While attempting to battle mine in Cove today, I discovered that the NPC's were calling guards on my elementals through the walls of the building. I tried this near multiple buildings and received the same results @Chris
Update: I spoke with Telamon on IRC concerning this issue. The NPCs are calling guards through the walls on aggressive actions (ie. attacking NOT stealing) only. This was seen as a quick-fix to the recent town killing shenanigans. To clarify, building walls and "walls of stone" will not break LOS in these instances. Battle mining in the town limits being hampered was just an unintended consequence.
Wind dragon taming took a hit, as well. Used to be able to tame dragons on the stairs but now they get whacked every time they enter the guardzone.
No it's because of the patch Telamon put in to help with the problem of townkilling that has seemed to wash over our server. He made it to where NPCs call guards on any aggressive monster or summon on their screen, even thru walls. It has had the unfortunate side effect of making some legitimate actions impossible, like battle mining or dragon taming in guard zones.
Out of curiosity; why would someone be taming a dragon in a guard zone? Battle mining, I can understand.
In Wind (before the patch) there was a place on one of the stairs you could lure a dragon to and safely tame them. Now, NPCs kill the dragons as soon as they enter the guard zone.
Well, before you bring it into the GZ you wear it down with a EV, then you lure it off the side of the stairs and you tele back up and stand there taming like crazy until it submits to you. Wearing down its health makes its fire breath do less damage. They can't tele back up the stairs to you cuz you're too high up, so they can't melee you. If you do it right, there's almost no risk unless some asshole comes and kills the dragon. But that method is done now with the patch.
Sounds like that is a fix. Also, both circumstances of Golems, "battle mining" if you want to call it that; and laming dragons in town both seem better as out of town activities. Risk vs reward.
The point of the patch wasn't to eliminate those activities. It was to try to cut down on the recent rash of townkilling that has kept staff so busy they can't do the patches we're all waiting for. It was a necessary knee-jerk reaction to a problem that was starting to slow this server down. Taming a dragon gives you no reward (unless you sell it). You still have to go out of town to USE the dragons. They don't make you money sitting in a stable. Wind just allowed tamers a nice way to grab a dragon real quick so you could move on to more risky activities. Wind taming wasn't completely without risk. You still had to lure the drakes away and not die, then lure the dragon and not die, then use an EV to wear them down before they killed you, then after that, you could quickly tame them and move on. The no-risk part came after that. Mostly, Wind taming was a nice place to show a new tamer how to get a dragon.
Hope that will be possible to fix in the future. I remember as a new miner I liked mining in Cove because I would die to the golems a lot, and and I could get ressed quite fast and get stuff back of my corpse. As to taming, Wind was the ideal place for new tamers to tame their first dragons and to finish training taming on them. I did try the other places to tame dragons, but Wind staircase was best. Let's hope Telamon will figure out how to calm down the guards a bit in the future. Also, did the mass killing only happen in Occlo, or other banks too? Would it be possible to just make Occlo guards super strict?
From what I heard, I believe it was mostly the mass of new players clustered around Occlo Bank. It's not the guards that are strict, it's the rest of the NPCs who call the guards that are moodier now. I'm not sure if Telamon can single out one town's NPCs like that. @Chris care to chime in?
hehe, taming a dragon gives you no reward. I like that. * I hear you, I do Kirby. But that's just funny.
How is it funny? If you tame a dragon, then don't use it for anything, just have it tamed and sitting in your stable, where is your profit? Sure you can have the dragon shit out its loot, but considering how long it takes to tame a pissed off dragon (The creature is too angry to continue taming), you can make more money in the same time doing other things. The reward from taming a dragon comes from taking it to a dungeon and killing things, not from just taming it.
Do you remember taming your first dragon Kirby? I'm sure it has a story to it; beyond that an even longer journey to get to it. (Not to mention a difficult achievement to unlock to boot, from the only achievement system built into UOR) If your reward is only ever gold, you're missing out on the wealth of the world my friend. I was poking the bear a little, only to make a point. Please forgive me for that. These types of activities are meant to get folks out of town boundaries. Not allow them more security, while being perfectly capable to achieve tremendous feats like casting the highest level spells, taming the wildest of beasts and standing toe to toe with giants. To me it still looks like a fix. Even if un-intended.
I remember it. @Prison Bound took me to Wind to show me how to do it. He told me to be sure and knock down the health, but I forgot and almost died. In a rush to heal myself, i forgot my taming macro was running and I healed the dragon. Now I've got a grey dragon, and I'm grey and almost dead, and a player ran by. He stopped and looked at the situation. My heart stopped. I thought for sure I was dead. He cast an EV, and put it on the dragon, then he started healing me. It turned out he was another tamer who took pity on my situation. He helped me get the dragon tamed, and gave me some advice. The dragon's stats were so good, I still use him. I have 2 dragons, Pinky and Brain. Brain is my first dragon.