I wanted to name this "The If I'd Known It Was Going To Last This Freaking Long I'd Have Thought Up a Catchier Name For It Grab Bag," but our Miss Georgia put a character limit in my title field once she saw how much caffeine I was mainlining. Well, happy birthday, grab bag. On to the show:
Q: What should I do if I find an NPC with the yellow quest indicator, but the NPC won’t talk to me?
A: Appeal him for his disrespect! Be sure to mention his name, the zone you are in, and your class, race, and level. When the menu of appeal options appears, choose Bug Appeal, and then Other, to get your appeal routed the best and quickest way.
Q: You said, last week, that beta testers only needed a CD key to play Catacombs. You are wrong.
A: Yes, I am, and I feel like a schmuck. We apparently did something different this year, and the executable you need to launch the live game is on the CD you bought. But as there are a few people out there whose friends bought them Catacombs, and emailed the CD key before snail mailing the disks, here’s how to dink with the files you already have in order to play.
PLEASE NOTE: This will only work if you have both the Catacombs beta installation, if that beta installation is reasonably up to date, and if you have a legitimate and unused CD key.
PLEASE NOTE: You are dinking with the files that update Dark Age of Camelot if you follow these instructions. If you mess them up and have to reinstall the game or worse, I am in no way responsible. If the prospect of computer annihilation concerns you, you need to wait until the software arrives at your doorstep and you install everything properly.
IF YOU WERE AN ACTIVE BETA TESTER, AND YOU HAVE AN UNUSED CATACOMBS CD KEY, AND YOU ARE A CONFIRMED RISK TAKER:
Do this carefully!! You are messing with the files that launch the game, and one false move may mean a full reinstallation!!
Open a file in your TOA installation folder called “update.dat” using Notepad.
Now, change the word “atlantis” to “catacombs” on BOTH lines.
Now save the file, and go back out to your desktop. Try to launch using your Camelot.exe shortcut.
If it doesn’t work, you may need to also copy the camelot.exe file from your TOA directory over to the Catacombs directory, and then try to launch from there.
You’re basically modifying the TOA executable to use your Catacombs files. I do not recommend this. I highly recommend you install using the CD that came with your CD key. Following these instructions may cause cancer, blindness, and inappropriate body hair. Unless you are truly desperate, wait for the CD to be delivered. I’m not kidding. Really.
Q: I am installing Catacombs, and my installation keeps hanging up. Any ideas?
A: The bit in the instructions about "please close all applications" is no joke – what most of us (including me, if you must know) missed was the always-on antivirus software. Make sure that’s off while you’re installing the game. Don’t forget to turn it back on when you’re done!
If you are still having problems, check out our Knowledge Base. (Up on the left corner of the Herald is a search field for the Knowledge Base. I typed "Catacombs install problems" and got the appropriate work around as the number two option – your mileage may vary with the search parameters.)
Q: I installed Catacombs to get the new class options. However, I’m waiting on some new computer parts, and for the time being I’m still playing with the TOA client. The game won’t let me choose one of the new classes at level five.
A: That is correct. The new classes are only available when you play using the Catacombs client and Catacombs launcher shortcut on your desktop. You can’t get to the new classes using the SI or TOA clients and shortcuts, even if Catacombs is installed elsewhere on your computer.
Q: My wife got mad at me, and edited me out of the permissions list for our house. It’s my house, actually, but I gave her the deed so she could edit something else. (My standing with AngryWives has decreased.) Is there anything you can do?
A: I’m very sorry, but no. All trades should always be considered final, no matter who you are trading with, because we just can’t get involved with that sort of thing.
In your case, I suggest flowers, or possibly a spot of vacuuming or even dishwashing. Chicks dig men who clean things. Sorry, friend, hope you can work things out.
Q: There has been much question regarding an item in Midgard. The item is: silksteel Cinder Tainted sleeves. I've only heard of them existing on PvP servers, where the ToA environment is shared, not on standard servers. Do these exist?
A: Our lovely and talented Item Mistress looked it up – they do indeed exist on all servers, with the same drop rate as on Mordred.
Q: Regarding the Vampiir class and spellcasting, what is the primary casting stat?
A: The power pool is "filled" using melee, not the more traditional stats - so the vampiir is a casting class unto itself.
When I gave the player who asked that question this answer, he kindly replied with a clarification for me:
Q: I understand that, but my question doesn't concern the power pool. I'm wondering what the base attribute is that the spells and spell damage is determined by. I'm not going to get greater spell damage from speccing Piercing or from having a higher Strength. While that will increase my power gain, it won't affect spell damage. Training the spell lines will increase damage and reduce variance, but there must be an Attribute that is connected as well, else the class is limited to the stated damage in the spell description.
I.e., with my sorcerer's lifetap, I do (for instance) 100 dmg normally, and 155 dmg if I have a good acuity buff applied, all else being the same. Higher INT equates to higher dmg on the same target. So what I wondered was what Attribute affected spell damage for the Vampiir?
A: Now I understand (and I suspected I was missing something, which was why I replied to the player personally, something I don’t usually have the luxury of doing) – the question required information from someone on the design team, not me. The answer I received from that team surprised me: “
There is no stat that affects the Vampiir's power pool or the damage done by its power based spells. The Vampiir is not a focus based class like, say, an Enchanter." The Vampiir is a lot more cut and dried than the typical casting class.
EDIT, 12/13/04 - I was told today that this answer is not entirely accurate. While there is no stat that affects the damage dealt (in the way that intelligence or piety affects how much damage a more traditional caster can do), the Vampiir's power pool capacity is intended to be increased as the Vampiir's strength increases.
Q: Here’s another for the design team: What is the design reason behind the Vampiir being unable to receive buffs from other players?
A: I asked, and ye shall receive: "
The Vampiir has "built in" buffs, in that it receives extra bonuses to constitution, strength, dexterity and quickness as it levels. This is done at a rate of 3/3/3/2, meaning that for each level, the Vampiir receives 3 constitution, 3 strength, 3 dexterity and 2 quickness points, beginning at level 6 (EDITED 12/13/04 - mistakenly said 5). For example, at level 16, a Vampiir would have +33 to strength, +33 to constitution, +33 to dexterity and +22 to dexterity.
The "design reason" would be that we wanted the class to rely less upon external buffs, which allows it to solo more effectively. It fits into the Vampiir's lore if you will because, technically, Vampiirs are "undead" and therefore they cannot be buffed with buffs normally used by mere mortals (or concentration buffs)."
Q: Autoremove: It actually wants to have the chars in-game to remove them. Have you ever considered that the persons you want to remove are the ones that AREN'T in the game?
Yeah, I know, we got the autoremove function.
That would of course require me to know the name of the 7 alts of every active person in my guild, which is rather unlikely, so I dont remove them by mistake.
Could you please try and get the function changed so it would actually be useful?
A: We did – more than a year ago. I apologize for the confusing documentation that would cause you to miss this crucial feature.
The command is /gc autoremove account nameofknowncharacter. So, let’s say the player you know you want to get rid of is named Jerkface, and you don’t know his alts. Simply type /gc autoremove account Jerkface, and wait a few days. Then try not to have a heart attack when Jerkface vanishes, but so does that nice healer everyone likes so much. The internet is a weird place.
Q: The Catacombs instruction manual says that vampiirs can be of all Hibernian races.. this is not the case though is it?
A: No, it’s not. The problem is the sheer amount of lead time a printed manual requires. At one point during the development cycle, any race COULD be a Vampiir, but not in the final version. I am sorry for any disappointment would-be Sylvan Vampiirs are feeling right now.
Q: Where the heck is the Spellcraft Calculator?
A: Offline while we update the poor, creaking, ancient thing. Watch this website for its return.
Q: I am having trouble with instanced tasks. I am in an instance that appears to be empty, but I still have a list of mobs to kill. What should I do?
A: We are patching next week to solve this problem, but for now, you can appeal (make sure you put the mob types you're fighting in the appeal text), and stay in the instance until a CSR contacts you. As always, I apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.
***
On the list of "good stuff we did today but forgot to note," we have this one - we added instanced entrance indicators and zone line indicators to the in-game maps of Catacombs zones.
New Herald readers have been asking what I meant by "ook" in a post earlier this week. The answer is that "ook" is a simple and quick way of saying "I am a giant monkey and totally embarrassed by my own existence at this precise moment." What’s really, really ironic is that I just did an interview (
http://www.gamergod.com/article_disp...article_id=150) wherein I suffered from writer’s block and could not recall a really dumb and embarrassing post. Ha! That’ll teach me!
Your friends in customer service would like to remind you that /level 20 is not available for our five new classes until a future version. It is not a bug that you can’t /level 20 a new class, and the CSR cannot just give it to you, no matter how much he or she may want to.
The newly redone class pages (
http://www.camelotherald.com/section.php?id=15) are at last complete! Well, as complete as these things get – we will of course be tweaking them as we receive feedback. The Herald team would like to thank our wonderful Team Leads and the equally wonderful retired Team Leads who chose to stay on and heckle from the bleachers, AKA Team Teal. They all did a wonderful job helping us (and by us I mean the Team Lead Lady, Miss Linda) to make the class pages an actual resource for the entire player community. Thank you guys so much, you are and will always be the best.
THREE YEARS. Ye gods and little fishes. I still can’t believe it. You all have kept this poor column going for three years. Thank you all for the terrific questions, the encouragement, and for what passes for charm in our little genre. It is a privilege to work with you.
Have a great weekend!
15/12/2004, 18h27
mais ca reste monstrueux si c a 300