Open Skies & Rooftops · Changelog · Echoes of the Isles

The Open Sky 13 changes

The sky above Escard, the wilds, the Aetherspire and Mount Caelahad is now open to anyone who can fly.
Exits that lead into open air show in bright cyan. The sea now shows in a darker cyan.
Anyone who is not flying falls. The higher the fall, the worse it hurts, and two storeys will almost always break a leg.
Walking toward an edge stops you there. jump <direction> steps off on purpose.
The roofs of Escard can be walked, and roofs that touch are joined. Two ladders lead up from the streets, and some buildings have a hatch.
Some upper floors now have balconies. An inn room's balcony door takes that room's key.
Metallurgists who drift can take to the air.
A metallurgist's vault now carries you up into the air and across, a room at a time, and you see each place you pass over. Vault toward a low building from the street and you land on its roof; end over open air and you come down gently.
A closed door stops a vault. metallurgy vault <direction> 1 clears a single room when you'd otherwise go two.
While flying, look shows the ground below and who is standing on it.
Anything dropped from the air falls to the ground, and may land on someone.
There is now open sky above Starspear Way North and the Gull Rocks.
New help files: help flying, help falling, help jump and help rooftops.

Features 36 changes

You can now write on a piece of paper, not just on boards.
New text added to a piece of paper by someone else shows up in a different handwriting or ink.
post can pin a written sheet of paper to a board.
Every help file has been rewritten in plainer language.
Harvest, plant and tend are now one skill, gardening. You keep your best rank, and experience spent on the other two comes back.
Crops you plant yourself need tend to grow.
Wild herbs have their own look and worth, and herbs you pick from a patch now count in medicine.
sneak stays on until you type it again, and tells you when you lack the Dexterity for it.
holdback lets you use an ability below your full rank. It covers fighting, magic, performing and covert abilities.
bug new, idea new and typo new open the next report with something new in it.
hemote is a quiet emote that only those who notice will see.
appraise always gives an estimate in silver, and every craft's check screen shows what the finished item is worth.
Typing a craft's name on its own lists what you can make.
An unfinished crafted item stays unfinished when it changes hands, so a buyer can finish it with tool.
The old work command is gone. leathercraft makes everything it did, and help work opens the leathercraft help.
lock, unlock and open walk you over to a door that is out of reach, and work on a hatch above or below you too.
bash now takes a moment to brace before it lands, and shouldering a door can bruise your shoulder.
pass <captive> room ties a captive in place so you can walk away.
A favoured skill from your background now improves twice as fast.
Characters without sorcery, metallurgy or runesmithing gain roleplay experience a little more easily.
Appearance now means how noticeable you are, from easily overlooked to impossible to ignore.
Blood and gore make you stand out and shopkeepers refuse to serve you. Striking customers get a small discount.
Guards no longer follow people around for low charisma.
You no longer lose your way in the dark, and a light in your pack or hand lights the room for everyone.
The stables show each mount's real price and which mount your riding would earn. Master riders are now brought a destrier.
Escard's shops now sell supplies for their trade: tack and feed at Carter's Livery, herbs and a mortar at Blackthorn Remedies, hides and leatherworking tools at Second Breath, cloth and sewing tools at the tailor, and rough gems at the forge.
Shop lists are sorted by kind, and shop stock no longer runs out.
Living metal weapons and armour have new, longer names, and reshaping a weapon renames it.
The Medical advantage is gone. Treating wounds depends on your treat rank alone, and any experience spent on Medical comes back at your next login.
treat promote has been removed along with Medical.
rawcolors shows colour codes as typed, even inside the editor, and @v shows your editor text whole for copying.
stringcheck <text> privately shows how coloured text will look.
Art tags mark pictures made of letters so screen readers skip them and vimode players get a description instead. See help screenreader.
The %W prompt code shows how many people are on whererp.
The pool screen marks a skill that has reached its limit and is saving what it learns for later.
The florist in Escard now sells lavender.

Sorcery 7 changes

Evocations now hold for a set number of rituals, 4 plus your Sorcery rank, instead of slipping with time. Rituals can carry an emote.
Atmospheric Vortex and Truthseeker's Sigh now grow with the caster's skill.
cancel <direction> and cancel room end your own wards, walls and vines early.
A chosen Path can no longer be changed.
Awakening now needs 10,000 roleplay experience earned, and each attempt costs 1,000 experience.
Awakening is no longer close to impossible. Alone, it now works about a third to half the time, and far more often with a sorcerer's help.
A failed awakening can be heard in the rooms around you.

Combat 5 changes

protect <name> keeps watch over someone outside a fight. If they are attacked while you are close, you step in and take the blow, arrow or thrown element meant for them.
In a fight, rescue <name> covers someone through the next round.
Everyone watching sees which guard you take with defend.
Practice weapons only ever leave light wounds, and very small hits leave none.
Disarm is gone. Any experience you spent on it comes back when you next log in.

Housing 3 changes

Fixtures bought with permanent add are fixed in place and can no longer be carried off.
permanent sell, move and customize now work only on real fixtures, not on things you have dropped in the room.
bolt <item> and unbolt <item> fix furniture to the floor of your house or shop so nobody can pick it up.

Bugs 54 fixes

Using a Kinetic Charm no longer crashes the game.
Choosing a Path never charged its experience cost. It does now.
Metallurgy sense could only find living metal within 8 ranks of your own, so experienced metallurgists could not sense beginners. Fixed.
Metallurgy sense said a piece you had attuned was carried by someone far off, even while you held it. Fixed.
RGB colour codes now show colour everywhere, not just in help files.
A tornado tearing items off someone could crash the game. Fixed.
Mounts can no longer be ridden into buildings.
A door closed from the other side could leave someone shut in with no way to open it. Fixed.
Stalls, the barn, the belltower and other roofed rooms now count as indoors: no weather, and no spells that need open sky.
Planting a seed could crash the game. Fixed.
Bitterfeed, Pillar of Water and similar spells now take effect beside the caster, not in a corner of the room.
Lighting a light in a dark room now shows you the room.
Stable lists now show the right mount prices.
Help pages that show colour codes now display them correctly for everyone.
The Flamewall vine message no longer says "the the".
Some item messages showed the item's keywords instead of its name, as in "The satchel leather small is closed." Fixed.
A batch of player-reported typos is fixed across help pages and game messages, and skill names now start with a capital when you train them.
Craft recipes now name the tool you need ("a curved leatherworking knife") instead of a bare keyword.
A lit scented candle or lamp scents the room even while someone carries it.
A Void attack you can't yet make now says plainly that it needs Sorcery rank 5.
help xp explains what skills cost.
The astral travel page on the website now gives the right counters for each plane and explains attunement.
Several room descriptions are fixed: the inn hallway's doors are named west and east, and Golanta Walk, the Smoke Loft and Inn Room 1 read properly.
Every point of strength you raise now adds to how much you can carry. It used to take up to eight points before the limit moved.
Walking in armour now costs the endurance per room that the combat screen shows. It used to charge again on every stride across a room, several times what the screen said.
The temperature follows the seasons again. It had stuck below freezing, so it snowed through summer.
Animal corpses have real weights. A grey wolf weighs about 90 pounds, and a bear is too heavy for most people to lift.
Creatures in a room no longer leave a blank line under their description.
give now hands over the item in your inventory before one you are holding with the same name.
give on something you are holding now tells you once to remove it, instead of repeating itself.
After an immortal moves you with transfer or goto, you now stand in the middle of the new room, within reach of what is there.
Lighting a candle, torch or lamp you carry keeps it in your inventory instead of setting it on the ground.
Candles, pitch torches and clay oil lamps can be picked up again after being set down.
Crafted furniture such as desks, beds, chests, wardrobes and bathtubs could not be picked up and moved. Fixed.
Many woodworking recipes, and the rabbit and snake tanning recipes, could not find their knife. Fixed.
The artcraft clay oven asked for a tool that does not exist, so nobody could make it. Fixed.
Steak, rough gems and fletching feathers could not be had anywhere, so the recipes that need them could not be made. Escard's shops now sell them.
A seam you have mined out now looks mined bare.
After flicker, a metallurgist now sees the room they arrive in.
bind takes 2.leg for a second wound on the same limb.
clrcmds now stops candle making too.
steady now clears withdrawal.
Sorcerous Domain works again when recast after it fades, and nothing of it lingers once it has faded.
Talisman draw and charge move a force toward balance and away from it, as help talisman says.
An illusion too complex to hold no longer costs the caster anything.
The pool screen's words now match how close you are to your next rank.
A sorcerer who flinches from living metal now sees who held it out.
A charmed item made by someone else now tells you it won't answer to you.
Food and drink from the Golden Barrel Inn, and the herbs and carrots you collect from crops, can be picked up again after they're dropped. So can the inn's room key 2, and Reed Callow's belt and wrist guards.
Flowers bought from the florist can be picked up again after you set them down.
mattack and arrows at range now take your round every time, even after your target steps closer.
Tea you cook is now a mug you drink, not something you eat.
tool and help tool now say which description shows where: the room shows an item's long description, not its short. They also explain dropping an item with a pose.
Reed Callow's heavy leather belt now protects you, instead of making you easier to hit.

Admin Goodies 5 for staff

path magic clear <player> clears a chosen Path. It refunds nothing and is logged.
ledgeredit <guild> lists a guild's treasury ledger and can reword, strike or add lines.
The stale Level 110 PROTECT help about snooping is replaced by the protect and rescue help.
areasync loads area files edited on disk into the running game without a reboot, and autosave no longer writes over a zone whose file changed on disk.
Four roof hatches are locked. Immortals hand out three of the keys, and the Isleguard storeman stocks the fourth. help rooftops lists them for immortals.