GNSmud

Does the new loading code work for non-rares? several non-rares are currently maxed (owl feather belt mostly)

Also, what's up with the brown bear fur in unicorn's run? Never see it, never see anyone wear it (everyone just wears the lion skin now).

Two separate issues here, I will deal with the belt first.
Some terminology (Drongo and I argued over this for a while, I am using terms I was told back in the 90's).

Limited: This means the item has a limited number of items that can exist. Shows in identify spell.
Soft max: This means the item rent is less than 5000, code checks players online only. If less than limit item loads, if more than limit max/1000 chance to load.
Hard max: This means item has more than 5000 rent, code checks all players, including rented. Then same load mechanics.

In this situation the belt (soft limit of 3) has been maxed for a long time. Mostly by newbies or alts going linkdead instead of renting.
I do a forcerent from time to time, and the code does as well though not often. If the newbie fails rent due to rares these items go into storage to be redistributed back into the game.

I am going to call this working as intended for now. We are still looking at item maxes, load rates and what to do about it in the long term, but at the moment it is a case of having to build the tools to build the tools to let us look at it overall.
Perhaps ask people to be mindful of limits when leaving alts around the place.

Brown Bear Fur.
Sometime during the 2000's Gandalf and Connie went through and removed a lot of items from the game.
Sometimes this was done by changing the zone load files (Heiraktazin) and was traceable, other methods not so much.
Luna and Kahil have done a great job of finding a lot of these items and allowing us to restore them, but have to rely on memory as to whats missing.
Where we were aware of the removal of items, or alteration we would look at it and see if it could be returned, and balance it if appropriate.
We have caught a lot, and fixed a lot, but some are really hard to spot.
In this case the bear fur was set to a max of zero, which was really hard to spot.
I have changed this to 4.

If you find any others, let us know and we can look for them.

Thanks for the explanation, we got some owl belts I would say make the max on the brown bear fur higher, maybe 8, but it's the BiS non-rare 'newbie' cloak so maybe it should be that low. Appreciate all the work.

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Luna and Kahil have done a great job of finding a lot of these items and allowing us to restore them, but have to rely on memory as to whats missing.
Where we were aware of the removal of items, or alteration we would look at it and see if it could be returned, and balance it if appropriate.

Like the blue lens and others, the earring of perception also got modified a couple of years back.
You might consider restoring to its original stats too.
It used to be sense life/spy, now it's only sense life.
I'm not sure if it was rare back then, or is rare even now.

Lennya wrote:Like the blue lens and others, the earring of perception also got modified a couple of years back.
You might consider restoring to its original stats too.
It used to be sense life/spy, now it's only sense life.
I'm not sure if it was rare back then, or is rare even now.

I think the red silk mask is sense life/spy

The files I have (1994, 1998, 2002, 2014+) show no changes to the earring of perception.
It is of course not in the 1994 versions, but added between then and 1998.
I will bump this to Luna to review.

We fixed the blue lens back to: Invis/Spy for blacktower.
Earring of perception is a weird item that loads in a skull.
It is not rare and was Sense Life/Spy 500 rent. It was !mage/cleric and druid.
It was pretty Overpowered for a no kill item.
I can make it:

Sense Life/Spy (rare)
Newbie-Medium !Warrior/Thief/Paladin

Sense Life/Spy (rare)
!Psi/Mage/Cleric only

It needs to be made and put on a monster in another zone correctly.
Any thoughts? I would rather just leave it be than fix it honestly. Have someone build it.

I'd prefer the earring be left as is. Clerics don't need a sense life item. Fighters, thieves, and monks need it badly. So it's nice to have a non-rare switchable sense-life item around.

As for it loading in/on a skull, I just took it to mean the owner of the skull died while wearing the earring.

@Zax a most perceptive observation

I always liked the fact that is was an easy-to-obtain spy item, even at level 1. Just required some walking. A goto item after a pwipe.
Eversince it got nerfed I found no use for it anymore.

Personally I'd lean towards the rare, level-capped idea, make it useable up until level 30. After that, you should be able to sort yourself out with other items/potions. Or maybe someone could build one that's not level-capped but harder to obtain.

Here's another for yous:
I've forgotten its name but there's this eyewear (in a chest? can't check, at work) in City of Angels that once had same stats as the crystal lens, but maybe with a bit of rent. I think it got nerfed to only true sight with a bit of rent (while it's harder to obtain, I might add).

@Luna I'm all happy about the blue lens, good work!

This zone is a real problem:

Alot of items are severely under-powered for the amount of things you have to kill.

Things I found that were silly so far:

Final Bosses have a +1 dam ring (max 5)
Final Chest behind bosses have:
Wizard Eye staff (mage only RARE!)
4d4 Scythe +3 +3 (adept only)

Object 'scythe ethereal darkness', Item type: WEAPON
Item is: METAL INVISIBLE MAGIC NODROP ANTI-GOOD ANTI-BARBARIAN ANTI-RANGER ANTI-
PSIONIST ANTI-MONK ANTI-DRUID
Worn on: TAKE WIELD
Scythe of Ethereal Darkness seems only willing to serve Adepts.
Weight: 20, Value: 5000, Rent cost: 5000 [RARE] [LIMITED]
Item is a: scythe. Damage Dice is '4D4'
Can affect you as:
Affects : HIT-N-DAM By 3

Item is: GLOW METAL INVISIBLE MAGIC BLESS ANTI-MAGE ONLY-CLASS
Worn on: TAKE HOLD
A Mage's Staff seems only willing to serve Experts to Adepts.
Weight: 1, Value: 0, Rent cost: 2000 [RARE] [LIMITED]
Has 10 charges, with 10 charges left.
Level 35 spell of:
wizardeye


I remember they went through the zone because there was a AMS item that was causing problems.

I have changed the glasses back to invis/TS.
It is still brittle, but I have labeled them as no max.



I really would change a ton of things about this zone, but once you change one thing...you gotta change everything!