Vanguard Build 1778 Patch Notes 3/13/2007

GAMEPLAY NOTES
- Aggro NPCs that can see invis will now attack if you move near them.
- Aggro NPCs that cannot see invis will no longer attack if you move very close to them.
- Ranged attacks use dexterity for their damage bonus again, they had been using strength.
- Some bugs with target hit points not updating correctly have been fixed.
- Disabled the text output about the number of charges on a charged item changing
- NPC Wyverns should now be capable of flying as intended
- All Clubs, Axes, Martial Swords, Hammers, Longswords and Maces have all had a damage increase.  The choice between light and medium weapons should now be more difficult to make.  Remember, while light weapons have a critical hit bonus every special attack with a medium or slow weapon does more damage. The rate at which you can use attacks does not change with the speed of your weapon but your auto-attack rate does change.

ADVENTURING NOTES
- All Classes – Some attacks remain direct attacks.  These are intended to be lower in damage, but have alternate uses and should be less expensive overall.  These debuff, buff and are not intended to be used to be a main source of damage.
- Bards - The Bard instrument ‘Ancient Melody’ has been changed from granting a voice modification to granting a string modification. Sorry Bards, but wasn’t it fun while it lasted?
- Blood Mage - Blood Tribute now heals the caster’s group as intended.
- Cleric – Your finishing moves now all cost 10 endurance
- Cleric – Maul of the Gods and Maul of Divinity now use a percentage of weapon damage instead of being direct attacks.
- Disciple – Increased the damage of Falling Petal, White Lotus Strike, Soul Cutter and Lao’Jin Burst
- Dread Knight – Increased the damage of Dark Bastion, Incite, Inflame, Shield of Fear, and Scourge.
- Dread Knight – Scythe of Doom now drains for 100% of the damage it deals
- Monk – Fixed an issue with Quivering Palm causing 3 lines of text when executed.
- Monk – Crescent Kick now costs 10 endurance and does not incur global recovery.
- Monk – Counter attacks are now cost free
- Monk – Many finishing attacks were more costly than intended.  Endurance costs have been lowered.
- Monk – Many attacks have been converted over to use weapon damage directly, either flat or percent based.  This will increase over all damage and give better returns when upgrading weapons and increasing strength.  Affected attacks are:
                Ashen Hand
                Crescent Kick
                Dragon’s Rage
                Sundering Dragon Claw
                Fists of Transcendence
                Legendary Fists
                Flying Kick
                Kick of the Heavens
                Thousand Fists
                Three Finger Strike
                Thundering Fists
                Deadly Adder Hand
                Celestial Kick of the Master
                Withering Palm
                Stinging Backfist
                Steal the Wind
                Quivering Palm
- Paladin – Stroke of Conviction now progresses differently to provide a more steady progression of hate.  The new levels are: 20, 28, 36, 44, 50
- Paladin – Maul of Valus has been added to trainers starting at level 18.  This is a new line of finishing attacks that follows Hammer of Valus.
- Paladin – Stroke of Fervor has been added to trainers starting at level 30.  This is a new line of finishing attacks that follows Stroke of Conviction.
- Paladin – Holy Strike and Blade of Vol Anari now deal their additional effects to fiendish races as well.  Ulvari hunters rejoice!
- Ranger – Increased the damage of Fleetblade
- Rogue – Please visit your nearest rogue vendor to learn all of the new poisons that you can. The following information is what has been changed…
- Rogue – Your weapon poisons are now granted at level 10 and have received numerous changes in functionality and recipes. There are also upgrades more frequently than there used to be.
- Rogue – Your flechettes are now granted at level 15 and have been adjusted in effectiveness and function (you can actually even train them now). They will be upgraded more frequently and have had new recipes added.
- Rogue – Your darts are now granted at level 20 and have also been adjusted in functionality and effectiveness. New dart recipes have been added and some dart recipes have been adjusted
- Rogue – Your scroll forging is now granted at level 25 and have received recipe alterations. These can now be trained as well.
- Rogue – The costs for scrolls to learn poisons, flechettes, darts and scroll forging have been lowered drastically. This should make them affordable.
- Rogue – Poisons, flechettes, scrolls and darts have received new animations.
- Rogue – Vendor costs for poison components have had their prices adjusted. This will be an ongoing process – these AREN’T the final prices.
- Shaman – Fixed an issue with the Patron Spirits quests that was allowing some players to pursue two different Patrons at the same time.
- Shaman – Claw of Winter is now a standard attack that uses weapon damage.
- Warrior – Increased the damage of Smash
- Warrior – Increased the damage and hate portion of Overwhelm

CRAFTING NOTES
- Of Striking crafted items have been changed. The previous bonus from striking was too powerful and so these items can no longer be made. Instead recipes will now produce striking items that are within the balance guidelines and add a striking proc as well.
This is NOT a retroactive change. Old striking items will remain the same
- Disabled a lot of the useless crafting spam
- The Thestran caravel quests now require the proper faction.
- Fixed issue with weak product description
- All old of striking weapons have been changed to soulbound
- Specialized defense now adds to block, dodge, and parry skill and the actual specialized defense skill did nothing at all
- Crafting quests should function as adventuring quests now, displaying the proper color difficulty and showing red quest bangs for quests you don’t qualify for but will in the near future.
- Some of the education quests have had their starting levels adjusted.
- The item requirements for the quest “Fresh Cloth” have been revised to better match the reward. If you are on this quest, please check your log.
- The “Swordsmith’s Apprentice” quests have had their level requirement increased. The experience rewards have been increased as well.
- The two reward items for the “Swordsmith’s Apprentice” line of quests have had their overall power increased.
- The advanced work order Door Frame recipe no longer asks for incorrect tools and has had a formatting error corrected.
- Hardened Meteor Shard should now give the proper deconstruct rewards
- You can no longer deconstruct some crafted cloaks
- All of the crafted crafting gear that got skipped by the last fix has been updated (no joking this time!)
- The direction-quest to find Kef Jortul for amateur Kojan outfitters and the Swordsmith’s Apprentice lines of quests should be more factual/helpful in their directions to find the appropriate NPCs.
- The Gwartak faction gain from the quest Grazeel’s Peace Treaty has been lowered.
- Joley and Rold should now despawn more reliably for the quest “Tonic” if the brute force method is chosen. However, safety is still not guaranteed.
- Some special/unique items were accidentally obtainable from regular work orders. This has been fixed.
- The Fiend Hunter’s tools now add ingenuity as the description reports instead of reasoning.
- Blacksmiths must now get at least a B on their specialization recipes to successful craft an item for the specialization quest, just as the other trades do.
- Focusing dust of resilience has been changed to Focusing dust of Wizardry
- Focusing dust of wizardry adds a skill bonus to Evocation, Alteration, and Conjuration when added to cloaks

DIPLOMACY NOTES
- Fixed an issue with the display of parley card refresh timers.
- The Informant’s Vest (Diplomacy container in the Shoulder slot) is now the Informant’s Valise. It equips now in the Diplomacy Container slot. The valise currently holds only Information, but will very soon accommodate clothing as well.
- Thannis Heartsworn will once again offer the quest, “Playing Matchmaker,” that follows “Local Maidens” in Tursh.
- Quick Pun now displays the correct icon overhead when played.
- Well-Traveled Wisdom now displays the correct icon overhead when played.
- Common Ground now displays the correct icon overhead when played.
- Blunt Evaluation now displays the correct icon overhead when played.
- Maze of Logic now displays the correct icon overhead when played.
- You may no longer Gossip with Crafters in Mekalia. This is a temporary change that will be reversed at a future time.
- Crafter Convince Civic parleys are now correctly labeled as “Shared Effort” in Tanvu.
- The Paladin Instructor Bordardia Stoneforge is now a Noble and takes part in Civic Diplomacy in Bordinar’s Cleft.
- The Civic Diplomacy option “Spiritual Revival” is now correctly an Incite parley in Tursh.
- Additional god-related lore dialogues added to the Civic Diplomacy options for Clergy in Tursh.
- Soldier Civic conversation options in Tursh are now correctly labeled.
- Captains Meshkat and Reyahni in Tawar Galan are now Domestics.
- Debutante’s Pants are no longer restricted to light armor wearing Adventuring classes.
- Leg items are now standardized to new Presence values (generally higher by 10-50%).
- The tier 2 waist item “Stylish Surable Silk Sash” is now no longer an alliteration.
- Elindrila Summerbloom is now Clergy in Ca’ail Brael.
- “Flesh and Blood” is now an Inspire card that repeals 2 inspire into 5 Demand, and modifies the dialogue status as well.
- Foot and Hand items are now standardized to new Presence values (generally higher by 10-50%).
- Diplomacy Chest, Shoulder, Waist, Leg, Foot, and Hand items are now standardized in weight and other statistics.
- Known Issue: Some Diplomacy items, especially tier 3 items, may not be deconstructable. This will be corrected in a future patch.
- Tier 3 clothing items are now available in Kojan and Qalia from Informants.
- The Traveler in Lomshir will no longer flip out like a Morduma and attack random wildlife.

WORLD POPULATION NOTES
- Ahgram - Ahgram guards will now correctly give out directions to adventuring instructors.
- Cragwind Ridge – The 3-dot snakes should stop following players into the outpost. Hooray!
- Fallen Cove - More than one Brittleshard Weapons Cache should now spawn at a time.
- Karrus Hakrel - Glowing Aqual Orbs are tradable.
- Karrus Hakrel - Glowing aqual orbs are no longer governed by trivial loot code.
- Ksaravi Gulch - The inhabitants of the Tauthien Tuatiren Village in Ksaravi Gulch are now 3 dot difficulty instead of 4 and 5 dot difficulties.
- Quests - The quest “The End of Innocence” now requires players to use the Altar of Zar instead of just walking up to it.
- Quests - Thorian Glowban will now exchange any ancient weapon once for any other weapon. Choose wisely.
- Rahz Inkur - Players above level 40, you’ll find more quests available to you at the outpost of Deliverance in Rahz Inkur.
- Seawatch Coast - Overland NPCs should have a lower aggro radius
- Seawatch Coast - Several overland NPCs have been changed from aggressive to non aggressive
- Three Rivers - “Task for Three Rivers: Greater Stonesmashers” should now update in all cases when slaying the appropriate targets.
- Three Rivers – Reduced the refresh timer on the Ant Queen Ayxlxyx event, allowing her to spawn more often.
- Vault of the Hidden - Vault of the Hidden should be summonable inside
- Zaraj Arena - The Legendary item reward “Destruction” from the Zaraj Arena has had its stats tweaked.
- Zaraj Arena - All quests that yield Zaraj Coins have had their reward increased
- Zaraj Arena - Arena Enforcers now offer a repeatable quest for Zaraj Coins
- Zaraj Arena - Added many new single events to the arena, ranging in difficulty from solo to full group
- Zaraj Arena - Challenge Tickets now have the correct icon associated with them
- Zaraj Arena - The gold event now yields 60 coins
- Zaraj Arena - The platinum event now yields 100 coins and is more difficult
- Zaraj Arena - Snare immunity was taken off of several single events

Items
- The items ‘Ancient Longbow of Leth Verael’ and ‘Ancient Shortbow of Leth Varael’ along with their upgraded versions now give +bow instead of +sneak.
- The heroic version of Queldoral, Bounty of the Gods now summons heroic Moonstrikes and Sunstrikes instead of Legendary Moonstrikes and Sunstrikes
- Mask of the Portal is now soulbound instead of bindable
- Certain level 31+ Thestran Greatmauls now have the correct 2-handed weapon model attached in place of their previous 1-handed model.
- All Shortswords in the game have had their appearances updated and retiered; additionally, they should actually be “short” now.
- All Longswords in the game have had their appearances updated and tiered.

GUI NOTES
- The red/pink color for text on your offensive target should now update correctly representing if a NPC can see you or not (red, aggro and can see you, pink, aggro and cannot see you).
- The map now properly shows your location while you are driving a ship, and you should now be able to target things (PCs, NPCs, etc...) while driving a ship.
- Your modified factions are now visible in your character sheet under the Diplomacy Factions tab below the Prestige Factions. They will be colored according to your faction rating and you may mouse over them to see your actual standing with that faction.

CODING NOTES
- Fix for NPC Names not drawing in the correct color.
- Fix for another group disconnect bug. This one occured intermittently if you had previously been in a group during your play session, and usually occured within a couple minutes of joining your new group.

~The Vanguard Team