Announcements - 2000/03 - Darkness Ascendant

''Material retrieved from original Zone caches available at http://web.archive.org.

The Spin from Turbine - 3/16/2000

Mass Weddings - 3/10/00

''Original Link (now dead) - http://www.zone.com/asheronscall/news/ashenewsdarkness1.asp

Darkness Ascendant

March 7, 2000

For months, floating Crystals and Shadow creatures have held stations in the wilderness, arranged like pieces in a game. Now they have mobilized. Rumored to have emerged from the earth, strange, twisted citadels hover over the land near several towns, and a vast, bat-winged figure is now regularly seen flickering like dark lightning amid the storm clouds. Have Dereth's heroes forced the leaders of the Shadows into some sort of desperate stand, or are these merely the opening moves in some larger and darker conflict?

Continuing our commitment to bring you a major new chapter in Dereth's saga every month, we introduce the March event! A relative calm prevails despite the ghastly floating citadels and other omens. Dereth's heroes have managed to extend the reach of civilization, so builders have constructed festival grounds in outlying areas and even a magnificent wedding hall to host the mass ceremonies traditional in the spring. Master Smiths tinkering with crystal fragments and shadow gems have managed to incorporate them into superior suits of armor. Perhaps most significantly, the Asheron's Call developers have embarked on a project to refine the graphics engine, introducing colored lighting effects and amazing new Drudges and Golems. The world of Asheron's Call will come into even sharper focus over the coming months. Thanks for joining us in the adventure!

Asheron's Call Build Notes, March 7

Here are all the tiny little details of the game update that was made on March 7, 2000. This list is culled from "check-in" notes submitted by the game developers themselves. Things of greatest note are listed first.

We won't reveal many changes concerning the new story developments, as these hold opportunities for players to drive the saga forward, and we don't want to take away the fun of discovery. As usual, the Town Criers, Barkeeps, and Scribes may know the latest news! Also, the trades of crafting and selling are always in flux, so changes to prices and abilities of items are not always detailed here.

Detailed Notes for builds 2290-2296:


 * Colored lighting! Many lights, including the sun and moon, will now cast colored light in both hardware and software modes.
 * All-new Drudge models. Beautiful!
 * All-new Golem models. Gorgeous! Kill a golem today!
 * Wedding Hall added, plus fun wedding favors.
 * Festival Grounds have been added near the Festival Stones named Wintersebb (near Qalaba'r), Leafcull (near Yanshi), and Leafdawning (near Rithwic). These are great places to hold contests of skill, since they have dummy targets of various difficulty -- the Leafdawning one also has a racetrack!. Scribes sell directions to all Festival Stones. Whack an oaken Drudge today!
 * Hand-to-hand combat is easier versus moving targets. You will “stick” to your target more.
 * Weapons that use the dagger skill have never used coordination to determine their "damage modifier"; they used strength. They now use coordination, like they're supposed to according to the documentation. The higher your coordination, the more damage you will do. This was done by popular demand and hopefully will please more dagger-users than it will annoy. Since dagger-users have always needed coordination and not strength to improve their dagger skill, this change should help them focus their attribute-building. This affects the following classes of weapons: dagger, jambiya, khanjar, and knife.
 * Mages got proficiency-point gains for casting a spell on a creature, whether or not it resisted! This was broken compared to the way PP works for all other skills. Now, you don't gain PP by casting a spell unless the spell is NOT resisted by the target. This was a great way to gain PP, but it was unfair and broken, and it now is fixed.
 * You can no longer equip bows with crossbow bolts and crossbows with arrows. There was a clever loophole making this possible. It was never intended to be this way. Fixed.
 * Fixed bug where you couldn't strafe while walking or running in Thrown Combat mode.
 * Now if you cannot put a new craft object into your inventory (due to its being full or your being too encumbered), then you will get an error message and not complete the act. (You actually get a success then an error message; we will fix that later.) Still, it's a bad idea to have your main inventory be full, or to be at maximum encumbrance.
 * When shopping with maxed-out encumbrance, you'll find transactions are a bit easier. Still not a good idea, though.
 * Artifex Vault has a fix to a locked door that was confounding.
 * Lure Blade 1 updated. Was using wrong component. Lure Blade and Turn Blade spells had problems since they both shared the same formula.
 * When appraising lockable items, if you have the lockpick skill, they now display their lockpick difficulty appropriately.
 * True Value can now be cast on orbs, wands, and scrolls.
 * Olthoi Noble and Queen can fit through smaller spaces . . . beware.
 * Wells and Fountains in towns should be usable by players to get water. The solution here is pretty cool. Flasks can be used from a player's inventory on a well to get water! Shopkeepers sell flasks.
 * No matter what your Alchemy skill, as long as it is trained, you will use the Smelting Pot successfully.
 * Spell icons for Blade Bane/Lure, Bludgeon Bane/Lure, Acid Bane/Lure, Frost Bane/Lure, and Fire Bane/Lure updated with proper colors.
 * Life magic spells no longer work against characters in the purple-bubble stage before they materialize from a teleport.
 * A clever exploit made it possible to hold a chest open and leave the area. Not anymore.
 * You get a confirmation dialog when using uncharged mana stones on items that would be destroyed.
 * Errant "Tool was destroyed" messages fixed.
 * New creature emotes allow more flexible creative effects.
 * New technology introduced that sets the stage for more complex questing.
 * You can now use extended/accented characters in chat.
 * The dart (or whatever) throwing animations pushed a character back each throw -- back, back, back . . . Fixed.
 * Lugian Boulder launch needed a sound. Well I did better. I provided a sound for the Lugian boulder launch AND collision. And the landing now sounds NICE and LOUD!!!
 * Texture memory warning should only appear once after startup and after settings are changed.
 * Various infusions and oils now look like they should, with colored bottles as they appear on the ground matching the icons in inventory.
 * Female chest used to sink when putting on certain armors, allowing her head to float above her body slightly. No more.
 * Scrolled examine panel will now stay at the scroll point when its data is refreshed. Makes it easier to examine something when its mana is dropping.
 * After you inscribe an item, shortcut keys 1-9 could stop working. Fixed.
 * Golem stomp attacks no longer sound like sword-swishes, instead they sound like large stomps!
 * Projectile spells were colliding with floors of liquid hot magma! Fixed.
 * Overrode Mountain Rat level to 20 and added 346 CP. Rats are no harder; their level and CP are now more in line with their toughness.
 * Aluvian shopkeepers that sell bundles of arrowheads now buy them back. Others are being fixed later.
 * Icon for Iron Ore should look like a lump of rock, not an ingot. Fixed.
 * Slag item should look more like slag. Fixed.
 * Silencia's Golem emoted when handed an item, and it sounded like cows eating grass, according to the bug. OK, so it sounded like SCRATCHING, which all creatures do, but we agree that it was a bit too small a sound, and replaced it with grinding rock.
 * Empyrean lighthouse final degrade happens much farther back now.
 * Lightning Elementals bleed better!
 * Some male robes looked crummy at the back, many people claimed to look like a hunchback. Wanted me to either fix it or provide them chapel bell towers. I opted to fix it.
 * Skeletons never "bled" with particles from their top half. Fixed.
 * Add sound, degrade to the beeswarm.
 * Brittlemain and Impenetrability spells were using the wrong visual effect. Fixed.
 * Inscriptions and parchment/book text should be less prone to getting wiped out under odd circumstances.
 * The lightning dart particle effect is now positioned correctly.
 * Attempting to cast a spell whilst running caused character to stop but didn't cast spell. Fixed.
 * Creatures have a level-up effect now. Level up a bunny today!

''Original Link (now dead) - http://www.zone.com/asheronscall/news/ashenewsdiscount.asp

Tell Your Friends: Asheron's Call Discounted to Retailers!

March 27, 2000

Asheron's Call leads the vanguard of online worlds with monthly upgrades that add new monsters, dungeons, quests, gameplay features, and technology. Right now, Shadow creatures massing in the wilderness have reorganized as if responding to a summons. Ghastly spire citadels have erupted from the earth and hover in the sky near major towns. Adventurers have been teleported away by an invisible force, then subjected to strange tests and interrogations. A major conflict with evil appears imminent.

At this critical time, we've discounted the retail price of Asheron's Call to recruit as many adventurers as possible. With the money new players will save on the game, they can buy several extra months in Dereth. Bring your friends in on the current adventure. They won't regret it, and we promise to unite your playing group with new stories and features for years to come.