by Darkgolem on Jan 15, 2007
Weekly Development Activities Update
The updates to the DDO development team's work keep coming!
Weekly Development Activities (Jan 15, 2007)
In QA
These items are in QA and should be part of the next update, "Litany of
the Dead: Part 2".
General
* You will now regenerate death XP debt slowly while
in town (not in dungeons) or while logged off.
* We have fixed a condition where characters could
periodically enter a state where healing over time and damage over time
effects (including city regen, tavern regen, and food) were not working.
* When running a dungeon in solo mode, there is no
longer an XP penalty for leaving and reentering.
* Anonymous players will now be able to join parties
and post LFM messages without problems.
* Displaying players only LFG in the Who panel
should be much snappier now.
* Fixed several incorrect mapnotes.
* Swimming underwater on low or medium graphics
settings will no longer produce a strobe-like effect.
UI Improvements
* The /gather emote is now available.
* The highlight on the activated action bar is now
more visible.
* When you are creating a party and someone asks to
join your group, you will now be able to send them a tell, accept or
decline their invitation, and even open the "create party panel" right
from the chat box. This is in addition to the old method of accessing
these functions.
* Auctions
o All emails
sent regarding auctioned items now include the item name.
o When you
successfully buy out an auction item, you will receive an immediate
chat tell message informing you about the successful purchase.
* If you switch from one character to another, you
should no longer see your previous character listed in the "Who" panel.
Monsters
* NEW More spectres have the potential to cast
spells.
* NEW Air elementals have never dropped
collectibles, but they occasionally displayed the collectible effect.
They will no longer do this.
* NEW AC and Dexterity scores for hard and elite
unnamed spiders were reviewed and in many cases were reduced
significantly. The hard version of regular brown spiders and brown
spider princes had their hit points reduced as well.
* Mummies will no longer occasionally heal
themselves to death.
* Wraiths should no longer attack or cast while
invisible and untargetable.
* The "spin attack" of vampires will now actually do
damage.
Combat
* Ammunition that is Secured(Item Locked) will no
long be automatically loaded if you run out of ammo in your ammo slot.
Spells
* NEW Chill touch once again caps its damage at
5d6.
* Undead (except for incorporeal undead), vermin,
and earth elementals are no longer immune to the trip portion of the
Cometfall spell.
* Sorcerers will now be able to activate Level 6
spell scrolls using a caster level check.
Skills, Feats, & Abilities
* We have changed how Mobile Spellcasting works. Now
all players can cast while on the move with half their normal movement
speed. However, with Mobile Spellcasting, you can move at full speed.
Consequently, the Improved Mobile Spellcasting feat has been removed,
as Mobile Spellcasting will now have the same effect Improved Mobile
Spellcasting previously had. Players who had the Improved Mobile
Spellcasting feat will gain a single free feat respec.
* The lockpick animation will now take the same
amount of time for all races.
Enhancements
* Halfling characters should no longer be able to
get themselves into a state where they are stuck with more than 4
enhancements and cannot swap them out.
* The Smite Evil enhancements family has a new icon.
* Favored Enemy (Gnoll) no longer has a blank icon.
Items
* Drops of Ancient Bronze tokens have been greatly
increased.
* All Gnoll bane and Goblinoid bane weapons will now
get their to-hit and damage bonuses against the correct target types.
* Monsters shaken by the "roaring" effect on several
named items will now have a "shaken" fear symbol over their heads.
* Your ears will now be visible when equipping halo
or tiara type headgear.
* Gauntlets will no longer be created with minimum
required levels that are higher than level 12 when looting chests in CR
12 dungeons on Elite. Existing gauntlets will not be changed. If you
have gauntlets that are higher than minimum level 13 or higher you can
either sell them or hold onto them for when the character level cap is
increased in the future.
* The Telekinetic effect on Whirlwind and Sirroco
has been changed to use a Balance check to resist the knockdown instead
of a Trip save. This means that in most cases monsters will now resist
the knockdown more than they did before because most of the monster
bonuses (size, number of legs, etc) are only applied to Balance saves.
* Both the Planar Gird and the Cape of the Roc will
now be found in the Clothing section of the Auction House. Previously
these items were listed in the Jewelry section.
NPCs
* The missing collectors from House Deneith are now
in place with new examples of alchemical goodness to distribute.
Quests
* NEW Monsters that have not yet "entered" the
world will no longer be able to be triggered prematurely. This will fix
several dungeons which could be rendered incompletable, including the
Twilight Forge Warforged Titan encounter.
* NEW Quest objects like altars will no longer be
immune to energy types like fire, ice, holy, etc. and will no longer be
immune to spells like Fireball and Cone of Cold that deal these types
of damage.
* The Circle of Eternity
o Fixed an AI
issue that caused several fire elementals to become stuck.
* The Court of Lailat
o The first
encounter with Queen Lailat will now reset if all the players in her
throne room die.
* NEW Gate of Nightmares
o Iorrat will no
longer respawn.
* Haunted Library
o Moved a trap
control box so that it is actually accessible to players.
* Irestone Inlet
o NEW We fixed
a kobold who erroneously had a mini-boss name.
* The Necropolis
o NEW The
Necropolis has received a face-lift. Who did it? Why did it
happen nobody knows .
o Raddha Cross
will now refer to the vampire using his proper name.
o The Bloody
Crypt
+ NEW You will no longer be able to repeat The Bloody Crypt without
repeating the four previous dungeons in the chain (Tomb of the Burning
Heart, Tomb of the Crimson Heart, Tomb of the Immortal Heart, and Tomb
of the Sanguine Heart).
o Tomb of the
Crimson Heart
+ NEW The Shrouded Horror that once spawned in this dungeon has been
replaced with a more appropriate CR monster.
* The Sands of Menechtarun
o Vorvand
Darkfur's chest should now unlock when he dies.
* Spawn of Whisperdoom
o Fixed several
optional objectives so that they can now be completed.
* Spire of Validus
o Improved DM
Text with better feedback regarding the Lichs treasure room.
o NEW The
primary villain in the Spire of Validus has been running low on decent
corpses. He will no longer unleash skeletal ambushes on opponents that
have returned to Stormreach, and the skeletons created in these
ambushes are sadly of shoddier construction (the magic animating these
skeletons will fail after a time).
* Three-Barrel Cove
o The Fire Caves
+ Adjusted the lava depth and added a ledge to help ensure players
could reach a chest.
* Vault of Night
o Prison of the
Mind
+ This quest will no longer be counted twice for both House Kundarak
favor and Total favor.
Under Development
These items are currently in development and are scheduled for some
time after the next update.
General
* The elven female avatar now has the braided
hairstyle available.
Monsters
* The Hobgoblins have finally gotten their
long-delayed and much-needed shipments of bows. Now, wherever
hobgoblins live, there is a chance they will have some archers amongst
their ranks.