VSOH - Game Update #2 : Vanguard News

Game Update #2

1. Guild Halls

2. The Brotherhood System

3. Bind on Equip

4. LFG Improvements

5. Rest Experience

6. Level Based Diplomacy

7. Deconstruction

8. Item Level Requirements

9. Equipment expertise has been removed from the game

10. PvP bug fixes

11. Crash To Desktop fixes and Optimizations

12. Quest tracking improvements



1. Guild Halls

Guild Hall plots are now available for purchase! They operate in a similar manner to regular housing in regards to overall construction but require new components. Building a Guild Hall will require efforts from all three spheres of Vanguard.



Crafters will need to learn brand new recipes for all three continents. There are new quests for different key parts of the Guild Hall structure, the majority which are for the mineralogist specialization. Other crafting trades will have some component recipes as well though.



Among the new recipes, a special mortar assembly recipe is introduced. This recipe requires components obtained from high level adventuring areas. Fetching these items will be very dangerous. You will want to bring a group.



Diplomats will be needed to obtain permissions to construct the Guild Halls as well. Without the correct documents obtained from the local government, the land owner will not be allowed to build a Guild Hall. However, obtaining this documentation will not be a simple task.



Finishing construction of a Guild Hall will take much more investment than building a smaller house due to the sheer size and space. However, once completed, they will be a great place for your guild to gather and store treasures, in addition to being a mark of pride for your group!



2. The Brotherhood System
Brotherhoods are a method for you and your friends to gain experience for each other, even when some of you are offline.

Features

· All experience you earn is split amongst the members of the fellowship, even members who are offline.

· When you are in debt or have lost experience, your experience will be devoted to repaying your debt/loss before you resume contributing to the brotherhood.

· Brotherhoods are completely independent from groups; you can be a member of both at the same time.


Limitations

* Brotherhoods can have a maximum of six members.
* You must be within five levels of every member of the brotherhood in order to join.
* You must be within a few meters distance to invite a player to your brotherhood.
* If you leave your brotherhood or are removed, you may not join another one for four hours of online played time.
* Members who are offline do not receive their experience until they log on. (Be careful when using the system to level up rarely-played characters, as their skills will fall behind, thus they will be very weak for their levels!)


Getting Started
Interested in creating a brotherhood? Simply target your friend, right click your defensive target window, and select "Invite to Brotherhood." You may then administer the brotherhood from the social window (default key 'O') "Brotherhood" tab.

3. Bind on Equip

All equipable items that were bindable are now either bind on equip or bind on pickup, with the majority of the items being bind on equip. Here is a quick overview of the affected items:



· All equipable items that were bindable are now BOE or BOP

· All uncommon and common items are BOE

· All rare world loot rares should be BOE

· All rare (and higher) items that are not on world loot tables are BOP

· All containers are BOE



4. LFG Improvements

There is a new LFG button that is located in the group area of the UI (left side of the screen), which brings up the new looking for group and looking for more tabs of the social window. This will disappear once a player joins someone else’s group, but it will remain for group leaders until their group is full. It automatically brings up the LFG tab for non-grouped players, and the LFM tab for group leaders.



The looking for group tab allows players to set which dungeon(s) or quest(s) (from the list of quests that the player currently has in their journal) they would like to work on, and then see a list of other individual players or group leaders. Players and group leaders in the list will be sorted based on their level relationship to you and how closely their preferences match yours, so those that are near your level and are looking to do the same dungeon or quest will be sorted highest in the list. The LFG tab also includes the option to auto accept group invites. If the player doesn’t turn on that feature, they will see the name, level, and class of the group leader and the name, level and class of each of the current group’s members when they are sent a group invite, at which time they can choose to accept or deny the invite as normal. If a player selects a group leader in the search list, they will get the new option to send a request to join that leader’s group, at which point the group leader will see the name, level, and class of the player that is requesting to join the group and the leader can choose to deny the request, or to send a group invite to that player.



The looking for more tab works like the LFG tab, except that it lets a group leader select the archetype(s) and/or class(es) that the group is looking for, in addition to setting the dungeon(s) and/or quest(s) that the group would like to find more members to do.



Both the LFG and LFM lists show individuals looking for a group and group leaders looking for more members. Hovering the mouse over a player in the list will show more info about them, such as what dungeons or quests they prefer, and if it is a group leader the tooltip will also show what archetypes or classes the group prefers and a list of all of the current group members’ names, levels, and classes.



5. Rest Experience

Heroes may now rest in Vanguard! Resting increases the rate at which a hero will gain adventuring, crafting, or diplomacy experience. As the hero gains experience in a particular sphere, rest of that type is exhausted. Rest for each sphere is separate, and is designated by a blue bar on the character sheet of the corresponding sphere. For adventurers, rest is also displayed on the experience bar. Camping allows a hero to rest, occurring more rapidly at outposts. A hero may tell if he or she is at an outpost when a tower icon appears next to his or her class icon.



6. Level Based Diplomacy

Diplomacy is moving from a “skill-based” (1-500) system to a “level-based” (1-50) system. In this changeover, your skill will be automatically converted to level. For instance, if you were skill 120, you would now be level 12. If you were 123, then you would be level 12 with 3 bubbles filled. NPCs and items are also converted as well, as will be the difficulty of conversations. This move allows us to fit Diplomacy more easily into creating content for the game, greatly speeding up the way we make content and reducing the places in which bugs can crop up – while also increasing the opportunities for sphere interdependence.



7. Deconstruction

Deconstruction is no longer process oriented. Deconstruction kits will be sold by vendors and each kit will have ten charges. Right-clicking the kit and then clicking on the item you wish to deconstruct will give you the option to convert the item to a resource or a dust.



* Common items should convert into attuning dusts or common resources
* Uncommon items should convert into resonance dusts, common resources and sometimes a rare resource
* Rare items should convert into focusing dusts, rare resources and sometimes ultra rare resources
* Anything above rare follows the same rules as rare



8. Item Level Requirements

Items in Vanguard no have a minimum level required to equip. The level is equal to the item level minus five. This excludes some miscellaneous items such as mounts.



9. Equipment expertise has been removed from the game

Waiting on a write up from Bill fisher



10. PvP bug fixes

We spent some time fixing some of the more egregious bugs



· Abomination grafts that produce a damaging effect has been reduced against players.

· Bards can no longer pulse an invis effect while in combat.

· See invis now functions properly – you can no longer see other players that are invis if you don’t have a see invis buff unless they are in your group.

· There is a new 40% damage cap on any single ability in PvP.

· Players may now rotate while rooted.

· Pets were previously hitting for full damage in PvP. They have now received a half-damage modifier to be in tune with the half-damage modifier applied to other damage types.

· You can now use abilities on pets in PvP. Previously, they would be immune to many types of abilities they shouldn’t have been immune to.



11. Crash To Desktop fixes and Optimizations



* Reduced the frequency of garbage purges. They will now only occur once your client has under 100MB of system memory free, and there is more "stuff" to purge. This will reduce the amount of "hitching flashes" to only the times when you really need them to prevent the game from crashing.
* Textures should now take up a great deal less system memory, reducing the number of crashes from out of memory errors substantially.



12. Quest Tracking improvements

Waiting for additional information