After a few hiccups we are proud to present the latest patch which will assist the Swadian war effort! (If anything the hiccups should prove that we work hard and fast to fix the problems!!)

Fixes

• armours that missed the the nerf has been corrected
  
• craftable armour and legendary helmets stats changed to correspond with latest patch
  
• shields considerably buffed
  
• decreased weight on skirmisher's armours
  
• remaining cavalry stuff moved to infantry (stats changed accordingly)
  
• invisible xbows are... visible
  
• Xbow class has had a large overhaul!
  
• Flamberge has had a buff!
  
• Hardmode nerf
  
• Lots of weapons had damage or weight buff!
  
• More rangers!!!
  

Greetings Swadians, today a new patch is upon us and as you might have heard there are quite a few changes this time around.
We are sad to say that due to a lack of food in the kingdom of Swadia, the King has ordered all horses to be slaughtered for sausages. We have however received reinforcements from new types of troops!

• New Features!
  
• All players have received their Mounted exp * 4 as Assist exp.
  
• Two new playable classes. The Crossbowman and the Skirmisher!
  
• Gear has been re-balanced and shuffled around again to fit classes better.
  
• Added massive amounts of new gear for players.
  
• Nords have had their looks updated and should now look more like proper Nords!
  
• All AI re-balanced. Mounted troops removed.
  
• Fixed random spawns on hard mode, all your favorite Nords are now back! Including Shield Maidens and Pikemen!
  
• Added anvil for repairing shields.
  
• New menu music! (For real this time)
  

• Maps!
  
• New map, Swadian Great hall
  
• New map, Port Assault
  
• Swadian Castle Fixed and back in rotation
  
• Mountain Outpost, Swadian City, Caravan Ambush, Swadian Town, Hidden Cave, Swadian Outskirts Updated/Fixed
  

• Fixes and changes
  
• Shrine cost is now dependant on level, 25 gold per level.
  
• Reduced Healing Pot and Ammo Box use times by 33%.
  
• Reduced foraging time by about 60%
  
• Construction time on barricades halved.
  
• Fixed deployable items not deploying on scene props.
  
• Fixed Res Tomes being able to refill at ammo boxes.
  
• Increased collision mesh on barricade and construction site.
  Bots should no longer be able to get on top of barricades and get pulled underground with it.
  Players should also not be able to walk over construction sites anymore.
  
• Banners updated
  
• More Rangers!!
  

You might have noticed we have been very quiet on the patch front lately. Well we decided to skip the next few patches and go straight for our next milestone 0.4.0, we have been working for a bit and we are now kicking into gear trying to get it finished soon. We are hoping for a release next week, but as usual I don't give promises. 

The reason I am making this post before a patch however is that this patch will bring a long some rather big changes in the mod as it is now, and we feel we should give you a heads up about it before it goes live and takes you of guard.

The main thing about this patch for us is to bring stats on everything, player classes and AI, down by a bit. As it is now we are touching caps on everything (even way over caps on some things) and this makes it an incredible pain to keep things balanced and it also gets in the way of later reward systems we have in mind. This does not mean you will all be peasants, far from it, we are simply toning down the top tiers a bit so you won't step from a warrior to a demi-god in 1 tier like it is now. With this change we can also give a lot more incentive to hybridize and give actual choice on what class you want as your next one after you have hit top tier in one class. Which brings me to the main point of this post.

There has been rumours and discussions about new classes for a while now. And yes, we are bringing in two new classes for players in 0.4.0!

Crossbowman, will be the new sniper favorite. Awesome accuracy, high piercing damage, but slow to reload. Will also be wearing medium armor as well as have the ability to fight with one-handed weapons and shields rather well if he gets forced into melee.

Skirmisher. This will be a lightly armored and very fast melee hybrid type. Focusing on polearms, mainly spears and pikes. While also being deadly with throwing weapons and shield.

Archers will be the ones with high rate of fire from now on, while suffering a bit on the accuracy side compared to crossbows. Commandos will remain the kings of melee still able to withstand a ton of damage with their thick armor and strong shields, but will also remain quite deadly up close.

As for Cavalry. Some of you might have seen this coming and some of you will likely hate us after this patch. After much discussion for months now we have finally decided on taking Cavalry, both player and AI, out of Nord Invasion.

There are several reasons for this. Cavalry as it is now is a monstrous soloing machine at top tier, it can solo content not meant to be soloed with ease if the player knows what he is doing. Of course we could just tone down Cavalry, but then we will end up going over the line. There is a fine line in regards to Cavalry, either it is overpowered or it is useless. There is no middle ground. Yes we can add measures to counter Cavalry like pikes and ranged weapons, but these hurts players on foot just as much, if not more, then players on horseback.

Secondly Cavalry is not a team class, it's never playing in sync with other classes and it has a tendency to always be the last man standing and a great delayer when everyone else is dead. Yes Cavalry kiting is a form of team play, but it is in essence a way to break the AI and this makes it even harder for us to balance the mod. Do we balance it around Cavalry kiting to be able to get anywhere thereby making it impossible to succeed without it. Or do we balance around players on foot being able to hold ground at tactical positions trough teamwork, thereby making it a walk in the park when you have Cavalry kiting. Once again there is no proper middle ground.

It also makes our job of making balanced and fun maps a lot harder. You  have to take account for the stupid AI cavalry being able to reach players and you have to try to make maps suited for player Cavalry as well as players on foot, this brings us back to the kiting question. Giving Cavalry players the tools and stats to be able to hold their own on the ground with on foot players is also a touchy subject, why would you go a foot class if you are as powerful on foot and you get a horse?

Our main concern is that Cavalry has never properly fit in Nord Invasion it has always been the odd man out and it always will be. That's why we have decided to take it out completely, this way we can focus on getting Nord Invasion to the direction we want, a great cooperative mod with intense defenses focused on teamplay and varied tactics.

We understand some of you will be mad about this especially for all the work you put into getting your levels and gear. We can assure you though that all gear both crafted and looted will be converted into new gear with similar stats and value. Experience will also be compensated at the time of patch as well as respec for all players.

Of course there will also be new stuff in the patch, but we want to keep some secrets you know..



Love,
Worm

Dear NI Community,

This notice is to provide server owners with notification of the disconnection of private servers as of 1st May 2012, excluding extraordinary geographical exceptions. This notice provides you, the server owner, with an excess of a four weeks to close your server. No member of the NordInvasion Team is in any way responsible for any charges or liabilities incurred as a result of the disconnection of private servers.

The development team have unfortunately had a large amount of their time occupied with policing private servers and dealing with an extraordinary amount of players exploiting and glitching the game, as our two previous notices have stated. The development team spend a huge amount of their free time working on NI and it is disheartening to see players abusing the game in such a manner. The Team cannot and will not detract from their professional lives to police a section of the community that insist on glitching the game. A portion of the community has left no recourse for the Team but to pursue this course of action and the Team will not be swayed from this course of action.

There are currently an excess of official NI servers to meet player needs but this will of course be subject to review after the disconnection of private servers. The Team accepts that further servers may need to be opened and will address this as of the 1st May 2012.

We appreciate that Houses may wish to play together on servers in House events. The NordInvasion Team are currently looking into this and a system will be examined for allowing House players to play in events together.

Yours sincerely,

#The NI Team

This is reiteration and expansion of Worm's post found here http://forum.nordinvasion.com/index.php?...886.0.html. We are unfortunately uncovering a large amount of players glitching and exploiting in the community.

If you are caught glitching by any member of the development team, regardless of whether you are exploiting the database or any particular map, you will face severe punishment. All players are expected to read the rules clearly set out on the forum http://forum.nordinvasion.com/index.php?...398.0.html.

The development team would also like it to be known that any server hosts will be treated very severely if found glitching. We place a higher standard of trust in you as server hosts to ensure that our rules are upheld and the game is played in a fair manner. Failure to do so will result in server disconnection and full character reset in the majority of circumstances. The development team's decision is final on these matters.

The warning and punishment system for players is not an absolute system. Do not attempt to rely on guidelines that were set out prior to the establishment of hardmode and private servers. Each glitcher will be treated on a subjective basis. As good practice the following outline will be followed by the development team but this not an absolute system and departure from this system will not be a basis for your defence in glitching or exploiting;

First Offense: an ingame/site warning
Second Offense: Your character will lose 50% XP
Third Offense: All characters will be reset
Fourth Offense: Permanent ban

It is to be noted that this system is not absolute and departure from the guidelines will occur on a subjective basis.

If you have any queries, feel free check these rules http://forum.nordinvasion.com/index.php?...398.0.html before PM-ing me.

Hypernoma

I was hoping I didn't ever have to do this in Nord Invasion, guess I was being pretty naive.

After some tips from some players about other suspicious players I decided to take a look into it. And I have so far permanently banned several players for sitting on a insane amount of Legendary items not obtainable by one person, especially more so when they have never killed the enemy that drops it even once.

I am currently going trough all trade logs and taking a closer look at all players inventories when it comes to higher end stuff, so anyone who has gotten a suspicious amount of items from someone or from someone they don't fully trust, I advise you to come clean now in a PM.

Everyone involved in this will receive a massive smack with the ban-hammer and unless you come clean first I'm not going to be very lenient afterwards.

There will be no naming and shaming, so take your witch-hunt elsewhere.


Love,
Worm

Another wee patch for you all.

• Gold is now spread out equally to everyone in assist range.
  
• Loot is now random between everyone in assist range and the killer.
  
• All Infantry only available armors has had their armor values increased by 50%.
  
• Updated House Banners.
  
• Most maps re-done.
  
• And one thing I forgot, high level players once again get loot in Normal Mode!
  

Another small patch for you guys!

• Time of day is now random on all maps!
  
• The Valkyrie and Jotne hammer should be a bit less terrifying.
  
• Small item changes, mostly to Legendary weapons.
  
• New House banners added.
  
• Map fixes and changes to old maps.
  
• New map - Swadian Overgrown by Dropsdawn!
  
• New map - Swadian Castle by Zetus!