This weeks Friday Grab Bag on the Camelot Herald is quite a doozy! Sanya Q&A round up coveres such topics as: the Midgard endurance regen spell, Rapid Fire, PVE "to hit" rates, /level 30, Ancient Brass weapon/Lost Seed quest weapons new proc, Sheeroe Hills encounters, and more.

Q: The Midgard endurance regen spell - I thought the range would be 1500, not 1000? A: The delve on this spell is throwing people off a bit. When you delve this spell, it tells you the range is 1000. That's quite true - you must be within a thousand units to cast the spell on the target. The tether range, which doesn't currently display in the delve, is correctly set to 1500 units.

Welcome to the Grab Bag from Sanya Thomas 2003-06-06 19:05:57 Another big one for you: Q: The Midgard endurance regen spell – I thought the range would be 1500, not 1000? A: The delve on this spell is throwing people off a bit. When you delve this spell, it tells you the range is 1000. That's quite true – you must be within a thousand units to cast the spell on the target. The tether range, which doesn't currently display in the delve, is correctly set to 1500 units. Q: (Insert question about community news and such here) A: If you'll look just above the top Herald story on the front page, you'll see two "tabs," one that says "Game News" and one that says "Community News." Click on the tab that you want to see. If you'd like to submit a story or a congratulations notice, the form is on the left sidebar, under Herald Features, under the feedback form, with a link called "Server News." Q: (Insert Rapid Fire question here) A: From the producer in charge of such things (astute message board readers may have seen a very similar quote from one of our team leads earlier today): "The entire intent of rapid fire was to allow archers to fire faster, and by design allows them to go as fast as .9 seconds per shot. However, this change should in no way allow the archers DPS to go higher then it was 1.62, since damage scales downward along with draw times. We're aware of some issues that may cause an increase in the damage rate in some cases, but this is not intended and will be treated as a bug as soon as we isolate the problem. We'll continue testing this over the weekend." Related note – interrupts are determined by the speed of the bow is fired, meaning that the time of interruptions for each shot will be scaled down proportionally to bow speed. If that made your eyes bleed, here's an example from someone who would know: "I fire a 5.0 spd bow. Because I am buffed and have stat bonuses, I fire that bow at 3.0 seconds. The resulting interrupt on the caster will last 3.0 seconds. If I rapid fire that same bow, I will fire at 1.5 seconds, and the resulting interrupt will last 1.5 seconds." Q: (Insert question about PVE "to hit" rates here) A: Let's start this answer with a quick refresher in how our "to hit" bonuses work. For every person attacking a monster, a small bonus is applied to each player's chance to hit the enemy. Allowances are made for those who don't technically hit things when they are participating in the raid – for example, a healer gets credit for attacking a monster when he heals someone who is attacking the monster, because that's what he does in a battle. Block, parry, and bolt attacks are affected by this code, as you know. We made a fix to how the code counts people as "in combat." Before this patch, everyone grouped and on the raid was counted as "in combat." The guy AFK getting Mountain Dew was in combat, the level five guy hovering in the back and hoovering up some exp was in combat – if they were grouped with SOMEONE fighting, they were in combat. This was a bad thing for block, parry, and bolt users, and so we fixed it. Sayeth the Executive producer: "We are aware that there are many reports from players about the "to hit" problems against high level monsters in 1.62. We are looking into these reports now, and will be especially taking note of any high level raids that happen this weekend. We have run some initial tests internally which do not show any lowering of "to hit" in those situations. However, we will run more tests and try to figure out where the problems many players are reporting are coming from. We'll keep you posted on what we find on Monday." With what I said before his quote in mind, make sure everyone in your group is actively participating in combat, doing whatever their class does. Heal, crush, sing, shout, stab, nuke, slash – whatever. Everyone off their butts and out of the bathroom. Make sure you've brought enough people to the battle, because some NPCs have a set number of attackers that should be met for optimum death. MORE than this number won't make the to-hit chances any better, but fewer will make it harder to kill. If you want to add your two cents to our investigation, make sure you tell us how many people were in the raid, what you were fighting, and roughly what level everyone was. What classes/exact levels were there would be good to know as well, but I know that data can be hard to gather in the chaos of battle. Short version – we are continuing to investigate. The initial results matched the to-hit rates we were seeing pre-patch. If you want to help, send details. Thanks for all the feedback so far! Q: How did you decide which realms got /level 30 bonuses? Why was (insert realm here) left out? How often will you update the list? A: Well, I can't say much. We have a method that determines whether or not a particular realm will be on the /level 30 list. We are not going to release this method. Why, you reasonably ask? Well, it may seem odd to some, but for a realm to need /level 30 *isn't* something we want to happen. Being on this list isn't a good thing! Our reward-for-50 system is intended for /level 20. We definitely don't want anyone reverse engineering our method for determining which realms are added to the /level 30 list, and then perhaps trying to convince his realm mates to stop going to battle (or to quit altogether) just to get on the list of ailing realms. We will monitor the populations constantly, and update the level 30 realms as needed. It is our fondest hope that someday, there will be no server on the list besides Pendragon. Q: Is /level all you're going to do for realms with population issues? A: We need a little time to see the effects of /level before we add any other fixes to the fire. Please, let's let the first rush to /level an alternate character settle down before we reach any conclusions. Q: I used the /level command to get a 30th level character, and let me tell you, the armor is not EVEN as good as wet Kleenex. This stuff was obviously meant for someone with one of the free level 20s. A: There are two suits, one for 20s and one for 30s – here's what the world builder in charge of this had to say: "We'd like to take a minute and make some clarifications about the free equipment NPC's we added to help the players that use the /level command. "In Hibernia you will need to go to Tir na Nog. If you are level 20 you need to seek out Somyr and Caryan near the mage trainers, and level 30 players need to speak with Carraent, Aetheonyc, Rhyryn, and Gwucyn in the stables. We will be adding some additional dialogue in 1.63 that will guide you to the right NPC a little more easily. "In Albion, you will speak with Hadreth, Assistant Wells, Galaris Pritchard, and Lucia Pritchard in Camelot for both the level 20 and the level 30 equipment. You need to speak with them while you are exactly level 20 or level 30, they won't respond to anyone outside of these levels. "In Midgard you will need to go to Jordheim and speak with Kelleher and his wife Andras for the level 20 equipment, and you will speak with Gair Svensson for the level 30 equipment. The NPC's should mention if they feel you'd be better served by different level equipment and will indicate with whom you should speak to get it." Q: Hey, my Ancient Brass weapon/Lost Seed quest weapon has a proc now! Is this a bug? A: Nope – undocumented feature. From the world builder: "All weapons for the Lost Stone of Arawn quest in Albion have had procs added to them. Ancient Brass Longsword - procs a minor vitality drain Ancient Brass Cudgel - indendiary pyre (fire DD) Ancient Brass Rapier - electrical DD Ancient Brass Pike - mana DD Ancient Brass Lochaber Axe - mana DD Ancient Brass Lucerne Hammer - mana DD Ancient Brass Battlehammer - fire DD Ancient Brass Two-Handed Sword - stamina heal Ancient Brass-Tipped Whip - damage shield Ancient Brass-Shod Staff - fire DD Ancient Brass-Shod Quarterstaff - minor vitality drain Ancient Brass Scythe - Protective Aura of Flame (damage shield) All weapons for the The Lost Seed quest in Hibernia have had procs added to them. Claidheamh falcata - Minor vitality drain Birrag Cuaille mace - Incindiary Pyre Cuinnsear dagger - void DD Ailm Darach spear - ice DD Bruais Creigeir shillelagh - Incindiary pyre Ard-Ennoilys sword - damage shield Corran scythe - dark DD Caorrunn Calbh staff - Fire DD Q: Were any changes made to the Sheeroe Hills encounters? A: Yes. Technically, we made them easier. Scout monster ranges were reduced from 4000 units to 750. Agro radius units were reduced from 1250 to 768. Q: On my champion I have the Vine Wrapped Defender shield that is dropped from Galladoria. The look of the shield was very unique and fit my setup quite well. It was a rare item to have as it was a medium round shield. In 1.62 this was changed! A: Yes – in response to player feedback, complaining that the shields looked exactly like shield available from NPC merchants. Q: From the patch notes: "- The Azure Silencer Fang and the Livid Silencer Fang (Albion) can now be dyed with the weapon enamels from Caer Sidi. Please note that using dye on these weapons will change only the hilt color." Do the dyes dropped in Sidi only affect hilts on dropped weapons or is it the same on crafted? If these only dye hilts, is there be a blade enamel dye? A: From our Item Princess: "The epic dungeon dyes typically affect the entire weapon model. However, the Azure Silencer Fang and the Livid Silencer Fang "models" are what we call bladeless hilts, with a particle effect that turns on in combat that makes up the "blade" at that point. In that case, the dye only affects the hilt, and not the particle effect. The epic dungeon dyes do not work on crafted items, and they also do not work on drops that are not from an epic dungeon." And… that's all for this week. Not much to announce – I FINALLY have the "Families Who Slay Together" emails all sorted and read. We have a lot of families logging in every night, ranging in age from three years to seventy four! I guess you guys missed the memo on how only single males in their early twenties play massively multiplayer games. Have a good weekend!