[crossfire] Back after into crossfire

[puff at albatross.pond.sub.org]

Hi all,

I haven't played crossfire for years (more than 20, I think), old timers
may remember me as Anvil, the berserker orc and a dragon named
Puff. Recently I tried it again and got hooked almost immediately
again. I play a dragon on crowcastle and two characters on
invidious2.meflin.net, on of them being Anvil reborn as a follower of
Valkyrie.

I saw that crossfire.metalforge.net runs a quite low version number. Is
that because players there don't want to lose their high-level
characters due to an incompatible update?

Now some observations I made:

1. The inventory weight of half-orcs characters is always shown as
-0.0/x, except right after loading. As soon as I pick or drop anything,
it's broken again. My dwarf is not affected and I confirmed with some
temporary characters that it is indeed always broken for half-orcs and
okay for dwarfs.

2. On invidious2.meflin.net, possible since the latest update, even
fully identified objects are shown as magic. This is probably intended,
but one problem is that with this change, equipped objects are no longer
shown in bold, unless they are non-magic. This is quite annoying, when
you want to switch rings and only the small (worn) marker shows you
which are currently equipped.

3. The goblin quest (first of Scorn nobility) sometimes does not reset
for days. I suspect that it is liked to one character camping in
Scorn. But while the camper obviously prevents Scorn itself from
resetting, it shouldn't affect the quest.

4. Rather an oddity, but I wonder if it is really intended that while
the library in Navar is basically a copy of the one in Scorn, it is not
alit.

5. Note sure whether I simply overlook something, but I found no way to
enter the snake pit in Lake Country. I always get pushed back by the
tower when trying to enter it via the mountains, but the way through the
swamp only gets me to the tower.

Two points regarding experience:

At one point I found that my dragon monk was level 4 at sense curse and
level 14 at sense magic. Is there a good reason, why sense magic gives
so much more points? Also, for a high level character, these skills are
rather annoying, but there is no way to switch them off. I started doing
sense magic before identifying objects, to avoid accumulating even more
points. Wouldn't it make sense to not give any points for sensing magic
or curse when a character fully identies an object?

I like the fact that skill-identifying now works on a per-object base
for stacks. But the result is a bit drastic for arrows and bolts since
you can easily walk out of a dungeon carrying more than a thousand
arrows if you auto-pick them. I suggest reducing the points for
identifying arrows and bolts by at least a factor of 10.

Finally a question:

When I do perceive self with my dragon, it shows "ability levels", based
on the levels I grew up with which metabolism. But what is the effect of
these levels? It took me quite some time even to figure out that a
certain metabolism meant that it is easier to get resistancy of that
type. Perhaps this information could be added to the books in the dragon
guilds in Scorn and Navar.

Regards,
Anvil/Puff