Posses Now Available (Almost)
We’ve added posses to the game. Anyone with 1,000,000 gold can create a posse. Simply talk to Tad the Posse Magnate in Townston to start the process.

Posses are currently disabled while we resolve some last minute issues with them. Expect them to show up in the next week or so.

What is a Posse?
If you know what a guild is, you know what a posse is. It’s a persistent group of friends that like to play Dungeon Runners together. Posses have their own entry on the social window and their own chat channels (both for posse members and officers). Check the in-game help on posses for more information.

Player Blogs
We’ve added a new player blog system that tracks various events that happen to you while you play. These events are supplied via RSS feeds to anyone that has interest in them. You will find RSS feed icons in the game that will help you to subscribe to these events.

The following events are currently exported:

1. Login
2. Logout
3. Level up
4. Died
5. Complete Quest
6. Killed Boss
7. Adding a Friend
8. Removing a Friend
9. PvP Match Results

This feature is not available on the PTS.

Friends List Now Exported
You can now export your friend’s list as part of your character XML data feed. By default, all characters have their friend’s list exported. However, you can easily opt out of this. Simply click on the new checkbox at the top of your friend’s list to do so.

Wishing Well Added
We’ve added a new wishing well to the game. You can find this wishing well on the upper level of Townston. Put a King’s Coin into this well and see what you get! Some special new items can only be received from the wishing well. This well can only be used once an hour!

New Dungeon Added
We’ve added a new dungeon to the game. It’s called “MutantMania” and is designed for levels 80 and up. This dungeon comes with a boatload of new monsters and a great new boss fight. Enjoy the splendor of 50 new quests in this dungeon.

Graphics Engine Upgrades
We’ve implemented several changes to the graphics engine to help with performance and to improve the look of the game:

1. We’ve optimized all of our shaders. It seems that our pixel shaders were terribly inefficient. We’ve tripled their performance in many cases. The impact of this will be most noticeable on graphics cards will lower fill rates.

2. We’ve optimized our animation system to help with performance when lots of characters are on the screen.

3. Water shaders have been reworked to improve the look and performance of water in the game.

4. Specular lighting has been added to the engine. This adds some sweet shiny to most items in the game. There’s a new graphics option to disable this new lighting option. Turn this off if you have performance problems with a low-memory graphics card.

5. Zone portals have received a new effect to help them look better.

6. Ambient lighting has been reworked in the engine to help with the overall appearance of all areas.

Quest Interface Reworked
We’ve made some significant changes to the quest log. All quests are now organized by dungeon, making it really easy to find the information that you need. We’ve also made the interface prettier, with the addition of icons for the areas and other polish items. You’ll also find new and improved indicators of all quest giver heads.

Minimap Upgraded
We’ve upgraded the minimap by adding new icons for quest givers and skill trainers.

Potion Counters Added
You will now see that there are some sweet potion counters on the main UI of the game.

Bling Gnome Trial Added
There’s a new quest you can get from the Bling Gnomes near the Amazon Shoppe. This quest will give you access to the Bling Gnome skill for a limited time. You can now try out the gnome before buying the box!

Townston Changes
We’ve made several changes to Townston that are noteworthy:

1. We’ve moved the entrance to the Horrific Dungeon of Legend back a bit to stop accidental entry when using the bank.

2. King’s Coin vendors have been given a new look to help make them stand out.

3. Tad the Posse Magnate has been added to the upper level of Townston.

4. The Wishing Well has been added to the upper level of Townston.

5. The water effect has been reworked in Townston to improve performance and the visual appeal.

6. Many issues with blocking objects and non-blocking objects have been fixed in Townston.

7. Many geometrical aspects of Townston have been simplified to help with rendering performance.

Tile Set Changes
We’ve made many changes to the various tile sets in the game:

1. Blocking issues in crypt-based dungeons have been fixed.

2. A new autumn forest tile set has been added.

3. New floor variants have been added to the library, ruins and catacomb tile sets.

New Chests and Loot-generating Objects
We’ve added several new kinds of chests to the game as well as other objects that generate loot. There are now chests that drop items of specific types. Explore the dungeon to find all the goodies!

New Items
Many new items have been added to the game this build:

1. Two-handed cannons have been added. Rangers rejoice! You’re no longer stuck with just crossbows and guns.

2. Every boss in the game now has a chance to drop special mythic items that are specific to that boss.

3. Several new armor sets have been added to the game. Of special note are the new ninja, pirate and jade armor sets. More color variants of existing armor sets have also been added.

4. Many other new mythics have been added to the game.

New Skills
Three new skills have been added to the game this build:

Montezuma’s Revenge (Ranger Trainer)
You ate some seriously bad tofu! Time to get to a toilet, stat! As you run around, you leave some of the most horrendous gas clouds known to Man (and Gosh) behind you! Each gas cloud causes some poison damage when an enemy runs into it. On top of that, the enemy may take an additional amount of poison damage over time. Sadly, the bad tofu does leave its mark on you too. You take some fire damage over the duration of the skill as well. Oh, it burns! It burns!

My Flaming Buddy (Fighter Trainer)
My Flaming Buddy, My Flaming Buddy. Where ever you go, he goes-ish.

To get your very own My Flaming Buddy, attack an enemy with this skill! Doing so will dish out a healthy amount of fire damage on your enemy and will potentially create a new My Flaming Buddy that runs around causing fire damage to nearby enemies. Don't get too attached to your new Buddy because his friendship is very temporary; 8 seconds to be exact. Look at the bright side; you don't have to deal with any long term commitments.

My Flaming Buddy, My Flaming Buddy and me!

Ray of Gosh (Mage Trainer)
Behold, all of your prayers are answered! Okay, perhaps not all, but at least this one is! Gosh sends down a mighty ray of Divine light to smite your enemies! Each ray shines down upon the position you pray for and sears an area with a radius of 2 meters for 3 seconds. All the heathen caught within the ray will be smote with some divine damage for each second they remain in the light!

Balance Changes
Several small balance changes have been made to the game:

1. Chill Bill now melts at the rate of 1% of his total health per second. The impact of healing him with ice skills has been significantly increased. This change was made to put pressure on players to use healing skills and ice when using him.

2. Rebalanced attack rating in PvP had an issue that favored low level players, letting them hit higher level players more easily. The closer a player was to level 10, the more pronounced this was. This has been fixed.

3. The Shadow Warg and Ninja henchman from the Shadow’s Embrace are now tougher.

4. The Embercore dungeon now caps out at level 90 instead of 100.

5. The chance for a free player to use a randomly generated yellow item has been reduced to 50% (down from 100%).

6. The Kings Coin cost for free players using vendors has been increased. It is now double the cost of members (up from 50%).

PvP Changes
We've made a few changes to PvP this build.

1. We've removed all old PvP maps and added four new ones. These new maps provide a much better layout for catching runners.

2. You no longer get rebalanced in rated matches when outnumbered (i.e. when a teammate leaves the battle early).

3. Group rating is now based on the highest rated player in the group instead of the average of the members.

4. All PvP ratings have been reset to 1500.

Edited by Stephen (09/12/08 06:57 PM)

What a huge chunk. Can't hardly wait.

I'm seriously getting a huge clue.

South Park reference! Word.

Can't wait for ratings reset. People are gonna be like...HA HA! Look at your rating compared to amount of wins! What a noob!

Then Ill be like..
Your right.. We should fight to show your better than me...

Lol for real though Im getting right back on the horse with pvp :P

and I think those characters were based on a pair from Kids in the Hall.


about Chunk 4:

I'm really liking the changes. Townston looks nice with all of the additions and adjustments (except that there's no more hide and seek ). The graphic upgrades are very nice! and the quest log is so much better. I love Tad's "Dubya" impression! The autumn forest map is a nice touch; it adds a nice contrast to the other sets.

10 minutes ran out...

I haven't tried flaming buddy yet, but Ray of Gosh is proving pretty useful for fringe mobs. Montezuma's Revenge seems ok, haven't tried it very much yet, though. I think Chill Bill's melting will force pvp'ers to use him less often per match- Flaming Buddy took CB out really quickly. I rarely use CB in pve, so I can't comment on that.

So, all in all, I think this build brings a lot of great improvements, and I'm looking forward to seeing it go live. *still anticipating posses on the PTS*

Is this just during battle or also while wandering through dungeons, sitting idle, etc.? Will Bill (or any henchman that's there to assist in combat) be added to a user's "group" area so that health can be tracked? Especially Bill if he will deteriorate while just standing there.

It's all the time, in either PVE or PVP. You can customize your user.cfg file to show a health bar above Bill's head, which will help greatly. Per Stephen, on idearunners, he probably won't be added to the group area since there are going to be many more summons.

Wow, all that? thats HUGE

Keep up the good work!!!!!@!@