The Captain’s dye pots, goggles and hide armor

This one is mostly for archers.

Last time I wouldn’t tell you who was counting at the back of Penhale’s Hold. It’s Jory Penhale, the Smuggling Captain. There’s a Penhale at the counter of each of the Counting Rooms, the Silk Room, the Dye Room and the Lace Room, and nobody in the cove explains that. He talks like a shopkeeper and he calls you a customer. He’s also level 43, with 400 hitpoints.

He charges you as soon as a fight starts, but he won’t chase you far from his counter. Every fifth swing is a poisoned one (“Interest is due, customer.”), and at half health he calls three of his runners in to help. For the poison, the Bowyer in Gullhaven now keeps a few antidotes, restocked over time, and you can make them at the workbench from a spider eye and two green slime gels. Standing next to him and trading blows was always hard work. Now shooting him costs you something too.

Shoot at him with a bow or crossbow and, about every seven seconds, he throws pots of dye at whoever is doing it, wherever they stand: two at most, picked from everyone shooting at him. He never aims at those fighting him hand to hand, but a splash lands on anyone near it, so archers who crowd the fighters put them in its way too. He shouts “Mind the stock.” as they go up. The tiles where each pot will land are marked in its color, three by three, so step off them. If you’re still there when it lands it hits for 9 to 18, and so does anyone else in the splash, so spread out.

A pot leaves a stain on the floor for fifteen seconds, and it stings you while you stand in it. Get caught in the splash and you’re dyed indigo or crimson for a minute.

Something changed for monsters everywhere, too. Stay in one place long enough, about ten minutes within ten tiles of where you arrived, and the aggressive monsters round you get used to you and stop picking fights, until you leave and come back. Logging out doesn’t keep it. Not the Captain, though: he never gets used to a customer.

If you’re lucky he drops his hat. The Rangers tricorne is black felt gone gray with salt, with a gull’s feather in the band, and it’s proper ranged gear: Defense +20, Ranged attack +7 and Magic defense +3, at Ranged 40 to wear. It’s a 1 in 128 drop, and nobody sells one like it.

Your character has a new slot: Eyes. It sits to the left of your head in the Gear tab, and the first thing to go in it is a pair of brass goggles, brass rims and amber lenses to keep the glare off a long shot. They give +3 Ranged attack and +2 Defense, and you need Ranged 10 to wear them.

They show under nearly anything on your head. Only a helmet that covers your face hides them: the full helms, the dragon helm and the Royal Knight’s plumed helms.

Last time rangers got their bows. This time they get something to wear with them. Hide armor comes in eight tiers, each a full set of coif, body, chaps, vambraces and boots. The free five need the same level in Defense and in Ranged: leather 1, hardened leather 10, studded leather 20, wolf hide 30 and bear hide 40. The three members tiers, yeti fur, serpent scale and dragonhide, need Defense 40 and Ranged 50, 60 and 70. None of it costs you any accuracy with a bow, the way plate does.

You can make the free five yourself, with Artisanry at the workbench. Leather and hardened leather are made from cowhide, which cows drop, and studded leather is cowhide and a steel bar. Wolf hide is made from wolf pelts, which wolves drop and the Alpha Wolf always does, and bear hide from bear pelts, off the brown bears deep in Thornwood. Leather starts at Artisanry 1, hardened at 10, studded at 20, wolf hide at 30 and bear hide at 40. A body takes three hides or pelts, chaps two and the other pieces one each. If you’d rather buy your first set, the Bowyer in Gullhaven still sells leather.

Serpent scale, one of the members’ three, is the green set at the end of the row above, and it’s under the tricorne in the first picture too.

The Ranged and Defense guides in the Skills tab now list ranged armor on rows of its own. And the crossbows have been redrawn, with their own poses for carrying and shooting, and fittings to suit each wood.

There are five new amulets to make at the workbench with Artisanry. The fang amulet is for archers: wolf fangs on a leather thong, the biggest capped in silver. The next three set a gem in gold, each with something off a creature worked in: a sapphire over a spyglass lens for accuracy, a ruby bound with wight sinew for strength, and an amethyst with a ghost’s wisp sealed behind it for warding off spells. The pearl choker is a band of pearls with a silver clasp, and it’s only for looks.

The Alpha Wolf drops a fang or two every time. The other three are new drops: the ghosts on Hollowmere’s north shore leave a wisp about one time in three, the barrow wights drop their sinew one time in four, and the brine skeletons aboard the Patience, deep in the Undercliff, drop the spyglass lenses they still carry as often. Spiders drop the silk for the choker, and the pearls come from raking oysters on the shore, about one for every seven oysters. Rings, on the other hand, were worth far more than went into them, so their value has come down: a silver ring is worth 200 coins now, and a diamond ring 6,500.

The website has a new account page. Your character stands at the top just as they look in game, and the arrows turn them round. Beside them are your membership and a button straight into the game. Below that you can change your email or password, set up two-factor login and see where you’re logged in.