AT THIS TIME THIS IS ONLY FOR THE ANIMAL ABILITIES SPELLBOOK! All other spellbooks have not yet been updated and, it's possible, will not work at all until they are updated. I decided to roll out these updates in advance of the rest due to the extensive nature of them to allow for a longer testing window.
The previously announced changes to magic are also live. In brief, these include:
1) Mana now recovers at a linear rate (This is live on test for everyone, and has been for awhile).
2) Debilitation and TM spells have had their mana costs drastically altered (These are generally reductions, AoE TM is the main exception) and backlash rates reduced.
3) Mana costs, difficulty and backlashes have been re-balanced and standardized for all spells. Additionally we've added a 5th 'tier' of spell difficulty.
| Old Tier | New Tier |
| Intro | Intro |
| Basic | Basic |
| Advanced | Intermediate |
| Esoteric | Advanced |
| N/A | Esoteric |
At this time Rangers have no Esoteric spells, but it gives us room to grow.
4) Reduced slot cost for AoE TM/Debil spells.
5) Improved effectiveness of AoE TM spells (this has been on test for a few days).
See http://forums.play.net/forums/DragonRealms/Abilities,%20Skills%20and%20Magic/Game%20Master%20and%20Official%20Announcements/view/427 for full details of the system wide magic changes.
Finally, there are some specific spell updates I made while making all the other adjustments:
System Rewrite: Environmental Efficacy. This replaces the old terrain modifiers that Ranger magic was subject too. The inputs remain the same (wilderness good, urban bad) but the conditions will determine how efficiently your mana is used. You can think of this as having somewhat different levels of room mana available to you depending on the environment (Remember that Empaths also use Life Mana and are not subject to this system, for good and for ill.) This does not currently apply to mana supplied from Cambrinth or Harness. (The old system minorly adjusted spell difficulty instead.)
Animal Abilities Spellbook: All spells have been extensively rewritten. In most cases this will show up as revised messaging and more consistent handling of refresh casting and casting on others.
See the Wind: Reduced to Intro difficulty. Now enables Dual Load.
Instinct: Reduced to Basic difficulty.
Cheetah Swiftness: Removed Utility as secondary skill. Preq changed to Claws of the Cougar.
Bear Strength: Increased to 3 slots. Secondary skill changed from Warding to Utility. Preq changed to Grizzly Claws.
Grizzly Claws: Reduced wilderness restriction.
Sense of the Tiger: The stripes are back.
Claws of the Cougar: Entirely rewritten. Now gives +brawling, functional brawling claws to those who do not already have them and RT reduction to melee attacks (like Hasten or Wildfire). The weapon skill boost will be relocated to a new spell in the Wilderness Survival spellbook.
There's a fair bit more I want to do for Ranger magic but I don't want to entangle additional projects in what is already a large project. At this time my focus was on making them mechanically sound and fixing glaring messaging errors and so forth. After we nail down what we want to do with the Ranger confound and some of the other moving pieces I expect further revisions, particularly within the Animal Abilities spellbook if development goes in the direction I currently expect.
I very much want feedback on these changes and appreciate your help with all of this. I will again ask that we focus on keeping the conversations civil and productive - something I believe we did a very good job when this discussion was initially started.
-Raesh
"It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true." ― The Slow Regard of Silent Things
