Quest notes and Alchemy release!

Talad

Two new updates in PlaneShift have been released!

2012.09.16

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.

2012.09.12

The silence of the last few months was due to devs working hard on new items we are now ready to release! A series of updates are planned in the next few weeks, and today we present you the first one. In particular the settings department have spent the last two months putting together what we hope will be a pretty exciting update, it's been a lot of work! Here are the details:

• We have now a way to keep track of your progress in a quest. Basically every time you speak with an NPC the server will automatically add 'quest notes' to your quest description based on your progress. To view them you just open the 'Quest' window and in the description section you will see a list of notes for the quest you have selected. For old and completed quests it may or may not show correctly (depending how far in time you completed those) but any that you start or progress from today will have them showing.
• Quest names have been improved to be more meaningful.
• The syntax/structure of quests has been updated, to simplify their maintenance for devs.
• All 'yes' and 'no' steps have been removed so that should stop all cross quest triggering of steps by mistake. This also means that you can use the menus to progress quests when the response from you looks like it should be yes or no and not just tell the NPC directly, exceptions to this include when a free text response is 'yes' or 'no'.
• Some quests rewards (armor/weapons/food/animal parts/raw materials... etc) have now increased quality. In general weapon/armor between 50 and 100, others may go up also in the range of Q150-300. This will make the quest rewards far more valuable to everyone but mainly new players and crafters.
• Many repeatable quests have been improved a little so you won't always do the same thing (unless you do the quest lots then you will run out of options). Harnquist for example now has a more wide ranging diet, and Remant wont always lose his bracers in the same place.
• The Blackflame quest line has been improved so that you no longer get quests showing if you should not be able to start them.
• The first part of the Magic Way quest updates is done. You can now get to adept in all ways (quest 6) and as soon as you pick a masters quest other quests will start to be locked out. The correct locks for all the quests have been added, and the settings about which quests are possible to get have been altered. To apply this logic to existing players, all master quest accomplishments have been wiped. This means you will have to redo the master quest again. In addition the Red Way quests now have more Way related settings explained to you in the quests (sorry to those who have done them as you'll miss this).
• We have tested in the range of 170-180 of the quests, so there should be very few bugs to start with, but there are likely to be some we have missed. Please either file them on the bug tracker and/or file a petition in game and we will fix it as soon as we know.
• All Xacha references should finally be removed from NPC descriptions, action locations, KAs and books.

The team really wants to thank Venalan and Mordaan for the exceptional work done on the items above!