Hey guys,
Today's update focuses most on re-balancing the combat triangle and equipment bonuses. We aim at making items more popular for PvP and easing the combat triangle giving you more Defence bonuses against your weaknesses. Special attacks have also been buffed and the early / mid game progress was made faster by improving certain drop tables and combat experience gains.
Key BindingsAs most if you have probably already realized, you are now able to bind your F keys to menu tabs. There's also an option to enable pressing enter before being able to chat. This mode allows you to use wasd for camera movement and qe to zoom in and out. You can also enable the option that pressing ESC closes the current open interface. Moreover, it's now also possible to lock your combat experience. You can still see experience gains when enabling this option though.
Damage SoakingI'm sorry, but I have to admit that this mechanism was bugged... for really a long time. Damage was never soaked and this patch aims at fixing the issue. Before the update damage soaking was a quadratic formula of your maximum defence bonus, which imo is a really bad way of doing it. Your maximum defence bonus now gives a flat soaking bonus. Due to the release of new equipment and their maximum defence bonuses, I have adjusted the maximum damage soaked a little bit. It's now properly working but less than it originally was meant to be intended.
Starting Zone & Game ProgressWe have identified that it may be too difficult to progress in early stages of the game. Thus we want to buff the drops of beginner level monsters to make it easier for new players to make money and to obtain useful items.
- Starter sets have been replaced with real item sets: Iron armour, hide and blue wizard robes.
- Drops for monsters around Barbarian village have been massively buffed: Barbarians, Goblins, Wizards, Archers, Hill giants, Moss giants, Tower Archers, Guards. They now drop items up to rune, more coins and larger quantities of resources.
- Monsters found inside the Barbarian dungeon have had their drops buffed. Quantities were increased and rune / dragon items were made more frequent.
- Dragons now drop dragon items more frequently - the chances were doubled.
- Slayer Tower drop tables overhauled. The Slayer level requirement is now taken into consideration and improves the droptable. Overall you will be getting way more valuable drops from monsters inside the tower.
- Thieving npcs now gives more coins.
- New players now get a randomized look instead of the standard one.
- More starting items are added to inventory after completing the tutorial.
Combat Experience RatesLet's just say I was wrong - 20xp per hit are way too low. We are changing the combat xp rates back to 80 xp per hit. Progress shouldn't be that slow and frustrating in emps. Afterall most of our content is designed for end-game and that should also be achievable in a fairly normal amount of time. The whole experience gained thing before and after level 99 has also been removed. It's always 80 xp per hit.
Softening Combat Triangle - Weakness BonusesI think the current system is a little bit too strict on combat styles that are effective on you. I am increasing the defence bonuses of all items agains their neutral and weak combat style. This doesn't have an impact on any damage soaking, but makes you more resistant against magic attacks when wearing melee armour for instance. The same logic also applies to other combat styles with their weak counter parts: Magic beats Melee, Melee beats Range and Range beats Magic. I've also chosen flat numbers, so that the system looks cleaner:
- Neutral bonus: 75%
- Weak bonus: 50%
What does that mean? If a melee equipment piece gave 100 defence bonus, you'll get +100 range defence bonus, +75 melee defence bonus and +50 magic defence bonus.
Fishing - Catch rates and Experience gainedI've adjusted the fishing timers a little, because the catch rates felt a little bit clunky and the amount of fishes obtained were just way too much on higher levels. I've made the catch rates faster on early levels and let the level have a little less of an impact later on. Catching sharks with 70 fishing for instance doesn't feel like you're getting a fish a minute anymore and you no longer get a fish per 2 ticks when having a very high fishing level. The speed curve of catching fishes is scaling better now. To cope with that change in fish gains all their experience gains have been doubled. You'll have to bank less often and will still gain the same amount of experience in the same amount of time.
Wiki UpdatesI have recently prepared a system that makes it really easy for us to keep stats of items up to date on the wiki. We will be testing the system within the coming weeks and see how well it performs. If this makes overall wiki updates easier I would also like to enroll the system on NPC data: stats, drops, attack speed, etc. So you'll always be able to view the exact in-game stats on the wiki too.
Game fixes / changes:- The accuracy bonuses of Infinity robes have been buffed and received a little strength bonus.
- Mystic robes received a slight strength bonus.
- The book of balance now gives Ranged strength and accuracy bonuses.
- You no longer lose as much ELO when losing a fight in the wilderness. It currently is too difficult to reach higher ranks, because you only rank up by only killing others. You can now also improve your ranking by just participating in many fights.
- Accuracy bonuses of defenders have been buffed by 25% (dragon defender +20 --> +25 accuracy). Defenders were a little bit weak when compared with a dragonfire shield or other alternatives.
- Overkill damage no longer exists and thus tick eating is now possible. That means eating at the same game tick when lethal damage arrives let's you live through it.
- Multiple incoming hits are no longer stacked as 1 big hit. This is only a visual change, because I have received complaints about people dying in 1 big hit. This was correct, but the large visual hit coming out of nowhere was a little odd.
- God robes now require level 1 Defence to be worn and have had their defence bonuses lowered. God cloaks now have equivalent stats to god capes: +5 magic accuracy and strength. Their level 25 Prayer requirement stays.
- Corrupt PvP items have been moved to level 40 Defence. That doubles their defence and accuracy bonuses, strength bonuses remain untouched.
- Multi combat spells no longer have an experience gain punishment: Barrages and chin chompas.
- Donator blades have had their attack speed increased. They now have the same attack speed as saradomin sword, scimitars and whips.
- Korasi's sword special attack now costs 50% special energy.
- Splitbark robe parts now give additional magic strength bonus.
- Comp ogre bow Range requirement increased to 71 - it can now shoot Barrow arrows.
- The experience boost of brawling gloves has been increased in the wilderness. They give 200% experience in the wilderness and 150% outside of it.
- Zamorak godsword freeze has been increased from 20 seconds to 25.
- Bandos godsword now also reduces the enemy's prayer points by 25% of the hit.
- Overloads can now be noted and traded.
- Dragon and onyx bolts now require level 61 Ranged to be used. That means you can use them with a rune crossbow.
- God bows level requirement has been moved from 80 to 75. To cope with that change I have increased their attack speed by 1 tick meaning they are now level 75 short bows. God bows also received a special attack that triggers a special effect when used with their appropriate arrow type (e.g. saradomin god bow with saradomin arrows):
- Saradomin: 50% of damage is drained from enemy prayer points. If attacking an npc this reduces their defence level by 50% of the hit instead.
- Zamorak: 50% of damage is drained from enemy defence level.
- Guthix (not yet available): 25% of damage is healed.
The additional passive perk increasing damage of using god arrows with their appropriate bow has been removed. They now have flat bonuses equal to barrow arrows and can also be used as such by other bows. - Demon saber and halberd now properly break when lost upon death.
- The charges of newly created elemental weapons have been increased from 5,000 to 30,000. This change brings elemental weaponry more in line with Demon weapons.
- Demon longbow has received +12 accuracy and +2 strength bonus. When comparing it to the demon crossbow it looked a little weak.
- Demon orb has received +4 accuracy and +4 strength bonus. It should be more a little useful as offensive stat booster while giving 0 defensive bonuses.
- Removed the strength level requirement for several items: Vesta, Statius, Godswords, Zamorakian spear, Demon saber & Halberd and Saradomin sword.
- Saradomin sword and obsidian claws special attack now hits 1 game tick earlier.
- Spectral energy drop rates doubled. You just need way more energy to charge equipment than there currently is in the game.
- Ancient statuettes from Revenants now have double coin value. We would like to make killing dangerous foes in the wilderness more valuable.
- A bug was fixed where runes from the rune bag would no longer show up after casting a teleport spell.
- Ghostly roves now give magic strength bonus.
- Accuracy of all special attacks has roughly been increased by 25%. Most special attacks have an accuracy boost of 25% while godswords and other high level weapons gain 75% - 100% accuracy boost.
- All bosses (the ones that count for daily tasks!) now have drops for the top 3 damage dealers. That includes all GWD bosses, Dagannoth Kings, Corporeal Beast, Kalphite Queen, King Black Dragon, Chaos Elemental and Smoke demon champion. Group bosses still reward the top 4 damage dealers.
- The Tower key required to access upper parts of the Slayer Tower can now be found in wardrobes inside the Slayer Tower.
- Banshees can now drop a creeping hand pet with a drop chance of 1 in 1000.
- Party hats strength and accuracy bonuses increased.
- Composite bows now have the speed of shortbows.
- Magic longbow, magic composite bow and demon longbow have received a special attack. It costs 35% special attack energy and is guaranteed to hit the enemy.
- Demon halberd now shares the dragon halberd special attack.
- Torags received additional Defence bonus while reducing its accuracy a bit.
- A bug with the dark bow special attack was fixed that would reduce its maxhit.
Engine fixes / changes:- Certain data holders in the client have been updated to use less memory. This improves overall performance and memory usage, especially on longer Rendering Distances and in crowded areas. For those of you who are interested what changed: A lot of arrays were int[]s, which used 4 byte or 32 bit per entry. That precision wasn't always needed, because a lot of numbers didn't go higher than 10,000 anyway. I have changed those arrays to be short[]s, which require 2 bytes or 16 bit per entry. This costs less RAM and allows your CPUs cache to load more entries per call speeding up iterations over these arrays: animations, loading models, saving colors, etc.
- Smoothness of compass and minimap have been improved. They are now anti-aliased when rotated and will no longer flicker or have white artifacts.
- Rune requirements now properly in the autocast interface.
- Texture atlases now use 4x anisotropic filtering (only if your GPU can do it!!). This effect makes textures appear less blurry and more realistic when viewed at specific camera angles. I have decided to not make this a setting, because the performance cost is non-existing for low resolution textures in emps.
This update mainly consists of balancing and overall improvements for the game. I want to make certain items more useful for PvP and give newer players an easier start for the game. With the amount of PvP ELO data available I'll also soon be able to put Hiscores online where you can lookup ranks.
All the best,
Thomy
Changes September 7th:- Barrows equipment charges of newly used items increased from 8,000 to 20,000. I'd like to bring this more in line with other equipment charges.
- Revenants droptables overhauled. Statues are worth more and drop more often. Third-age drop rates have also been adjusted. Statues and third-age drops are now also always broadcasted.
- Amulet position now depends on the platebody model. This fixes an issue where amulets would be invisible on certain armours.
- God robes now share monk robe's prayer bonus.
- Dark bow special attack speed increased. The projectiles now fly and hit faster.
- Reset lamps can no longer be used when items are worn.
- Unnoted overload potions can now be traded.
- An issue was fixed where you couldn't hit through protection prayers when your enemy had low hitpoints.
- NPC defence bonuses have been fixed. There was an issue that globally gave them 15-20% higher stats.
- KQ and Corporeal beast now properly drop items for the top 3 damage dealers.
- The charges of newly used spectral equipment have been doubled. Repair costs stay the same. However the amount of dropped spectral energy upon a kill can now be higher due to higher maximum charges.
- Crossbow limbs now have an alch value.
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