Sanya and her Grab Bag! She hits on the contest, crafting, porting, and artifacts.

It's a grand grab bag, it's a high flying bag: Q. The patch notes for 1.70 said that I could make diminutive siege apparatus recipes at skill 800. Then, this week, I saw something in patch notes about skill levels being set to 600. My tailor is at 865 tailoring, and I still can't make these recipes. What gives? A. The patch note, combined with incomplete/wrong documentation, is creating some confusion here. I apologize for that. This is what we’ll be uploading to the documentation section next week. The Tradeskill Princess (formerly known as the Item Princess) contributed to this answer, and it’s been checked with actual crafters, so it should be correct and complete. Crafters first see the recipe for the diminutive siege apparatus when their primary tradeskill is at 800, but it appears in their recipe list as “grayed out.” That means they can SEE the recipe but not use it. It cannot be used until you get your primary tradeskill to 900 (and your secondary skill to 600, more on that in a moment). The recipes were set up this way for two reasons: To ensure that they would be very gray and impossible to exploit for free skill increases (diminutive siege apparatus recipes are incredibly cheap compared to other products at the 800 skill level), and to ensure that the crafter would almost never fail to craft a diminutive siege apparatus or fail to assemble and deploy the final product. The patch note from *this* week is in regards to the secondary skill checks in each recipe. Even if you have the 900 skill required to use the recipes, your secondary material skills will need to be at 600 to fire off the recipes. This means a 900 Alchemist will need 600 Herbcrafting, a 900 Spellcrafter will need 600 Gemcutting, and a 900 Armorcrafter, Weaponsmith, Tailor or Fletcher will need 600 in Woodcrafting, Metalworking, and Leatherworking (600 in all three skills, not just one). Again, I apologize for the bad documentation and the confusing patch note. Q: I have a question about porting. My realm (Midgard) had all of its keeps. We then took Dun Da Behnn and all of the towers except tower four. A big argument broke out in battlegroup chat over whether or not we could port into Behnn if we captured the fourth tower. Some people were really sure they read on the Herald that you could only teleport to the coastal Island keep, and told everyone that taking tower four was a waste of time. Well, we took it anyways and it ended up that we /were/ able to port into it after all. Can you please explain exactly what enemy keeps a realm can port into? A: Any of them, assuming you’ve got all your own keeps. If you could let me know exactly what part of the Herald made you think some coastal keeps could not be ported into, I’ll fix it right away. There are likely some contradictions on the Herald, considering how many months of documents and notes went into the final website! Anyway, the four keeps with direct ocean access are fair game. If you conquer any of the four, and their four towers, and you own all your own keeps, you may teleport there. The full answer from the designer, “You must own all your keeps to teleport into an enemy realm. You may capture any of the four coastal keeps and teleport into them (assuming you also own all four towers). These four are: Crauchon, Bolg, Da Behnn, and Crimthain for Hibernia. Bledmere, Blendrake, Hlidskief, and Nottmorr, for Midgard. Benowyce, Berkstead, Erasleigh, and Sursbrook for Albion. Owning any of these keeps (and all their towers) will allow a realm to teleport into them, assuming they also own all of their own keeps. Supply lines into the non-coastal keeps follow the normal supply line rules, with one exception. In order to trace supply into a non-coastal enemy keep (ie, one of the keeps not listed above) you must control the enemies coast island keep. (Crauch, Bled, Beno) in order to trace supply to non-coastal enemy keeps.” Q: Who/Where is the crafting merchant in Camelot City now? A: I’ve got the answer from the Quest Duchess: ”The tradeskill merchants in Camelot city are as follows: Silura Starish Marna Alchemist Kael Alchemist Lendand The two alchemists are located in a magic shop, and the other two are located near the magic shop with the other merchants (in the same merchant square with the boat merchant, and the RP hat and clothing merchant). Silura and Marna are next to Moira Camber, the weapon merchant.” Q: I followed the link about the Come Back to Camelot campaign, and noticed a sweepstakes with some nifty prizes. But I’m not returning, I’ve been a customer forever. Am I not allowed to enter the contest? A: You ARE allowed to enter the sweepstakes for a chance to win the different prize packs. Returning players who take part in the promotion are automatically entered, but everyone else just needs to follow a specific link on the contest page. By the way, let me clarify a couple things on that page. First, those are prize packages. The grand prize winner wins the spectacular video card AND the free lifetime account AND all the other stuff. The second prize winner wins the free six months AND the swag. And so forth. Second, the disclaimer at the bottom of the page is strictly a CYA thing on our part. If a giant slug from outer space happened to worm its way into the underground bunker (protected by police dogs and surface to air missiles) where we keep our game servers, and we were unable to offer the game three months from when the winners are announced, the winner of the six month free subscription would not be entitled to a cash payment worth the value of the unused and unattainable three months. So, if you win, pray that our planet is not assaulted by giant space slugs. Q: I was inside a keep, one that had been destroyed (in other words, a keep with zero hit points) and took AOE damage. I was not actually near the visible hole in the wall. Was this a bug? A: Nope. A keep or a tower with zero hit points does NOT have the ability to protect you from area of effect spells, or damage from “falling rocks” (meaning AOE fallout from someone who was targeted on the top of the wall). Q: I was peeking out through a window to target someone attempting to take my keep. I noticed an archer giving me the gimlet eye, and ducked down out of sight. I STILL got hit a few seconds later. WTH? A: This is also not a bug. If the archer can target you and get the shot off before you duck, the arrow will find you even if you jump into the courtyard. This is one of those unrealistic things that happens in a game that wouldn’t happen in real life. The system does a line of sight check when the archer targets and another when the shot is released. There isn’t a check made when the arrow arrives at the target for a number of reasons having to do with both server programming and balance. Q: I have been looking for (insert artifact here) for several hours. I have killed the creature who drops it a number of times, and yet, no artifact. Is the drop rate bugged? A: Probably not. Some artifacts have a 100% chance to drop, and will drop every time. Others have a much lower drop percentage. Here’s an example. Let’s say the artifact is set at a 10% drop rate. That means that for every ten times the monster is killed, the artifact will drop once… on average. Put more specifically, there’s a one in ten chance for the artifact to drop EACH TIME the monster dies, and the odds never change no matter how many times you kill the monster. The number of times a particular outcome has occurred has no effect on the probability of a future drop. The slate is wiped clean with every spawn. You could get insanely lucky and have it drop four kills in a row… and you could conceivably hunt it a hundred times and never see it fall. Neither scenario is likely, but certainly possible. *** I love hearing about Sanya sightings! There’s a cheat website out there where “I” have been posting lately. Of course, the fact that I’ve never posted there in my life does not convince anyone that I’ve been impersonated. But I haven’t tilted at any windmills lately, so: I don’t post to cheat websites. Currently I am lurking at the Vault, the Safehouse, Catacombs, and a number of guild and server forums. Nowhere else, sorry. Having trouble getting New Frontiers to play? Please make sure you’ve extracted and installed the files into your game directory after you download them from our partner sites). The New Frontiers installer is not automatic like a patch – you actually need to unzip the installer, and click on the icon. Gentle reminder – we will be removing the ten silver realm ability respec stones next Wednesday, so please, experiment your brains out over this holiday weekend. And it is a holiday weekend here in the US (and I hear our Canadian friends had their national party on Thursday, so it’s a festive long weekend for them as well) – so be careful on the roads, guys. See you next week.