Sanya from the Camelot Herald answers some more questions from email and the message boards via RPG Vault Boards Fabulous Friday Q&A, from your emails and the boards. Y'all be safe for the holidays, and take care of yourselves. Q: So, the raid I was on destroyed the supply keep. We really needed the supply MERCHANT to respawn because we were out of siege equipment parts. It took FOREVER. How do those keeps respawn after they come under new management? A: You need to prove you can hold the fort. Right after you “win,” you are extremely vulnerable. Only the keep lord instantly respawns, along with the doors and the flags. The next NPC you’ll see will be an archer, and then guards. The supply merchant and the roaming guards of your realm are the last to spawn. For a supply keep to be fully respawned takes a bit less than an hour. Note that regular keeps have the merchants popping right away. Q: So what’s it take to get credit for capturing a keep? I’ve been on a lot of keep beatdowns, but /gc info still shows “outposts captured: 0.” A: This is one of the guild features that isn’t fully implemented yet – most raids are NOT the work of one guild, so we need to find a fair formula. Q: The 40th level bezerker epic gives you a choice of weapons, and I wanted an axe. But I can’t wield it in my left hand. Um, this sucks? A: Well, the quest and item people agree with you, so the next patch will have the axe auto-update to be a weapon for either hand. Just hang on to it. Q: The loot in the top of (insert high level dungeon here) is rather unimpressive. What’s up with the 80% quality gear? A: The easily accessible loot right inside is really only meant for two purposes – one, a fast and cheap source of armor for a player who would otherwise be naked or in gray armor. And the second, and primary purpose, is for crafters to salvage – the parts are things they need to make higher level armor. Perhaps people in need of some terrific armor could work out a deal with a crafter to supply them with parts in return for clothes. Q: I left my old guild to join a new one. I had a zillion realm points, but when I joined my new guild their point total didn’t change. What gives? A: Guild realm points are accumulated via straight addition, by adding up the points of the individual members. However, the program does not simply add up the points that show in your individual program. The points are totaled on the fly, as someone wearing that guild banner earns them. So when you leave a guild, your points are your own, but the guild total still includes your earnings while you were among them. Your new guild doesn’t get credit for points you earned as a member of another group. Q: I’ve been leveling out on the frontier on those tasty purple monsters, and I was still a little bloody from the encounter. Then I died on the frontier to a player, and I lost experience and constitution. WTH? A: This is intentional. If you are down so much as a single hit point from monster damage when you are killed by another player, you will lose exp/con. It seems unfair, but the alternative is more unbalancing to the game – people would fight monsters, and if it looked like they were going to lose, they’d suicide on the nearest guard and gain risk free, no-loss experience. Leveling on the frontier is not meant to be risk-free – the possibility of someone taking advantage of your weakened state is a clear and present danger. The other side of the coin (enemies using the native fauna to cause you to suffer) is considered a tactic. It’s not terribly NICE, but war… isn’t. Q: Mesmerize/stun – how does it work? A: Here is how it’s supposed to work. Each spell has a certain duration. Stuns vary between 3 and 10 seconds (ten seconds, that is, at level 50), and a mez can last up to 30 seconds. A stun cannot be broken, but a mez breaks when the victim is hit or damaged. A melee stun is the same as a caster stun for the purposes of duration and effect on the victim. Both mez and stun spells are affected by the code of diminishing returns, timed by the victim. For example, say Mark Jacobs hits me with a stun for ten seconds. The second time he stuns me, I will only be stunned for five seconds. The third time, 2, the fourth, 1, the fifth, 1, and the sixth doesn’t work at all. If I am not hit (not necessarily a stun, but not hit in combat at all) again for sixty seconds, the “timer” of diminishing returns is reset. With a mez, the same thing happens. 30 seconds, then 15, etc. This code is activated per victim. Diminishing returns has no knowledge of how the spell was cast (shout, spell, ability, style, etc). Let’s go back to me being repeatedly stunned by Mark, and this time, Matt Firor joins the party. Mark stuns me for ten seconds. When Matt takes a swing at me, HIS stun only lasts for five seconds. Mark’s second spell (the THIRD time I got hit in this little battle) only lasts for two. Some stun and mez spells are instant casts, but they have a recycle time of ten minutes. Please bear in mind that the diminishing by halves stated above may change to have the timer diminish a little faster than halves.