Quite a few months ago there was some discussion about Outlands not being a popular destination, which is a shame, because it has some nice looking areas.
As i discovered today, we even have one long term player who wasn't even aware the outlands areas exist!
For those who don't know, its recommended level range is 4-10, although personally i think going there at level 4 is quite risky.
I won't tell the portal key or location for those who don't know. Just ask around ICly and somebody will tell you.
One of the main complaints raised at the time of discussion was that the first area (the maze) is a bit of a pain, especially for non-rogues, and the second area (the valley) quite deadly for non-sneakers or those without ranged attacks.
In order to make the Outlands a more popular location for both RP and grinding the following changes have been made.
Changes
1) The entry location has changed to the ruined city.
2) In order to make traversing the valley and going into the maze worthwhile we have a surprise (for those who do not hang out on IRC at least) at the center that makes it worth travelling to (see issues below). The new feature is given as a quest, so its a once per reset thing to stop massive grinding of this area.
Known and Possible Issues
1) The "quest" you get from the maze center is currently missing its journal entries. Everything works as expected, you just don't get the journal entries, they are blank. This will be fixed when cryptc gets the journal entries imported.
2) There are two new chests that don't spawn treasure for the moment, including the reward chest in the new area. I've uploaded a fix and just needs cryptc to get that integrated into the server.
3) Not entirely sure about this one. cryptc felt as though the ruined city colouring had changed somehow for the worse. I haven't actually changed anything here except for making the portal appear here. However, i kind of felt the same as well when i checked it out. Maybe its our imaginations.... if anyone familiar with the (old) outlands goes there, let me know if you also feel that its somehow different.
4) Balance of spawns in the new area. This got some limited testing, but its always hard to get this one right and as always, for some characters things will be too easy, for others too hard. There are two options available to do the "quest" each which will spawn different enemies. Initial testing indicated one was perhaps easier than the other. This area is really for level 10 minimum, and better to be in a party. Try it out, and let me know your character(s), their level(s), which choice you made, and how difficult you found it.
5) Death and respawning. There are some fancy scripts in place in the new area that handles a lot of what is going on there. Things should work ok, but i'm not entirely sure what will happen if you die, leave the area long enough for it to reset, and then teleport back. You may get stuck... or not. Depends on what you did (or didn't do) before your death.
6) Performance. You may experience some jitter on your client if you have an older computer when hit a certain trigger. I tried to make sure this was kept to a minimum by delaying some commands. Let me know if you have any real bad experiences with this.
Feedback
If its a bug you think you've found then please post in the Bug forum. Other feedback you can send via PM or start a thread in the general discussion forum.
Change to Outlands
