Hello everyone!

Mostly things I found while checking yesterday's two updates — plus one genuine addition that should have been there from the start.

Changes

look now inspects a target, exactly like examine. It was only ever reprinting the room.
help look now has an article. It didn't before.
Tab completion offers targets after every inspection verb, not just some of them.

Fixed

Hundreds of Chinese room descriptions had English words fused into them.
The three realm challenge entry rooms were entirely in English.
Some equipment was generating far stronger than it should have been.
Buying an item back from a merchant could reduce its level.
enhance defense was refused even though the game told you to type it.
Two skill descriptions described their own bonus incorrectly.

look

In a text game, look is how you inspect things. It's been that way in MUDs for thirty years, and Portalborn didn't do it — look sword reprinted the room description and told you nothing about the sword.

It works now. look, l, ex, examine and their Chinese equivalents all inspect a target, and bare look still shows you the room as it always has.

And a name that matches nothing now says so. Previously look zorblax gave you the room description again, and examine zorblax told you that you examined it and found nothing extraordinary — as though it were there. Both now tell you plainly that there's no such thing here.

That second part matters more than it sounds. A command that answers with something plausible when it didn't understand you is worse than one that errors, because you have no way to know it didn't work.

help look also has a proper article now, in both languages.

Chinese room descriptions

This is the one I'd most like Chinese players to check.

Room descriptions are assembled from several phrase sets, and they were applied one after another rather than all at once. That meant a short English word in an early set could match inside a longer word and claim it before the correct full-sentence translation ever got a chance — so rift would be replaced inside rifts, quiet inside quietly, and the properly translated sentence sitting in the next set never ran.

The result was descriptions with English fused into the middle of them. Some were a single stray word. Some were a whole sentence, including a warning that a room damages you during combat — which a Chinese player simply could not read.

All the phrase sets are now matched together, longest phrase first. Just over two thousand room descriptions changed, and every one of them changed by losing English. Nothing else about them moved.

The checker that should have caught this was never looking at room descriptions. It is now, and it reports zero.

The three realm challenge entry rooms were also entirely in English — the difficulty warning, the level requirements, the boss names, all of it. Now translated, and the difficulty names match what the portal list already called them.

Equipment levels

Some older equipment templates carry no level of their own. When one of those reached a high-level character, the code was multiplying its stats by your level instead of scaling them along the same curve real gear follows.

A weapon that should have had around 161 attack at level 100 was arriving with 4,200. It went both ways, too — because the game sizes enemies against your gear, that inflated weapon was inflating the monsters to match.

All 45 affected templates now land on the same curve as everything else.

And buying an item back from a merchant could stamp it down to your level and lose its stats permanently. Buyback is a transfer, not a new item, and is now treated as one.

Also

enhance defense was refused. The message listing your options said attack, spell, defense while the code only accepted the abbreviations. It takes both now.
reckoner_hammer said it dealt its damage only to targets below 35% health. It deals 400% to any target, and below 35% it adds an execute bonus on top. spirit_leech said its heal applied below 35% health when it heals on every cast. final_cleave said "double damage" below 30% when the bonus is triple.

Thank you all. Yesterday's second update came from a player report, and most of this one came from checking it — which is generally how it goes.