Mage Battle Royal.

There was still an abandoned fortress: Emerald.
Osiris Ellow, Cain's cousin and Belferond's long time arch-nemesis wanted it for his guild, the Arcane Brotherhood.
Knowing that few would stand in his way, Pellastrina Dark Desire stepped up and took the challenge. Ellow would have to beat the woman if he wished to capture the fortress..

Like melee fights, arcane spellcaster matches can end really quickly.. Pellastrina started the round by casting defensive spells.. and Osiris, fearing for his life, thought it'd be wise to set up Epic Warding and Epic Mage Armor..



While I was a little busy saving the screenshot, Pellastrine had won the match.. I didn't see what happened but I came back in time to see Pellastrina teaching Osiris some "unusual" tricks..



Ellow, showing his keen mind, quickly demonstrated how well he had learned Pellastrina's arcane lessons. By dispelling the former Thanatos' mage's spell mantle, he left her open and casted his missile storms on her.. Being the fragile woman that she is, Pellastrina couldn't take that much damage and was left unconscious.




Another round started but it was getting pretty clear who would come out victorious in the end..







Pellastrina, showing some outstanding willforce, got up and challenged Osiris Ellow once more. Sadly she was in no condition to put up a fight anymore..



Suddenly, Kha'Leesha, Queen of the Underdark and her twin sister came out of nowhere and caught Osiris off-guard, grabbing him and the harmless gnome that was passing through and had stopped to watch the two mages fight.
But that wasn't the end of those two. Pellastrina, who was alive and resting near the stone conjoint, heard Osiris cursing the elf and rushed to see what was going on.
Using her strong spells on the elf, Pellastrina dropped Kha'Leesha to her knees and saved the day.. not before scolding Osiris for his lack of... "attention"..

Upcoming Changes to BadLands RPG

Some of you are hungry for new stuff in our world.
So am I.
I did start a lot of changes a few months ago and had to put BadLands on hold for a while. I'm ready to get back at, but not with the same All-Consuming-Obsession that I had in the past.

I have been talking with Leaf Stone recently about his baby, BadLands. Leaf is the original author of BadLands, just in case you didn't know. Leaf made several offers to me about BadLands.
1. To let me merge both modules together. That is, to bring the Bosses, Boss Areas and Boss Drops as well as anything else, like the Bone Bash Theater, into BadLands RPG.
2. The 1.69 upgrade (currently beta 9) does not work with our existing database and server monitor. (It's barely working now). When I mentioned this to Leaf, he offered to do the work to change over to a different program that works better.

Other changes coming soon are:
3. A lot of good ideas you-all brought up in this Blog.
4. A new Trap System for Rogues I have been working on. Terry helped test it too many months ago. I need to finish it and import it.

Changes that are "in-works":
5. New areas added to the Mad Clerics Tower atop Sheelo Mtn.
6. A +6 upgrade shop for strength based melee builds. +6 AC mostly.
7. Some new monsters. Some of you have seen the DM spawned Snow Slaad.
8. Some new bosses and new boss drops for melee builds.
9. Changes to some existing bosses. I will only say this much: The new Medusa can turn any player to stone now. . . . . Of course I include some form of limited protection. . . . . . Oh, by the way, Statues are forever. (note to self: all statues need pigeons)
10. Did I mention the new . . . . oops, that would spoil the surprise.

Items 5 through 10 are in various states of disrepair. 1 to 4 will come later.
I will be happy to review anything you build with the tool editor. If I like it and it "fits" BadLands, I will add it to our world.

qwildurn@verizon.net
Qwildurn Bluemoon

Recent Tournament Results

(Thanks again to the DM's that hosted the battle and took these great screen shots and written descriptions for me to easily post, Simon Hawk)


Everyone grouped at Hot Cave of Madness for the fortress battle.
Free Blades had Thor and Lycan.




The other side, the combined forces of Chimeria, Phury Shadowblade (both from Shadow Blades) and Merin Kensai (Warlord of the new Sword Saints guild)



First bout ended quickly with thor dev critting his opponents..



Second was no different and ended with Free Blades winning easily..



Then Chimeria had to leave and Merin/Phury team had a new member coming to their aid, the mighty Uthlari Rendflesh from Death Dealers.
Merin and Phury were already down but Rendflesh was calm. He came striding into the battlefield and with strong hits, he bashed Lycan to oblivion.



and then went after Thor. After a couple of minutes of a well balanced brawl, Rendflesh got the upper hand and Thor had no choice but to retreat. Trying to heal himself, the free blader couldn't dodge nor block Rendflesh's attacks, so he was defeated in this epic battle..



After everyone left, it was up to Uthlari and Lycan. Good and old 1 vs. 1.
Uthlari gave his best. Couple of strong and deadly hits on Lycan but the latter knew how strong the half-orc was, so he relied on his divine powers to defeat the DD member.
2 well placed harms and Uthlari was badly wounded but he didn't give up, he kept swinging. Lycan said the magic words and another harm came flying into the orc's body and he couldn't fight anymore..
Free Blades had won the Fortress Battle!!



It was time for Lycan to choose wich fortress he wanted. And he thought UD was a good choice.

The New Hardware and ISP is Working

I just want to say that I think the new server hardware changes, including the new ISP, are finally working well.
I have resolved the "crashing without players" issue by adding a "dummy" script that forces some constant activity. It generates about as much activity as one player. I've been able to play alone on BadLands RPG, BadLands 2082, and BadLands 1095 for several hours each without a crash. Unless we get a constant 40 players this should not create any lag. I can alter it to turn it's self off/on at a certain number of players but until that's needed I won't.

I am currently hosting three modules, RPG, 2082 and 1095. Mostly just to see if I can. Partly so players can see what the original BadLands was like. Which brings up the question, "What is original?" BadLands 1095 was the last public release by the original author, Leaf Stone. From that common point all other BadLands modules have gone separate directions. BadLands 2082 is Leaf's continued direction which I host for Leaf. As to why BadLands 1095 was made public and Leaf suddenly made such drastic changes to BadLands is a whole new blog and a lot of BadLands (dirty) history would have to be retold. I was a part of this history so most of it would be first hand.

I did set the DM list on all 3 mods to be the same, but it's unfair to expect anybody to actively DM more than one mod.

The downloads are being sent at full speed and what took 45 minutes now takes about 5 minutes to download. And it does not seem to make the server lag like it used to.

http://badlandsrpg.game-host.org
qwildurn@verizon.net
Qwildurn Bluemoon

Let us Port up the Mountain beyond North Face :)

Hiya Blade here,

I have some thoughts & observations which if implemented might save us from some of the problems of the " Mega Spawn ".

In my experience, worse than the Polar Bears, is when Legendary chars want to go get their new Shark Boots. I have about 20 chars that could use this upgrade, and it is increasingly difficult to find a time when the server is quiet enough to send your level 50+ up to the shark without causing some disruption to other players. The last few times I have taken to going invis from Northbound through the Beetles on South Sheelo and round the back way to Lonely Slopes to avoid causing spawns on North Face where people are more likely to log in and want to play.

What i would like is some sort of equivalent to " Snow Pipes " to get us up the mountain higher to say where the new +6 Crafting Stuff will be :)

Maybe this Port Stone could be Level Limited to Level 41 ?

I tend to leave my characters bound in the UDark, but for those that bind in Mountain Shelter it can be useful to capture the outpost in the UDark, so that you can port your champions down there without running through the sewers.

Another observation (Hope this isn't too much of a spoiler ), but the Ancient Caverns Outpost allows the option to port to a number of locations around the Game World, maybe this sort of thing could be implemented more ........ " Greater freedom of movement " to alleviate these problems when moving the higher level chars around :)

All the Best ...........Blade :)

Hardcore Server and Hardcore Players?

Hardcore Server and Hardcore Players?

Deimonos_85 and I were chatting in emails and I just have to repeat this. ROF-LMAO

Deimonos_85 said: "Oh yeah, that guy is just weird. I was playing with him and a couple more in the mines, and he kept bugging me for a complete relevel.. and the "You are hardcore" after seeing my Deep Orc dev-crit a Trog made me laughed real loud.."

LOL :) BadLands IS Hardcore minus the permanent death, no respawn for players. Few would ever make level 15 if is was set to "Death is Forever".

Q

Hell hath no fury...

... like a DM scorned.

Ok people, here's a bit of advice for you to make all our lives a little better. If you're a high level character in a lower level area, PLEASE kill the monsters you spawn whenever possible. We're all guilty in one way or another of mega-spawning monsters that end up killing lowbies trying to XP their characters. Well this past weekend somebody (not me) mega spawned a massive amount of bears and left them on the mountain. Guess what happened next? Thats right, our very own Qwildurn walked right into that huge pile of pissed-off teeth and claws with his new character and got ripped to shreds. Why is this such a big deal you may ask? I'll tell you why, it's a big deal because Qwildurn is the host and DM of BadLandsRPG and when you piss him off, bad shit happens. Hellie Layne and a few others paid with their lives that fateful day. I don't like dieing for other peoples mistakes so please kill your mega-spawns if you're walking through an area.

(The picture below is an example of how to kill the mega-spawned bears.) :P