Wda - 10/29/07

[Palmetto]

Oct 29th 2007, 15:30 GMT
Weekly Development Activities
In QA
These items are currently in testing for release in Module 6.

General

• The Level Cap has increased to 16!
• Player characters that have been rendered unconscious but have stabilized will very slowly regenerate health until they wake up at 1 hit point. Warforged auto-stabilize and repair at a rate of 1 hit point every 2 minutes while inert, the other races regenerate at a rate of 1 hit point every minute while unconscious but stable.
• You can now use the command "/resloc" to find out where you will resurrect when you die.
• Favored Enemy: Orc can now be taken during character generation by rangers.
• Fixed an issue where other player's movement may appear to stutter
• You will now be notified when a player picks up your soulstone with a message and alert: "Your soulstone has been picked up by ."
• Torel the Wizard can no longer sit and spin while using rest shrines.

UI Improvements

• Bringing up the enhancement panel will now remove players from mouse-look mode.
• Examination tooltips now appear when hovering over the text of an item in a "choose your rewards" window and chests.
• Guild login and logout messages will now show up in the chat window. You can turn these messages off via a new option under the UI tab in the Options UI.
• A new command '/quest completions' will display the number of times you have completed each raid.
• On the Create Party Panel:
  • A button has been added allowing the player to clear the selected quest.
  • If a player has made changes to their party criteria and closes the panel, they will be asked if they wish to apply the changes before the menu is closed.
  • The "Update my party" button will no longer be ghosted initially. Clicking this button will auto-select the "Advertise my party" check box.

Shopping

• Added a "Sell Gems" button to the sell window of vendors which buy gems. Hitting this button will sell all unsecured gems in your inventory as well as all gems contained in all of your gem bags.

Spells

New Spells

• Polar Ray
  • Evocation [Cold]
  • Level: Sor/Wiz 8
  • Deals 1d6 per caster level (max 25d6) cold damage to an enemy with a ray of freezing ice and air.

• Sunburst
  • Evocation [Light]
  • Level: Sor/Wiz 8
  • A globe of searing radiance explodes silently to blast targets for 6d6 of light damage in addition to permanently blinding them. Oozes and Undead take 1d6 per caster level damage. A successful Reflex save reduces the damage by half and negates the blindness. Light fearing undead may be instantly destroyed by this spell

• Charm Monster, Mass
  • Enchantment (Charm) [Mind-Affecting]
  • Level: Brd 6, Sor/Wiz 8
  • Casts Charm Monster on multiple targets. Charmed monsters will fight as trusted allies but get additional saves every 3d6+12 seconds. A successful Will save negates this effect.

• Cure Critical Wounds, Mass
  • Conjuration (Healing)
  • Level: Clr 8
  • Casts Cure Critical Wounds on multiple targets. Positive energy is channeled to heal critical wounds of allies or damage undead for 4d8 +1 per caster level (max +20). Undead who make a successful Will save reduce the damage by half.

• Firestorm
  • Evocation [Fire]
  • Level: Clr 8
  • A storm causes an area to become shot through with sheets of roaring flame, causing 1d6 per caster level fire damage to targets in its area. (Max 20d6)

• Horrid Wilting
  • Necromancy
  • Level: Sor/Wiz 8
  • Deals 1d6 per caster level (max 20d6) damage to living targets by evaporating moisture from their bodies. Deals 1d8 per caster level (max 20d8) damage to water subtype outsiders and plants.

• Inflict Critical Wounds, Mass
  • Level: Clr 8
  • Casts Inflict Critical Wounds on multiple targets at range inflicting 4d8 +1 per caster level (max +20) damage or healing undead a like amount. A successful Will save reduces the damage by half.

• Otto's Irresistible Dance
  • Enchantment (Charm) [Mind-Affecting]
  • Level: Brd 6, Sor/Wiz 8
  • At your touch, enemies feel an irresistible urge to dance and begin doing so, complete with foot shuffling and tapping. The spell makes it impossible for the enemy to do anything other than caper and prance in place.

• Shout, Greater
  • Evocation [Sonic]
  • Level: Brd 6, Sor/Wiz 8
  • Emits an ear-splitting yell that deafens and deals 10d6 sonic damage and stuns targets in its path. A successful Fortitude save halves the damage and negates the stun.

• Summon Monster VIII
  • Conjuration (Summoning)
  • Level: Clr 8, Sor/Wiz 8
  • Summons a bezekira to fight for you for a brief time. Casting this spell locks out casting any other Summon Monster spell for 8 minutes.

• Trap the Soul
  • Conjuration (Summoning)
  • Level: Sor/Wiz 8
  • Forces a creature's life force and its material body into a gem on a failed Will save. Although this essentially 'kills' the target, it is not a death effect and functions on creatures such as undead (but not most constructs). This spell requires a khyber dragonshard as a special material component, and can affect creatures of up to 30 hit dice.

• (Note: The quality of the gem required varies on the hit dice of the targeted creature. Three versions of this spell exist using a spell selector, appropriate for creatures of up to 10 HD, 20 HD, and 30 HD.)

• Bards gain access to the following existing spells:
  • Cat's Grace, Mass; Cure Moderate Wounds, Mass; Eagle's Splendor, Mass; Fox's Cunning, Mass; Heroes' Feast; and Summon Monster VI

General Spell Changes

• A Paladin's Aura of Courage will no longer cause various other spell effects to repeat over and over. The Aura of Courage bonus has also been changed to a Sacred Bonus to Will Saves vs. Fear, and as such, will stack with Morale effects.
• Acid Rain now uses a normal "attack spell" animation instead of the one associated with summons and lingering clouds.
• Touch of Idiocy no longer permits Heighten, as it has no save.
• Stone to Flesh can no longer be cast on "self", since statues are rarely capable of casting spells.
• Cure Wounds spells, including the Mass Cures, can no longer be Heightened as Clerics can already freely cast the higher level versions of those spells and are the ones most likely to use them as offensive spells against Undead. Note that the Heal spell is unaffected by this change as there are more circumstances under which you may wish to Heighten the spell.
• Freedom of Movement will now protect against the Crippling weapon effect. This change will include some monsters with wards that are similar to Freedom of Movement.

Skills, Feats, & Abilities

New Feats

• Force of Personality
  • Prerequisite: Cha 13
  • Benefit: Picks the highest modifier between your charisma and your wisdom
  • modifier for your will saves.
• Insightful Reflexes
  • Prerequisite: Int 13
  • Benefit: Picks the highest modifier between your intelligence and your
  • dexterity modifier for your reflex saves.

New Abilities

• Barbarians now possess a new ability in the feats section of their character sheet. "Dismiss Rage" can be used at any time to prematurely end their barbarian rage. Note that you will still be subject to fatigue from your rage, and it functions only on the barbarian class ability - you cannot dismiss any other rage like effects.
• New Rogue Special Ability:
  Skill Mastery: A rogue with this ability gains +1 to all skills. This ability may be taken multiple times.
  
  Rogues now can choose which special ability (Improved Evasion, Crippling Strike, or Skill Mastery) they desire when they reach levels 10, 13, or 16 rather than having one automatically assigned to them. In addition, Rogues can now swap these special abilities for others as if they were feats.

General Skills, Feats & Abilities changes

• Crippling strike now occurs with ranged sneak attacks using bows, crossbows, and thrown weapons.
• The intimidate skill has always factored in the size of your target. You get a bonus when attempting to intimidate creatures that are smaller than you and get a penalty against creatures that are larger than you. The description for this skill now explains this.

Enhancements
General Enhancement Changes

• Many enhancement descriptions have been clarified to reduce confusion about their benefits.
• The Bard enhancement "Music of the Dead" is now trainable at level 6 instead of level 7.

Items

• For all normal chests, players who are not in the dungeon at the time the chest is opened with not get loot from the chest and will not be able to have loot re-assigned to them. For all raid chests, players who are not in the dungeon at the time the raid boss is killed will not have loot generated for them and cannot have loot re-assigned to them.
• An issue with thrown weapons not dealing appropriate damage and not having appropriate to hit rolls has been fixed.
• Bashing damage from the shield Ward of Undeath is now flagged as Good
• Blessed Cold Iron Khopeshes, Blessed Cold Iron Mauls and Blessed Cold Iron Heavy Picks will now always be sold at the Divine Reagent vendor in Feather Fall's Apothecary. House Jorasco.
• A problem with UMD devices becoming unequipped when logging in has been fixed
• When an item is unequipped while a character is offline, (because a spell wore off, for example.) the item will no longer appear as if it is still equipped.
• Corrected issues with Everbright effect and weapons made of special materials (adamantine, mithril etc.). These weapons should all now have full time protection from item wear caused by rust and acid.
• Critical hit effects on weapons were preventing in certain rare circumstances sneak attack damage from applying. This has been fixed.
• Darkweave Armor and Darkleaf Breastplates can now be found in treasure chests throughout Xendrik.
• Various barkskin potions have been added to the random potion treasure drops.
• NEW - Rapid reload now affects repeating crossbows.

NPC's

• Zawabi now checks to see if he can give you the demon queen raid quest before taking your items.

Monsters

• A troglodyte in Freshen the Air had not been scaling correctly with the difficulty level. This has been fixed.
• Beholders will no longer emit any beams while petrified.
• Charmed and summoned monsters now make noise detectable by other monsters as if they were players.
• Creatures will now only display "Zzz's" if they are magically compelled to sleep.
• Elemental arrows fired by monsters are now less flashy, but should no longer bog your client down when encountered in large numbers.
• The hill giant seers in Madstone Crater now have an immunity to charm affects because in certain circumstances being charmed could break their scripting. Now, they can't be charmed and will always pay attention to when the enchanter controlling them dies and will then become allies.
• NEW - Fixed a case where some of Whisperdoom’s Daughters would sometimes not spawn, thereby preventing progress.

Quests

• Caverns of Korromar
  • The "Source of Evil" will now be found when entering the Beholder's room, instead of when approaching him.
• Euphonia's Challenge
  • The Wizard's Stones can no longer be deleted.
• Vault of Night
  • Each player is now allowed 1 one the gifts from the Laughing Knives
• Gianthold: Cabal for One
  • NEW - A crafty Hobgoblin trap is now a bit easier to find. This does not mean it’s any easier to disable. Note also that on higher difficulty levels, it may still be incredibly difficult to spot.
• Hazadills Shipping Warehouse:
  • NEW - Fixed an unclimbable ladder.
• Prison of the Mind
  • NEW - Improved the pathing of the Arcane Oozes in this quest.

[Mearamar]

Woot

[Kargon]

[*]A new command '/quest completions' will display the number of times you have completed each raid.

Kargon pretty sure we have this for while now...

[Palmetto]

Kargon pretty sure we have this for while now...

I just report what I am able to dig up, I don't check for accuracy (aka, don't shoot the messenger).

[Kargon]

I just report what I am able to dig up, I don't check for accuracy (aka, don't shoot the messenger).

Shoot, Nevermer. Demand Tasty Ham From, Definatamally

[Khalai]

The number of NEW tags is pretty light this week, but I guess that's to be expected, with so much time till the update.

[Qzipoun]

The number of NEW tags is pretty light this week, but I guess that's to be expected, with so much time till the update.

Well considering we had NO new tags last week, I do not think that is to be expected

[Furgulder]

A crafty Hobgoblin trap is now a bit easier to find. This does not mean it’s any easier to disable. Note also that on higher difficulty levels, it may still be incredibly difficult to spot.

yay!

[barecm]

Hopefully they can work in something in for rangers... like fixing ranged combat or something.

[MysticTheurge]

Hopefully they can work in something in for rangers... like fixing ranged combat or something.

Or three new Ranger prestige-enhancements?

[ErgonomicCat]

[*]NEW - Rapid reload now affects repeating crossbows.

Codog ftw!

[ErgonomicCat]

Or three new Ranger prestige-enhancements?

Yeah, there's 3 new, I think they said 2 are ranged.

And Codog is all over the ranged issues right now. Assuming he gets done what he wants to get done, I think Mod6 could safely be called "Episode 6: Return of the Rangers"

Hopefully sans Ewoks.

[barecm]

Or three new Ranger prestige-enhancements?

Yeah, something... anything at this point would be nice. Outside of the freedom of movement spell, not much of anything useful for rangers since mod 3 increased our rate of fire (but broke the combat).

[MysticTheurge]

Yeah, something... anything at this point would be nice. Outside of the freedom of movement spell, not much of anything useful for rangers since mod 3 increased our rate of fire (but broke the combat).

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php...35#post1398535

[Deragoth]

Gotta love DDO Europe

I can't wait to see polar ray. It's going to hit like a ton of bricks!

[Gratch]

Hmmm... kind of a short list after 2 weeks. Hopefully they're busy with lots and lots of new content.

[Yukiko]

Thats one weak WDA Imo

please throw us a hint or something

[Ekental]

Darkweave... like, a +1 bonus to hide and move silently?
If so, I can tell exactly where all the darkweave items are ending up.

[Yaga_Nub]

You can now go to the Offical WDA which Q has just posted... but it's still not stickied yet.

[Quarion]

You beat me to it!

For the official WDA post, click here!