U42 Preview 2: 4/16-4/18

[Cocomajobo]

Disclaimer

Everything seen on the preview server, Lamannia, is not final and is subject to change or removal before live release.

Hey, all! The pre-sale of our new Expansion (visit www.ddo.com/sharn) is available! The preview server will be opening up for a first preview of the contents of that expansion, which will be Update 42, on Tuesday April 16th and will be closing in the evening of Thursday April 18th. This preview is expected to contain the following features:

• New Dungeons:
  
  • 9 Sharn Story Dungeons
  • 6 Cogs Explorer Dungeons
• The First Raid from the Masterminds of Sharn
• The Cogs Explorer Area
• New Named Loot (both Quest and Raid)
• Minor Artifacts
• New Filigree

There will be a dev event on the preview server on Wednesday 4/17 from 8PM to 10PM Eastern where you can chat with atleast Cocomajobo to get questions answered and have your feedback collected for the rest of the team to peruse.

In addition to those main features there are an assortment of smaller changes and/or bugfixes which are listed below

Character

• Favored Soul's Bonus Feats have much clearer and more concise wording
• Fixed Obscuring Mist doing Obscuring Darkness FX
• Fixed Obscuring Mist's effect having the name/description of "Obscuring Darkness"
• Fixed Fireball's/Domain Fireball's spell description (never got updated in U41)
• Fixed some animation issues on Male and Female Tieflings
• Tiefling's innate Fire Resistance and Infernal Resistance enhancements (acid/cold) now properly update their values when you level up without needing to relog
• (non-Scoundrel) Tieflings no longer innately use Fiddles for Bard songs
• Tiefling/Scoundrel players are now immune to fear, as they're supposed to be.
• The spell Spawn Screen no longer scales its number of targets (badly) via caster level, and instead affects all allies in the AOE.
• Druid: Tier 1 of "Force of Nature" (in Tier 5 of Nature's Protector) now grants the following in addition to its current effects: "Your attunement to Nature is emboldened - Your Druidic Oath is no longer broken by wearing metal armor or shields."
• Wail of the Banshee now has its signature Wail sound effect back!
• Tieflings, both male and female, now have a second dance.

Items

• N/A

Monsters

• N/A

Quests

• The Salve of Stone to Flesh in Eyes of Stone now has a cooldown of 5 seconds, rather than 30.
  
• Nudged a pair of hobgoblins in the quest Caverns of Shaagh to help them not become one with the stairs.

Misc

• Shield Guardian Hirelings have updated sounds
• The engine will no longer limit video/virtual memory usage as harshly on systems which have sufficient virtual memory. The game should properly take advantage of virtual memoryresources available to it.
  
• The character sheet UI now uses abbreviated class names, and has moved all four class fields onto the same line
• The character sheet UI now displays your Offhand Doublestrike underneath Doublestrike.

[TrueMan54914]

Looking really forward to this. Mostly cant wait to see the changes to the tank gear To bring it on par with or better then the RL set.

[Alcides]

Looking really forward to this. Mostly cant wait to see the changes to the tank gear To bring it on par with or better then the RL set.

I second this.

[Zites]

Looking really forward to this. Mostly cant wait to see the changes to the tank gear To bring it on par with or better then the RL set.

I second this.

Make that 3!

[HastyPudding]

Will all of the correct appearances be attached to the new weapons and armor, now?

[SpartanKiller13]

Looking really forward to this. Mostly cant wait to see the changes to the tank gear To bring it on par with or better then the RL set.

I second this.

Make that 3!

I'd be excited to get an upgrade, but if it isn't better then I don't have to gear farm for my tank so to me I see this as a win/win!

[Whisper1]

Hello, all!

We've finally locked down and approved a preview build for the second Update 42 lamannia preview. This preview is expected to be opened up this afternoon (Tuesday 4/16) and run into the evening of Thursday 4/18. There is expected to be a dev event on Wednesday evening from 8-10 PM Eastern where members of the DDO team will be on Lamannia answering questions, collecting feedback, and/or running content with players. We will have release notes posted when the server has been opened which, again, is expected to be this afternoon. This second preview will contain the following features in various states of polish:

• All 9 Sharn Story Dungeons
• 6 Cogs Explorer Dungeons
• The Cogs Explorer Area
• The first Sharn Raid (the only one going live at the time of U42's initial release like Curse of Strahd did with Ravenloft)
• Named Loot
• Minor Artifacts
• Filigree
• Misc smaller changes and fixes

We are very excited to hear what you find and think of the various U42 features! Will update this thread when the preview has opened.

Will you look into Warlock and Monks, they are overpowered in-game. I see a lot of them solo R5-6 difficulty with no problem.

[ifumoveudie]

Will you look into Warlock and Monks, they are overpowered in-game. I see a lot of them solo R5-6 difficulty with no problem.

Throw bards in there as well then, because i can solo r5 at cap with no problem on my Bard, lol.

[Turyturbo]

Will you look into Warlock and Monks, they are overpowered in-game. I see a lot of them solo R5-6 difficulty with no problem.

LOL, I have seen many classes soloing R5-6 with no problem. Sorcerer with insane DPS. FVS, too. So you want them to look into these classes as overpowered in-game (Bard, FVS, Sorcerer, Warlock, Monks, etc..). Warlocks have low DPS comparing with other classes (Sorcerer, FVS, Wizard, etc..) but Warlocks has better endurance of damaging (no mana needed for blasts).

[kain741]

Will you look into Warlock and Monks, they are overpowered in-game. I see a lot of them solo R5-6 difficulty with no problem.

lol...created april 2019. at least have the guts to ask for a nerf on your real forum account.

[Bluebird6757]

Will we need to flag for the raid (I assume by running the story dungeons) before entering on Lam?

[Aelonwy]

Will all of the correct appearances be attached to the new weapons and armor, now?

MMMMMmmmm appearances. Yes please. Lynn teased us saying its some of the best artwork ever. I want to see too!

[PsychoBlonde]

LOL, I have seen many classes soloing R5-6 with no problem. Sorcerer with insane DPS. FVS, too. So you want them to look into these classes as overpowered in-game (Bard, FVS, Sorcerer, Warlock, Monks, etc..). Warlocks have low DPS comparing with other classes (Sorcerer, FVS, Wizard, etc..) but Warlocks has better endurance of damaging (no mana needed for blasts).

And Arti, and Paladin, and Druid, and Fighter, and Barbarian, and Cleric . . . I don't think there's a single class where I haven't met SOMEBODY who can just utterly stomp R5 without appearing to notice.

R5/6 is about the cutoff for "I have a solid build and heavy investment in this character", although it depends heavily on the content. "I can solo Lost At Sea" is not even in the same ballpark as "I can solo Temple of Elemental Evil".

[MistaMagic]

Downloading the new client now

[banjo174]

And Arti, and Paladin, and Druid, and Fighter, and Barbarian, and Cleric . . . I don't think there's a single class where I haven't met SOMEBODY who can just utterly stomp R5 without appearing to notice.

R5/6 is about the cutoff for "I have a solid build and heavy investment in this character", although it depends heavily on the content. "I can solo Lost At Sea" is not even in the same ballpark as "I can solo Temple of Elemental Evil".

Seeing warlocks solo R10 content is hilarious though . . . Funny though, how players are looking to punish some of the classes, just because there are people who are good at the game. Wouldn't be the first time games have nerfed based on the achievements of players though.

[jwelch]

Will you look into Warlock and Monks, they are overpowered in-game. I see a lot of them solo R5-6 difficulty with no problem.

and there's a gob of us who are not, at least in the Monk arena. Monks have been nerfed here and there rather a lot of late, we have earned a break. (Prior to the latest one, I'd agree, but it took a lot of real work to get back to close to where I had been prior. Not everyone is reincarnating every five days.)

[jwelch]

And Arti, and Paladin, and Druid, and Fighter, and Barbarian, and Cleric . . . I don't think there's a single class where I haven't met SOMEBODY who can just utterly stomp R5 without appearing to notice.

R5/6 is about the cutoff for "I have a solid build and heavy investment in this character", although it depends heavily on the content. "I can solo Lost At Sea" is not even in the same ballpark as "I can solo Temple of Elemental Evil".

This is a great point. There's a lot of things I can run at high levels because the design of the dungeon happens to work in my favor. Lots of stunnable outsiders? I'm going to have a MUCH easier time than lots of undead. places where I can funnel mobs so getting flanked is less of a problem? the same. Nice small rooms where EIN works really well? Much easier than wide open spaces.

I've done runs with rogues, especially post "can assassinate *anything*, where if I can get a kill at all, it's luck. I don't personally mind, I'll be a support player all day, but yeah. Every class has people who are really good at that class. Punishing them for that is petty.

[jwelch]

Seeing warlocks solo R10 content is hilarious though . . . Funny though, how players are looking to punish some of the classes, just because there are people who are good at the game. Wouldn't be the first time games have nerfed based on the achievements of players though.

Yep. Anyone soloing at that level has spent a lot of time to get to that level. I see no reason to punish them. If EVERYONE is running rampant on r7 and above runs, that's not a class/race/build issue, that's a dungeon/reaper design issue and should be fixed at that end.

[Lynnabel]

I don't think there's a single class where I haven't met SOMEBODY who can just utterly stomp R5 without appearing to notice.

This is - in an abstract - part of our major goals for the current balance of DDO, and reading this actually made me smile irl One of the most disheartening things to hear in an online game is "why did you pick <class/spec/playstyle>??? it sucks" and there have been eras where DDO had a lot of that. I think we're closer now than we have ever been, and I hope very much that our future plans continue to move us in the right direction

[Ladywolf]

And Arti, and Paladin, and Druid, and Fighter, and Barbarian, and Cleric . . . I don't think there's a single class where I haven't met SOMEBODY who can just utterly stomp R5 without appearing to notice.

R5/6 is about the cutoff for "I have a solid build and heavy investment in this character", although it depends heavily on the content. "I can solo Lost At Sea" is not even in the same ballpark as "I can solo Temple of Elemental Evil".

Well said. Good players can make builds of ANY class that can zerg thru higher reaper content... also seen/played bad builds of all classes that can’t manage r1...