Fixed an issue causing Escorts to not recognize that they have reached their destination in several cases

The 3 year veteran reward hitching post and ankh have had a couple bugs patched- they now properly obey their owner and the ankh's placement issues have been resolved.

A bug allowing use of the Necronomicon when not considered Undead has been patched. As a result, the Necronomicon now requires a minimum of 60.1 in Forensic Evaluation, Spirit Speak, and Magery to use.

• A bone armor dye tub has been added in game, as an ultra rare drop.
• The Dark Guardian summon has had its damage output increased a bit.

• Fixed an issue with Santa Claus not handing out presents
• Fixed an issue with presents sometimes not giving any items
• Fixed an issue with Meditation not working at all

Pending a nightly restart, the following changes have been made:

Bone Crafting has been introduced! This will allow players to harvest bones and ethereal bones from gravedigging, and craft bone armor, as well as bone crafting stations for their houses. Bone Armor will become more useful, as players with > 80 Forensic Evaluation (e.g. Necromancers) may meditate in Bone Armor and will enjoy the benefit of the passive mana regen being cut in half compared to non-necro players. Bone items require both Tailoring and Forensic Evaluation skill to craft.

Additionally the following changes have been made:

A bug allowing players to actively meditate in armor heavier than leather has been patched. The Necromancer spell Death Ward now lasts 5 minutes, with a one minute cooldown.

• Some noxious decay bug fixes have been added to avoid the "endless heal" scenario.
• A bug causing the faction pillar to be a stingy bastard has been fixed.
• Fey slayers have been removed from crafting tables, as we have very few fey mobs at this time.

• Fixed an issue preventing skeleton keys from receiving their decay timers, this was an unintended side effect of another hotfix recently
• Fixed an issue with being able to use objects inside of secured containers when you don't have permission to
• Fixed an issue with being able to open Lottery Boxes when they are not inside your backpack
• Fixed an issue with not being able to use/decorate locked down objects that are stacked on top of each other due to line-of-sight, you should now be able to use/decorate objects up to the ceiling

• Fixed an issue causing players to see "you can't do that so quickly" erroneously, as well as preventing players from teleporting in quick succession
• Tracking distance is now greatly reduced when inside of a Dungeon as part of the ongoing balancing

The Colosseum can now only be reached by using the skiff at Buccaneer's Den docks, or the skiff at Britain's docks south of the bank (the larger docks slightly to the south-east, where the Town Crier calls out the latest gossip). To be clear, skiffs are the smaller boats, not the big ships.

To leave the Colosseum's island, 2 different skiffs are available to take you back, north to Britain, or west to Buccaneer's Den.

We've deployed a hotfix for the issue preventing players from releasing objects with collision. The full fix requires a server restart, until then, you can say "I wish to move this" to bring up the Decorating Tool and use the release button from there and it will work.

Pending a restart:

• Faction guards are now mounted and quite fast.
• Faction members' names will now be displayed in special colors: Minax - Cyan; Shadowlords - Green; True Britannians - Purple
• All warhorses purchased from here on out will only be rideable by faction members.

The following changes have been made to help prevent getting items stuck inside of house walls causing them to be unable to be retrieved.

• Can no longer drop items in places that are blocked or that you cannot see
• Can no longer release locked down items that are in blocked locations or in a spot you cannot see

Note: In some cases, to decorate and move objects on top of each other you may be required to place items in an open spot first and then use the house Decorate Tool to move them to the desired place

Item Collision issue:

• Fixed an issue with object collision not being updated/removed when moving or picking-up items that have collision

Notes:

• Escorts and pop-up Orc Camps have been re-enabled & town vendors are vulnerable again
• Vendors & dungeon chests have been respawned

Fixes:

• Fixed issue with SOS treasure not being created in some cases
• Fixed being able to drop items into other beings' backpacks in some cases
• Fixed Fame & Karma values not being rounded
• Fixed Meditation being interrupted when switching targets
• Fixed issue with Magic Reflection not causing notoriety actions in some cases
• Fixed issue with some Ostards not being able to traded, bought, and/or controlled by players with no or low taming skill
• Fixed issue with being able to loot equipped items from dead NPC paperdolls (special items obtained this way are subject to removal)
• Fixed issue with skeleton key being used inadvertently in some cases
• Fixed issue with not being able to trade Fire Beetles or other pets in some cases due to "having items on them"
• Fixed issue with stacked objects not showing the count in it's name in some cases
• Attempted to fix edge case with releasing a pet sometimes causing notoriety action erroneously

Changes:

• Increased leash distance for pop-up Orc Camp mobs
• Pet abandonment time limit increased from 3 days to 7 days
• Blank Scrolls inventory minimum increased from 20 to 333 on Scribe vendors
• Create Food spell now creates food directly in your backpack if you have room instead of requesting you to target the ground
• Escorts will now show how much time is left before you can accept another one
• Armored Saddles now have durability that decreases with each successful bola hit you take
• Removing saddles from pets will no longer refund the deed
• Warhorses now have passive bola resistance due to their built in armor
• Players will now be kicked off their mount if they somehow manage to mount while the pet is paralyzed or disabled; it is not intended to be able to mount & move on a paralyzed pet

An exploit causing faction players to receive quite a lot of silver upon depositing silver into a controlled town stone has been fixed. This exploit has existed since factions were released. As a result, upon next restart, all players' faction silver will be reset to 0. This exploit was only recently reported to us despite being around for so long- to avoid future wipes, please report anomalies promptly so that we can fix them immediately.

Additionally- purchasable faction guards have been beefed up a bit.

• Bonded pets will no longer release themselves when starving
• Pet hunger rate has been decreased greatly, now starvation will occur at 72 hours without feeding, instead of 16 hours

Note: Bonded pets will still continue to experience hunger, but it has no effect at this time. In the future, hunger may factor into controlling your pets.

As you may be aware, we're working to isolate the root cause of the recent crashes. Through the process of elimination, we are making a change to the town vendors, and they have are now invulnerable again for the time being. As a result of this change, the Escort NPCs are disabled, as well as the pop-up Orc Camp spawns.

This change is temporary while we monitor the servers for a short period of time. We appreciate your patience and support!

• The time to capture a town once the sigil is deposited into a faction stone has been reduced from 24h to 8h
• The time between when a town is captured until it is once more vulnerable has been decreased to 36 hours to compensate

The True Britannians faction mob has been changed from Drakes to Dragons.

• Fixed an issue preventing players from reporting player murders if a monster or NPC gets the killing blow
• Fixed an issue with treasure chests in dungeons not decaying if untouched for a period of time; additionally, random Orc Camps now spawn in overland with a chest of difficulty levels 3 to 5 (overland chests do not offer uncommon items like dungeon chests)
• Fixed an issue with the Stuck Menu not responding to button presses in some cases
• Fixed an issue with not being able to place the decoration Tattered Green Banner