by: Tony "RadarX" Jones

It's been a busy week soldiers, and the AFS has kept us engaged with lots of news and events. Here are the highlights of this week and what you need to know!

Path Day: This week marked another major patch, changing a variety of things like squashing some bugs, and breaking a think or two (as patches tend to do sometimes). What were the most significant changes?

UI Changes - They made a few nifty changes that let you adjust chat box sizes (bigger basically) and font. Little tweaks like this will really make the game feel less rigid when it comes to the UI. Uniformity and simplicity is a good thing but players love flexibility. Also your health/power bars glow when you are in combat which can draw attention to the fact you are under fire.

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Be very very quiet, he's hunting Bane.

Shield Extender - Apparently the Sappers were getting a shield bonus even when creatures were inside the shield dome. This "feature" apparently has been corrected now.

More Control Points - They added another 9 which are located on Areaki. This should provide players with an opportunity to scrap with Bane invaders over what should be AFS owned turf.

Crafting - They changed crafting again, but honestly most of us haven't been able to figure out the difference. The names have been changed and some of the recipes add different modifiers than they did before. Enhancements were changed and...we just need a guide NCsoft! For the love of all that is holy, just a crafting guide!

The patch made tons of tweaks but those are the highlights. Find the original notes here.

More Changes in a Hotfix: Tabula Rasa Community Manager April "CuppaJo" Burba let us know they were hotfixing a few things and making additional changes that we'll see on the live server soon.

These are still on dev and will require further testing... but just an FYI.



. Increase range of Controlled Fission to 60m (from 20m)

. Increase range of Explosive Nanites to 60m (from 20m)

. Improved Crab Mine explosion damage by 50%

. Increased Crab Mine run speed by 100%

. Increased Shield Extender duration to 2 min with a 3 minute reuse

. Improved Stealth for Stealth Armor to 2% per pump per piece

. Improved Power Regen Aura for Mech Armor to 2% per pump per piece

. Increased range on Hortimonculous to 20m

. Increasing the time on reanimated corpses

. Increasing the damage done by corpse explosion by 4 times and increasing radius

. Bio Augmentation will have a 4 minute timer and a 5 minute cool down

. Increasing the damage on carpet bombing

. Nerfing Lightbender damage

. Nerfing Forean Machina damage

. Nerfing Hominis machina damage

. Nefing Treemite damage



Other knowns we are working on:

. Reinforcements suck (they just kinda sit there, don't do a lot of damage, etc.)

Ok that's a LOT of stuff to take in. An additional 2% on Stealth armor should make the Rangers a little more happy. I know I'm tired of being visible at 35 meters. The Mech Armor increase should put that ability back in line with what it was like before the combat changes. Considering how much punishment our armor takes now, this seems like a perfect idea. The creature nerf was very much needed as many of those listed go straight after health bars. Overall very good stuff.

Dev Diary on Control Points - Tabula Rasa Producer Starr Long released a developer diary discussing how Control Points were created and what they hope to accomplish with them. It's a pretty interesting read if you enjoy hearing about game design but you can find it on our site.

***Rant Alert*** The following statements are that of RadarX and not necessarily any other Ten Ton Hammer employee.

The Escapist Whines about Tabula Rasa - The Escapist put up an video...editorial? This video concerns Richard Garriott and Tabula Rasa. I wouldn't recommend wasting precious time seeing it but if you must (and it's NSFW), go watch for yourself and make your own determination. I honestly don't have the first clue who this guy is, but I saw a few things that bothered me.

A) Yahtzee you talk way too fast. The MicroMachine man called and he wants his bit back. I understand with such complexity you want to make things go as quickly as possible but between your speed and accent I (and a number of other people I asked to listen) barely understand a word you were saying.

B) You avoid MMOG's so...why are we supposed to care what you think again?

C) The TR UI looks like World of Warcraft? Did you really play World of Warcraft? By similar do you mean hotbar buttons I can find in every game on the market? Because I don't remember a big targeting circle in WoW.

D) You don't like MMOG's...climb off your soapbox reverend we GET it.

E) FPS players and MMORPG players aren't in the same demographic? Half the people I know that play MMORPG's have or do play FPS games on a regular basis. That isn't an official survey but then again I didn't see any facts in your video. I know they have games in Australia so I can't see how you drew this conclusion.

If you couldn't tell, that was the biggest waste of time I have seen this week and without taking any more shots I'd just like to say I disagree with them. We'll leave it there.

Friday Night Fights Continue - Last week in the Concorida Wilderness NCsoft sponsored a boxing match where 32 players went hand to hand against each other and the final contender fought General British himself. They are running it again tonight so congratz on winning Neweeng and good luck to those challengers who will attempt to dethrone him. Find all the details on how to enter at the official site.

We hope this weeks briefing has been a little educational for you soldier, because knowledge saves lives in the field. Be sure to keep checking back for more and check out our forums.