Hi everybody,

Giant slurry of changes incoming with defenses and autocuring. This is going to be a long one, so bear with me.

## Defense shortlist changes:

* Old 'defense overhaul' system deprecated, all defenses in it moved
into the new defense system.
* New system established.
* Truehearing, fire, galvanism, frost, and sixthsense moved to new
defense system.
* Ability for defenses to persist through login and/or death added to
new defense system on a case-by-case basis.
* Initial platform for auto defense raising added. Not yet coded, but
the framework is in place.
* About 50 defenses added to this system.

## Autocuring shortlist changes:

* Focusqueue removed.
* Steam, dust, and slush queues entirely rewritten from the ground up.
See 'Priority Queues' section below for more details.
* Defense upkeep added to autocuring.

## Defense Overhaul:

We've been working toward this for a while, and it's finally coming to fruition. Defenses have always been a bit of a stickler for folks, being a point of pain and requiring either a large amount of typing or large scripts that take a large amount of time to write and maintain. We've all been there.

In the end, it's easier for us to maintain this data than it is for you, and it benefits us in the long run to keep the data in one centralised location than off in disparate locations like it is now, so as a long-term project, we are seeking to kill two birds with one stone and bring defenses into this centralised system.

This will also mean a lot of things for you the further this progresses along. For every skillset of defs we move over, that will eventually be another skillset of defs that doesn't get removed whenever you skillflex/classflex. When we get the autodeffer up, you will be able to raise your defenses without the need of a defense script built into your client.

As well, we are about to enter discussions both internally and with your organisation's envoys about how we want to decide which defenses do not fall on either death, logout, or both, based on the consumption costs of commodities, power, or any other factors which may be involved. After we establish a guideline on this, we will start applying these traits.

Finally, and this is live now for the slush, steam, and dust queues, defense upkeep in autocuring. If a defense falls, you will be able to re-raise it, and even prioritise its reraising amongst your focusing and affliction curing for full control.

## Priority Queues

The Priority Queues for Slush (AC MODIFY SlushQueue), Dust (Dustqueue), and Steam (SteamQueue), with the removal of FocusQueue and addition of defenses, have changed heavily. You now have three different options to add to these:

* AFF
* <aff> [FOCUS/POWER [<min power>]/BEAST]
* <def>

AFF means 'any aff'. If this is not included, you will not cure at all. We highly recommend including this and feel it would be extremely questionable to remove it, but it wouldn't be a customisable system if you couldn't also shoot yourself in the foot.

<def> would be the name of the def (e.g. fire, frost, sixthsense).

<aff> would be the name of the aff (e.g. haemophilia, blind, dysentery). FOCUS uses normal focus. BEAST uses beast focus. POWER uses powerfocus, and has an optional argument which lets you specify the minimum power at which it will be used.

As a note, one vital change is blind and deaf will be cured with steam/dust unless you focus them once it gets to AFF. This is a notable change from before. However, any form of focus on blind/deaf will use sixthsense/truehearing to cure it.

~ Ianir the Anomaly

Penned by My hand on the 15th of Tzarin, in the year 500 CE.