Progress update

Howdy community!
The work on the spiritism patch is still going strong.
Our 8th patch just hit the test server and by now all the code for the spells is finished and the main work we are doing at the moment is on polishing and balancing.
The balancing is quite the task since we want spiritists to have a reasonable way of making money from the ether while still having players’ skill and group coordination be the determining factor in larger fights.

We also need to try to make it so that people who put skillpoints into the spiritism skills and the accompanying multiverse skills get a good payback for their investment.
Still we want everyone to be able to make some kind of money from the ether to avoid spending so much time on building something that a very small part of the community will ever touch.

Our current approach to this is to limit the amount of spirits you will lose when entering the ether with a spiritbox.
A fully skilled spiritist will not lose any spirits while a lower-level will lose some percentage of the spirits he or she has in a spiritbox.

The new etherworld

The mood and look of the etherworld have changed quite a bit.
As I have talked about before you now move much quicker in the etherworld, jump higher and have lower gravity.
But the biggest change is really how you as a player and other spirits look.
You are no longer a hollow version of a hooded figure, you are now a combination of your Akh and what’s left of your Khat bound together in the ether by your Kau.
Kau is now shown as energy streams emitting from you Akh. These energy beams are used to drag your Akh around the world and also indicates to other players how much Kau you have left before you can be pulled out from the ether and expelled.

Here’s a screenshot of what you now look like while in the ether. (Click for larger version)

New spell effects

With new spells come new spell-effects.
Here are a couple of examples (still work in progress) of how the new effects look. All spiritist spells can be cast both in the ether and in the world of the living.
Some spells even functions slightly differently depending on which realm you are in.

Ether Portal
Open a portal from the etherworld to the world of the living, or from the world of the living to the etherworld.

Dispel Portal
Dispel all portals in an area around the target.

Expel Spirit
Modify the target’s Kau attack so that it can be used to banish spirits

Transcendental Awareness
Target will be able to communicate with the dead beyond the ether and sense the living while in the ether.

Transcendental Seance
Summon restless spirits in the etherworld.

Other changes in the patch

Mainly our work is going into the new etherworld but as usual we will include a large amount of bug fixes and balance changes in the patch.
A lot of the issues with the magic combat has been resolved, targeting has been cleaned up and several improvements to self-casting has been implemented.
Several issues with items going to the wrong slot have been sorted out and all loot will now feature one extra row for items to avoid the annoying stacking of items that sometimes occurred.
There’s been changes to looting from blue loot too, as items looted from a blue loot-bag will now be marked as stolen.
We also fixed several issues with stolen items where they could easily be “washed” by trading them to other players or simply dying again.
Tons of fixes for handling stolen items where also added, you can no longer for example place stolen loot in bank slots at all (currently you can but the item will jump back to inventory after a while) etc.
All tool-tips for sellable items will now show the stack price rather than the price for a individual item.
Also, we fixed the break-dancing horse bug and several other issues.

That’s all!

We would really love to get your input on all of this so please leave your feedback and thoughts on the forums!