Three new goals, thief changes, other

This Subclass merge and changes:

Some pretty big changes to thief. The main one is that the Assassin subclass has been merged into Bandit and anyone who was previously an Assassin is now a Bandit. All thieves also have a subclass timer reset. These are the overall changes to each thief subclass:

Ninja:

• The ‘Stalk’ and ‘Quickstab’ abilities have been moved into Ninja.
• Lag free strangle is now a Ninja ability.
• Ninja has a new ability called ‘Veil of Shadows’ that allows them to become immune from to magic damage for a few seconds. The duration and the recovery are both based on dex, str, and luck.
• They also have a similar ability called ‘Veil of Stone’ that allows them to become immune to physical damage for a few seconds.

For the purposes of this skill, ‘magical damage’ is anything not bash, slash or pierce, so can still be weapon damage if it is a magical type.

Both abilities are combined under a single skill and command just called ‘veil’. They can both be used in combat and are lag free, but cannot be used at the same time.

Bandit:

• The ‘Assassinate’ ability has been moved into Bandit.
• The extra (up to 5th) attack on Backstab has also been moved into Bandit.
• Pilferage has been significantly increased. The old range of gold bonus was 10-30% and maxxed out at 300 luck. The new range is 25% to 80% and maxxes out at 600 luck.
• Moving through a room that has been entrapped will now be slightly slower than before. Kind of a niche use but mudinfo #1929 has more info on why this matters at all.
• Bandit can now backstab while in combat, but in a different way than Ninja. Ninja can start a fight with a mob then still backstab it while bandit can only backstab *another* target not already in combat, so this is useful to initiate combat with one mob while already fighting another.
• Bandit has a small chance (based on dex and luck) to insta-kill a mob with a backstab. Mobs with extremely high HP for their level may not be outright killed but will still take significant damage.Mobs that cannot be assassinated can also not be killed this way, or mobs immune to your damage. There is also a level check in here but it won’t impact anyone not trying to use this feature to repeat backstab / flee on massively higher level mobs. Nocrit mobs can’t be affected by this either.

New Area and Goal – Tilule Rehabilitation Clinic:

Do you ever wonder where NPCs go after they have been wounded in battle, then suddenly reappear as if nothing ever happened? They make a visit to the Tilule Rehabilitation Clinic! Here, patients receive medical care to heal their wounds, and even have surgery performed on them to correct those more serious ailments.

Things are not as they seem at the Tilule Rehabilitation Clinic, though. The owner of the clinic, Tilule, needs your help completing various tasks to help clean up the clinic and ensure it continues running for many years to come. If you are up to the challenge, find the owner on the third floor of the clinic. He will be happy to accept any help that comes his way.

Level Range         : 50 to 80
Goal Difficulty     : Medium
Goal Recommended at : Level 75
Goal Converter      : Rhuli
Area Author         : Rhuli

New Area and Goal – Shadow’s End:

The Western Halo Mountain Range’s shadow’s edge looms over an ancient burial ground known as Shadow’s End. Wind whips through the pass and gives a chilling voice to the skeletal remains trodden deep into the dirt and they scream hollow tales of generations of warfare. Over the years, bloodied victors, maimed survivors and their distant kin raised many mausoleums to house the remains of the luckless victims of such senseless bloodshed.

The beautiful, gracious and noble queen of Lamentia named Lailah possessed a heart of gold. Lailah cared deeply for each of her few followers and gave generously, despite her own poverty. On the 147th day of the Season of Piety, of the Year of the Followers, Queen Lailah entered Shadow’s End to pay her respect to the fallen.

As she walked among the burial grounds with her friend Starburst, the sun goldfinch, Queen Lailah chanced upon the swept marble landing of an open tomb. An open tomb, this long after the hostilities, drew her attention and roused her suspicions. The Queen carelessly approached the tomb and stepped into the prison of a powerful, deceitful being of shadow known as The Dread.

The Dread offered Lailah endless riches in exchange for shared possession of her own body. Lailah, who had borne witness to the greatest depth of poverty possible in the war-devastated lands over which she reigned, gave in to The Dread’s temptation out of misguided hope. During their unification, The Dread leeched the generosity of Lailah’s heart, at once feeding off her loss and twisting her soul toward corruption, greed and darkness.

Lailah’s humanity withered under The Dread’s corrosive influence and her body followed the perverse degradation that started in her mind and soul. The queen’s heart still beat with a golden light, however, and her soul, not wanting to leave the world with a twisted reminder of its foolish pact, compelled Lailah to design an end to her master’s reign even as she fell under his power.

Lailah designed a map to lead her followers to the treasure chamber. Sensing her betrayal and hating that golden fragment of humanity that remained to her, The Dread viciously ripped Lailah’s golden heart from her body using her own twisted hands. Lailah’s corrupted shadow immediately shredded the map but was blinded during its work by Starburst, who stole the remnants of the document and distributed the tattered pieces across the land. Only one who possesses great wisdom and strength will be able to reclaim
Lailah’s treasure.

Welcome to Shadow’s End, adventurer.

Level Range         : 200 to 201
Goal Difficulty     : Difficult
Goal Recommended at : Level 201
Goal Converter      : Trepid & Robbo
Area Author         : Trepid

Note: Two people working together are required to complete this goal.

New Area and Goal – Old Vanir:

A long time ago, there was a group of individuals who followed the God Njord and his struggle to destroy the Aesir. These were the Clan of Vanir. Ultimately, the Aesir tore the Vanir asunder and their fight was ended. The only thing left behind is the ruins of their former Clan Hall. Recently, a team of Aarchaeologists, lead by the Professor, unearthed their ancient Clan Maze.

This is a test raid that can be unlocked with the completion of the first test in raiding, the Testmaze10 raid. Please see Goals Testmaze10 for more information.

This is a tribute to the Vanir clan, which disbanded in August 2014.

Other Game changes this reboot:

• Have made some changes to gquest timers and extended time. If a global quest is won within the first 10 minutes, the timer will now be extended for 5 minutes. It was previously 5 minutes with the timer extended for 3. (Throxx / Mendaloth)
• You no longer need stormy weather to use Call Lighting, but you do still have to be outside. Many people have suggested this over the last year or two no not putting a specific name next to the idea.
• The delay between shots while using ‘volley’ has been increased and the duration of the skill itself has been extended. Overall amount of damage will be the same but a little more spread out giving people a chance to escape. If you can’t because you’re not paying attention or stacked too many commands then that’s on you. Triggering recall on combat is not legal and this does include ranged damage.
• The addition of critical hits impacted the balance of some high end epic areas a little too much. We now have a flag to ignore critical hits completely for certains – they won’t do critical hits and critical hits will not happen against them. This won’t be set on too many but I will ask the imms to post to mudinfo as they are identified and flagged. Builders, you can’t set this flag yourselves, an imm has to do it for you. (Quadrapus / Koala)
• Critical hits were not showing when the weapon damtype was just the generic ‘hit’ message. Now fixed. (Ocho)
• The cause of the last crash was pretty obscure – forcing an animated object to talk on a channel while we had the code on that requires new players to be ‘approved’ by an imm/advisor/helper before others can hear them, but is now fixed. Related bug causing special characters in mob names to throw a GMCP error when they talk on grouptalk also fixed. (Fiendish)
• Chance of retreating / fleeing from a high percentage in web have been reduced.
• The ‘reown’ command was not sending a GMCP update after the trivia points were charged, making it look like you didn’t get charged at all if you were only looking at client stat windows. (Shemyaza / Anaristos)>