New areas, other changes July 15th 2023.

We have quite a few other changes in today’s update, details below:

New Area and Goal: Svrogan’s Logging Camp:

After years at sea, with now tatterred sails and dwindling
stores, the call from atop the main mast comes as a shock:
"Land ahoy!". Captain Svrogan and his crew have been in search
for the fabled Ironwood Isles. It is said the Ironwood trees
produce the hardest wood known to man. Many have called it a
fool's errand, and that it was but a fabled land. Svrogan
however, knew that if he could find these Ironwood isles he
could be a rich man indeed.

In the distance, a faint glimmer akin to mirage in a desert 
heat caught his eye. Encircled in a thick fog, only the faintest
of treetops emerged high above. Just then, a ray of sunlight
caught just right, and sent a cascade of brilliant light that
pierced the fog ever so briefly. 

At long last the journey for the lost Ironwood Isles is about
to pay off! Svrogan knew that the journey was just beginning
though, as now he would have to make shore and setup his
logging camp before any profits would be seen. 

Will you answer the call and help Svrogan and his lumberjacks
establish camp on the island of the lost Ironwood forests?

Level Range         : 80 to 110
Goal Difficulty     : Medium?
Goal Recommended at : Level  100
Goal Converter      : Myrddin
Area Author         : Myrddin 

New Goal in the Dark Temple of Zyian:

Among the villagers in Abend, whispers and rumors have said that people
have gone missing when they are around the well. There are also rumors
about a group of robed and hooded people entering and leaving the well. A
few brave and adventurous people have gone into the well, and none have
returned.

Will you be the person to investigate what is happening and end their
nefarious intent, or will you just walk by?

Level Range          : 130 to 150
Goal Difficulty      : Medium
Goal Recommended at  : Level 140
Goal Min Level       : Level 100
Area Author          : Rundvelt
Goal Converter       : Teleron

Other game changes:

• As I think most of you know (annnounce note 1437) there is a group of players and imms looking at changes to improve balance and PVP in the game. Part of this process will involve some experimental changes to try something and see how it goes.

  One of those changes is to speed up PVP at Superhero. As of this note, all PVP damage at level 200+ is doubled. Maybe it should be 50% or some other number or maybe we decide this is too broad of a change and remove it completely so let’s try it and see what we learn.

• Aard has been without a web client for a while. I have been working on a modified version of MudPortal and getting it working for Aard. It has been out there for a while unannounced but it is now ready and available at:

  https://play.aardwolf.com

  Note that this is only meant to be a very basic quick way to try Aard, the Aardwolf Mushclient is still the recommended client. Also, although it is a web client this does report the *real* I/P address to the game so please don’t try to use it to multiplay.

• The max number of people you can ignore has been raised from 10 to 20.
• Scribed scrolls / brewed options will now have descriptions and keywords that look like this:

    +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
    | Keywords   : scroll 3xincompletehealing incompletehealing       |
    |            : 1xrefresh refresh                                  |
    | Name       : a scroll of 3*incomplete healing, refresh          |
    +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
  

  Note the difference between 3x in keywords and 3* in the description. One is better for reading the other is easier to manage items. (Yajan/Myth)

• Fixed a couple things with the ‘clients’ command. Mudlet never counted correctly because of the way they change the client ID with each version and also added “Mudrammer” and the new web client.
• ‘Runto healer’ now works in Aylor to take you to the healer. (Kelaire)
• Wolf Spirits gives higher bonuses during three moons but this was only working if the spell was cast while outside. I removed the outside part of the requirement and also removed the lower duration under three moons.
• Social usage by mobs and players is now tracked separately.
• Fixed the player name not apppearing correctly in ‘yell’ when they have a pretitle set. (Talia)
• The message when you gain a powerup will now show powerups this remort in the message. (Losteix)
• When you use ‘:’ to emote no a channel, if the next character is ) or (it will use that instead so you can still do the basic smile/frown symbols on channels. (Guinness)
• Fixed the ‘(Null)’ message to room whenever anyone wears/removes Aard sleeping bag.
• There is a new policy for restrings – you don’t need every character to be a different xterm color, but this will allow a little more at least – short desc limit 40 characters as displayed / 100 characters including color codes, long desc limit has not changed as long desc generally should not have many (any?) color codes anyway. (Vilgan)