Woohoo!  First posts in a year-and-a-half?  Great to get this forum started up again.   

So here's what settings is working on:
Recently completed: revision of Shield Making quests
Currently (0.6.2 and earlier) shields are made using "Diagrams" rather than the standard crafting books we've all come to know and love.       The problem is there is a LOT of them.  So to make them more in line with other crafting, the individual diagrams are being phased out in favor of a progression of shield making books from which you can make several kinds of shields each.  Thanks to eonwind, Tuathanach, and Lumi for their work in sorting the rules.  Lots of new shields are being introduced and it coincides with rules changes in shield effectiveness.   I'll let Rules explain those details.

So with these changes there is a big impact on the quests used to reward these books.  There were a total of 14 quests giving 16 books (1 book, Catalog of Shields, and 15 diagrams).  Many of these quests had nothing to do with crafting other than their reward.  So this has now been reduced to 5 quests repurposed for the 4 new books.  The remaining quests have been given new rewards and one has been greatly expanded into practically a whole new fun quest. A couple others have been eliminated.  (Including that whole weird sequence where you give away your Golden Shield Diagram then later get it back).   These quests will be wiped for everyone so you can go through the quests again and get their new rewards.  So when the new update goes through, be sure to check with Trasok to get started in shield making.  And no, there will be no wipe of preexisting shield making skill, so you advanced crafters can just zip through the quests.  On another note, some of those small parts that could only be bought from NPCs will now be craftable as well.  So you'll have a choice between buying standard quality versions from the NPCs or making higher quality parts yourself.


In progress:
Bow Making is a long standing skill desired by the community.  Rules worked out the process some time ago (thanks to eonwind, Tuathanach, and skelbellor!) but the quests have been on the to-do list for awhile.  Cirerey completed the first quest and got started on the 2nd but left the team in December 2013.  So it was shelved a bit as settings had other pressing projects in progress.  Now Tuathanach has been gracious enough to pick up the project and complete quest #2 and with the help of Lumi, create the final quest as well.

The 3 were recently polished into working drafts and loaded on the test server.  So we've been going through and testing them.  Under the category of "this is why we test these things" the first quest wasn't going to quite work as is, so I decided to simplify it and reloaded it yesterday.  I like it better this way.  We're still in the process of testing these quests but they should be ready for the next update!  So get ready to make some bows!  \o/


Next up:
After finishing off the bow making quests, I plan on FINALLY finishing off those last two alchemy quests.  There is one more advanced, very special book to be rewarded for those highly skilled in alchemy.  These 2 quests were quite ambitious and ultimately got put on the bottom of a very large pile of projects.  But I actually did some writing on it a few weeks ago so it's just a matter of time to get back to them and finish them up.  They won't make this update but will be in a future update.

That screen would be the most reliable way.  Seems today the server is lagging heavily for some reason.  To the point where it's reporting as not reachable.  So I don't think it's you.

I'm pleased to announce Explorers is still alive and now under new leadership.  All hail Resildren as the new leader of the Explorers Guild!   

Also (on next server reboot if that hasn't happened in the past few days), be on the lookout for the new athanor.  A late entry from the art dept. on that one.   

Quote from: Mordaan on November 03, 2013, 05:00:30 pm

(a container where a worm transforms into a butterfly).

The way you describe that makes me laugh. Makes it sound like a box you can buy. And I think caterpillar would be better than worm.

Was Talad's description.   

Right, gotta pay attention to exactly what kra says.  "After that..."   

Intel (R) HD graphics family driver 8.15.10.2372

There's the likeliest culprit.  PS has NEVER worked well with intel cards.

Just a note on my progress.  One of the purposes of the tutorial is to point you in the right direction to get started in quests.  In particular, the "intro" quests.  I have updated most of those, adding some additional Q & A, particularly for Introduction to Crafting and Introduction to Science.

Consequently, a big part of that is how quests are chained.  So this has been a good opportunity to start the restructuring of quest chains, which has been a goal of mine for years.  Crafting has gotten the biggest change, with branches for each crafting area (mining, metal working, blades, armor, and general crafting quests).  In the intro quest, Harnquist will now explain how and where to get started in each craft.  I've also redone science, arts, and seeds of wildwood.  And changing the order of the quests is no good without dialog to properly direct you, so I am working on that now.

So it's a huge project but I'm making good progress.  I'll get as much of this done by the time the tutorial is released, but it will be ongoing.