Wurm Server Release Notes 2011

Release notes by year:
2024 - 2023 - 2022 - 2021 - 2020 - 2019- 2018 - 2017 - 2016 - 2015 - 2014 - 2013 - 2012 - 2011 - 2010 - 2009 - 2008 - 2007 - 2006 - 2005 - 2004

111221 Merry Christmas!

These updates arrive together with some Merry Christmas wishes to all Wurmians:

• A bug was found with the visited places on the epic map, and deities should move around the map more properly now.
• Build, sacrifice and cut down missions on on Epic wild are more meaningful.
• You should now see enemy missions as well.
• The bug where the Lady of the Lake was invisible was fixed.
• A note regarding epic missions until incentives and rewards are improved further: The spirit bonuses refer to +5% Favor gain, +10% Stamina gain, +1 CR, and +5% movement rate. These effects may be transferred to your deity when he or she is 'helped'. They are reset upon scenario completion.

111219 Wild joining the freedom cluster

• The old wild server has joined the freedom cluster in order to keep it attractive. The server will be referred to as Chaos from now on. It is now free to play and no longer requires a premium account. You may travel freely from the other servers to the wild server and back via the western freedom borders. The portals have been removed.
• Players on the server have been converted to the Freedom Isles kingdom. Chaos is a PvP home server which means you can be attacked by other players although they will receive a reputation hit. You may engage in village wars in order to avoid such penalties. There are discussions on how to make PvP more enjoyable and interesting on the server in the future using a modified alliance system.
• Note regarding travel to or from Chaos: Your inventorys should merge flawlessly but you may wear double sets of armour pieces on your body after the initial transfer.
• Settlement guards will now hunt in the closest perimeter of a settlement
• A bug where archery was possible into structures at long distance was fixed
• A bug with stealing not triggering guards properly was fixed and some skills reversed
• A bug with converting religion was fixed

111216 Minor change to ganking

• The difficulty when parrying is no longer affected by the number of attackers which should reduce the effect of ganking somewhat. This will affect monsters as well.

111214 Wound treatment ease plus slew of fixes

• Treating wounds now have a minimum 20% chance to succeed
• Fixed a bug with Crown of Might influence
• Uniques no longer harm eachother with combat moves and creatures may also lose loyalty when attacking other uniques.
• Drake armour now use material as intended when improving instead of taking damage, which was a serious bug.
• Because of this, existing dragon armour was sacrificed on Elevation and new dragons spawned.
• Flatraising was not properly limited on Epic whereas digging was which caused problems. Both are now brought in line.
• Fixed a bug with enchants carrying over servers.
• Inactive affinities were lost when changing servers. Fixed.

111209 More Epic balancing

• You should now be able to log on inside locked structures if you are allowed to enter them because you're a villager or ally.
• You were allowed to recruit a citizen too many, resulting in double upkeep in certain instances. You should verify if you're on the limit.
• Because of abuse, HOTS is no longer allowed to change kingdom more than once per month. It will be doubled if keeps getting abused.
• Lockpicking no longer follows the curve since it was deemed overpowered.
• More kingdom defense creatures should spawn.

111205 Weekend bug reports

• Attacking same side on Epic home servers should no longer give automatic skill penalties but the expected reputation hit.
• Changed some issues with creature movement code.
• Bell part mappings fixed.
• Prospecting on Epic home server surface should now give more proper results.
• Epic skill levels: Archery and Bow skills should again be easier to increase during target practice. Aiming with the bow will now be properly limited by real and not effective skill. The Lore option is now properly displayed at 10 skill.
• A note about building Epic target items such as Foundation pillars: The person who finished the pillar may have to push it off and on the placement tile for the trigger mechanism to work.
• Finger of Fo and Rod of Beguiling used to work only for Fo priests but now works for every faith in order to increase their usage.
• You should now receive some (30 minutes) sleep bonus when you have participated in an Epic mission that is finished. Make sure you haven't reached the limit.

111130 A slew of small bugs

• Creature slay missions should now update more properly.
• Fixed a bug with collectibles on the Valrei map.
• Fixed a bug where changing settings in a kingdom didn't propagate properly to other servers
• The /transfer function on Wild was disabled pending what to do with it. It was also rare and considered an exploit by alt characters nowadays.
• A bug that set your kingdom to Freedom Isles when leaving Epic via portals to Wild was fixed

111125 Minor mission bugfixes

• "Give" missions should now work properly and not make the receiver go away after the first item"
• "Sacrifice" missions should now properly verify that the item you are to sacrifice fits in a normal altar.

111123 Epic balancing

• Some changes on the Epic servers:

1. Imping dragon armour now requires Drake Hide or Scale and not leather.
2. You may no longer target enemy deeds with aggressive pets. You have to ride onto the deeds on them if you want to bring them.

• Already in this update on Epic, and upcoming change on the other servers:

1. When you drop the Crown of Might or Charm of Fo, your pet will no longer be charmed or dominated. The creature will stay in a confused state a while.

111122 Official map release

• The most recent Wurm maps have been officially released. You don't have to look! You can find them at http://www.wlhost.net/view.php. Thanks Mike!
• The bug to where your fightskill could drop to 1 if it was below 10 was fixed.

111121 Epic Home Server improvements

• A few steps were taken to make the situation better for newbies on the Epic home servers:

1. The limit where no fighting skill is awarded was raised from "real" 2 to 10
2. The quality level of Iron Ore is now unlimited on Epic home servers in order to make it more attractive to stay and defend for premiums.
3. Starter deeds will receive a lot better protection soon. They are supposed to be very safe and barely raidable.
4. PvP is enabled for same side kingdom in order for people to be able to deal with spies and griefers. You will receive a reputation, skill and alignment hit but it may be desirable at times.

111121 Shutdown bugfix

• Epic portals are now destroyable
• Minimum time that a deity may stay in a normal hex was lowered to 6 hours. The delay until it enters the next hex is now 2 hours. Maximum time a deity stays in a non-trap hex was raised to 3 days.
• You should now be able to destroy structures held by enemy players on Epic home servers.
• The bug that made Exodus shut down this friday and Elevation today was fixed in this update.

111118 Mission tweaks

• If a deity receives help it now will receive a bonus to attack if fighting. Note that two successful missions are required in order to help your deity at the moment - one on epic wild and one on the home server.
• "Decent" quality level for missions was increased to 30.
• Epic home servers may now receive drain or ritual missions for tokens and guard towers of enemy kingdoms.
• There is now a new type of mission where special items spawned on the server may have to be found and sacrificed.
• The feature that prevented house walls from being destroyed on Epic Home servers was removed. Let's not call it a bug.

111116 Curve tweaks

• The Curve was applied to Combat Rating versus both players and creatures which was unintended.
• The Curve effect was removed versus creatures. Note that this has effect on deed and kingdom tower guards. Might need further tweaking so bear with the situation please.
• The penalties for visiting enemy home servers were made less severe again because of this.
• Other limitations that the curve should not be applied to were found such as meditation, prospecting and archery. The curve is not supposed to affect hard limits but the effect of your skill.
• Surface mining limits were also affected on Epic. We are going to discuss surface mining and the digging limits in the forums so this is subject to change.
• Kingdom tower guard spawns should now be properly limited. You will have to kill surplus guards.
• We are looking at making creatures move a bit smoother and it's possible you see some changes today already.
• Zombie infestation received a cooldown of half an hour.

111111 Sermon and limit tweaks

• Sermons give more faith again and even for less followers now
• Tree names in missions are now correct
• Deities on Valrei moves faster
• Large cart speeds are returned to normal
• Farming output quality was returned to the curve algorithm on the Epic servers
• The limits such as farming yield and slope digging is supposed to work on actual skill and not the curved value. The skillgain speed increase on Epic is supposed to suffice for this.

111110 Successful Epic debugging

• Epic code has been seriously debugged. Old missions had to be removed.
• Certain skill limitations unintentionally used the curve such as for building.
• Huge Bell weights and sizes were brought into order.
• Large cart max speed was reduced 30%.
• Kingdom converts were reset.
• Steel has more use and reduces item damage somewhat.
• Enemy home server penalty was increased
• Epic guards now gank like before
• Custom kingdoms that were lost on home servers should work again.
• Requirements were lowered in order to take the kingdom ruler tests.

111101 Epic mission progress

• The Epic missions still have some issues but some may work better now. We'll be sorting out the remaining issues soon.
• HOTS players received negative Combat Rating on their own home server. Fixed.
• There are now twitter feeds for the new Epic servers: www.twitter.com/epicserv1 ,epicserv2, epicserv3 or epicserv4. Freedom and wild already had twitter accounts: wildserv1, freeserv1, and freedom003.

111031 Epic issues fixed

• The agressive quest avatars should no longer be aggressive to players from the same kingdom
• Lady of the Lake, The Sword in the Stone and the King Cobra have now arroved to appoint rulers
• Upkeep cost for deeds are now properly calculated
• Kingdom towers for Player made kingdoms should now receive the proper kingdom id
• CA Chat should now be enabled for Epic Home servers
• Mining and digging now gives strength skill, but strength affects weapon damage a lot less on Epic
• Resonators and clappers for bells used the same identity numbers, so some of your clappers may have turned into resonators
• Mission progress is also being debugged, there are failing cases

111028 Release of Epic

• The Epic cluster is now available. New players should use the Epic portal after the tutorial.
• As an existing player you can build a portal and pop over. You can always return after one hour!

111024 In-game voice chat live Beta test

• The proximity voice chat has been enabled on the live servers. You need to use the unstable client to try it out.
• You find it on http://www.wurmonline.com/client/wurmclient_unstable.jnlp. You may have to allow the new code in your firewall and anti-virus programs. AVG for instance gives pretty harsh warnings.

111017 Item transfer bugfix

• A reason for missing items during transfers between servers was found and remedied. Items were returned in the cases we were made aware of
• Attacking into and out from duelling rings have been restricted across the border
• You should now be able to unlock and lockpick items inside containers
• Horse breeding now has a maximum of 1 trait up to skill level 20
• Fixed a bug with /stuck and structures

111014 Artifacts made more interesting

• The artifacts received more power in order to increase their use based on some good suggestions from Madt.
• Note that the cooldown usually is about one hour. Some of the effects listed below will be visible in the Spell Effects window.
• There are also other older effects that aren't listed here. Some of the effects may require you to be of the proper faith, i.e Fo for Finger of Fo.

1. The Glass Eye of Vynora may now be used to cast the spell Locate Soul.
2. The Glass Mouth of Vynora may now give 1 hour of sleep bonus.
3. Glass Ear of Vynora: Drops 1 gem 50% of the time and gems are always over 70QL
4. Silver Finger of Fo: Having this item in your inventory gives every allied person in proximity the effect that wounds do not get worse no matter how big they are.
5. Gold Rod of Beguiling: Having this rod on you gives a 10% weapon damage buff in PvP only.
6. Gold Charm of Fo: Currently this artifact allows you to tame any animal you like. No change.
7. Gold Crown of Might: This artifact currently can be used to dominate fearsome monsters. If you wear the crown on your head it protects as a steel great helm and wearing it gives every allied person in proximity a non-stackable Combat Rating bonus of 1.
8. Steel Sword of Magranon: Buffed Damage and Flaming Aura effect.
9. Bronze Hammer of Magranon: Buffed Damage and Flaming Aura effect.
10. Glass Orb of Doom: Now has a 20 seconds 'Use' timer. When it reaches 0 the Orb deals a 50 damage wound to enemies that rots with infection. There's a 5% chance it backfires immediately and may kill the user and people closeby.
11. Steel Sceptre of Ascension: Buffed Damage and Rotting Touch effect.
12. Iron Scale of Libila: Raise Zombies. No limit on parrying as a shield. Indestructible. Also gives bonus to shield parrying skill.

• The range where you can build close to altars now has been increased to 50 tiles in order to promote more open recharge warfare which was always intended. Apparently 20 tiles didn't do the trick. Existing structures will have to be torn down.
• Recharging artifacts now properly has to be done at the same side altar. Fo, Magranon and Vynora at the White Light altar, and Libila at the Bone Altar.

111012 Horse breeding improvements, spell tweaks

• Horse breeding should now yield more sensible results at higher skill levels
• Pain rain now has faith requirement of 40 instead of 60 since it made Fire Pillar look overpowered
• Worm Brains was also brought into line with Fire Heart

111005 Item weirdness fix

• The bug where newly created items suddenly became irresponsive was fixed. Some items may still experience this but it should go away over time.
• A bug where tunnelling creatures created drop shafts was fixed.

110928 Freedom KOS modification

• KOS lists are now enabled on Freedom again but generate a 3 minute warning for the criminal to leave the deed
• Changed large cart seating positions because of possible exploits
• Area spell casting range was toned down a bit

110927 Reducing strain on settlements (and GMs)

• Village guards will now target creatures that bash fences or cave walls (not uniques), however creatures tunneling beneath villages has been disabled for now. It will be enabled initially on the epic servers
• Picking seeds, fileting meat, cutting cakes and crushing wemp now requires you to have the item on you because of some loopholes
• Creatures on deeds should now be protected. Make sure the to disable permissions that allow others to attack your creatures
• You may no longer put people on KOS on freedom settlement deeds since it was abused
• If you have left a server for two weeks you are no longer considered to be caring about your animals
• HOTS no longer receive danger bonus for lockpicking off deed since they have the faster thievery (lockpicking, traps, stealing) skillgain as a kingdom bonus
• Combat spells now have longer range with increased difficulty the longer the range
• Stumps may now be destroyed quickly

110926 3000 Premium players!

• On Sep 25, 2011 at 23:34:11 CET Raub made us break the 3000 premium players mark! He has received 3 years free premium just because we're so happy! Thanks everyone who keep supporting Wurm in the effort to keep enhancing it into the game we all wish for!
• Uniques may now break down reinforced cave walls.
• "Cave dwellers" such as the Cave Bug may now tunnel through regular rock walls. Champion cave dwellers may even (very rarely) break reinforcements if untame.
• Tree stumps will now appear when a tree is cut down (Only wild and Independence has that code but the other servers will receive it asap).

110921 Transfer bugs attacked

• A bug with locks and keys when changing servers should be fixed
• A bug with friends list being disrupted when changing servers should be fixed
• HOTS should now regain nutrition and food levels at the normal rate again

110919 More creature updates

• Fence breaking was toned down in that only Trolls, Lava fiends and Uniques break fences now.
• Uniques should be a bit harder to trap and break out more.
• Tougher creature types such as champion and greenish may no longer be hitched since it was considered overpowered. Normal types may though.
• A rare bug that caused Deliverance to shut down yesterday was fixed.

110915 Exodus server available!

• The release of the Exodus server was extremely successful in that it was just like flicking a switch and it was made available on time. Enjoy!
• The server creature limit is lower than the current amount so the server has a surplus of creatures and the start area could need some help clearing these out. Once killed, these will not return until the lower limit is reached so you can really make a change in helping people reach the coast.
• Creatures should move around a lot more now.
• Very strong creatures will now bash fences and walls (not house walls) unless tamed or dominated.

110912 Mailing and boat fixes

• The problems with COD mail deliveries between servers have been fixed.
• There were some instances where captains could cross the border but their boats remained behind. Should no longer happen.

110909 Item bug gone

• The aforementioned bug where items became irresponsive fixed itself. It was probably due to some id number confusion because of the rollback where the id counters now have catched up. The problematic items are gone. Luckily it was mostly clay, dirt or wood scraps anyways.

110909 Small weirdness

• Apparently items sometimes get created and end up irresponsive so you can not interact with them. We haven't found the cause for this yet. It mostly appears to be related to recycled item objects, which usually are low worth items but it can be a bit annoying.
• Shark models may look too large or too small depending on the state of model pack or server code. Eventually we'll synch and it will look good.

110908 Change to throwing creatures

• Creatures such as sharks should no longer throw you out of the larger boats such as Cogs or Corbitas. The smaller sailing or rowing boats do not provide that protection.

110907 Wurm is stable!

• There! After having to dish out loads of bad news the last 48 hours we have formally pushed through. Boats transfer between servers with thousands of items in the hold. I heard 4k+. Don't try to break it please.
• In case you lack items in inventory or on the body, return to Independence and they will show up and follow you over this time.
• There are no known severe bugs. The server is running smoothly. Most errors have been sorted. Time to rejoice!

110907 Two more bug fixes

• Boat locks didn't transfer properly which caused weirdnesses.
• If you tried to transfer in the beginning when there was a limit, items on your body or in your inventory may remain on the old server. These appeared if you returned but were stuck there. They should now transfer with you again. If you dropped them or put them in a container or boat you will need to bring that container back as well.

110907 Boat transfer bug fixed

• The bug that caused boats to remain and players to cross the server border was finally found, glared at and eradicated.
• The servers are restarting one final time, then we sort out the dispersed accounts and bring them back to their boats. This usually means putting them back on the Independence server and summoning their boat. Most stuff should remain but there may be lost items. Unfortunately we can not spend time looking for them unless they are really valuable.
• There is still no telling how many items you can bring in your hull. It's possible that several thousands can be brought over but it is untested successfully. It could very well work if one thousand items do.
• If there are more problems we'll deal with those in good order.
• Big hugs to the GM team for all their fantastic work!

110907 Moving ahead

• Apparently some boats fail to transfer from Independence. The cause is unknown. I suspect some item causes it, but the best suggestion is to move away from the border at least 10 tiles, disembark, embark and try again. Apparently it is an old workaround.
• You who ended up in the water with no boat around, try to make it back across and see if the boat is still there.
• There is extensive debug information being written in case there is a special item causing this.
• Deliverance will open from Golden Valley now. Currently we are losing customers whatever we do and there's no telling which is best.

110907 Item restrictions for boats

• When we performed the tests as previously explained, things went well. However, there was data loss when people tried to bring many items. We had to hardcode a limit of 300 items in the hull of your boat which should bring you over safely. It may seem little but we prefer to be safe than sorry. We succeeded in bringing more items on test but apparently there is a limit on the live servers that we were not aware of.

110907 Small delay but release soon

• We are running a bit late. We need to verify that ships can cross before we open the servers when they are up again.
• Crossing should be impossible and may make you end up in the water until we open the border. Do not attempt to cross until we give the sign.
• We will send a volunteer over to verify that the boat crossed properly.
• Note that there may be sharks on the other side.
• When we have verified that ships can cross we will open the Golden Valley portal as well.

110906 New attempt Wednesday 7th at 18.00 CET

• Opening the new server today failed for a few reasons, the worst being malfunctioning hardware. There will be rollbacks and we'll put everything back as good as we can then we try to open the Deliverance server again tomorrow at 18.00 hrs CET.

110906 Herb sizes changed

• Some herb and seed sizes changed to something more sane. This had a dramatic and unexpected effect on the number in food storage bins, since it uses size to calculate numbers stored. Basically you may lose up to 90% of herbs stored in bins.
• In order to prevent boat theft on the non-pvp servers, you may not cross borders between these on ships unless you are the owner or friend of the owner. Village permission will not suffice.

110902 Small changes to thievery on PvP servers

• These changes applies to PvP servers only since you can not perform thievery on the other servers:

1. When you reach -200 reputation you will now (again) join HOTS
2. Mayors and kingdom rulers may no longer go into illegal mode

110830 Stuck bugfix and anti-griefing

• A bug with the /stuck command was fixed
• In order to handle griefers better, area spells now affect same-side players on the wild server who are KOS on your deed. Lurker in the Dark will also locate them.

110829 Mount speed bug fixed

• Wounded mounts will now properly regain their speed when healed
• Converting will now fail if it would make a mayor change kingdom
• Shield skill gain speed was increased some
• Artifact recharging is supposed to be a challenge and have great risk, so it now uses the same dates as altar destruction. Also you can only recharge one artifact at a time. Also, recharging libila artifacts must be done at the White Light while the others are recharged at the Black light
• You may no longer spawn at the lights since it only served as newbie traps
• The Dirt spell was too effective in removing clay and can no longer be used to do that. A bug with digging on clay was found though, and may actually lower it properly now.

110721 Minor mount changes

• Chain and leather Bardings now give a bit less movement penalty. The effect together with weight previously was a bit too much.
• Putting on and removing barding now requires you to stand on solid ground
• A bug where a movement penalty wasn't removed for creatures was fixed

110715 Fo priest buff.Horses and guards toned down

• Tower guards and horses were a bit too powerful in the new system and now have lower Combat Rating
• Followers of Fo now receive a passive healing bonus at faith 20
• Oakshell power now uses the rule of 70 algorithm and may glance
• If the power of an Oakshell is above 70 it will grow into a Thornshell and cause wounds like Area of Shared Pain where you wear no armour. The effect name won't change yet though.

110713 No more disappearing mounts

• The reason for some mounts disappearing in caves during restarts was that it used code to delete creatures from crowded underground areas. This should happen no more.
• Armour glance rate versus mobs has a lot less dependency on the type of attack the creature does.

110712 Mode differentiation and soft spots

• The effects of defensive and aggressive mode has increased. They are dependant on skill. Max combat rating bonus for normal fighting was raised to 2.5
• You need to succeed with the skill rolls for aggressive and defensive mode in order to receive these effects
• Fightstyle skillgain speed increased
• Drake and scale received a bit more damage reduction
• You no longer lose focus when you are hit hard when fighting players since it skews fights very fast
• There are now "soft spots" you can hit depending on your stance versus the opponents. These will give a bit higher chances of critical hits
• Examining an opponent now gives information on which stance he uses
• Creatures will try and move into your soft spots

110711 More fighting tweaks

• We are still trying to get the fighting system modifications in balance. This update addresses some more issues.
• Dominated and charmed creatures now have half the Combat Rating
• Strongwall can now be cast on entrances while outside
• Creature spawns now give skill again on the wild server
• Shield bashing now has a cooldown
• Creature attack rate was lowered
• The rate at which your secondary weapon is used increased
• Shield effectiveness was increased
• Aggressive stance deals more damage
• Defensive stance now deals a lot less damage
• Defensive stance gives more bonuses when parrying and using shield
• Normal stance gives a bit higher Combat Rating so you hit easier
• Fungus and Fungustrap casting cost was lowered approx 25% since the combination was weak compared to Fire/Icepillar
• The max number of guards a settlement may hire was set to 50. No existing settlements currently have more guards.
• Axes now do more damage per second since they don't parry
• Weapon speed for twohanded weapons in aggressive mode was set to 90% instead of 80%

110707 Fight skillgain increased

• The skill you gain from slaying creatures increased
• Parrying with shields and weapons should occur more frequently again. Sometimes a successful parry only reduces the success chance of your opponent instead of fully blocking. Your skill will cause greater chances of deflection
• Dragon scale armour was buffed a bit compared to drake hide

110706 Minor buffs

• Drake, Dragon Scale and Plate armour received some more damage reduction
• Foot and leg wounds are again a bit more severe
• The lockpicking penalty to boat locks was lowered a bit

110705 Weapon tweaks

• Weapon skill now affects weapon swing speed maximum 10%. So at weapon skill 50 you have 5% faster swings and at skill 90 you have 9% faster swings.
• Swinging now has a floating value, so you may swing on average every 3.5th second instead of like before every 3d.
• Armour glance rates were modified and balanced.
• If you have achieved and use your mastery title when improving armour or creature wearable items, you now gain improvement speed bonus. The reason behind this is that the demand for armour is very high compared to the time it takes to improve it, especially on PvP servers.
• Lockpicking boats have been made harder.

110704 Combat changes, bug fixes, Wurm meeting date

• Combat was changed in various areas since it was pretty much broken in some aspects:

1. Each armour type has a set base damage reduction affected by quality and the rule of 70 which means it has 91% effectiveness at quality level 70.
2. Armours have a glance rate depending on they type of weapon that tries to penetrate it. This should make various types of armour more interesting.
3. Favor gain was increased by 15%, but armour now affects favor gain speed (using speed reduction formula). Cloth has no penalty and wearing studded leather has about the same gain as before.
4. Weapon parry, dodging and shield use was also tweaked.
5. Since we are not able to mass test these changes unless we put them live, your feedback is important so please test and discuss in the forums.
6. Two handed weapons get a speed bonus when used in aggressive mode
7. Some damage tweaking is still needed but hopefully it's within fairly sane ranges.

• The annual official Wurm meeting date is set to friday the 26th of August in Stockholm. More info in City Hall in the forums at www.wurmonline.com/forum.
• Leg wounds speed reduction was increased again
• The increased improve rate for armours made it too hard to gain skill and was removed for now. The rule of 70 effect and the new changes should be enough to ensure you can get hold of good armour easily enough.
• Creature wearable items such as saddles and horse shoes are now as fast as armour to improve.
• Lockpicking on enemy deeds with at least 10 guards now give "risk" skill gain bonus even if they are dead
• A bug where animals would not return from being offline when you got a new pet was fixed
• Debugged leading creatures around mines so it works a lot better and no animals are lost
• Small carts should no longer visually stay beneath ground when you walk on top
• You may now use a "last gasp" ability on your body to drag yourself out of the water which allows you to climb without slipping for two minutes.

110628 Full loot reinstated

• The partial loot system was abandoned in it's cradle and full loot is reinstated with some major improvements to armour instead:

1. The rule of 70 is applied to armour, which means that armour (like weapons) is 91% effective at quality level 70. At quality level 30 it is 51% effective.
2. Armour parts are now twice as fast to improve and polish
3. Magranon faith protection probability was reversed back up to 25%
4. Res stones probability was upped a bit to 25%
5. Foot and leg wounds should have a lot less impact now
6. Damage to ridden mounts should slow them down significantly

• Structures that have no walls should fall down more properly in the future (may take two days continuous uptime)

110627 Evalutating partial loot system

• Horses should now be properly affected by wounds, armour penalties and encumbrance
• Minedoors off deed is now 5 times faster to destroy in order to curb gatehopping
• The "prosperity bonus" for deeds was removed
• We will evaluate a partial loot system in order to promote taking risks and testing pvp for a week:

1. The difference is that you now get to keep most of the items you wear on your body
2. Previously you lost everything, but now you only drop the items in your inventory, as well as your weapons, your shield, any containers worn and one piece of armour when you die
3. The effectiveness of res stones and the magranon bonus were reduced to 12.5% each, so accumulated 25% instead
4. BoKs work as previously
5. The reasons behind this change have been discussed in the forums. We'll see how it feels and what the real effects are

110623 Altars and prosperity bonus on wild

• The "prosperity bonus" added to the settlements on wild this last update was not well received in its current form and will be modified or reverted.
• The huge altars may now be destroyed using normal weapons as well. They still heal themselves 1 point approximately every 10 minutes at which time a warning is broadcast. Break altar does some more damage as well and requires lower casting level.

110616 Small tweaks and bug fixes

• Tweaked how steppe and grass spreads
• Jam is now made from maple syrup and berries instead. Winemaking should work properly again
• Cake slices now take into account the weight of the cake
• Freezing lava walls no longer should create a huge pit
• There was suspicion of a stealth bug. We debugged the code and fail to reproduce it
• You can now destroy enemy unfinished kingdom items such as towers
• Area spells will no longer affect you when you log on invulnerable
• A bug where dredging could cause dislocation was fixed.

110613 This should be interesting

• The Wild Endgame and the functionality of the altars changed. The altars may now be destroyed on Wrath day and the day of Awakening in the first and third week of a Starfall when the moons are aligned to open them up for attacks. You may attack your own altars.
• If the altar receives critical damage, a random artifact belonging to the deities of the altar is used to channel protective powers to prevent the altar from being destroyed. The artifact shifts and is returned to and hidden by the spirits in the process.
• The protection causes the altar to immediately disappear and reappear somewhere else.
• The followers of deities belonging to the altar receives a light internal head wound from channelling their life force into healing the altar.
• Weapon minimum swing timer was increased to 3 seconds.
• Spirit guards became too fast with these last changes and should be less deadly again.

110610 WoA downtoned

• A poll showed that more than 2/3ds thought that WoA was overpowered so the effect has been toned down on weapons only. It was perceived as one of the main barriers to entering PvP which was a very undesirable situation. Basically, every weapon is now very fast and WoA may have effect in certain situations increasing speed a little bit more. Creature weapon speeds increased a bit as well in order to balance.
• Very low Animal Husbandry skill now doesn't totally wipe traits. Instead a random number of up to 5 traits will be kept. Note that color is a trait.

110607 Birthdays and Heatwaves

• We're having a fat heatwave here in Sweden, and I had a long nice weekend. There was a heatwave in Wurm as well, with quite a lot of venerable creatures dying from age that shouldn't have because they were cared for. I found a situation that caused it. From what I could see it would have happened even with the previous deed protection but I never received any reports about it so it's a bit confusing. In any case I am sorry for your losses. Like a team member put it "Looking forward to see you at the Wurm meeting in about 2 months. Then I can give vent to my anger at a nearly 2-year breeding program has been destroyed ;)"
• Removed some code that prevented bred creatures from spawning in very populated areas.
• Steppe and moss should spread a bit easier.

110527 Breeding, spawning, caring, coloring

• In order to bring the animal situation in control you may now start to "care" for animals. This prevents them from dying to old age.

1. Starting next wednesday European time venerable creatures will lose their on-deed/tamed/leading/hitched protection and die at venerable age unless "cared for".
2. You start and stop caring by right-clicking on an animal. The number of creatures you can care for increases with the animal husbandry skill.
3. Type /stopcaring on the command line in order to stop caring for all animals.
4. Thank Othob Rithol for the caring suggestion

• Trying to preserve a color when adding more of the same should be a bit easier now. Thank Tich.
• How traits are generated was changed thanks to a suggestion from Gaeron. The forum post is here: http://wurmonline.com/forum/index.php?topic=55489.0
• Creatures should no longer spawn on severe slopes such as mountain sides.

110525 Traits and artifact recharging

• Good traits were a bit too common for animals since the last change. Toned down.
• Recharging artifacts now gives a server wide message. Recharging also takes up to 4 minutes instead of 30 seconds.

110523 Light and wild modifications

• We are looking at solving the problems with lights acting a bit weird. Also, you can soon light candelabras filling them up with candles first and candles should no longer pile.
• Horses now should slow down when they receive damage. Further tweaks may be required.
• You should no longer be able to use farwalker twigs and stones very close to the huge altars or duelling rings.

110516 Rebranding required

• A golden opportunity to rebrand your creatures has surfaced! A bug made it so that brands were lost during server restarts, so creatures need to be rebranded. Uncertain Congratulations.
• Pets were often lost when changing servers since the last pet id was transferred from the previous server and saved. This should work properly in the future.

110513 More understandable faith bonus

• The calculations for altars and the bonuses they create was improved and should yield more understandable results.

110509 Yet another small breeding tweak

• Now your creatures can be made to mate so that you can gain skill, but if the creature max limit hit is reached there will be no offspring produced when the time for delivery is up. There is also now a space consisting of 1/25th of max creatures reserved for animals to spawn in the wild.

110502 Creature tweak and fat bug

• A bug where creatures started gaining fat as soon as they lost fat was fixed. Note that creatures will starve to death when they lose all their fat levels.
• Very old and very young creatures will no longer breed and there is a period in life where animals are more prone to breed. Certain sick creatures stop breeding earlier as well.

110429 Late Easter

• The Easter Bunny has arrived. Since we failed to summon it last weekend we asked for a special appearance now. It was sighted at a LOL on the wild server and in The Howl on Freedom. It seems that you may also accidentally find your easter egg while foraging.
• A bug where your pet could be attacked by your own tower guards when you attacked an enemy deed was fixed.

110426 Long awaited client and server update

• The client and server has been updated. This should solve a lot of problems and cause very few new ones.
• The biggest changes are on the client which no longer uses JOGL, but instead only LWJGL.
• Major changes on the server:
• Movement code changed which should cause less disembarking.
• Creature spawning now has two pools where 50% is reserved for aggressive animals and 50% for non-aggressive. This should even out over time. In the next update, creatures older than approximately 6 months will start dying unless they are on deed, loyal or ridden. Uniques, humans and guards are not affected.
• There are lots of small bugfixes such as with meditation and artifact recharging.

110323 Old embarking bug resolved

• The old bug that often teleported you shortly after embarking a boat was found and fixed in the unstable client.
• A bug with handing out Slayer of Champion titles was fixed

110322 Tunneling and ignore powers

• Opening tunnels is now a bit harder in certain circumstances as a counter measure to an exploit. This may be improved after some feedback.
• The weird wild lag should be gone.
• Experiment: The /ignore command now has the functionality to auto mute for an hour if enough premium players from the same kingdom use it on another player in a short time frame. You only have one such vote within a set time frame as well. This system may be abused for a while so try not to take such mutes too seriously initially.

110316 Artifacts change

• Instead of artifacts insta-disappearing after a month of finding them, they will now have 120 charges. Every week 10 charges are removed. Every time you use an artifact one charge is used. You can recharge the artifacts at the enemy altar of light. If an artifact has 0 charges it will disappear within the week.

110311 Sleep bonus frozen by default

• By default, sleep bonus is now frozen when you log in so don't type /fsleep until you want to start using it.

110310 Registration and artifacts

• Registration emails work again but for yahoo and hotmail they usually end up in the spam folder. We'll try to figure out which settings are wrong.
• Artifacts will now disappear after around a month of use. The current ones will disappear randomly in about 3 weeks. Most artifacts had new functionality added and shorter cooldown.
• Transfers between different types of servers are now limited to at least one hour.

110309 Servers moved, all systems online

• We officially have to declare this last effort to move the server software to new hardware a success. There have been many failures and worries along the way but everything seems to be up and running perfectly now on the new hardware.
• The registration and shop pages are open and working again.

110309 Shop and registration down due to server move

• The shop and registration is down because we have moved the game servers to new hardware and operating system which means a lot has changed. Since these pages use dns entries we had to move the servers so that we can pinpoint the problems and find solutions.
• The forums are also undergoing some changes in case you think they look different.

110303 Horses buffed and mine door restrictions

• Horses have received a buff and barding protects the whole horse for now.
• Various restrictions on surface mining was imposed because of exploitability, and you can no longer attach mine doors to openings larger than "90" steps/dirt
• A bug with staff skill was fixed that prevented them from working properly
• Archery will act a bit weird and deal damage with a delay until next update because we are making arrows visible during flight.

110302 Guards and horse barding

• Spirit guard combat rating was returned to what it was before
• Horses now can wear barding (just bug fixed)
• Armour chains are now created in larger doses.
• Two handed weapons now give CR bonus versus creatures on vehicles if you're not on a vehicle yourself.
• The brand new polearms give double damage against mounted moving creatures

110301 Guards nerfed

• Spirit guards were nerfed because they were deemed over powered with the recent changes.
• The amount of village bonus you get from sacrificing was made ten times higher. There's a forum post in City Hall covering the details.
• The server move was a moderate success but we had to rever again. It seems the servers themselves are very fast but there is something wrong with the network.

110228 Village faith bonuses

• There are now a couple of small faith bonuses that apply to the whole village. You gain these bonuses as you sacrifice items. They are visible in the Settlement Info window.
• A new attempt at changing the hosting will take place on Tue 1st of March at 10 AM CET. Estimated downtime is up to 4 hours.

110217 Champions gone

• Apparently the deities decided that there were too many champions and removed them all. The skill bonuses they received have been reverted. Those who raised channeling a lot after champing long ago have been compensated somewhat.
• The deities have apparently agreed to only allow a certain number of champions - 3 Magranon champions for Mol Rehan, 3 Vynora or Fo champions for Jenn Kellon, and 6 Libila champions for Horde of the Summoned.
• Champions no longer have real death - instead they lose 1 point extra characteristic when they lose champion status. They are required to gather champion points by slaying enemies and raiding deeds. A champion starts with 15 champion points and loses 1 per day. In other respects they are the same as before.
• The three known champions who sacrificed their lives for their deities will stay revered in the memory of the people they served: Longshanks, Teslas and Maincorpse.
• On another note - spirit guards have changed some and may be a bit too hard now. They may attack mounts and also attack in larger groups on extremely heavily guarded deeds. Give feedback.
• Most creatures hunt a bit differently - hopefully more effectively.
• Priests should now be able to finish unfinished items.
• OH and you are now able to do more things on boats such as crafting in inventory. Possibly archery and spells. This may be disruptive so come with feedback as soon as possible after trying it out.

110131 Deeds, contracts, and skill corrections

• Merchants now trade ownership when the contract is traded
• A bug which let you control mounts and vehicles with too little skill was fixed
• A bug where non-premiums were able to trade deeds for founded settlements was fixed
• Lamp/sign/flag decay bugfix

110124 Zombie skill-gain

• Skill-gain when fighting summoned Zombies is now lower since people suspected exploits. Skill-gain shouldn't need to be 0 since it has summoning cost but it shouldn't be safe skill-gain either.

110121 Jewelry enchantments

• You can now cast no-locate on rings, bracelets and necklaces. This is a first jewelry enchantment and we may get a few more. The chance that it will hide you against a Locate Soul is (ql+power)/2 %. The enchantment slowly gets worn out when a locate soul is cast.
• You will now see how many more items your personal merchant may put up for sale in the management windows.
• No-locate cast on creatures now stays 3 times longer as well. Locate Soul was unchanged and never increased favor cost. The time to cast was increased instead but that was reverted.

110120 Locate, creature enchants, and healing

• The locate player spell cost was increased to 20 favor because it made it too cheap to keep track of invaders
• Creature enchantments and healing now works on allies like they should

110117 More spell and champion tweaks

• Vulnerable actions such as casting and healing are more often interrupted by being hit now
• A speed bug with web armor was fixed
• Frantic charge now updates movement properly
• Using key-bind to repair through walls was fixed
• Area spells still are too dominant on the battle field so favor cost was increased to 30
• Fire Pillar no longer targets creatures. Instead Fire Heart received a buff. The corresponding Vynora spell is Shard of Ice which is a bit slower but with more damage.
• Willow-spine should work better now
• Being overheated invalidates your link just as if you are out of range
• Champions no longer receive Faith bonus in their own territory

110114 Spell tweaks

• The Fo spell Charm Animal is now available, and the Magranon spell Frantic Charge is now available.
• Ward should have more effect. Creatures should become more careful overall.
• Web Armour didn't have the slow down effect it was supposed to which was fixed.
• Zombie infestation now creates more powerful zombies.
• Scorn of Libila casting time was reduced to 15 (from 20) and favor cost to 40 (from 50)
• Signs, lamps, banners and flags will be maintained by existing spirit guards in villages now

110112 Favor overheating test

• We are going to test a form of cool-down where you get overheated if you use a lot of favor in a short time. The reason behind the solution is that linking was deemed to be a bit too powerful sometimes. If this initial code is too much we'll have to ease it up but we need real fight situations to test it on.
• Area spells now cost 20 favor instead of 10. Pain rain cost was reduced to 40 since the new favor cool-down should make it harder to create death zones with it now.
• A minor tweak: you should now be able to dig 1 deeper than you can flatten.

110110 Area spell & leading bug-fix

• Casting area spells below ground now properly is obstructed by cave walls
• The bug with leading your mounts on foreign deeds was fixed

110105 Lag situations reduced

• The lag that occurred after a Fire-pillar spell was cast has been remedied
• A situation where the server froze like last Friday because of a chase-case with Tweets has also been sorted