Puntif

If you check your harvesting rate, it is probably one per second or less. Those extra clicks just cause a "slow down" message (which you may be #ignoring). That's my understanding.

The gargoyles only move and attack at night (between 3:30 and 0:30 game time). If you only go onto the White Stone map during the day, you get no gargoyle attacks unless you attack a sleeping one you find.

I thought of this while laying in bed this morning: There is a ship too large for the docks, so it must be embarked and debarked vial ships boats that work like the other EL boats do - transporting you between some docks location and the ship. The ship is large and has multiple decks: at top deck, a deck for cabins including the galley, 1 or more decks for cargo and ships storage, and a bottom level filled with rocks for ballast and bilge water. The captain may have a quest for you. He has a list of things he needs done and he will offer you one of them to do that matches your abilities (carrying capacity, skill levels, etc). Once you have performed the quest, you get no more quests until you take a voyage, but after returning to the home port, you are again eligible to get a quest to allow you to start a new voyage. I have thought of quests for provisioning the ship and gathering cargo for the voyage: 1a) Bring him a load of 10 gold bars from Dan in Portland. 1b) Bring him a load of 10 silver bars from Dan in Portland. 1c) Bring him a load of 10 stell bars from Dan in Portland. 2a) Bring a load of food to Thelma, the galley cook: 50 cooked meat from Moonshadow Tavern. 2b) Bring a load of food to Thelma: 100 fruits from Lakeside Tavern. 2c) Bring a load of food to Thelma: 100 veggies from the Isla Prima tavern. 3) Bring 20 pieces of coal to Thelma. She will reimburse you the purchase cost but you can buy it or mine it yourself. 4a) Since the voyage may be dangerous, bring the captain a sword of any kind and he'll pay 1 plat more than the cost to buy. You can buy it or make it. 4b) Bring the captain a scimitar he ordered from the swordsmith in Portland. 5) Go to White Stone City library and bring back a map they have stored away for him. 6a) Bring a load of 5 hammers from the blacksmith who sells them. 6b) Bring a load of 20 needles and 50 spools of thread from the Portland general store. 6c) Bring a load of 100 pieces of leather from the Lakeside general store. 6d) Bring a load of 20 deer skins (not the fur) from the fur trader. The ship has rats on it. The captain has placed a bounty on rats (just bring the tails of dead rats to the first mate to claim your bounty). Regular rats (maybe a little tougher than bunnies and don't attack) are found on all decks (bounty=5 gold). Huge rats (much tougher and will attack you) are found in cargo decks (bounty=10 gold). In the bottom of the ship where the ballast rocks are is some standing bilge water where water rats live (even tougher and will attack) (bounty=50 gold). In addition to perpetual rats, occasionally the boat will be swarming with pirates that need to be repelled (killed). Once the pirates are all killed, they don't reappear until the next pirate encounter. On other occasions, the ship will be attacked by a sea monster - a giant octopus. Its tentacles will appear at the edges of the ship. The tentacles must all be killed separately. Once they are all killed, they don't reappear until the next sea monster encounter. In addition to this tedious shipboard life, there is fishing (a new skill). The stern of the top deck has 2 fishing net stations (one to starboard, one to port).. It requires a fishing skill of 6 or higher to "use" a net. When you "use" a net (if successful), the net acquires 1 to 10 bags. Each bag may contain driftwood (worthless), a fish (1 or more "raw fish" to sell to the galley cook), a piece of ambergris (somewhat valuable - sell in the port when you arrive), or a rare floating valuable such as an empty vial, a staff or quarterstaff, a wooden shield, etc. You would only get larger fish if your level was high enough (see table below). In order to acquire fishing skill, an old retired sailor on the top deck will sell you a fishing rod and some bait. You may "mix" a rod with a bait to make a baited rod (no skill, no exp). The character then looks to see what the result is: either you caught a fish (and the rod is no longer baited or the fish made off with your bait (if the fish's level exceeded yours) or no fish came and your rod is still baited. The "drop" could appear in a bag at your feet. Fish(*) Min level Chance Exp Drop perch 0 70% 7 1 "raw fish" mackerel 2 20% 15 2 "raw fish" ocean bass 5 7% 25 3 "raw fish" tuna 10 2% 60 4 "raw fish" shark 16 1% 90 5 "raw fish" plus a chance of random anything (*) - the fish's name here is just for illustration and need not be presented to the player. Additional fish sizes might be considered. In addition to the port of origination (which could be placed at any port on continent 1), the ship may make other stops. I suggest two other ports of call. They need not be large, maybe isolated cities about the size of Portland City. Maybe one is an island city and the other is a city trapped between a wall of cliffs and the sea. When the ship arrives at a port of call, the signs on the ship's boats could change to indicate the current destination. In the pay-to-play version, a port of call on continent 2 would be a good idea.

By the way, fishing skill could have it's own cape, except it's a yellow slicker with matching hat. Abilities: keeps out rain and stormy weather.

Yeah - I had the problem twice tonight. I ran traceroute and it looked like a problem between UK and France.

I was fighting a gargoyle when all combat stopped. All the client stuff still works but I get no response from the server (ping command, stats command, clicking the clock or compass). I guess somehow I lost a connection but it's never happened to me before. I thought we might have lost the server, but the players in-game screen is getting updated, so the server is still up.

It just happened to me again. I closed the client and restarted it, I got a long black screen which eventually gave the "unable to connect to server, press alt-x to quit " message. Pressing the any key got me reconnected and still facing gargoyles.

CPU busy (server load) isn't the only thing that can cause "lag". Other conditions such as network capacity, paging, waiting for I/O, or latches/semaphores/etc can cause slowdowns that affect the game performance.

Usually, when you remove the last item from a bag, the frame or panel or whatever you call it that displays the contents of the bag vanishes. Sometimes it stays onscreen. I haven't noticed a pattern when it stays open instead of closing. I took a quick look at the client source but it wasn't obvious where that panel is created and deleted.

Does the same signal close both the bag and the panel? If so, the client is removing the bag image but not the bag panel.

When I started playing, there was never over 20 players in-game. That's at lot less competition for the number of spawns than there is now. I think 44 is the lowest number of players I've seen lately and 150 is common.

I think it would be fun if rabbits spawned in bunches or 2 or 3 or 4 at a time (maybe not every time but sometimes) instead of just one at a time.

Yeah, but wait till you see the lawyer fees THAT requires!

I had ideas for the thread too. You could harvest cotton (or flax) and make thread. (From the department of "I wanna be able to harvest or make everything in the game")

I think they must be steel needles for the kind of heavy leather work needed for making armor. I was trying to think of a way for them to be manufactured in game terms. My impression is that manufacturing requires at least 2 items. If I'm wrong then you'd still have to use up a whole bar of steel to make 1 needle which doesn't make sense economically. I think needle making must be done in a factory setting where they can make a hundred needles from one bar of steel. I suppose instead you could smelt 1 iron ore and 1 coal into a steel wire, then manufacture the wire into a needle. That smelting operation would be a higher alch level than required to make a bar of steel, I think.

BUT DON'T LET THIS ONE GET INTO THE HANDS OF THE BUNNIES!

Thanks for putting the formula for Iron Chain on the web site. I just made some. The web site says must be level 35, but I made some with manu level 33. Also, you should require a needle as well as a hammer to make it. It uses thread. I hope to see the steel and titanium versions documented soon.

- is this an error on the web site or in the code? What level should it be to make iron chain?

I guess you've never met the Joker who is already in the game. He wanders around giving people free stuff. I was disappointed that when I met him, he wasn't wearing a harlequin hat.

I thought of this situation when I saw a suggestion on another thread about flying carpet. I can picture flying above a forest and suddenly starting to fight something far below that you can't even see.

He just stands when you enter or leave the room out of respect like you do for a judge or the president.

I like the medallions being different. I was going to suggest that the medallions be manufactured like this: Unicorn Medallion: 1 silver bar, 1 matter essence (for defense), 1 energy essence (for attack) Requires manufacturing skill level (whatever) and alchemy skill (whatever) Moon Medallion: 1 silver bar, 1 sapphire, 2 matter essences Requires manufacturing skill level (whatever) and alchemy skill (whatever) Sun Medallion: 1 gold bar, 2 energy essences Requires manufacturing skill level (whatever) and alchemy skill (whatever) Stars Medallion: 1 titanium bar, 1 ruby, 2 matter essences, 2 energy essences Requires manufacturing skill level (whatever) and alchemy skill (whatever) Some of the rings could be made like: Ring of Disengagement: 1 silver bar, 1 air essence Requires manufacturing skill (whatever) and alchemy (whatever) Ring of Valley of the Dwarves: 1 gold bar, 1 matter essence, 3 energy essences, 1 spirit essence Must be made in Valley of the Dwarves anywhere on the map. Requires manufacturing skill (whatever) and alchemy (whatever)

Hmm - sounds good. And I want, a lightening bolt spell that is attracted to metal staffs.

I have occasionally had that problem where the mouse can be moved but clicks and keypresses are ignored. I am running Slackware Linux 9.0 with ATI Radeon video - maybe it's our video drivers. I don't think an application can lock out keypresses that are bound to XWindows functions.

The only time my stats have dropped (and I've lost things) was when I was online during a server crash. I don't think the server has crashed lately, though.