General Long Opens His Ground

A soldier has set up in Twin City with nine fights he has lost and written down. Everything below is live now.

General Long's trials

Nine bosses, one every ten levels from 50 to 130. You fight each one ALONE, in a copy of the arena nobody else can enter, and each pays once a day. Find him in Twin City at (429, 241).

• Losing costs nothing. No experience, no dropped gear, no lost attempt -- you are put back where you stood and may walk straight back in. Only a WIN spends one of your three trials a day.
• The boss is measured against you. Its health is not a fixed pile; it is a fixed number of YOUR blows. Every class fights the same number of swings, so no one is shut out by their class.
• Armour saves you from its sword, and nothing saves you from its fire. The ground strike is a share of your own maximum life and lands in full, at every level and in any gear. Move.
• Each rung teaches one thing, and the warnings do not all mean the same. "The ground beneath you glows" means walk. "It draws the fire INWARD" means run AT it -- everything beyond a few paces burns. "It levels its blade at you" means step SIDEWAYS, because the whole line is cut and fleeing down it will not save you. Add guards, an enrage, and at 120 acolytes that MEND the boss until you cut them down. The last one asks all of it at once, and pays a DragonBall.

The whole ladder, its rewards and how to read each fight: General Long's Trials.

Meteors and DragonBalls

The Meteor rate is now an honest number and the guide prints it. A player counted one Meteor per fifty kills on Bird Island with a blessing running, which was far too generous, and it has been brought down across every map in the same proportion -- no field pours just because its monsters are a little stronger.

Lucky Time adds half again, not four times. The blessing was quietly paying four times the ordinary rate. It now adds fifty percent, which is what it was always meant to be worth.

A DragonBall keeps its own rate and did not move with the Meteor: it sits a steady twelve times behind, on every map and at every level. Every number, per map and per 1000 kills, is in Drop rates.

The monster health bar tells the truth

If you fought with auto-attack you will have seen a bar empty while the monster kept standing. The server never told your client what a monster had LEFT -- only what each blow took off -- so any number your client missed drifted the bar for good, and a fast auto-attack gave that many chances a second. The server now corrects the bar as you fight. It empties when the monster dies.

Newbie Help, in Twin City

A few steps from where you first arrive, Newbie Help hands out a package every ten levels up to seventy, cut for your class. The slots take turns -- a weapon here, armour there -- so nothing you are given is thrown away ten levels later, every weapon comes with an open socket, and the level 40 and 70 packages carry what your next promotion needs. Details: Newbie Help.

Smaller things

• Your booth can call out. Type on the vendor channel while your stall is open and the whole market hears it -- and a shopper who arrives later is told it when they open your booth. It used to reach nobody but you.
• Gear can fall with sockets already in it. Weapons most often, one socket and rarely two; anything else at most one and far more rarely. The chance rises with the monster's level.
• Monsters above level 100 hit softer against armour and can never take more than a third of your life in one blow. The mid game is untouched.
• Eighteen monsters have stopped shooting. FlyingRooster, BattleGhost, SilverHawk, the roaming apes and the rest of the rare wanderers were striking from nine cells away with a melee attack. They were never meant to -- the original game gives them a reach of one -- so they now walk up to you like anything else. BirdKing keeps its range; that one really is an archer. Reported by a player.
• The Training Grounds are free again, properly this time. Arrows, and the mana and stamina of aimed weapon skills, were still being spent while you sparred with the dummies -- so an archer could practise for exactly one quiver and RapidFire cost a hundred stamina a swing. Nothing is consumed there now. You still need a quiver to fire and a full potency bar for an XP skill. Reported by a player.
• Ore comes out of the ground at every grade now. Each ore is a ten-step ladder -- your client has always called them Rate1 through Rate10 -- and the mine was only ever producing the bottom rung. Better grades are worth more, a lot more at the top: a Rate10 gold nugget sells for thirteen times a Rate1 one. Each grade is half as likely as the one below, so the top of the ladder is a genuine find. Reported by a player.
• The Hunt Master has moved to the south gate, by the Conductress, where the hunting starts.
• Ape Mountain's trader now stocks accessories for the levels that are actually fought there; the high-level counter went back to Desert City.
• The launcher no longer gets stuck when a leftover file from an earlier update is in the way, and it says plainly when a client is already running. Update to 1.5.8 by simply starting it.

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