v0.8.0 — Spell Bar 2 & the Open Omens

Additions

• Spell Bar 2: every character now has a second spell bar with 12 more slots, for spells and bard songs alike. Right-click a slot out of combat to pick any spell from your spellbook, through the same category menu your spell gems use, and left-click to cast it. Slots behave exactly like gems: they fizzle, they raise your skills, they share recast timers, they trigger Sympathetic procs, and songs keep playing and twisting as usual. A spell can only sit on one bar at a time, and memorising it into a normal gem takes it off Spell Bar 2. Type /bar2 to show or hide the bar — the choice and the window's position are remembered per character — and put /bar2 cast 1 through /bar2 cast 12 on a hotbutton to fire a slot from the keyboard. A slot your character cannot currently use, after losing a level or dropping a class, is drawn grey and comes back on its own. /stopsong now stops every song you have playing from either bar, and they stay stopped until you cast them again; zoning before a stopped song wears off can start it singing again, so use /stopsong once more after the zone.
• Summon Group reaches other zones: Summon Group now calls your whole group, not only the members standing beside you. A group mate elsewhere gets a window asking whether they want to come, and may say no. They have 60 seconds to answer and cannot accept while in combat. The usual zone rules still hold: someone not flagged for your zone is sent back to the Bazaar, and nobody is pulled into an adventure or expedition they are not part of.
• The lower Omens of War zones are open to everyone: Dranik's Scar, The Bloodfields, Harbinger's Spire and Nobles' Causeway need no progression flag and no level. Dranik's Scar sits on the map beside Tearel in the Bazaar for every character, listed under Discord. Wall of Slaughter, the Ruined City of Dranik and everything past them still want the Omens of War flag from Tunat`Muram Cuu Vauax in Tacvi.
• The Fabled drop Fabled gear from their era: during a Fabled season, every player who loots a Fabled named gets one random authentic Fabled item from that named's era, rolled for them alone in their Spoils window. It arrives at the same quality as the rest of that Fabled's loot — Legendary by default — and a clicky comes with all its charges. Any Classic Fabled might yield a Fabled Fippy's Paw, for instance. Only Fabled named drop them; the ordinary named never do.
• A Magus at every Wayfarer camp: the camps in Butcherblock, East Commonlands, Everfrost and South Ro each have a Magus now, as North Ro already did. Hail one, name another camp, and you are sent there. Bring your Adventurer's Stone, the same one the adventure recruiters ask for; without it a camp Magus offers Nedaria's Landing only. Magus Wenla in Nedaria's Landing sends you to the same five camps. Before this only North Ro had a Magus, and her trips to East Commonlands and South Ro went nowhere.

Balance

• Rampage comes back much sooner: Rampage now has a 5 minute reuse instead of 10. Each rank of Hastened Rampage takes 40 seconds off and the seventh takes 30, so with all seven ranks it is ready every 30 seconds where it used to be every 3 minutes. This covers Warriors and Berserkers. A Rampage already cooling down finishes its old timer first.
• Gladiator's Fury from level 10, and it hits harder: Warriors, Paladins, Shadow Knights and Berserkers can pick it up at level 10, and the first rank is free. Rank 2 opens at level 25 and rank 3 at level 45, for 10 points each — it used to want level 65 and 30 points. While you dual wield with a two-hander your hits now land 90% of their damage at rank 1, 95% at rank 2 and full damage at rank 3, up from 65%, 70% and 75%, so it is worth carrying from the start. If you already bought it, the difference is back in your unspent points: 30, 50 or 80 for one, two or three ranks. The description in the AA window updates with the next client patch.
• Weapon stances for four classes: Two-Handed Proficiency and Dual-Wielding Proficiency are now free at level 10 for Warriors, Paladins, Shadow Knights and Berserkers, where they were Warrior-only at level 70. The class list in the AA window updates with the next client patch.
• You can bank 1,000 unspent AAs instead of 100: sitting on 100 unspent points used to throw away every further scrap of AA experience and tell you the cap was reached. The ceiling is 1,000 now, so you keep earning while you save for an expensive line.
• Headshot, Assassinate and Finishing Blow stop at level 70: their top ranks reached levels 88, 90 and 92, which put a level 80 raid boss one arrow from death. They now work on enemies up to level 70 and no higher, whatever rank you own. Nothing leaves your AA window and no points are refunded; the later ranks still raise the damage, they simply no longer raise the level. The descriptions will keep showing the old levels for now.
• Later Headshot and Anatomy ranks no longer cost you chance: from rank 11 on, Headshot — and Anatomy on a backstab — used to lower your chance to land the kill as the price of a higher target level. Those ranks now keep the same chance as Headshot rank 8 and Anatomy rank 10.
• Bards can run several detrimental songs at once: your damage-over-time, snare, slow, debuff, area and crowd-control songs (mez, fear, stun, lull) no longer replace each other. Sing one on a target and it keeps pulsing every 6 seconds while you sing the next, so several run at once on different enemies alongside one helpful song, with no re-clicking. A song on a single enemy ends when it dies or leaves range or sight; any song ends when you take it off your bar. Stun, mez, fear, sitting, feigning death and being charmed stop them all, and so do /stopsong and death. Area songs centred on you keep going wherever your target wanders. Every pulse of a mez song is another attempt on its target, even after damage wakes it — it can still resist, and a resist does not stop the song — so sing it elsewhere or take it off your bar to let the target go. Songs with a recast or a mana cost, such as Brusco's Boastful Bellow, Brusco's Bombastic Bellow, Ancient: Lullaby of Shadow and Creeping Dreams, still land once as before.
• Bard songs trigger Beeeees! and Shamanic Tongues: a Bard hero who also holds the Druid's Beeeees!, the Shaman's Shamanic Tongues or the Necromancer's Cascade of Decay can now set them off with damage-over-time songs, the way a Druid's or Shaman's spells do: Fufil's Curtailing Chant, Fufil's Diminishing Dirge, Angstlich's Assonance, Ancient: Chaos Chant, and every Tuyen's and Vulka's chant. Each chant tick has a chance, and Angstlich's Assonance triggers on every tick. Snares, slows, debuffs, mez, lull and the bellows do not. Before this, songs never triggered them at all, because both abilities wanted a spell costing at least 10 mana.
• The Games now come after Luclin: the Game Master in the Bazaar opens the arena only for accounts that have finished every expansion before the Planes of Power — Classic (Lord Nagafen and Lady Vox), Kunark, Velious and Luclin. The Games pit you against the powers of those Planes, so they come after Luclin now instead of in place of it. The flags belong to your account: once one of your characters has earned them, all of them can enter. Hail the Game Master and he names the bosses your account still needs. Any Games you have already won stay on your ledger and wait for you. Everyone in your group needs them too, and needs to be in the Bazaar when you say ready, so nobody is locked out of a run they could not enter.
• Lady Lachesis adjusts levels one class at a time: every character can now ask her to lower or restore the level of any class they hold, at 500 platinum per level in either direction. Pick a class, pick lower or restore, pick a level. Progress inside the new level resets to its start, your other classes are untouched and your buffs stay on. A class can only be restored up to the level it was lowered from. Your hero level is your lowest class, so you can build the combination you want one class at a time.
• Lady Lachesis' menus behave: her hail now offers the free AA reset to single-class characters too, rather than promising a menu that never appeared. She tells you when your free reset is spent or when you lack the Emperor's Favor for a paid one, and the reset text reads correctly. Blind fate follows the server's class limit, will not start while you are fighting, and if it stops partway she says so and tells you to check your classes.
• Kratos only answers in Say: saying kratos in group, raid, guild, shout, auction or OOC no longer calls the buffbot. Say it in Say chat, as before. Nothing else changes — same buffs, same tiers, same 2 hour duration, same 60 second cooldown.
• Kratos no longer announces you to the zone: calling on it used to crack thunder over the whole zone with your name in it, every 60 seconds. It is silent to everyone else now. You still get your own line with how many buffs took hold, your tier, the duration and how many pets were covered.
• Two NPCs have left North Ro: the pair handing out free food and drink in the Northern Desert of Ro are gone. The Mischievous Halfling in the Bazaar still gives a full stack of Emperor's Feast and Jupiter's Nectar whenever you ask him to provide food and drink.

Fixes

• Experience bonuses run out again. A Bottle of Adventure could hold its bonus for good: it stopped counting down for as long as you carried anything that casts it — the rest of the stack, say — in any bag, on your cursor or in a worn slot, so a second bottle kept up to +50% experience running forever, and an elixir with charges left did the same by itself. They now run their stated time and expire. Experience elixirs can no longer be parked in an Armarium clicky slot either: drink one when you want it. A frozen bonus you are carrying right now starts counting down on its own and wears off.
• Experience bonuses count down wherever you can fight. A few zones pause buff timers, and some of those are hunting grounds — East Commonlands and Thundercrest Isles among them — so an experience bonus never ran out while you stayed and kept killing. It now ticks in any zone where you can fight, and still pauses with the rest of your buffs in the Bazaar, the Plane of Knowledge and the other safe zones. Dying still does not end one; being sacrificed by a necromancer clears every buff, as it always has.
• Buffs from strangers count down again. In a group, a buff cast on you by someone outside it could stop ticking and survive your death, as long as they stayed in your zone and still carried whatever cast it. Only your own buffs and your group's do that now, which is what was always meant.
• Vainglorious Shout and the other cone abilities work. It claimed you needed a target while you had one, and did nothing — as did every AA that hits in a cone: Wall of Wind, Beguiler's Banishment, Paralytic Spray and the six Drakkin breath attacks. They fire now. Keep an enemy targeted, and face the ones you mean to catch: the cone goes where your character is looking.
• Frenzied Swipes only hastens Feral Swipe. While it was up, every AA you used came back 27 seconds sooner — which, with Rampage now at 30 seconds, would have meant a 3 second Rampage.
• Omens of War opens up if you hold the flag. Killing Tunat`Muram Cuu Vauax in Tacvi is meant to open the era, but its zones were shut to everyone, so the flag did nothing and the Wayfarer Magus offering a trip to Wall of Slaughter sent you nowhere. Wall of Slaughter, the Ruined City of Dranik, Anguish, Riftseekers' Sanctum, the Muramite Proving Grounds, the Catacombs, the Hollows and the Sewers all take you now once you hold it, and turn you back if you do not. Anguish, Riftseekers' Sanctum and the Proving Grounds carry their own level requirements too — 68, 69 and 65 — which apply unless you are a hero catching a class up.
• Overflow zones stay open. When a busy zone such as the Bazaar opened an overflow copy, that copy was deleted minutes later and any corpses in it were buried. Overflow copies now stay.
• Camping with your Trader stand up no longer crashes the Bazaar. Clicking Begin Trader and then camping out — or using #offlinetrader — took the zone down and disconnected everyone in it instead of raising your offline merchant. It was not a one-off: your stand was still listed when you came back, so camping again brought the zone down again. Your merchant now goes up as intended and the stand stays open while you are logged off. Your goods were never at risk, since listings and the items in your Trader's Satchels live in the database and rode out every restart. If you were clicking End Trader before camping to work around it, you no longer need to.
• Offline stands behave properly after a zone or server restart. Stands rebuilt when the Bazaar came back up were reading leftover memory for some of their settings, which could make a merchant act unpredictably. Fixed on both paths — the one that raises your stand when you camp, and the one that restores it after a restart.
• The Spoils no longer leaves loot behind on the corpse. A kill rolls your loot for you personally, so what lands in The Spoils is your own roll rather than a copy of the monster's. When that roll came up empty the monster kept its own drops instead, and you would find gear on a corpse The Spoils never mentioned. The corpse is cleared and its coin paid out either way.
• "Luck is with you!" matches your loot. With The Spoils on, a kill could announce an upgraded item that nobody then received. The message now only appears for an item you really get — look for it in /spoils, or on the corpse when the loot was left there.
• Levelling a new class with a friend pays both of you. A hero levelling a new class can now group with a friend of the same level and both earn: the game used to judge the group by the hero's highest class, so the friend got nothing and the kill was worth less. Group and raid experience now go by the level you are playing. One thing to know — while you level a new class, that class's level is the one that counts, so you need to be within 5 levels of the highest player in the group, or within half your own level if that is more.
• Adventures survive zoning. Zoning after accepting a Lost Dungeons of Norrath adventure left the recruiter insisting you had none and the Leave Adventure button dead, even with the adventure still in your Adventure window. Both keep working now, and a win that completes while you are zoning is paid when you land.
• The North Ro Wayfarers camp is staffed. The Takish-Hiz camp was standing empty; its adventure recruiter, both adventure merchants and the Wayfarer who hands out the Adventurer's Stone are all there.
• The open spellbook shows the volume you switched to. /book 2 with the book already open left the old volume's spells on the page, and clicking one cast the new volume's spell from that spot. The page redraws straight away now.
• Right-clicking an empty spell gem shows the spell menu again. It sometimes did nothing at all. The menu follows the volume you have open with /book and lists only that volume's spells, so a volume with no spells has no menu, and /book 1 brings back your first 720.
• Your other pets' names show in the Pet window. With more than one pet out, an extra pet with a longer name — any pet named after you, for instance — could show a blank name, leak a little memory every frame while it was listed, and crash the client when you camped or reloaded your UI. The names show properly now, and clicking one targets that pet whatever it is called.
• No more stutter when killing monsters. Every kill rebuilt the whole AA window list, open or closed, for a frame hitch that ticking "Can Purchase" used to hide. The list now rebuilds only when something on it changes, like earning a point or a level, and buying an AA rebuilds it once instead of three times.
• No more gibberish in your chat window. Some players saw lines like SPOILSRULES|ADD|... printing into chat while their Spoils window's RULES tab sat empty. Those lines are how the server feeds the window — they were never meant for your screen. They reach the window in every setup now, so chat stays clean and your saved rules show up where they belong.
• Smoother frame rate. The client does less background work every frame, especially in busy zones, and stops writing debug output on every key press and click. The server also sends your character stats only when they change instead of the whole list every few seconds, and your stats no longer go blank for several seconds after a zone.
• Patch your client: Spell Bar 2, the spellbook and spell-gem menu fixes, the Pet window names, the AA window stutter and the quiet chat all come down with The Imperial Courier. Press PATCH in the launcher before you play.