Shattered Kingdoms

You can see the list of changes here:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=20946

Some preliminary clarifications:
- The game previously only had the ability to save a single pet with your player file. Now all of your pets will save when you quit. They will reappear when you log back in. Any creature that you can create or control using a class ability is now considered a pet for this purpose including but not limited to: store pets, elementals, animated dead, controlled dead, charmed and dominated creatures. Tribunal guards that you can order around are still not considered pets.
- If you don't have a pet store pet already, you should always be able to buy one regardless of the pets currently following you. If you already have a store pet, it should no longer affect whether you can get pets through any of your spells or abilities.
- As a consequence of some of these changes, elementals and probably other pets can now pick up items. Most of them won't be able to wear most equipment due to their creature type. And while multiple pets can save, their equipment still will not. Therefore when you quit, your pets will remove and drop all of their equipment before leaving the realms with you. You may want to macro up a quit alias to have them remove and drop their gear before you quit so that you can pick it up yourself.

Wait, does this mean sorcs can charm good charm NPC's and hoard them and scouts can hoard good charm tames? If so that's a huge problem. Not only that, can multiple NPC's be created this way? I mean what if a sorc can have 2 Lathrons? That'd be really bad.

The warlock change is nice, though I still say elementals should require concentration rather than be on a timer.

Hmm... no, they can't hoard creatures. But it does bring up a point that I hadn't considered. If you charm a unique creature and quit with it, then it will eventually re-pop. When you log back in, there will now be two of them in the game. There may need to be an additional code change to deal with this, although I'm not sure what we want to do about it yet. Perhaps unique creatures should not be allowed to save. Feel free to give your opinions.

I don't know. Unique creatures need to save simply because of scouts. I mean things like the Swamp boa, golden mane lion and other tames that are singular spawns and such would be hurt. The scout would have to go track down the tame again every log in and would be inconvenienced, especially when the pets have some pretty big travel times. (Ie on the other end of the realms where you log off.)

Is there any way to set a nosave flag for NPCs and such perhaps much like items? That way when you log off you can't save Lathron or such. This'll allow scouts to keep their tames but not allow sorcs to intentionally spawn multiple lathons or so. Sorry if it's not helpful, just brainstorming and sharing concerns.

There is a difference between a guy like Lathron who is a unique character and a golden maned lion. Even if the lion only spawns in a single location, he is not necessarily one-of-a-kind in the entire world. I don't think most scout pets would be impacted by a change to prevent unique NPCs from saving.

ALSO: If you are using pets and see anything strange or the game becomes unstable, please let me know ASAP. Making multiple pets save probably doesn't sound like a big deal but it was a fairly major change and it could cause the game to crash if I didn't cover all the bases exactly right.

It appears that pets gained through charm person do not properly respawn when logging back in. The spell is released on logout and is not listed on release once logged back in, which might explain why the pet isn't there, either.

Alright after the mUD came back up I tried to buy a pet with my scout. I couldn't purchase one and upon releasing it I tried to tame my boa back. I couldn't and it instead crawled west and poofed into nothingness.

Edit: After releasing the pet and the escaping boa, I went looking to find another pet, a very low level one. I had an impossible time taming and and in fact it couldn't be tamed. Afterwards I logged out and immediately logged back. Tamed the pet without any problems.

Apparently buying a storebought pet and releasing it prohibits you from taming anymore pets until you log out for some reason.

I'd prefer that unique charms/controls couldn't be hoarded, but other than that sounds like an interesting change, even though it buffs scouts even more.

Charms also don't save over logout. I logged out with Bill Kourney and a store-bought pet, and when I logged back in I had no pet, just like before the update.

I don't know, a lot of the charmable NPCs that sorcerers use are unique little snowflakes. If unique charms can't save onto the file then what's the point? Not that I'm arguing for sorcerers to get buffs, they're one of the last classes that actually needs this sort of thing, so I would be pro not saving unique charms.

The animate dead nerf was a pretty good change though. Necromancers desperately needed a wimp in some form, and then any buff to warlocks is definitely welcome. But seriously, a good addition to warlocks is to make any Dark-Avenger character die instantly to magma spray, no save, no magic resistance.

Deep-elf necros are pretty much done with regarding the necromancer change. That's not bad, just interesting to note.

Come to think of it, necromancers are probably done as a whole.