Patch Notes September 2nd 2009

This patch prepares the ground for Darkfall’s October Expansion. All the changes implemented have been carefully considered and balanced before introduction into the game.
Ships

Darkfall’s October Expansion brings massive changes to the naval combat landscape. We take the first steps in this direction in today’s patch:

* Damaged ships will now move slower. This makes it harder for ships to run away and de-spawn when they are severely damaged.
* All ships have had their hitpoints significantly reduced. This change will bring balance and more of a challenge to naval combat.
* Most ships are now cheaper to produce. This excludes high-end ships for now.
* Trying to unsummon a ship while it’s taking damage or being repaired will now break the unsummoning.
* If you attack a ship you could go rogue depending on the status between yourself and the player controlling it.

Warhulks

* Damaged warhulks will move slower
* Trying to unsummon a warhulk while it’s taking damage or being repaired will now break the unsummoning.
* If you attack a warhulk you could go rogue depending on the status between yourself and the player controlling it.

Crafting

Skill gain in weaponsmithing has been enhanced: Creating higher rank weapons will now make your skill increase faster. This change will make it more rewarding for crafters to involve themselves in creating higher rank weapons.

Visual and Worldbuilding Updates

There have been many visual updates to the environment (boulders, vegetation etc.), also updates to the Chaldean props, to Dwarven Stone Walls, and to many props around Agon.

There have also been worldbuilding improvements and updates to the following areas:

* Zahnal
* Shargal
* Sorgom
* Velmuna
* Zirdna
* Dun Amsharra
* Fahral
* Kir Janu
* Saenal
* Niasha
* Nerghum
* Aderghum

Weapons / Items

New one handed clubs have been added to the game

* Spirit Club
* Manus Dei
* Bonecrippler
* Composit Club
* Enigma

Durability has been increased for the following transmutation staffs, to align the item’s value and resource cost with the item’s lifespan.

* Sarracenia
* Cursecaller
* Bonestaff
* Tyrantsmight
* Rod of origins
* Staff of legend
* Draunadan
* Snakeskin
* Corpsecall
* Darkheart

New elemental bows have been added to the game:

* Ravenous
* Flametrail
* Bolt Thrower
* Snowfall

Arcane protection has been added to necklaces
Arcane protection has been added to rings
The inventory of chaos chests has been upgraded
If you attack a cannon you could go rogue depending on the status between yourself and the player controlling it.
The shield blocking damage reduction bonus has been reduced to 80%

Magic

* All spell schools skill up faster. We need to point out that this concerns the schools and not the individual spells. This is the first step in introducing more spells and spell schools to the game
* Unburden has been modified: It’s quicker to cast, has a larger effect, a shorter duration and a longer cooldown. The changes are to make the penalty for armorcasting more meaningful add a bit more balance to melee and archery vs. magic.
* Mana and ingredient costs have been reduced for the following spells:
- Delayed shot
- Desecration
- Disease
- Evil eye
- Exhaust
- Holy weakness
- Lightning weakness
- Mental weakness
- Ominous drain
- Palsy
- Pestilence
- Piercing weakness
- Slashing weakness
- Slow
- Sluggish
- Spell curse
- Stupidity
- Tarnish
- Tongue rot
- Weakening blaze
- Weakening chill
* Magic area of effect damage (splash damage) will no longer give extra damage if the target has his back turned against the spell’s epicenter. Backstabbing bonuses for magic will only be given if you hit a player directly in the back with a magic projectile. This is another step in balancing magic vs. melee/archery and is counterbalanced by a small reduction in shield blocking damage reduction.
* Heal other & Sacrifice reach has been extended making healers a little more effective.
* Corrected problems with the Reflect Spell
* The Wisdom requirement for learning Maintenance has been reduced to 30 from 50

Accessibility/ UI / Controls

The following are just a few of the many planned improvements to Darkfall’s accessibility, User Interface and Control system.

* Added first person animations for bows, grenades and magic staffs when running and walking. You can now see what you’re wielding.
* Clicking on a player’s name in chat will now open a message tab for that player
* When you are buying in bulk you can now type in the number of items you want
* We have increased the max number of items you can buy in bulk
* Fixed several bugs having to do with the visuals of an inventory.
* Fixed a bug where on rare occasions a player could get one of his old characters restored.
* Corrected a bug where sheathing a weapon before a missile would impact would cause a damage miscalculation.
* A “follow me” button has been added to the world map. This will make the world map always center on you.
* Corrected some party member window issues having to do with dragging the window.
* Auto-sheathing of weapons has been added when pressing the use key on an object (e.g. gravestone, mount etc.)

Village System

* Village Control Points now give 20% more gold output.
* Village Control Points have had their health reduced by 25%
* A global message will be issued 30 minutes before villages go vulnerable.

Monsters / AI

* Fighting against monsters will now approximately triple the skill gain compared to that against player characters
* Getting hit by monsters will approximately triple the skill gain (i.e. resistance) compared to getting hit by player characters
* There have been several upgrades to AI tactics and monster behavior making them less likely to be exploited.
* If you attack a mount you could go rogue depending on the status between you and the player controlling it.

Environment System

There was a bug where some areas weren’t seeing enough weather effects like rain and snow and this has been fixed.

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This is mostly an information update on topics that the community may find useful. There will be more of these types of updates on a regular basis. Since we haven’t had one in a while, this one is quite long.

Policies
There seems to be some confusion about what’s allowed and what’s not in game. When in doubt, the EULA and the Terms of Service are displayed every single time you start the game.

The general rule is that any third party program that interfaces with the game or gives a player an unfair advantage is prohibited in Darkfall. The only types of programs allowed are chat communication programs and screenshot-video capture programs.

Use of third party programs that allow players to cheat in the game will result in accounts to be permanently banned without warning and without appeal. We detect all use of such third party programs and we’ve been banning people for their use every day. After a recent mass ban we’re happy to report that we’ve been detecting and banning fewer and fewer players.

Starting today, players exploiting the geometry will receive temporary bans which for repeat offenders will escalate to permanent bans. This means that when we detect players inside the terrain, rocks, trees, buildings, walls, towers etc. we will be taking action against them. This policy will be posted inside the game lobby and there will be no appeals for these offenses.

Also, starting today we will detect and take action against any use of loot scripts. The action will be temporary bans which will escalate to permanent ones. This policy will also be posted inside the game lobby and there will be no appeals for these offenses.

Unattended macroing and unattended use of autorun and swimming against obstacles are also prohibited. We have taken great measures to limit macroing, to reward the players who are actually playing the game and allow them to catch up easily. We will continue working on making macroing and its effects irrelevant in Darkfall.

North American Server
Many of you saw the announcement our server hosting partner GNI made about the signing of our cooperation in North America.

We had already explained that we would be launching in North America sometime during Q2 2009 and this information is also in the FAQ:

We will be making our own announcement when we nail down an exact launch date for the NA server, there are a couple of things which may affect the launch date by a few days that are not ironed out completely yet. Character transfer/cloning will become available with a significant delay (months) and possible further restrictions. This concerns only the characters without any of their possessions. More on this at a later date.

There are several considerations to be taken into account including the fact that European rights and North American rights to Darkfall belong to different organizations.

More Servers
Plans for more servers are also underway. Announcements will be made as needed.

Account Management and Sales
https://accounts.eu.darkfallonline.com is the URL to Darkfall account management and sales.

We’ve performed a complete overhaul of the account management system and things are running much smoother than they used to. We have increased our capacity repeatedly and we’ve been trying to keep the Darkfall shop open as much as possible since last week. This has been increasingly difficult to maintain as demand remains high. This despite the fact that there is still no “Buy Darkfall” button anywhere and our release has been limited to the Darkfall community.

Our number one concern is the quality of the experience for our existing users. We don’t want to create any problems by allowing too many new users in. This is why we have no boxes in the market, why we haven’t been promoting the game, why our new site isn’t up yet, why we don’t offer a free trial, why we don’t offer more payment options etc.

We understand that Darkfall’s soft launch is unorthodox, but we are working hard to change all that while maintaining the best possible experience for our existing users.

Darkfall pricing on the European Server is as follows, as described in the Darkfall FAQ :

What does it cost to play Darkfall?
First you need to purchase the Darkfall game client download which includes one month of game time. This costs 42 Euro. Residents of the European Union are also charged 19% VAT so the client download costs 49.98 Euro. After the initial month of game time is over you need to pay a monthly subscription to continue. The cost for the monthly subscription is 11.77 Euro or 14.00 Euro for EU residents (+19% VAT)

Darkfall Support
http://support.darkfallonline.com is where you can find the Darkfall help desk. This is a ticketing system and you need to have a Darkfall account to open a new ticket.

The Darkfall help desk has been handling hundreds of requests a day on the following topics:

General Issues - Technical Support – Bugs – Feedback – Gameplay Issues – Accounts and Billing.

The Darkfall Help Desk will also be populated with many more knowledgebase articles shortly. We are compiling these based on the user feedback which is just now starting to mature enough to create a proper Knowledgebase.

Darkfall Help is there to help you get started with the game and can be found both in-game and outside of the game at this address:
http://www.eu1.darkfallonline.com/help/
Darkfall Help is currently receiving a major overhaul which will be evident within a few days.

In-game help: Players can call on a GM in game by typing /gm_help to get help or /GM_report to report player behavior. There is 24/7 GM coverage in Darkfall and all requests will be addressed, whether or not you receive an acknowledgment of your request.

Darkfall developers are kept informed on all support issues.

Darkfall Updates and patches
We have been following what has been happening in the game very closely, and have been paying close attention to all feedback by our playerbase . We are involved in a constant effort to improve everything about the game. We have been fixing bugs as they come up, and our updates have all been very substantial in content and features. We have made huge improvements to the game already but the best is yet to come.

While the patch notes simply highlight some of the major changes to the game, there are always hundreds of changes, fixes, and tweaks in every patch which we don’t mention. We started posting patch notes on March 21st. Before that our patches contained mostly bug fixes and optimizations.

Here are the links to all our patch notes:

March 21st
March 27th
April 2nd
April 10th
April 15th
April 16th
April 24th
May 1st
May 15th
May 16th

Things to look forward to:
Our team is expanding and is fully committed to working on Darkfall. We are working on virtually every aspect of the game and our goal is to continuously improve the Darkfall experience.

Some of the things to look forward to in the near future include but are not limited to:

Imminent massive optimizations to further improve gameplay, massive battles and sieges
Improving the newbie experience, making the transition to Darkfall smoother and lowering the learning curve
Continuously adding polish to the game
Substantial improvements to the graphics
Large content updates
Massive feature updates
Further improvements to the economy
Massive improvements to the solo and the small group experience
More PvP diversity and options
Substantial improvements to PvE
Darkfall Media Coverage
Since our launch wasn’t heavily publicized, media coverage has been fairly light. Even so, there are Darkfall articles on many gaming websites, gaming blogs, and print media in many different languages.

Here is a sample of some English language Darkfall coverage links you may find useful:

IGN RPGVault Editorial, review, and first impressions

Darkfall: My first Breath in Agon – First Impressions of Aventurine’s Labor of Love
What the hell is Darkfall and Why Can’t I Play It?

Ten Ton Hammer’s First Impressions

MMORPG.com have a few correspondents and bloggers providing regular Darkfall coverage

Darkfall Features @ mmorpg.com

Darkfall – The Conversion of a Self Proclaimed Carebear
Darkfall Combat Guide, Part One
Darkfall – Skills in DFO
Darkfall Overview Part II, Looking at the Down Side
Darkfall-Survival Tips
Paragus Rants on MMORPG.com. Paragus has been putting out some of the most useful and informative articles about the Darkfall experience since the Darkfall beta.

Darkfall: Warhulks
Post World War I Interviews
60 Days of Darkfall
Warships
Rafts and Sailing
Alliance Leader Interviews
Alliances and War
City Building
Mounts and Politics
Guild Functionality
Darkfall Beta Review

Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog has also been offering regular Darkfall coverage and commentary

Thank you for Reading,
The Darkfall Team
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Patch Notes April 24th

It should be said that our patch notes contain only the most noteworthy updates to the game. They cannot contain everything we’ve done or everything that we’re working on. The patches are substantial enough that we don’t need to add every little thing to make them seem bigger. There are hundreds of smaller fixes and additions that we don’t mention here but this is not all we’ve accomplished since the previous patch. During the week we also do a lot of work on things for future patches and updates. One of the most important and time consuming phases in incorporating an update to the live game is testing. We have many updates developed which are still in testing. If we haven’t addressed a standing issue, it obviously doesn’t mean that we’re not going to, so please don’t assume that we won’t / can’t / or aren’t aware of it. In most cases we’re already working on it.

Here are this week’s patch notes:

New Quests

New Quests for the Factions have been added:

MIRDAIN FACTIONS:

THE SERENE SPIRE

* Areas of Bad Magic
* Inside the Crystal Green Tower
* Hidden Secrets
* Flesh of the Guardians

THE ARROWHEADS

* Gray ork Mercenaries
* Hidden agents of Melek
* The Melechar Report
* The Mission
* Stealing their Faith

THE EMERALD THRONE

* Bad Magic
* A Historical Monument
* Mercenaries
* Nairath the Mage
* Ingedients for Nairath
* Teeth of the Beast
* Between Mages

DWARVEN FACTIONS:

VOICE OF YMIR

* Aegin’s Hall
* Lords of the Frozen Hall
* The Demon’s Scepter
* Nidstein the Mage
* The Amulet of Eiradan
* The Shadows of Nithron

Visual Updates

There have been many visual updates including to:

* Vegetation
* Water mills
* Wells
* Benches and chairs
* Various trees
* Human capital
* Market stands
* Clan mines
* Metal statues
* Ovens
* Fireplaces
* Mahirim and human doors
* Palisades
* Signs
* Most wood textures
* Misc. props

Optimizations

There have been many optimizations as usual including:

* Updates to the servers to better handle situations where thousands of players participate in sieges

Area / World-Building

Area / Worldbuilding updates to these areas:

* Bluefield
* Broadherne
* Darkmouth
* Bloodscar
* Qattenhal
* Mar Shral
* Hawkmoore
* Thorndale
* Hithe
* Thangruk

Monster Updates

There have been several updates to monsters along with the following specific changes:

* Demon has been rebalanced
* Devil has been rebalanced
* Baradron has been rebalanced

Monster loot has been updated in these monsters:

* Bonecrew Captain
* Demon
* Hill Giant Clobber
* Icejarl
* Nahdruk Heretic

Monster A.I. has been updated

Crafting Updates

* Scale boots now available to crafters
* Scale gloves now available to crafters
* Greataxe transmutation recipes have been added
* Durability of monster loot items is reduced compared to crafted items

Weapon / Armor Updates

New axes have been added:

* Cleaver
* Gloomblade
* Orthus
* Sagaris
* Scorpio
* Serpent’s Kiss
* Terror
* War Pick

New Great Clubs have been added:

* Einherjar
* Grief
* Oathbreaker
* Outlaw
* Thorgrim
* Thunderpick
* War Maul
* Wild Hunt

Servant of Malaut armor has been rebalanced

Magic Updates

* Armored Casting has been rebalanced
* Frostbite has been rebalanced
* Reagent requirement have been added to Launch
* Reagent requirement have been added to Explosion

Bug Fixes

There have been many bug fixes, including the following noteworthy ones:

* Fix for enchantment to prevent duplicate enchantments on an item.
* Fix to mule skill so that when your skill increases your maximum carrying weight will be updated immediately.
* Fix so that you can’t use magic while mounted.
* Fix so you can’t “fall through” water and walk under water.
* Clan guard towers have been fixed to work on all policy settings.
* Fix to ignore lists, where a player that was ignored would not show up in the ignore list

Additions

* A Trade channel has been added. Use by /trade . This will go out to all of the racial alliance
* Fighters Guild NPCs in Clan Cities now teach spirited archer

Gameplay

* A player will lose his invulnerability shield when running/spawning into a clan city/hamlet, unless he is a member of the clan owning the location.
* When a player leaves or is being kicked/banned from a Clan there will now be a timer of 45 minutes before he actually leaves the clan.
* Minimum time period between changing policies towards a Clan have been changed to 20 minutes.
* Alignment boost for killing or ganking an evil or enemy player has been reduced to 1 point.
* Ship cannon rate of fire has been balanced
* Unsummon / unspawn timers for warhulks and ships have been increased

Party and alignment:

* Parties will now follow standard rules for killing and ganking.
* If you kill/gank a friendly player in a party he/she will get the opportunity to forgive the killer.
* You will never get an alignment boost by killing a party member.

Enemy standing on the HUD:

You will now have the names of the players you target colored according to their standing towards you and your clan.

* Members of the same Clan as yours will have their name displayed in BRIGHT GREEN
* Members of Clans that you are at WAR with will have their name displayed in DARK ORANGE *
* Members of Clans that you are ALLIED with will have their name displayed in GREEN
* Opposing Racial Alliance will have their name displayed in DARK RED
* EVIL Racial Alliance players will have their name displayed in RED
* ROGUE Racial Alliance players will have their name displayed in GREY
* GOOD Racial Alliance players will have their name displayed in BLUE

These rules will follow in the order of: Clan Status, Opposing Racial Alliance, Same Racial Alliance.

Examples:

* An EVIL player of the same race as yours but a member of a clan that you are at WAR with will always show in DARK ORANGE
* A GOOD player of an Opposing Racial Alliance that does not have an affiliation with your Clan will always show in DARK RED
* An EVIL player of the same race as yours but a member of a clan that you are ALLIED with will always show in GREEN
* A GOOD player of the same race as your but a member of your clan will always show as BRIGHT GREEN

Cheaters Banned today
We banned 213 cheaters today. These are the people using 3rd party programs to cheat with. They were not banned for macroing, they were banned for cheating. They were automatically detected and also verified manually in a variety of ways. This number represents 90% of the cheaters in Darkfall right now. The rest have also been detected, and we’re waiting for them to be verified before we ban them as well.

These people were warned repeatedly. They chose to believe that we cannot detect what’s going on in our game. They took the word of the makers of these hacks over the word of the creators and administrators of the game. There are no exceptions. We don’t care if journalists, clan leaders, or our friends are among them. They were cheating in order to gain an unfair advantage over the rest of us. They deserve to be banned.

What comes into play here is something called “selfish punishment” in social science. Cheaters are likely to be some of the most outspoken people against cheating, and more likely to report cheaters. This is as so to maximize the benefit for themselves - taking it away from others. This is also the case here; we recognize some of the people from the boards habitually accusing the company for not doing anything and complaining that cheating is rampant in Darkfall, when in reality it’s not.

If you cheat in the game, you will lie about it too. Whenever we ban a cheater he or she will appeal to the community, denying it on the forums. Then come the excuses to Darkfall support about their little brother, their roommate, or about their account being hacked. So now we expect a couple of hundred people to take to the boards. Threads along these lines will be removed and posters will be banned. Darkfall Support has been instructed to not provide more than the automated ban message. Do not side with these people just because you may have played with them and didn’t happen to observe them cheating. They were cheating beyond a shadow of a doubt, detected and verified in more than one ways. There is no appeals process, our decision is final, and we will not reveal our methods.

We will keep aggressively detecting and banning players that cheat in the game. If you’re not running 3rd party cheats, you have nothing to worry about. Those that don’t take our word for it, will be banned like those banned today.

Thank you,
The Darkfall Team

Update and Patch Notes
Hello,

It’s a pretty large patch, and taking a bit longer than expected. The servers should be up within an hour. Thank you for your patience.

Here are the patchnotes:

• gm_help has been updated to become a request

• gm_report has been added (Use it to report abuse or exploits to all online GMs)

• Alignment has been tweaked. The maximum positive alignment you can have has been reduced to 10.

• Attacking an invulnerable player will no longer skill up the skill you are using

• You will no longer skill up by using the conscript (starter) weapons

• Armor durability loss corrected

• The Teleport Anchor Skill can now be found at more vendors

• Placement of items in bags, banks, and clan vault will now be properly persisted in all cases

• Loot window will now stay in the same place between each looting session

• Supreme Generals can now kick players that are bound to a specific city/hamlet. Access this functionality through the Clan Window.

• The overview of a clan’s challenges is now publicly available to everyone. Access it through the Clan Window. You can browse the clans there to do so.

• Gates have been added to all Clan City entrances. To open or close a gate simply press the use button while aiming at the gate house. Note that you must be at least a Lieutenant to be able to open/close city gates.

• Miscelaneous client bugfixes

• Several sound updates

More quests have been added:

ALFAR FACTIONS

• THE HARN MANDEAN
• The Abandoned Stronghold
• Unwanted Neighbors
• Assistance from Shoal’s Finest
• The Element of Fire
• Ninseri of Espenhal
• A Fair Trade
• More Clues of an Unknown Power
• TEMPLE OF THE GOD KING
• Nobody disobeys Shoal
• Shoal’s Iron Fist
• Not Worthy
• A Mission Completed
• THE RADIANT CIRCLE
• The Demon Hand Legend
• The Windlords of Velmuna
• The Demon’s Hand
• A Much Desired Artifact
• THE SHADOW SALIENT
• Grey Ork Hideout

HUMAN FACTIONS

• KNIGHTS OF MALREGARD
• A Trip to Sanguine
• Into the Twilight Kingdom
• WHITE ORDER
• Help for Silverley
• Assisting the enchanters of Silverley ***The Shadow of Highmoore
• SONS OF RIADA
• Secrets of the Nithron
• Heralds of Reconquest
• Chronicles of the Firstborn
• A Prophecy Come True

MAHIRIM FACTIONS

• THE WOLFMASKS
• The Cursed of Fang Lake
• A Marked Gravestone
• Honoring the Alliance
• THE CIRCLE OF NEITH
• These Mysterious Guardians
• Elusive Akathars
• Dim Stormrunes for Celetia
• THE LONGCLAW
• Proof of Existence
• A much awaited package
• Problems in Wolf Run
• The Centaurs of Wolf Run
• The Centaur Report
• ELDERS OF RED MOON
• Summoned by Red Moon
• The Lost Hero

New Weapons

• Orkish Strongbow
• Mirdain Seeker
• Mahirim Preyfinder
• Dwarven Warbow
• Alfar Deathsinger
• Mercian Composite Bow

Armor

• New Scale armor boots have been added
• New Scale armor gloves have been added

Magic

• Tornado in Air Magic has been fixed/tweaked
• Explosion in Air Magic has been fixed/tweaked
• Heal Other in Greater Magic has been fixed and no longer heals mounts
• Sacrifice in Spell Chanting has been fixed and doesn’t heal mounts anymore
• Lay On Hands in Lesser Magic has been fixed and doesn’t heal mounts anymore

Monsters

• Spellcasting monsters have been re-balanced
• Snow Clan Elder loot has been tweaked

The following skills have been re-ballanced:

• Greatclub Mastery
• Greataxe Mastery
• Greatsword Mastery
• Knife Mastery
• Polearm Mastery
• Sword Mastery
• Axes
• Clubs And Maces
• Greatclubs
• Greatsword Power Attack
• Sword Power Attack

Visual Updates:

• Jungle Vegetation
• Iklit Houses
• Human Houses
• Human NPCs
• Some human castle walls

Area/Worldbuilding updates in the Human area:

• Bloodscar
• Hawkmoore
• Highmore
• Bluefield
• Brockmoore
• Lainstone
• Broadherne
• Greendale
• Cranwyn Bay
• Somerstone
• Wetfang
• Outer Cranwyn Bay
• Bladethorpe
• Quattenhal
• Scarbourne
• Nekaria
• Sandstone
• Taleria
• Hammerdale
• Gulghat

All of the Ice Continent has been updated

Update April 9th
Yesterday there were player disconnects from server errors. We discovered that it was an issue with a router at Telia France which impacted several ISPs including Virgin Media. This caused players in the UK, France and other areas to get disconnected from the server. As far as we know this issue has been fixed.

In 48 hours characters with names made in an effort to confuse GMs and other players, for example adding a string of lower cap L’s and upper case I’s (IlIlIIIl) in their names will start getting their host accounts permanently banned. If you have a character like that, delete him and make a new one with a proper name.

Which brings us to cheating: We hear complaints from some players and some clans that continue seeing cheating everywhere when in fact this isn’t the case. We should know since we log everything. The exploiters we ban always deny they were using 3d party programs; they complain and ask for proof. There are also people who continue using 3d party programs to exploit, thinking that if they’re careful and not observed by GMs that they’ll go undetected. What all these people have in common is that they don’t understand that we log everything. Characters are flagged server-side and investigated in-game. Reports of cheating players are verified server-side. We have a combination of automatic and manual investigation. We use them both to be thorough, but we don’t rely on one or the other. We know someone’s cheating beyond a shadow of a doubt, and if you’ve even done so once, you’re not safe. There’s no such thing as “clever use” when you own all the server logs. We’ll eventually get to you and ban you. If you’re currently using 3d party programs to exploit with, we suggest you uninstall these programs immediately and hope for the best.

We’ve had complaints about random client crashes during sieges which we have addressed to a certain extent and looking at more cases. We will eventually get to the bottom of all these issues. We are getting a lot of reports by players, we are monitoring the forums, and we’re fixing bugs and making improvements to the game every day.

We cannot refund game items under any circumstances, this is Darkfall policy. We are working on making it so that you don’t lose any if we need to bring down the server and you’re still in-game. Refunding for siege losses is also out of the question. We’re working on modifying the mechanics to eliminate this problem. We would rather use our programmers constructively fixing issues like these, than peering through logs to verify who lost what, where and when. We understand your frustration and appreciate your understanding. We’re doing our best here.

Some players have been complaining about lowered performance during massive battles. Now, let’s put things into perspective here: Small skirmishes in Darkfall are what other games call “massive battles”. We recently had approximately 2000 characters involved in battle in the same area. Battles with several hundred characters are the norm and run very smoothly. Of course you’ll get progressive frame rate drops when you’re working your way up to thousands of players in the same scene. We’re seeing a lot more characters in Darkfall battles than you see maximum units in RTS games. One of our first priorities is to continuously optimize this experience. Massive battles in Darkfall will get larger and run smoother and smoother. Now we don’t mind if people keep bitching at us about getting this even better, we’re never satisfied ourselves, so please keep that in mind.

Later today at 5pm GMT we’re opening up the store. The last couple of times we’ve offered a lot more copies than usual. We’re working to keep improving our capacity so we can eventually leave the shop open 24/7.

Tomorrow we patch and we’ll have patch notes right after. Until then,

Thank you,
The Darkfall Team

Patch Notes April 2nd
These are the weekly patch notes. Again this patch has been mostly about fixing bugs and about server optimizations going in. Other than that, some noteworthy additions and improvements include:

·Several client issues have been resolved, a few of these were causing client crashes for some players
·Situations where some players would experience a loss of item attributes have been fixed
·Various world building updates
·Visual update to the city walls of Sanguine
·Shield positioning on Dwarves has been improved
·Fixes to quests
·Stamina cost for all spells have been reduced
·Mana cost for all spells have been reduced
·Achrids have been balanced
·Air elementals have been balanced
·Athain Hump has been balanced
·Gardaroc loot has been balanced
·Ingredients for cooking lobster have been reduced
·Stormblast in Air Magic has been fixed
·Come Hither in Air Magic has been fixed
·Explosion in Fire Magic has been updated
·Fire Shield in Fire Magic has been updated
·Fire Ward in Fire Magic has been updated
·Haste in Fire Magic has been updated
·Rapid Shot in Fire Magic has been updated
·Impetus in Fire Magic has been updated
·Smoke Signal in Fire Magic has been updated
·The correct name of the reviver is now displayed in the revive confirmation dialog.

Thank you,
The Darkfall Team

Next Availability

Quick update March 31st
The shop will be open today again for a limited number of copies. This will happen at 3PM GMT.

Second, having to do with support requests: If you see your support request priority is low, it doesn’t mean that we’ve classified as low, it actually means it was handled immediately. Requests are currently prioritized by order received. New requests have a lower priority than older ones.

Concerning cheating and exploiting: We’re banning some people almost every day but the problem is minimal to say the least. We’ve also been working on addressing the issue at the source as time permits.

Most of the people getting banned are confused by claims they cannot be detected because we have a small team and won’t dedicate resources. Trolling posts on this and other forums and videos on Youtube attempt to create the false impression that cheating is rampant. The logic behind this is: everyone is doing it, and so should you. This couldn’t be further from the truth however.

Most of the people posting about cheating in Darkfall aren’t even playing the game and are doing so to create an impression. The only way to really know what’s happening in the game is to ask a few players you know for a fact are playing how many times they’ve seen people using exploits since we started banning for it.

We also get reports by players in the game about other players exploiting. In most cases the players reported hadn’t been exploiting, in others a lot of people are reporting the same one person, or repeating what others are saying.

The only reason we are addressing this matter is to protect Darkfall players from getting banned by using these programs. We permanently ban all accounts using exploits. It’s sad to have to ban someone who just bought the game, but we don’t warn, inform, hesitate, or explain. We do this to protect the game and the players. The fact is that if you’re using third party programs to exploit, it’s just a matter of time before you’re banned.

Thanks for reading,
The Darkfall Team

Concerning client sales on Monday time has changed to 6PM GMT for the store to open up.

Something billing related: Some people are reporting messages about getting charged again for the Darkfall Client. This is an erroneous message that got triggered while billing requests were being processed and delayed transactions are going through for players who had not been billed properly and could not access the subscription page to get a subscription. If you were actually charged for the Darkfall client recently, it’s because your charge just went through, and you hadn’t been charged properly before. In the unlikely event that a double charge is initiated for whatever reason, the transaction is canceled within 24 hours.

Also about the extra days we gave out, they will be applied to all accounts properly, whether you’re seeing the correct amount of days remaining in account management or not. This will be updated correctly.

About siege mechanics: A few days ago a siege ended without the expected result. We investigated why this happened and discovered a combination of unrelated errors were responsible. Everything associated with this has been corrected so it won’t happen again. We want to thank everyone for their feedback on this incident.

We are investigating reports of client crashes during sieges. These aren’t server related so it’s harder to pinpoint the source of each crash. If you experience a client crash during a siege, please send us an error report. In order to do this, go to where your Darkfall folder is located and run SFErrorReport.exe (example: Program Files > Darkfall> SFErrorReport.exe.). Follow the simple instructions and send the error report. It’s important that you do this before you re-enter the game after the crash.

This is a significant patch today as you can see by the patch notes below and the size of the update. There are a whole lot more fixes in than listed, mostly items which corrected existing bugs. We already have a lot more enhancements in production for the subsequent patches. Our entire team is working continuously as always to improve the game.

* Weapon visuals have been enhanced
* Environmental lighting have been enhanced
* Visual updates to Mahirim structures
* Visual updates to Ork structures
* Visual updates to Human structures
* Visual updates to Mirdain structures
* Visual updates to Alfar structures
* Visual updates to Dwarf structures
* Visual updates to misc. props in Agon
* A second entrance to the human capital has been added
* Visual update to Human Clan Keep Tier 3
* Human and Ork roads and city signs have been updated
* Visual update to Ork ruins
* Visual update to Dwarf ruins
* Visual update to misc. trees
* Visual update to Mirdain crystal lake castle
* Visual update to human female non armor
* Visual update to vegetation
* Coastlines in Agon have been updated
* Ork Male animations have been updated
* Ork Female animations have been updated
* Human Male animations have been updated
* Human Female animated have been updated
* Mirdain Male animations have been updated
* Mirdain Female animations have been updated
* Mahirim Male animations have been updated
* Mahirim Female animations have been updated
* Dwarf Male animations have been updated
* Dwarf Female animations have been updated
* Alfar Male animations have been updated
* Alfar Female animations have been updated
* Snowclan Warrior loot updated
* Sprint skill now gives a minor Dexterity boost
* Flames of Vengeance in Arcane Magic have been tweaked
* Hasten Spells in Arcane Magic has been tweaked
* Holy Shield in Arcane Magic has been tweaked
* Holy Ward in Arcane Magic has been tweaked
* Holy Weakness in Arcane Magic has been tweaked
* Lend Mana in Arcane Magic has been tweaked
* Mystic Shield in Arcane Magic has been tweaked
* Mystic Ward in Arcane Magic has been tweaked
* Reflect Spell in Arcane Magic has been tweaked
* Sacred Missile in Arcane Magic has been tweaked
* Spell Immunity in Arcane Magic has been tweaked
* Virtuous Wrath in Arcane Magic has been tweaked
* Bludgeoning Weakness in Necromancy has been tweaked
* Cursed Bolt in Necromancy has been tweaked
* Death Fog in Necromancy has been tweaked
* Desecration in Necromancy has been tweaked
* Evil Eye in Necromancy has been tweaked
* Eye Rot in Necromancy has been tweaked
* Infernal Shield in Necromancy has been tweaked
* Infernal Ward in Necromancy hasbeen tweaked
* Mental Weakness in Necromancy has been tweaked
* Piercing Weakness in Necromancy has been tweaked
* Slashing Weakness in Necromancy has been tweaked
* Undeath in Necromancy has been tweaked
* Unholy Caress in Necromancy has been tweaked
* Unholy Flames in Necromancy has been tweaked
* Vampiric Touch in Necromancy has been tweaked
* Crafting costs for Cloth Armor have been lowered
* Crafting costs for Padded Armor have been lowered
* Crafting costs for Studded Armor have been lowered
* Crafting costs for Bone Armor have been lowered
* Leather Armor can now be crafted at an Anvil
* Infernal Armor can now be crafted at an Anvil
* Crafting cost for non-mastery weapons have been lowered
* Slavemasters have been tweaked
* Legbreakers have been tweaked
* Mercian Battlehammers have been added
* Crafting ingredients for ships have been tweaked
* New quests have been added to all races starting towns
* New PvP quests have been added to all capital cities
* Some corrections to quest descriptions have been made
* Some quest rewards have been tweaked
* A confirmation dialog on revive has been added
* Some misplaced clan city vendors have been fixed
* Quest window at vendors have been enhanced
* Updates to the clan window
* Players logging out in the middle of combat exploits have been fixed
* Fix for situation where sometimes a client would not display the attributes of an item
* Moving the window around will no longer block Darkfall
* Sprint exploits have been fixed
* Mount running without stamina loss has been fixed
* Fix for missing icons on the world- and mini map
* AI tweaks
* Updates to the worldbuilding

Thank you,

The Darkfall Team

Updated an error in the patchnotes which mentioned alfar animations twice and didn’t mention mahirim animation which were also tweaked for this patch