Weekly Development Activities for the New Month

Samera tells us what's going on in Westwood to made DDO better.

Weekly Development Activities (Apr 30, 2007)

In QA

These items are in QA and are scheduled for Update 4.1: Mark of the
Dragon.



General



    * NEW – Resurrection Shrines now function in all
ways like the Raise Dead spell. They will no longer drain the mana of a
spellcaster that uses them, and restores people to life at 10% hit
points rather than at 1 hit point. This is meant to address an
imbalance between the effects of death for casters versus non-casters.

    * NEW – The Coin Lords have used a portion of their
increased income from the Auction House to upgrade the elementals
powering the teleporters in Stormreach. Each of the teleporters in the
various House wards of the city now allow anyone using them to select
their destination from any of the other teleporter locations in
Stormreach.

    * Once upon a time there was a mighty warrior who
had a love pure and true. But then his beloved disappeared and the
mighty warrior flew into a rage. Where had the object of his passion
gone? The warrior embarked upon a heroic quest to find his lost love.
For an entire year the warrior searched without any sign of his
beloved. And then one day…..could it be? Yet this was a different sort
of love – the mighty warrior's beloved had changed, but it was his love
still, and a great happiness filled the dazed warrior.

    * You can now /point at things that are farther away
than 30 meters.





UI Improvements



    * NEW – The bold lock icon for locking your
inventory has returned!

    * NEW – The resistance labels in the character sheet
have been replaced with icons. This fixes a bug in which the character
sheet was not able to display all resistances.

    * The Enhancement Training panel now has undo and
redo buttons. In addition, hovering over the buttons will display what
hitting the button will do. For example, if you removed a benefit that
took 7 other enhancements with it, you can hover over the "undo" button
to see which 7 enhancements were removed and hit the undo button to
quickly put them back in your list.

    * You can no longer enter dirty words in your LFM
note. Bad players! No cookie for you! PS: Anyone who tries putting a
naughty word into their LFM note after reading this will get a
/pseudopod smack.

    * Corrected display issue with floating damage
numbers for Sneak Attacks when base weapon damage does not overcome
monster's Damage Reduction.

    * NEW – Portal Screens for House Jorasco, House
Kundarak, House Phairlan, House Denieth, the Market, and the Harbor
have been updated to reflect the environment of each ward.

    * NEW – The tabs in the bank have new artwork.





Monsters



    * NEW – We have made additional adjustments to some
monster AI.

    * NEW – You can now click on Hellcats.

    * The giant skeletons in Gianthold Tor no longer
have a chance to display an empty collectible shiny when they die. They
are not supposed to drop collectibles.





Combat



    * Lay on hands and remove disease now pay on
execution. If you get your animation interrupted, you don't lose your
activation cost.





Spells



    * NEW – Cure Critical Wounds is now a Spontaneous
Cast spell like the rest of the Cure Wounds spells. This means that
Cure Critical Wounds is always memorized in the Cleric's Spell book and
may not be removed.

    * NEW – Wizards are now able to inscribe Scrolls of
Banishment to add the spell to their known spells list.

    * NEW – The Knock spell can now be learned by
Wizards when training.

    * Other players will now be able to see your Niac's
Cold Ray.





Items



    * When you loot chests you can now change who the
loot is reserved for to anyone currently in your party. The new menu
contains data on player's names and primary class, so if you see the
perfect dagger for a rogue, there's no confusion about who the rogue in
the party is. Please note: items which are bind on equip cannot have
their reservation changed.

    * Items can now be designated as "exclusive." This
means that you can only have one of an exclusive item in your backpack
or equipped at a time. You can still place multiple exclusive items in
your bank, mail, trade, and sell exclusive items (as long as they are
not bound). Exclusive item A will have no effect on how many copies of
Exclusive item B you can own. We have no plans to retroactively add
this property to current items other than the Ring of Spell Storing.

    * The Fearsome armor effect will no longer place a
permanent special effect over the character's head.

    * NEW – Arrows and Bolts of Chaotic Outsider Slaying
and Lawful Outsider Slaying will now slay Outsiders of the appropriate
alignment.

    * NEW – The bonus from Seeker now also adds to the
base damage of the weapon on critical hits (before multiplication).
Beware Seeker Heavy Picks.





NPCs



    * Aulandar Thislecrown in the House of Wizardry,
Jorasco city ward now has the title that proves she sells level 7 spell
scrolls.





Quests



    * NEW – Stormreaver Raid

          o The spike
damage will no longer scale quite as high for Hard/Elite.

          o Players
overcharged by the Stormreaver will no longer get a save roll (since
there wasn't a save anyway).