Sindusk

Since the mod was brought up (the one I made for exactly this purpose), I feel it's valid to provide some context. Basically, when I first generated the map for my unlimited server, it was riddled with horrible bumps and hills all over the terrain. It looked incredibly unnatural and was terrible to travel across. 10 slope up, 13 slope down, 11 slope up again. It was miserable. After some time, I managed to design a system that would naturally terraform the ground back into a more natural state by detecting severe deformities. It does this by moving dirt using logical amounts of slope differential between two sides. If you're looking at a hill that's 10-15 slope each tile up to the top, it's going to be entirely unaffected. If someone digs a 20 slope ditch on a single tile corner, the system would detect that and start moving dirt from the top down into the pit. It's actually somewhat difficult to describe how the system works, but it doesn't just "flatten" the world or make it look miserable. It also doesn't impact building sites, it doesn't work on deeds, and since its implementation there have been no complaints about the map terrain or existence of the system. The best way to describe it is probably a demonstration. This is the gif I used when I posted the patch notes to my server:

It has always bothered me how useless some of the rare items are. I saw people making mods on Unlimited that would grant bones through sacrificing, give skill gain, or even provide other benefits separate from rarity entirely. However, there's already rules in place that rarity follows, it's just not implemented very well. When you consume a rare item while improving, there's a small chance that it transfers rarity (1/100). When you use a rare material to continue an item, it would provide a chance of transferring rarity as well (1 in however many materials are required). Following that mindset, I thought it would make more sense if rare materials just "worked" properly, and thus made the following changes to my WU server: Rarity Improvements Rarity windows now operate on bad luck protection similar to recently introduced treasure map finding. Rare materials now have a 5% chance to transfer rarity during improvement and creation actions scaled based on weight used. This applies to any combinable resource used to create an item or improve an item. For example, using a rare lump will have a 5% total chance to transfer its rarity over the 1kg it has. The chance is modified based on the amount used to improve or create with. For example, if you use 0.1kg of supreme lump while improving your pickaxe, that improvement action (if successful) will have a 0.5% chance of turning the pickaxe supreme. This makes it so that combining rare materials is no longer detrimental to obtaining rares. When you combine up a 40kg rare iron lump, consuming it to improve would net on average 2 rares via improvement. Furthermore, creating items using rare components such as handles, blades, nails, planks, etc. are now much better as well. The following system only applies to items which are created in their entirety from two consumable resources. For example, using a rare handle and a rare sword blade to create a sword would use this system. Using a rare anvil and a rare lump will not use this system, since the anvil is not consumed in the process. Metallurgy does work. Using rare charcoal with rare iron will produce rare steel, for example. When the item is created, it will roll randomly between the two rarities of the resources used to create it, distributed equally. For example, using a rare handle with a supreme blade will give a 50% chance at a rare, and 50% chance at a supreme. Using a normal handle on that same supreme blade would yield a 33% chance at normal, 33% chance at rare, and 33% chance at supreme. Using a fantastic handle on the supreme blade would offer a 50% chance at supreme, 50% chance on fantastic. If both items are the same rarity, it completely guarantees that the resulting item will be the same rarity. A fantastic handle and a fantstic blade will always create a fantastic sword. I find solutions like this to be far more eloquent in design than the ones than simple conversion of the rares into something else. If you're making arrow shafts, and get a rare arrow shaft... you should have a strong chance to make a rare arrow from it. It shouldn't just be spamming rare arrow shafts so you can eventually sacrifice a lot of them to get something else. That type of mindset generally encourages "gaming" the system to obtain as many rares as possible to achieve the final reward as many times as you can for maximum profit. That said, it's not like what I did was that much better. People ended up spamming shafts and handles so they could have good chances to create a rare tool. But at least they were creating a component of the rare they were aiming for, allowing them to do what's called "deterministic farming" towards their objective. Making a bunch of shafts and handles doesn't end with them being able to rare their dragonscale.

Yup. That's the icon for it.

If you thought the priest overhaul was big, just wait until you see what Tich had in store for you.

Been a minute (few days) since my last post, so it's time for another round going through all the latest comments. So I ended up playing around with this for a bit, trying to figure out how to implement this exact thing onto dispel. I ended up with a few revisions that I attempted. At the end, I scrapped the whole thing and set it aside for now. While it's obvious that players want to be able to choose what type of effect to dispel, all the solutions for doing so have been pretty poor. I'm not willing to rush out a shoddy implementation just to "get it done" in this case. For now, Dispel will function as it always did. There's the possibility of revisiting this topic in the future but it will not be a part of the Priest Rework update. Makes some changes in the code. Nope. Definitely wont work on uniques. That's a pretty good idea with Oakshell. I'll ask the team if that's something we want to do. I'll be making a change to Purge shortly which will make it avoid dispelling karma effects. They're too costly to be removed so easily. We're still making some changes. Once all the changes are finalized (which should be soon), we'll have a finalized list of changes that we're ready to present. It shouldn't be too much longer. It does right now, but I'll likely be removing the ability for Purge to dispel those effects alongside Karma effects in the next update. I tried something similar to this in Wurm Unlimited. While people love it and use it frequently, I've found it fairly damaging to the economy. Players who have many resources are able to more easily and securely create "masterpiece" items. Instead of having to sit there casting on your supreme item, risking a shatter every time, you instead just cast on items you might plan on selling until you get a 100+ cast, then use the scroll to transfer it over. This removes a ton of the risk and provides all the reward to the player. Again, it feels extremely good from the player perspective because they strictly benefit, but it's a flawed design that will most likely cause significant damage to the community and economy.

Nice responses. I read through it all and I think I have an idea. What would you think about allowing a form of "splitter" into a BSB? An example: You insert a splitter and set it to 90QL. Everything below 90QL would then be averaged together, and everything above 90QL would be averaged. This gives you two piles of bulk items. You then insert another splitter and set it to 50QL. Everything below 50QL would be averaged together, everything between 50QL and 90QL would be averaged together, and everything above 90QL would be averaged together. This gives the player the ability to split their BSB in a variety of ways, while being pretty clean in regards to how it's handled. If players don't want it to split, they simply don't add any splitters. It would be extra work on behalf of the player to create and install the splits instead of requiring new interfaces or similar. It also doesn't interrupt the existing gameplay, and instead is a pure addition. Would probably need to limit the amount of splitters, potentially based on the QL of the BSB/FSB, which would provide incentive for carpenters to actually improve those objects. What do you guys think?

Yes, every attack with Bloodthirst still deals the 33% more damage. The infection wounds are a bonus on top of what already existed. The new BT changes do not apply to bows. Bows will function identically to how they did before with Bloodthirst. The magic shell idea is something interesting, but it's kind of exactly what we wanted to avoid. There's consideration for making it so that Purge does not dispel karma effects, and the normal Dispel spell would need to be used to remove them after a Purge. It's a new spell so we'll likely still tweak it a bit, whether that be cast time, cooldown, favor cost, or mechanics in general. It remains to be seen. Feedback is valuable for that process. While attack speed is capped to 3 seconds, the "base" speed can be lower. This base speed is what's calculated with all the effects, such as web armour, then it gets capped after all effects are in place. The infection wounds are different from infection... "status?" - This is one of those design areas that definitely needs clarification and possibly a rename of the mechanic. For example, we have poison "wounds" and poison "mechanic" which are different things. You can have a bruise with poison or infection. You can have a poison wound without poison status on it. You can have infection wounds without infection status on it. These are really difficult to convey, whether it be in a forum like this or in-game where it actually matters. When you get hit by an RT weapon, the only way you know that the wound is infected is to watch the combat log and recognize which area they hit. This whole thing has room for a lot of improvement. Rant aside, the infection wound differs from the infection "status" that is applied by RT because it actually changes the wound type. This changes how it interacts with armour and (by proxy) ignores glance rates. This gives BT a DPS increase based on the glance rate of the opponent. Alongside the significant damage increase, this makes BT a form of hybrid between Venom and the elemental enchants, as well as offering more versatility. It's hard to say exactly where BT will end up, but from my own perspective I believe 10k BT is the highest damage, highest versatility enchant for damage out there. The others are faster and mildly comparable, but BT offers a whole new way to fight, where you can wear down the opponent over time. While it's true that in PvP most players just zerg down a single target, when you scale down the fight sizes to smaller skirmishes such as 1v1 and 2v2, the infection wounds become way more valuable for obvious reasons. Landing an infected wound on a high shield skill target could be the difference between winning and losing the fight. In the end, time will tell how valuable it is. It now has its own identity separate from the rest of weapon enchants, and that was the goal with the change. I believe we'll be targeting the ability for players to switch their deity on both Freedom and Epic clusters - thus 2 resets. Can you elaborate on what's wrong with Dispel in it's current form? I believe I read something a long time ago posted in this thread regarding dispel, shattering, and similar... but it's buried so far back that I can't find it or recall the specifics. That's a bug and will definitely be fixed. Thanks for testing and reporting that!

I would really like to see something similar to the bulk sorted mod from Wurm Unlimited, but it's implementation should not be so... choppy. The idea of shelves that accept certain QL is along the right track, but I'd like to see something truly inventive that makes sense and doesn't require player configuration to achieve the proper result. Also, shelves would make the interface harder to manage. Any ideas for ways to make this happen without just sorting by groups of 10QL and 1QL past 90?

The <5kg means they'll take full damage from their weight, not that they're immune to Sunder. It's specific to that change line, not Sunder as a whole.

Sunder now works on large objects like forges, ovens, and guard towers. Before these changes, it would do the full 1-20 damage on those items. Guard towers would be able to be brought down in ~10 casts from decent skilled priests, making it take mere minutes to remove a tower. These changes are intended to make it so that Sunder is balanced against the new objects you can use it on.

You shouldn't need to have Wurm Assistant to notice someone is casting something hostile on you.

New changes should be live on Oracle and Baph test servers shortly: New Spell: Purge (All gods & demigods, 45 faith, 35 favor) Purge removes all beneficial spell effects from the target creature. The spell effect removal completely ignores dispel resistance and does not have a resistance of its own. Purge has a 5 minute cooldown after a successful cast. Cast time is 15 seconds and range is roughly 6 tiles. This spell is designed to be a countermeasure for using half a dozen effects to "mask" the effects that actually matter and prevent them from being dispelled. Bloodthirst now has a chance to inflict an infection wound on the target. Chance to inflict an infection wound is the power of the bloodthirst / 100,000. This grants a 10% chance per swing at 10k Bloodthirst. When an infection attack is rolled, it will ignore the target's glance rate, similar to how Venom currently works. Infection wounds now tick every minute, and will rapidly worsen. Bandaging or treating an infection wound will stop the worsening effect, but they will still tick every minute. Web Armour now adjusts attack speed as a multiplier instead of a flat amount. Every 10 power of Web Armour adds 1 second to the duration of the effect. This is unchanged from previous mechanics. The effect no longer slows each attack swing by 0.5 seconds per power. Instead, it now slows the attack speed by a percentage equivalent to the power. For example, at 50 power, web armour will slow swings by 50%. If the attacking weapon swings every 3 seconds, it would instead swing every 4.5 seconds under the effects of Web Armour. This interaction works off the base attack speed of the weapon, not the actual. A glimmersteel small maul has a base attack speed of 2.7 seconds (3 seconds with a 10% reduction for being glimmersteel). The actual swing speed of the glimmersteel small maul is 3 seconds, since you cannot swing faster than once per 3 seconds. The glimmersteel maul would swing every 5.4 seconds under the effect of 100 Web Armour. By this logic, you can ignore web armour completely by using fists and bearpaws, since fists have a base swing speed of 1 second. Other interactions similar to this (like Frantic Charge) will also apply. Sunder damage has been reworked. Sunder now accounts for the targets QL, damage, and weight when calculating the damage done. Base damage remains the same, at 0-20 damage based on cast power. Quality now reduces the damage of the sunder cast, starting at 0.5% reduction at 1QL to 50% reduction at 100QL, scaling linearly. 80QL items will take 40% reduced damage. Damage already on the item also reduces the damage of the sunder cast, starting at 0% reduction at 0 DAM and scaling to 100% reduction at 100 DAM. 50 DAM items will take half as much sunder damage. High weight objects (guard towers, forges, etc.) will take significantly reduced damage now. Any item under 5kg will be unaffected by this change. All items over 5kg will start taking significantly reduced damage, scaling indefinitely. Light of Fo, Scorn of Libila, Life Transfer, and Essence Drain now use intelligent wound targeting. They will prioritize healing the highest damage wound(s) they can. Nahjo now has the meat & alchemy affinity. Enchants when examining an item now have color! Check the image below for an example. Colors are able to be modified individually on a per-player basis through the text section of the client settings. You can revert it back to boring by configuring all colors to white.

Good question. We're looking to make it so the higher of the two faiths will be applied to the character on login. For example, someone who has 50 Libila faith (Chaos) and 80 Magranon faith (Freedom) will login with 80 faith. If they're on Chaos, they'll be 80 faith Libila. If they're on Freedom, they'll be 80 faith Magranon. Afterwards, considering everyone has a free faith transfer, you can elect to go Libila, Magranon, or whatever else you want at 80 faith.

We'll be looking at ways to make Rite of Death functional on Freedom without being a griefing tool. With the new rite tech available, we have more options than before, and getting some good ideas for new benefits to Rite of Death would help along that process. Now that Rites have an effect that lasts 24 hours after being cast, what type of benefit should Rite of Death grant the server when cast on Freedom?

Minor update: Priest Rework is now active on the Oracle test server. This is a PvE server and will more closely mimic functionality on Freedom. Libila is now enabled on PvE servers. Some spells are disabled, notably Corrupt (previously Fungus), Zombie Infestation, Land of the Dead, and Rite of Death. Converting a player to Libila on a PvE server should no longer move them into the Horde of the Summoned kingdom. This functionality remains on PvP servers, where converting to Libila will automatically transfer you to the Horde of the Summoned. Dark Messenger can now be used by players in WL kingdoms (including Freedom).

I worked at an elementary school a while ago, and something they were experimenting with was Code Combat. They wanted me to make a judgement call as to whether or not it was worth purchasing the subscription for the school. I spent the whole day on it, and my judgement that it was both extremely enjoyable and actually very solid at teaching the fundamentals of coding. I highly recommend it. The first whole set (40ish levels?) is free and runs in the browser, so give it a shot yourself and see what you think. It's a bit cheesy and over the top, but if you're able to get past that, it's a really neat way to learn how to code.

It doesn't, and that's why further changes are planned.

My philosophy aligns with increasing the power of other objects instead of "nerfing" existing content. It does create a bit of power creep, but so long as it's controlled and met with increasing challenges, it's really not that big of an issue. That said, the Bloodthirst change was absolutely necessary. This is because it was broken by concept and not through value. The old Bloodthirst functioned by adding flat damage on every attack. The new Bloodthirst increases damage using a multiplier. Some hypothetical examples: Old Bloodthirst at 10k would give +10,000 damage per hit. A 90QL huge axe hits for 25,000 damage per swing, once per 5 seconds. DPS is 5,000. A 90QL short sword hits for 12,000 damage per swing, once per 3 seconds. DPS is 4,000. If the huge axe has 10k BT, it would've had 35,000 damage per swing, once per 5 seconds. DPS is 7,000. If the short sword has 10k BT, it would've had 22,000 damage per swing, once per 3 seconds. DPS is 7,333. Obviously Bloodthirst was incredibly valuable on fast-attacking weapons. In fact, it turned out that some fast-attacking weapons would straight up outperform their 2h counterparts with identical power Bloodthirst. Take longswords and 2 handed swords for example. In the previous system, given the proper arguments, 2h swords with 10k BT would actually do less damage than a 10k BT longsword. That's just simply not right. We can extend the example above to the new system: If the huge axe has 10k new BT, it will have 33,250 damage per swing, once per 5 seconds. DPS is 6,650. If the short sword has 10k new BT, it will have 16,000 damage per swing, once per 3 seconds. DPS is 5,320. Using a global multiplier instead of an overloaded flat damage increase creates a balanced atmosphere. Now let's imagine that there are plans to remove the minimum swing timer of 3 seconds from the combat system in the future, and a fast-attacking knife with a 1 second attack is planned. The knife does 3,000 damage per swing, once per second. DPS is 3,000. If the knife has 10k old BT, it would do 13,000 damage per swing, once per second. DPS is 13,000, nearly double that of a huge axe with BT and almost triple without. If the knife has 10k new BT, it would do 4,000 damage per swing, once per second. DPS is 4,000. This is reasonable. While there's a time and place that flat damage increases can be implemented, Bloodthirst was in a state where it fundamentally undermined the balance of the weapons in the game. Yes, it's being changed to be a net decrease in damage on most weaponry that currently exists right now. Again, there are other changes that are planned that I'll be working on in the near future (it just takes a bit of time to implement). It will help this situation. However, I'd also argue that even without any further changes, Bloodthirst still has it's own value: Damage is added directly to the hit, allowing it to be calculated as physical damage. This is the only enchant that would not be mitigated by Soul Strength. Since the damage is all physical, it cannot be avoided through the likes of Elemental Immunity in meditation, nor reduced by the new jewelry enchants. Elemental enchants do not modify the base hit, and therefore do not apply secondary effects from material such as lead weaponry. Lead weaponry will apply larger poison wounds if Bloodthirst is applied. I personally believe that the argument for Bloodthirst being dead in the water is heavily overblown, especially considering there are upcoming changes intended for it. I've done my best to explain why it was changed, and I'm aware of the aftermath. We're working to amend the issues brought up by the adjustment, and still feel it was fully necessary both for the existing game balance and making the system more easy to work with in the future.

Venom will no longer glance against any creatures except uniques, which will have their normal 50% glance chance. That chance is static and processed after all other calculations. There may be room to change how that works in the future (as well as the way that creature glance rates works because right now I feel it's less than ideal), but it's outside the scope of this update and therefore will not be changed as part of the priest rework.

I was testing against an enemy player and a bull and it would never glance. Then I spawned a troll and it started to glance, which forced me to go into a deep dive about how the glancing works. Glancing on a player always checks their actual armour. If none is found, they have no armour rating and no glance rating, and therefore the attack never glances. The glance rate for creatures is dependent on half their actual armour rating. Bulls for example have no armour, and therefore no attacks glance. Trolls, on the other hand, have 60% armour and thus glance 30% of the time against any attack. This was where my initial testing failed, since the two targets I used to ensure the changes worked didn't actually have a way to glance the attacks. However, it gets even more interesting. Oakshell provides a unique glance chance of its own. If a player has Oakshell, it provides a global armour glance rate that ignores damage type, and would therefore cause Venom to still glance (up to 33% of the time at 100 power). Furthermore, legendary creatures (or uniques) also have a built-in global 50% chance to glance, which also would apply to Venom. These are unique cases where the target would still glance despite having Venom on the weapon. The primary issue is that creatures would be able to glance the attack if their armour was more than nothing. I've created a fix which should be pushed to the test server on the next update. Thanks for the testing. I believe it will now work as I originally intended from here on out. This also allowed me to fix the salve interactions with glance as well, so they will apply properly in combat scenarios also.

New update to the test server today: All creature enchant spells (Excel, Truehit, Goat Shape, etc.) no longer give the infidel error if the target is not hostile. Hostile targets will still give the infidel error. Lifted the restrictions to create house walls and fences for all priests. This also fixes issues with priests being unable to continue those objects. Bows are now considered weapons for the purposes of enchanting. This allows Bloodthirst, Nimbleness, and similar enchants that target weapons to be cast. Keep in mind that not all weapon enchants actually provide a benefit on bows. Resurrection stones no longer stack with the item protector passive. The item protector grants 35% (same as before), but resurrection stones now override the passive and grant their usual 50%. New messages have been implemented to make it more obvious what occurred. If you have a passive and resurrection stone, the message you get afterwards will reflect what actually saved your items (the passive or the stone). Fixed an issue where Scorn of Libila was not applying Heal Resistance properly. Fixed an issue where Vynora could not flatten tile borders. Fixed an issue where the extra combat damage passive was not reduced from 25% to 15% in certain scenarios. Fixed an issue where Soul Strength was not applying resistance to spells properly in some cases. Known Issues There are no keybinds for new spells and some of the changed spell keybinds no longer function properly. Jewelry enchants give no status indicator for extra damage or protection against elements. Scorn of Libila and Light of Fo aren't properly targeting high-damage wounds as intended under certain circumstances. This covers every problem I'm currently aware of. If there is anything that is either a bug or major concern, please reply here and I'll be sure to get around to either answering or fixing the inquiry.

Capes

All of these ideas are exceptional and can be executed in the primary game (look at runes). However, the mark that I see being missed is: How does this work into the actual loop of improving an item? What you're describing here is basically what runes are - attach it and forget about it. Sure it "resets" the item and needs to be improved again, but that's more of a prestige instead of tackling the core issue we're attempting to be solve: the improve/repair gameplay loop. How do we adjust the actual gameplay loop of improve/repair specifically to add more depth to it and give these bonuses? I wasn't there when the game was first being designed (obviously) so I don't know the logic behind the improve/repair design as it stands now. However, I can tell you that, as a personal opinion, I both agree with your statement that damage/repair feels bad while simultaneously disagreeing with you that removing the repair aspect would be beneficial. In short, it does make the improve system feel better, but it also comes with a set of issues unrelated to the actual gameplay itself that poses some issues. Capping the item to your skill creates an artificial boundary where players cannot spend their time to overachieve and make a truly exceptional item. If someone has 70 weapon smithing but obtained a fantastic longsword, you bet they're going to push it to 75-80 if they can. The existence of damage and repair allows the improve system to not artificially cap the quality you can achieve. In theory, with an astronomical amount of luck (and probably a few million years of time), someone with 1 skill could create a 99QL item. Removal of damage and repair during the improvement process would allow players to calculate their effective level with incredible ease. If you currently wanted to see how much time it would take to create a 70QL item with 80 skill, you'd basically just have to guess. The damage and repair system will throw a wrench in most calculations that you do to attempt to figure out the exact amount of time it would take. Sure, with enough effort put in, you could create a simulation program that would take the parameters and figure out the most optimal solution, but it's actually quite difficult. However, if damage and repair was removed from the gameplay loop, then it would be trivial for players to say "I have X skill, how many improves until I get it to Y QL?" A calculator for such a purpose would exist very shortly after the change. That's not to say that removing repair is just a bad idea. I'm mostly just playing devil's advocate here, and I feel that other changes would need to accompany the removal of damage and repair from the improvement process. That's a really good point. I know a few server owners who have experimented with hunting servers, but I'm not fully read in on how they played out or the problems they had to deal with. I'll have to reach out to a few of them and get their thoughts from the owner perspective of things. I think that's the insight I'm missing to really form a proper opinion on the subject.

Well... isn't this thread an interesting one. Just noticed this thread being necro'd today actually. It's actually one of my favorite old posts because it lead to a lot of mods I created in WU that actually did help expand the end-game because of the discussion that happened here. It lead to my implementation of Chaos & Enchanter crystals, a change in the design philosphy of my Spectral Drakes and Reaper mobs, and the addition of a unique scarce resource (Blue Wyvern). Also, the most recent addition that I feel really nailed the end-game philosophy: Leaderboards. While this is no longer truly a relevant topic for the current development of Wurm Online - there is a roadmap that will keep the team busy for ~6 months to a year - there's no harm in discussing what comes after before those decisions are made. Perhaps this is a topic that we'll want to touch on after the current projects. I'm always down for a good discussion, so let's just dive right into it! There's a lot here, and it's all really true. PvP is kind of considered the "end-game" because man is the most dangerous game. The idea behind this whole thread was to discuss ideas in order to change that and provide a more PvE-focused endgame for those who desire it. You can look all over in other games to see how they deal with this issue, but many of them don't apply to Wurm since it's a very different style of game from most MMO's. Since Wurm is very much a sandbox where players need to create their own goals, it goes against the philosophy of the game to throw and NPC down and say "Okay, go do this now. You have to in order to go further." That just doesn't sit well in Wurm. Instead, you need to get something else where the player has the option to do something that would help them, but still make it repeatable. Right now, there's not a whole lot of that in the game. You can consider increasing skill or improving an item/cast as a form of that, where you repeat the action until you achieve the goal you were looking for. Now on the topic of quests that never end, there's a current trend going of infinite scaling difficulty being one of the best solutions. As you go further, things get harder, but the rewards increase. This type of implementation could apply to Wurm in some way. For example, a dungeon of sorts which creates waves of creatures of increasing difficulty and number until you inevitably die due to the difficulty. This is a rather poor example, as it would need to be designed specifically to make it more rewarding than punishing (skill loss would likely turn players away from this for example). However, what if that type of scenario could be translated to improving an item? What if there was some way that you could make a challenge to improve an item, perhaps in the form of a puzzle/mini-game, that would become more and more difficult until you lost? In return, you would gain an increase to the item that would gain some benefit for your effort. I actually had a prototype of a new mod I was working on that would take an approach in this manner, giving a mark on items that would increase their "base" quality. Lets say that someone had increased their base quality of their forge by 30QL. It was then improved by a 90 skill mason. They could see something like the following, where the new "maximum" quality would be 130QL (30 base + the original 100 cap). The forge itself would improve like it was whatever QL shown - 30 (so 113 would actually be improved like an 83 item). As I always say, I have three focuses. Spells/Religion, Combat, and PvP. Adjustments to the combat system are something I'd really like to get into, but it'll be after the other two topics are touched on. The priest rework covers the first aspect, whereas my next work will involve PvP. It's far too early to say anything about what the combat adjustments might look like, so we'll just have to wait and see. I've added this on my WU server and it has been met with positive reception. Designing something around a small hunting party instead of the discrepancy between "I can kill this solo" and "I need 10 people to kill this" would be a really nice void to fill. Adjusting skills with little usage is something I'm also very interested in. Stealing and Tracking are two skills I really have my eyes on since they're almost never used. Alchemy is also a really neat topic that I'd be interested in diving into sometime later down the line as well. It's natural integration with the priest and spell system has me curious about what type of interesting interactions we could come up with. There's also the "throw" option for a target in combat, which is rarely used except to cheese. Making throwing alchemy potions to weaken enemies or strengthen allies could be an interesting avenue to explore. Rares also have a lot of hidden design potential. Due to their scarcity, there's a possibility of making them more versatile. I've always had discussions about a hunting server for my WU servers. Since I added much more difficult mobs than trolls that roam the land, it's been a topic of conversation more than once. I have concerns that it would fail in execution. While the idea is sound, you could end up in a scenario where either everyone moves there to keep it challenging, or players avoid it completely because it takes too long to access. I'm unsure if there's a proper middle ground where neither of those problems exist. My attempt at it was making sure that difficult creatures spawned in biomes (tundra, snow, steppe, etc). That worked out to a decent degree, but it required a map specifically tailored around that fact. A map like that would most likely be on epic if it happened, yeah. Also, the mention of enemy starter towns sparks an interesting idea to me. When designing a game, you generally have two perspectives: the player and the developer. The player wants to achieve all their goals and become as strong as they can. The developer wants to limit their growth to a steady rate to keep them playing, meanwhile making sure they don't become omnipotent. In a way, this creates a back and forth for players and developers, where the developers will create something new, players will use it in an unintended way, the developers will fix it, the players will find another way to achieve the same goal. Rinse and repeat and you've basically got development in a nutshell. One idea would be to make an NPC faction on a PvP server. Give them their own, large deed with well built walls and fortifications. Give them NPC players equipped with good weapons and armor that defend that deed. Allow them to roam and kill players and loot them. Their loot would then be distributed among the raiding parties they send out. These NPC's would be only as strong as the players allowed them to get (with a certain baseline, perhaps ~70-80QL plate/chain), as well as offering a consistent opponent even if the PvP kingdom balance shifts in one direction. Instead of solving player problems with additional players, we put a hostile NPC in place to shift the tide. I can most closely relate this type of option to end-game crisis in Stellaris, which is the public enemy of all players and gives not a single care whether or not you are the strongest or weakest empire in the galaxy. You're an enemy and you'll be under attack. This is quite a big undertaking as a significant amount of AI work would need to be implemented to ensure that they were not easily cheesed in combat. However, back to the point of player vs developer, this would create a really interesting back and forth for development. Every time the players would learn a way to "cheese" the AI, the devs would be able to patch that option and force the players to find another way... until there were none left. You'd be left with an NPC faction that would pose a significant thread and add a new dimension to the macro gameplay on a PvP server. This was the approach I took with my titans in WU to moderate success. There were half a dozen kills using cheese mechanics (rotting touch, sacrificial knives, etc) before I finally managed to force the players to truly fight it head-on in actual combat. While this is easy to implement, the actual reward is where the hard part comes into play. What do you give a player that has it all right now? Economy is something I'm pretty familiar with. The Wyvern server had an issue early on before I had taken it over, where all the currency was drained out of the traders and nobody who joined the server could access any money. The solution put in place (not by me) was injecting hundreds of gold into traders so they wouldn't run out. Needless to say, this caused an issue where the economy was shattered and people could buy whatever they wanted at all times. After I took over as the owner of the server, I was challenged with trying to solve this problem. I tried money sinks (consumable items purchased with currency), increasing upkeep, adjusting value on items, and all sorts of other options. In the end, there wasn't really any way I could solve the underlying problem: players had stockpiled outrageous amounts of wealth. If I add something highly expensive, new players cannot access it for the reward and rich players don't bother because it's not worth it to them. If I add something inexpensive, the rich players buy hundreds of it while normal players scrape by. If I try to directly take money away from the wealthy through a currency reset or increasing money rewards in the game, they get upset (with good reason). A bit of a rant there, I know, but the point is this: I'm not qualified to try and solve the economy problem. I could implement a system that would solve it, if such a thing existed. Actually thinking of the solution, though, I have no idea. There's a thread here on the forums discussing the economy problem in Wurm in-depth and from what I've read the opinions vary widely on ways to solve it, with holes being picked in every suggestion made. This creates a larger gap and void between established players and new players. Adding content to the game that is fully locked behind a large grind is generally going to be viewed poorly. For example, if we added a new weapon that was better than all the rest locked behind 99 weapon smithing, there's probably going to be some significant complaints. There's a limitation of interactivity in the game right now. Most of the actions are done through context menus or keybinds. The UI doesn't really support interaction too far beyond that (for the moment). This is something that would have to wait for the UI overhaul before being tackled due to the input limitations of the game. Think of how you would interact to play chess in-game right now. What buttons would you use? I do understand that feeling where you're just going through the motions again, and most of the enjoyment comes from that first time around when you're truly working your way towards something. I feel that could possibly be replicated with the right system. Give people a goal to strive for in the overall. In a way, the valrei map is a form of this, where players can do in-game missions to have an effect on the "global" board. A system similar to that, but with goals that are far more attainable and unique, might be something interesting to tackle. This would create incentive for full villages to make a team effort to accomplish something on a macro scale for a reason beyond just doing it. I've been thinking about adding more depth to things, but I have a question to pose: How would you add depth to improving an item? Almost everything in the game uses improve/repair as the functions to make it better. How would you add depth and break that gameplay loop? This was something I was interested in doing to discourage macro gameplay on my private server. Most of the ideas had flaws except for a certain few, and I'd be interested to see if we can brainstorm something that truly hits the marks. Here's some restrictions: Must be an addition to improve/repair, cannot change it fundamentally. Some people (myself included) actually like to use Wurm as a game I can play while watching a TV show. When a new season comes out of a show I enjoy, logging into Wurm to improve some items while I watch it on my other monitor is something I really like. When I posed changes that would break this gameplay loop, it was met with negative reception. Cannot be a mild efficiency increase. What I mean is that it can't just be something to make it faster to improve. We want something that will actually affect the end result without just meaning we get from QL X to QL Y faster. This would just be met with people ignoring the system if it's too hard or becoming too fast by always doing it. Using outside resources is a bonus. One idea was using "reinforcements" or "augments" of some kind during the improve/repair process. These would be other items created through other skills (like jewelry smithing or something) that would give bonus effects to the item at the end. This gives value to other skills while also allowing players to target what type of augmentation they want their item to undergo while working on it.

Made a round of changes which should now be on the test server: Bless and Refresh no longer give "would never help the infidel" error if the target is not hostile. Hostile targets will still give the infidel error. Fireheart cast time increased to 7 seconds from 5 seconds. Shard of Ice cast time increased to 7 seconds from 5 seconds. Fo's combat rating bonus at 70 faith now also applies in tundra. Fo's and his demigods' stamina bonus now applies to tundra. Tosiek now has the spells Bloodthirst and Web Armour. Tosiek no longer has the spell Life Transfer. Smeagain now has the item protection on death passive. Natural favor regeneration has been significantly improved. It now regenerates faster and refills favor every 5 seconds instead of 10 seconds. Damage enchants Flaming Aura, Frostbrand, and Essence Drain no longer have a minimum damage threshold for a wound to be applied. Life Transfer and Essence Drain no longer have a minimum damage threshold for healing to be applied. Restrictions for Libila priests have been lifted: Farming, Harvesting, Sowing, Planting, Gathering. Fixed a bug where converted damage types through salves or the Venom spell would not calculate glance chances properly. Fixed an issue where monsters were attacking priests with the non-aggressive monster passive. Sorry Emoo. I didn't touch on everything I wanted to yet, so this is up next: Scorn of Libila weirdness - not applying healing resistance, not healing wounds properly, etc. Item Protection on death revisited - we'll be changing it to make it no longer stack with resurrection stone. Instead, it will offer 35% chance passively, but a resurrection stone will overwrite that with it's normal 50% chance. BL characters being able to harvest from mycelium trees and similar If anything was reported that is not fixed in these notes or mentioned here, please reply here with a new iteration of the report. I've done my best to go through all of the pages and fix what I've seen but there's just simply too many comments (and words, frankly) for me to catch everything.