[Dolalin]

I thought I'd return to this on the subject of Necromancers because leaving it incomplete has been bothering me.

I found this interview with GZ on Stratics after some digging, it references all of Vampiric Curse, Circle of Death and Lich. He is talking about them on the day before/the day-of the July 1st patch that implemented the first two:

Vampiric Curse / Bond of Death (formerly Circle of Death) (Necromancer) has a new effect.

Vampiric Curse and Circle of Death (Bond of Death) spent a month between June 7th and July 1st patches in a broken state.

From June 7th patch:

Wave of Enfeeblement (now Vampiric Curse) and Circle of Death (both Necromancer) will not work for the next week or so while we make a fix on them.

And from the article:

> Vampiric Curse level 29 DOT that gives you health (so like a drain over
> time) and damages.
> Circle of Death level 49 DOT that gives you more health over time and
> damages. I did not understand their functionality because they didn't
work
> previously (tomorrow's patch should fix this).

On Lich (which was new, though I can't tell for sure which patch it goes in on (gotta be either June 7 or July 1st)) there is the following:

Posted by Mortuus Mortezzah on July 01, 1999 at 9:36:03 AM CDT:

...

Note: Looks like my guess that Lich is the final in the 'Dark Pact' lines was correct. I assume we take on Lich form (similar to how COB we take on Dread Bone form), and perhaps a few other traits as well... (i.e. in Dread Bone form we gain their sight, etc).

Again I'd like to applaud GZ for taking the time to answer these questions. I doubt he will continue to be able to do so, as more and more people are inundating him with similar messages
--------------------
> Can you explain what the Lich spell does?

Call of Bones, but a lot more so.

Now what pisses me off is that he doesn't mention Leach anywhere. Leach is the level 12 necro drain, and is missing from the May 5th 1999 EQLizer spell listing, but it is not mentioned in any of these patch messages.

I would have to assume it was added in one of these spell updates, perhaps the June 7th one that added Vampiric Curse and BoD? That would make sense. But I can find no proof of this. All I can see is that it suddenly popped into existence.

Also, on Charm/Beguile removal, which is only provided because it's kinda interesting:

The spells were removed because Necromancers (and Shamans) could not
charm anything near their level - the pets that they can summon are almost
always better than anything they could hope to charm (because of the charm
level limit). Because of this, and because of some of the inherant trouble
that can come with the charm spells, I decided to remove them from the
Shaman and Necro. I did not remove the undead charming, which works very
well. On a similar note, Shamans did not lose their animal charming. I
will make sure to replace it with something interesting.

http://web.archive.org/web/200003030...16313520.shtml

And lastly, on July 1st patch, both Shaman and Necro disease dots had their damage doubled and durations halved. Necro poison spells also had this done. From the July 1st patch message:

* Necromancer's poison magic doubles damage and cuts duration by half. The total amount of damage is exactly the same, but the time has been halved.

* Necromancer and Shaman's disease-based magic now has a shorter duration. Instead, damage increases.

https://wiki.project1999.com/Patch_Notes#July_1.2C_1999

There are a few other class changes here too:

* Increased recovery amount of Word of Healing (Cleric).
* Harmony (Druid / Ranger) is slightly more effective.
* Incapacitate functions as Enchanter (lvl44) magic.
* The Dark Pact (Necromancer) AC specification has been removed. The effect of layering other magic has been improved.
* Wizard's damage magic “casting time” has been slightly shortened.
* Improved Magician Burnout magic.
* The secret medicine used for Burnout III (Magician) has been removed.
* Added new Wizard magic "Bonds of Force" to Wizard clerk.
* Changed to Mana Sieve (Enchanter), now has immediate effect instead of DOT (persistent damage), and reduced Mana consumption (also reduces effect).

Remaining questions on the Necromancer side though:

* What did the 29th and 49th drains do before they were changed away from Lifetap AoE spells? Did they work or were they broken?

* When was Leach added?

I will try to find answers as time allows.

Hypothesis so far:

Level 12: Leach added (June 7th(?))
Level 29: Previous lifetap spell changed to Vampiric Curse (June 7th [added but broken], July 1st [fixed])
Level 49: Circle of Death changed to lifetap drain (June 7th [added but broken], July 1st [fixed, renamed to Bond of Death])
Level 49: Lich added (June 7th(?))

Note that BoD/Lich weren't researchable until September 13th (recipe was broken).

I'm also going to limit the scope of my list to spell additions and removals only, and *very* significant changes in spell function, otherwise things are going to get crazy.