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.

omg 1st.

Love the herblore extension.

Finally quarry master works on gem rocks.

Nice Overloads

Very Great Update Thomy! Can't wait to see how the overloads work! 

Hope minigame will get more popular now Thanks thomy.

Basically what you did with overloards is that you nerfed all the other potions and making overloads even weaker than just the super potions before the update..

Basically what you did with overloards is that you nerfed all the other potions and making overloads even weaker than just the super potions before the update..

The difference is that overload keeps your stats at 120, while taking only one inventory space for 20 minutes of playtime, you had to use multiple inventory spots for potions before but i do agree that the number shouldn't have gone down from 121, aka what z brew used to boost.

Basically what you did with overloards is that you nerfed all the other potions and making overloads even weaker than just the super potions before the update..

Nope. Overloads go to 120 and super potions used to go to 118. Supers now go to 114 and extremes to 120.

Overloads are nice, brew nerfs seem quite harsh. Will need to see how it impacts combat though. Glory t was seen as a straight upgrade to fury, that's been it's identity forever. I think it should be better, this def bonus nerf comes out of nowhere really. Third ammy health buff is huge. Wish you'd just add ivy instead of buffing nest chance.

Good update overall.

Basically what you did with overloards is that you nerfed all the other potions and making overloads even weaker than just the super potions before the update..

Super potions used to go to 118, overloads go to 120 so overloads aren't weaker than super potions pre-update. Overloads stay at 120 while super potions drain over time, it's a significant increase in dps if you aren't constantly sipping your super potions.

Supers are definitely weaker, but I don't really mind personally.

Really nice update, Thomy. Loving the ctrl+click dropping option! Keep it up.


EDIT: Zamorak brew boostin strength to only 104. Is this intentional...or?

Before the update i was getting max hit of 86 with the maxed gear and a slip of zbrew+super melee potion, now im getting max hit of 82 with that same setup. Same with just the overloards, max hit is 82. For PvM saving few slots of inventory space is maybe worth it, but for PvP i still have to use the brews for 1 tick healing cause we don't have karambwans like osrs has.

I don't think the Glory (T) nerf was needed. It has always been an upgrade from fury since regular glory is a cheaper/weaker version of a fury. So Glory (T) > Fury > Regular Glory.

As mentioned by Crusher123, people need to use brews for 1 ticking food+brew in PVP. So now if you want to bring an overload and still be able to 1 tick food+brew you will have to waste an extra inventory slot, which is the opposite of saving inventory slots. Maybe add Karambwans? ᷅\_(ヅ)_/ ᷄

Loving the ctrl+click dropping option! Keep it up.

You even know whos idea it was?

Quote from: Earl on September 19, 2017, 09:31:52 am

Loving the ctrl+click dropping option! Keep it up.

You even know whos idea it was?

Yeah, someone from the osrs community.