Progress Report for 3/01 to 3/27

[Enyo]

It's the progress report for March 1st to March 27th, 2010! You know the drill!

• More wilderness upgrades! In addition to more context-based descriptions, you can now encounter context-specific creatures, making the wilderness more involved and smoothly-transitioned than ever before. Look for seagulls flying over the ocean and otters along riverbanks!
• Two-handed weapons are now a possibility! All weapons can potentially be held two-handed, but there will usually only be a notable effect with those arms designed to do so. Fighting with a weapon in both hands also increases the appropriate
  weapon skill somewhat more quickly than by using the same weapon in one hand. See "help two-handed weapons" for details.
• You can now opt to fight only with weapons (not attacking with bare hands or non-weapon objects at all, though you will still use a shield if you have one) or with anything your character can manage (from bare hands to rocks to burning torches, including actual weapons). See "help fight" for details.
• The advancement rate of weapon skills and some defensive style skills is no longer dependent upon the speed of the parties involved.
• One new landmark.
• New items: clay bullets; pit forges; pinchpots, pinchpot cups, and pinchpot bowls.
• Helpfile additions/updates: balance, bugs, channel behavior, containers, death, encumbrance, fight, forage, guard, herbs, hoarding, library, literacy, lore, newbie, note, PK, surrender, two-handed weapons, typos.
• New encounters: newts, otters, carp, tench.
• New descriptions: lizards, minnows, trout, rainbow trout, brown trout, cutthroat trout, golden trout, catfish, salmon, herons.
• New feelings: augh, horror, snerk.
• Various minor city improvements.
• Wilderness fishing options expanded slightly.
• Info readout condensed.
• Color added to health, while both health and phealth color progressions have been altered slightly.
• The "noise" command now uses emote-style parsing for its action messages, and its sound messages can begin with a, an, or the.
• The "bait" command now allows you to simply type "bait pole" if you have something that's obviously bait at hand; this will only work if the object in hand explicitly ids to "bait" to keep accidental baitings down.
• Corpses with feathers now accept "unplucked" as a valid argument. "Plucked" still applies as before.
• Enjoy the headache-inducing splendors of our new novelty modes! See "help novelty modes" for details.
• Brand new wiki work.
• Bugs, typos, and balance issues fixed, of course.
  

Damn but that's a healthy update. We're starting to announce these on the front page now, too. See you next time, kids, and thanks for playing!