check this thread for details.  the server is being updated.  http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=42839.msg479311#new

I assume by pterosaurs, you mean the fast travel we have. And if you do mean that I'm not sure which bits of them you think would benefit from an additional explanation. The quest based system of travel seems pretty clear to me. But I might be wrong.

Yes, I was talking about the fast travel system.  And the quest system is nice, but it may not occur to a new player to walk up to the pterosaur handler and ask them for a quest as a way to travel.  they may not even be aware that fast travel is an option, so having a tip to say "hey, come check this thing out and see how it works" might be useful.  /2 cents.

I've been tinkering with skins over the last few months and wanted to share my first Way themed skin.  This particular skin is a Blue Way skin.  I've also made a few modification to the GUI including:

- Ability to make the buddy list narrower than the current default settings
- Added equipment slots to the small inventory window (the one that pops up when you open inventory from a container or when you trade with someone).  These equipment slots can be "hidden" by resizing the window.
- Added custom icons for:  Open Inventory, Transfer to Inventory, Take All, and Take Stack All buttons.
- Added inventory weight to the small inventory window.
- Modified the chat panel to have the tabs between the dialog box and the reading pane.
- Slight modifications to the location of decorations for the main inventory window.
- Slight modifications to the crafting and spell casting progress bars (moved the button down to remove overlap with progress bars).

I've included a link to couple of screenshots and zipped skin below.  If you want to try it out, simply place a copy of zip folder in your skins folder. It should appear in the skins list the next time you launch PS.  For windows it's located at C:\Program Files (x86)\PlaneShift\art\skins or C:\Program Files\PlaneShift\art\skins (depending on if you're running 32 bit or 64 bit).  I've been testing this skin on my computer (windows ; an earlier version was tested on Mac; it has not been tested on linux.  If you have any issues or suggestions, let me know. 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/p3at5gkffb915nz/AACEGLqcTlodOCqN4ET9goxma?dl=0

Thanks for all the positive feedback!

Inspired by the new update, I also took a stab at the Fenki robe.  https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0p2l7ql4r3466vw/AAB5LTOb3b5JW0Be45dxMMSna?dl=0

2 - I've added 'mind' 'left hand' and 'right hand' inventory slots into the 'bag' or 'small inventory' window so that you can move items in and out of your hand and mind slots without the need to open the full inventory window. This should mean you can keep your screen tidier while crafting.

Thanks Venalan!     I was trying to do this very thing with my own skin and couldn't get the mind slot to work properly.

Wouldn't it be easier to just randomize critter drop quality and have npcs sell a variety of quality stuff?

I wouldn't be opposed to this, but I would hope that the critter drop q is a little more limited than harvesting and mining are right now so it's not every value between 50-300 (perhaps limit quality it to every 25 or 50 q points).  Having to manually stack things in your inventory when you are mining or keeping multiple stacks is annoying enough when you're mining one thing, but if you start doing that with multiple animal parts while hunting, inventory management is going to turn into a nightmare.

Also like the idea of reducing randomness as skill increases.  I'm not sure if you could do this on a per item basis, or if it's already set up this way. 

Example:  Making leather gloves is easy but making a chain mail torso is hard, and making leather gloves will be "mastered" much earlier than making a chain mail torso so the script should take into account at what skill level each item is considered "mastered" and have the lowest randomness assigned at the "mastery level" for that item.  So say you can master leather gloves at 20 levels of armor making, then the lowest random variable will be assigned around level 20 for leather gloves, but say you need 80 levels to master chain mail torso, then the lowest random variable will be assigned around level 80 for chain mail torso.  If two skills are needed in a step to make something, the random variable should be averaged between the two skills needed, or possibly slightly weighted toward the primary skill.

It might be nice also, if NPCs are added, to be able to request to be healed (either free or for a nominal fee) to help new players.  Maybe you have to do a quest to get healed for free or something along those lines.  Just a thought.