Update 1.37.0 - The giants, rebuilt

Update 1.37.0

The three heaviest monsters in the game have been rebuilt in 3D. The Ettin, the Mountain Giant and the Demon were still the sprites of 1998, animated in a handful of frames and facing eight directions that were mirrored from four. They now move, strike, take damage and fall with animations drawn from scratch, at more than double the frame count. The Warehouse Keeper also opens a second vault, the Shared Bank, which every character on your account uses at once. And the biggest change in your own hands: a normal melee attack now lands only when you are truly next to your target.

You must update your client to log in. Close the game and the launcher, then reopen the launcher and press PLAY. This update changes how the client and the server talk to each other, so an old client cannot connect at all.

New

• Shared Bank: the Warehouse Keeper now opens a second vault that every character on your account shares. Store something with one character and take it out with another, along with a shared gold balance. It holds 100 items across the same ten sorted pages as your personal bank, with the same search box and Sort button. Items bound to a character — Hero gear, angels and anything bought with Coins — stay in your personal bank and cannot be placed there. The Warehouse Keeper's old Talk option has been replaced by this.
• The Ettin has been rebuilt in 3D. Its slap is now two blows, one with each hand and offset from each other, and the strike travels past you instead of showing you an open palm. When it dies it drops to its knees, holds for a moment and falls face down, where before the corpse simply froze. Its walk no longer slides across the ground.
• The Mountain Giant has been rebuilt in 3D — five brand new animations at more than double the frame count, its footsteps now land in time with its stride, and its club makes a sound when it hits the ground instead of when it winds up. Its attack is a vertical hammer blow with the club, not the Ettin's slap.
• The Demon has been rebuilt in 3D, with six animations including a casting pose it never had: it raises one hand with its fist wrapped in red flame, and the flame keeps burning as a light of its own after dark.
• New /friend command and Alt+F shortcut to send a friend request to the player you point at. Requests only reach players who are in peace mode or inside a building, and never while they are in the arena.
• The Tile Grid now marks 16 px cells, and a new Grid Opacity slider under it in F12 lets you make it fainter or stronger.
• Guild Captains can now assign the Huntmaster, Raidmaster, Veteran and Guildsman ranks.

Improved

• Melee attacks now land only when you are right next to your target; Critical attacks keep their full reach, and monsters that hit up close now step in beside you.
• Only short swords and daggers stagger on hit now. Other weapons, spells and monsters no longer freeze you in place (big knockback hits still push).
• Minimap auto-run no longer stops when a monster gets in the way or hits you; it walks around it and keeps going, and it keeps pushing through the same path instead of detouring.
• Double-clicking the minimap now finds a real path to the spot, including portals, instead of getting stuck on walls.
• Recall can no longer be used for 10 seconds after taking damage from a player or a monster, except inside your own town.
• Clicks and spell targeting now land on the 16 px cell centered under the cursor, and the Tile Grid draws one square per walkable spot with your character in the middle.
• Damage numbers now always show when a hit lands, including hits on your own summons and small PvP hits.
• Your starter weapon can now be sold to a shop for 1 gold, and new characters start with a tidy bag: potions grouped by type.
• Logging out is now instant when you are inside a building (warehouse, shop, blacksmith, city hall and the rest).
• Feedback and ticket replies now accept up to 1000 characters, and the text cursor follows the arrow keys.
• The arrival platform on Bleeding Island is now a safe zone.
• The stone slab and stairway in Aresden Farm and Elvine Farm are gone. They led to a dungeon that does not exist here, and the spot is plain meadow now.
• Three unobtainable leftovers — Red Candy, BlueCandy and Green Candy — are gone from the item catalogue; no drop, shop, craft or quest ever granted them.
• The wiki now spells its formulas in plain terms — Str, Vit, Level and the Merien bonus instead of raw variable names — and the item affix tables name each secondary attribute in your own language.
• The wiki no longer claims a Tutelary Angel raises an attribute — angels grant combat powers only, and the build calculator's angelic fields now cap at the Merien talent's +15.

Fixed

• Depositing an item in your Guild Warehouse no longer tells you the item was dropped and could not be transferred. The deposit always worked; only the message was wrong, and it read exactly like losing the item.
• Bows with the Archery talent (step 3) now stagger on 5% of hits, as the tooltip says.
• Recall no longer costs a point of mana when you have mana-save gear. It is free again, as intended.
• The Sunder (Broken Armor) icon no longer stays stuck on a target after its stacks expire.
• Monsters now cross narrow diagonal bridges in both directions instead of stopping at the end of the plank, and no longer get stuck on them after being knocked back.
• Demons, Gargoyles and other monsters in Tower of Hell 3 and the deep dungeons no longer get stuck behind narrow bridges.
• Scrolling the mouse wheel in the System Menu now moves between tabs consistently, including past the end of the Graphics tab.