Here it is, once again:

Q: I was registered for the fan gathering, and was therefore supposed to receive a beta for Darkness Rising. I never received it, and spoke to someone at the Roundtable in Las Vegas, who assured me that I would get another invitation. Still nothing!

A: I try to handle stuff like this on a per-player basis, rather than taking up time in the more general grab bag. But as you'll see in a second, the Herald was my only alternative.

We took the information for all players at Roundtable without their beta, and we ran them through the system again. When we mailed out the invitations, many of them were bounced back to us, saying that we were not tagged as allowable mail, and we were invited to fill out a form to verify that we were not spam. Under normal circumstances, filling out the form would be no trouble, but right now we've got hundreds more beta invites to process, and filling out forms isn't something we can take the time to do.

And if we got bouncebacks like that, I shudder in horror at the number of beta invitations sitting forlornly in spam folders. Out of the dozen or so players who wrote me with this problem, only one responded as I asked… so my guess is that my email to assure you that I wasn't ignoring you hasn't been seen! It's a communication and a grammatical nightmare!

Please, I beg you, tell your email programs and spam filters to accept as valid any mail coming from Mythic Entertainment. Allowing us to send you mail will NOT result in any offers of porn or pharmaceuticals, so please just let us through.

Q: Is there a way to remove money from the consignment merchant?

A: Yes. There's a slash command called "settle." Here now is the Code Warrior with the documentation you need to use this command.

/settle is used to remove money earned from a consignment merchant's sales.

/settle with no parameters removes all the money available from a consignment merchant.

/settle followed by a number (eg /settle 50000) will attempt to remove that much money, in copper pieces, from the consignment merchant.

/settle will fail if you try to withdraw more money than the consignment merchant has, if you're not near a house with a consignment merchant that you have permission to withdraw from, if the consignment merchant has no money from sales, or if /settling would cause you to have more than 200 platinum.

Q: What is going to be added for crafters with Darkness Rising?

A: Every single bit of horse barding and armor will only be available through crafting, with the sole exception of the freebie set you get for pre-ordering the expansion. The Herald team is putting together a nice feature so you can preview the different items before you start begging your local crafter to make them.

Q: Does the quality of an arrow determine the damage/accuracy that it hits at? I have a guy that swears that the damage is determined by quality, yet others have told me that it's not true.  Can you clear up this question?

A: Code Warrior: "A weapon's damage is indeed affected by quality - in this case it's the quality of the bow, not the arrow. The quality of the arrow is ignored (although arrows have their own damage modifications based on the type of arrow being used)."

Q: When I'm fighting a mob in PvE, and kite for a while, the mob goes back to med up for a bit.  When the mob is going back and I cast a bolt or a DD on it, it seems that the mob has a higher miss rate than it normally would.  Is this so, or is there a bug with the mobs?

A: We looked into it, and I think what you describe is mainly coincidence. As the Code Warrior says, "There is anti-kiting AI, which is what you've run into, but it doesn't affect to-hit chances, merely determines at what point the monster figures out you're toying with it and decides to not play that game any more."

Q: I've been trying to find information on critical caps. Please correct me if I'm wrong. In RVR, there is a cap on nuke critical damage of 50% that I've seen. I've been told that the same cap applies to bolts and melee damage, but I've seen much larger criticals in RVR for both. Is this a bug? How does the system work? Does the chance to crit increase in rvr for nukes to make up for the reduced crit damage, which I've also been told? Does this apply to melee and bolts as well? Help me out here =).

A: This has been quite the column for me to rely on the Code Warrior to look stuff up: "For all attacks (melee, archery, direct damage, bolt and damage over time spells): the maximum that can be done against another player is 50% of the original hit's damage. (If the player is a berserk Berserker in melee combat, this is actually 100%). Against monsters, the maximum damage that can be done through a critical hit is 100% of the original hit's damage.

"The base chance for getting a critical hit with a spell is 10%. For non-list casters and for any damage over time spells, the base chance is 0%. This can be modified by various realm abilities and outpost bonuses, but only up to 50%. (In the case of the berserk Berserker, they have a 100% chance - every hit is critical.)"

Q: A friend of mine went to the roundtable event. He mentioned after he got back that the Mythic Devs have said that lag hacking is a legitimate strategy. Is this true?

A: I won't say your friend was smoking crack in the bathroom between sessions; I'll just point and laugh.

We said no such thing.

We said lag hacking was difficult to prove in CS terms (we can be pretty sure that's what someone is doing, but we can't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt) and that most of the cures people suggest are worse than the disease.

We do not want to disable windowed mode, as there are too many legitimate reasons to play the game that way. And there's no sense in punishing all people merely because some players are, to use a technical term, "losers." Also, there are dozens of ways to lag hack that don't involve window dragging, so it wouldn't solve the problem.

Since many of us play every night, we're aware of the problem, and we've working towards solutions. I can't really talk about it since I have no details, and I've got no timeframe to give you. But lag hacking is not a "strategy."

Last call for 2006 Calendar Contest entries! This is a great chance for any fan, cartoonist, or other kind of artist to add a credit to the old portfolio - you'll still own your work, and  it'll be published and mailed to industry veterans. So what are you waiting for? Check out  http://www.camelotherald.com/more/2104.shtml for directions.

The Darkness Rising expansion features a number of visual upgrades for necro pets. I wanted to let you all know that if you're not running the Catacombs client, though, you won't be able to see the new and extremely awesome models.

One of the questions featured tonight mentions the horse armor and barding. You'll have to suck up to a crafter if you want any of it, unless you pre-order the expansion. If you do, here's some more information from the Moderately Evil Overlord, Walt: "The pre-order horse armor is available to every character on an account - if the account is flagged properly. The player needs to talk to an NPC to receive the armor.  The armor cannot be traded to other players, but can be used on any horse (except for the basic level 35 horses which cannot wear armor), as the player desires."

Thanks again for the fantastic time, Vegas attendees. Everyone else: take the poll and help us choose our next city!

Have a great weekend.