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Tynian: Bug abuse, version 3.84
Wed Nov 21 15:02:51 2001
To: all
A bug was introduced in version 3.84, which caused one to get experience
on mobs that normally would yield no experience... sometimes a _lot_ of
experience. I brought the game down this morning, to halt abuse of this
bug. I did not have the leisure to make the appropriate adjustments until
this afternoon.

Fortunately, I was able to track down which characters abused the bug.
Those that gained 1000 or more experience points as a result of the bug
are listed below. Not only have I removed the ill-gotten gains, but the
offenders have also been penalized a multiple of the experience they
received via the bug. The multiplier is based on the difference between
the effective level of the PC and the mobs they killed, as an attempt to
give the benefit of the doubt to those that killed things that would not
normally give them experience, but weren't _way_ below their level.
The penalty ranges between x2 and x5.

Since there were only 18 characters, I edited the player files by hand.
It is therefore possible that I made a mistake someplace. If you feel
I have deducted too much, or not enough, based on the penalties below,
you may contact me. Be warned that if you accuse me of deducting too
much, and I pull the backup for your player file, and find that my
calculations were correct, I will deduct the same penalty over again.
This is my way of thanking you for wasting my time twice.

To those that reported and did not abuse the bug, thank you.

FLIs: This action does not preclude you from punishing your follower
further, should you deem it necessary, and does not otherwise limit any
way that you'd like to discourage followers from abusing bugs. 
Name          XP     Penalty (mult)
Ibram      :  33949  160996 (x 4.7)     Rubicant   :  22091   91818 (x 4.2)     
Snarf      :  18113   61318 (x 3.4)     Ezral      :  12437   26534 (x 2.1)     
Shon       :  10083   48514 (x 4.8)     Weezer     :   7668   24851 (x 3.2)     
Dantrag    :   7437   30903 (x 4.2)     Cynder     :   6559   14445 (x 2.2)     
Abe        :   5965   16458 (x 2.8)     Keat       :   5934   27350 (x 4.6)     
Tiberius   :   4990   13086 (x 2.6)     Noctus     :   2473   10468 (x 4.2)     
Wardrof    :   2297    4594 (x 2.0)     Charles    :   1909    6529 (x 3.4)     
Kantor     :   1859    8587 (x 4.6)     Mourngrim  :   1835    4979 (x 2.7)     
Fweep      :   1741    5469 (x 3.1)     Mordith    :   1464    5641 (x 3.9)     

				*****
Tynian: Bug abuse, part 2
Wed Nov 21 16:54:10 2001
To: all
A point of clarification:

Those that are at the lower end of the table in the previous bug abuse
note are less likely to have been specifically seeking out low level mobs
to exploit the bug. It is possible that low level aggressive, random
hunting, etc., would account for illicit experience being earned. There's
no doubt on my mind that those at or near the top of the list were
specifically taking advantage of the situation.

In short, Ibram and Mordith are not equivalent, by any stretch of the
imagination.

Tynian.

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