Patch 2.35.4 - Scheduled to release October 16th 2014

[Gwyn]

This build should be visiting the Seven Realms early tomorrow morning.

We are calling this build the "Player Request" Build. Almost all of these changes come directly from player requests we have received. Additionally, this build features the Halloween Event!

Improvements

• Halloween!
  • Spooky town is open for business, and all of the ghosts and ghouls are up to no good!
    
  • Spooky town is now a level scaled event. All players of all levels are welcome.
    
  • There are 3 special event outfits that can be earned in Spooky Town. You must figure out how and where to get such treasures. Mipou in Ardent City will gladly trade a full costume set for a gnogmenting pack if you wish to keep the outfit forever!
• Village Politics!
  • In every village, the Mayor is now elected by the village's citizens.
    • All villagers can now access the Village Ballot from the village window in the Menu, allowing them to pick a mayoral candidate to vote for. They can change their vote or choose to abstain at any time.
      
    • Also, any villager can run for Mayor, and will appear on the Ballot for other players to vote for.
      
    • On the first of each month, votes are tallied, and the candidate with the highest number of votes becomes the Mayor. In case of ties, the most senior candidate is chosen.
      
    • After the election, the candidates and votes are saved. You do not need to rerun for Mayor or vote again, they will persist until you change them.
  • The Mayor now has the power to assign and revoke ranks to the individual citizens from the Village Roster.
    • Each rank has certain privileges attached:
      • Naming Rights: permission to rename the village and change the village slogan.
        
      • Common Vault Access: access to the normal village vaults. (However, all villagers can always access the very first village vault.)
        
      • Reserved Vault Access: access to certain special village vaults marked by the Mayor.
    • The Mayor can also rename the ranks.
  • If the Mayor resigns or cannot remain Mayor for any reason, an emergency election is called for three days later, and King Leo immediately selects a Mayor pro-tempore for the mean time.
• The village roster has been improved, allowing players to whisper to or friend fellow villagers.
  
• There is now a village project to increase the size of the Village Vault. It can be upgraded ten times, expanding its size by up to 6x!
  
• Added an event outfit trader to Ardent City. Players can take their newly aquired outfits from events (example: Desert Nomad's Orchid Attire) and can trade the entire set in for a gnogment pack to use forever. You must have all four pieces, and each piece must be unspoiled (it cannot be gnogmented to another item)! The trader will remain in Ardent City always, so while the event may close, players with the correct items can make the trade at any time.
  
• Auction House Changes: We have made some changes to help the Auction House be a more powerful tool for players
  • When a player starts an auction, the item no longer remains locked in their inventory. Instead the item is taken from the player and no longer clogs up space
    
  • If the auction succeeds, the buyer receives the item, if the auction fails, the seller will receive the item back in the mail.
    
  • Auction fees have changed. There is now a 2% listing deposit. This gold is taken from the player when the auction is started. If the auction is a success, the deposit is returned. If the auction fails, the gold is taken as a fee.
    
  • There is a 3% sales fee for using the auction house as well, if the auction is a success, 3% of the sale price is taken from the player out of the earnings. If the auction is a failure, there is no sales fee.
    
  • All gold earned from auctions, or returned bids, will now be deposited to the players mailbox along with a letter describing the details of the transaction.
    
  • We hope these changes encourage players to sell and utilize the auction house more aggressively.
• Gold Squish
  • We are 'squishing' player gold into a new currency system. Players will now have a mixture of gold, silver, and copper.
    • 100 Copper = 1 Silver
      
    • 100 Silver = 1 Gold
  • All gold costs and player gold will remain exactly the same, but will be converted to this new system
    
  • With the gold numbers being smaller, we can more clearly display gold on the user interface, and players will be able to grasp and understand gold numbers more effectively.
  • Additionally, we feel this system is more flavorful and immersive for our world.
    
  • It is important to note: No player gold or costs are changing! This is purely in how the gold is displayed! A player may think they have lost gold, but it will simply be converted. Example: If a player has 1,500,352 gold before this patch, after the new system they will have 150 gold, 3 silver, and 52 copper.
• We added a small toggle button next to the hat slot in the outfit GUI. Toggling this button will change whether or not your avatar appears to be wearing their hat. This is so players can receive all of the benefits of a hat, but do not have to visually have one, and can instead have their face and hair revealed.
  
• Added a Realm Traverser (free travel) to Lake Kiwa
  
• Gardening Improvements
  • Watering your crops now grants bonus XP that scales based on the amount of XP the crop grants (was a static 10xp before)
    
  • Planting your crops now grants bonus XP that scales with level (was a static 10xp before)
    
  • Added a special effect and sound when a player gets an abundant harvest. It also floats a message up stating the bonus received
    
  • Removed the crop 'Wheat' that had no in game purpose and was buggy
    
  • The price of high level exotic seeds (not flowers, herbs, or regular seeds) has gone up slightly
    
  • Fixed a bug with the duration on certain high level crops:
    • Banshee's Kurrat: Is now correctly a 22 hour crop
      
    • Hasty Banshee's Kurrat: Is now correctly a 2 hour crop
      
    • Belldrop: Is now correctly a 9 hour crop
      
    • Hasty Belldrop: Is now correctly a 20 min crop
  • Fixed some bugs with icons and 3d imagery of certain flowers:
    • Marigolds, Pansies, Golden Eye, Mums, and Amber Roses.
      
    • The above list includes regular, magic, and hasty variants.
• Character Create tweaks
  • The game now starts in fullscreen mode by default.
    
  • Adjusted the default head, hair, and face options to be the nicer ones.
    
  • Hide some of the top-bar buttons that aren't important while in character create.
• Level 30-40 Content
  • Several players have commented that this level range is difficulty to level in and is a point of frustration for a lot of players.
    
  • To help add more content, we added over 100 bounties to zones in this level range.
    
  • Additionally, the following zones had a visual update, making them look cleaner and more magical
    • Gloomspar's Umbrage
      
    • Hungry Troll Cave
      
    • Tavern Basement
      
    • Old Verda
      
    • Wizard School - Dorm
      
    • Rackabone's Peak
      
    • Rackabone's Cave
      
    • Hogfish Mine
      
    • Cook Cavern
      
    • Wizard School - Lab
      
    • Crystal Quarry
      
    • Spider City
      
    • Minotaur Lairs
  • Cleaned up some of the high level sheep particle emitters
    
  • Beyurru
    • Beyurru now only summons a pounder once every 10 seconds instead of 8
      
    • Beyurru only summons 2 pounders to guard the bridge instead of 3
      
    • Beyurru's pounders should be less inclined to go Aegis!
• We worked on the spice cost of breakfasts. Slightly increasing the cost at lower levels, and greatly reducing the cost at higher levels.
  
• Improved the crafting jewelry proficiency Frederich's Guile. This proficiency wasn't scaling well, we have boosted it across the board.
  
• Bounty bosses no longer drop lucky gems since each player is given a gold reward already for completing the bounty
  
• We tweaked some of the medallion key prices. The goal with these changes is for lower level zones to be more open to players as they play through. As level cap is continually raised and more content added, the lower medallion zones will continue to be lowered in price.
  • In Traven, all of the prices were reduced by a substantial amount. Lower level zones (Rega, Vega, etc.) were lowered more, higher level zones (Future Ardent) were lowered less.
    
  • The price to trade Traven medallions up for one another was reduced to a 3:1 price (used to be 5:1). Pyrron trade values remain the same.
    
  • Pyrron 1 dungeons were lowered in price by a small amount. Pyrron 2 dungeons were not touched.
    
  • Shadow Fated gear had its medallion price reduced, additionally, a version of shadow fated outfits can now be purchased with gold from a new vendor standing next to the old one.
• We boosted the amount of mail per day a player can mail to 25
  
• We changed how missing in gathering works:
  • Before, if you were lower gathering skill than the node, you had between a 1% and 50% chance for a success. If you were at level or greater, you had between an 83% and 95% chance for a success.
    
  • Now, if you are below the level of the node, you have between a 1% and 90% chance, depending on how close in level you are. If you are at level or greater you will never miss (i.e. "Find Nothing.")
• We worked a lot on encouraging team play, regardless of level difference
  • Bounty Scaling
    • Before, a person would get 4x for a challenging bounty, 2x for a moderate bounty, and 1x for a easy bounty.
      
    • We have changed this by merging challenging and moderate together in one group with a 4x ratio. All easy bounties will now be a 2x ratio. We hope this gives higher level players a slightly better incentive to drop into lower level zones to help a friend and run with a party.
  • The combat XP gained from killing a Zingara is no longer penalized if you are higher level than the Zingara. Happy hunting.
    
  • Party XP: We changed how party XP works for normal mobs
    • Before, there was a bunch of fancy math that gave higher or lower level players certain bonuses. After this was calculated, it divided the base amount of experience between party members based on these percentages, and the level of the highest player.
      
    • After these changes, if you are in a party, you get 50% reduced XP period. Regardless of party size. This number is then scaled to the player individually, not to the party as a whole.
    • This means in general, players in party will be getting a lot more experience than before.
      
    • This is a bit complicated, so I will explain with an example:
      
    • Lets say a level 20 enemy would give 200 experience to a level 30 player. If the player killed the enemy by themselves, they would get 200 experience. This has not changed.
      
    • If they were in a group with a level 75 player, then before these changes the level 30 player would get just a smidgen of XP. If there were a lot of people in the group, then this smidgen would get reduced even further.
      
    • Now instead, that level 30 player gets 50% reduced XP, so 100xp. This won't change if the party is 2,3,4,5 or 6 players, they will always get their same 100xp.
      
    • The higher level players will still receive less because of the the level difference between themselves and the enemy, but this no longer penalizes the low level player.
  • Earn free crowns! You can now complete surveys and help research projects in exchange for free crowns in Villagers and Heroes. You can find it in the item shop by clicking the "Earn More Crowns" button. *However, per our contract with Steam, Steam players will be unable to participate in these surveys.
    
  • When you have Lucky Cards available to use, a Lucky Cards icon is now shown near the minimap.
  
  
  Bug Fixes
  • Fixed a bug causing friends' hair in the Friends window to sometimes be shale-colored.
    
  • Fixed: Kumari wouldn't let you turn in her quest if you killed scratcher yesterday
    
  • Fixed a float plant in traven: -401 290 118
    
  • Kumari: Capitalized R in “Rat catcher” the first time she uses the phrase. Lowercase the second time.
    
  • Linolia: various grammatical errors were fixed with her dialog.
    
  • Guard Tutall asks for 20 small fangs, but the quest can be completed with only 10.
    
  • Centurion Grigor should say “ore” instead of “rock.”
    
  • Fixed an issues that was causing Shadow Fated zones to frequently crash

[MFHOOD]

Honestly, I like this game. A lot. And seeing your dedication to it makes me even happier. Great work guys :)

[TravelEcho]

I have to say that this update of Villagers and Heroes is hands down the best I have seen in *any* MMO(and I've played most of them--often quitting in exasperation as the devs add stuff I don't want and remove stuff I do want) Except for the "Village Politics" which just doesn't interest me, everything else seems to be an improvement designed to keep me playing for a very long time. Thank you, Devs!

[Gwyn]

Originally posted by jande:

I have to say that this update of Villagers and Heroes is hands down the best I have seen in *any* MMO(and I've played most of them--often quitting in exasperation as the devs add stuff I don't want and remove stuff I do want) Except for the "Village Politics" which just doesn't interest me, everything else seems to be an improvement designed to keep me playing for a very long time. Thank you, Devs!

Thank you so much for the response! If you don't mind, can you tell us specifically what you like about ti?

[Smithy]

Hey gwyn, if you see this just wanted to say there is still a server issue, when i try to load the game it says that i can not connect to the master server, i have between four and five bars of connection, ive tried re-downloading the game but it still says the same thing

[Gwyn]

Originally posted by chris.teesside:

Hey gwyn, if you see this just wanted to say there is still a server issue, when i try to load the game it says that i can not connect to the master server, i have between four and five bars of connection, ive tried re-downloading the game but it still says the same thing

Right click on the game in your steam library, go to properties. I believe it's the third tab, but there's a Verify Game Cache (or something like that). Do that, restart steam, try to play.

Please let me know if this does not work.

[Smithy]

Nope, still says cant connect to the master server, i tried twice.

[Gwyn]

Originally posted by chris.teesside:

Nope, still says cant connect to the master server, i tried twice.

I know this sounds silly: is it possible that a firewall is blocking you? Sometimes updates to a firewall can change the settings.

[Smithy]

it shouldnt be, i can access any other game just fine

[Smithy]

yeah firewall has VaH allowed so that isnt the problem

[Gwyn]

Alright, thanks! So here's what they want you to try now: open the game, open settings, then click options, and scroll to the bottom, there should be a "Submit Bug Report" button. You shouldn't have to connect to the server to do this.

[Smithy]

i cant do that, it tells me i cant connect to the master server before any menu's pop up, the only buttons on the screen at this time are ok(on the server error) and the maximise/ minimise button in the top right which does nothing

[Gwyn]

When you click okay, what shows up?

[Smithy]

I click ok then the error message just dissapears and immediately pops up again

[Gwyn]

okay, go here: https://forum.villagersandheroes.com/showthread.php?9325-How-To-Retrieve-Console-and-Client-Txt-Logs&highlight=retrieve+console+logs

Get the console logs and the client.tx, then email them to: [e-mail]

[Smithy]

ok