Weekly Development Activities (June 18, 2007)

[Samera]

In QA
These items are in QA and are scheduled for Update 4.2: Searing Heights.

General

• NEW – Players get 3 more weapon set configuration slots, for a total of 7!
• Fixed an Auction House bug where it was possible to bid on an auction and receive a different quantity of the item than expected.

UI Improvements

• The XP bar should no longer disappear on larger monitors.
• Auction House
  
  • You can now filter your auction house searches by item level. This search is based on the minimum level to use the item. Items with no level requirement are considered level 1 by the filter.
  • Clothing and Jewelry sections in the auction house are now broken up into multiple categories based the slot the item equips to. There are now a total of ten categories for both of these two sections. Note: Only newly posted auctions will appear in these new categories.
    
• Friends List
  
  • Offline friends will no longer show up in the friends list when added or imported if "Hide Offline Friends" is checked.

Monsters

• UPDATED – The spike damage of the Razor Cats is now working properly. Those who hit a razor cat in melee combat will have to make a reflex save or be injured by the spikes. Keep some throwing hammers and/or spearblock items handy.
• The fire elemental's Aura of Flame has been fixed. It can no longer be blocked by spell resistance.
• Duergar barbarians, bandits, and bards had their alignment corrected. They are now Neutral Evil instead of Lawful Evil.
• Higher level wights and ghouls (CR 10 and above) will be able to use their innate abilities like level drain and disease on more of their attacks, rather than only doing these on their “rear back and jump forward” attack. This makes them more like their pen and paper counterparts and will make them a little more challenging. Players will of course still get their saves to resist these effects.

Combat


Spells

• New Spell:
  
  • Holy Sword
    
    • Paladin 4
    • Channels holy power to turn a Blessed Cold Iron weapon into a +5 Holy Cold Iron weapon that grants its wielder a continuous Protection From Evil effect while equipped. The holy weapon is permanent, but is destroyed on dungeon exit.
    
    
• NEW – Tenser's Transformation now grants Simple Weapon Proficiencies in addition to Martial Weapon Proficiencies. Additionally, casting Tenser's Transformation will now also grant proficiency with Throwing Hammers.
• NEW – Chill Touch now (properly) has a fortitude save to negate the strength damage portion of the spell.
• Potentially long-lasting debuff spells like crushing despair, bane, doom, and ray of enfeeblement have been changed so that they are removed by resting at a rest shrine.
• Fixed Mind Fog's spell school. Mind Fog is an enchantment, not a conjuration.
• The description for the Symbol of Flame spell has been fixed to accurately describe the amount of damage the spell does. The reflex save for this spell has also been fixed. Players and enemy npcs can now attempt a reflex save to reduce damage by half. The spell has always done 5d6 damage, and this has not been changed.

Skills, Feats, & Abilities

• Reduced difficulty of detecting traps with Search and Spot, especially at low levels (5 and under).
• NEW – The Power Critical feats have been upgraded. All of these feats have been consolidated into one. Once you have this feat, you will get a +4 bonus to confirm critical hits with any type of weapon.

Enhancements

• The Toughness enhancement lines for dwarves, barbarians, fighters, and paladins have been upgraded. They now give you 5, 10, 15, and 20 additional hit points respectively instead of 5, 5, 5, and 5. They all still have the Toughness feat as a prerequisite.
• The Follower of the <diety> Enhancement Lines now grant sub-abilities:
  
  • Tira's Champion: (Associated with Follower of the Silver Flame) Activate this ability to grant weapon proficiency in longbows to yourself or a friend until the target next rests. Consumes a use of turn undead.
    
  • Similar sub-abilities exist for the other faiths.
    
• Rogue Subtle Backstabber is now an active enhancement that has a toggled stance. While turned on, you will generate less hate on melee attacks.
• NEW – General
  
  • Extra Dragonmark I
    
    • Cost: 1 Action Point
    • Prereqs: Any Dragonmark, Level 2 Character, 3 Action Points Spent.
    • Benefit: Gain an additional use of your Least, Lesser, and Greater Dragonmarks per rest.
      
    
    
  • Extra Dragonmark 2
    
    • Cost: 2 Action Point
    • Prereqs: Any Dragonmark, Level 6 Character, 18 Action Points Spent.
    • Benefit: Gain an additional use of your Least, Lesser, and Greater Dragonmarks per rest.
      
    
    
  • Extra Dragonmark 3
    
    • Cost: 3 Action Point
    • Prereqs: Any Dragonmark, Level 10 Character, 33 Action Points Spent.
    • Benefit: Gain an additional use of your Least, Lesser, and Greater Dragonmarks per rest.
      
    
    
  • Extra Dragonmark 4
    
    • Cost: 4 Action Point
    • Prereqs: Any Dragonmark, Level 14 Character, 48 Action Points Spent.
    • Benefit: Gain an additional use of your Least, Lesser, and Greater Dragonmarks per rest.
      
    
    
• Warforged
  
  • Warforged Brute Fighting I
    
    • Cost: 1 Action Point
    • Prereqs: Warforged Level 2, 3 Action Points Spent
    • Benefit: Activate this ability to cause your melee attacks to generate 10% more hate, making enemies more likely to attack you.
      
  • Warforged Brute Fighting II
    
    • Cost: 2 Action Points
    • Prereqs: Warforged Level 6, Warforged Brute Fighting I, 18 Action Points Spent
    • Benefit: Activate this ability to cause your melee attacks to generate 15% more hate, making enemies more likely to attack you.
      
  • Warforged Brute Fighting III
    
    • Cost: 3 Action Points
    • Prereqs: Warforged Level 10, Warforged Brute Fighting II, 33 Action Points Spent
    • Benefit: Activate this ability to cause your melee attacks to generate 20% more hate, making enemies more likely to attack you.
  • Warforged Brute Fighting IV
    
    • Cost: 4 Action Points
    • Prereqs: Warforged Level 14, Warforged Brute Fighting III, 48 Action Points Spent
    • Benefit: Activate this ability to cause your melee attacks to generate 25% more hate, making enemies more likely to attack you.
      
• NEW – The Silver Flame Exorcism enhancements now use 10 + (class level) + Charisma Modifier as a DC for the Will and Fortitude saves rather than a fixed save DC. Updated the descriptions to match.
• NEW – An enemy poisoned by Thoughtburn (from the Way of the Assassin ability) now displays appropriate particle effects.
• Undying Call now properly differentiates between Drow and "real" elves.
• The various enhancements that summon creatures (Iron/Steel/Mithral Companion and Vulkoor’s Avatar) can now only be summoned in dungeons. You will no longer trigger the cooldown (and lose the attempt) if you try to summon them elsewhere. Summoning these creatures will now also break stealth.
• Iron Companion no longer lists Cannith Repair II as a potential prerequisite, since a character with Cannith Repair II has already unlocked the enhancement through the Least Mark of Making.

Items

• The House Jorasco Divine Reagent Vendor now carries Blessed Cold Iron Greatswords, Bastard Swords, Longswords, Shortswords, Scimitars, Warhammers, Rapiers, Dwarven Waraxes, Khopeshes, Mauls, and Heavy Picks.
• NEW – New enchanted food and drinks are available in all taverns. Warforged also have new enchanted balms and tonics. The new drink and tonic restores 2500sp over 1 minute. The new food heals 500hp over 1 minute.The new balm heals 450hp over 1 minute.
• Corrected the caster levels for Wands of Flame Arrow and Wands of Holy Smite to appropriate values for their spell level. Wand of Flame Arrow was reduced to Caster Level 5. Wand of Holy Smite was increased to Caster Level 7. Wands of Resist Energy was changed from Caster Level 1 to 3. These changes will affect the UMD difficulty of activating the wands as well as the wands gold value.
• The Helm of the Black Dragon and the Helm of the Blue Dragon will now appear in the correct Clothing section of the Auction House. They were so pretty they were mistakenly put in the Jewelry category.
• NEW – Randomly generated thrown Returning weapons will now correctly bypass their targets Damage Reduction.
• NEW – Clarified the description of the Nullcloth Gown to make it obvious that the 15% Spell Failure applies to all spell casters, even Divine casters.
• NEW – Corrected the naming for stacks of higher level Barkskin and Shield of Faith potions. They will now indicate their additional bonus eg Potions of Shield of Faith (+5).
• NEW – You will no longer be able to attach items to mail messages that are not currently in your inventory (i.e., an item that is in your bank).

NPCs

• Several enemy characters from the Aurum have had their alignment changed to Lawful Evil.
• Many npcs were incorrectly insisting that they were "Race: Elf" in the examination window. This information has been removed from these lying npcs.
• Niles Cage (Stormreach Harbor) is no longer performing an appendectomy on himself.

PVP


Quests

• Made a change to help prevent quest items from becoming inaccessible if the party member who was carrying them dies or leaves the quest.
• NEW – Ataraxia's Haven
  
  • Players will now always be able to exit the mine cave without difficulty.
    
• Cerulean Hills
  
  • Rare Encounter Garunt will now have a treasure chest.
    
• NEW – Menechtarun
  
  • The winds have shifted the sands of Menechtarun, revealing ancient roads.
  • Many of the named minibosses out in the desert of Menechtarun have gotten new supplies or found new sources of power. They are a fair amount stronger than before and will put up a better fight.
    
• The Missing Ward
  
  • The hard and elite versions of Necromancer Gerti have had their spell lists fixed. They will no longer repeatedly cast the sleep spell.
    
• NEW – Prison of the Planes
  
  • Cochitlehua has remembered that he has "Teleport Without Error" as an at-will spell-like ability.
    
• NEW – Sorrowdusk Island
  
  • The named gargoyle Vermilo now functions properly (and his chest spawns on the ground).
    
• Stormcleave Outpost
  
  • Made several changes to the pillars:
    
    • The Mephits have had their hide skill lowered so they should be easier to find
      
    • The Mephits now have a 60 meter leash so they shouldn't wander away
    • Changed an objective to read 'Alight the Pillars' to make it more clear that they need to be fully lit and fully active rather than just partially lit.
      
• Xorian Cipher
  
  • The three named spectres in the Xorian Cipher quest, the Urdak brothers, have been changed into skeletons so they can no longer occasionally flee and leave you stranded in a locked room. They will be slightly more challenging to beat than they were before.
    

In Development
These items are in development and are scheduled for Module 5: The Accursed Ascension (Litany of the Dead Parts 3 & 4).

UI Improvements

• Added active/toggle/passive usage to action tooltips.
• Tooltips that display long cooldown periods will display them in minutes and seconds – e.g., 2 minutes 30 seconds instead of 150 seconds.
• Action tooltips will inform the user when an action is useable in water, not useable in a brawl, or when it is useable only in public. They will also display the target type for the action.
• Tooltips for skills now include the key ability.
• Tooltips for spells and feats now include the save DC and save type(s).
• Shopping
  
  • You can now ctrl-click on an item in a shop to purchase the item in bulk. A pop-up dialog will prompt you to enter the number of items to purchase. Note: This dialog is only used when purchasing items. There is still no way to control the number of items you sell from a stack.
  • When items in a shop are alphabetized, they are sorted first by base name (e.g. sword, dagger) and then by prefix (e.g. masterwork, vorpal).
  • When you add items to the shopping cart, the cumulative cost of the items in the cart will affect the "can afford" status of the items available for purchase / repair.
  • If a player's haggle skill changes, then the shopping cart display price will now update to reflect the change.
• Spells
  
  • Spell tooltips now include blocks that describe whether or not a spell can be resisted, and what the specific material component is for a given spell (if any).
  • Spell tooltips now include a metamagic information block. This block lists the kinds of metamagic that can affect this spell.

Spells

• NEW – The Crushing Despair FX are now persistent.

Skills, Feats, & Abilities

• NEW – The number of Turn Undead attempts per rest will now be calculated on the current displayed Charisma modifier. Previously only permanent changes to Charisma from level advancement and tomes were counted.
• NEW – The Listen skill now helps you detect hidden monsters.

[darkgolem]

NEW – The Listen skill now helps you detect hidden monsters.

How did this take a year to get noted?

[Coldin]

In QA
These items are in QA and are scheduled for Update 4.2: Searing Heights.

General

• NEW – Players get 3 more weapon set configuration slots, for a total of 7!

Yay, more weapon slots!

[LordDamax]

• NEW – The number of Turn Undead attempts per rest will now be calculated on the current displayed Charisma modifier. Previously only permanent changes to Charisma from level advancement and tomes were counted.

Thank god. I've been bug-ing that one since beta.

[Solik]

Is that list of Dragonmark enhancements correct? 1 AP for each, not 1,2,3,4?

That just might make them worth something.

[ChaosTheEternal]

• NEW – Prison of the Planes
  
  • Cochitlehua has remembered that he has "Teleport Without Error" as an at-will spell-like ability.
    

Wonder if he'll end up teleporting "without error" to a place where players can't reach him?

• Potentially long-lasting debuff spells like crushing despair, bane, doom, and ray of enfeeblement have been changed so that they are removed by resting at a rest shrine.

This one makes me happy, though.

In all, good list.

[Symar-FangofLloth]

Yay!
Although, I could swear that listen let you "see" stealthed monsters. At least while they are moving (which is when it makes sense to me, not while they're just standing there).
And those Dragonmark increases will be nice.
More weapon slots, great for all the TWF-ers out there.
PotP end fight will be trickier now, I imagine.

[darkgolem]

Is that list of Dragonmark enhancements correct? 1 AP for each, not 1,2,3,4?

That just might make them worth something.

Has to be wrong. Hmm 4 action points for 4 heal spells? Thats like what..140 sp value for 4 action points.

[Shadow_Flayer]

• NEW – Prison of the Planes
  • Cochitlehua has remembered that he has "Teleport Without Error" as an at-will spell-like ability.

Excellent. PotP getting more challenging is a good thing.

Any idea when we will get information on the bard changes?

[Samera]

Is that list of Dragonmark enhancements correct? 1 AP for each, not 1,2,3,4?

That just might make them worth something.

Oooooooops.

You're right. It should be 1, 2, 3, 4.

[GeneralDiomedes]

The weapon slot change is great actually for both TWF and casters. No more fiddling with weapon combos before a quest, or just saying screw it and not having the optimal combo for a certain encounters (PoP has a wide variety of enemy types for example).

I noticed that the Dragonmark enhancements set yet another precedence for cost progression in that the incremental benefit and the cost stay the same as you go up.

As a compromise, how about applying that math to the Toughness change? Each progression costs an additonal 1 AP but the incremental benefit stays at 5. You spend 4 AP for 20 HP. I think this would be more balanced than what you are proposing.. although I would prefer it to just stay the way it currently is.

EDIT: I see the correction now .. NVM then although that still makes the Toughness progression the odd one out.

[Yaga_Nub]

In QA
These items are in QA and are scheduled for Update 4.2: Searing Heights.

Quests

• NEW – Menechtarun
  
  • The winds have shifted the sands of Menechtarun, revealing ancient roads.
  • Many of the named minibosses out in the desert of Menechtarun have gotten new supplies or found new sources of power. They are a fair amount stronger than before and will put up a better fight.
    
  
  

The desert is supposed to be for levels 8 through 12 (I think), so why are you making it harder? Don't change things like this because you have a capped population. Make more content. I don't want to run my baby characters through quests that say they should be level 10 but instead are really level 14 quests.

The desert area has been out for a long time, why the change now? The devs changed PoP in less than a week when they decided it was to easy. If the devs thought the desert was to easy why didn't it change when it first came out?

The correct answer is.... it wasn't to easy for us then and it's still not a push-over for most level appropriate characters now. DON'T FIX IT IF IT AIN'T BROKEN!!!!

[Solik]

I was afraid of that. I was almost ready to build a dragonmarked character, too.

Still worth it for that AP cost? Hmm... I dunno.

[Vhlad]

The desert is supposed to be for levels 8 through 12 (I think), so why are you making it harder? Don't change things like this because you have a capped population. Make more content. I don't want to run my baby characters through quests that say they should be level 10 but instead are really level 14 quests.

The desert area has been out for a long time, why the change now? The devs changed PoP in less than a week when they decided it was to easy. If the devs thought the desert was to easy why didn't it change when it first came out?

The correct answer is.... it wasn't to easy for us then and it's still not a push-over for most level appropriate characters now. DON'T FIX IT IF IT AIN'T BROKEN!!!!

Many of the outdoor named mobs could use a buff. Thirsty One (bloodstone chest) has always been a complete push-over (the arcanes and skeleton archers are tougher). The named mummy is just as easy as the unnamed one at the ring of spell storing chest.. etc,. (the list goes on)

[Ron]

Is this really going to make a June release, as per the splash screen?

[GeneralDiomedes]

Many of the outdoor named mobs could use a buff. Thirsty One (bloodstone chest) has always been a complete push-over (the arcanes and skeleton archers are tougher). The named mummy is just as easy as the unnamed one at the ring of spell storing chest.. etc,. (the list goes on)

Exactly .. those chests could all be solo'd rather easily. The hardest thing about farming them was waiting for the instance to reset.

Anything which the game harder and encourages grouping is a good thing IMO.

[bobbryan2]

Anything which the game harder and encourages grouping is a good thing IMO.

I'm glad you're not a dev.

Harder isn't always better. The only time you should make something harder, is if the rewards are worth the challenge. With the exception of 3-4 good named items out there (with abyssmal drop rates), those chests suck...

[jkm]

NEW – New enchanted food and drinks are available in all taverns. Warforged also have new enchanted balms and tonics. The new drink and tonic restores 2500sp over 1 minute. The new food heals 500hp over 1 minute.The new balm heals 450hp over 1 minute.

emote: cheer

[GeneralDiomedes]

I'm glad you're not a dev.

Harder isn't always better. The only time you should make something harder, is if the rewards are worth the challenge. With the exception of 3-4 good named items out there (with abyssmal drop rates), those chests suck...

You think people run them for the normal loot?

In this particular case, the challenge of the encounter did not match the potential reward in any way shape or form.

[Mad_Bombardier]

Items

• NEW – New enchanted food and drinks are available in all taverns. Warforged also have new enchanted balms and tonics. The new drink and tonic restores 2500sp over 1 minute. The new food heals 500hp over 1 minute.The new balm heals 450hp over 1 minute.

Yay, House Ghallanda has finally reached a new trade agreement with House Cannith!