TEST Release Notes - July 1 2008

[Ironhawk]

• Undead Grenadiers should now animate properly when attacking players
• Removed some particle effects from the ship sinking sequence to reduce chug
• Reduced the number of NPC ships that spawn in the Privateering area
• Avatars that teleport to friends that are in jail (but have already kicked down the cell door) will now be able to leave the cell
• Updated the ship damage interface
• Cannons do more damage the closer you are to your enemy
• Fixed a bug that caused the cannon reload status bar to occasionally hang at an intermediate point

[Ironhawk]

About this update:

- Not only grenadier but spineskull and urchinfist also do the throwing grenade
animation when attacking us. This is great!


- The damaged part of our ship's hull and also enemy's are now clearly displayed.
This is useful to know which part of our ship we should guard and which of enemy's
we should attack. If we hit the damaged part we get bonus damage point.


- Now there is only one ocean for test server which is Amberassa. Goodbye Lankoglia!
I wonder why Disney did this. They just recruited lots of new testers but
why they reduced the server to only one? Tight budget?

- Hex eater shots no longer petrify enemies with voodoo doll. I tried witchdoctors, gypsies,
spanish piratas, brinescums, and mollusks. All of them are immune to hex eater shot.

After dozens of hex eater bullet and long after their blue damage point dissapear,
they can still attack us. No more 500+ rep per mollusk and hex eater is useless now.
I feel sorry for those who had put multiple skill points in hex eater.
It's better if Disney NEVER give this kind of bullet in the first place.

- The sentence "Cannons do more damage the closer you are to your enemy"
is rather misleading. The truth is "Cannon and broadside damage points are ENORMOUSLY reduced
than before the update when enemy is close and further reduced if the enemy is out of radar"
Look the pic below to compare standard damage point for roundshot
and thunderbolt before and after the update.

Damage points reduced around 90%! This is ridiculous!
But after we break the hull we get bonus damage point if our
cannonball hit precisely at that broken part.
Thank God they didn't reduce this bonus damage point which is
about the same with before the update.
Damage points when cannonball hit mast/sail are not shown anymore but i believe
they're not reduced because it's still relatively easy to take down mast using thunderbolts.

Standard damage point for explosive, thunderbolt, firebrand and roundshot.


Bonus damage point for explosive, thunderbolt, firebrand and roundshot.


We get Standard damage point when cannonball hits an unbroken hull.
We get Bonus damage point when cannonball hits broken/damaged hull.
In game the damage points fluctuated around those numbers and also depend on our cannon level.
Screenshots above taken from my lvl 33(canon lvl 18) and lvl 39(cannon lvl 25) pirates.

[Chris]

ok awesome looks like they are getting pretty far with privateering cant wait!

[Ironhawk]

My friend said that broadside and cannon damage points are severely reduced
because we sank too many devs in ship pvp LOL

[Ironhawk]

Other new features from this update:

- Enemies with dagger (raider, maitre, assassin, etc.) now attack us from a distance, and only approach us when we are out of dagger's range.

- Privateers now have ranks. Everytime we sink enemy ship we get infamy point (like rep point). We get the promotion after we collect enough infamy for that position. Every player has separate ranks for French and Spanish sides.

[Dr. Zeppers]

Thanks for putting all that info together Ironhawk.

I sure hope they fix that Hex shot thing. Make it less effective, or make it so the enemies regenerate voodoo, but dont make it totally ineffective...

Will have to wait and see what they release to open when they do. Im assuming you report all this to them as well?

Thanks again.

[sammyh]

what ranks are there?