Pave the ground underneath it.
We've been developing for a few nights, and here's what's new.
As most of you no doubt are aware, we are reseting the maps and characters tonight. That's right, it's a brand spanking-new world untouched by Hearthling hand and unaffected by the trials of the past. Obviously, we've taken the opportunity to make a few changes.
The Ring of Brodgar
Is no more. Instead there are mandatory wilderness spawns.
Food
The FEPs for the different food objects are now decimal. A food type can thus give you, for example, 1.3 FEPs. This change allows for much better granularity in our FEP assignments, especially as quality increases on food items. Food types no longer get meaningful quality increases only at certain particular atoms (E.g. Q40 for a 1 FEP-food), but rather continuously yield more FEP:s as quality on them increases, albeit in fractions. The other big change here is that we now have a varied diets bonus to FEP:s. For every other new type of food you eat (Apple, ant solider, apple pie, carrot cake), you get your FEP-meter's total maximum reduced by one, effectively shortening it, for this particular iteration over it. When you level up, the bonus is reset.
BBBs have been nerfed (as has bear LP, btw).
Quality Points
Quality points actually no longer exist, though you need not be overly concerned about that, as it is mostly a behind the scenes change. Quality is instead saved per the map format, allowing for much shorter lookup time on the quality data. The main effects you will notice are:
A) Quality decreases as you exctract materials from a particular area. The quality grows back again over time.
B) Shallow water only yields clay if there is actually a clay quality point in the vicinity. All other spots will yield exactly one unit of Q10 clay, which will immediately drop the area below yieldable range, which, in turn, grows back in about a day or so.
Herbs & Plant Spawns
Plants no longer spawn in naturally occurring patches on the map. Instead, we have a new herb: The Wild Windsown Weed. The Windsown Weed can be dried in either a drying frame, or on a herbalists table, and, once it's dried, it converts to a plantable seed of some kind. Drying takes 2 ingame days in a drying frame, and eight ingame hours on a Herbalist's Table.
The Four-Leaf Clover is another new herb. The Clover can be fed to wild Moufflons and Ochsen. Doing so allows the animals to be sheared for one unit of wool(Moufflons), or milked for two liters of milk(Ochsen).
Summonings & Hearths
Hearth Fires can be destroyed again. Hearth Fires are no longer carryable. If you have a hearth fire, crime scents can be used to summon you by it. If you do not have a charter stone, or a hearth, you can be summoned anywhere. You should really have a hearth. Should you lose your hearth, you will get a new wilderness spawn if you cannot be logged in at your last logged out position.
There are some other changes as well, but I think I'll leave those for you to discover on your own.
The map will be initialized as 5x5 supergrids, to be increased to 7x7 as soon as the first batch of minimaps is done.
We have terminated the server. When it comes back online, it will be using the new maps.
Long live the Second World.