.

Citizen Favor

The citizens of Telon are seeking adventurers to help spread their influence across the land. By seeking out a faction registrar you can don the banner of a city, gaining favor with its citizens while you battle their enemies. Each creature that is slain will offer a chance to receive tokens bearing the symbol of their registered city. These tokens can be returned to the city in exchange for citizen faction. Be warned that while many factions are friendly with each other all factions have opposing factions of some sort. Raising your faction with one city will reduce your faction with those they oppose. While you can switch factions at any time those who are worried about becoming outlaws in certain cities should heed this warning.
Gaining faction will allow you to purchase factional rewards with the use of platinum tokens. These tokens can only be retrieved from the vilest of beings and only when you are wearing the banner of your chosen city. Those powerful enough to defeat raid NPCs will receive ancient coins which can be converted into a platinum token of any type you desire.

Racial Mounts

With the release of the citizen favor system comes the first factional rewards -- racial land mounts! All races have been granted a unique looking mount with improved speed over other mounts in their tier. These mounts can be attained at levels 30 and 50 after you have gained the required faction and number of platinum coins. Players will be able to get any of these mounts as long as they do the work involved for their attached cities. Click here for a list of the mounts for each race.

Class Updates

This update we have given significant updates to two more classes. Blood Mages and Psionicists have received a lot of developer attention. Abilities that may have been broken before have been fixed, spells have been tweaked and upgraded or updated and all three classes should be more in line with their intended vision in terms of power and utility. Specific tweaks will be listed in the patch notes.

Anti-Hitching

As always, increasing performance remains a high priority for our development team. To that end, with this update we will be introducing new anti-hitching code that should have an immediate and noticeable effect.

New Particles

Sometimes, things just need to look cooler. That was the case for many adventuring class spells and/or abilities. Blood Mages, Disciples, Druids, Necromancers and Sorcerers all received new and improved particle effects.

Patch Notes

GENERAL
NPCs that are considered bosses should now be the only NPCs with all caps in their names.
ADVENTURING
Blood Mage
The range on Blood Feast has been increased to 50m
A new recipe has been added to your Symbiote assembly recipes. You can now make Body Bags at level 26. These are 20 slot bags that fit in your ammo slot and hold symbiotes, organs and blood vials.
Added a health buff component ot Serak's Mantle. This health buff scales similarly to the AC buff portion of the ability.
Increased the damage of the Bursting Cyst ability line as it upgrades over time.
Vitalizing Symbiote now functions differently. It gives its target a 5% chance on spell cast to have their next spell cost 50% less energy.
Renewing Symbiote now functions differently. It gives its target a 5% chance to proc a heal over time on hit.
Cleansing Symbiote now lasts for 10 seconds and removes 8 poison and disease counters every 2 seconds.
Increased the rate at which Ritual of Shielding grows with Blood Union.
Removed the refresh timer from Ritual of Shielding.
Your offensive spells are now labeled with damage type.
Regeneration and Accelerated Regeneration now last for 1 hour.
Symbiotes are now created in stacks of 15.
Bleed effects should now state the ability name and the caster name in their combat spam.
Lowered the energy cost of Accelerated Regeneration
Lowered the energy cost of Life Graft
Lowered the energy cost of Serak's Amplification
Lowered the energy cost of Inspirit
Psionicist
Fixed a bug that caused the refresh haste portion of Temporal Acceleration to stack with Coda of Alacrity
Mind Over Body - this ability allows the Psionicist to levitate and has been added to trainers at level 20.
Meta Mind is an innate ability that increases the damage and energy regen of your group. It is tied to your concentrations and is always active. It increases damage by 10%, refresh timers are lowered by 5%, 3% of outgoing damage is returned as health and adds 45 energy regeneration per 6 sec. This regeneration stacks with other Psionicist or Shaman energy regen. Meta Mind is learned by visiting the correct gestalt. Those players who have already visited this Gestalt and learned Greater Astral Form will not need to revisit the gestalt.
Concentration: Greater Astral Form - This concentration has been removed and is no longer available to learn.
Concentration: Cerebral Bastion - This concentration has been revmoved and is no longer available to learn.
Concentration: Astral Form - This concentration is now called Ethereal Projection and is the first of three Planar Projection concentrations that are learned automatically as the Psionicist gains levels. At level 30 Astral Projection replaces Ethereal Projection and at level 50 Transcendence replaces Astral Projection.
Lure - This ability has changed. It is now called Primal Wrath. It is a buff that increases charmed pet damage by 25% for 45 seconds.
Mass Amnesia - Lowered the refresh to 2 minutes and is available at level 24.
Time Trick - Time Trick II is now trainable at level 24.
Time Trick - This ability has changed. It no longer breaks when the target is attacked. While affected the target cannot be damaged, but can be affected by other debuffs. Time trick no longer slows or snares. This ability is also now level restricted, meaning that the first version of the spell only works on targets below level 31. Durations have also changed. 45, 50 and 60 seconds for versions 1, 2 and 3 respectively.
Mind Wipe - This ability is now instant cast and has a 60 second refresh timer and removes a percentage of your target's hate.
Memory Shift - This ability is now instant cast and has a 60 second refresh timer. The amount of hate added has been greatly increased.
Psionic Barrier - This ability has had it's power increased to address scaling issues.
Paralysis Field - A new power that immobilizes all opponents within 10m of the caster. It is instant cast, lasts 8 seconds and has a 20 second refresh timer. This new power is now available at trainers starting at level 12.
Temporal Fracture - is now available at level 10. A new version is available at 50 and previous version have been adjusted in level.
Mindfire - This ability has been moved to level 16. It now deals damage over time instead of instant damage and lowers all resistances by a small amount. The resistance debuff should stack with all other debuffs of this type. The damage-on-cast added to the target is still present and has had its damage increased.
Telekinetic Blast - Removed the self damage portion of the ability and increased the damage.
Thought Surge - Removed the self damage portion of the ability, made it instant cast with a 10sec refresh, extended the range to 15m and it can now be trained at level 32. Costing has also been lowered. A new version has been added to trainers at level 48.
Corporeal Hammer - Reduced the cast time to 1 second and increased the refresh time to 20 seconds.
Thought Pulse - Slightly reduced the amount of damage that is inflicted on the player when using this power.
Dementia - Now causes its damage over 8 seconds, has an 8 second refresh and slightly higher energy cost.
Chronoshift - Removed the refresh and increased the cost slightly.
Psychic Schism - Now does damage over time in addition to all of its former effects.
Compression Sphere - Now lasts 20 seconds and its damage has been increased to compensate.
Diamond Skin - This ability has been added to trainers at level 50.
Synchronize - This ability has been added to trainers at level 8. This ability is to be used to break the effects of time trick and return the target to normal time (it can then attack and be attacked).
Mindspy: Preservation – Mindspy Preservation has been changed to Mindspy: Weakness. This ability will now tap into the mind of your opponent and return a power that will deal a large amount of damage and
Psychic Mutation – Now works properly and adds a small amount of energy to your group whenever a counter has been successfully executed.
CRAFTING
You can now convert silver and gold sigils for ancient platinum coins
WORLD POPULATION
Ancient Port Warehouse - Dresla: Fixed an issue where her adds would never spawn.
NPCs - Nerksawl and his placeholders now wander a different path. Also, 2 additional spawn locations have been added. These spawn locations are not independent of each other.
QUESTS
Nusibe Necropolis - Leopard Hides will now update for the gahren leopards. NOTE: Players will need to abandon and reaccept this quest.
CODING
Shader version has changed so all cached shaders will be deleted.
Changing your render quality will no longer wipe your shader caches.
Memory leaks fixed.
Increased client stability.
Reduced hitching.
With this update, you will see an option to Pre-Compile your shaders. Doing this will result in not having to compile shaders for new materials during normal gameplay.
New tab files have been patched and will be pre-loaded by the client. They contain information about assets and will prevent unnecessary disk access during normal gameplay.
Lighting Changes
Fixes have been made to ambient lighting calculations. This effects indoor and outdoor lighting
Night ambient lighting will be slightly brighter.
Bump should be more pronounced in outdoor areas, especially at night.
Fixed an issue with lighting on billboard trees.
Fix for being dismounted when you item preview a flying mount item in your inventory.
Fix for levitate being stripped when cast twice.
The /who command now allows for searching for diplomat, artificer, blacksmith, and outfitter. It also shows the level/profession info for all three spheres now. The "Advanced Find" in the Social window has been updated with these new features also.
Housing: Items that do not show up visibly in your house will appear in red text in your building item list now. These fixtures can also be moved to your current location which will make them visible again.
The command /assistoffensive now works.
Targets hit by Area of Effect spells now properly do conditional checks on all targets hit, not just the first target of the ability.
You can now share lockout timers with other players.
Fix for combat forms returning to the unbound state if you ran out of endurance.
Item tooltips have had their displays standardized. All statistics will now appear in the same order on the item.
Added Tanvu riftway to UI.
Some NPC's in non-raid areas had their Area of Effect abilities broken and are now fixed again.
Fix for rescuing someone who was targeted by a dead NPC/PC. It will no longer try to attack the dead entity.
Abilities now correctly display the effects of spell/melee haste items and buffs as well as updating properly when cost-modifying buffs are applied.
The distance at which the name of harvesting resources and NPC's names has been extended.
Fixed a bug where druids could summon infinite amount of pets.
Fixed the name tag offset for the Jharu warrior model.
The old petition system has been replaced.
The new system can be accessed through the main menu by clicking on Help.
Clicking on Help will bring up an information window that contains the server MoTD along with general help information.
Clicking on the petition button in the Help window will take you to the Vanguard knowledge base where you can submit a petition through the webpage.
Guides( Knights of the Crimson Fellowship ) are now always visible to players.
Shadows now render correctly for transparent materials on creatures such as the wasp.
QUEST JOURNAL REVAMP
General
Quests are now time-stamped when they are received.
Quests glow for five seconds after being added or updated.
Timed quests are now colored blue, although they turn bright blue when they go under a minute remaining.
Quests that are ready to complete are now colored light brown.
Timed quests glow for five seconds when they go under a minute remaining.
The time remaining on timed quests glows off and on every second when they hit 15 seconds remaining.
Quest names (but not any of their information lines underneath) glow when they contain a location in the player’s current chunk.
Timed quests always sort to the top, no matter what sorting option is chosen.
On almost all of the sorting options in both the tabs of the Quest Log and the Quest Tracker, selecting the same option again will reverse sort that option. So selecting sort by date, after sort by date was already selected, will reverse sort by date, with the oldest quests on top. The only exceptions to this are Sort by Chunk, which always sorts by nearest quests first, and Sort by Sphere. Sort by Sphere iterates through three different ordering algorithms—on its first selection, Adventuring, Crafting, Diplomacy, on its second selection, Crafting, Diplomacy, Adventuring, and on its third, Diplomacy, Adventuring, Crafting.
The last three sorting options for each type of quest and the quest tracker are saved when the player logs out and are used to recreate the lists when the player relogs. The use of the last 3 sorting options is to ensure that the list will be exactly how it was when the player logged out. So if the player sorted by date, then level, and then chunk. The list will be sorted by chunk, but within the chunks by level, and within the levels by date. One additional feature with this is that if a player selects Sort by Level twice to sort by reverse level, it is not recorded as two sorting options. So the previous sorting order shown on startup, with a reverse level sort in place of the level sort, would be sort by date, sort by reverse level, and sort by chunk, and not sort by level, sort by reverse level, and sort by chunk. This is to make sure that no accuracy is lost in recreating a list on startup.
The details options for each type of quest and the quest tracker are saved when the player logs out and are used for recreating the lists when the player relogs.
Journal
The quest log is sorted by tab into Adventuring, Crafting, and Diplomacy quests.
Adventuring quests are sortable by Chunk (based on the nearest chunk in the quest’s location list, also including the completion chunk), Date, Level, Name, and Size.
Crafting quests are the same but without the size option.
Diplomacy quests are the same but also without the size option.
When a new quest is added to the quest log, it is sorted into the list based upon the player’s past three sorts. Also, the quest log automatically switches to the appropriate tab and selects the new quest. That way, when a player opens the quest log, the new quest will be the one selected on the left and showing on the right.
When a quest is updated the quest log automatically switches to the appropriate tab and selects the updated quest. That way, when a player opens the quest log, the updated quest will be the one selected on the left and showing on the right.
There is now a details button available for each of the three quest log tabs. The Adventuring detail options are “Show All Relevant Chunks”, “Show Completion Chunk”, “Show Nearest Chunk”, “Show Start Date”, and “Show Group Size”. These options are the same for the Crafting and Diplomacy tabs, except that they leave out the “Show Group Size”. These options decide what details show beneath each of the quests in the quest log.
Only one or none of the first three options, “Show All Relevant Chunks”, “Show Completion Chunk”, “Show Nearest Chunk”, can be selected at the same time. Any chunk shown includes both the name of the chunk and the chunk coordinates.
Quest Tracker
The quest tracker is only visible if a quest is being tracked.
The quest tracker is resizable.
Right-clicking on the quest tracker will open up an options menu.
Left-clicking on a quest name in the quest tracker will select the quest in the quest log.
Double-clicking on a quest name in the quest tracker will select the quest in the quest log and open the quest log.
Double-clicking on an already selected name in the quest tracker, while the quest log is open, will close the quest log.
The quest tracker is sortable by Chunk (based on the nearest chunk in the quest’s location list, also including the completion chunk), Date, Level, Name, and Size, and Sphere.
The quest tracker can now show additional details of quests, with the options, “Show All Relevant Chunks”, “Show Completion Chunk”, “Show Nearest Chunk”, Show Start Date”, and “Show Intent”. Show intent shows either the sphere of the quest, or, if it is an adventuring quest, shows the size of the quest.
When a new quest is added to the quest tracker, it is sorted into the list based upon the player’s last three sorts. Also, the quest tracker automatically moves its position to the new quest.
When a quest is updated the quest tracker automatically moves its position to the new quest.
When a timed quest goes under a minute, the quest tracker automatically moves its position to the quest (this is in order to alert the player that the quest time is running out).\
There is a new filter available for the quest tracker options, “Filter Distant Quests”. This filters out any quests that don’t have a location in the current chunk.

Transcribed from the Vanguard Vault at IGN. The page it was read from.