Weekly Development Activities

• NEW - The Spell Selection window should
  no longer crash the client.
• NEW - Some quest rewards were becoming
  permanently ransacked; this is now fixed.
• The tavern in Necropolis is now named "One Foot Inn" and has a
  new flavor NPC to relate the tale of how it got the name.

Monsters

• Dead mummies will no longer cause despair.
• Charmed mummies will no longer cause despair in allied players.
• The Warrior of the Six is now correctly tagged as Neutral Evil.

Items

• Repeating crossbows should once again be functioning properly.
• NEW
  - If you have a shield and a wand/scroll/thrown-weapon equipped and are
  blocking, in most cases the shield will now take item wear, not the
  right hand item.
• All adamantine weapons have been given a boost
  to their Hardness. This change will affect all existing weapons as well
  as newly created adamantine weapons.
• The new brigandine armor introduced in the Twilight Forge Module
  will now appear properly on Drow.

NPCs

• NEW - Kaltrop, a student of
  monster behavior, has taken to frequenting the One Foot Inn. Kaltrop
  has some interesting information for adventurers regarding the special
  abilities of the Necropolis' inhabitants.

Quests

• Gwylan's Stand
  
  • An influx of foolish
    adventurers into the area surrounding Gwylan's Stand has allowed the
    various monsters in the area to accumulate a little more treasure.
    
• Necropolis
  • Bloody Crypt
    
    • The Lich is now the Black Abbot and not a generic lich.
    • Using the levers to open the east and west wings will
      correctly report that you used a lever, and not a book.
      
    • Salasso now wears the correct robe.
  • Bloody Crypt Junction
    
    • Using the waypoint to the burning heart will correctly
      place you at the side entrance room.
    • You can now see Brother Salasso at work on the Heretical
      Path from the junction.
      
  • Graveyard
    • Julia has outfitted her tavern with new tables and
      glassware.
    • The tavern now has a mapnote.
    • Kai-Teng and Dame Calla have unpacked many of their books
      and papers.
  • Tomb of the Burning Heart
    
    • Fixed several untargettable sarcophagi.
      
    • Fixed a group of inactive wights.
  • Tomb of the Crimson Heart
    
    • Several undead will no longer spawn on a wall.
      
  • Tomb of the Immortal Heart
    
    • Only one of each book will spawn.
      
    • Hell Hounds and Earth Elementals will no longer respawn.
  • Tomb of the Sanguine Heart
    
    • Fixed a broken trap.

Under Development

These items are currently in development and are scheduled for some
time after the next update (most likely Module 3).



Performance

• The landscape renderer has been overhauled to
  provide better performance (especially load times). In addition, the
  new landscape engine enables huge draw distances that were not possible
  before.
• The overall frame rate has been improved and ‘hitching' reduced.
• Avatars
  and monsters are now a bit brighter than other objects (the intensity
  depends upon the environment and lighting conditions).
• 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).

UI Improvements

• The text on the XP bar has been clarified
  to make it more obvious that you have not lost the XP you were accruing
  toward your bonus AP when you die and get an XP debt while you are
  working toward bonus action points.
• You will now get chat feedback in the combat window when you hit
  someone with a non-damaging spell (like fear or slow).
• NEW - The "New Mail" icon will now
  appear on the Focus Orb even if it is minimized.
• NEW - The "To" and "Subject" line of the
  Compose Mail UI no longer accept carriage returns.

General

• Phantasmal killer is now a fear effect.
• The
  Silver Flame has recognized that the brothers stationed in Taverns have
  been casting an inferior version of Restoration. From now on, the spell
  cast in taverns will remove 1 negative level in addition to all the
  other Restoration effects.
• Players will no longer get stuck while dismounting from ladders.
• We
  are pleased to announce the addition of the /showhelmet <on |
  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.
• When you successfully swap a spell, you will now get an alert
  telling you that it worked.
• NEW - Poison dart and poison grenade
  traps will now actually poison you instead of doing poison hp damage.
• Lava Cam! When your camera is in lava, it now looks more like
  it's in lava, as opposed to water.
• Made
  some small tweaks to our avatar animations. For example, human female's
  wrists won't twist in the dual weapon combo attack, dwarven arms won't
  over-extend when they use an axe to cleave, etc.

Monsters

• Spiders
  • NEW - Some mid- and high-level
    (mostly CR 7 and up) spiders have new stronger poisons.
  • NEW
    - Most spiders on the hard and elite settings have had their attack
    damage reduced significantly, particularly those on the elite setting.
  • Widow type spiders will once again shoot functional webs.
• Some ogres have been eating their veggies and will be able to see
  and hear better than they could before.
• Several
  bow wielding enemies will now shoot various energy arrows like flaming
  arrows or cold arrows. These will do the typical piercing damage (1d6
  and up) in addition to various amounts of energy damage.
• NEW
  - Several resourceful enemies have begun using various alchemical
  substances in battle. In most cases, these will affect players as
  energy damage over time.
• NEW - Vermin are no longer immune to
  stunning blow.
• Elemental Empathy will work properly on Earth Elementals that
  have used their Earthgrab ability.
• NEW
  - More powerful versions of Mummy Rot are now labeled accordingly:
  Pernicious Mummy Rot is more dangerous than regular Mummy Rot, and
  Virulent Mummy Rot is even more lethal.
• Female humanoid villains will no longer charge into melee range
  if armed with spells or bows.
• We
  are fixing an issue with the death animations of Arcane Skeletons. They
  will no longer "eat collectables" they should be creating.

Combat

• NEW - All enemy trips and
  knockdowns now have dual saves (an initial save and a secondary save).
  Most give you an ability modifier check for the initial save to
  determine whether or not you fall. This is usually your Strength or
  Dexterity modifier, whichever is greater on your character. Some
  knockdowns like grease give a reflex save as the initial save. Once you
  fall down, your secondary save checks will occur every two seconds and
  are versus your balance skill to determine when you stand back up.

Spells

• Resist Energy is now available for clerics,
  paladins, rangers, and wizards. Protection from Energy is now available
  to Rangers, Wizards, and Clerics. This change allows these classes to
  cast Protection From Energy and Resist Energy the same way a sorcerer
  can, by memorizing a single spell and then choosing which damage type
  to ward against. The days of memorizing several Resist Energy:
  (Element) are no more!

Skills & Abilities

• Bards can now activate their
  singing abilities while moving! The activation time on their singing
  abilities has been reduced significantly as well. An animation glitch
  has also been fixed!
• The description for the Paladin's Lay on
  Hands ability has been corrected to better describe the amount of
  healing/damage that the ability does.