But at the same time, having studied unarmed combat for 1 year, you've also become better at handling a knife -- the skills are somewhat transferable, at the very least you'll be more coordinated and know how you're body moves. You'll do better unarmed than an your armed ned, but you might still do more damage with a knife than without. Plus, it seems to me that a skill level of 6 is far from equivalent to a year's experience -- maybe a couple of months at the most.

As far as mobs getting lost, is it possible to have them killed and respawned if they've been triggered, and have been sitting still for say 5 minutes? Lost mobs would be fun to hunt down too. I think mobs around the main roads (Hydlaa to Ojaveda, Gugrontid) should be tame or absent, while the ones around the shortcuts make sense to be aggro. Any monsters on the road to the Bronze Doors should be wild -- it's a dangerous place, after all. Maybe even put the thugs and cutthroats on the road to Ojaveda there.

Somewhat related to Ojaveda being a beginner's spot (maybe not anymore since the spawn points were changed), I see the unlawful element in Ojaveda being more covert -- smuggling, maybe a little extortion, planning the raid (while the actual theft happens elsewhere); I figure that's why Kisatol is around. This is encroaching on Settings, but I think the Ojavedan government or people should be cracking down on overt theft and thuggery. The Enkis seem to be modeled on the nomadic tribes of the Middle East and North Africa, who regarded theft to be a very serious offense. I think I remember hearing of some reason why the rest of Ojaveda is inaccessible, and maybe that's why there isn't much law in Dsar Akkaio right now.

Now that I'm done possibly stepping on toes, a quick note to the Devs and GMs. I think you guys (and gals) are doing a fantastic job with the game. The Planeshift setting is one of most unique I've seen, second to Planeshift. On the coding side, there has been obvious improvement, and I'd like to thank everyone that's been donating their time and effort into making this game what it is, and what it could be.

Neither a forum search nor poking through the options yielded any results for me. Is there a way to keep the chat window (or some other windows) from stealing focus when something happens? Right now my only solution is to turn the window off completely, but that's a less-than-ideal solution, because then I can't see any notifications at all.

OOC:
You need to reformulate the way you've got your odds. 1:1 does not mean you get your money back, it means you get your money back, as well as an amount equal to it. These are even odds, which you do not get on a tie. Just to make everything perfectly clear, using modern parlance, winning a bet of 6 tria will result in a payout of:

1:1 -- 12 tria (6 + 6)
2:1 -- 18 tria (6 + 12)
3:2 -- 15 tria (6 + 9)

Please note that payout is the total given back (including the amount of the original bet) and not the profit.

To determine the payout for any odds taking the form of x:y (with original bet b), use the following formula:
payout = b * (1 + x/y)

I agree that the amount of effort currently required is fine, and appropriate. I do think that there needs to be some balancing, but I think that making the skills actually sustainable (at all levels of progression) would go a long way towards making grinding less boring. Talking about crafting, for instance, there supply is much greater than demand, especially for novice crafters who want to improve, and must therefore create large amounts of common/standard quality weapons before they are able to consistently produce superior/exceptional/finest quality weapons. It also requires a large amount of raw material, which for the moment many players need to mine themselves because they cannot afford to pay other people to mine it for them. This problem is compounded by the fact that many (professional) miners prefer to mine platinum because they make much more from it than (even though it has no current use in the world) than mining iron and coal. Crafting also produces very few PPs compared to the amount needed to advance a level. Thus we see that to train crafting skills, is not cost-effective in terms of monetary cost and experience, which means that many will have to hunt mobs to get PPs, and maybe tria as well if they are strong enough to challenge loot-producing monsters. If not, they have to grind plat to pay for their training.

Currently, I believe that the only family of skills that produce enough PPs and tria to sustain continued training is (melee) combat. You are even able to train both your weapons and armors skills at once, and excess PPs can be directed towards training stats, which further improves your combat power. Mining does pay for itself, if you can get the PPs. Crafting could pay for itself, if demand were increased. Further reducing the weapons sold my NPC merchants will probably be a major way of achieving this. Increasing the amount that NPC merchants pay for crafted weapons, and the price of their own weapons, would also be appropriate -- players would be given more reason to buy a crafted weapon if the NPC alternative is comparably priced, and players can sell their crafted weapons to NPCs for something that at least covers the cost of the materials. Especially since the Settings says a sword's cost is equivalent to a year's earnings for a farmer. By that standard, every character in PS is very, very wealthy.

Character stats are the anomaly in that they aren't trained, they are bought. Which leads to the previous comment that You can go from a 47-strength weakling to a 150-strength hero in minutes if you have the tria and PPs -- the latter of which might be difficult since the greatest gains in PPs are found in combat, which you are going to find difficult if you have 47 strength. Here, I would say that more grinding IS needed, absolutely. Maybe apply the skills progression system to stats as well -- you buy some theoretical knowledge, then train it up. Experience in stats would come through doing activities that require that stat. If it lowers your stamina, chances are it should exercise Endurance. This doesn't really make it more difficult, since you can go on doing the same things you do, but it will slow the progression to something that makes much more sense.

I wonder if the calls to eliminate PPs altogether are not unfounded. But instead of replacing it with something complex, why not just eliminate the need for PPs, and leave it at that? You still buy theoretical training, it still costs tria. Afterwards you train it to get experience in that skill as usual. PPs to me are just a hold-over from the leveling paradigm of most RPGs, which PS is trying to shy away from. Remove them and the amount you can train a skill is still dependent on how much that skill is actually used, so I don't see it as losing much of anything, except an artificial cap. If the amount of PPs rendered by an activity were harmonized with the amount needed to train that skill, it would definitely be balanced, but would have the same end effect as removing them anyway.

I deliberately avoided talking about skills you can train but don't have any use yet (ie cooking/baking) since this IS in alpha/beta. RP also goes a long way towards making grinding more enjoyable. This is especially seen in cooking and baking, where although the products are useless as far as (current) game mechanics goes, they do find a use in the RP community. There are also a few people that have decided to mine iron and plat as a service even though it's not the quickest way to get rich in this game.

Harnquist gives out several quests, at least 5 of them, and he doesn't give them in any order. So if you need the book, don't accept the quest given unless it's the one you need. I once had to bug him for about 5 minutes before he gave me the right quest. Same with Trasok. It would be nice if the sword- (and axe-) making quests were dependent on having completed either one of the stock-making quests, but things are the way they are, and at least you can't lock yourself out unless you absolutely don't talk to any other players.

Is there any information as to which files are responsible for the change? Is it the actual <mapname>.zip files, or is there something in the executable itself? That is, could I run the update and just roll back the problematic maps?

The new wilderness with the "sharper edges" shows a remarkable tendency to ensnare hapless adventurers, such that an /unstick is necessary. Hills that yesterday were perfectly climbable, I suddenly cannot get through, nor can I climb back down. I've rolled back (0.4.01 installer) to see if this would fix the problems, and it did.

Something else, and I don't know if it's related, is that on-screen models seem to be out of sync with the heightmap -- I've been both waist-deep in earth and about two, three feet above it at various points. The heightmap doesn't seem to have changed though.

Maces are effective, as has been said, against armor, more so against light and medium than heavy, though it will still fare better against heavy armor than blades and projectiles will. Skeletal opponents are also vulnerable, if they are on the roadmap. They require less agility to use effectively, as well as less training though damage should be heavily influenced by strength. Maces do not need as much upkeep as bladed weapons, as there is no edge to keep sharp.