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

[swashbuckler II]

omg omg omg WOOOO
Obvious long update lol
ill wait bout 15 min hopefully done updating

[Chris]

Yup new enemies new bosses and lots of bug fixes! I cant wait my goal is to complete all of those quests by the end of the weekend.

[The Skirata Clan]

all of this in the open game and not on test anymore? even with all of those issues i keep reading about?

[ukebec]

Yay! But now I have to wait until this workday is over before I can go check it out...Aaarrrrggggghhh!

[Chris]

Yes all the stuff on test has been moved to open. With or without bugs i guess.... i mean the update itself had tons of big bugs fixes.

[Davil]

Yes! Now we can deal with Doll users in Pvp! Not to mention redo skill points!

[Maximvs]

The Good:

Much of the updates are the bomb - The new Options Screens, Ship Boarding interface and Retraining of Weapons, New Weapons, new Skiy Graphics, lots of stuffl are all great additions.

The Bad:

The big bugs we wanted fix - didn't happen, and they took away options forcing players to now use more glitches to level up... the dagger will now be used even less (becoming almost like gernades), and as for Hex Shot on the Pistol...

The Ugly...

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).

What a bunch of bull. Not only does it NOT slow them down any, but the spells they cast vs the 'voodoo' they regain are out of wack.

All I got to say is I'm glad all my pirates are 40's because this is a sad day for anyone wanting to level a pirate...

So now three weapons (Gernades, Pistol and Dagger) have become useless all within one update... and I believe this loss alone outweighs the gains...

[Chris]

Arrrg this SUCKS! Why that is the dumbest thing ever geeze disney do you get anything right?! Off to the grog blog!

[Evie]

Hmm, excited and terrified, all at the same time.

I've been looking forward to new stuff for my 40 to do, so I'm happy to see it, but if its now harder to level my least favorite weapons, that's not going to be fun for my other pirates once the quests are done.

Oh, well, off to go see how good (or bad) it is!

[Chris]

Its good and bad!

Grrr i wonder will there be an update where disney doesnt get rid of something good and replace it with something worse?

What was wrong with the dagger? I havent heard ANY rants or suggestions to change the dagger skills so what does disney do.... they change the dagger skills. However stuff that we have been ranting and suggestiong about for over a year still hasnt been added or fixed?!?!

[ukebec]

I noticed yesterday that all the threads on the Grog Blog are closed to new comments...interesting timing there! Just as the new updates come out they've disabled the feedback. What a coincidence.

[Chris]

Yes what a coincidence indeed!

If you need me ill be on kingshead mass murdering the navy to relieve stress!

[ukebec]

Does it seem to anyone else that many of these updates are designed to force players into group situations, and make it much harder for those players who prefer to do their pirating solo?

[The Skirata Clan]

that's why i thought they were going to wait... id rather have them wait and fix what needs fixing then rushin things out and screwing up.