Dark Castle News

23/Feb/2010
- Coded lvl 53 barbarian skill pursuit (helpfile forthcoming)

19/Feb/2010
- Some profession code added for the release of 53+ skills
- Java telnet client added to website: http://www.dcastle.org/javaclient.php

11/Feb/2010
- "a Cloverleaf Token of the Immortals" was renamed to "a Cloverleaf
of the Immortals" to fit spacing for a new feature.
- Eddie the Exchange Broker (of tokens) has arrived in Sorpigal.

08/Feb/2010
- Q&A w/ Apoc scheduled for next Monday (the 15th) at 9pm EST.
See the forum "Town Crier" section for more details.

05/Feb/2010
- Weaken cannot be cast on a paralyzed person.

04/Feb/2010
- Help Update got an update.
Slow progress but it is happening occasionally. ;)

03/Feb/2010
- Sad news for DC today.
We learned that one of our longtime friends and
the player of Destiny and the Imm Eris has passed
away. Our condolences to both her friends and family.

28/Jan/2010
- Helpfile for Arcane Surge is in.

20/Jan/2010
- NFL Pool and Pick'em Prizes have been posted and most prizes
distributed. Speak with Apoc to collect your non-platinum
prizes or if you are one of the "unknown" winners.
Details posted on the forum.
- Stay tuned for our annual NCAA March Madness pool!

19/Jan/2010
- We'll be scheduling the first "Q&A with Apoc" in quite some time
in the near future. Keep an eye here and on the forum for more.

12/Jan/2010
- DC's annual NFL pools have reached their conclusions.
Congrats to Harlem for winning the team pool and to
Brannoc for winning the Pick'em pool.
(Apoc was robbed in both! :P)
Prizes will get distributed to everyone who earned something shortly.

08/Jan/2010
- Helpfile in for Behind the Mirror.

07/Jan/2010
- Fixed bug with astral walking across continents leaving charmies behind.
- Helpfile in for Occoran.

06/Jan/2010
- Apoc has returned from afar -- be afraid.

Several changes made that affect movement between continents:
- All cross-continent magical travel has an additional 5% chance of failure.
- Cross-continent travel costs double the usual mana/ki for: Astral Chanty,
Word of Recall, Portal, Beacon, and Summon.
- Cross-continent recall via the "recall command" gold costs are doubled.
- There is no change to teleport on players.
- Teleport on a mob is restricted to locations within the same continent.
- Using Summoning Song and Call Follower across continents costs 50% more.
- Helpfile in for Planes of Existence.

01/Jan/2010
Happy New Year!
- Bug fixed for behead (previously weapon type did not matter).

31/Dec/2009
- The Templars of Far Reach have cleared some rubble off the Spine Road.
(This means a new area is open -- congrats to Sergio for all the work!)

27/Dec/2009
- Groups no longer get an XP bonus.
- Zones which have not been run in 3 repops or more get a 10% gold bonus on
all of their mobs during each repop. This stops after the 6th repop or when
the zone is run again.

24/Dec/2009
- Just a reminder that there's only a few days left in the
holiday donations special! Any submissions received prior
to the deadline will be credited even if they're processed
after the deadline.
- Have a great Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Dwali, or
non-denominational festive season!
> From the entire Imm team!

23/Dec/2009
- Apoc is on vacation (honeymoon!) from the 24th until the 1st.
This means if you do something stupid and get yourself
frozen or zapped, you probably won't get to do much about it
or have an appeals process until he returns.
(In short, you may want to be less stupid than usual. :P)

22/Dec/2009
- Tumble bug fixed.
- Farsight messaging fixed.
- Bash/Gold-Thief glitches fixed as a part of flee bug fix.
- Fixed yet another bug regarding breaks in combat.

20/Dec/2009
- Fixed an issue with berserk and knockback-like skills
- Removed the combat break feature.

17/Dec/2009
- The monthly Immortal Team meeting was held last night with 10 imms
in attendance. Items discussed included area upgrades, new players,
continents, grouping vs solo, and coding of new skills.

15/Dec/2009
- Villainy should display the correct message now.
- Forest Meld should no longer break when traveling to swamp sectors.

14/Dec/2009
- Trivia will be on Wednesday nights at 10pm EST starting this week.

11/Dec/2009
- Helpfile for SILENCE (Level 53 Zealot ability) is in.

10/Dec/2009
- New member of the Imm team: Tarma, here to help with code support.

04/Dec/2009
- Added new vault command: vault search
This will search all vaults that you have access to for
a specific keyword. The output is similar to vault list.

03/Dec/2009
- Bards can now sing stop in a noki room.
- Bards can use whistle sharp multiple times in a row like
they use to be able to do.
- Small edge-case fixed with lightning shield where it
wouldnt produce backlash damage if the damage dealt to the
druid was less than what stoneshield would mitigate.

02/Dec/2009
- Helpfile for Pilferer skill "quickstab" available.

30/Nov/2009
- New Donations Special posted on mortal board and in forums.
Enjoy and happy holidays!

29/Nov/2009
- Fixed a bug with bard's tumbling skill. Now it works when using a weapon. ;)

28/Nov/2009
- Fixed bug with vaults that caused deleted/zapped characters to have access
to vaults still.

27/Nov/2009
- Crash bug in Rage fixed (yay!)
- Remove Poison now works in conjunction with Commune
- Kickass new error reporting for mob progs to make Sergio
all warm and fuzzy (and give him more debugging work).
- Helpfile for Level 57 Legionnaire skill, Leadership, is in.

19/Nov/2009
- Helpfile for Templar's "SPIRIT SHIELD" is in.
(Largely because I already had it written from the summer.) ;)

18/Nov/2009
- Brace now tells you who is bracing a room already.
- Batter no longer lets you crash into another clan, guild,
or restricted area when champion.
- Even though it's not being released until much later, the
helpfile for WARMAGE is in for anyone who's interested.
- TRACKER and SPIRITUALIST helpfiles installed.
- TROUBADOUR helpfile installed.

16/Nov/2009
- Ki disrupt now works as described in the helpfile.
- Helpfiles for REAVER and TEMPLAR complete (as per help UPDATE).

14/Nov/2009
- Fixed a crash bug with firestorm
- ki blast/knockback wont send champions to guild or clan rooms now
- ki blast/knockback wont send normal players to guild they don't belong to now

13/Nov/2009
- Big update to HELP UPDATE outlining the next wave
of level 51+ skills and professions development.

11/Nov/2009
- Mostly fixed bug with earthquake so it doesn't crash us anymore.
- Brew reuse timer only affects you if you're brewing a valid recipe now.
- Stoneshield no longer affets fs/ls/as backlash damage.

10/Nov/2009
- Elder's Terribly Tough Trivia returns tonight at 10pm EST.
Win gold and other great prizes!

07/Nov/2009
- Fixed bug with vaults that caused us to crash lately.
This may have also been the EQ corruption bug we've been tracking.

06/Nov/2009
- Brew components are all in. Happy hunting.

05/Nov/2009
- Resist Magic will work with commune now
- Fixed 3 crash bugs, still 1 known outstanding crash bug...

04/Nov/2009
- Papyrus & bottles will be dropping regularly.
- Scribe components have been scattered throughout the world.
- Most of the brew components have been put in game as well.
An additional post will follow.

02/Nov/2009
- Something is up with DNS.
Use this IP if you can't resolve dcastle.org. 206.222.16.147

29/Oct/2009
- Brace yourselves, the initial group of level 51+ skills are
now active and in game! (I know, I'm as shocked as anyone
-- each has its own helpfile and the list is also available
in "help UPDATE" for the time being.)
- Brew and Scribe components will all be in game shortly,some
are not yet available.
- Removed DEBUG msg from ki transfer.
- Sleep no longer warns you when sleeping in a camp.
- Elemental filter fixed so it can't be spam learned.

28/Oct/2009
- In an effort to resolve the ki disrupt issue in one swoop,
Julian has re-written the skill from scratch. It works as
outlined in "help KI DISRUPT" and should be much fun. :)
(Note, this is currently in progress due to some complications
news item will subsequently detail when its officially in.)

27/Oct/2009
- We did some further experimentation with yesterday's backlash
shield tweaks and are making a couple adjustments.
- All 3 spells have a cap on the amount of damage that can be
reflected (ie. to prevent sucking up 1k damage from a Quiver.)
- All 3 spells (FS, LS, AS) all have an increased minimum so as
to allow mobs and melee hits to make more sense.
- Helpfiles to be updated shortly to give more details.

- Fixed an issue with reflect and concentration as they relate to
each other (some bizzare old code leftover) so there should be
fewer strange concentration losses when wearing reflect eq now.

26/Oct/2009
In a fit of "old-schoolishness" we've made some
changes to backlash shields across the board.

- Fire, Lightning, and Acid shields now return a % of damage
at attackers rather than a flat rate.

- Saves still affect how much shield damage people resist.
- Mobs have an approximately "80" skill level across the board.
- Things like sanc/eas/etc still affect all backlash shields.
- Backlash shield damage can no longer be "dodged" via the skill.

Bottom line: basic melee damage from these doesn't change
all that much, but "big ticket" beats such as backstab will
warrant more caution. Direct questions to Apoc.

25/Oct/2009
- Some bugs with 51+ skill make camp fixed.
- 2 x 51+ skills/spells for each class should be done now.
(Finish up testing some of them, see help UPDATE for info.)
- DC forums at http://forum.dcastle.org/ upgraded.
Please e-mail julian@dcastle.org if you find any problems.

24/Oct/2009
- Coded 51+ skill, scribe

21/Oct/2009
- Coded 51+ skill, brew

20/Oct/2009
- Oh noes, more STIs from virtual MUDsex!
(Load rate on condoms has been nerfed.)
- Stats altered on the following: Gnakk's Ice Armor,
Firedragon head, fiery earring, feather & bone earring,
Dwarfsilver ring, & illusionary helm.

14/Oct/2009
- Players with a lvl < 50 can now increase the size of their vault.

03/Oct/2009
- Today, Apoc got married. You may now rejoice. ;)

29/Sep/2009
- Uber-Donations Special where you can score some quest eq is
soon to end. Get'em while they're hot!
- Apoc's wedding is in 4 days -- hence his disappearance lately.
- We're pretty sure there'll be more useful news to follow soon.

22/Sep/2009
- 11 days until Apoc's wedding. :P
- New (old) clan back. Go Sweden.

20/Sep/2009
- GL hydra tail produces damage info now.

17/Sep/2009
- Some new commands/options for testing stuff by Imms went in.
- Testing actually is continuing on the level 51+ stuff lately.
Yes, I know it's a balls-long wait, but we're getting there, I promise.
- Help Update updated.

15/Sep/2009
- Two top notch new Chain quotes added (exciting, I know).

13/Sep/2009
- A band of daring Grugrach raiders have recovered Shyntoa's Diary from the Deep Gnomes.
- Troglodytes moved within Underdark to make access easier for the appropriate levels.

11/Sep/2009
- Little bit of staff house cleaning today.
Some of our less useful comrades have been umm, relieved of
their duties. ;)
- Warrior and thief 51+ skills tested.

08/Sep/2009
- Farsight messaging fixed.
- Tharkes Axe weight modified to match other Tharkes Axe.
- New Architect (yay!) Opticon -- no, it's not Optimum. :P

05/Sep/2009
- Fixed some bugs in a 51+ skill.

02/Sep/2009
- New "first-time-ever" Donations offer posted on mort board and forums.
- Dr00d love! Blue bird got a significant boost across all sectors.
(this should be in next compile/boot)
- Re: Voting on Mudconnect.
In an effort to kill off interest in their site, you apparently need
an account and be logged in to vote for your favorite MUD now.
So yeah, sucks, but hey, go make an account and vote! :P

27/Aug/2009
Easier link to join the NFL Pick'em group for anyone interested in playing:
(Remember everyone who maintains picks throughout the season gets a prize!)
http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/pickem/register/joingroup
League #: 8371
Password: dcastle

21/Aug/2009
- Fixed bug with firestorm..hopefully
- Fixed bug with look/liquid containers

18/Aug/2009
- Bizzare exit issues in Drearwood fixed.

10/Aug/2009
- Sergio promoted to Implementor and is now ready to accept even MORE
bitching and complaints! (w00t!)

07/Aug/2009
- The Dark Castle 2009 NFL Pick'em Pool is open for any number of
interested players. To join, visit:
http://forum.dcastle.org/topic_show.pl?tid=5588

05/Aug/2009
- New helpfile for fakesell.

04/Aug/2009
- Quest gear stats upgraded accross the board.
Everything got at least a small boost, some more than others.
(Weapons remain unchanged -- the above refers to class specific gear.)

25/Jul/2009
- You can trip/kick/etc while singing Crushing Crescendo now.

22/Jul/2009
- Registration is now full for DC Fantasy Football 2009.
- "DC Football Pick'em" will be open for registration soon for
any number of players and will of course have prizes too.