Vanguard Update #1 + First Test Server Patch Notes

[Jedite]

Whether it be in the desert sands or the swamps of the Deadlands, Vanguard Update #1 brings you some dirty villains to fight, new weapons to kill them with, and new places to kill them in!

On Tuesday, March 6th 2007, Vanguard Update #1 will go live. It will be a much larger patch than usual as not only will there be new content but a great deal of additional art as well. Update #1 includes:

Dozens of new weapon models
Six brand new NPC races to battle
Two new mid to high level adventuring areas
Nine dungeons with revamped art and/or lighting


Vanguard – Saga of Heroes
link has all the pretty nice screenshots of new models ect.

BUT WTF ARE THE HELMETS!!!

[DickTrickle]

Interesting Xennu race there... Is their leader Thomas Mapother?

[Jedite]

Woah big news day for Vanguard.. Test Server is now live, and here are the first Test Server patch notes.


Vanguard Build 1765 Patch Notes 2/28/2007 – TEST SERVER

Welcome to the Test Server!

While it may not be for everyone, playing on the Test server can be a lot of fun. Things will break, there will be no CS support and your character is never truly ‘safe’. However, you will also get a chance to directly affect the game by helping work out new systems and features before they are finalized for the rest of the live servers.

Players on Test can expect much more frequent developer sightings and interaction as designers, programmers, QA testers and even artists will be checking in constantly to get feedback and monitor the newest changes.

For those beta testers who now find their characters on Test, you may find your character has items that are no longer valid. There is no need to /bug those items, simply getting rid of them is fine. In addition, any quests your character had opened at the end of beta are no longer open and please be sure to visit your class trainers to get the latest spell/ability adjustments.

Have fun!


GAMEPLAY NOTES
- Dark Elves now start at -8100 faction with Celestine Ward like all other “misunderstood” races instead of -8200
- Abilities which cause damage over time that are not in the same spell line should now stack.
- Melee and Ranged direct attacks have had a bug fixed that was causing them to do around double damage. Direct attacks are one type of melee attack that do not use weapon damage and strength damage directly, the are most often used with abilities that do not have damage as their focus.
- An attribute bonus soft cap bug was recently introduced related to healing and damage bonuses. When a player hit their soft cap their total magnitude was dropping significantly. This issue has been resolved and the damage bonus soft cap is functioning as intended again.
- While levitating far above terrain or water and not attempting to move down, you will now descend twice as fast as you did before. Attempting to move down continues to allow you to get down even faster.
- Player Housing: Buildings in the construction window now show additional stats such as max fixtures and max chests.
- Player Housing: An indication has to how many upkeep payments you have missed has been added.
- Player Housing: Upkeep Bank coin values will now also show as red text when negative in additional to the negative value.
- Player Housing: When an upkeep payment is missed, you will not receive an additional notification via in game mail.
- Player Housing: Fixed an issue where building construction sites were only visible if you were within 50meters of them.
- PVP - PVP deaths will no longer leave you still dead after you release until you log out.

ADVENTURING NOTES
- Bard - Bards can no longer throw ranged spears/javelins
- Bard - Bard songs should now correctly apply themselves to the bard and his group members, at a minimum, when entering crowded locations such as the Ruins of Vol Tuniel, or the Brownie Storehouse in Tursh.
- Blood Mage - Sanguine Focus now grants regeneration, no longer reduces heal effectiveness on the blood mage, and increases mitigation correctly.
- Dread Knight – Dread Knights can now throw spears/javelins
- Monk - Aum of the Harmonious Body should now grant upgrades to Deadly Adder Hand at appropriate levels.
- Monk - Aum of the Harmonious Body should no longer give incorrect error messages.
- Shaman – Shamans can now throw spears/javelins

CRAFTING NOTES
- Sage’s Agony and its upgrades should not equip correctly on items
- Dust, powder, and shards of devastation have all been removed from deconstruction tables as they were not used before tier 5. The current items have been changed to cash loot
- The quest “The Herbalist’s Equipment” has had its rewards changed.
- Ultra rare tier 2 resources have been removed from tables as they were not supposed to drop in the first place.
- All tier 2 ultra rare resources can be converted into tier 2 rare resources by right clicking them
- If you take the style-learning quest, and don’t yet have the first basic refining recipe, you should be given it so you are able to finish the quest.

DIPLOMACY NOTES
- Tahean’s Vengeance - New 12 presence quest, “Deposing Sage Marin,” available at Tahean's Vengeance.

WORLD POPULATION NOTES
- Azebaj Hive - Several of the rare / named NPCs will appear more often
- Ceros Isle – Killing Rhinos should now update the Reckless Rhinos quests correctly.
- Ceros Isle – Several rare NPCs on the island were missing their loot. This has been corrected.
- Dargun’s Tomb - Several of the rare / named NCPs will appear more often
- Gauthek Village - Several of the rare / named NPCs will appear more often.
- Karrus Alljur - Several of the rare / named NPCs will appear more often.
- Karrus Hakrel Overland Camps - Several of the rare / named NPCs will appear more often.
- Ksaravi Gulch - Several of the rare / named NPCs will appear more often. These NPCs will also appear after a time regardless of player interaction.
- Ksaravi Hollow - Several of the rare / named NPCs will appear more often
- Lair of the Vi’Rak - The Vortex to the Lair of the Vi’Rak will now teleport your entire group if they are within range of the vortex.
- Lair of the Vi’Rak - The Vi’Rak Neophyte should now drop loot as intended
- Mound of the Zihurr - Reduced the effort required to spawn the Ant Prince and Ant Queen in the Mound of the Zihurr.
- Quests - Ghostly Burning Essence for the quest “Flames of the Past” now has the correct icon in the inventory
- Rahz Inkur - The Slaves of the Zull Efreet are now properly playing their mining animations in Rahz Inkur.
- Redcap Storehouse - Several of the rare / named NPCs will appear more often.
- Renton Keep - The Renton Keep Missive, “Task For Renton Keep: A Watchful Eye”, has had its coin reward reduced.
- Trengal Keep - Several of the rare / named NPCs will appear more often.
- Vol Tuniel - Rare NPCs in Vol Tuniel will now appear more often, enjoy!
- Vol Tuniel - Solathus the Armor of Vol Tuniel is now somewhat more difficult his loot has also been adjusted accordingly
- Vol Tuniel - Additional Rare NPCs have been added to the dungeon. Some of these new rares will appear when the dungeon has been uninhabited by players for a time period.

Items:
- Shield of Promise has been increased to Heroic and is now Soulbound
- Blessed Chain Vest has been increased to rare from uncommon

GUI NOTES
- Crafters with many recipes will no longer be able to actually build a house in real life while waiting for their recipe list to expand. (Expanding crafting recipes is now much faster.)
- Added a tutorial pop-up that explains the death penalty when you die.
- Group Loot options viewed by non-leaders will now wrap correctly instead of being cut off.
- Right-clicking on toolbelts when crafting will open the toolbelt so you can see what's in it. Left-clicking will change to that toolbelt as before.
- The selected toolbelt is now indicated with the green checkmark when changing crafting toolbelts.
- Percents are now displayed for crafting grade and progress so you don't have to mouse over the status bars to see them.
- The crafting toolbelt selection window will now properly close if you cancel crafting while it is open.
- Mail composer window will now auto fill in the subject with an item name if sending an item and their is no subject currently set.
- Item 'Equipped Effects' are now shown in the item examine window.
- The title window is now larger so long titles will fit correctly.
- Your selected titles will now display correctly when you log in and the display won't be messed up by gaining new titles.
- You will now see an indicator below your player status window when you have an active petition in the queue. You may click on this icon to edit or delete the current petition.
- Added "SGOUI HOTKEYBANK UP" and "DOWN" commands for UI modders to utilize.
- Brokers: Fixed alignment issues with the purchase confirmation window and the purchase amount.
- Fix for some hitches related to being a member of a large guild.
- Quests will now be colored in the quest log by their relative difficulty to your level.
Red: +6 or more levels
Orange: +3 to +5 levels
Yellow: +1 to +2 levels
White: Same level to -3 levels
Green: -3 to -10 levels
Gray: -11 or more levels


CODING NOTES
- Fixed a bug in which your corpses would disappear from your travel journal after you camped. You should now see all existing corpses in your travel journal, including ones you were unable to see before.
- Fix for a bug where items were sometimes being unequipped after looting a corpse then relogging.
- Fixed a bug that was causing abilities of the same ability line (or of mutually exclusive lines) to not display the same refresh timer.



~The Vanguard Team

[Guiness]

Originally Posted by DickTrickle

Interesting Xennu race there... Is their leader Thomas Mapother?

Taking bets on who the mob is with a play on Cruise's name.
Edit: Can you say Mind Flayer?

[Ayeshala]

Hegnerian is obviously the Sorcerer mentioned by Elandar in "Morgan's Tale" in his story to the halflings (published on the Vanguard website back around 2004/5.)

What's interesting is it seems Hegnerian was imprisoned and not destroyed. I guess his Temple will be one of the high end lvl 50 raid areas.

EDIT: NM, the Sorcerer in Morgan's Tale is called Lucertae. I guess the Elves have an history of their Sorcerers going mad power hungry.

[Broham]

Do bards get instruments yet?

[Mkopec1]

Good stuff!

[vynde]

are there underwater dungeons in vg yet? something like kedgekeep maybe

[Anyen]

I'm not sure if there are yet, but when they finally release all of the Kojan stuff that didn't make it in launch there definitely will be.

[Laerazi]

Relighting dungeons > *

[Jitx]

Looks like some interesting changes... anyone happen to have a spare buddy key? Looking to see how much has changed since I played in beta. Looks like it might be getting close to wrth picking up.

[Jedite]

Nino if you read this..

Were are the helmets man? hehe


1 other thing, has there been any discussion as far as re evaluating the Paladin Virtue stuff? If you go over the paladin boards at the affiliate paladin site, its pretty much a concensus that as of right now Virtues are hardly ever used for the exeption of LoH due to the high point cost, and the really HORRIBLE method to ataining virtue points..


For example right now its either wait 72min for 3 points, or get points by using rescues, but only when you rescue someone and you yourself are below 20% health which NEVER freaking happens in any type of group situation, basically u get lucky if you get a virtue point when you rescue given as to how healing right now works were basically if you the tank lose agro you are probably getting healed anyhow so u wont get to 20%, and if you are not the main tank then pretty much forget about losing health.

The virtue system needs a HUGE revamp, specially since really most of the virtue talents are next to worthless given the current implementation of the system.

[MetalNeo]

I would be happy if they would put spells operating under the wrong spell type to the right one. Most notably...

Ranger snare says alteration but its really under conjuration with about a 20% success rate.

Ranger root says conjuration but its really under evocation with a surprising success rate considering my evocation is about 18.

Other then that more is definetly =

[Ham n Cheese]

Alright if after this update dragon stance is still broken and my monk 'epic' is still a sword I can't use I'm officially rerolling.

[Nino]

Originally Posted by MetalNeo

I would be happy if they would put spells operating under the wrong spell type to the right one. Most notably...

Ranger snare says alteration but its really under conjuration with about a 20% success rate.

Ranger root says conjuration but its really under evocation with a surprising success rate considering my evocation is about 18.

Other then that more is definetly =

I talked to the class guys about this yesterday and the ranger spells have been fixed. You CAN get your spell school skill ups by using those spells on low level NPCs. I know it sucks, but the option is there. If you skill is like 84 go cast on level 8 NPCs and this should begin to go up rapidly.