There's a little box floating at the top of every page now telling you about the beta contest - I'll be using that box anytime there's something I need to make sure as many people as possible are aware of. It's pretty basic - you'll notice that if you actually do what it says and go to the contest page, it's still floating up there telling you to go to the page you're on... but hopefully it works, which is about all I want.

First off, <8 Sanya for embracing the SoaP goodness. Not quite the title I'd have liked, but I guess "I've had it with these mother******* cows in this mother******* Grab Bag!" was a bit much...

Oh, come on, you couldn't have resisted either, if you were me.

Q: The Labyrinth press release says the new race can use 2H weapons in one hand! Have you thought about XYZ?

A: Yes, we have, and we think we can do it in a good way for the game. This is where I mention that it's only a plan. Actual play testing may yet prove that we should not do this, in which case, we won't. It's a press release, not holy writ.

. . . . .

Q: According to my sources, a paladin´s damage per second should be increased while under the effect of its haste aura. Could you confirm/negate this rumor, please? Also, during some test fights against the same time of monsters, it seemed that the weapon´s base damage increased when being hasted, but the used style´s growth rate decreased at the same percentage, thus causing the sum of damage over a long period of time (say, five to ten hits) to remain virtually the same, regardless of the paladin being hasted or not.

For example, the same style caused in sum 150 damage (40 damage from the style) with the haste aura being turned off, but 150 (20 from style) while being hasted. Could it be the growth rate of the weapon styles adjusts itself to the relative weapon speed?

A: I would like to thank you for spelling everything properly, using punctuation, and using paragraph breaks to boot. As you probably know, punctuation and grammar can drastically change the meaning of a question.

I got the answer from the Redheaded Stepchild. Short answer: Haste = more damage over the long haul.

By the way, there are so many factors that play minor roles that we could not even begin to answer you without simplifying matters somewhate. Or, as the Redhead put it: If we try to factor [all that] into examples, heads will explode, kittens will die, and little children's toys will burst in to flames.

That aside, there are two components of melee damage we are interested in. The first, base damage. The second, styled damage. Base damage remains constant per swing. So, no matter how fast or slow you are swinging, that damage should be the same for each swing. Styled damage remains constant over time. So, over one minute, if you swing 100 times or 10 times, your style damage will add up to the same amount, and it will be split evenly across each swing in that time frame.

When you add melee haste, like Celerity, your swing speed is increasing. The base damage per swing is staying the same, but the styled damage is going down. Because the styled damage over a time period is the same, and base damage over time increases the faster you swing, damage over time will increase with melee haste. It might not be readily apparent because of the melee damage variance. As your statistics professor would say, five to ten swing test runs can be incredibly deceptive because of this variance. The sample size is much too small. An appropriate sample size to see a clear difference would be around 1000 styled hits for each test run.

It's expansion time, which means it's beta time, which means it's contest time! Last year's contest didn't do so well, but I'm chalking that up to me not giving everyone enough time - this time around, I'm giving you almost a month. Other than the duration, this year's contest will be almost the same as last year's... but for those of you who don't remember last year's, here's the overview:

Most beta contests come in the form of a screenshot contest, or a poem contest, or something similar. They're fun, but since everyone else does them I like to do something different; something that matches the focus of the site, and hopefully provides something more useful to everyone long-term than a collection of haikus.

This contest could best be labeled an "information contest". Basically, to enter you just send something in that could be put on the site (or information that would improve it). A guide, links that you think should be on the links page, a link to a guide, a note that a particular piece of info on the site is out of date... etc. The more useful your submission will be to future visitors, the more points you get - the five people with the most points at contest's end get a spot in the Labyrinth of the Minotaur beta.

To enter, send your entry to contest@classesofcamelot.com. The contest will run from now until September 15. The contest page is here.

Here are the notes from Pendragon:

===================================

Dark Age of Camelot
Version 1.85c Release Notes
Tradeskills, Quest System, and Class Changes
August 17, 2006

===================================

TRADESKILL CHANGES AND FIXES

Pendragon Test Monsters

- To facilitate testing, we have added a merchant for each realm that will sell dropped components for alchemy, legendary weapons, and specialty recipes. The merchant is available in the capital city for each realm. The names of the merchants are as follows:

Albion: Pedlen
Midgard: Seljan
Hibernia: Reic

Alchemy Updates

We greatly appreciate the feedback received for Version 1.85b's tradeskill changes. The following notes are adjustments made as a result of your feedback.

- The reactive blinding netherium armor tincture, reactive blinding arcanium armor tincture, volatile blinding netherium weapon tincture, and volatile blinding arcanium weapon tincture recipes have been removed from Alchemy.

- The stable greater celeric netherium and stable greater celeric arcanium tinctures will now have a 7 minute reuse timer associated with their charges.

- The stable neutralizing arcanium and stable revivifying arcanium tinctures will now have a 5 minute reuse timer associated with their charges.

- The spell duration for the invigoration potions has been decreased from 10 minutes to 5 minutes.

Specialty Armor Updates

- Added steeple hat recipes for the specialty armors for all realms. Please note that the steeple hats have the same 5th slot bonus as the existing circlets.

- Added new recipes for reinforced and studded armor sleeves that grant 5 quickness cap.

- Added new recipes for cloth armor helms (circlets, wreaths, crowns and steeple hats) that grant 5 quickness cap.

CAMELOT CLASSIC WORLD NOTES

Monster Notes - Midgard

- Elder Skogsfru will now drop tinderboxes.

Quest Notes - Midgard

- Carved in Bone - The quest journal now gives the correct directions to Rielder's location in Mularn.

SHROUDED ISLES WORLD NOTES

Quest Notes - Hibernia

- Learning the Paths – Players who are level five should no longer become an Animist when they select the keyword to learn about Animists from Faolan.

Mythic has finally released the overview of their next expansion, along with the name: Labyrinth of the Minotaur. Here's the overview from the official site:

Dark Age of Camelot celebrates its fifth anniversary with the release of Labyrinth of the Minotaur, the new expansion for the epic fantasy massively-multiplayer online role-playing game. This is the seventh expansion for Camelot and it introduces a hulking new player race, a unique new player class, a massive new dungeon, and an exciting new Realm vs. Realm™ (RvR) game play experience.

The ancient race of Minotaur has returned to the lands of Albion, Midgard, and Hibernia to reclaim powerful but corrupt relics hidden long ago by their ancestors. Lust for these relics once brought about the downfall of the powerful Minotaur kingdom and their evil influence now threatens the kingdoms of Man.

The Minotaur seek the help of the three Realms to reclaim the lost relics and prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. In exchange, the Minotaur have promised to share the secrets of the Mauler, a unique profession whose practitioners draw upon the powers of the earth to enhance their martial arts prowess.

Only the mightiest of heroes will be called in the service of their king to aid the Minotaur with their quest. They will venture deep beneath the former Minotaur capital on the island of Agramon to explore the maze-like Labyrinth, a dungeon whose size knows no equal. Rumors of an army of mechanical constructs powered by dark magic abound and it is said that Cerberus himself watches over the relics.

Those heroes lucky enough to emerge from the Labyrinth in possession of a relic travel the Frontiers as marked men. There are many that covet these relics and they will stop at nothing to possess them. The pursuit of these relics will escalate into a vast struggle that will burn like a wild fire, engulfing all races and beings across the Realms.

Key Features

• A New Playable Race for all Realms - The Minotaur. Half man, half bull, the Minotaur is so powerful he can wield two-handed weapons with a single hand.
• A New Player Class for all Realms - The Mauler. Unlock this new brawler class and channel the elemental powers of the earth.
• A New Dungeon - The Labyrinth. Deep beneath the island of Agramon, this vast maze is the largest single dungeon in any MMO.
• New RvR Game Play - Minotaur Relics. Players may acquire and use these relics, but become targets to be hunted by the other Realms.
• New Item Slots - Mythical Items. Hunt the depths of the Labyrinth for these rare new items.
• New Levels - Champion Levels 6-10. Five additional Champion Levels allow players to expand their powers, abilities, and items slots.
• Requires the original Dark Age of Camelot and Darkness Rising™ expansions to play.

For a very (very VERY) long time now, the spell lists here have been woefully inaccurate - first because I was waiting for Mythic to update their XML so that the spell lists could be updated that way, and later because I was planning on making the spells (like most of the rest of the site) database-driven.

Well, neither of those things has happened or is going to happen, but we've got new spell lists anyway - at this point, pretty much copies of the Herald's lists.

Why bother with spell lists, if they're the same as the Herald's? Well, they're not going to stay that way. If you look at the new Reaver spell list, you'll see notes on each spell listed below the official spell description. These notes are for things that players should know about a spell but which are not listed in typical spell tables. In addition, I'll be adding information to the tables that was present on the old CoC pages but not on the Herald.

In addition to the class spell pages (which you can get to via the navigation bar or by going to classesofcamelot.com/spells/), each spell skill now has a page as well, located at classesofcamelot.com/spells/SkillName.asp. Enhancement, for example, is located at classesofcamelot.com/spells/Enhancement.asp.

To make the most of the new lists, I'll need help from those of you who know your class - what should others know about a particular spell that they can't learn by looking at the table as it is now? If you have something, you can email me, use the comment page, or post in the discussion thread. And please do the same, of course, if you run into any problems with the pages.

Sooooo.... yeah. There are Google ads on the site now - currently just a small box directly below the navigation, but I'm going to be experimenting with the placement and form of the ads. I'm mentioning them, despite their self-evident presence, because we ("we" being myself and Mistwolf) at one point – years ago though it may have been - made something of a to-do about the site being ad-free. Why the change?

First, despite having left years ago, Mistwolf has been paying the hosting bill all this time. It's past time that changed, and why not let the site pay for itself?

Second, it’s easier these days to have less annoying but more useful ads, thanks to AdSense’s success. There’s no need for pop-ups, interstitials, or other such intrusive nonsense. And Firefox means that if you really don’t want to see the ads, you don’t have to.

And finally – the biggest reason, for me – why not? I have no love for sites that put money ahead of content – that was a large part of why I left another fansite and came to CoC in the first place – but putting ads on the site will not change its focus. The site can remain focused on the same thing it’s always been – getting DAoC information to the community – and not be a financial burden on anyone.

That being said, I’ll make pretty much the same pledge Mistwolf made when asking for donations: Whatever money comes in from the site will be used for the site in some form. Obviously the main way of that happening will be to pay the hosting bill, but should the ads bring in more than that, well... I’m not sure, exactly. It won’t go to line my pockets, though.

If you have any comments on the ads or creative uses for extra income they might generate, please post in the discussion thread.

Edit: There's now an ad box at the bottom-center of each page as well... I'm trying to keep the ads visible, but not annoying...