The following items have either been fixed or enhanced.

• Public houses and Lockboxes
  Public houses may now have lockboxes just like private houses.
• Additional storage for sale - building permits
  You may now purchase a building permit from the Architect NPC to increase the capacity of your house with regard to lockboxes. Each building permit will increase your available lockboxes by one up to double your original allotment.
  For instance; if your house originally allowed two lockboxes, you may purchase two building permits and apply them to your house. Your house will now support 4 lockboxes.
  You apply the building permits by standing under your house sign and double clicking the permit and targeting your house sign.
• Additional storage for sale - Storage Tax Credits
  Lord British is requiring a 'use tax' be paid for each additional lockbox for each day of use. You may purchase tax credits from the Architect NPC, each being worth 30 days of use.
  A house may store about 2,600 days of tax credits which breaks down as follows.
  For 1 extra lockbox, that's 2,600 days
  For 2 extra lockboxes, that's 1,300 days
  For 3 extra lockboxes, that's 888 days
  Etc.
  You apply the tax credits by standing under your house sign and double clicking the voucher and targeting your house sign.

I considered granting extra storage to only smaller houses, but figured that 'collectors' living in larger houses would simply create extra accounts to fill their storage needs. I would prefer to satisfy those needs within a single account while at the same time draining some gold from the economy.
Collectors are always going to migrate towards the larger houses and more storage regardless. This housing patch attempts to satisfy the needs of the common adventurer, crafter or casual player.

Important note: If you have purchased and placed an additional lockbox and your tax credits go to zero, one of your lockboxes will be 'released' and decay as per normal. The system does not distinguish between your lockboxes as they can be released and relocked down in any order. It is therefore advised that you keep your tax credit bank fat and not let it run too low. You can check your credit bank on the house sign.
The credits on your house sign are shown in real-world hours. So if you apply a 30 day credit that will appear as 720 credits.

PS. We are looking to means that might allow public houses to lock at least some doors so as to make the available lockboxes reasonably valuable, while at the same time preventing the old 'vendor as free storage exploit'.

The following items have either been fixed or enhanced.

• Locking doors in public houses
  You can now lock doors in public houses.
  With the recent addition of 'upgradeable storage', we no longer believe the 'free vendor storage' (the OSI motivation behind unlockable doors on public houses) is a major concern. While we understand 'free vendor storage' will happen on a small scale, the bulk of players that want more storage will simply upgrade their home storage and be done with it.
  This change will allow:
  1. shop keepers to lock a room to their shops and make effective use of all those lockdowns that are now all but useless.
  2. Close up shop while on vacation, restocking, redecorating, etc.
  3. Open a public inn (see upcoming changes below)
  

Upcoming changes:
We will be adding a deed that allows you to change individual locks. What this enables is the ability to run an inn.
The basic idea would be where:
1. you friend someone
2. you change the locks on their door and give them a key
3. the new friend places a strongbox outside their room with the room key in it
4. if the innkeeper is nice, they will put a lockbox in your room for personal storage

Note: 1, 3 & 4 are optional.

PS. Thanks Akarius Alexios for the neat inn idea.

The following items have either been fixed or enhanced.

• Rares Factory now online
  We've finally brought the rares factory online.
  What this means is that we can now generate 'true rares' ingame that carry their 'set identity' with them. For instance, we now have rare wines and there are only so many bottles of a certain vintage. There were only ever 20 bottles of "Toad Hollow Merlot" produced, so you will see on the bottle:
  Toad Hollow Merlot, bottle 1 of 20
  Toad Hollow Merlot, bottle 2 of 20
  Toad Hollow Merlot, bottle 3 of 20
  Etc..
  
  Item Identification also shows this M of N identifier so that you know you own the a 'true rare'.
  
  Other 'true rares' generated by the rares factory will not carry the M of N designation in the name, but will still carry it in the description returned by Item Identification. For instance, the fabled sword Hrunting does not give M of N in the name, but you can find exactly how many of these swords were ever produced (or will ever be produced) by using Item Identification upon it.
• Overland Merchant
  The overland merchant may now give you a bottle of rare wine, or perhaps a rare book describing the available wines.
  Remember: The Overland merchant is the merchant that is announced on the Town Crier.
• Overland Bandit
  Overland bandit may now drop the fabled Hrunting
  Remember: The Overland bandit is the bandit that is announced on the Town Crier.

Definitions:
Daily Rares: semi-rares that drop regularly
True Rares: rare items of which there are only a finite number (1-N.)