Two quick comments:

Stacking buffs are an excellent suggestion, and I'll figure out how to balance them so that they can work.

The elemental shield will have to wait until I can get to implementing damage types, which is a large-scale backend update, and a long ways off, atm.

Two updates to this Sticky:

First, the BR Builder is hosted on the BR website, although it's not the easiest to find. The direct link is here . Note that as we haven't had support of the code of this Java program in years, you'll have to either revert installations, or tell the main builder ...

A number of things are still level-adjusted. You hit on the major ones of these in save vs. spell and save vs. attribute. Also, of course most spell damage is level adjusted. The amount of damage mobs deal is based in part on their level.

The rest of combat is solely indirectly that level affects ...

A complete spell rebalance is on my plate, but I haven't worked out where I want spell damage to fall at a base level, yet. In particular, I'd like most every spell to be useful (at a per mana cost basis) to some extent. I.e. even that shoddy little magic missile spell can do reasonable damage ...

Several related changes to the hide skill went in:
Removed code that automatically unhid players from several locations.
Adjusted visibility checks to allow hidden mobs/PCs to occasionally be seen without magical aid.
Added notifications when performed actions cause a character to lose hide.
Changed ...

Parry and dodge are solely dependant on your practice percentage. Dexterity has never affected them (although hitroll and level used to). There is only one adjustment to that base number in the code - this occurs when the victim cannot see their attacker. Obviously, that case reduces your chances to ...

It does. I pushed the maximum limit of usefulness to -5000, simply to have a cutoff point so that mobs like xor and the avatar diablo mobs aren't entirely unhittable. Regardless, with the changes, you'll have a reasonable (if low) chance of hitting them based almost solely off of your hitroll.

Glad to hear it. We've added a (somewhat more active) facebook page. Look us up there for the best access to announcements and current events in the realms.

A combat tweak went in, suggested by Brodgar during playtesting.
Hit tables were updated to make the early newbie levels somewhat less frustrating.
Additionally, blind, dirtkick and invisibility directly affect chances to hit, now, and targets that are unable to defend (stunned, incapacitated ...

Fixed two minor display bugs: one that showed mob keywords instead of name upon give or receive of money, and one adding a proper period to the end of tell history messages.

Fixed a very exploitable bug with currencies. Thanks for reporting it Kalisto.

Two bug fixes went in, correcting an issue with perm-fly items across login/logout, and a display issue with dispel magic.

Fixed affect-based crash bugs introduced with spell callback system. This only occurred from demon's steel hook and serpent stun head.
Edit: re-fixed this to catch the final location it could occur.

From a social perspective, the biggest change is that Kiri gave up the administration to Scavenger several years back. He's now handling all the hosting and behind-the-scenes work, but doesn't stop in often. More recently, he granted me full administrative access (yes, code, too), and I've been ...

Added "misfires" to toss command. Also made it so enemy targets have a save to avoid being hit by tossed potions.