How do we use the Paint Stations?

Ah! Just double click the dye tub, click on the item in your backpack (or yourself to hue your skin) that you want to dye, and then it’ll ask you to input a number between 1 and 2000.

So let’s see… some fun colors I like are:

• [0] Neutral: this’ll give you pale skin on humans and the default on everything else.
• [1] Pure Black
• [1101] Strange Rainbow Color
• [1150 - 1180] The well-known glacial hues
• [1688] Black with blue speckles

Most of the normal colors lie in the 2 – 999 range. Enjoy! There are paint stations scattered across the land.


How do I trick or treat?

Ah, don a costume robe and say "trick or treat" out loud - a target cursor will pop up and then simply click your NPC of choice. Voila! A succulent treat will appear! Be careful though, sometimes you may just get a Trick!

(The costume gates will be updated soon so that they too allow you to trick or treat)


How does the Castle British Community Collection work?

I’m glad you asked! Once you’ve killed your share of zombies, bring their looted zombie parts to Castle British and you’ll see a small donation box on the bridge. If you get enough points you can redeem them for such prizes as:

A new costume robe: a chance to be a random monster

• The Wind Staff: er, turn up your speakers while fighting for this one
• A Glass Sword: this deals extremely high damage, but shatters after one use. I've used it personally to fight the strange monsters that Wilki seems to conjure up.
• For each tier of the Community Collection completed another layer of decoration will adorn Castle British in the, dare I say, “spirit” of Halloween. Hurrah for Haunted Castles!

There are seven tiers of decoration altogether.


How do the Costumes work?

Mwaha! There are actually two systems in place to meet all of your Halloween needs!

The first involves a “costume robe” that comes with your new character, and you’ll find in your bank box. Each one has a random chance to make you a different monster (from a predetermined set), and some robes are more naturally rare than others. These costume robes give you the simplicity and power to change your appearance at a whim, without too much fuss or muss.

The second kind involves a series of moongates (101) spread throughout the five facets. Each moongate is themed to the area (although a few demo gates are available in Britain), so if you’d like to be a Fire Elemental I'd head off to the Fire Dungeon.

Obviously Felucca will have some of the most rewarding types of costumes due to the difficulty of tracking them down, as well as the intense ML spawn areas, so while Trammel Fire Dungeon will give you a Fire Elemental costume, Felucca Fire Dungeon will give you An Evil Mage costume (my personal favorite).

This kind of costume is more permanent than the costume robes, so if you want to go back to normal just find a black moongate that says it can remove costumes, and you’ll be back to normal. So if you’re the adventurous type, here’s a list of some (but not all!) of the gates:

Trammel:

• Minoc: a horse
• Deceit: a mummy
• Wind: an air elemental
• Red Solen Hive: a solen worker

Felucca:

• Britain: a zombie
• Papua: a terathan avenger
• Ice Dungeon: an ice fiend
• Blighted Grove: a bog thing

Ilshenar:

• Bet-Lem Reg: a pixie
• Exodus Dungeon: Exodus Overseer

Malas:

• Luna: a crystal elemental
• Umbra: a vampire bat

Tokuno:

• Fan Dancer Dojo: a fan dancer (saw that one coming!)
• Bushido Dojo: a tsuki wolf

Remove Costume Moongates are available in both Trammel and Felucca Britain. The gate for Felucca Britain is actually east of the moongate outside of town.

Note: Some issues with being dead and crossing through these gates are being resolved very soon!


The zombies ate my brains! Halp!

The important thing to remember is to remain calm. Your corpse may or may not reanimate as a zombie at this point, and we’ll share some very important survival tips with you now just in case.

• If your corpse reanimates as a zombie, it has all of your stuff (It is after all *you*)
• These zombies are vicious. They’ll swarm you, your friends, your family, and that little NPC dog too. If you don’t see any bankers or healers around they just might have gotten too strong for the local populace.
• This is a test center, so make sure you buff up your Resist Magic skill along with your combat skills so you can absorb a good amount of the zombie damage.
• Kill that zombie! If your walking corpse gets away you might just not see your items again!

Another important travel tip: Try to make a new character in another friendly town like Skara Brae – Britain is under attack.

Well everyone, welcome again to the 'Shard of the Dead!' We'll have more exciting news for you soon, so be prepared!

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Today (10/30/05) we'll be publishing some various changes and fixes to the 'Shard of the Dead'. Let's all give Ando from QA a hand for getting this list together for us!

• Halloween Community Collection now gives the correct rewards
• Zombies no longer attack most NPCs. NPC spawning will be back to normal
• You can now use a Paint Station on your pets
• You can now trick or treat with a costume gate robe
• You can no longer use a costume gate while dead
• Costumes now display their rarity
• Modified the rarity of certain costume robes and randomized existing robes
• Made a few small modifications to Zombie Generals
• Implemented a more efficient litter removal system