Isle of Morrow

Version 1.5.0

A polish-and-peril release: the screens grow color and clarity, your legend gets a page of its own, and the island itself grows teeth. The title screen now announces the build.

A new coat of paint

Every screen now speaks one visual language: titles in bright cyan, hotkeys in bright yellow so the eye finds them first, values bright, labels quiet, and gold the color of gold. The top bar wears classic door blue with the region name picked out. The main screen's right rail was reworked, with your class in color, gold in gold, and a new experience bar that fills toward your next rank and says "train!" when the yard would take you.

The ? help screen was the messiest page on the island; now every key is painted bright yellow apart from its description, section by section. The same treatment runs through the harbormaster's ledger, the pack, the shops, and the character sheet.

See yourself clearly: the character sheet

• Everything on one page. Attributes, hit points, mana, stamina, experience and the next rank, what you wield and wear with AC and dodge, your abilities (every working you can speak, or your trade's knacks), gold in hand and banked, marks, spirit chill, and your standing with the wardens.
• New lifetime numbers. The island now keeps your story: monsters slain, lifetime gold earned, and deaths. Existing characters start counting from the upgrade.

The harbormaster's ledger

A new key. Press L anywhere in the world for the ranked roll of every name on the island, by level then experience, with occupation, fortune (purse plus vault), monsters slain, and who is ashore right now. Names wear their karma color, so the lawful read green and the outlawed read like a warning. It is also listed in ? and in the manual.

A more dangerous island

The verdict was in: the cellars felt safe, and a rank-1 with a fisherman's dirk could beat a brigand. No longer. The whole bestiary was sharpened, with tougher hides, heavier blows and better aim, tuned fight by fight against the real combat code.

• The cellar stings again. Rats, dogs and kobolds land real hits; venom and packs make a careless trip expensive.
• Brigands are a rank-3 problem. A rank-1 with a starter blade who stands their ground will very likely die. Come back leveled, armored, or not alone.
• The cave troll is a wall. Its wounds knit as fast as a longsword opens them, so bring a bashing weapon or bring friends.
• Deeper halls hit deeper. Ghouls, shades, wraiths, hellhounds and the Ashen Warden all grew meaner; the toughest kills pay more experience for the trouble.

Armor genuinely matters now, and the smart first purchase is no longer optional. The four-rank-8s-versus-the-Warden math still holds.

The island provides: random drops

• Monsters drop more than coin. About one hostile kill in ten leaves an item in the corpse, matched to the creature's level: a torch off a rat's hoard, a chain shirt off a wraith.
• The ground renews itself. Hunting grounds now re-seed sparse finds over time, a scatter of coin and sometimes a piece of kit, sized to the ground's own creatures. Town streets stay swept, floors never silt up, and finds decay on the normal clock.
• Yours to tune. The tables live in content/drops.php as plain data, and the console gains a "random drops off" switch.

Quality of the counter

• PgUp and PgDn everywhere they were missing: the armory's long rack, the chandler's shelves, the fence's plank, the vault, the trainer's list, and your own pack all page a windowful at a time.
• The pack shows your body. A new ON THE BODY panel lists every slot (hand, head, body, shield, ring) and what rides in each, so "where does this go?" answers itself while you leaf through the bag.

Smaller strokes

• The prompt row earns its keep. The move hint is gone (the numpad walks, ? explains it) and the freed room now points at a attack, g get, i pack, t trade, @ sheet, L ledger, M manual, ? help, with the keys in yellow.
• American spellings throughout: the Harbormaster's Ledger, the Gray Chapel, the Vane Armory, armor, color, on every screen, in the manual, and in a live world's region names via migration.
• The manual keeps up. The L key is documented, and the panels chapter matches the new screens.

For SysOps

• Upgrading is a plain overwrite of the morrow/ folder in your board's doors directory. A live world migrates itself (schema 11) on the next call: characters, items and history all survive. No wipe, ever.
• New console switch: "random drops off" disables both the rare monster drops and the ground litter if you prefer the pre-1.5.0 economy.

Version 1.0.0

First release. A multi-player MMO-lite homage to the old CompuServe game Island of Kesmai: group up and fight monsters, fight other callers (PvP can be disabled by the SysOp), go on quests and discover secrets.