Level 8 Vulns - Yes, You DO Get Them!

According to a dev post on Turbine's forums, we will be getting level 8 vulns to go with those shiny level 8 spells. PKs take heart!

No word yet on whether this just means the creatures will vuln you with level 8s while you stick with level 7s ;).

Post-Move Known Bugs

It looks like some interesting issues have been cropping up as a result of the server move, which certainly make for some interesting gameplay.

As of now, you can actually go white on Darktide! If you see any other amusing issues, let us know. For now though, we have a discussion topic. Go!

Issue 103 is up!

As expected, this week had very little activity on the forums, as the team prepared for the upcoming server move, and upgrades. However, Severlin did confirm that the shard drop rates are still not where they should be, and will again be increased next patch, and NoWorries posted a fix to one of the Lord's quest riddle bugs. Additionally, Frelorn detailed the server upgrades and move.

Enjoy!

Results: Top Ten Excuses for Dying in PK

The results of this contest are in! Congratulations to Decayed_HG, with the following winning entry:

My cat hit my standby

You can view all the results in our Top 10 section.

Thanks to all who entered, and we hope you'll enter again.

Decayed_HG, you have seven days to claim your prize.

Please note that for this contest, we gave bonus points for lame excuses noone would believe anyway (but are probably true!) and totally bizarre reasons that noone would believe (and probably aren't).

Having Trouble with the Riddle Quest?

According to Turbine, there is a known bug with the riddle where you're asked the following question:

Statue tells you, "In the Dark Season, 312 spawn were set forth into the pools to be blessed by the Whispering One.
During the Dark Season when the spawns were set forth, 3 spawn out of every 8 spawn that were set into the pools were weak and destroyed by their siblings.
Of those strong spawn that survived, for every 5 spawn that remained in the pools, the Whispering One demanded 3 be sacrificed to his glory."
Statue tells you, "Know how many spawn survived and you will know where the staff must be placed."

Official response from NoWorries follows:

If you get this riddle go over to where the other statue spawns and use the hollow numbered 150.

It will reference the correct hollow in the upcoming patch.

Weekly Contest: Top 10 Weird New Rulesets

First of all, it might help to explain what this is. Each week, we will create a topic on the AC General Board (and post a link here on AC Vault) asking for the top 10 ... something. We'll pick the top ten winners, and the #1 prize winner will get a two week VIP or a permanent title. Up to you which, but you don't get both.

This week, we're looking for the Top 10 Weird New Rulesets.

The person chosen for submitting the #1 response, will be awarded with either a two-week VIP or a permanent title. Rewards are subject to good board history.

You can find out more by visiting the entry in our Top 10 section.

Good Luck!

Downtime: 10/13/08 4am EDT - 10/14/08 6pm EDT

Following the past weekend's hardware test, Frelorn has made the following announcement:

The time has come for us to upgrade our game servers. After a successful test weekend we are ready for the game worlds to get thier new hardware. So on Monday, October 13th at 4am EDT all the worlds will come down. They will remain down until Tuesday, October 14th at 6pm EDT.

Why will they be down that long you ask? We along with upgrading the hardware, we will also be bringing the game servers closer to us. Currently the game servers are located in Washington state, where they have been since the game launched. As you can imagine, this can be problematic if anything goes wrong or if we need to do some work fast. So we have decided to move the servers closer to us here in Massachusetts. This means we will have to copy all of the data from each world once it comes down and then transfer it the new hardware.

This will be a time consuming process, but the end result will be the ability for us to provide better service to our players. Our hope of course is to have things back up and running much sooner than the window we have given ourselves, but as everyone knows, things can go wrong. So we have given ourselves some extra time just in case.

We thank you all for your patience while we go through this transition.
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations

Issue 102 is up!

This week, Frelorn listed the items that were changed in the hotfix that went into the game on Tuesday, NoWorries and Severlin addressed the continued problems with some of the Society quests and the Pristine Mana Shard drop rate, and Frelorn went into detail about information related to the test server, Shadowfell, which went live late Friday night.

Enjoy!

Help Wanted!

Asheron's Call Vault wants you! With the introduction of Societies, AC Vault has a need for database editors to assist in updating our Armour (I speak UK English, so sue me!), Weapons, and Quests Databases. You can choose to either take on one, two, or all three of the databases as your area.

The ideal "Database Editor" would be able to spare a couple of hours a week adding and updating entries into their designated database, through Vault Network's VNAP interface. They should also be able to work well in teams, and must be actively playing Asheron's Call (preferably with an active interest in the society content).

As a reward, you will receive VIP access on the Vault Network forums, a custom title of your choice, and the potential to receive awesome bonus stuff.

If you're interested, contact me using the e-mail form on AC Vault.

Shadowfell Tips

The good folks over at the AC wiki have put up a page with tips on how to go about playing around on Shadowfell, the new test server. Included is information about how to use the XP vendors, spell learning NPCs, and augments.

So get on down to Hebian-To ingame, and have a blast! Some live events have already gone down, with more hopefully to come.

Scheduled Outage - October 6th 07:00 - 11:00

We've just heard that all Turbine services (AC, LotRO, DDO, the Account Management site, and associated forums) will be down for maintenance on the 6th October from 7 to 11 AM Eastern time according to a post on Turbine's forums.

October 2008 Desktop Calendar

This month's Desktop Calendar is now available! Available in three resolutions, it should fit on virtually every type of screen except dual screens.

You can go right ahead and download them now.

For those of you with two screens, AC Vault has a solution for you! To use AC Vault's desktop calendars with dual screens, you can use our DualPaper utility to merge your own wallpaper, allowing you to put the AC Vault calendar on one screen, and whatever you want on the other.

Have fun!

AC Vault / Turbine Dev Chat Log

Thanks to those who submitted questions for the developers, and those who chose to attend. The chat went well (apart from a couple of technical hiccups) and we hope to be able to run another one shortly.

For those of you who missed it, a preliminary log of the chat is posted on the dev chat page.

Stay tuned for more of this sort of thing in future, and we're sorry we weren't able to answer more questions in the allocated time.

Shadowfell is coming!

On Friday, October 3rd around 5pm EDT, we will be opening Shadowfell. This will be our first live test of our new hardware that will be used on all worlds. This test server will be a copy of the Frostfell database, but will be open to all players from all worlds.

For this test world we are going to need your help. We want to get as many players as possible on this world as we can to test the limits of this new hardware. In order to accommodate players from other worlds, we will be placing the level up NPC's that were used in the Throne of Destiny testing, in various towns throughout the world. This will allow everyone to level up quickly to participate in all live world events for the weekend.

During this weekend, we will be running several live events. Various members of the team will be in the world throughout the weekend having lots of fun and wreaking havoc to test the limits of the new hardware.

On Friday when this new world is open, it will appear on the standard launcher along with the other live worlds. Just login to this world as you would any other. It's as easy as that!

We had to pick one world database to copy and Frostfell won the random drawing we had this time. So players on Frostfell will find a recent version of their characters available to them, while other players will need to create new characters. The good news is that along with the level up token we will be offering to players, there will also be armor and weapons available as well.

And of course we will be throwing some extra goodies out here and there throughout the weekend. I know that I plan on being on as much as possible and having some fun. We do hope to see you all there!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations

Issue 101 is up!

This week, most of the topics related to September's patch, and the changes or additions that were made this month. One of the issues was an unintentional change to the new Acolyte Sclavus, and Severlin confirmed that the updated shield/weapon graphics unintentionally gave these monsters a pretty big buff, which should be fixed in the next update.

Severlin also is looking into the drop rate of Pristine Mana Shards, so if you have any input, please feel free to go post it on the forums.

Enjoy!

Results: Top Ten Real Life Things You'd Like to do in Dereth

The results of this contest are in! Congratulations to Limbo_hg, with the following winning entry:

Put Asheron in a old folks home

You can view all the results in our Top 10 section.

Thanks to all who entered, and we hope you'll enter again.

Limbo_hg, you have seven days to claim your prize.

Also, Otaka_Kei, you have won second place - contact us to claim your permanent title.

Scheduled Outage - September 30th 07:00 - 14:00

We've just received word that the game will be down on the 30th for an update. No word on what this "update" contains.

---

The Asheron's Call Game Servers will be brought down on Tuesday, September 30th from 7:00 AM - 2:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT) for an update to the game. Thanks for your patience, and we'll see you back in the game soon!

---

Weekly Contest: Top 10 Excuses For Dying in PK

First of all, it might help to explain what this is. Each week, we will create a topic on the AC General Board (and post a link here on AC Vault) asking for the top 10 ... something. We'll pick the top ten winners, and the #1 prize winner will get a two week VIP or a permanent title. Up to you which, but you don't get both.

This week, we're looking for the Top 10 Excuses For Dying in PK.

The person chosen for submitting the #1 response, will be awarded with either a two-week VIP or a permanent title. Rewards are subject to good board history.

You can find out more by visiting the entry in our Top 10 section.

Good Luck!

Patch Tree Updates

The patch tree for the September event has been updated with the release notes and rollout fiction, as well as some of the new content. Below is an extract from the Patch Tree change log:

[2008-09-23 07:45]Updated: "Release Notes" by Staff
[2008-09-23 09:37] Updated: "Rollout Fiction" by Staff
[2008-09-23 10:56] Updated: "Town Crier Sayings" by Staff
[2008-09-23 10:56] Updated: "Viamontian Town Crier Sayings" by Staff
[2008-09-23 10:57] Updated: "Society NPCs" by Staff
[2008-09-23 12:52] New: "Eye of T'thunn" by Staff
[2008-09-23 13:04] New: "Off To The (Carenzi) Races!" by Staff
[2008-09-23 13:06] New: "Shards of Mana" by Staff
[2008-09-23 13:07] Updated: "Shards of Mana" by Staff
[2008-09-23 13:24] New: "Carenzi Racer Bookie" by Staff
[2008-09-23 13:28] New: "Tamara du Cinghalle" by Staff
[2008-09-23 13:29] New: "Shard of Mana" by Staff
[2008-09-23 13:30] New: "Plucked Eye of T'thuun" by Staff
[2008-09-23 13:31] New: "Grand Casino Key" by Staff
[2008-09-23 13:32] New: "Grand Casino Chests" by Staff
[2008-09-23 13:33] New: "Carenzi Racer" by Staff
[2008-09-23 13:37] New: "Blighted Wand" by Staff
[2008-09-23 13:38] New: "Blighted Dagger" by Staff
[2008-09-23 13:38] New: "Blighted Crossbow" by Staff
[2008-09-23 13:39] New: "Blighted Crossbow Coin" by Staff
[2008-09-23 14:28] Updated: "Ulgrim's Sayings" by Staff
[2008-09-23 14:29] Updated: "Ulgrim's Sayings" by Staff
[2008-09-23 14:35] New: "Weeding the Deru Tree" by TalentScam

I think you'll all join me in saying: "Woot. Casino Updates!"

Also, Turbine's event page for September is up, with the Release Notes and Fiction.

Updated: AC Vault / Turbine Dev Chat, 30th September 7PM EST

Due to scheduling conflicts, Turbine have asked for the dev chat to be moved to Tuesday 30th September (same time, same place). This ensures that as many devs as possible are able to attend.

Details of how you can follow the chat are posted on the dev chat page.

We apologise for the inconvenience.