GU5 - Test server notes

[Akatosh]

Test Update Notes April / 21 / 2008
Game Update #5

1. Racial Mounts
2. Class Updates
3. Anti-Hitching
4. New Particles
5. Patch Notes

1. RACIAL MOUNTS
We have added a unique racial mount for each race in Vanguard! The mounts can be attained through a series of faction based quests that can be started in each race’s home town. If you happen to like another race’s mount better than your own though, worry not! With the appropriate faction, players will be able to complete any of the quests.

Citizen Favor
The citizens of Telon are seeking adventurers to help spread their influence across the land. By seeking out a faction registrar you can don the banner of a city, gaining favor with its citizens while you battle their enemies. Each creature that is slain will offer a chance to receive tokens bearing the symbol of their registered city. These tokens can be returned to the city in exchange for citizen faction. Be warned that while many factions are friendly with each other all factions have opposing factions of some sort. Raising your faction with one city will reduce your faction with those they oppose. While you can switch factions at any time those who are worried about becoming outlaws in certain cities should heed this warning.

Gaining faction will allow you to purchase factional rewards with the use of platinum tokens. These tokens can only be retrieved from the vilest of beings and only when you are wearing the banner of your chosen city. Those powerful enough to defeat raid NPCs will receive ancient coins which can be converted into a platinum token of any type you desire.

Racial Mounts
With the release of the citizen favor system comes the first factional rewards -- racial land mounts! All races have been granted a unique looking mount with improved speed over other mounts in their tier. These mounts can be attained at levels 30 and 50 after you have gained the required faction and number of platinum coins. Players will be able to get any of these mounts as long as they do the work involved for their attached cities. Click here for a list of the mounts for each race.


2. CLASS UPDATES
This update we have given significant updates to three more classes. Blood Mages, Psionicists and Sorcerers have all received a lot of developer attention. Abilities that may have been broken before have been fixed, spells have been tweaked and upgraded or updated and all three classes should be more in line with their intended vision in terms of power and utility. Specific tweaks will be listed in the patch notes.


3. ANTI-HITCHING
As always, increasing performance remains a high priority for our development team. To that end, with this update we will be introducing new anti-hitching code that should have and immediate and noticeable effect.


4. NEW PARTICLES
Sometimes, things just need to look cooler. That was the case for many adventuring class spells and/or abilities. Blood Mages, Disciples, Dread Knights, Druids, Necromancers and Sorcerers all received new an improved particle effects.


5. PATCH NOTES
Vanguard Build 2036 Patch Notes 4/21/2008

GENERAL
- NPCs that are considered bosses should now be the only NPCs with all caps in their names.

ADVENTURING
- Bard - Psionicist -Fixed a bug that caused the refresh haste portion of Temporal Acceleration to stack with Coda of Alacrity
- Blood Mage - The range on Blood Feast has been increased to 50m
- Blood Mage - A new recipe has been added to your Symbiote assembly recipes. You can now make Body Bags at level 26. These are 20 slot bags that fit in your ammo slot and hold symbiotes, organs and blood vials.
- Blood Mage - Added a health buff component ot Serak's Mantle. This health buff scales similarly to the AC buff portion of the ability.
- Blood Mage - Increased the damage of the Bursting Cyst ability line as it upgrades over time.
- Blood Mage - Vitalizing Symbiote now functions differently. It gives its target a 5% chance on spell cast to have their next spell cost 50% less energy.
- Blood Mage - Renewing Symbiote now functions differently. It gives its target a 5% chance to proc a heal over time on hit.
- Blood Mage - Cleansing Symbiote now lasts for 10 seconds and removes 8 poison and disease counters every 2 seconds.
- Blood Mage - Increased the rate at which Ritual of Shielding grows with Blood Union.
- Blood Mage - Removed the refresh timer from Ritual of Shielding.
- Blood Mage - Your offensive spells are now labeled with damage type.
- Blood Mage - Regeneration and Accelerated Regeneration now last for 1 hour.
- Blood Mage - Symbiotes are now created in stacks of 15.
- Blood Mage - Bleed effects should now state the ability name and the caster name in their combat spam.
- Blood Mage - Lowered the energy cost of Accelerated Regeneration
- Blood Mage - Lowered the energy cost of Life Graft
- Blood Mage - Lowered the energy cost of Serak's Amplification
- Blood Mage - Lowered the energy cost of Inspirit
- Psionicist - Mind Over Body - this ability allows the Psionicist to levitate and has been added to trainers at level 20.

[Akatosh]

- Psionicist - Meta-Mind is an innate ability that increases the damage and energy regen of your group. It is tied to your concentrations and is always active. It increases damage by 5% and 125 energy regeneration per 6 sec. This regeneration does not stack with other Psionicist or Shaman energy regen. Meta Mind is learned by visiting the correct gestalt. Those players who have already visited this Gestalt and learned Greater Astral Form will not need to revisit the gestalt.
- Psionicist - Concentration: Greater Astral Form - This concentration has been removed and is no longer available to learn.
- Psionicist - Concentration: Cerebral Bastion - This concentration has been revmoved and is no longer available to learn.
- Psionicist - Concentration: Astral Form - This concentration is now called Ethereal Projection and is the first of three Planar Projection concentrations that are learned automatically as the Psionicist gains levels. At level 30 Astral Projection replaces Ethereal Projection and at level 50 Transcendence replaces Astral Projection.
- Psionicist - Lure - This ability has changed. It is now called Primal Wrath. It is a buff that increases charmed pet damage by 25% for 20 seconds.
- Psionicist - Mass Amnesia - Lowered the refresh to 2 minutes and is available at level 24.
- Psionicist - Time Trick - Time Trick II is now trainable at level 24.
- Psionicist - Time Trick - This ability has changed. It no longer breaks when the target is attacked. While affected the target cannot be damaged, but can be affected by other debuffs. Time trick no longer slows or snares. This ability is also now level restricted, meaning that the first version of the spell only works on targets below level 31. Durations have also changed. 45, 50 and 60 seconds for versions 1, 2 and 3 respectively.
- Psionicist - Mind Wipe - This ability is now instant cast and has a 60 second refresh timer and removes a percentage of your target's hate.
- Psionicist - Memory Shift - This ability is now instant cast and has a 60 second refresh timer. The amount of hate added has been greatly increased.
- Psionicist - Psionic Barrier - This ability has had it's power increased to address scaling issues.
- Psioncist: Paralysis Field - A new power that immobilzes all opponents within 10m of the caster. It is instant cast, lasts 8 seconds and has a 20 second refresh timer. This new power is now available at trainers starting at level 20.
- Psionicist - Temporal Fracture - is now available at level 10. A new version is available at 50 and previous version have been adjusted in level.
- Psioncist: Mindfire - This ability has been moved to level 16. It now deals damage over time instead of instant damage and lowers all resistances by a small amount. The resistance debuff should stack with all other debuffs of this type. The damage-on-cast added to the target is still present and has had its damage increased.
- Psionicist - Telekinetic Blast - Removed the self damage portion of the ability and increased the damage.
- Psionicist - Thought Surge - Removed the self damage portion of the ability, made it instant cast with a 10sec refresh, extended the range to 15m and it can now be trained at level 32. Costing has also been lowered. A new version has been added to trainers at level 48.
- Psionicist - Corporeal Hammer - Reduced the cast time to 1 second and increased the refresh time to 20 seconds.
- Psionicist -Thought Pulse - Slightly reduced the amount of damage that is inflicted on the player when using this power.
- Psionicist - Dementia - Now causes its damage over 8 seconds, has an 8 second refresh and slightly higher energy cost.
- Psionicist - Chronoshift - Removed the refresh and increased the cost slightly.
- Psionicist - Psychic Schism - Now does damage over time in addition to all of its former effects.
- Psionicist - Compression Sphere - Now lasts 18 seconds and its damage has been increased to compensate.
- Sorcerer - Energy regeneration on Taqmir's Bolts now lasts for the correct amount of time.
- Sorcerer – Increased the range on Shocking Grasp to 25m.
- Sorcerer – The particle effects for Incinerate, Inidria’s Inferno and Taqmir’s Barrage IV no longer appear AE.
- Sorcerer – Asaya’s Insight should now increase spell accuracy as well as spell school skills.
- Sorcerer – Opal Focus should now have its buff effect of making you immune to movement impairing effects work more often now. If you find an NPC spell that it does not work on, please notify your class lead or report it. Thank you.
- Sorcerer – Asaya’s Scorn has been added to trainers at level 46.
- Sorcerer – The functionality of Chromatic Halo has changed. It is now a rune that lasts for 2 minutes or 1000 damage. It has a 2 minute refresh and is instant cast.
- Sorcerer – New forms have been added. You should now get Icy Focus, Fiery Intensity and Unfocused at level 10.
- Sorcerer – Increased the radius on all Sanctuary spells to 10m.
- Sorcerer - Changed the funtionality of Flame Spear. Now has a 3 second cast time, no ranged condition and deals extra damage on critical strikes. The base damage has been lowered. A 20 second refresh has been added.
- Sorcerer – The Ring Conjure abilities now function differently.. These abilities now summon focus items into your inventory. These items can be activated instantly from your inventory. Once they are activated they apply the buff they previously had. They now have a 5 second refresh timer.
- Sorcerer – Lowered the energy cost of Seradon’s Falling Star
- Sorcerer - Lowered the refresh of Seradon’s Falling Star to 22 seconds.
- Sorcerer - Chaos Volley has been completely reworked. It is now a nuke that deals damage to you and your opponent and gives you and your group 2% spell damage for 20 seconds. It stacks up to 3 times, increasing the damage with each cast and the damage buff up to 10%.

WORLD POPULATION
- NPCs - Nerksawl and his placeholders now wander a different path. Also, 2 additional spawn locations have been added.
- Quests - Nusibe Necropolis - Leopard Hides will now update for the gahren leopards. NOTE: Players will need to abandon and reaccept this quest.
- Quests - Poison Supply (Part 7) - The toxic inebriation potion is now functioning again.

CODING
- Revamped quest log and quest tracker.
- Fix for being dismounted when you item preview a flying mount item in your inventory.
- Fix for levitate being stripped when cast twice.
- The /who command now allows for searching for diplomat, artificer, blacksmith, and outfitter. It also shows the level/profession info for all three spheres now. The "Advanced Find" in the Social window has been updated with these new features also.
- Housing: Items that do not show up visibly in your house will appear in red text in your building item list now. These fixtures can also be moved to your current location which will make them visible again.

[Dazzling/Bongbane]

Too bad they didn't put in all this badass Psi stuff when I was still playing... damn...