EXCELSIOR DAILY

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+Nyx
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Re: EXCELSIOR DAILY

Post by +Nyx »

The auction winners and prices from this weekend's Grand Auctions:

Saturday
Gold
Item - Winner - Price (in millions)
Mountain house - Lestat A Zero - 26.202
Santa - Yoda - 2.474
Nutcracker - Gouki - 2.58
+Nyx statuette - Geo Fizzle - 5.55
+Veritas statuette - Geo Fizzle - 11.4
+Colibri statuette - Geo Fizzle - 7.54
+Jade statuette - Geo Fizzle - 5.54
+Requiem Statuette - Lestat A Zero - 11.86
+12 tinker suit - Phoebe - 75.08
+10 items to BOH - Alejandro - 13.5
Combine bags of holding - Alejandro - 16.34
Elysium ticket #10 - Space The Gray - 7.28
Make mount 0 slot - Merrilus - 6.625
Snowy tree - Yoda - 2.05
Gingerbread House - Gouki - 2.8
Snowy log - Lestat A Zero - 0.81
Snowy trough - Ansiktial - 3.94
Ice floe 1 - Vara - 0.8
Ice floe 2 - Tribecca - 0.78
Ice floe 3 - Tribecca - 0.92
Ice floe 4 - Vara - 0.66
Ice floe 5 - Fab - 0.94
Ice floe 6 - Fab - 0.39
SantaSleighRudolph - Tribecca - 5.28
SantaSleigh - Alejandro - 3.9
SantaSleigh8 - Cornbread - 5
Charlie Brown tree - Stormbringer - 5.05
Snow Park - Cornbread - 4.1
Large xmas table - Fab - 5.05
Ice Rink - Dramoor - 19.2
Snow Pile 1 - Stile - 1.15
Snow Pile 2 - Fab - 1.15
Snow Pile 3 - Mojo JoJo - 0.8

Tokens
Item - Winner - Price (in millions)
Ethy dye tub - Aryck - 18.4
Oaks skull - Cornbread - 1.54
Plat tinker tools - Cornbread - 2.2
+120 PS of choice - Pscicopata - 1.24
Santa Cookies & Milk - Thomas Covenant - 0.72
Melted Snowman - Lust - 0.68


Sunday auction:
Gold
Item - Winner - Price (in millions)
+10 items to BOH - Stormbringer - 14.34
Santa - Baby Spendy - 3.33
Snowy tree - Psicopata - 1.15
Gingerbread House - Stile - 2.2
Snowy log - Baby Spendy - 1.26
Snowy trough - Nagash - 3.2
SantaSleighRudolph - Stile - 3
SantaSleighEast - Vara - 2.24
SantaSleigh - Lust - 2
Charlie Brown tree - NME - 1.04
Snow Park - Stile - 2.01
Large xmas table - NME - 2.84
Ice Rink - Nagash - 19.6
Snow Pile 1 - Snydly - 2.2
Snow Pile 2 - Ansiktial - 2.6
Snow Pile 3 - Lust - 2

Tokens
Item - Winner - Price (in millions)
Ethy dye tub - NME - 8.12
oaks skull - NME - 2.05
plat tinker tools - Devlin - 2.5
+120 PS of choice - Winson - 1.25
Santa Cookies & Milk - Semz - 4.2
Melted Snowman - Ansiktial - 3.3
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Re: EXCELSIOR DAILY

Post by +Nyx »

Lady Melisande's ticketing system has been updated to allow for group fights. The system works the same as before for the Lady Mel tickets, but when you are moved into the 'waiting room' before the boss, there is now a table with a deed on it. You will stand next to the deed and say "party" and it will give you 5 party-tickets. You can only receive these 5. Then, you step onto the teleporter next to the table. You will be moved to a room where you can hand your party tickets to your friends over a table. Once your friends have the ticket in their packs, they will be automatically moved into the waiting room. When you're ready to go back to the waiting room, step back onto that same teleporter. Everyone will then approach the bright pink stone to be moved into Lady Mel's room. Only the primary ticketholder will be able to summon her, which will happen when the primary ticketholder enters her lair, and the timer for Lady Mel herself begins at that time.

Hope that makes everybody a bit happier with that system :)
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Re: EXCELSIOR DAILY

Post by +Colibri »

Extra info for the recent updates.

Changed vendor listing (vendors.uoex.net)
First some clarification: this website was developed by Temoc (a player here on Excelsior), and since it proved useful I gave it an "official touch" with the vendors.uoex.net website address.
There have been some complaints that this site is ruining the economy, especially the vendor population at TC and Makoto. Another issue was that players put up very cheap prices and with that basically eliminating the need for a "good spot". So there were good and bad sides to it.

We have now made it to include all vendors in the world, for those in TC or Makoto the listing fee is included in the seat rental, and other vendors will have to pay a fee to be listed/subscribed. Also, prices are no longer shown on the site.

Currently, this fee is 0gp per day and it will remain till start of January. After that, the price will gradually go up to the final price, which will be based on vendor's regular daily fee, but at least some minimum amount. I'm not yet sure what the fee will be, but probably somewhere near the vendor's daily fee (multiplied with a factor of 1, making it the same), but at minimum 5000gp (or thereabouts). Could also be a factor of 0.5 and minimum 5k, or factor of 1.5 and minimum of 2k. This may vary with time.
Perhaps in the future there might be a discount for vendors that are in a house that has a world teleporter rental, or possibly a double fee to also show prices (though probably not)... time will tell.

Just a note, I've noticed that those near Britain and Trinsic bank are displeased because they are no longer listed. Please keep in mind that this was initially intended for TC and MZ. As shops were added to the teleporter, if i recall correctly, Temoc decided to add those places to the sync, as well as Britain and Trinsic since there were some vendors around. This was a "temporary" solution, aka beta version, even though it was running for a year and a half. So please be happy to have been listed for all that time for free, without the need to rent a world teleporter.



Champion spawn changes
The main change is that there is no longer the 8-candle rule voting, as it was often a reason to dislike someone just because they didn't vote you in. We've also seen cases where people have advertised a champion spawn, but as people came to it, they didn't vote them in.

Also if you go to a champion spawn and start participating (dealing damage), your points from all other champions will be erased (this is however not the case with triple-champ-events). This was somewhat of an issue with the three oaks spawns, as some alternated between spawns for a bigger chance of getting the skull.

Also, powerscrolls and gold are not distributed directly by the old code (similar to the one whether you can loot the corpse) but is completely redone. When the champion dies, you have to be within 60 tiles (used to be 15 tiles), and you had to have been active (dealing some damage) within the last 5 minutes. This should eliminate those issues where players die, go to resurrect, and miss out on all gold and powerscrolls.
If you arrive to a champion spawn when it's at level 15 or 16, you will not be allowed to participate.
But if you arrive to a champion where there has been no activity for 15 minutes, you are allowed to join in (and basically becoming the only member, as others then cannot join).

More in detail: when you kill spawn at a champion, you are given "activity points". These points are of different nature:
- whether you have done any damage in a short slice of time - basically how much time overall have you been active at the spawn,
- how much damage you dealt to the spawn,
- how much damage you dealt to the champion,
- whether you have damaged the champion at all.

Then all these four types of points are normalized... for example, if you did 5000hp damage, a friend did 3000 damage, and another player did 2000 damage, the "champion damage points" are 50%-30%-20%. Similar is done to how many points you collected with activity, damage to spawn, and whether you did any damage to the champion. In the case of "any damage to champion", if you did 6k hit points, your friend 4k, and the other guy nothing, these points would be 50%-50%-0%.

Then all of these points are added to an overall score, but have different weights. I'll keep that a secret, and also it might be tweaked a bit, but roughly speaking, 2/3 of the overall score depends on activity (mostly time, and some based on damage to spawn). the 1/3 is based on how much damage (and any damage at all) was given to the champion.

Few things that still need to be done:
- Scrolls are given arbitrarily... if you and another player have participated, but you have accumulated the total of 80% of the points, and the other player 20%, and three scrolls would be given out: one goes to you, one goes to the other player, and the third scroll has a 50-50% chance to be given to you or the other player.
- If the number of scrolls doesnt match the number of players (e.g. 8 players, 6 scrolls), then those 2 players that didn't get the scrolls, should get a bigger cut of the gold.
- Some extra points based on account age, giving newbies a bit better score (about 15-20%).
- Potential issue if participants leave the champ when the boss is already out. If it's during the red candles, the levels eventually go down below level 15 when it's possible for new players to join, but at the champion level, the only way is to wait 15 minutes, then join, but only one player can join that way.
- Forgot to make MOA drop less gold than the default (regular champs).

API Access
I've added a way to connect to the shard with your browser. This is mainly a staffing feature, for example when configuring new areas there is a lot of text that needs to be inserted or edited, which is hard to do with the game's old school text editing features. So most of what's done in this area isn't something you'll see as a player. Though I have added a cool feature that even players can use, the Journal. Type [account, there you will see a button with API info, and you can open your journal from there. If sometimes you want to copy-paste something :)

Server timezone change
If anyone noticed, we have been running on the CET *summer* time in all of November .. I have decided to move us into the "default" timezone, that is the Coordinated Universal Time aka GMT+0. No daylight changes are observed in this timezone, so please note that your relative time difference to the shard will change as your daylight savings are on or off.

Yard wand items limit on town houses
By default, the limits for yard items were 2 tiles on either side of the house, and 5 tiles on the south. This was occasionally a problem with townhouses, especially near popular places. So i have changed this limit to be 1 tile extra on every side. (at the moment, for townhouses the limit is 0 extra, as I forgot to revisit this code after the initial testing... multitasking hehe).
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Don't know what the purpose of your life is? Well then make something up! ;)
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Re: EXCELSIOR DAILY

Post by +Colibri »

Wow, so map, much house, wow, very Trammel :mrgreen:

http://www.uoex.net/images/MapExport-Tr ... -12-23.bmp
+Colibri, Administrator of UO Excelsior Shard

Don't know what the purpose of your life is? Well then make something up! ;)
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Re: EXCELSIOR DAILY

Post by +Colibri »

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Kwanzaa, Chanukah, Winter Solistice, to you and yours, from the Excelsior Staff.

We visited Santa and took a picture with him :D
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Re: EXCELSIOR DAILY

Post by +Nyx »

I have revamped all of the Fel dungeons similarly to what was done with Fel Ice a few months ago. These dungeons now have double or triple the previous number of spawn, and all new spawn gives double the weapon xp of their Trammel counterparts. Khaldun and the Ophidian Temple were included in this update; however the Solen Hive, Brit Sewers, Wind and Wrong were not.

We'll keep an eye on these areas to see if they need any adjustments.

Enjoy!
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Re: EXCELSIOR DAILY

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Almost all Fel cities have been revamped to include spawn. Most of the Fel graveyards have had their spawn increased. Various spots in Fel have had spawn added including the Cove orc fort, the Hedge Maze, and Yew crypts. All spawns added have double weapon xp.

Enjoy!
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Re: EXCELSIOR DAILY

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Mobs can no longer spawn inside buildings on Sgail that hold quest NPCs. They can still be dragged into most of these buildings, however. Players should be mindful to clear all mobs in the vicinity before approaching any quest NPCs to avoid any issues with not receiving the quest item/reward due to running away.
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Re: EXCELSIOR DAILY

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Sgail:

The unimbued leggings and the soulwood talisman are no longer able to be traded or sold.
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Re: EXCELSIOR DAILY

Post by +Nyx »

All Ilshenar dungeons, and some overland areas, excluding Wisp dungeon have been revamped. There are 2-3x as many spawn in these areas, though you are not likely to see any noticeable difference in the number of paragons.

Enjoy!

-Nyx
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Re: EXCELSIOR DAILY

Post by +Colibri »

Voting rewards are back!
The vote reward stone at the town center is back! But please read these instructions first...
On our frontpage (http://www.uoex.net) at the bottom of the central column, I have placed 4 links to the topsites that seem to be best for voting. You can vote for our shard on each of those, about every 24 hours. After you vote, you can go to the Town Center and doubleclick the "Reward stone" - it's right next to the world teleporter. You will get 1ED for a successful "voting process".

Here's the tricky part: as some of you already know, or would eventually find out, this reward stone only rewards votes on the GTop100.com site. But 1ED is too big of a reward for voting just on GTop100, and we need votes everywhere.
If we all vote on those four sites, the 1ED per "voting process" will hold up. I know that some will just go get that 1ED with as little effort as possible, but as long as the majority plays fair, the 1ED reward will remain.

If this doesn't go as planned, I will be deciding between two options:
- To simply reduce the reward to for example 3-5k gold,
- Or to make it so that as you claim your reward, the system checks other sites as well and makes a reward proportional to that (but that takes time to code, and there's a lot of things with bigger priority on my list).

So if the turnout is at least 80% or 90% (that a rewarded vote was made on all the sites), it will hold up.
If not, I will remove the stone until further notice. In case that the turnout was very low, and for example only 20% of players voted on all sites and then claimed the reward, as planned, then I might cross reference those votes with some extra vote-related-data and give an extra reward to those players after the stone is removed.
(Disclaimer: I might add a fifth voting site to the list there, but I won't go to the extremes with for example 15 sites, because I know entering that captcha too many times isn't very fun)

About voting in January: I would like to thank the 27 players that continued to vote even though the reward stone was removed. You will all get a double reward for each vote (2ED), made after the stone was removed and until right now.
Btw, I am unable to find the players for a few votes, so in case anyone reading this voted from work or perhaps remembers their IP, please send an email (address is on the front page) if your IP looks like any of the following:
199.33.x.x, 85.76.x.x, 204.115.x.x, 65.120.x.x, 70.83.x.x (write the missing digits in the email to get the reward :))


Vendor listing fee for vendors.uoex.net
Although this was intended for earlier in January, I have just set the pricing for being listed and from now on, vendors that are not in Town Center or Makoto Zento are no longer listed for free. The price is set at 20% of it's charge-per-day - or -1000gp - whichever is smaller. This will be increased to 50%-or-2000/3000 sometime in the middle of February.
Please open your vendor's menu to check whether your listing is On or Off - the way you want it to be (to avoid either being delisted by mistake, or on the other hand, not to use gold on something you dont want).
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Re: EXCELSIOR DAILY

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Lady Melisande changes:

The process of questing for the tickets is the same. However, we have made modifications to the system that takes the tickets and moves the players to prevent issues that were happening previously. Now, once you have your lady mel ticket and are ready to fight her, you will go to the same room as before, and check the same clock as before. If she is ready to be spawned, approach the neon green stone. Listen to the dialogue, and then speak the appropriate speech trigger based on whether you are fighting alone or in a group. Once you have received your preparation ticket you will then say 'ready to move' when ready, and you will be moved to the preparation room. You will have 5 minutes to buff up and prepare to fight her.

Once buffed and ready to move on, approach the green stone and then walk through the gate. You will now have 20 minutes to fight her. Walk toward the west side of her lair and she will spawn.


Notes:
- Pets will not move with you at any point. Unshrink them only when you have been moved into Lady Mel's lair. She will spawn when you approach the end of her room, so you will have a moment to unshrink your pets before she arrives. Shrink your pets again before your ticket runs out or you choose to leave - you will NOT be refunded if you choose to use the pet summoning stone.
- Don't spam the speech triggers before the dialogue asks you to, or you will simply cost yourself more time. Spamming it will not make it go faster, it will make it go slower.
- Give your entire party their tickets before you yourself say 'ready to move', otherwise you are moved and they are not. You will not be refunded a ticket for moving before you've given your group their tickets.
- Don't dawdle in the preparation room. You have only 5 minutes, and if your ticket expires you will have to leave without fighting lady mel. You will not be refunded a ticket.
- Don't use the exit portal in the preparation room unless you truly wish to leave without fighting lady mel. You will not be refunded a ticket for leaving accidentally.
- The ticket stone will disappear when lady mel is not available to be fought. When she is available again, it will reappear. Please do not send pages regarding the 'missing stone', unless you yourself have sat there for at least 45 minutes and it has not appeared.

Once everyone gets the hang of this modified system, it will go much smoother than the previous one :)
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Re: EXCELSIOR DAILY

Post by +Nyx »

Lady Mel tweaks:

- Some minor streamlining on the code to help prevent bugs

- If you are hunting Lady Mel as a party, the party leader must trash any extra party tickets before being moved, or she may not spawn at all. The instruction book also includes this information.
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Re: EXCELSIOR DAILY

Post by +Nyx »

The red wall in the 2nd gauntlet has been removed. We'll continue to monitor behavior in the gauntlets, and as long as everyone behaves appropriately enough, we won't have to add such things back.
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Re: EXCELSIOR DAILY

Post by +Nyx »

+V and I are running an experiment for the next month. All balrons (except the ones in Ilshenar) have been modified to ignore pets and/or to attack the weakest in their range. We do not recommend hiding to avoid this, as other players will be able to kill the mob - Pets that are unattended do not count toward kill stealing/spawn sharing rules, and if the other players can't see you, they have no way to know you're actually there.

We will be monitoring the effects of this change, and it may or may not become permanent depending on the results.
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