A new update is ready for you all! This time no client update is needed, as all changes are server side. It includes many updates to rules, settings, and bugfixes. Here are the details.

NPCs:

• Improved the behaviour of aggressive NPCs: they will now be able to decide if attack or not based on their current HP rating and the player overall power
• Improved the Cuttroaths AI
• Fixes/improvement to the Mercenary Tribe AI
• Fixes/improvement to the Maulberlord AI
• Improved the Consumers AI
• Introduction on day and night behaviour for many Mobs; some of them will wander in their area during their wakeing hours and will go sleep at night
• Additions to KAs, mainly in regard to trainers knowing what they train and being able to direct you to the higher and lower skill trainers, where appropriate. This isn't finished but its a nice start.
• All NPC descriptions have been looked at and in the vast number of cases improved (Taya).
• Some changes to NPC traits and items to match descriptions more closely.

Tribes:

• Both gobble tribes behaviour near the lake of tears has been improved
• A new Trepor's tribe has been added in ojaroad2 map

Quests:

• A new skill based repeatable hunting quest, similar to Harnquist is hungry, has been created and added (Taya).
• A vast number of small spelling and grammar mistakes have been fixed mostly from player reports (big thanks to Mrae, Erodare, and all the others who have reported things).
• A good number of quest 'bugs' have been fixed (noticeably Bestowing the Gifts of Xiosia and Harnquist is Hungry).

Books:

• A total of 11 new books have been released. Including the five volume history of magic books, a great two part biography written by Cirerey, a book about our favourite Wanderer (finished off by Taya) and a few others, big thanks to all the authors.

Items:

• A lovely selection of new plants will take the places of many of the dummy sacks which you currently see (Aiena).
• Almost all alchemy item's weight have been reviewed and fixed (thanks to shadow-knight)

Engine:

• Fixed a bug with the quest system which could trigger the wrong quest upon a player response
• Expanded loot command to support looting all/items/money from commands patch by naeg (/Loot [roll] [all|money|items <categories>). Using for example 'weapons' as a category will loot all items in a category beginning with 'weapons' '/loot items weapons' categories can also be stack, '/loot items weapons, armor, animal part'
• Added check for visibility for training with NPCs (#5965).
• Support for /mypet when mounted (#4167).
• Fixed moving of items in containers you guard.
• Fixed locate nearest_player to only return players.
• Fixed (PS#5964) frozen by GM displayed while using frozen spell.
• Fixed not working group confirmation on loot to self for group roll. (PS#5962)
• Extend guard area to area guarded by familiar/pets (PS#4734).
• Fixed a couple of situation where the items apparently disappeared in a container.
• Make sure the Character First Name is used and not the Account name when a client is Asked for its Name when a Character is loaded. This will prevent situations like PS#5942.

Hi,
our current hoster is asking us to move and we are seeking a new one. If you know an ISP or a hosting company which you think can donate a server in exchange of sponsorship, please write a personal message to me.

Requirements:

• Bandwith usage ranges from 300Kb/s to 1Mb/s
• The server should have the equivalent of 1 quad core and 8Gb RAM.
• Disk space of about 100 Gb is enough.
• We need root access to the machine to install all needed components.
• Must be a hosting company and not your home server

We have about 1 more month to move.

Thanks.

(revamp of an old thread, I've updated the text)

Guildhouses are awarded through auctions, which tend to favor the ones who grind the most money. This may be a problem for the RP guilds, as their members do not accumulate money through crafting/monster hunting. To ensure there is a good balance between the two types of guilds, we want to introduce also a way to award guildhouses based on contribution to Role Play within the community.

If your RP guild wishes to be granted the use of a guild-house you will have to apply for one. Guilds that have guild-house currently may not apply. Guild-houses will be granted on the basis of your answers to the questions below, on how your guild actually acts in game and after careful consideration by Game Master and Development team members.

So, this is what we want to hear about from you, and please take your time in getting your replies to us, there is no rush. You should answer each question carefully and then pm/e-mail your response to a Game Master, who will then forward your application.

• 1 - How long has your guild been around? (Note - We will try and give equal weighting to both older and newer guilds, it should also be noted that a newly created guild is unlikely to be granted a guildhouse until you have shown consistency and commitment to PlaneShift over time. We can't give guildhouses to every guild or the upkeep will outpace our capacity to support this initiative.)

• 2 - How active is the guild in recruiting new members? (Things you can include - Do you have a core set of players that are highly active and can guide the guild and new comers to the guild? Do you prefer to only recruit players who you know can role-play, or actively recruit new players who will fit into the settings of your guild and nurture and teach them how to role-play on Laanx, or would you have none selective recruitment? Explain to us WHY you would make these choices.)

• 3 - Do you have an official guild history and settings publically available for your guild? Do you think that from the creation of the guild you have stuck to these? If not why and how will you try to address this in the future? (We won't require that all guilds have a website, but we HIGHLY encourage it. If you could include links to either private websites and/or posts from the PlaneShift guilds forum for this section it would be appreciated.)

• 4 - Describe your commitment to role-play on Laanx? (Things you can include - How important is role-play for the guild? All role-play, mainly role-play and some levelling, no role-play and all grinding? Do you, and how will you follow the RP guide lines that are currently in place? Do you create new role-plays and join current ones at every opportunity?)

• 5 - How would your guild use a guildhouse to aid PlaneShift's incoming players and develop its current role-play atmosphere? (Things you can include - Why does your guild need it? How will it benefit the guild? What RPs will be based in and about it? In what ways will it be used to benefit new comers to the game and guild? How will it be used by others outside of the guild? Will you keep your guildhouse open or will you lock the door? What is your role-play reason for this choice?)

• 6 – Where would you like your guildhouse to be? And how would the position effect the role-plays you plan on taking part in? (Locations include - The winch or warehouse district of Ojaveda for merchants? Dark secluded out of the way alleys for the less law abiding? Next to the Laanx temple for religious organisations? Note – there are limited houses available, and we will do our best to award guilds access to a house most suiting their settings. Guilds that wish to expand areas of the game that are, at the time of reading this, under-utilised for role-play, will have favouritism provided they answer all other questions well. Important, the presence of a 'Door' per say is not required to have a guild house, if you wish to be imaginative with the means of entry, you may, but you must explain why it needs an alternative.)

• 7 - Do you accept that any guildhouse given can be taken away at any point if it is found you are unhelpful to new players, combative with Game Masters, failing to role-play or not keeping sufficient server presence to merit the use of a guildhouse or for any other reason deemed appropriate by the Game Masters or any other development team? (Note - A guildhouse should be considered a privilege, and not a right.)

A few final notes...

Do not try to tell us what we want to hear, that in itself will be cause for refusal to receive a guildhouse. We want honest input that will help us to make Laanx a better place for role-play, if you're in this for a guildhouse simply, wait for auctions which may also still be run. Remember that spelling and grammar counts so please proof read and spell check.

Finally, if your application is refused, we will try to explain why. There will also be a three month period before another attempt at applying will be considered.

Good luck to all who apply.

Here is the second update of the week ... Alchemy has been released and ready to be used in game! This includes new crafting, and new quests. This work has been going on for few months, and it's a pretty big accomplishment. Looks like Liera the arena's alchemist really needs a help for an urgent matter, will you be able to aid her?



Here's a brief list of what alchemy has to offer:

• brew powerful potions to heal, restore mana and stamina
• enhance your magical skills and your abilities with mighty potions
• use most of the lootable animal parts to brew strange concoctions
• usable ingredients include ore and crystals
• news for blacksmith: alchemists will need quicksilver to brew their potions, will you be able to provide them the much needed ingredient?
• use your herbal skill to brew potions able to heal and cure disease and ... more!

And don't forget to pay a visit to Jayose, looks like alchemy lore has been revealed! But alchemy does not end here, expect a "mystique" update in the next weeks.

Many thanks to eonwind for the alchemy rules, items, crafting update, and to Mordaan for the alchemy quests.

We also did a number of fixes on the Engine , we list here the ones applicable to this update:

• There was a problem with the random generation by which the last element was never selected (example the Azure Way buffed item). Also there were some issues where the buffs reserved for gem enchanting (greater, ...) were selected for standard random loot. Both are now fixed. The items with wrong modifiers have been changed with valid modifiers.
• Expanded the possibilities to set quest's prerequisites and verify certain conditions during the quests. Example is now possible to check possession of items, and check their quality. This has been used in the recent quest update.

Many thanks to Weltall for the engine support and enhancements.

Windows

If you have a notebook or laptop computer:

It's always best to use the vendor drivers, be sure those are up to date. Only if that fails you can try to experiment with other drivers.

For laptops with ATI video cards you can use the drivers from http://www.omegadrivers.net/ati.php

Nvidia users can try drivers from http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/

If you have a desktop or workstation computer:

Before you can update the graphics driver, you need to know what kind of graphics card you have.

The easiest way is to run the DirectX Diagnostic Tool:

   1. Click "Start."
   2. On the "Start" menu, click "Run."
   3. In the "Open" box, type "dxdiag" (without the quotation marks) , and then click "OK."
   4. The DirectX Diagnostic Tool opens. Click the "Display" tab.
   5. On the "Display" tab, information about your graphics card is shown in the "Device" section. You can see the name of your card, as well as how much video memory it has.


Once you know the kind of graphics card you have, visit the manufacturer's website to download the latest driver. Here are links for downloading drivers from the most common graphics card manufacturers:

    * NVIDIA: http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp
    * ATI from AMD: http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html
    * Intel: http://support.intel.com/support/graphics/


Mac OS X

   1. Click the Apple.
   2. On the "Apple" menu, click "Software Update."
   3. If there is a Mac OS X update available, you can install it. If there is a graphics driver update, it will be included in the Mac OS X update.

Linux
   Generally you can use the drivers that are included in your distribution. If you have issues consider using propitary drivers (This is especially important for nividia users)
   If you are still having issues check for a new version of your favorite distribution.

We just released few updates, in particular:

• Fixed gems effect. Due to a bug the enchanted gem effects were not correct, this is now corrected.
• Added new quest to enable armor enchanting for players. It's now possible to find the Armor Enchant books in game and set the enchanted gems into armor!
• Fixed the login problem for old accounts, see this.
• Fixed MyPlane achievements on PlaneShift releases your char has played.
• Fixed cooking prices. Intermediate items cost less, final items cost more, allowing better economy for cooks.

Here we are with some juicy news!

• Mining, harvesting and fishing now produce variable quality items. This means you can find better ore, plants, ingredients, and fishes. The minimum quality is anyway capped at 50, max quality at 300.
• It's now "simpler" to find better random loot, we have revised the loot generator chances and formulas. Nonetheless, finding rare loot is still hard.
• It's now possible to see the random loot item rarity ! In the description window of the item, you will see the "Rarity" info at the end. Rarity is expressed in words (example: extremely rare) and also by a percentage number, which expresses the chance to find such an item (after the standard item is found). Let us know which rare weapons you have, will be good to see who has the rarest!
• Gem enchanting quests and books are available to players! First you need to be an apprentice in one of the ways, then you need to find the new quests dedicated to gem enchanting. There are two quests, each dedicated to 3 Ways.

Enjoy!