DDOCast 553 - Sharn Pre-Orders

[pjstechie]

Arkat & Axel join us this week to talk about Update 41.4 and Sharn Pre-Orders!

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Game News - 2:40
Sharn Pre-Orders - 37:48
Community News - 1:15:35
Lightning Post - 1:20:50

Watch shows live at twitch.tv/ddocast

Sharn Pre-purchase
Sharn FAQ
Update 41.4 Release Notes
DDO Chronicle 325
DDO Chronicle 326

[FuzzyDuck81]

I'm enjoying the pre-order thingies so far.. not tried inquisitive much yet but tiefling is a lot of fun, their racial abilities are very nice & they look awesome - it's a shame that the small horns were removed though, I rather liked the more understated look.

The shield guardian is nice - not very strong on the attack but just having a big meatshield decoy that can self-heal is really useful & naturally will pair very well with an inquisitive who'll be firing off diplomacy all the time & it makes sense that their spells will be stuff to make them harder to kill.

The high society cosmetic is nice, but I'm personally not really a fan of the inquisitive one, though maybe I just haven't found a character it really suits yet. The peacock pet is really good but for me it's the bloodhound that's the real star & I like that it's only the medium package for him so there's likely to be more good dogs running around with their ears flapping in the wind

Universal AP tome is great, even if your build never already included any universal trees then you can just take the 1st point in 1 & get something handy - inquisitive's +1 attack & dialogue skills is one you'll presumably have access by default due to the package, but the most useful IMO is falconry for the bird who'll give you +2 spot, excellent for a trapper or a wolf druid.

Universal AP tome price seems high especially vs. the racial AP tome, but they're a lot more restricted too; there's more racial APs available to earn in-game already through reincarnations & they're probably not seen as such a big an impact on balance since they don't contribute to any potential dual capstone issue. Supposedly no store item with in-game benefits is exclusively available there, so presumably the universal AP tome will be added later to earn in-game too, probably as an ultra-rare dice reward & sharn raid loot.

Reaper is a tricky one - I run r1 or 2 from time to time but not all that often & my most experienced character only has about 6 or 7 APs so while they're getting a boost, it's not really enough to make up the difference from EE to R1, but I can totally see how when the AP start piling up the bonuses really start to outweigh the difficulty increase. The best i can come up with for a way to handle that is to have some ability supression, so on r1 & 2 only cores plus 1st tier abilities apply, r3 & 4 2nd tier abilities can apply & r5+ there's no limits - there'd still be advantages for people with lots of AP running at lower skulls, especially if they spread them out among multiple reaper trees but hopefully it could help limit the worst of the problem.