Weekly Development Activities

July 17, 2006

Check out the latest updates to the "Weekly Development Activities."
The goal for this feature is to give solid expectations on what you can
expect to see in future updates.

In QA

These items are in QA and should be a part of the next scheduled
update.

General

• Loot messages from other players will be tagged as loot messages
  and can be filtered out.
• Players will no longer get stuck while dismounting from ladders.

Monsters

• Improved the dragon's spellcasting AI and line of sight
  recognition.

Items

• Vorpal weapons will behead monsters as per the
  Players Handbook - you must roll a natural 20 and confirm a crit to
  vorpal your target.

Spells

• The Fragment of the Silver Flame's Protection from
  Evil effect will no longer give protection against Neutral and Good
  casters trying to affect the wearer with Charm or
  Enchantment(Compulsion) spells.

Under Development

These items are currently in development and are scheduled for some
time after the next update.



Performance

• Overall bandwidth of the game will be reduced
  another 1-3%, and certain problematic dungeons and laggy areas will be
  significantly improved by 20-50% (when your client gets flooded with
  information about objects in your local area).

General

• We are pleased to announce the addition of the /showhelmet |="" off=""> command which can be used to hide your helmet graphic.
• We
  are improving the combat/damage feedback mechanism. This will not only
  eliminate "false" hits where the target would flinch but no attack roll
  would take place, but also give better feedback as to the strength of
  the hit.

Monsters

• Widow type spiders will once again shoot functional webs.
• Elemental Empathy will work properly on Earth Elementals that
  have used their Earthgrab ability.
• We
  are fixing an issue with the death animations of Arcane Skeletons. They
  will no longer "eat collectables" they should be creating.

Items

• The Freedom of Movement effect on the Kundarak
  Delving Boots will ward the movement effects of Storm Giant weather
  control. It will no longer ward the Beholder's petrify eye beam or the
  Mummy's Despair ability. We are also working on exempting the boots
  from the movement restrictions of Sleetstorm and IceStorm.
  

To discuss the weekly development activities visit the official target="_blank" href="http://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51004">DDO
Forums.

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