See Braddock Steele in the War Camp to find out about the legend of the magical music that can turn the tide of war! He has a NEW quest for you - guaranteed to give you a spike in the War Meter! (Note - you will probably see this jump in the War Meter percentage when you log in, because the first person to complete the new quest will trigger the change.)

Vivi set up the underground quest - the backgrounds and the flute are drawn by Jemini. I set up a new swordfighting enemy by making some conversions to a mecha-sized monster's attacks.  I gave him a little AI - he's not difficult.  I thought about making him a little tougher but after some of the feedback about swordfighting difficulty I decided to keep him easy.  Note that in the quest at the beginning there is a little Gremlin - if you use the Equip button, it shrinks you when you come back - you'll see a little "mini-me" version of yourself.  When you go underground you will be back to normal.  Although it kind of makes sense for you to shrink when you go underground, actually. 

The music this year is a very special treat! Sionnach is the composer and performer of this authentic Irish Traditional Style piece. The MechQuest title is "Peter's Trip to NZ & Neville's Jig" - "NZ" stands for a location here on Earth, actually, but it got a minor renaming to fit Planet Loreon. In "real life," Sionnach is the Dad of our Gremlins ArchKnight, Plasma Charge!  (Yes, you will be able to get a Starship Item as a war reward that plays this music - I recolored a radio & coded it to play the music - along with a special item designed by Minar that I coded to work in tandem with the radio.)

Charfade wanted to guest-art us a new Cloverblade this year, but she just didn't have time. So this year's Cloverblade series is drawn by Minar and animated by Korin! blues came up with the ideas & numbers for the specials, and Vivi coded them up. These shops open when the war reaches 50% - which you will reach quickly, I'm sure!

Battle ON!

Innumerable Hordes of Leprescythe

The war count is massive - it seems like you fight and fight and just aren't getting anywhere.  That Rainbow portal is continally pouring out Leprescythe so something is going to have to be done about that.  There is an ancient legend of a realm underground - where a magical musical instrument could help win this war.  

Contrary to a rumor I read on the forum, the war rewards are ready. What is not yet ready is a quest. That quest is scheduled for release Friday. That additional quest involving the musical instrument and the Leprescythe is why the war meter is so high.  It is not a delaying tactic - it is part of the story.  It was meant from the very beginning to be a war that would take more than a few days.  However, I may have set the initial total too high as it looks like people are feeling war-weary.  That will change but it is a result of something that you will do, not a case of "staff intervention."

I did run into a couple of snags this week with technical issues (still working with the old and slow PC because my laptop STILL isn't back - and my mouse started acting erratic - jumping offscreen.  Finally traced it to my wireless keyboard but I lost a lot of worktime troubleshooting) - and just to put the icing on the cake, ended up with a fever & sore throat.  So, due to the need for a morale boost in the war, Vivi is stepping in to help revise the plan slightly for the quest advancing the storyline - we're simplifying my original quest plan which was going to be a rather complicated maze, but the basic story remains the same.   

Braddock Steele has been keeping a close eye on the news. You should go see him either via the News Screen when you first log in, or in Soluna City. He's got a mission for you (hint: we're at WAR)!!!

...But he's a little mixed up:

You do NOT need clovers for any shops this year! Please ignore him on that subject! Shops will unlock as the war meter progresses.  Clovers do not drop!

Other than that, you should check out the intro cutscene to illuminate the latest developments (cs mostly by Lyris, with a couple of little additions by me and thanks to Korin for helping me smooth out the last bit and to Vivi for 'sewing it' into the town). Jemini created the sweet new background and you will see more when the war progresses.

Another little Gremlin - The Lucky Warriors ought to be giving more credits than the normal enemy at their level, but they're not. Yet. I think it's a result of the scaling code. Or maybe I forgot to add the extra code, or over-wrote the draft that had it ... I forgot to test their rewards while testing them in the quests. Sorry! Note that there is a new version of the Lucky Warrior AND a new version of the Leprescythe.  You may encounter the originals or the new ones. Thanks to blues for coming up with the new specials, and to Vivi for coding them!

We have some awesome rewards but I'll talk more about those later. Grab the Luck Mods - the shops are already open! You'll want to hurry up to 25% on the war meter to unlock those new Heads because they will help you plow through these enemies!

There is more story you will unlock as well, as you progress through the war. (There is NEW music involved!)

The newsletter indicated that today would bring Vend-o-Tron new weapons on Romero, but it just wasn't possible - they're in the 90%-ish done range and will come next week asap.  

Well, have fun - enjoy your Lucky Celebrations - and I will check in with you! 

First of all let's all wish Vivi a very happy birthday!  And many, many more!

He animated today's Scalpel Front Arm weapon for us, besides his normal coding in of the specials blues designed! The specials all fit into the description so you should go to Romero and check the Vend-o-Tron for that info.  These are Nova Gem exclusive weapons. My original plan was to bring you also Star Captain and NSC (non-Star Captain) weapons, which Minar drew for us but we just honestly didn't have time to get them animated for this week. (Minar had final exams and Korin had a ton of other things in the works.) You will get them most likely next week. 

So many mecha models "lost weight" this week - TONS - so they could "fit" in the walkaround quests! I had to shrink their shadows, actually. Some have only one shadow, and some have two. And of course each mecha model has many levels - so to roll this release I had to open 8 separate windows with many, many tabs in each one to change nearly 100 filenames! So if you were not able to complete the walkaround quests in any of the models on the following list, try again!

• Wolfblade (lower-level, not the Advanced)
• ShS Trog SC
• ShS Trog NSC
• Dragon Spirit Form NG
• Dragon Spirit Form SC
• Dragon Spirit Form NSC
• Chronomecha
• Derpmachine
• Guardian
• Mechatron
• Vanguard

If you get stuck in a different model, or are still getting stuck in any of the above, please report it in the Gremlins forum as a reply here

I fixed a few database typos:

• Sparkler Rocket Std 3010 description is now correct
• Dimitri's Gaze series got a typofix and a grammar fix
• The Flamorah series also got a correction in its description 

I didn't get into quest files this week for any dialogue or mouseover typos. I'm still on the PC which can't handle having MQ open and running while Flash is open and running, so my multitasking is suffering horribly. I actually did some questwriting on actual paper with an actual pen with actual ink over the past couple of weeks! My hard drive on the laptop turned up blank - all my precious text files gone... and the first estimate from a file recovery place was over $1,000 USD. Getting one more estimate before I just get a new HD & send this one to Korin to give it a last-ditch effort for file recovery - so let's all hope for the best. Back up your files NOW!

Anyway...

Also in this bugfixing frenzy, Vivi got rid of NaN bugs in:

• Cosmic Talon (head)
• Steve Skysplitter (head)
• Yeti Boss (arm)

Vivi also fixed something with the Giant Gorilla on Liath - I don't know offhand what it was ... because a Gremlin sneaked into one of our testing mechanisms somehow - so that fix actually rolled un-tested! (Normally every potential fix gets tested before it rolls Live.) (The Gremlins ArchKnight Plasma Charge is checking it now - he just told me that what was wrong is that it was buffing the player instead of its own attacks.)

Speaking of Gremlins AKs - Ello is back with us! 'Ello, Ello!

Coming up: Charfade plans to guest-art us a St. Patrick's Day weapon! Jemini did backgrounds for St. Pat's Day! Traditional-styled original Irish music! More about that new music later, though - because I have to run out the door! Have a great weekend - thanks so much for your support! Please tell your friends about MechQuest!

Wow a lot is going on right now. Where to start ?!!!??

Talking with Alina & also with Lyris on MSN as we speak.  Have been wrangling with my poor laptop, which is now in Data Recovery ... but somehow I've managed to juggle MQ's needs! The newsletter is not going out till tomorrow early, though, because I was in a conference call with the data recovery guy & the dude who repaired my no-function screen. 

What's coming up? Well, off the top of my head I know we have new weapons from Minar and one or two new enemies with specials from blues, getting coded by Vivi, on Romero! Korin is working on quests! I'm awaiting a revised cs from Arklen which relates to a quest - it's almost perfect already, so worst-case, I add a line of code and leave one bit of animation as-is.

Sorry this is so short but I had really better post and dash for now! Later, taters!!!!!