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61

Update Notes / Update October 6th - Glacors, Graphic Tweaks and Fixes!

« on: September 23, 2017, 08:58:51 am »

Hey guys,

I've got a few things ready for today, so please take your time and read through the patch notes. Some updates may be of special interest to you. Have fun killing Glacors!

Glacors - Steadfast, Glaiven and Ragefire Gloves.
Glacors can now be found in the Asgarnian dungeon (wyverns cave). They require level 92 Slayer to kill and drop new tier 80 equipment: Steadfast, Glaiven and Ragefire gloves, which have the best offensive bonuses in the game. Below's a picture of me fighting a Glacor with its companions:

Culinaromancer gloves have received slight adjustments (leather, bronze, ... dragon, barrow) with this patch too. These gloves are supposed to be used with all combat styles and their defensive bonuses have been adjusted accordingly. I've also identified that gloves are giving much more strength bonus compared to their boots counter parts. Thus, I've increased the strength bonus of following items:

• Leather - mithril boots: +1 strength
• Adamant boots: +2 strength
• Rune boots: +3 strength (up from 2)
• Dragon boots: +4 strength (up from 2)
• Bandos, armadyl and battle robe boots: +5 strength (up from 3)

Engine updates:

• Improvements for textures with alpha values. Leaves of trees will look smoother now.
• Support added to load custom model formats. This means that we can develop custom models with textures from now on.
• Loading new areas has less impact on your fps rate now. Distant objects may fade in a little bit slower, but therefore your fps isn't dropping a lot anymore. You'll still feel short loading spikes, because I want to make sure the map is loaded fast enough in order to be able to immediately continue playing when new areas fade in.
• Moving textures should no longer shortly show other textures (magic trees).
• Crowded areas will now lag less. I've optimized the animation downgrading code and tweaked it when lots of players are around. This issue never existed, but since we've peaked at 128 players last Sunday... this was starting to get an issue.
• Dragging items will no longer trigger the move interface event. This was an issue when dragging items from the very top of your bank to the very bottom. The moving speed of items in the bank has also been increased.
• Zoom in and out speed has been halved. This will help zooming with touchpads on laptops smoother and easier.
• Improvements to the ground smoothening algorithm. Texture blending is now smoother and only at edges where it's really needed.
• Click areas for large monsters have been increased.
• Nex can no longer be hidden when standing on top of her. This will also apply for other bosses in the future.
• HD floors have received further improvements. The game will now detect different ground types (snow, sand, grassland, mud, etc.) and mix textures accordingly. The ground quality settings have also slightly been reworked and can now be combined with HD water unless being on the lowest setting.

Game changes / fixes:

• Online time on the account page has been fixed.
• Corporeal beast 2nd form spawn location fixed.
• Sigil drops are now broadcasted.
• Smithing 1, 5 and 10 are now correctly working.
• Monks of Zamorak can no longer be assigned as a Slayer task.
• Using a grimy or clean herb on a Leprechaun now notes all herbs of the same type in your inventory.
• Special attack regeneration rate adjusted. I've copied the values from the OSRS wiki. It now restores 5% every 15 seconds. You'll also no longer immediately regenerate special attack when logging in. I've found and fixed this bug with the adjustment.
• Colored max capes have received the effect of max capes (accumulator, skillcape animation, description).
• A bug was fixed where degrading items were resetting their charges upon every login.
• Hit counters on players in wilderness are now cleared after 7 seconds out of being combat rather than 10. That should make sure that 'old' fights no longer have left-overs in 'new' fights.
• Dropping items now resets your current skilling action.
• Guardian angel tickets and double xp scrolls can now be bought on ironman accounts from the Grand Exchange.
• Sacred clay equipment from the tutorial is now correctly equipped.
• Scan clues now give directions when being far away from the spot.
• Destroying clue scrolls now ensures that you get a new clue afterwards. Unless you're very unlucky and get the exact same clue again. Chances for that are 1 in the thousands though.
• The visual combat level of Spectrals has been changed to 369. This changes nothing about their combat behavior, but marks them as stronger foes for people who haven't fought them yet.
• Crystal shield is still being too strong compared to other shields. I don't want it to remove it from its spot of being a really good defensive shield and thus have given it negative accuracy bonuses (-7 for every combat style).

I've been quite busy in the past weeks with exams, so I wasn't able to get another update done in September! I can already spoil you with things that are planned for late October though. We'll be getting a Nex pet and a brand new boss with new weapons!

All the best,
Thomy

62

Update Notes / Updates September 19th 2017 - Overloads, Grand Exchange Tweaks, Water and more!

« on: September 07, 2017, 02:14:18 pm »

Hello everybody,

I've got a few balancing changes ready for today. Please read through them and let me know what you think!

Herblore Extension - Overloads
Overloads and extreme potions are here! You can find the recipes in the Herblore skill interface in the game. An overload potion is a combination of an extreme attack, strength, defence, magic and range potion. So all of your combat stats are boosted. Also, they won't decay for the duration of the potion effect. So your levels always stay at their maximum. With this update, I'm also nerfing normal and super potions. This is necessary, else our overloads will end up making you way too strong:

• Brew's stat reduction has been reduced. However, the reduction is now stacking.
• Normal potions: You now get 1 + 8% of your level as boost.
• Extreme potions: You now get 3 + 20% of your level as boost: This gets your level up to a maximum of 122.
• Overloads: Mix all extreme potions together to get an overload potion. This boosts all your combat stats to 122 and keeps them there until the potion effect runs out.

I am aware that this is a nerf to super potions, but it was impossible to add new potions with super potion's combat power. Extreme potions and overloads are untradeable. Also brews have received a nerf in their healing power and stat boosts. On the other side though, their stat reduction effect is no longer that strong. Some level requirements for potions have also been reduced. Please check the Herblore skill guide in-game for all the details.

The screenshot shows drinking an overload potion and new water, which has already gone live a few days ago.

Grand Exchange
It was sometimes not satisfying how the system worked and I've also identified that quite a few price calculations are just wrong. With this update I have taken randomness out of the market system and want to improve the fairness of transactions. I've changed the following:

• Price calculation updated. I'm no longer taking random values out of all transactions of the past 90 days for the average price. I'm now taking the most recent 200 transactions of an item to calculate its price. I remove a percentage of outliers and calculate the mean of the residual values. I'm also taking the amount of the transaction into consideration now. This ensures a better calculation of prices and people won't be able to manipulate an item's price anymore by selling or buying an item very cheap or very expensive (e.g. fishing bait).
• Offers (buy & sell) are no longer randomly being matched. Before the update it would just find any buy offer and any sell offer that match and would complete the transaction. This resulted in the system not really being able to detect increasing or decreasing prices quickly enough or even not at all. I've taken the randomness completely out of the transaction matching code. The best buy offer is now matched with the best sell offer. If your buy offer is the highest, the system makes sure that you have the highest priority in buying the item and thus will get it first. You will be matched with the best possible sell offer.
• The selling price is no longer the price that will be paid. You're now charged by the average of the buy and sell offer. This means that if I buy an abyssal whip for 2m and somebody sells it for 1m, it will cost me 1.5m and the seller will also get 1.5m ((2 + 1) / 2 = 1.5). This system ensures more fairness towards sellers and will no longer result in hesitations for sales.

Engine Updates

• Certain wall objects have had their orientations fixed (barbarian village shelves, shields in varrock castle, etc.). The configuration for wall configs has been wrong and they sometimes were wrongly rotated. This was barely even noticeable, because only small objects were affected. This also fixes a bug where clicking areas for such object were wrong (rub glory in POH). This patch also slightly increases loading times for lower-end computers.
• Holding down the CTRL button now allows you to instantly drop items from the inventory. If items cannot be dropped, it'll trigger the destroy dialogue.
• Scrollbars have visually been updated. They now have a gradient instead of being a single color block.
• Water shaders have completely been reworked. You'll find water being more realistic now with a ripple effect. Reflections are planned as final step for the water update. Though, only for high-end computers in order to be able to render the refractions fast enough.
• The kill logs interface has been updated. You should no longer crash or find buggy models when idle animations are disabled. I wasn't able to get any issues on my laptop anymore. However, please let me know if there's still issues if you find any!
• The way monsters are rotated to terrain has been changed. This will fix flickering issues with large monsters on small hills (frost dragons).
• I've started to work on a loading mechanism that completely gets rid of loading screens, which will allow me to set infinite rendering distances. Theoretically speaking of course, it'll still be limited to the maximum performance of your computer. Anyway, I can't say when I have this update ready,  but I've started to work on it as small side project. This will also boost performance even more once finished.

Changes and Fixes:

• Several elite clue item requirements have been changed. Certain items that were really difficult to obtain have been replaced with more common items. You can view the changes on the wiki in the coming days: https://emps-world.net/wiki/Clue_scrolls (please give us a few days to update that!)
• The chances for obtaining crushed nests from Woodcutting has been increased from 5% to 8% (10% with strung rabbit foot).
• New creature can be hunted: Grenwalls. You need 5 Grenwall spikes to create extreme Ranging potions.
• Ground mud runes can now be created by using 5 mud runes on a pestle and mortar. You need 1 ground mud rune to create extreme Magic potions.
• Quarrymaster aura now also works on gem rocks.
• The experience curve for Pest Control experience rewards has been adjusted. You now get more experience on lower levels than before. The maximum amount of experience to obtain remains unchanged.
• The defensive bonuses of glory (t) have been reduced. It shouldn't be straight up better than an amulet of fury.
• Amulet of ranging has received a +5 prayer bonus to be comparable to other top amulets.
• Third-age amulet now gives +2 health bonus.
• Alch value increased for following items: Dragon halberd, wands, infinity robes, dragonfire shields, barrow gloves, dragon boots
• Rare clue scroll rewards are now broadcast (< 1% dropchance).
• Nex armour drops are now broadcast.
• Giant pouches are no longer being broadcast.
• A bug was fixed where certain items wouldn't degrade.
• It's now possible to rest by right-clicking the run-orb on the minimap. Resting increases your health and hitpoints regeneration rate.
• Several stairs in Falador have been fixed.
• Corporeal beast can now be fought in instances.
• The Runecrafting experience multiplier for combination runes has been increased from 1.1 to 1.5.
• Buggy spots that could get you stuck around the Ice wyrm cave entrance area have been fixed.

Since a lot of people kept asking me about oldschool: No, there's no progress yet. I'll be posting it when available. I hope you enjoy this update, it brings a little more usefulness to Herblore and solves a few issues with the Grand Exchange.

All the best,
Thomy




Changes of 20th:

• Due to a large disappointment of super potions, I've reverted them back to their old state. They now boost stats up to 118 again.
• Extreme potions and overloads now boost stats to 122.
• Brews are healing for 16 again.
• Zamorak brew acts like an extreme strength potion and boosts strength to 122.
• Saradomin brew acts like an extreme defence potion and boosts defence to 122.
• Hunter experience rates have been reduced by roughly 30%. This should've already been in the patch yesterday, but I forgot to update it. Hunter was being trained a little too fast. My bad, made a mistake in my calculations.
• Overload boost is now re-applied every 5 seconds instead of every 15 seconds.
• Corporeal beast instance fixes.

63

Update Notes / Updates September 6th - Rare Dyes, Minimap Overhaul and Fixes

« on: August 25, 2017, 01:53:51 pm »

Hello everybody!

I've got some interesting changes ready in this update. Please take your time and read through them.

Minimap
We've completely overhauled and customized all minimap icons with meaningful descriptions. The worldmap viewer reflects this change and you can even search for places of interest. I think it's easier to just show a screenshot of what I'm talking about:

If some places are missing or are wrong, please let us know! Also special thanks to JP writing and collecting most of the data. Really helped me to get this update done sooner.


Barrow, Shadow, Blood and Third-age Dye
I've added a new reward to clue scrolls: Dye shards. Combine 500 of these shards with a Dye bottle (costs 2 EP) to create one out of 4 dyes that can be used on several items:

• Torva
• Pernix
• Virtus
• Full slayer helm
• Max cape and hood

Please bear in mind that once you've used the dye it will vanish and your equipment will become untradeable. The dyed item is reverted back into its original form if lost in PvP zones (if someone kills you in wildy). Each hard clue scroll rewards you with 1-4 random shards and every elite clue scroll with 2-8 random shards. Our calculation here is that on average you need to complete 200 hard or 100 elite clue scrolls to get the total amount of shards for 1 bottle. This does sound a lot, but bear in mind that a lot of people are doing clue scrolls and that the shards can be traded! It requires level 90 Herblore to mix the dye.

This is a screenshot of colored Torva armours. Other dyed items look similarly.


Engine Updates:

• Shadow calculations improved. There's now a smooth transition when shadows are no longer rendered. The rendering distance now also has an impact on the shadow distance. This overall reduces performance on high rendering distances a little, but therefore renders shadows in a more correct way.
• MMB has been finalized. All objects that aren't animated are now stored in large area buffers. Previously to this update, certain objects (ones you could click on) weren't put into those buffers, because they had interactions and updates of those buffers wouldn't work. Besides the tech talk, you'll feel a performance gain in the whole game. I've jumped from 80 to 95 fps in Barbarian village.
• Spell hovers are no longer white boxes but a white border matching the icon layout.
• The keys 1-5 can now be used to answer dialogues.

Fixes and Changes:

• Skilling auras now use up 1 charge per skilling action instead of 10. This was intentional, but it made auras pretty much useless for their price.
• Pest control fixes: Void knights and portals how correctly have their defence level again. The amount of players in the minigame also affects the portal's hitpoints and monster spawn rates more now.
• Nex drop chances for torva, pernix and virtus slighty buffed from 0.3% to 0.5%. That buffs the team drop chance from 1.2% to 2%. I'm really happy with the update and that those items are rare, but so far there hasn't been a lot of armour drops.
• String amulet spell updated - now requires earth runes instead of fires.
• Stringing amulets now gives crafting xp.
• Changing your boots / hair color no longer has an impact on some items, e.g. apprentice wand.
• Barrage ice block will now only appear if your opponent is definitely frozen. Before the update there was a 0.5-1sec timeframe where the ice block could appear and your opponent still had a freezing immunity timer running.
• Monsters will no longer reset combat when one person dies or teleports away. This caused a bug in the Nex teamfight where she would reset and respawn her minions and heal up to almost full health.
• Everything else from the bug reports section that I forgot to mention. Big thanks for all the reports!

Oldschool Emps-World
Sadly I couldn't find the time to continue any work on the project because of irl work and updates. I will be posting news if available on Facebook or in patch notes topics. Since I've heard it quite a few times in-game or read it on the forums already, I'll be giving a short statement regarding the project:
I know there's hype around the project and some of you want to see this soon, but it's a huge step and a huge project! So give me some (many) months to get it finished. I assume that an alpha can be ready in a few months, but there's no way to promise that. I also would like to make clear, that the current Emps-World is the main game and will receive way more attention and updates than the oldschool project. We've recently gained a lot of players and that shows me that a correct mix of fun updates and advertisement campaigns are progressing Emps-World. I also want to make clear that the whole oldschool Emps-World will get 300+ players, 1k+ players, 2k+ players... (whatever random number you insert here) is straight up nonsense. It will probably be even harder to get oldschool running when taking into consideration how difficult it is to keep a game alive and running. So please... do yourself and me a big favor and quit that nonsense.

All the best,
Thomy

64

Update Notes / Updates August 24th 2017 - Balancing, Nex, Oldschool, NPC Weaknesses and More!

« on: August 12, 2017, 07:45:13 am »

Hello everybody!

I've got quite a few and big changes ready today. I think this is the largest patch notes I've ever written! Please take your time and read through them. With this update I aim to improve PvM by a lot! Please let me know what you think about the changes.

World 2
Since there's hardly ever more than 5-10 people playing on world 2, I'll be closing it. If the need arises for another world or if our population becomes a lot larger again, I will re-open it. In the future world 2 will be an oldschool world. More details below in the topic!

Combat Rebalancing
I'm trying to balance the damage output of Melee, Range and Magic. I want to make sure that every combat style is able to do about the same damage output and won't be superior to any other. My aim is to let the combat situation decide which combat style is optimal. I've identified quite a few issues with the damage output and am trying to fix them with this update.

1) Magic
The overall performance of magic was just better than anything else. Every staff is a 1h weapon, spell-casting is with the speed of a whip/scimitar and ancient spells have overall really good additional perks (poison, reduce attack, lifesteal and freeze). On top of these spells, there's other staves that hit much harder and have their own spell (ivandis + zuriel). I'm fine with that situation, but we have to re-balance some of these spells in order to make every form of magic viable and not overperform compared to melee or range. I'm not changing any accuracy, attack speed or spell effects, but I'm reducing the overall max hit and base damage in order to balance things out with other combat styles:

• All: The amount of strength bonus each spell gives has been nerfed.
• Zuriel base damage: 35 --> 30 (equal to fire wave and ice barrage
• Ivandis base damage: 35 --> 30 (equal to fire wave and ice barrage)

Zuriel and Ivandis especially were able to hit 60+ with the right potion and new armour setup. That outperformed every other combat style and was simply said just overpowered. These staves also didn't require any runes, so they were just the best weapons you could get in almost every situation. I've continued my tests with lower level armour and found the same difference. Magic was just hitting higher overall than other combat styles and needed to be adjusted.

2) Range
I've identified a similar issue with Range, it was a lot weaker than Magic or Melee and needed to be a little bit stronger in order to compete with Magic and Melee. Following bonuses have been buffed:

• Arrow strength bonus: Increased by 12.5% (1-2 maxhits). No worries, most of your additional damage still comes from equipment.
• Bolt strength bonus: Increased by 5% (1 maxhit).

Bows were in general too weak and needed some adjustments in order to be as strong as whips or staves.

New Boss - Nex
Has it been a while since you've been beaten up in emps? Well, here's Nex! And she's absolutely ready to destroy teams attempting to kill her. It's a new and unique combat challenge with great rewards. I won't be explaining Nex's mechanics, because I want you to develop your own tactic to kill her. Some information about Nex:

• 6 Phases: Water, Smoke, Shadow, Blood, Ice and Zaros.
• Multi attacks: every group member is hit by her spells.
• Unique special attacks that are deadly if not dodged.
• Drops for every participant! (Up to a maximum of 4)
• New power armour: Torva (melee), Pernix (range) and Virtus (mage). The drop chance is 0.3% to get one random piece of the armour. This is PER participant, so up to a maximum of 1.2% for a group.
• Guaranteed elite clue scroll drop.

Boss Instancing
There's now the option to fight every GWD boss as instance. You can create an instance by right-clicking on the Big door before each boss room. The instance name is a unique identifier, which allows other players to join your instance. If you don't want any others to join, enter something random and keep it a secret for the duration of your fight. Each instance automatically deletes itself if no player is no longer in it.

Abyssal whip (bow and staff) Economy
The market has been overflown with abyssal whips. Their staff and bow equal variant will have the same destiny if these items cannot be consumed in some way. With this update I'm introducing abyssal dyes; special thanks to Junkz (https://emps-world.net/forum/index.php?topic=19916.0). These dyes can be used on an abyssal whip, bow or staff to change its color. With this change we're limiting the amount of abyssal weapons that are brought into the game and create a continuous demand for them to be consumed when coloring. It'll also create a market for dyes and make it easier for people to sell donator items. In my opinion this is a win-win situation and thus has been implemented. Colored abyssal items can still be found in mystery boxes!

NPC Configuration System
I've completely reworked the way monsters are configured. Most of their combat actions are now read from a single file and can be changed at any time. We could in theory modify a monster completely without even having to restart the game. With this system, I'm also introducing a bonus system for npcs. This system has always existed, but was invisible and based on the monster's level entirely. I've also updated monster bonuses the same way I've updated equipment bonuses with last patch. Reducing bonuses up to 70% if a weak combat style is used (see https://emps-world.net/forum/index.php?topic=19760.0). This is an overall nerf to the defence and accuracy system of monsters!

In case somebody's interested in it, here's the config of Commander Zilyana (don't worry, these configs were automatically generated, I didn't write down every single npc ):

Code: [Select]

"6247": {
    "size": 2,
    "name": "commander zilyana",
    "health": 380,
    "combat": {
        "attackType": 0,
        "attackAnim": [
            6967,
            6964
        ],
        "combatClass": 1,
        "blockAnim": 6966,
        "aggression": 1,
        "deathAnim": 6965,
        "bonuses": [
            350,
            350,
            350,
            182,
            182,
            182
        ],
        "levels": [
            350,
            160,
            240,
            0,
            0
        ],
        "attackTimer": [
            14,
            6
        ]
    },
    "combatLevel": 596,
    "walkAnim": 6962,
    "standAnim": 6963
}She has level 350 attack, 160 defence, 240 strength, 0 range and 0 magic. She also has 350 melee, range and magic accuracy bonus, 182 melee, range and magic defence bonus. Since she is a boss, she has neutral defensive bonuses. Starlight has a weakness to magical attacks, because it's a melee npc.

Engine Updates:

• Texture filtering for intel chips has been improved. Mipmapping has been adjusted and textures are now smoother.
• Brightness of textures adjusted to give them a more natural look compared to other objects in the game.
• Updater improved. New players will now have less loading interruptions. The assumption here is a decent internet connection, else it's just going to take a while. A bug has been fixed that could crash the updater and leave people without the ability to download new files (invisible objects).
• Pick Mode option added: By default the internal pick mode is selected. This performs mouse hover actions on the CPU rather than on the GPU. It's proven to me that this yields better performance, because certain GPUs have really bad and slow implementations of reading specific pixel values. If you experience bugs with it,  you may disable it to get back the old mode. However, I recommend to keep it enabled for better performance! Everyone also has it enabled by default.

Drop table updates:
I've adjusted the droptables of certain monsters. Special thanks to Wg (https://emps-world.net/forum/index.php?topic=19900.0) and Charr (https://emps-world.net/forum/index.php?topic=19891.0) for the feedback topics!

• Skeletal wyvern
• Hellhound
• Gargoyle
• Bloodveld
• Chaos druid
• Chaos dwarf
• Jelly
• Troll
• Poison & Red spider
• Obsidian dragon
• Chaos elemental
• Kolodion
• King black dragon (onyx drop removed)
• Kalphite queen (onyx drop removed)
• Chronozon (onyx drop removed)

In-game changes:

• Guthans lifesteal bonus has been increased to 20% from 15%.
• Barrow set descriptions updated.
• Healing bug fixed.
• Saradomin katana lifesteal bonus buffed from 3% to 5%.
• Regen bracelet lifesteal bonus buffed from 2% to 4%.
• You no longer face south-west when super heating.
• Ring update scrolls no longer delete their entire stack when used.
• Degraded crystal shields are no longer tradeable.
• Gertrude is selling pets again.
• Colored ranger boots names fixed.
• All spears and halberds now correctly have an attack range of 2 tiles.
• Smelting jewellry will no longer bug other actions (teleporting to Ancient Caves).
• Clicking items now flushes the current action trigger. You could use certain items during dialogues to trigger other dialogues.
• Onyx tokkul value has been doubled.
• Regen bracelet can now be repaired with onyxes.
• Iban staff now auto-casts the Iban spell.
• New teletabs can be crafted in your house: Trollheim, Rimmington, Taverly, Pollnivneach, Rellekka, Karamja and Yanille.
• I've found the correct dart throwing animation and changed the current one.
• Small adjustments have been made to the dharok animations. The axe position sometimes was a little bit off.
• Emps-Wars boss HP fixes. I can't really verify what caused the bug, but I couldn't reproduce it on my local test world anymore. I've also reduced the amount of tickets you gain by killing the boss from 10 to 7. Compared to other ways of gaining tickets (killing players and capturing flags) it just wasn't worth it to even bother doing that.
• People can now talk at tutorial island.
• Saradomin sword can now be used to repair 10,000 charges of the Saradomin katana.
• Deaths in the GWD are now less punishing. Your items spawn outside the boss room, right at the place before you enter it. A bug with a height problem on death has also been fixed, which wouldn't let you pick up your lost items.
• Experience drops for 250m stats fixed.

Oldschool Emps-World
Some of you may have already seen this on the forum, but I'm now officially announcing the project. I'll be creating an oldschool version of Emps-World. This game will co-exist with Emps-World and your account name will be shared. However, no items and levels can be transferred between the 2 realms. You will start from 0 in oldschool Emps-World! You will be able to talk to friends and join clan chats though. I cannot talk too much about this project yet, because a lot of things are yet unknown or yet to be decided! I've set myself following milestones in the next months (weeks, days?):

• Load oldschool data and create an updater for it
• Map current game to oldschool: I aim to get an alpha up as soon as possible, where you can walk around and enjoy the oldschool feeling. This version will contain bugs and will be reset once it's fully released. I just want to know how people react to it before spending months on finishing the full project.
• Discuss combat system: This counts for Emps-World and oldschool Emps-World. Imho the current weakness changes have done their bits to improve the situation, but we can also copy osrs' system completely with all bonuses and worry about their balancing issues instead of ours.
• Oldschool items: Serpentine helm, toxic blowpipe, tentacle whip, abyssal dagger, abyssal bludgeon, etc.
• Oldschool monsters: Zulrah, Abyssal sire, Kraken, Cerberus, etc.
• Zeah: I would have the maps
• Get a million players.

All the best,
Thomy



Fixes of 25th:

• Nex improvements. No longer bugs when not killing her minions.
• Torva, Pernix and Virtus now have level requirements are are in the level tables.
• Your HP / Prayer is no longer randomly restored / reset.
• Void knight has received his defence level back.
• Certain objects that were unclickable can be clicked again (Slayer dungeon, GWD)
• Slayer tasks for bosses no longer give 10+ to kill.
• You can no longer only hit 0 on level 1 Magic, Range or Strength.
• Rod of ivandis can now be repaired again.

Thanks for all the bug reports!

65

General Discussion / Future of Emps-World - Popularity Discussion

« on: August 11, 2017, 08:41:57 am »

Hey everyone!

It's probably no secret, but Emps-World has massively dropped in popularity. I still see about 300 daily unique logins, but we've lost a lot of players. I'd like to discuss the situation in this topic and also ask for your input. What could make Emps popular again?

As we've already discussed certain things numerous times, I'll list them here:

• Voting: Yes, every server does it and yes we've already tried it. Voting will only work if we give out good rewards. So what could these rewards be? They shouldn't destroy the economy, nor give too many unfair advantages. In the past voting never brought us anywhere and I doubt it will ever work for Emps.
• Advertisements: I know that ads help growing our population. Though... there's no budget for ads everywhere and I also can't get spots on toplists.
• Oldschool: That'd be equal to developing a completely new game. However... I could try to load oldschool maps in the current Emps-World client I don't think graphics will change anything though.
• Referral system: I'm working on it. Ideas for the rewards?

What changes / updates do you think will make Emps-World more popular again?
Please be gentle and respectful to others, else we'll just delete your replies!

All the best,
Thomy

66

Update Notes / Updates August 8th 2017 - Game Balancing & Fixes

« on: June 13, 2017, 01:33:31 pm »

Hey everyone,

I've been away for quite a bit. The reasons for my break is that I'm just being busy with other things. Also the decline in emps' popularity has been quite demotivating and frustrating for me. So I've decided to take a break and focus on my master thesis as well as on my job. Don't worry though, emps is still a hobby that I enjoy working on! I'll be working more on features that bring new players and keep old players rather than programming new content. The updates I currently have in mind are the following:

• Referrals - Pretty much done for months already, but I still haven't had an idea on how to fix cheating here. We probably need to verify referrals manually in order to keep it fair.
• Nex - I originally planned to release this new boss directly after Construction but it got delayed many times. It's still on the update stack though.
• Achievements - Recently started working on it, but I cannot say when it will be done. This heavily depends on how many achievements there will be.
• Graphical Improvements - I've read into water effects and thought that ambient occlusion might also improve the game. Though I haven't had too much success yet in implementing those.

Weaknesses

It has been brought up recently that equipping high level armour completely destroys the combat triangle. You get defensive bonuses for every attack style and that results in being overall resistant to everything. This becomes especially annoying in PvP situations where your opponent's high level armour just cannot be countered in any way.
This is unhealthy gameplay imo and I am presenting following solution: defensive bonus reduction. Armours can be is split into 3 classes: Melee, Range and Magic. The combat triangle's concept is the following: Melee beats Range, Range beats Magic and Magic beats Melee. Thus Melee armour is weak against Magic, neutral against itself and strong against Range. In order to give weakness and neutrality a more meaningful impact, I've reduced weak and neutral defensive bonuses:

• Weakness: 35% of its original bonus
• Neutral: 70% of its original bonus

Strong bonuses have been untouched (Range bonus of Melee armour). This means that there has been no impact on damage soaking and also accuracy and strength bonuses remain untouched. This change's purpose is to give your character clearer weaknesses but still keep armours useful.


Changes and Fixes:

• Clan chat messages are now correctly shown again. Some commands were just ignored. (/create, /delete, etc.)
• Experience broadcasts were bugged. They're fixed and will now show correctly.
• The fade-in effect of new objects when the map is loading has been improved. Some flickering effects have been fixed.
• Superheat spell has been fixed. It will no longer eat runes and grant experience when you don't meed the requirements to smelt ores.
• Framescale now goes up to 2.0. This will work fine with 4k monitors. With this patch, the viewport with framescales has also been fixed.
• A bug in duel arena was fixed that healed players randomly while they were dying resulting in the other party winning the duel. I know this bug has been frustrating for many months, but the cause remained unknown until now!
• A bug in PvP fights has been fixed that showed a wrong health bar. The bug occurred when you ate and healed at exactly the same time. The heal is registered as a negative health addition. This addition (- -1 = +1) resulted in the hit being added instead of being subtracted and then showed a wrong health bar.
• The proc chance of Karils and Veracs has been increased from 25% to 40%.
• Damage soaking bonus of Torags increased from 8 to 10.
• Crystal shield's defensive bonuses have been nerfed. It now gives +75 in every combat style.
• Dharok's effect has been buffed. The maximum hit has been buffed from 84 to 96 (1 HP, pot, prayer, max strength bonus). The formula has also slighty been edited to let the effect kick in earlier. Your Equipment screen now also shows the max hit with Dharoks on 1 HP.
• Accuracy bonuses of melee barrow weapons nerfed from 131/151 to 121. Note: Dharok's axe accuracy bonus nerf of 30 sounds like a lot but its max hit has been buffed by 10 to cope with that!

I'll be on holidays (no work + no uni) in the coming 3-4 weeks and plan on releasing at least one of the bigger updates mentioned above.

All the best,
Thomy

67

Feedback / Player Chosen Updates - Discussion

« on: May 25, 2017, 06:57:03 pm »

Hey guys,

Since the last discussion thread was really cool and informative, I'll start another one. This one is going to be a bit longer, so please take your time to read through it.

It's no big secret that RSPS have a little decline in players. We don't feel this too much in Emps-World, but it's also there. The player counter is a really bad reference, because our daily unique user counter is much stabler! So no worries, there's not a lot less people playing, but people play less often. We still peek at 400 unique daily logins! I've also seen a lot of new usernames around, looks like Facebook and Google Ads are working out. Anyway, I'd still like to get us in a more popular state and I don't think this is going to happen through the RSPS community... emps is kinda going its own direction with many many customizations.

Sooo... what would you like to see in the game? What do you think that new/old players dislike about the game? What features would you add and what thing would you change?

I've not talked too much about Emps-Script yet, but there would be the possibility that the community could design quests / game interactions. Some parts of the game are already written in Emps-Script: The tutorial, Obsidian Terror quest, Clue scroll dialogues, pet dialogues, Construction dialogues and shops, etc. So this is going to be used a lot more in the future. I was already planning to make Emps-Script public in the past but kinda lost track of it and developed other things. So, would you like to make your own Emps-Script code and run it in the live game? This would all happen in world 3! I know that the answer to this is going to be a definite yes, but it's also going to be a lot of work to get it into a ready state. Nonetheless, thoughts on that? Would you enjoy to see the community also deliver content?

As always, keep it nice and simple. No flaming and be nice! Excited to hear your opinions.

All the best,
Thomy

68

Update Notes / Updates June 9th 2017 - Reward Shops, Corrupt Dragon and Combat Improvements

« on: May 25, 2017, 10:38:06 am »

Hey guys,

I'm changing quite a few things with this update. Please take your time to read through them and let me know what you think of it!

A short teaser of the Saradomin katana:


Combat Experience Rates
The combat experience rates in Emps-World are 80xp per 1 damage you do. This is 20x the rate of RS and is imho really high. The problem with this rate is, that people finish their 99s too fast. Resulting in maxed players without gear due to the lack of actual combat they've done. Moreover, it also significantly decreases the time you'll spend planning your level ups and/or weapons you'll get on your leveling path. Effectively making all items below level 70 completely useless to obtain. Thus, I'm lowering the combat experience rates to 40xp per hit. This is 10x the rates of RS and is similar to other combat skills' rates, which are between 5-10x the RS rates. This is also the original emps rates. I think this just fits better into the overall style of the game, where training levels takes a while. Please let me know what you think of this!

Hit Accuracy (chance to hit)
The way accuracy has been calculated previously was a little bit random. It didn't really scale properly and was just hitting 0s way too often, especially in PvP or boss situations. I've found the original OSRS formulas and used them. I found the results really promising. You could get tankier for lower level monsters and higher levels would become a little harder. To copy with this change, I've lowered the defence levels of bosses. This change will also benefit PvP situations, because it makes lower level weapons more powerful and the gap between super tanky and no armours is now smaller. You are still feeling a real difference when wearing good armours, so don't worry! Let me know if this is better or worse.

Clue Scroll Rewards
I've slightly changed the clue scroll rewards. Especially the easy/medium ones. The pool of adamant and rune items was expanded and now contains magic and range items around levels 30-50: Blue mystic, green dragonhide, rune arrows, adamant arrows, etc. The dragon item pool was also expanded and now contains range and magic items around level 60: Infinity, dragon arrows, ranger boots, robin hood hat, etc. I want these items to be more useful for newcomers. So clue scrolls will be worth doing it on lower levels in order to get more gear.

Usefulness of Shops
I've updated several shops to make them more useful. Below's a list of shops and their changes:

• Emps-Wars:
  • Blessed dragonhide has been removed and was added to clue scroll rewards.
  • Saradomin katana upgrade added. You can upgrade a Saradomin sword for 250 tickets to get a Saradomin katana, which has a 3% lifesteal bonus, level 80 stats, degrades to dust after 20,000 hits and cannot be traded.
  • Corrupt dragon weapons and armours. They are level 70 variants of their respective dragon version. They don't degrade, are untradeable and require a dragon item to be upgraded.
• Tokkul Shop
  • Inferno adze: Dragon axe, dragon pickaxe and 100k tokkuls are required to buy the upgrade. It acts as woodcutting axe and pickaxe and its special attack costs 15% energy.
  • Coal bag: Can be filled with up to 54 coals and degrades after 1,000 uses.
• Warrior's Guild:
  • Regen bracelet: Gives +2% lifesteal bonus and has the same offensive bonuses as rune gloves. It degrades after 20,000 hits in combat, costs as much as the fighter torso and cannot be traded.
  • Silver and gold precision bracelet. Each of them giving +20 accuracy and +6 strength bonus, making them stronger than barrow gloves (offensive-wise). The silver precision bracelet costs 2k tokens and degrades after 20,000 hits. The gold precision bracelet costs 20k tokens and never degrades.
• EP Shop:
  • 4 new auras: Quarrymaster, Call of the sea, Wisdom and Lumberjack. They give you a 10% chance to get double of skilling resources. This also counts for the experience gain.
  • Colored ranger boots have been added.

List of changes:

• Mystery boxes now correctly contain all Abyssal bow and staff variants.
• Dying in Emps-Wars will no longer bug your client out, forcing you to relog.
• A bug with the fixed screen client was fixed.
• Lowest floor quality now renders correctly and doesn't leave artifacts in the air anymore.
• Interfaces now position themselves in the center of the screen when resizing the game. If you use a lower resolution client, interfaces are now placed more to the left. This gives you the feeling that they are centered in the game.
• Lowering stats with reset lamps is no longer broadcasted.
• Broadcasted messages no longer mess up clan chat.
• Rare construction drops (monster heads) are now also broadcasted.
• Further improvements to the Frame Scale setting has been done. Fonts will now be smoother and won't blur out anymore when scaling the game.
• Clue scroll rewards updated. Zamorak, Guthix and Saradomin blessed dragonhide armours can now be obtained since they've been removed from the Emps-Wars reward shop.
• Killing the boss in Emps-Wars now awards the winning team 10 tickets instead of 5. Other ways to gain extra tickets remain unchanged.
• The camera now follows your player faster. You feel this difference especially when being totally zoomed in.
• Crystal shields and bows now have 500 charges per degradation step instead of 300. The defensive bonuses of Crystal shield have been updated, it now gives +105 defence bonus in every combat style. This makes it the new best defensive option. All offensive bonuses of the crystal shield have been removed though.
• Dragon battleaxe special attack buffed - It's now identical to a super strength potion.
• The check task options of the enchanted gem and slayer helm now only send a chatbox message.
• Rare clue scroll rewards are now also broadcasted.
• Defeating Jad and receiving a Fire Cape is now broadcasted.
• Golden mining outfit now gives additional 1% Mining AND Smithing experience per piece worn.
• Robin hood hat and ranger boots accuracy and strength bonus has slightly been buffed (+1 both).
• Void accuracy modifiers have been increased by 10% for elite and normal sets. This does sound like a lot, but it gives you up to 5% higher hit chances against opponents with high defence bonuses. Maxhits remain untouched.
• Seercull special attack changed. It now shares the magic short bow's special attack and does 2 quick shots.
• Magic shortbow special attack now costs 50% energy instead of 75%.
• Added a command to fix position issues in Emps-Wars or elsewhere. I was unable to completely fix this bug for everyone. I couldn't reproduce it anymore, so I thought it was fixed. Anyway, you can type ::resetpos to fix it manually.

All the best,
Thomy

69

Update Notes / Updates May 24th - Duel Arena, Emps-Wars, Lunars and more!

« on: May 14, 2017, 08:36:20 am »

Hey guys,

Big shout out to everyone giving me their input in our New Player Experience discussion: https://emps-world.net/forum/index.php?topic=19563.0 It really helped me pick some things that needed to be reworked or updated and I'll definitely create more of these topics in the future! Thank you.

Duel Arena and Staking Limits
I've come to the conclusion that limiting stakes doesn't benefit us at all. It's just shifting problems or denying to actually deal with toxicity. I'm therefore removing all staking limits. The staff team will also act much stricter on offensive language from now on. Starting off with warnings and faster mutes, especially in clan chats.

Emps-Wars
I've seen a lot of feedback on the forum and requests to bring this old minigame back. I'm not returning the exact old minigame, but imho an improved version of it. I've removed the top floors of both team's castles to make the actual boss fighting area larger. On top of the Zamorak castle you'll find Fareed and on top of the Saradomin castle the Ice queen. Their stats remain the same and both of them have a low defence level. This means, that also lower leveled players can deal damage to them. Moreover, the Ice queen's and Fareed's attacks scale with your maximum hitpoints level. This can reduce damage up to 90%! I've also spawned 3 Saradomin/Zamorak warriors on top of their appropriate castle. The capture the flag minigame wasn't removed, you can still steal flags to gain additional score for your team! The minigame ends if one of the team's boss dies or if more than 10 flags have been captured.


Broadcasting system
I've added a basic system that broadcasts messages across both worlds. They are disabled in all PvP zones to avoid other people from sniffing you out on good drops! Following in-game events will trigger a broadcast:

• Level 99 in a skill.
• Level 99 in all skills.
• 50M experience steps in a skill: 50M, 100M, 150M, 200M and 250M.
• Drops from a monster exceeding a Grand Exchange price of 5M.
• Untradeable drops that have a rarity of <= 1%. This is for rare collectibles.
• Players completing the tutorial.

Frame Scaling
You can now scale your client's window by factors of 1.0, 1.125, 1.25, 1.375 and 1.5. What does this mean? It just makes everything in your client larger. This will increase performance and is useful on 4k monitors or on small laptop screens. It's not yet 100% perfect and still a little bit blurry, but you'll immediately feel the change if you have a small screen or a 4k monitor. By default this setting is set to 1.0, which means that it's disabled.

Lunars
It's been a while since the Lunars have been some updates, so I've decided to fix / add some spells:

• Cure plant now works on farming patches.
• Monster examine has been fixed. It now shows all the monster's levels and max hits.
• Npc Contact has been added, you can talk to following people: Current Slayer master, Taskmaster Matt, Tyras Guard, Ghost Captain and Observatory professor.
• Moonclan teleports now work. The area isn't configured though
• Shilo village teleports now work. The area isn't configured though.
• Hunter kit spell added.
• String jewellery spell added.
• Animations of share potion spells updated

The other spells will be added whenever their original functionality gets into the game.

Other changes, fixes and updates:

• An issue with displaying multiple graphics, projectiles and ground items has been fixed. Sometimes one of the aforementioned would have wrong angles. This was only a visual bug.
• Shops in Barbarian village have been updated. They now contain more useful items for beginners: Runes, arrows, armours up to rune, dragonhide and blue mystic. Something everybody will recognize and know that it is useful.
• The shadows of particles has been improved. Please note that particles only cast shadows at higher shadow settings.
• Valuable drops (100k+) are now mentioned in your chatbox and received a looting glow. You cannot miss valuable drops.
• Level up graphics updated. They're now in more detail and level 99 displays a special one.
• Limpwurt roots can now be planted and farmed. Their seeds are dropped by Hill giant variants.
• Total bank value or per tab bank value is now shown in the title of your bank screen. This system is using Grand Exchange values if available else high alch values.
• Shenven can now assign Obsidian dragons.
• New players are now put into the Assistance chat by default.
• CTRL + C and CTRL + V now work. Pasting can only be used once every second to avoid massive spamming. It can also be used at the login screen to copy paste passwords from password managers. Copying only works when being online and copies the current chatbox input.
• Daily tasks interface now shows the rewards for their completion. There's now also a cash reward for completing daily tasks. This goes up to a maximum of 65-70k for level 90+ tasks. The minimum reward is 15k. This is supposed to help new players gain some cash by completing their daily tasks.
• The ::wiki command now supports search options. For example '::wiki Grand Exchange' will directly bring you to the appropriate wiki page.
• A bug at tormented demons was fixed where their recoil damage didn't take protection prayers into consideration. They'll no longer deflect more damage than you dealt to them.
• Catching chinchompas now adds 1-6 to your inventory. That results in an average of about 3 per catch.
• Chinchompa spawns north of Falador have been doubled. It'll now be easier to catch them in larger amounts.

Outlook
I thought it may be interesting to know what I'm currently working on or planning for the future? Let me know if this section is interesting and I'll keep doing it in future update notes.
I've created a way of generalizing all minigames, having the ability to put them into a minigame finder / minigame checker interface. That'd give you the opportunity to see who's playing what minigame and teleport there directly. I'm also looking into getting water reflections to work. Other than that, I'm browsing the Suggestions and Ideas sections to find nice additions to the game.

All the best,
Thomy



EDIT: All new Lunar teleports are messed up, because I typed a wrong id. Since they don't serve any real purpose, I'll patch them tomorrow!

70

Feedback / New Player Experience - Discussion

« on: May 13, 2017, 03:38:18 pm »

Hey everyone,

I'm creating this topic to discuss possible issues and also changes that could be made to Emps-World in order to improve it. Feel free to give me your ideas and opinions, that's what I'd like to hear. If this thread turns out well, I will definitely create more of these topics.

What do you think about the experience of new players? What could improve the game for new players or even make it more appealing to them? What are the current flaws? What's good and what's bad about the current situation?

I am eager to hear your ideas / opinions!

All the best,
Thomy

71

Update Notes / Updates May 12th 2017 - Abyssal Weaponry, Character Colors, New Client and More!

« on: April 27, 2017, 08:18:48 am »

Hey guys,

New abyssal weapons have been released! Please take your time and read through the update notes. Some things may be of great interest to you.

Abyssal weaponry - Bows and Staves
New abyssal weapons have been added - Abyssal bows and staves! They are the identical counter parts to abyssal whips and can also be bought in their EC shop variants: Bronze, Iron, Steel, etc. These new weapons can also be upgraded with elemental crystals and share identical stats as elemental bows and staves. Abyssal bows and staves are dropped by Abyssal demons.


Their donator variants also fit your character's look perfectly well:



Spirit Shields
Another change to spirit shields, because I'm still not really confident with the spot they are currently in. I know they've been changed back and forth many times, but I think that this new effect now leaves them in a spot where they are useful and not overpowered. Their old passive and active damage deflection mechanics have been removed and replaced by a complete damage negation effect. Activating a spirit shield enables an aura that negates all incoming damage for 2.5 seconds. This has a 60 second cooldown and doesn't block any spell or freezing effects! I would like to have a counter to large incoming blows of hits, which isn't only useful in PvM situations, but also in PvP scenarios.

Character Colors

I've added new colors to the character design screen. The secondary color of your legs is now the same color as your top. Before the update, it would just be green. If you're missing a specific color, just let me know in a post below and I'll add it! I'd prefer to have a reference of where I can find your color, so please suggest a model in the game that has your preferred color.

Discord
This has become really popular and I've decided to add a plugin to the forum page. There's now a plugin just right of the shoutbox. Feel free to join our discord channel, play Emps-World, chat or play other games: https://discordapp.com/invite/xUvVGkk Please bear in mind that the forum rules also apply in our Discord channel.

Graphics Library Updated
I've updated the internal graphics library we're using from lwjgl-2.9.0 to lwjgl-3.1.1. With this change, I've had to recode all user input and the way the client is downloaded and linked on your computer. Some of you may have to re-download the game at www.emps-world.net/play but there will be a popup, so don't worry! This will allow me to use more modern functionality in the future and should also have better stability especially on older PCs. Moreover, the client will no longer crash due to out of memory errors anymore but warn you, that you have to lower your graphic settings. The internal way of processing game logic was improved and smoothened out. You will find movements, animations and camera turnings smoother. I've also gained an fps boost with this update on my setup.

List of changes and fixes:

• Aggression range of monsters reduced by 2.
• When getting Jad assigned as slayer task, all Slayer related item effects now also do count during the fight caves. However, Slayer experience will only be gained when actually defeating Jad.
• You can now finish Slayer tasks without having to be member. Getting Slayer tasks however still requires member. That should solve some confusion when you try to complete an existing task as non-member.
• Mazchna and Vannaka can now be used by non-members to get Slayer tasks.
• You can now use the normal magick's autocasts when using the lunar spellbook.
• Improved fog quality. Some objects would fade out incorrectly inside foggy area.
• Fixes for texture smoothenings in upper floors and multi-level areas.
• Fixes for distant shadows on maximum rendering distances. There were shadowy area artifacts that were incorrect. Hard to spot, but it's fixed now.
• Slayer's staff now scales up to level 70.
• The crumble undead spell now hits undead monsters by 140% of your maximum hit.
• Abyssal demons now drop abyssal staves, whips and bows. They've also gained an ability to teleport and have a magical attack now.
• Kolodion now drops Abyssal bow.
• Smoke demon champion now drops abyssal staff.
• Edgeville teleport can now be found in the Grand Exchange and Price Checker.
• Dropped item timer is now refreshed when relogging into the game. Before the update, it would just disappear.
• Barow brothers can now be assigned as Slayer task by: Vannaka, Duradel and Shenven. They are classified as a boss task and give more Slayer experience than normal monsters.
• Karil and Verac description hover fixed. The set bonuses provided a 25% chance and not a 20% chance. This is only visual.
• A bug in the Verac armour set was found. It was only negating 25% of your opponent's defence instead of 75%. The set should - as always intended - be really powerful now!
• Staking limit has been risen to 10m. I'm fine with how the experiment turned out and think that 10m will be the optimal value as a staking limit.
• The way invisible damage is handled has been changed. This should fix a bug where your hitpoints bar would show an invalid value during PvP actions.
• Position of furies updated on male and female characters. These amulets were floating a little bit too much in the air.
• I was able to fix a bug that caused flickering of particles. Feel free to re-enable them.

What do you think of these updates? Do you like the new character colors and abyssal weapons? Would you like to see more such things in the future? Let me know!

All the best,
Thomy

72

Update Notes / Updates April 27th - Item Balancing, Duel Arena, Highscores and More!

« on: April 21, 2017, 01:45:48 pm »

Hey guys,

Quite a few changes ready for today. Please take your time and read through them!

Staking and the Duel Arena
I've decided to do an experiment with staking. We'll be limiting all stakes to 1M as maximum bet. Depending on the outcome of the experiment, we'll keep it this way, or limit stakes to maximum 10M per fight. If everything backfires, we'll just go back to how it used to be. I know that this may be frustrating for some players, but let me try to explain why I'm doing this.
In my opinion, gambling (=staking) is just frustrating gameplay. People are betting money until they lose it, that's the nature of gambling. Imho that just doesn't belong into games. Moreover, it also brings so much toxicity to the game. Players are often being upset about their losses and yell at each other, effectively creating a toxic environment for others. I've seen this too many times in global chats and would like to put an end to it. The game isn't about gambling, it's about training and leveling your character. Having an adventure, talking to friends and killing monsters. It's definitely NOT about gambling.

Highscores
It's been a while since I've last updated these. There's now ranks on player pages. So you'll always know your rank in a certain skill. Moreover, you can now also go back and forth 10 pages at once. You can also jump to a specific page by entering the page number in the highscores link.
Following link will jump to page 101: https://emps-world.net/hiscores.php#skill,Overall,100
Why does 100 jump to page 101? Because computers start counting at 0 and that leaves an offset of 1 to natural numbers. 

Slayer pets
We're getting more pets, yay! Just like hatchling dragons, certain slayer monsters have received pet drops:

• Abyssal demon
• Basilisk
• Cockatrice
• Kurask

Their drop chance is 1 in 1000.

Following things have been updated:

• Fighter torso scaling up to level 70 is just too much. It now caps at level 60 with a +6 strength bonus.
• Morrigan javelin special attack adjusted. Before the update, the bleeding effect was 80% of the total hit. The bleeding effect now is 120% of the total hit. To cope with this change, the special attack hit now deals 60%. Simply said, 40% of the initial hit has been converted into bleeding damage.
• Morrigan axe special attack costs changed from 25% to 30%. Their maxhit has been lowered by 5% and accuracy buffed by 5%. You could just deal too much damage in a too short amount of time.
• Dark bow special attack adjusted. The special attack's max hit was reduced by 20%. However, if you now use dragon arrows with the bow, it'll boost your hit by flat 8 damage. This lowers the maximum hit of the bow from 52/52 to 48/48. It just shouldn't be possible imo to 1 shot somebody completely. To cope with this nerf, I've increased the special attack's accuracy by 20%. This will make the bow more powerful in fights with good armours and high defence levels.
• Void equipment, defenders and fighter torso are now turned into more cash if lost in the wilderness. A full void knight set turns into 800k,  fighter torso into 240k and dragon defender into 180k cash.
• Further improvements to water and lava planes.
• Ferocious rings now have an Ancient Caves teleport option that place you directly near Shenven.
• Shenven now wears a Slayer master cape.
• Slayer experiences for bosses has been multiplied by 4. Such tasks should really be worth your time, because they are difficult and can take a while.
• Buggy slayer tasks have been fixed. You'll no longer encounter tasks that cannot be completed. Also, Chaeldar and Hundig now correctly can reset your task once for free.
• Slayer experience gains for bosses has been increased.

Please don't be too upset about the staking changes. It's an experiment for now and if it fails, I'll definitely revert it back how it used to be. I just want to do do something against the gambling problem and its resulting toxicity in emps.

All the best,
Thomy

73

Update Notes / Updates April 1st 2017 - Construction

« on: March 25, 2017, 11:59:13 am »

Hello everybody!

It's finally there, Construction!! I hope you didn't come here expecting it would be an April's fool? It's not! This update has taken quite a while and the finishing touches have taken a bit. I don't want to talk too much about how to train the skill, because our wiki page has already been prepared:
https://emps-world.net/wiki/Construction
Oh yeah, most important: Using a hammer on any furniture removes it!



Materials
There's several materials you'll need for building your home. All of the materials for Constructions can be found in or around Rimmington:

• Planks: Can be obtained by going to the Sawmill operator in Rimmington (west part) or by using the Make Plank spell from the Lunar spell book.
• Limestone bricks: You can mine limestones and cut them with a chisel in the northern part of Rimmington, around the dungeon entrance. The stonemason in Rimmington also sells small amounts of Limestone bricks.
• Cloth and Gold leaf: Sawmill operator.
• Marble and Magic stone: Stonemason.
• Gardening supplies: Any plants you want to have in your home can be bought from the Gardener in Rimmington. She is directly west of the house portal. The items in her shop are ordered by the level required to place them in your house.
• Paintings and Maps: You can buy all kinds of paintings and maps for decorating your home from King Percival, who can be found in the White knights castle in Falador. King Percival also sells Skillcapes.
• Slayer trophies: There is a 1 in 1000 chance to obtain those while killing specific monsters.
• Fishing trophies: There is a 1 in 1000 chance to obtain those while fishing specific fishes.

Altars and Prayer Experience Rates
Altars give up to 250% prayer experience for offered bones. On top of that, every lit burner (no matter which one) gives additional 50% bonus experience. Resulting in a maximum of 350% prayer experience per bone that is offered at an altar. Now though, the base experience rates of burying bones need some adjustments:

• Frost dragon bones: 1875 --> 1275
• Dragon bones: 600 --> 490
• Wyvern bones: 525 --> 480
• Dagannoth bones: 500 --> 440
• Baby dragon bones: 400 --> 300
• Burnt bones: 350 --> 250
• Big bones: 220 --> 190

Please bear in mind that the gilded altar can give up to 350% experience, so this isn't a tough nerf at all. In the end, you can still gain Prayer levels much faster than before! Other altars with 2 lit burners already give at least a 200% experience boosts. So using any altar is already better than the old experience rates.

House Activities
There's several things you can do inside your house. Not everything is fully configured, because certain things would require quite a lot of time to develop while giving no real content. A good example for this is the games room. You can build everything in it, but the games don't work. There's a lot of other useful stuff to discover in Construction, such as: Prayer altars, crafting teletabs, teleport rooms, throne rooms, etc. I'll just let you find it out.


Other changes and fixes:

• Barrow chest now has a 10% chance to reward you with either a hard or elite clue scroll.
• Game settings interface has completely been overhauled. Settings are now divided into categories and the interface supports a large mode, just like bank interface, price checker, etc.
• We now have a more natural, blue sky. The fog color and distance calculations were also changed with this update.
• Improvements in object picking code. Especially slower computers will feel this.
• Thanking posts was turned into Liking posts. It makes much more sense to like a post instead of thanking it.
• Pest Control now only requires 2 players to start the game. Before the update 5 players were required.
• The way draws during duels is handled was updated. You should no longer find yourself winning or losing in an obvious draw.
• Golden mining outfit can now be bought from the Star sprite (shooting star).
• Various versions of Duellist's caps can be bought from the Brimhaven Agility arena ticket shop now.
• Drop chances of elemental crystals increased for Tormented Demons.
• Humidify spell updated. It now applies water to all items in your inventory. You can also make softclay with Humidify.
• Make Plank spell added. It now transforms multiple logs into planks.
• There is now a closer banker to Obsidian dragons.
• Teletabs can now be created in houses and have thus been removed from the wizard's drop table.

I hope you have a lot of fun building your own house. This has really taken a while to develop and I would also like to thank following people for helping me in doing so:

• Jonneh -  for the initial base of the skill. It really helped me get a good understanding of how it's supposed to work and your Room configuration system is a really good way of doing it. Thank you!
• Charr - You've really helped me collect many room configurations. Thank you.
• Jp - Also been a real help with configuring rooms. Thank you.
• And everyone else who has tested Construction in world 3. I hope there won't be too many bugs in it.

All the best,
Thomy

74

Update Notes / Updates April 20th & 21st - Slayer Overhaul and HD Water beta

« on: March 16, 2017, 01:37:56 pm »

Hey guys,

I've decided to change a few things with this update. Most important being untradeable equipment and Slayer! I'm also working on HD water, which will improve the game's quality even more. Have fun!

Untradeable Equipment
With the recent changes to the death mechanic, I no longer see a reason for certain items to be tradeable. I've created a list of items which can no longer be traded:

• Defenders
• Void knight equipment (also korasi's sword)
• Fighter torso

Quick reminder from previous updates: If these items are lost in a fight in PvP zones, your enemy will get a cash drop instead.

Slayer
You haven't seen an update in Slayer for a while, so I've overhauled the internal code completely and added some new things. You can now get a larger variety of monsters as tasks. Moreover, I've created a formula that calculates the combat strength of a monster. With this formula I've redone the task set of slayer masters.
There's now also a new slayer master, Shenven in the Ancient Caves. She only assigns very tough monsters. That includes all bosses around Emps-World and even Jad! The dialogue system of all Slayer Masters has also completely been rewritten and new task monsters have been added.



New Slayer Point shop items (20k SP per weapon):

• Chaotic longsword, rapier and maul: Level 72 Attack and Slayer: Boosts accuracy and strength during slayer tasks by 10%.
• Chaotic staff: Level 72 Magic and Slayer: Boosts mage accuracy and strength during slayer tasks by 10%.
• Chaotic crossbow: Level 72 Ranged and Slayer: Boosts range accuracy and strength during slayer tasks by 10%.

Chaotic equipment degrades after 15,000 charges and can be repaired with coins. The price for a full repair is 1,000,000 coins. Some people may not like the release of 'especially' these weapons, but I think that they are in a really good spot as Slayer rewards. They definitely won't outperform other high-level weapons outside of Slayer tasks and will make bosses during tasks easier to solo.


HD Water
Water has massively been reworked and is now in public beta. I've created dynamic water planes that are animated. We'll be testing the code in several areas to verify if everything is working out properly. Don't worry if you dislike it though, you can toggle the water quality via the game settings. Please bear in mind that this change doesn't have any large impact on performance! The water animation now is in low quality and I am currently working on reflections and better water surfaces.


Following things have been changed:

• Floor in houses of Port Sarim has been updated. It's now looking better and less cluttery.
• Fps rate setting has been changed. You can now select the following steps: 30, 60, 80, 144 and inf.
• Charges of fremennik ring upgrades has been increased from 3000 to 15000. I want these rings to be useful and not break in the middle of a fight.
• Korasi's sword accuracy and strength bonuses have slightly been buffed.
• Accuracy bonuses of fremennik helms has been buffed.
• Bar smelting level requirements and experience rates updated.

All the best,
Thomy




Updates of 21st:

• Chaotic longsword slightly buffed.
• Stat buffs for longswords (bronze - dragon).
• Chaotic maul and gladiator maul animations updated. These new animations fit better and don't differ too much. You're still holding the weapon the same way.
• Proper attack interface for all swords added.
• Degradeable equipment can now be checked again.
• Fighter torso now scales with your level up to 70. This also increases its accuracy and strength bonus accordingly.

75

Update Notes / Updates March 16th 2017 - Graphical Improvements

« on: March 03, 2017, 01:21:41 pm »

Hey guys,

Not a lot of new things with this update. This is mainly another construction preparation and test update. I've optimized how large houses are loaded and added some usability to them. I'll now be able to show you the progress of Construction in the live game. I'll probably do that during the weekend. So make sure to be around.

Fog and Map Loader
You may have already noticed this, because the update went live a few days ago. The map loader now fades in new objects, giving you a smooth loading transition instead of them just popping up. The fog plane was also made circular to give it a more natural feeling. It won't affect performance, but make the game look smoother.

Following things have been changed:

• Stronger, richer colors for elemental bow particles.
• Npc and item floor adjustments have slightly been reworked. You should no longer find items being inside the ground. Items should now always be aligned properly to the ground plane.
• Skulling system tweak: As long as you fight your opponent, your skull will keep refreshing its timer. So you shouldn't lose your skull during fights anymore.
• You can now get multiple clue scrolls of a kind. The rewarding system has also slightly been adjusted. You now get a casket, which can be opened at a later time or even be traded with other players. This should make it easier to collect clue scrolls and their rewards.
• Grand Exchange prices of item sets are now calculated from their individual parts. They no longer have a separate price.
• Music system has completely been rewritten with a new library. Mind testing that for me? It worked on both of my computers, but you never know.
• Teleport system has completely been reworked. If you find some locations being wrong, please report them to me! I tested a lot of them, but couldn't go through all of them. There's 100+ locations.
• Price checker now shows rounded comma values of item values. It'll no longer show 20M, but 20.12M for example. The total price is rounded to 4 comma values.

I'm looking really forward to the release of Construction, because it's coming closer!

All the best,
Thomy