Greetings Starmourners,

Let the Greath--erm, Xenohunt begin! Yes, Starmourn will be running its own version of a hunting event this weekend, dubbed the Xenohunt! What does this mean?
It means that the following things are now in effect:

- Double XP for hunting
- Each mob you kill that would grant you experience will grant you a number of points based on its level. Collect points and climb up on the %7XENOHUNT RANKINGS%. There are 3 brackets/tiers:
* below level 50
* levels 50-74
* levels 75 and onwards (ONWARDS? What do you mean, Ilyos?)
If you enter a new bracket during the hunt, you will be ranked according to the new bracket. It is -not allowed- to manipulate your xp to go down in brackets in order to rank in a different bracket. Offenders will be disqualified from the Xenohunt. Once you reach level 75, it is unlikely that you will be ranked in the 50-74, even if you go down in level (see the next section for why)
- At the end of the Xenohunt, the top 6 players in each bracket will receive credit prizes:

1st: 300cr
2nd: 250cr
3rd: 200cr
4th: 150cr
5th: 100cr
6th: 50cr

(why are we dishing out lower prizes than other IRE for similar events? Currently, due to our population levels, it is harder to maintain a healthy competition here)

The winner of each bracket will also get an honors line! That's obviously the real prize

- Also, simply by participating, you can win some prizes, by reaching the following point thresholds
100 Points = 5 Bound Credits
750 Points = 10 Bound Credits
2500 Points = 15 Bound Credits

- At any time you may use the %7XENOHUNT% command to check out your score and see the current rankings


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%6TALENTS%
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Now...how are you supposed to reach level 75+? Well, you won't grow above level 75, but you can now start earning talent experience that goes into towards your %7TALENTS%. Yes, if you remember the system we talked about last year, it's about time we start putting it to good use, and what better time to do this than now?

How does this work?

Once you are level 75, any normal experience you gain will go towards a separate talent experience pool. When you have enough experience in this pool, you may spend it to gain a talent point. You can then spend this point to enhance a number of aspects related to your character. This system effectively removes the cap on hunting experience as you can continue to gain talent experience and points for a very long time. Naturally, the more points you get, the more experience it will cost to gain the next point.

To interact with the system, you can use the %7TALENTS% command:

%7TALENTS LIST% List your talents and distribution.
%7TALENTS SHOW <name>% Show information about a specific talent.
%7TALENTS ACQUIRE% Spent talent point experience and acquire a new talent point.
%7TALENTS INVEST <name>% Invest a point in a talent.
%7TALENTS RESET% Reset your talent distribution.

There are currently 11 talents in play, spread across three categories that enhance hunting, scavening or generic adventuring. More talents will come in time.
This is a rather large system and, as such, we expect there to be some bugs and issues. Please report them as you find them and we'll fix them as quickly as possible.

%7Notes:%
- Those that were already 75 and had some extra experience added have had that extra xp converted to talent xp. That means that you might be eligible to purchase 0-3 points outright. No xp has been lost for anyone
- For now, reseting your point allocation is free. In the future, once we're done with testing, this action will cost you a chunk of talent experience (probably equivalent to 1 point worth of talent xp)
- Once you gain some talent experience / a talent point, you will no longer be eligible to drop in the 50-74 bracket of the Xenohunt

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%6XENOSLAYERS%
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There's another little big thing that'll happen this weekend, but our friends from Fantom Laboratories haven't yet finished giving us all the specifics on what it is they're looking for... stay tuned.

Final note: we're still writing the HELP files...