Mage Knight Apocalypse 1.02 Patch

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Code Changes
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- A "Chase Camera" mode has been added to the game. To enable it, go to OPTIONS ==> CONTROLS and click on the "Chase Camera Control" button. NOTE: This "Chase Camera" mode is most useful to players that use "click to move". WASD users may not find this mode very useful at all. See below.

- A "Recenter View" hotkey has been created. To use it, just press "F" at any time during the game. The camera view will then recenter to behind the character. NOTE: This key is most useful to users using WASD movement. You can easily utilize the regular free-camera to look anywhere, and then you can just simply tap "F" to recenter the view behind you. This key is remappable in the CONTROLS section.

- You can now remap the "Camera Control" key. By default, that key is either the middle mouse button or SPACEBAR. However, you can now remap that key to any button or key press, as desired.

- The gameport input is now being ignored so that the "continuous spinning" issues that customers with Saitek Keyboards or other devices plugged into their gameports were experiencing. This should no longer occur and those devices can safely be plugged back in while playing MKA.

- If a skill has DOT damage (damage over time, like poisons and burning effects) then that DOT damage is now properly amplified by Mastery rankings and INT bonuses. This will make DOT skills (like the Vampire's Poison Touch skill) much more effective in the long-run now.

- Some skills that did damage per second in an area of effect (like the Elf's Light of Consecration) were doing damage multiple times per second instead of only once per second. That has been fixed now and those skills are doing reduced, but proper, amounts of damage now.

- If your sound card is not properly detected, the game will now default to "Generic Software" drivers for your sound card. This should avoid the "screeching" sound effects that a few users experienced, and should help users with non-Sound Blaster cards with other issues.

- You can now return to the Vurgra Divide after leaving it and entering other missions. (Previously, there was no entry on the Portal Map to get you back to Vurgra Divide after you entered any other mission area besides a town. That is now fixed.)

- When you die and revive at a Portal Stone, your NPC sidekicks will teleport to your location also, to make regrouping easier.

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Game Difficulty Changes
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- Difficulty settings were changed. HARD difficulty is overall about 20% harder than it was previously.

- More importantly, the dynamic scaling curve has been increased so that the game becomes more difficult at *all* difficulty settings as your power rating increases with experience. In other words, on Normal or Easy settings, at the beginning of a character's life, there will be almost no change in difficulty (from v.1.01). But as that new character grows in experience, the challenges faced will keep pace with your abilities and items more accurately, keeping the challenge level higher even at maxed out power ratings. (Previously, the game became too easy, at any difficulty setting, as your character became more experienced.)

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BE WARNED! Characters with high power ratings may need to adjust their tactics because of this increased level of difficulty. Expect things to be different!
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Skill Balance Changes
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- Fixed all mouseover help tips to accurately reflect what each skill is doing in-game. NOTE: This affected MOST of the mouseover tips. It will appear that we made massive game balance changes because of the differences in those help tips
but that is NOT TRUE. The balance changes made are included separately in these patch notes whenever we actually changed something (listed below). Only the mouseover help tips changed in 95%+ of the cases where you see changes in the tip text. (However, the text you get now is much more accurate than it was previously.)

- Rapid Fire (Dwarf) : Skill was buffed to be more useful. Lasts 10 seconds at Rank 1, 12 at Rank 2, 14 at Rank 3, 17 at Rank 4, 20 at Rank 5. 30-second cooldown timer.

- Mindreave (Vampire) was incorrectly draining mana from targets at a rate far greater than intended. It has been reduced to intended levels (approximately 75% of what it was previously). The cooldown timer was increased to ten seconds instead of five.

- Proc damage on Adamant Statue (Draconum) was brought into line with other spells. (Variable damage and slightly lower damage at all ranks.)

- Shadow Walk (Vampire) critical hit bonuses were reduced by half. The Ranks are now 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50% additions to the critical chance per rank while Shadow Walking.

- Fatal Storm (Vampire) was incorrectly adding 1.5 the amount of weapon damage that it should have been and has been fixed to add only the designed amount of damage now.

- Blur (Vampire) is now 10 seconds in duration at all ranks and increases Dodge at different rates, depending on skill rank. 30% at rank 1, plus 5% per rank thereafter.

- Vampiric Aura (Vampire) regenerates less health per second now to those in the aura's area. (Approximately 25% less than previous.)

- Aimed Power Shot (Dwarf) has a cooldown of 10 seconds instead of five.

- Bless Weapon and Group Bless Weapon (Elf) got buffed so that they add more Holy damage to attacks during its duration.

- Poison DOTs (Vampire and various monsters in the game) were buffed to compensate for the fact that they do damage once every two seconds, instead of once every second.

- Crippling Shot (Amazon) was more powerful than Warshrike Shot...which is higher on the tree than Crippling Shot. The Knockback effect was removed from Crippling Shot to compensate. Now Warshrike Shot is a moderate damage crowd control (stun + knockback) shot, while Crippling Shot does nasty damage over time.

- Tal's blunt proficiency (Elf) should now only level when blunt weapons are used, rather than all melee.

- Bloodreave (Vampire) has an increased cooldown timer of 10 seconds (instead of a bit over four seconds).

- Bite (Vampire) has a decreased cooldown timer. It now takes only 2.5 seconds to cast this spell, instead of 3.0 seconds.

- Bloodlust and Bloodrage (Vampire) have longer durations now so they are more useful as buffs. Both have been increased from 15 to 30 seconds in duration.

- The various potions that increase your attributes (STR, AGI, INT, etc), as well as the Toughness potions, have been reduced in duration from 30 minutes to 15 minutes.

- Light of Consecration was buffed after the DOT fix (above) fixed the number of times it does damage per second. The spell now does damage only once per second (as it should) and the amount of damage was increased to maintain effectiveness at this slower pulse rate.

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Vendor Changes
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- Chrys'alara now sells staves at both vendors, Telur and Dardanus.

- Magestone powders are now available from herb vendors.

- Sell-back value of potions has been reduced for high end potions because it was too easy to make potions that could be sold back for profit which allowed too much gold into the game.

- The armor protection curve has been flattened somewhat so that mid- to high-end armors give less protection to the user. This will make the later stages of the game slightly more challenging since characters will have less protection. Some of the high end armor was given higher stat requirements.

- All herbs, except the starting recipe herbs (like Dittany Thorn and Marjoram Moss) have been removed from vendors. Potions are still available at vendors, but if you want to make your own potions, you'll need to collect herbs from out in the world. (NOTE: Reagents you can't get in the world, like magestone powders, are still available from vendors.)

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Monster Tuning
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- Orc Cyclopses now use their AoE stun less often. (About half as much.)

- Katalkus and Dragon should both now drop good loot if killed first.

- Katalkus and Dragon corpses made to linger for less time.

- Delara's Shadow Walk skill timer has been increased so that she doesn't disappear as often.

- Corrupted Temple Guardian's health regeneration has been tuned down slightly so players can fight him on the temple top more easily.

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Sidekick Tuning
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- Sidekicks are tougher now and last longer in a fight. (They previously died too easily.)