Sandalphon Posted September 14, 2023 Group: Members Topic Count: 5 Topics Per Day: 0.01 Content Count: 9 Reputation: 13 Joined: 05/22/23 Last Seen: January 25 Share Posted September 14, 2023 (edited) [Updated January 13, 2025] The version on this post is the latest, patch notes are on a post below. Many fixes and updates! --------------------- The last few years, I've been poundering a certain matter: Why is Ragnarok Online so difficult to get into for new people? A few answers come to mind but there's one factor most people seem to agree on: Finding any sort of accurate information on this game is a nightmare. Basically, unless you're already in the know, it's really difficult to sort out good guides and databases from bad ones. Nevermind the hundreds of guides made for defunct servers that were full of customs, even the "good" sources of information in Ragnarok are often divergent and dubious. And so, I set out on a personal project: Improving the way this game is presented to new people. A daunting task, but one that must be accomplished. If we wish to see the game continuing to thrive as it enters its 3rd decade of life. For starters, I begun by reaching for the lowest hanging fruit I could think: The in-game skill translations. Of course, although I call this a low hanging fruit, it was an enormous task nonetheless. And so I present the community with my work, the initial release of my Improved Pre-Renewal Skill Translation and Tooltips. These are "translations" in name only. I didn't care to look at the official, original or korean descriptions at all. My starting point was llchrisll's skill translation file for Pre-Renewal. From there, I compared the content of the tooltip against RateMyServer, iROwiki/classic/ and my own knowledge. But that's not everything. I went and double checked the code for every skill, in order to make sure it was accurate. The damage formulas for every skill, the success chance of every debuff, what stats and gear work or do not work for a given skill, what other skills interact with, the scaling per level on skills, the whole works. Almost every single skill in Pre-Renewal was revised and compared against these sources to see which one was most accurate. To my surprise, I found that all three could be wrong. And this happened A LOT. If you trusted in-game tooltips, you were being lied to. Like, more than half of the time. When information was not incomplete, it was wrong half of the time. You trust iROwiki? That's a little better but your understanding of the game was basically fanfiction compared to reality. RateMyServer descriptions? Surprisingly they were the closest to reality a few times but they often had outdated descriptions that didn't match the game at Ash Vacuum episode. But enough talk, it's better that I show you just how wrong everything really was. With pictures! Bowling Bash is such a rich skill! There's so much to talk about! Any experienced player could write a paragraph or two about how this skill works. But the tooltip? Didn't even have any information about Skill Scaling per level? I'm sure we could improve this a whole lot if we tried... Now this is more like it! It mentions a bunch of key aspects of Bowling Bash, such as how it hits twice, has gutterlines, how they can be removed and mentions the invisible cast time that so many people don't even know about. Not to mention I've fixed the line breaks, so that words are not cut in half. Just for this skill? Of course not, line breaks were done to every skill. I can't guarantee it will stay nice and pretty on different font but I did try to leave a little margin for error. Next, let's take a look at a favorite of mine: Soul Breaker. See? This is the sort of 'fanfiction' I was talking about. Literal lies present on this tooltip! This is one of the tooltips I'm most proud about, and a perfect example of how I want to make information accessible to new players. Soul Breaker is a skill most people aren't really sure how it works, but with just a tiny page, you can quickly reference every single important fact about Soul Breaker. The colors make it so easy to understand! Next, let's look at some example where iROwiki was completely wrong: Okay, this is another poo one. No useful information at all. What do extra skill levels do? Let's check iROwiki: Okay that makes sense, it IS a strip skill similar to Rogue's. Let's check the source code to be sure... skill.cpp case GS_DISARM: rate = sstatus->dex / (4 * (7 - skill_lv)) + sstatus->luk / (4 * (6 - skill_lv)); rate = rate + status_get_lv(src) - (tstatus->agi * rate / 100) - tstatus->luk - status_get_lv(target); break; Well well well, what do we have here? iROwiki is lying? More likely than you think! The DEX difference does not matter in this case. Instead, Disarm cares about the gap between the Levels. After about 40 minutes of testing and making sure I got my facts right, I was then able to write the only accurate description for this skill that matches its current implementation. So yeah, this pattern repeated itself a lot over the months. Some classes are worse than others. Going over Star Gladiator and Bard/Dancer skills was a huge chore. Some more examples: And well, since you can never have too many examples, have a big collage of them. This release includes everything I could think about that was relevant for Pre-Renewal: -Base Classes -Second Classes -Trans Classes -Expanded Classes -Quest Skills -Item Skills -Homunculus Skills -Guild Skills -Mercenary Skills Of course, I'm just a single guy and this is a huge file of text. There's no doubt typos, inconsistencies, and breaking of standards. I tried to follow llchrisll's translation formation but haven't done enough revisions to work all the problems yet. Still, it's ready to be used and tested. Let me know here any and all typos and mistakes you find! I've used these extensively since their initial release and I believe I've caught most mistakes and typos by now. However, if there's anything wrong, please reach out to me and I'll fix it upon the next revision. skilldescript.lub Edited January 13 by Sandalphon 4 2 4 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sapito Sucio Posted September 14, 2023 Group: Members Topic Count: 12 Topics Per Day: 0.00 Content Count: 186 Reputation: 112 Joined: 04/10/12 Last Seen: 7 hours ago Share Posted September 14, 2023 Great work! and thanks for sharing. Just have in mind that, both rAthena and llchrisll's work are based on kRO formulas, which sometimes iRO doesn't follow at all Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shatowolf Posted September 14, 2023 Group: Members Topic Count: 3 Topics Per Day: 0.00 Content Count: 259 Reputation: 35 Joined: 11/19/11 Last Seen: Thursday at 11:19 AM Share Posted September 14, 2023 Awesome work mate. thanks for sharing this to community. keep it up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xJohn Posted September 14, 2023 Group: Members Topic Count: 2 Topics Per Day: 0.00 Content Count: 19 Reputation: 4 Joined: 04/18/23 Last Seen: February 4, 2024 Share Posted September 14, 2023 Well, you could also include the Monster Exclusive Skills... for example: NPC DRAGONFEAR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sandalphon Posted September 14, 2023 Group: Members Topic Count: 5 Topics Per Day: 0.01 Content Count: 9 Reputation: 13 Joined: 05/22/23 Last Seen: January 25 Author Share Posted September 14, 2023 2 hours ago, xJohn said: Well, you could also include the Monster Exclusive Skills... for example: NPC DRAGONFEAR I have never seen a server just give them out as usable skills though, so their descriptions are usually not seen anywhere. I suppose that would be possible. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sandalphon Posted January 13 Group: Members Topic Count: 5 Topics Per Day: 0.01 Content Count: 9 Reputation: 13 Joined: 05/22/23 Last Seen: January 25 Author Share Posted January 13 (edited) It's been a while since my initial release of those descriptions, and a lot of things need to be changed. A few mistakes here and there, but also plenty of mechanics changed on rAthena whose descriptions need to match that. Yes, I'm looking at you, Enchant Deadly Poison. Let's not drag this too long, yeah? Here's some patch notes: Typos fixed on the following skills: Shield Chain, Cart Boost, Cart Termination, Watery Evasion/Suiton Updated Cart Boost to account for the new interaction between this skill and Please Don't Forget Me(it no longer cancels the effect) Weaponry Research: Includes information about the Hidden Bonus(battle.cpp, line 3269) Raid: The debuff only applies in Renewal Venom Splasher: The timer information was completely wrong. Corrected and now also includes cooldown, additional information added on comments Jupitel Thunder: Was missing any information regarding damage Explosion Spirits/Critical Explosion: Corrected information, the SP recovery is disabled, not halved Blitz Beat: Corrected damage on information, improved wording Head Crush: Corrected ambiguous information about bleeding Shield Boomerang: Information about damage calculation Shield Chain: Massively expanded on the information and comments, including comparisons between this skill and Shield Boomerang Dispel: Clarification on the fact that MDEF reducing the chance is a myth that never existed Land Mine: Damage information completely wrong, fixed now including Mercenary version Freezing Trap: Added information on damage and scaling Blast Mine: Damage informationm missing, durations wrong too, fixed now Claymore Trap: Damage information missing, fixed now Gravitation Field: Included information about the secret property of the skill, where damage ticks count as auto attacks Throw Zeny: Accurate information about reduction versus players and bosses Final Strike: Added a a note, pointing out that Hercules uses a stronger formula for the skill Grand Cross: Greatly improved description Throw Kunai: Changed to reflect changes on rAthena(no longer misses, pseudo elemental) Throw Shuriken: Same as above(even more nerfed than kunais, why did you guys ever do this?) Steal: Massively improved description with more information and insight on High DEX/Low DEX Envenom: Improved damage descriptions Left/Right Hand Mastery: Recent information about the skill's inner workings Enchant Deadly Poison: Updated to the latest details of the skill, post the recent rework Next update I'll include the monster skills that were requested. I'd also like to expand upon this by adding quick reference pages in-game, containing information such as Status Effects, monster skills, etc. I updated the first post to have the latest version, but I'll leave it here as well just in case. skilldescript.lub Edited January 13 by Sandalphon 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b1rbert Posted January 13 Group: Members Topic Count: 7 Topics Per Day: 0.00 Content Count: 47 Reputation: 3 Joined: 05/04/14 Last Seen: 2 hours ago Share Posted January 13 Thank you for your hard work towards better skill description and against the atrocities that gravity left behind. great work! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EAJ_BASEMASK Posted January 13 Group: Members Topic Count: 0 Topics Per Day: 0 Content Count: 45 Reputation: 8 Joined: 03/17/21 Last Seen: 18 minutes ago Share Posted January 13 What's your paypal, willing to give some tips. thank you for your hard work it takes a lot of work to recorrect those descriptions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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