Sanya from the Camelot Herald answers a few simple questions this week. I am sure she gets loads of these and this is a really nice way to keep her typing fingers from getting tired so she can still play the game. No, I was not able to resolve the many excellent evade questions I received this week. They have not been forgotten. For now, read onwards for resolution order, CS questions, and an explanation of why the buff system explanation didn't work for some classes. Q: The way you explained the new buff system seems wrong, wrong, wrong for my (insert hybrid class here). Who’s crazy, me or you? A: Me. It was an internal miscommunication. I gave the original explanation exactly as *I* received it, and the explanation works for the classes I am personally familiar with through my own play time. But it seems that originally, “spec” buffs were envisioned as buffs that worked on two stats, and “base” buffs would only affect one stat. This isn’t how it ultimately worked out, as you all well know. However, some of us at Mythic kept using the term “spec buff” to refer to double buffs, as opposed to buffs that require spec points to use. I’m told I looked like I’d eaten a cockroach when this little detail was explained to me. So the original explanation still applies, but you should substitute “double stat buff” where it says “spec,” and “single stat buff” where it says “base.” The original explanation does work, but there are too many exceptions - exceptions can be explained by my poor use of terminology. I completely apologize for the confusion. Q: I was being harassed in the game, and I sent in an appeal. No one ever talked to me! A: We usually deal with harassment by talking to the person who is being a cretin, not the victim. If we go to investigate, and see nothing, we never just delete the appeal – we go look at the logs to see what happened. Our CSRs play the game and know perfectly well how frustrating some circumstances are. Q: Why did you delete my appeal? A: We didn’t. We never delete appeals – but we may close some without personally responding to the customer. If that’s the case, an email is automatically sent to the address we have on file for you. Q: What exactly is the support@darkageofcamelot.com email used for? A: That email address is ONLY used for technical and billing support. Any other questions sent there generally receive a polite form letter letting you know that they don’t handle gameplay issues. The people that read that email do forward feedback-type letters. Usually to me, so addressing a letter to support AND me is not necessary. Q: I looked in my errorlog.txt as you suggested last week, and tried to send it to you. But the file was huge, and my email server wouldn’t process it. Do you still want them? A: We can only use error logs that are less than two weeks old from the current date, so you can go ahead and delete old ones. By the way, a complete error log contains a header, and two enormous chunks of data. Just sending us the header doesn’t help. We’ve used the error logs received in the last few weeks to solve some pretty big issues, so keep them coming! Q: I spent a few days going link dead a lot. What’s going on? A: A lot of different things. Cable users had a lot of problems this week due to some infrastructure issues on the cable networks across the country. We’re doing what we can to alleviate the problems with some tweaks to the way we send out packets. When the problem is US, you’ll know because hardly anyone can log into DAOC. Also, when it’s US, we’ll tell you as we have in the past. You may not get as immediate an answer as you would like, because our network people have to investigate, contact our ISP, and wait for an answer. If the answer is inconclusive, we have to investigate our own material, and possibly call the ISP back with the mature adult equivalent of “It is SO your fault.” Either way, it’s a time consuming process that takes awhile to get an answer more definitive than “we think” or “we guess.” Q: What’s the time difference between the Herald and Europe? A: Us to GMT is –5 hours. You’ll have to do the math for your particular part of Europe. Q: Regarding spellcrafting – you said that a mistake at the highest levels of spellcrafting could kill you. Uh, I’m a pure crafter, I really don’t want to lose experience. Also, if I’m imbuing a player made object, whose name goes on the item as the creator? A: You won’t lose exp, and both names go on the object. Q: What is the resolution order of attacks and blocks? A: First, the game checks to see if the enemy would have even hit you. (Bladeturns, damage shields, etc all fall into this step.) Next, the game checks to see if you evaded the attack. If you don’t evade, the game checks to see if you parried the attack. If you don’t parry, you get a chance to block if you’re equipped to do so. After all that, the game tells you how much damage you took. This is how it works – the lead programmer just looked directly at the code to be absolutely certain. Short version – the checks are hit/miss, evade, parry, block.