The Harvest Moon Consortium

[Winterhawk99]

Rustling in the boughs above stirs some movement in the Sanctum, it seems some Elders intend to gather soon.

YTR NPCs will be around Shortly to be chatted with on all sorts of matters, be they business or otherwise. Ascend to the very top to speak with them, any Conclave member and Elf is welcome!

Got this on the discord channel Yell'tarien: which means the dms are active once again although once again I myself cannot participate. I'm at work. it is June5th. I will note all activity I see from now on from date to rough day for those in the past being the low activity on the server.

The Dm's have risen from the dead again. Let's see more activity and hopefully some good cpr on dms so people can feel they actually exist. I wasn't sure for awhile. But this is good news and hopefully more good news in the future.

[Winterhawk99]

Ok. So had 5 days off and played The Dragon's Neck server as much as I possibly could. And I have lots of notes.

They did an update Friday night into the wee hours of Saturday morning and into Sunday. It was a large update and had a huge amount of scripting bugs. So, the staff was working on it all weekend. They did get many of the problems fixed. but for now, let's table all that.

I started my adventure in the late Wednesday and into the wee hours of Thursday morning. I started to notice that some players were coming back. Most likely anticipating the update. got in some good rp and there were some dead times. As the weekend went on more and more players showed up with their pcs. There are some cliches among the various pcs so be aware especially from a group that started more in the beginning of when TDN opened to public. I arrived about a month to a month and a half afterward. But that's not a huge concern at the moment being that potentially you can always find rp with someone.

I do have quite a few stories to post about this weekend too. On to which my pc will be on the border ethereal and helping another pc though not directly. Always good when I can put together some great stories.

Now I'll take the update first. When they updated it was hard going. You could get on the server for a few minutes and then it would go down. It took 3 times for them to stabilize it. One time I got on I was in the circle but there were only tiles no placeables, however I could hear other players talking though I was alone. I have never seen that before. The staff after it would go down would bring it back up and lock players out to test and fix.

some of the errors included: module could not find OBDC databases. that's when a module cannot connect with its outside databases (.OD or .xml files or any file that is a database) That's either usually caused by someone misspelling a database in the acp script (syntax error) or the system they use for databases such as open office or the Microsoft package losing its connectors by updates. It was most likely a syntax error I would bet.

also default ai scripts # 6 and 7 were broken. I can't really diagnose that unless I see the script.

and a Random 1 error not familiar with that error myself.

After several fixes the server stabilized, and we were able to play for a few hours before the server went down again. When it came back up the module heartbeat script was broken and sending out TMI errors. Alot of TMI errors. That would be broken loops.

When I left, they were still having problems with it. A big credit to the staff is they did not stop working on it until the world was stabilized rather well. There was some lag off and on most likely caused by the heartbeat TMI's that broke every minute or so.

And as I sit here, I looked up the discord site to see they will be working on it Tuesday night again. The fact that they are persistent and working on it shows that they give a damn so kudos. They do have some talented scripters as I understand and so believe the problems will be fixed before I get back from work in ten days.

[Winterhawk99]

Dms this weekend were very active in the elven areas. I saw them twice which is a marked improvement, and they were active.

Since I have a way to monitor them, I've been recording their activities. Now I can't see where they are on the server, but I know when they are on the server. All said and done dms are active almost all the time I played but rarely with the elves. it's about a 45/1 difference. It's most likely more but I've only been recording activity for about a month. After the update they were with the elves twice that I know over two days. both these instances were at player events. This is a marked improvement. as they were on a long time.

The first was at the gathering a of the people a once-a-month player event. A dm assisted in a ritual to find out more on a necromancer operating underneath the goblin ruins. He or she did very well in fact. Was a good event. Still, it was a player event not a dm event.

Later that same day was a nurturing the forest event. We got about 1/2 way through it and a dm showed up as an NPC and walked with us. He did not do much but just being there was great. So, activity with the elves has gone up quite a bit.

when I come back in 10 days I will look very close to see if there is any other dm activities or if it was 'We updated the server lets pay attention to the elves for a few days. kind of thing.'

I do hope the trend continues.

[Winterhawk99]

I think I spoke about the magic wisps up above and how they set off the faction bug.

Most severs have work arounds for the faction bug now days and I literally have not seen it post EE except on this server. These wisps would explode and hurt everything around them like a fireball then the Npc faction that was hurt would go enemy on the pc the wisp would hit. or if the pc destroyed it, the thing would explode hurt another faction and they would go hostile.

I.E. the faction bug.

It was actually pretty stupid for the staff of TDN to do it. But now after the update they no longer explode. They seem to have fixed the wisps so the faction bug will not appear when they die, or you kill one. In fact, they came up with a very creative way to do it. Instead of the wisp exploding it only hits the pc faction no others. At least this is what it seems to me. And it hits the pc faction with either a beneficial or negative side effect at random. it turned out to be in my opinion a very creative and thoughtful fix that you could turn into a story very easily. I would have never thought myself in going that route.

That is if the faction bug doesn't show if the wisp spell radius when it dies catches another faction. I'm still looking at that. if it takes out the wisps affecting other factions that's a big kudos from me in that it was so creative and in line with rp.

[Winterhawk99]

One note I just discovered

Some players on discord were discussing their magic items on TDN. and some have a whole lot of magic items. now they seem to be in line with the server as a whole +1 to skills but one mentioned equipment with combined +6 to wisdom and a whole lot more.

I've been playing the server since mid-march that's three months. only found one magic item the whole time and I could not use it. it had +1 to sleight of hand.

the only magic item I do have is some dull chain mail with +1 diplomacy and another player outright gave it to me.

It makes me wonder if there are indeed Dm favored cliches on the server, because this is certainly a tell-tale sign based on the players I observed talking about it on the discord channel. Can't say that its true yet but I'm going to talk to some of my sources about it and get the lowdown.

I do have an update from an anonymous source:

"My information leads in that direction as well, with Gms being incredibly giving with some players, even allowing them to flout major rules, and going out of their way to nitpick and even pick on others. It all seems very high school drama."

[Winterhawk99]

Just want to remind everyone reading this that this is not my review. rather they are notes I am taking; that I can come back to while doing the review after I have played my review character out.

I believe that some on TDN's staff are monitoring this thread because there have been adjustments made based on my observations. Which is good. If they change things for the better while I am playing, then when I do the review, I can comment that they are making the world they created better.

[Winterhawk99]

There have been some accusations of Elderly and Disabled abuse and harassment by the dms on this server. I am looking into it. It's also been charged that the staff of this server has a dangerous habit of asking for personal health information in order to "ok" playing characters with psychological differences, and then using that information against the player OOC, resulting in a majorly ablist.

Again, I will be looking into these accusations. I really hope this is not true.

[Winterhawk99]

Small note:

Many of the trees in the elven forest do not have .WOK's attached to them. You can walk right through them.

it's either a minor mistake by the modeler, laziness by the modeler or whoever built them was considering engine load. not sure. but you can walk straight through many of the trees in the elven forest. It's nice for my character being a shamaness attached to the tree spirits and having just a spot of dryad blood but a minor technical mistake that I noticed.

there are also some very minor topographical errors but not enough that a non-builder would notice.

Notice to anyone that builds. Placeables do not cause engine load unless animated. They do lengthen area load times though. be aware of that when you build.

[Winterhawk99]

hit a small snag with leveling today.

made 9th level and got no spells. check the dragons neck wiki and found out I should have. Shaman 9th level gets 1 4th level spell.

so wrote a ticket. Dm was good. In fact, very good representing. He said that at the moment the shamans don't use the shaman table but the favored soul table (for some reason) when they acquire spells.

Personally, I think someone screwed up the 2da table for shaman spells. seems the only thing that can cause this situation when leveling.

going to go ahead and level then see what happens when acquiring the next level. will compare tables again.

Again, Dm was polite and a good rep for the server unlike one particular dm i have encountered before that was not.

I compared the two tables on the wiki very closely and found that I was in fact using the shaman table up until this level, so something did happen with the last update. The shaman 2da spell table did change to the same as the favored soul. will watch this carefully.

[Winterhawk99]

played 20 straight days and have lots of new insights but I'll do those at work.