MARCH 25, 2004

Headlines:

• Refining some DX9 functionality.
• Some adjustments have been made to pets.
• Some general bug fixes.
• Added a new rogue discipline line, Assassins Strike. The tomes can be found in the East Commonlands and the Plane of Knowledge.

DirectX 9:

• The center of collision for all players & NPCs has been set higher. This resolves issues with climbing, running up hills and some other collision issues.
• We have made improvements to position processing which should alleviate some of the problems related to getting stuck in geometry.
• Improved collision and movement when near overhangs.
• The auto-duck mechanism is now an user-enabled option. It can be set in the General tab of the options window. This feature forces your character to duck automatically to get into small places. If set to off, you will need to manually duck to enter those places. It is "on" by default.
• Warping of very small NPCs (e.g., giant rats in Qeynos) has been resolved.
• Rain now has visible weather.

Pets:

60+ player pets have been improved in a number of ways. Most notably, the effects of pet foci will be more dramatic as a player progresses with more powerful equipment. There have also been a number of inconsistencies between different tiers of pet foci that have been fixed. All of the existing foci should never show a power decrease in any aspect when upgrading from a lower tier foci to a higher tier foci. The most dramatic changes in pet stats are in the following aspects:

• Level - Most tiers of Foci will add one level to the pet.
• Max HP - Most tiers of foci will add max hit points to the pet, some tiers are more dramatic than others and follow a similar rate of progression to player characters as they gain equipment equivalent to the pet focus items.
• Mitigation (AC, Agility) - Most tiers of foci will add mitigation to the pet. Some tiers are more dramatic than others and follow a similar rate of progression to player characters as they gain equipment equivalent to the pet focus items.
• Damage Output - Generally the pets did not receive a significant change in their damage output, although there are certain pets that have had their max hit and offense increased.

Overall, the player pets have received a significant boost. There are instances where you will see no change in a specific aspect of a specific pet. For example, the Rathe's Son pet summoned with Minion of Eternity has not received an improvement in max hit points, but it has received a significant mitigation improvement.

These changes affect the pets summoned by the following spells:

• Ward of Xegony
• Child of Ro
• Servant of Marr
• Rathe's Son
• Legacy of Zek
• Saryrn's Companion
• Child of Bertoxxulous
• Spirit of Sorsha
• Spirit of Arag

The most profound changes were made to the magician pets as they were most in need of improvement to maintain class balance. Beastlord and necromancer pets also received upgrades, but not of the same magnitude.