Weekly Development Activities

June 5, 2006

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In QA:

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

UI

• NEW - The Guild message of the day will
  be able to contain punctuation.
• NEW - We have changed the text of the
  in-game help request for "Stuck" to reflect the best procedure to
  follow if you get stuck somewhere in-game. Previously the instructions
  directed players to log out of the game, which is not the best course
  of action. Instead you should submit a help request and wait for
  assistance.

General

• NEW - In order to bring the stealth
  and invisibility system closer to the D&D Core Rulebooks, we've
  redesigned how the systems work.
  • 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, you will now have to make a stealth check with a
    +20 bonus. Invisibility does not grant Move Silently, and so you are
    advised to activate stealth when you are invisible.
  • Both invisibility and stealth now contain detaunt elements
    when you are in a party. Opponents will prefer to attack targets that
    are visible, and if they cannot find you they will eventually give up,
    rather than omnisciently hunting you over long distances.
  • Read more about the Invisibility changes href="http://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40205">here

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.
• We will be correcting some of the (now) incorrect NPC dialogue
  following the recent relocation of several quest NPCs.
• Scrag the kobold will be fixed so that he can talk to more than
  one player at a time.
• NEW - 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 you can choose to skip the
  class-specific tutorials and head directly to Stormreach if you want.
  However, we still recommend running through the class tutorials that
  can be found in the buildings behind the Rook's Gambit.

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, we will be adding Bane and
  Greater Bane missiles 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.
• Players will no longer find Slaying arrows that don't have
  killable monsters associated with them.
• Hold Person scrolls will now be available for sale with the rest
  of the level 3 Arcane Scrolls.
• We are changing the description of some resistance items to
  help 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

• We will be adding a rest shrine near the Black Heart Encampment
  in the Jungle of Khyber.
• When we made the recent adjustments to the difficulty of the
  kobolds in the Old Sully's Grog quests, we neglected to adjust the
  level of the kobold in part 1. He will now be the same difficulty level
  as the other kobolds.

Combat

• We will be making some improvements to combat feedback for
  critical hits.
• We will be changing the tooltip description for the Power
  Attack feat to help clarify that this feat only applies to melee
  attacks. We will also be changing the language of several additional
  tooltips to help make sure their meaning is clear 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

• We are fixing a graphics memory leak that causes performance to
  severely degrade over time, eventually causing instability or crashes.
  This should also help alleviate "hitching."
• NEW - In a continued effort to help
  our dial-up players we will be making some further reductions to
  bandwidth usage. All players should see some benefit from this
  reduction.
• Fixing a bug that sometimes causes players to crash while
  teleporting.
• We have added or corrected several focus orb images.

Under Development:

These items are currently in development and are scheduled for the
Twilight Forge Module or later.

(Please note: this is just the second installment in the
extremely lengthy list of fixes and changes that we are working on for
the Twilight Forge Module. This is just the beginning.)

UI Improvements

• Alerts for "Missing Spell Component" will now list what the
  missing component is.
• UPDATED - The "/help alias" description of the /alias command is
  being updated to properly reflect /alias' capabilities.
• NEW - There is now an option to ignore
  all guild invites.
• NEW - Guild invites from squelched
  players will now be ignored.
• NEW - The correct error message will now
  be displayed if your guild invite expires.
• NEW - If you die from constitution
  damage you will no longer have an ability damage icon appear on your
  screen after you have resurrected.
• NEW - 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

• You will now be able to log out while incapacitated.
• You will no longer be able to be both exhausted and fatigued;
  exhaustion will remove and block fatigue.
• NEW - The upper limit of 40 on skills
  will be removed.
• NEW - We are changing the way "Over
  Time" spells and effects work. The 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.
• NEW - 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

• NEW - 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.
• We are fixing a display issue where the damage over time
  component of Slicing Blow isn't displaying properly (please note: the
  DOT is occurring properly, it just isn't displaying properly.).

Enhancements

• Warforged with Improved Fortification will no longer be healed,
  even if they have taken the "Healer's Friend" enhancement.

Items

• We have fixed a display error in the description text for
  mithril armor where the text stated that mithril armor was a medium
  armor instead of a light armor. This was a text error only and will not
  change performance.

Spells

• NEW - We are fixing a problem where holy
  smite is not properly stunning evil creatures.
• NEW - Lightning bolt and flaming sphere
  would periodically hit targets more than once. This issue will be
  fixed.
• NEW - The Divine power spell is being
  fixed to properly apply the correct amount of temporary hit points to
  its target.
• NEW - 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.
• We are fixing an issue where if you've been hit by multiple
  blindness spells, all of the spells would end as soon as the first
  spell expired. Now your 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 you resist a spell due to an item of spell resistance, it
  will now send feedback 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.
• NEW - Xorian skeletons will no longer be
  immune to fire.
• NEW - Casting "Blind" on Velah the
  Dragon will have no effect.

To discuss this new feature, or the upcoming changes visit the
official DDO
Forums.