Dungeons and Dragons Updates

DDO

Fans of the MMORPG that started it all, Dungeons and Dragons, will be pleased to hear about the following updates.  First of all,  the Guild message of the day will be able to contain punctuation, allowing for much greater grammatical precision (you knew an English degree was better for something more than serving burgers and fries while wearing one of those stupid paper hats – didn’t you?)

They have also changed the text of the in-game help request for “Stuck” to reflect the best procedure to follow if one gets “stuck”  in-game. Earlier, the best a player could do was  to log out of the game – not always the best course of action. Now, players will submit a help request and wait for assistance.

The systems involving invisibility have been redesigned. in order to bring the stealth and invisibility system closer to the D&D Core Rulebooks.

Monsters that think they have detected a hidden target will no longer unerringly hone in on the stealthed character; rather they will rely on a “best guess” to target where they logically believe the character to be. Invisibility, rather than being complete undetectability, now routes through the stealth system as Hide and Move Silently do. When using invisibility, players now have to make a stealth check with a +20 bonus. Invisibility does not grant Move Silently, and so players  are advised to activate stealth when you are invisible. Both invisibility and stealth now contain “detaunt elements” when one is in a party. Opponents will prefer to attack targets that are visible, and if they cannot find those targets they will eventually give up.

For a complete list of updates, check out the Full Article after the jump!

DDO

Fans of the MMORPG that started it all, Dungeons and Dragons, will be pleased to hear about the following updates.  First of all,  the Guild message of the day will be able to contain punctuation, allowing for much greater grammatical precision (you knew an English degree was better for something more than serving burgers and fries while wearing one of those stupid paper hats – didn’t you?)

They have also changed the text of the in-game help request for “Stuck” to reflect the best procedure to follow if one gets “stuck”  in-game. Earlier, the best a player could do was  to log out of the game – not always the best course of action. Now, players will submit a help request and wait for assistance.

The systems involving invisibility have been redesigned. in order to bring the stealth and invisibility system closer to the D&D Core Rulebooks.

Monsters that think they have detected a hidden target will no longer unerringly home in on the stealthed character; rather they will rely on a “best guess” to target where they logically believe the character to be. Invisibility, rather than being complete undetectability, now routes through the stealth system as Hide and Move Silently do. When using invisibility, players now have to make a stealth check with a +20 bonus. Invisibility does not grant Move Silently, and so players  are advised to activate stealth when you are invisible. Both invisibility and stealth now contain “detaunt elements” when one is in a party. Opponents will prefer to attack targets that are visible, and if they cannot find those targets they will eventually give up.

Other updates are as follows:

Vendors and NPC’s

–  The Jewelry and Clothing Pawnbrokers will be moving to the Marketplace Tent. Vendors selling non-magical consumable goods will take their place in the House shops.
–  Some of the Incorrect NPC dialogue following the recent relocation of several quest NPCswill be corrected.
–  Scrag the Kobold will be fixed so that he can talk to more than one player at a time.
–  Sailor Calatin of Smuggler’s Rest will be moving down the dock next to the Rook’s Gambit Tavern. He will be more centrally located so that players can skip the class-specific tutorials and head directly to Stormreach if desired. (Going through the class tutorials is still recommended, however.)

Items

–  NEW – Permanently damaged items will reduce in value at a slower rate.
–  The variety of Bane/Greater Bane/Slaying arrows and bolts will be significantly increased. Additionally, Bane and Greater Bane missiles will be added to the loot tables for chests.
–  Warforged Oil (Drink) will be significantly improved so that it is comparable in effectiveness to similar to non-oil drinks of equivalent cost.
–  The Brooch of Waterbreathing will once again have a 90 second effect.
–  Hold Person scrolls will now be available for sale with the rest of the level 3 Arcane Scrolls.
–  The description of some resistance items is being revised in order to clarify stacking. For example “of resistance” items do not stack with items that give a bonus to a specific category of saves (i.e. will saves).
–  There is the possibility that some items have been created that cast Fireshield. Fireshield has not been fully implemented into the game and does not return damage to enemies that attack a fireshielded character. These items will no longer be created, but Fireshield items already in existence will not be changed. Fireshield does reduce damage from fire while it is in effect.
–  Holy, Axiomatic, and Anarchic weapons no longer display the Immune message when a player of the correct alignment equips them.
–  The Brooch of Shielding and Raktu’s Trifle will no longer display an alert icon for their Magic missile shielding effects.
–  Any new Docents of Filtration will be properly identified as docents.
–  Any new Thanatos Weave Robes will be properly identified as robes.

Quests

–   A rest shrine near the Black Heart Encampment in the Jungle of Khyber will be added.
–   The level of the Kobold in part 1 will now be the same difficulty level as the other kobolds.

Combat

–  There will be  mprovements to combat feedback for critical hits.
–  Changes are coming to improve the tooltip description for the Power Attack feat. This will help to make clear that this feat  applies to melee attacks only. The language of several additional tooltips will be clarified as well.

Monsters

–  The Conjured Spiders in Euphonia’s Challenge have had their AC reduced. This should reduce the amount of time it takes new players to take these spiders down.

Performance

–  There will be a fix of a  graphics memory leak that causes performance to severely degrade over time, eventually causing instability or crashes. This should also help alleviate “hitching.”
–  In a continued effort to help dial-up players,  there will be further reductions to bandwidth usage. All players should see some benefit from this reduction.
–  A bug that sometimes causes players to crash while teleporting will be addressed.
–  Several focus orb images. have been added or corrected.

Several items are currently in development and are scheduled for the Twilight Forge Module or later.  Some of these:

UI Improvements

–  Alerts for “Missing Spell Component” will now list what the missing component is.
 – The “/help alias” description of the /alias command is being updated to properly reflect /alias’ capabilities.
 – There is now an option to ignore all guild invites.
 – Guild invites from squelched players will now be ignored.
 – The correct error message will now be displayed if your guild invite expires.
 – If a player dies from constitution damage, s/he will no longer have an ability damage icon appear on your screen after being resurrected.
 – In order to explain the death penalty more clearly, the Death Penalty tooltip will be changed to read “You are significantly below the minimum amount of experience points required for your level. Your maximum hit points and spell points have been reduced, and you suffer a penalty to your attack rolls, saves, skills, and caster level.”

General

– Players will now be able to log out while incapacitated.
– Players will no longer be able to be both exhausted and fatigued; exhaustion will remove and block fatigue.
– The upper limit of 40 on skills will be removed.
  The “Over Time” spells and effects will be changed. Intervals will be closer together (i.e., 2 seconds instead of 6 seconds), but will do less damage/benefit during each interval. There will be no change to the total amount of damage/benefit, this is purely a change to how the damage/benefit is spread out over time. This change also applies to the way lava does damage over time.
 – Owing to their construct nature, Warforged will find that they are able to hold their breath under water significantly longer than they could before.

Combat

–  All races will be able to cause damage when they attempt to attack while sneaking with a shield.
–  The display for your party member’s HP/SP bars will refresh more frequently.
–  A display issue where the damage over time component of Slicing Blow isn’t displaying properly is being addressed.

Enhancements

– Warforged with Improved Fortification will no longer be healed, even if they have taken the “Healer’s Friend” enhancement.

Items

– There was a text display error in which the description text for mithril armor, labelling it a “medium” armor instead of a “light” armor. This has been corrected, and will not change performance.

Spells

 – A problem where holy smite is not properly stunning evil creatures is being addressed.
 – Lightning bolt and flaming sphere would periodically hit targets more than once. This issue will be fixed.
 – The Divine power spell is being fixed to properly apply the correct amount of temporary hit points to its target.
 – We are fixing the Bard song “Inspire Greatness” and the spell “Greater Heroism” so that their greatness effects will no longer prematurely end when the bonus temporary hit points are used up.
–  Melf’s Acid Arrow is having its look and effects changed so that it appears bigger and brighter.
–  An issue in which players hit by multiple blindness spells, has been fixed. Players’ full sight won’t be restored until the final blindness effect has ended.
–  The “doom” spell will now properly give you a -2 to your attack rolls (as per D&D rules).
–  Having the benefit “Improved Heightening” will no longer give a discount to spells that are already maximum level.
–  The poison spell will now show immunity effects if cast on an immune target.
–  When a player resists a spell due to an item of spell resistance, feedback will be sent to the combat chat tab.

Monsters

–  MOVED FROM “IN QA”- The Guardian of the Seal of Shan-to-Kor will now be less likely to walk on top of people (float) during combat.
–  Xorian skeletons will no longer be immune to fire.
–  Casting “Blind” on Velah the Dragon will have no effect.

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