Release Notes - October 17th 2008 - OPEN

[Chris]

Release Notes - October 17, 2008

• Added new Quests for Level 5 Weapons. These new Quests are unlocked when a weapon reaches Level 20 and only after the Level 4 Weapon Quest for that weapon has been completed. These new Quests involve defeating Boss Enemies, so make sure you have a crew to help fight them! The Level 5 Weapons are:
  • Pirate Blade (L5 Cutlass Weapon)
  • Bloodletter Dagger (L5 Dagger Weapon)
  • Grand Pistol (L5 Pistol Weapon)
  • Taboo Doll (L5 Voodoo Doll Weapon)
  • Vile Staff (L5 Voodoo Staff Weapon)
• Boss Enemies can now be found in the Caribbean. They are marked by a glowing skull icon over their heads and are much more difficult to defeat than normal enemies of the same level. Some boss enemies will always spawn in the same location, while others are more rare and randomly spawn throughout the world.
• The Dagger has been rebalanced with new abilities:
  • Backstrike - Attacking an enemy in the back using a Combo Attack now does a Backstrike and deals extra damage. However, attacking an enemy from the front with a Combo Attack deals less damage than before.
  • Attunement Breaking - The Asp and Throw Dirt skills now can break Voodoo Doll Attunement on players and enemies. If a player using a Voodoo Doll is hit by these skills, they will lose their attunement and will need to re-attune their targets. Also, players who recently had an Attunement broken will be immune to further Attunement breaking for 30 seconds. Skeleton enemies who have their Attunement Broken will be unable to cast voodoo hexes for a short time.
  • Interrupt Ability- The Asp, Throw Dirt, and Viper Nest skills can now Interrupt another player who is charging an attack (such as Take Aim, Long Volley, and Staff Hexes). Interrupting a charge will cause that player to have to start his charge over again.
  • Throw Dirt also now gives a 25% reduced accuracy instead of 40% and lasts a shorter duration.
• Trainer NPC's at local blacksmiths can now retrain your weapons, by retraining a weapon you can refund all your spent skill points and allow you to re-choose your skills for that same weapon.
• Captains now have more control over who boards their ships with a new ship-boarding permission system. Additionally, players at dinghies now have a better interface for finding ships to board.
• The Game Options interface is now more clear and easy to use.
• The maximum size of Guilds has been increased to 500 members.
• Fixed a major issue in Privateering affecting when players can make ship repairs.
• Fixed a bug where players were not allowed to sell a ship if they could not carry the gold received from the sale.
• Pistol and Grenades deal slightly more damage in PVP now.
• The targeting sights for weapons now only turn red when the enemy is within range. The Voodoo Staff targeting sight turns yellow when the target is within range of a Blast and turns red when the target is within range for the selected Hex.
• Improved the sky, as well as updated and optimized many visual effects throughout the game.
• Health meters for enemy ships should no longer randomly disappear.
• Enemy ships can now attack your ship after you've disabled a flagship (but not after you've boarded it).
• Players can now replay The Black Pearl Boss Battle even after defeating the Goliath.
• Fixed some animation issues with NPC's that occur when players interact with them, also updated NPC movement to be smoother and less erratic.
• Fixed an issue where crew members were not receiving their crew bonus when sailing on larger ships.
• Fixed a bug preventing enemies from recovering Health and Voodoo. Since enemies now recover Voodoo again, Hex Eater no longer permanently disables a Voodoo Doll using enemy. Constant Hex Eater shots will still keep an enemy's Voodoo near zero (preventing heavy spell-casting). Once the shots stop, the enemy will recover his Voodoo slowly and begin casting spells again.
• Green and Grey leveled enemies yield slightly more Reputation Points than before