This week me’s have mostlys been defendings the shinies Qeynos city from mean Void nasties. Apparently everybody elses was unavailables.
This was the ending-results. Her Royal Highness (who should not leaves the house dressed like thats. She’ll catch a colds!), saved from a perilous fate by a mere Ratonga (yay!), after her Kerran (tee hee!) Captain of the Guard (*mirthful squeak!*) got possesseds by a spooky royal ancestrous rude ghost and tried to do her the mischiefs. We were too lates to prevent him stealing the Qeynos Claymore, a powerful magicy artifact that is the very very importants. Me’s not sure whys this sword, and hateds Overlord Lucan’s blade, Soulfire, are wanteds by the voids like they made of cheeses.
The writings on the swords is in Void Glyphs, which sniffs a lot like a clue to mes. Anyhowses, it looks like they’ve gots it, and whiles I’s the go-to rat for the existential threats these days, I doubts they going to sends mes into the void to go gets it.
Don't worries, Murrar Shar fans! He still breathings!
So I decideds to go save Frostfell. But then I be doings that every year. This year thoughs, while teachings McScroogle not to be sendings junkmails and not be sos McScroogley, I noticed somethings:
What is McScroogle doing with the Qeynos Claymore?
I’s been findings you’s sword, your Majestys!
Though knowings that McScroogle, it’ll be turnings out to be the cheaps unlicensed knock-offs made by underpaids gigglegibber goblin.
All this, and Frostfell starts tomorrow too. Wheeeee. I’ve already dug out my bag of Frostfell hats and cloaks.
Maltheas is looking forward to popping over to Freeport to point and laugh at the Overlord’s ex-flying fortress. He only ever visited it once, in an ill-fated attempt to assassinate The Overlord (the original Freeport to Qeynos betrayal quest). It is a fine thing that such a symbol of Lucan’s oppressive dominion over Freeport has been laid low.
The most relevant fix in this mighty bugsquashing patch for our Extreeeme Questing Ratonga is:
* Many collections from Sinking Sands that were originally on the Kunark Burynai and then later removed have been added back to the tables in this zone.
That’ll help me catch up with folks who’d gotten them done via Burynai. I never had a Burynai :( there’s obviously a lot of fixes for quests I’ve not gotten to yet, as well.
I’m hoping that the drop rates for some quest starters might have been sneaked up. I was also sure I saw a fix for Et’sipe Ymeresh’s failure to spawn somewhere, but it doesn’t seem to be in the notes. I’ll check in on him anyway, as I’ve had the quest “Where will this lead me?” for far too long.
It’s also great to see “The Path of the Sun Wolf” making a return to the Peat Bog. Maltheas did it years ago before it vanished, but it’s an interesting little quest that I’m sure a lot of newer players will enjoy.
Everquest 2 : Will of a Tyrant patch notes follow, after the leap.
This one is rather more fulsome than the previous efforts. It supersedes the test mod that many of us have been using that fixed the archery and dagger issues. You can grab the patch at the official 1.02 Dragon Age Patch page.
Dragon Age: Origins 1.02:
You do not need to download patches prior to Patch 1.02. Downloading Patch 1.02 contains all previous patches. Downloading Patch 1.02 will provide you with all patch data available.
Balance
* Daggers now apply 0.5 points of damage per additional point in dexterity and 0.5 points of damage per additional point in strength, as originally intended. This increases dagger damage for high-dexterity characters.
* During combat, mana or stamina reserves now correctly regenerate more quickly when reserves are low. This allows players to occasionally use an talent or spell in the later stages of lengthy fights.
* When exploring, mana and stamina now regenerate more quickly at higher character levels. This reduces downtime between fights.
* The spells Force Field, Crushing Prison, Cone of Cold, and Blizzard now have shorter durations and/or longer cooldowns. This ensures that combatants can no longer stun-lock each other by repeatedly casting the same spell.
* The cooldowns for several low-level sustained abilities are now shorter. This ensures that players are not penalized for accidentally deactivating them.
* Certain battles were not scaling properly, resulting in excessively difficult fights. They now scale as intended.
* Enemy corpses now drop health poultices and money more appropriately, resulting in less clutter in the player’s inventory.
Gameplay
* In rare cases, enemy corpses were selectable when they contained no loot. This no longer occurs.
* Party members whose combat tactics were set to defensive behavior no longer stop attacking after using a spell or talent.
* In rare cases, combat tactics conditions could fail to determine whether a character had enough mana or stamina to use an ability. This no longer occurs.
* The Rally talent no longer repeats its audio effect if it is active during certain conversations.
* The Rally talent no longer deactivates upon area transitions or conversations.
* The Shimmering Shield spell now deactivates when the character is out of mana.
PC Specific
* Controlling a summoned creature (like a ranger’s pets) during certain special area transitions no longer results in odd behavior.
* Creating a character in a custom module did not create a folder for saves. This could result in corruption of main campaign saves. This no longer occurs.
* In some cases, the class icon was set incorrectly for characters imported from the downloadable Character Creator. This no longer occurs.
* The options menu now includes a setting to automatically download previously purchased content that is not currently installed.
* After installing new downloadable content, the game now always reminds the user to restart the game.
* The icons for some promotional downloadable content items were missing. They now appear correctly.
* The screenshot upload GUI would stop working from time to time on the client. There was a memory override that was fixed. It is a client fix. It doesn’t affect the other problems we have seen on the server.
Plot *Spoiler Warning*
* Promotional downloadable content items now remain in the player’s inventory when standard items are removed at the end of the dwarf noble origin.
* Repeatedly talking to Duncan after gathering the vials in the Korcari Wilds but not the treaties no longer provides duplicate experience.
* Leliana’s personal plot can now be completed if the player substantially increased her approval (through gifts) before talking to her.
* During the siege of Redcliffe, enemies are no longer able to spawn in locations that would break the plot.
* Bann Teagan no longer disappears when he is supposed to be accessible during Urn of Sacred Ashes.
I’ve noticed a lot of folks in my logs that look like they’re trying to track down some of my mods. With my mind once again turned towards modding, this post is here to help. These are all the ones I can still find available on the net. Some of my Oblivion mods, and all of my Morrowind ones (which were rather better) seem to have vanished without a trace, and I’m a couple of hard-drive crashes along since then. I no longer have Oblivion, so can’t offer much in the way of support for any of them.
These were all made in the first few weeks of Oblivion being out (I lost interest rather quickly. Oblivion was not half as fun to mod for as Morrowind), so are a bit primitive compared with what’s available now, but still, people still seem to be searching for them, so here you go. You can find full readme files on the hosting site and in the zip package.
I like to name my mods like old school D&D spell names :)
Ark’s Tutorial Terminator Plugin for Oblivion
My most popular work, and was a lot more complicated than it sounds, involving a lot of gentle pruning of dialogue trees and scripts if I remember rightly. This one is included in a lot of larger mods now, including the Tamriel Immersion Experience.
It removes all those annoying tutorial pop-ups. Don’t use this unless they have nothing more to teach you.
Ark’s Multiple Multiplier Mod
Apparently there were about a million mods that set multipliers to 5, but none for lower numbers. Five minutes later:
Simply sets your stat multiplier to a flat rate of two, three, or four, depending on which esp you use.
Ark’s Problematic Potions Plugin for Oblivion
Warning: This mod makes Oblivion more difficult.
Makes it so that the number of potions effects you can be under at once depends upon your ranking in Alchemy.
Without this mod, anyone can be under the effects of 4 potions at once. This mod changes things, so that Novices can only be under one effect at once, Apprentices 2, Journeymen and Experts 3, and Masters 4.
Ark’s Little Guys
This mod adds Gnomes, Dremi, Khajii, Argoni, and Dwarves (and as a bonus, Dremora) as playable races. Needless to say, this isn’t very canon, but some folks love playing those little guys. Don’t blame me if you have trouble reaching the cookie jar! There’s reports that the Dremora can make you crash so stick to the little guys! (It was a pre-existing NPC race I enabled for players. Unwisely as it turned out.)
This was one of the earliest mods to try to create a new race. Once I got the hang of shrinking and stretching them, I made a few, all with their own racial abilities. The most popular were the little cat guys, the Khajii.
Gnomes in Oblivion! Ark's Little Guys in action.
Ark’s Toasty Torch
A little test mod I didn’t release to the public at the time. Adds a flaming torch to your starting cell. Unlike ordinary flaming torches in Oblivion, it can be used as a weapon. Unfortunately in gaining that feature, it stopped creating a light radius, and I never got around to figuring out how to fix that. Still, it was quite a fun bit of kit to play with.
Ark’s Tribute to Leeroy Jenkins Plugin for Oblivion
In a moment of madness, I created this horror. Complete with sound files sampled from the original Leeroy, I still wake up at night cursing myself for unleashing it upon the world. For some reason, some people actually like it.
It adds a wonderfully magical spell, Summon Leeroy, to Trayvond in Cheydinhal’s Mages guild, and Edgar, of Edgar’s Discount Spells.
I have tried to contain Leeroy’s greatness as best I can, and yet I still could not call this mod well balanced. But then neither is Leeroy, so it is fitting. Pick either the balancedish Leeroy or Uber-Leeroy esp. Don’t use both. That would be too much Leeroy for anyone to handle.
The 6 year pack will include a rather natty matching cloak and hat set. Not too keen on the colour scheme (Green is my colour), but it’s still a quite nice appearance only set. If we could choose a colour for it, that would make me even happier. Red + chains makes it look kind of evil.
EQ2 Veteran Reward: The Shroud of Fate
There is a gadget called “Call of the Veteran” which lets you teleport to a group member from anywhere in the world once per day. Handy indeed.
The pick of the pack, for me, is the Hammer of Adept Hands, a wondrous gadget that will refill your tradeskill vitality once per week. Somehow crafting feels wrong when you don’t have any vitality, so this will mean a whole lot more crafting from Maltheas’ fine support staff team.
It might seem a little weird that 6 year veteran rewards are becoming available when we only had EQ2’s 5 year anniversary celebration last week. The solution to this mystery is the bonus veteran time that has been gained through purchase of expansions over the years, meaning that some people have already hit 6 years worth. I hit year six in a couple of weeks.
Update: Turns out the Call of the Veteran is slightly cooler than we thought. Rothgar spilled the beans on the forum earlier:
The teleporter actually has two functions. First it summons a portal that only you can see. Right-clicking the portal gives you two options. One option is to port to a group member anywhere in the world. The second option is to summon a group member from anywhere in the world to your location. Once you use an option the portal goes away. I think the recast time on it is 60 minutes.
Yes, this works across zones and yes it works in dungeons. A player must meet the requirements for the zone before they can be summoned to you. So this means they have to have access to the zone and can’t possess a lockout timer for another instance of that zone. Our goal with the summoning ability was to allow veterans to share the “coolness” of this item with other players that might not have it yet.
Fixed potential corruption of character statistics.
Fixed portrait appearance sliders when importing a character from the downloadable Character Creator.
Fixed import for preset face settings from the downloadable Character Creator.
Made Easy difficulty easier.
Slightly increased attack, defense, and damage scores for all party members at Normal difficulty.
Fixed video issues when running on a very wide screen display, including ATI Eyefinity displays.
Fixed an issue with Dragon Age and Windows Game Explorer.
Updated Visual C runtime libraries.
They’ve been holding back the toolset patch til this game one was released, to ensure they matched up correctly, so hopefully that’ll be along real soon.
February 2nd, 2010 will be a date marked in every Trekker’s diary. Cryptic Studio’s Star Trek Online will be unleashed upon the universe. I can’t wait, but I suppose I shall have to!
It was also revealed this week that Cryptic had made the wise decision to change their design regarding modelling the ship bridges. Now we’ll be able to move about our bridge, and invite other players into them. A great boon for roleplayers, and the designers have done themselves a big favour in the long run, as the various bridges will be excellent areas for the plot-centered episodes to utilise.
“We didn’t want to have interiors at launch,” said “Star Trek Online” executive producer Craig Zinkievich. “We thought it was just a little bit too much. We really wanted to make sure we delivered a really deep experience, but your bridge not being in the game, it really felt like a hole in the game, and it was just something that we had to put in.”
Aye, I know, Champions Online was rather bad so I ought not to be getting too excited, but the clack is that after Cryptic lost the Marvel license for the game that became Champions, they kind of lost heart in it, and moved most of the best folks over to STO, as it had much greater potential for success. Star Trek fans can only pray to the Q that, just this once, we’ll get a Star Trek game that doesn’t suck.
In celebration and hope, here is Dark Materia’s utterly awesome Picard Song.
