Changes Board

Greetings, All Shaman skills/songs that use materia now allow for you to forgo explicitly specifying a materia type when you use them. If you omit a materia, the skill/song will automatically pick the best type for the skill/song that you have available. This should make Shamans easier to play without having to necessarily worry about skill/song and materia combinations. As long as you don't spend materia like a maniac without killing anything, you shouldn't really run the risk of running out of materia. Of course, as has always been the case, you have to be killing mobs that provide the tier of materia that your songs/skills are using, regardless of whether you specify the exact materia or let the song/skill auto-select it for you. There is one song that is an exception: rebirth. It has a dynamic materia cost which makes calculating an auto-selected materia a bit more difficult code-wise. I'll try to look into that, but in full disclosure, there are only two materia that give it a boost anyhow: roagmo and efantig (efantig being a stronger boost). So just set your alias to explicitly use one of the two and forget about it. :) On a final note, all Shaman songs/skills that were affected by this change have been converted to a new skill system known as "gen_skill". All "modern" skills use this system, and we have been slowly moving "legacy" skills into the new paradigm for, well...a decade or two. Anyhow, I mention this because while in theory this shouldn't change the skill's behavior from the standpoint of the player using it, in practice it sometimes does. Namely, it can alter the range of the "roll" (think of dice) of the skill level whenever the skill is used (in comparison to what used to "roll" with the old system. So after converting these Shaman songs/skills, don't be surprised if things seem either underpowered or overpowered at first. It might take a bit of playtime for me to smooth out the rough edges. Cheers, Marisil