Updates to Sacrifice have now gone live. New in this update, Sorcerers will no longer need to be taught the Sacrifice ability, it will be inherently known. Sorcerers will also find that the cooldown time between Sacrifices has been greatly reduced, and can be further reduced by training in Necromancy lore.

At 10 ranks of Necromancy Lore, the Sorcerer will no longer suffer spirit loss on a failed sacrifice. At 30 ranks of Necromancy Lore, there will be no spirit loss on a successful sacrifice.

Two new options have been added to Sacrifice. SACRIFICE CHANNEL and SACRIFICE INFEST.

SACRIFICE CHANNEL, learned at 60 Necromancy Lore ranks, allows a Sorcerer to direct the energy of a sacrifice into their Animate, healing it of injuries and refreshing its animation to 20 minutes.

SACRIFICE INFEST, learned at 100 Necromancy Lore ranks, allows a Sorcerer to taint the energy of a sacrifice, weakening the next few spawns of the same type of creature for a short amount of time.

-KEIOS

Keios is pretty amazing. ~Wyrom

>SACRIFICE CHANNEL, learned at 60 Necromancy Lore ranks, allows a Sorcerer to direct the energy of a sacrifice into their Animate, healing it of injuries and refreshing its animation to 20 minutes.

Is there a limit to how many times this can be done on an animate?

>>Love the updates, but very sad at the loss of sacrifice teach. Even though I never used sacrifice while hunting, I had many enjoyable interactions with the teaching aspect. RIP sacrifice teach.

The SACRIFICE TEACH ability is still there, and will still work as it did in the days of yore, but will no longer be a requirement.
Sorcerers who manage to Sacrifice on their own without teaching will appear to be "already taught" afterwards.

-KEIOS

Keios is pretty amazing. ~Wyrom

Nice number choices!

>Sorcerous Lore - Necromancy........| 120 30

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>Daid: Pretty sure you have a whole big bucket as your penny jar. You never have only two cents. :p

>Love the updates, but very sad at the loss of sacrifice teach. Even though I never used sacrifice while hunting, I had many enjoyable interactions with the teaching aspect. RIP sacrifice teach.

Yeah, me too on that.

I had let a sorcerer use a Raise Dead scroll on a corpse in town to understand the power involved the last time I taught.

Is it really that hard to find someone to teach it that this is necessary?

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>Daid: Pretty sure you have a whole big bucket as your penny jar. You never have only two cents. :p

Any way Sacrifice could be updated to let it be used on undead?

Good stuff here, dont think ill use them (since Mal is demonology focused), but these are great. Thank you for lowering the CD for all of us. I was actually expecting the CD to be lowered by necro lore.

great stuff!

Player of Malisai

Winterberry goes in both hands.

~ X., Free the Fifth

Yanso says, "Everyone offer thanks to the healthy looking lass and the most famous sorcerer or all time for finding these magical flowers."

Regarding PC animates, can we extend the duration (currently under 20 minutes)? PC's are only animated for rescues and cannot be used as monsters. I think it would be nice if salt crystals weren't required for rescues but that's another tangent.

>>would I be able to make the next few rift crawler spawns maneuvers less effective using infest?

This only affects straight out casting/attacking and defenses, not maneuvers.

-KEIOS

Keios is pretty amazing. ~Wyrom

Can the hollow soulstones wands be updated to renew animates?

<<<<SACRIFICE CHANNEL, learned at 60 Necromancy Lore ranks, allows a Sorcerer to direct the energy of a sacrifice into their Animate, healing it of injuries and refreshing its animation to 20 minutes.>>>

FANFRIGGINTASTIC!!!

Nothing lukewarm about this, that is an awesome and much needed update! This addresses concerns sorcerers have voiced for a long time, in a creative and "sorcerish" way. Absolutely love it, thank you! :)

I will add my voice to the disappointment at losing the need to "teach" however. Sorcery, in particular, has such a rich legacy of teacher-student interactions. I thought the "sacrifice teach" component was a brilliant way to encourage and promote RP. And unlike uncommon runes, this is an ability every sorcerer has in equal portions, so it shouldn't be too overwhelming to find a teacher.

Teaching aside, this is a brilliant update and I can't wait to go try it out, not to mention invest a wee bit more in Necromancy.

Thanks!

~ GtG (and her sorcerous friends)

You utter a light chant and raise your hands, beckoning the lesser spirits to aid you with the Fire Spirit spell...
Your spell is ready.
You gesture at a jungle troll chieftain.
You hurl a roaring ball of fire at a jungle troll chieftain!
AS: +387 vs DS: +44 with AvD: +44 + d100 roll: +47 = +434
... and hit for 111 points of damage!
Flames incinerate left leg to the bone. Not a pleasant sight.
The troll chieftain howls in agony as the flames dance over her body!
... 30 points of damage!
Burst of flames to chest toasts skin nicely.

The roaring ball of fire strikes a jungle troll chieftain, blossoming into a much larger sphere of flame upon impact.
... 35 points of damage!
Burst of flames to back fries shoulder blades. Youch!
The troll chieftain howls in agony as the flames dance over her body!
... 30 points of damage!
Burst of flames to left hand burns fingers bright red.

Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.
>
Cast Round Time in effect: Setting stance to guarded.
>sac chan chief
You focus your inner thoughts, channeling a part of your spirit as you initiate a link with the troll chieftain.

Steeling your thoughts, you begin to draw energy from your victim.
The chieftain contorts in agony, her mouth open in a silent scream!

Your senses tingle, then become awash in a flood of power as the life leaves your hapless foe!
[You have earned 1 prestige point.]
The troll chieftain snarls her defiance one last time before going still.
A jungle troll chieftain seems to lose an aura of confidence.
A jungle troll chieftain seems to lose some dexterity.
Focusing on the link to your animate, you carefully feed an animated jungle troll chieftain the stolen life of your sacrifice, the pulsating energy revitalizing and healing him of his injuries.
Roundtime: 10 sec.
R>

[You have earned 1 prestige point.]
The troll chieftain bellows in rage one last time and dies.
An animated jungle troll chieftain falls to the ground in a heap.
You sense a loss of the connection between you and your animate.

Thanks. Love the great ideas here. Have to wait and see what else comes about before I consider changes to lore training though.

This makes me happy!

Thank you for keeping SACRIFICE TEACH in-game too; I really like using it as a roleplaying tool for dealing with non-sorcerers.

This one change addresses several persistent issues. Thank you!


<< In the mean time the duration and spirit loss changes will drastically increase my use of Sacrifice. >> --Xorus

It may be better than you-know-what.

Is there a way to get some sort of visual indication that the infest is in effect? Right now it's super nebulous as to when it starts and when it stops. It'd be great if there was some sort of adjective added to a creature under its influence!

With the level variance of critters it's really hard to see the effect of Infest, is there anyway we could get some sort of messaging when we encounter an infested target? And is the debuff present for anyone in the area hunting the infested targets, or only for the sorc?

with less than 20 minutes left on an animate....

>sac chan trol
You focus your inner thoughts, channeling a part of your spirit as you initiate a link with the jungle troll.

Steeling your thoughts, you begin to draw energy from your victim.
The troll contorts in agony, his mouth open in a silent scream!

Your senses tingle, then become awash in a flood of power as the life leaves your hapless foe!
[You have earned 1 prestige point.]
The jungle troll falls to the ground as the stillness of death overtakes him.
The deep blue glow leaves a jungle troll.
Focusing on the link to your animate, you carefully feed an animated Grimswarm orc sniper the stolen life of your sacrifice, the pulsating energy revitalizing and healing her of her injuries.

Roundtime: 10 sec.
R>
You sense a loss of the connection between you and your animate.
An animated Grimswarm orc sniper falls to the ground in a heap.

Not seeing where you lose the animate

So, it REFRESHES duration to 20 minutes? What happens if your current duration is 1 hour? It reduces to 20? Intended to be a negative in that way, you trade duration for healing? Most people I think get longer durations (I get 2 hours with a zircon). I think I'll keep using my wand for healing. But good for everyone without a wand I guess.

Has anyone tested to see the degree of weakening of critters under the INFEST? Is it put AS/CS/TD/DS or is it work with effective level in the BCS system? I think programming wise it would have been easier to move down the level, and that would affect myriad game mechanics (to point for us, focused implosion, focused maelstrom, and many manuevers), so I like to think maybe that was the way it was done.

The cooldown is reduced by necromancy lore, is there a limit, a seed? Or this for us to figure out, I suppose I may have to volunteer to test it considering...

I sense much more mana in my future.

Now if I had a Animate Dead Wishlist....

1. Reanimate animates (especially pcs) see logout bug and why the hobgoblin can't I reanimate if I use another gem and mana to redo it? I can't think of a good reason.
2. More control. If you have a semi animate and tell it to attack a magic immune critter and it sits there and casts at it, over, and over, and over. Or you ask it to spell you up and it spells you up with the same spell over and over and over, and not the one you want that you know it can cast. TELL ANIMATE ATTACK MAGIC, TELL ANIMATE ATTACK PHYSICAL, TELL ANIMATE ATTACK SPECIAL, TELL ANIMATE MAGIC 401, etc. I think this is actually a little difficult to code and requires core BCS changes.
3. Self animation, because self animation.