U55 Preview 1 (5/10 - 5/12)

[Lomizir]

Disclaimer

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

Hello, folks! Preview 1 of Update 55 for the Isle of Dread is now open as of 1pm EDT on Tuesday, May 10th! It is expected to remain open into the afternoon (EDT) of Thursday, May 12th.

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Update 55 contains a number of features and quests for our upcoming expansion pack, the Isle of Dread, including loot and the increase of our overall level cap from 30 to 32, along with some minor changes and bugfixes.

To access the new Dread content, speak to Lord Poincelot in the Dread Overlook (reached through a portal in the middle of the Test Dojo) to be granted preview server specific DDO points and then "purchase" the content pack in the "New to DDO" category of the DDO Preview Store. You can then speak to The Questgiver nearby to be teleported directly into the four quests available in this preview. As the NPC will note for you, we recommend doing the first three before tackling the final dungeon.

To provide a little more detail on what you can expect to see in this preview, please review the items below:


Big Picture Notes

• Isle of Dread Itemization
• The Level Cap Increase
• Isle of Dread Content (4 new dungeons in this preview):
  
  • The Curse and the Captive Crustacean
  • Plundering Pirates' Point
  • Bullywugs and Booby Traps
  • Fall of the Forgotten Temple
  
  

Bugfixes

• A large variety of typos in various pieces of content and the UI have been fixed
• Fixed incorrect DC description for Devour the Soul
• SLAs in Divine Disciple may now heal undead players
• The Heighten metamagic will no longer lower your spell DCs
• Greater Color Spray SLAs are now considered to be spell level 5
• Quench from Bottled Rainstorm now has a 1s cooldown for safety purposes
• Removed visual effects from Tidal's on-hit imbue to prevent client lag
• Several armors have had their max dex bonus corrected to appropriate values
• The Banquet Hall amenity no longer removes itself while zoning
• Ottos Stones of Experience no longer tell you that they add Epic Destiny XP
• Stat damage in dungeons is now restored more reliably
• Recipe text for augments in the Remnant Vendor are now correct
• On-hit fire damage from champions now respects its internal cooldown
• Produce Flame may now be cast directionally
• Fixed a tabaxi character creation bug (bow backwards)

Gameplay Changes

• The evil spirit that has been resetting so many bear traps after they've been triggered has been exorcised from DDO for now. Most bear traps will now only trigger once.
• You may now trade 100 pack ingredients for a Star Fragment, and 100 Star Fragments and 500 Threads of Fate for a Nebula Fragment
• Enchantment is now an option for Magus T3 DCs
• Teleport items found within expansion packs have been upgraded! These items are now able to teleport you to all destinations that the other teleport items had access to - this means that if you have one of these items, you'll be able to teleport directly to the locations of all of them. You must own the item associated with the location you are attempting to teleport to. This means that, for example, when using the Sharn Boarding Pass, you'll be able to teleport to the Feywild if you own the Feywild Tuning Fork as a part of your account. However, you do not need to have the Tuning fork with you to do this - which means that carrying one of these items is now equivalent to carrying all of them, potentially saving you inventory space. You may also drag these individual locations from the menu onto your hotbars, so if you need to reach a specific destination often, you can activate them from there instead of from your inventory. The following items are affected:
  
  • Isle of Dread Treasure Map*
  • Saltmarsh Compass
  • Feywild Tuning Fork
  • Sharn Boarding Pass
  • Bottle of Mist

* Note that for Preview 1 of U55, the Isle of Dread Treasure Map will take you to the Marketplace, as the real place it's sending you isn't quite ready!


UI Changes

• Items within the Shared Crafting Storage now update their names and descriptions automagically should they be changed in a game update!
• Item bind status is now displayed on one line in item tooltips
• Multiple improvements have been made to how weapons display their dice:
  
  • Base damage rating now factors in your ability score modifier, which makes it a much better estimator of a weapon's relative effectiveness
  • Weapons no longer show dice estimations for their base and critical rolls, instead displaying a simplified view so that it's easier to understand what numbers mean
• Augments now display much prettier! Their slot types now appear in examination and are color-coded appropriately
• There is now a separate icon for each Tome of Learning you've consumed

[rabidfox]

[*]You may now trade 100 pack ingredients for a Star Fragment, and 100 Star Fragments and 500 Threads of Fate for a Nebula Fragment
[*]Teleport items found within expansion packs have been upgraded! These items are now able to teleport you to all destinations that the other teleport items had access to - this means that if you have one of these items, you'll be able to teleport directly to the locations of all of them. You must own the item associated with the location you are attempting to teleport to. This means that, for example, when using the Sharn Boarding Pass, you'll be able to teleport to the Feywild if you own the Feywild Tuning Fork as a part of your account. However, you do not need to have the Tuning fork with you to do this - which means that carrying one of these items is now equivalent to carrying all of them, potentially saving you inventory space. You may also drag these individual locations from the menu onto your hotbars, so if you need to reach a specific destination often, you can activate them from there instead of from your inventory. The following items are affected:

Wow, those are both really nice to see.

[Zeklijan]

Wow this looks really good so far!

[Sirea]

Any plans to put the Bottle of Mist in the DDO Store since it’s no longer possible to upgrade the Ravenloft pack to get it?

[rabidfox]

any plans to put the bottle of mist in the ddo store since it’s no longer possible to upgrade the ravenloft pack to get it?

^^^^ this!

[Zeklijan]

Any plans to put the Bottle of Mist in the DDO Store since it’s no longer possible to upgrade the Ravenloft pack to get it?

All of the other discontinued old expansion items, too.

Personally, I would buy the hirelings that I am missing.

[WiseFreelancer]

Came here first as the first post to read not really expecting much, but the Nebula change and the teleport changes are awesome!

[Leo_Sarlona]

Any plans to put the Bottle of Mist in the DDO Store since it’s no longer possible to upgrade the Ravenloft pack to get it?

^^^^^^. This please, I fully believe in paying for all the Utimate expansions to help support the game I have loved for 10+years!!!

[Anthorin1]

"You may now trade 100 pack ingredients for a Star Fragment, and 100 Star Fragments and 500 Threads of Fate for a Nebula Fragment"

What are "Pack ingredients"?

[rabidfox]

"You may now trade 100 pack ingredients for a Star Fragment, and 100 Star Fragments and 500 Threads of Fate for a Nebula Fragment"

What are "Pack ingredients"?

What the s/s/s mats were changed to:
Crystallized Spiderweb
Desert Sand Crystal
Fractured Sliver of Time
Glowing Fen Mushroom
Medal of House Deneith
Scrap of Patterned Cloth
Vault Key

[Anthorin1]

What the s/s/s mats were changed to:
Crystallized Spiderweb
Desert Sand Crystal
Fractured Sliver of Time
Glowing Fen Mushroom
Medal of House Deneith
Scrap of Patterned Cloth
Vault Key

Ah ok

[DYWYPI]

The Isle of Dread (U55) Preview 1 Dungeons

For whatever reason with some of the U55 Preview quests they seemed to lack a bit of character. The dungeon structures almost seemed "oversized" as if giants or King Kong were meant to have been populating them. Perhaps with voice-overs and music; it'll give better atmosphere and experience.

The Curse and the Captive Crustacean: in this rather short quest; we are sent to deal with an contained: overgrown crab. Apparently the local Kopru enjoy the idea of "torturing" the poor crab with ballistae. Our task seemed to be attempting to use the ballista to try and overturn or incapacitate the now 'angry crab'.

Shoot your mouth off; you know where you're aiming.

Simple enough unlock and prime the ballista and fire at a large numbered target, hopefully whilst the crab is positioned in front of the said relevant target...

It appeared occasionally some of the ballista 'unlocked' even when puzzle hadn't been completed. I assume that's a bug; two lit tiles, instead of all three, were enough to unlock.

Looked down to the sea, all the crabs and the fishes.

I could imagine the quest being annoying for some soloing classes, i.e. trash pelting you with projectiles while you are trying to interact with the puzzle levers.


Plundering Pirates' Point: apparently the pirates seem to be fond of looting 'evil monoliths', perhaps they are amateur archaeologists. Anyway they also took some prisoners' and have a fortified wooden stockade.

Curse the sleek machines and their iron-coloured ships.

I liked the 'tainted water' effect that was a nice touch. The map was rather large and spaced out; it almost seemed over-scaled. There seemed to be quite a lot of prisoners randomly littered around to collect, which was tedious due to the large wasted area.

Neither of the first two quests was that impressive or memorable, they didn't give a great 'first impression' for an Expansion.


Bullywugs and Booby Traps: Kermit and Friends seem to have infested an ancient underground temple structure and been put in charge of the "Assassin's Blade". I liked some of the artwork of the dungeon and the fact it had collapsible floors. Albeit I would have preferred more cobwebs.

Got no more shelter, no more sun.

The too easily breakable stone totems, which fired force beams from their eyes, were OK. But they were probably overused or should have been better placed and higher density in one or two rooms.


Fall of the Forgotten Temple: this quest looked more polished - more completed - than the other three quests, which helped give it some atmosphere.

With my minion fingers, working for some God.

I can see why it was recommended the other three quests were completed prior to this quest. Again, we venture into a Kopru temple, but this time we're looking for a teleportation device.

Your mouth is full of wordless hymns.

The quest just seemed to keep sprawling; on and on... The corridors we're rather long and it didn't really help when many of the levers were hidden in obscure places. The long length was its biggest fault.

Journey till the end of the night.

I didn't manage to complete the quest; I possibly came across a bug or something, perhaps I killed a boss too fast? I know one of the early chests up a ladder, in a dead-end never unlocked.

My eyes are filled with prizes you've been showing.

I found the hidden Mud Cavern. Furthermore I did manage to get to room with the named chests and the shielded Isle Control Monolith.

However, there didn't seem to be a way to get that artefact itself, as seen in the image, nor open any of those chests nearby. I can only assume something didn't "trigger" correctly to let me progress... further.


I haven't gone into great detail and just reiterated those issues that I found most memorable.

[DYWYPI]

Having rerun the: Fall of the Forgotten Temple, within the last few days...

[...] I didn't manage to complete the quest; I possibly came across a bug or something, perhaps I killed a boss too fast? I know one of the early chests up a ladder, in a dead-end never unlocked.

[...] However, there didn't seem to be a way to get that artefact itself, as seen in the image, nor open any of those chests nearby. I can only assume something didn't "trigger" correctly to let me progress... further. ...

I can confirm: I must have come across a bug at the time of U55 Preview 1. Because I would have already destroyed any orbs, in that final room and collected all the crests and technically would have fulfilled the prerequisites, etc. :-)

[Tap4black]

[*]You may now trade 100 pack ingredients for a Star Fragment, and 100 Star Fragments and 500 Threads of Fate for a Nebula Fragment

Sure would be nice if they expanded the crappy selection of current Perfected items to include ALL current artifacts in the game........

[mikarddo]

[COLOR=#ff0000][*]The Heighten metamagic will no longer lower your spell DCs[*]Greater Color Spray SLAs are now considered to be spell level 5

Hmm, which spells did Heighten lower the DC of?

Also, what does the change to Greater Color Spray SLA mean? Does it lower the DC on the effect?

[Lynnabel]

Hmm, which spells did Heighten lower the DC of?

Also, what does the change to Greater Color Spray SLA mean? Does it lower the DC on the effect?

1: This was a narrow case! The easiest way to see this would be to put Heighten on for the Soul Eater capstone: Heighten sets the spell level to 6 (since you have a max of level 6 Warlock spells) but Devour the Soul is a level 8 spell, so it would actually lower the DC. This code change was pretty simple (aka only change the value if the changed value is greater than 0) so all of those corner cases should be cleaned up.

2: Behind the scenes, that spell was level 1, so this is a net gain of 4 DCs.

[nytethrash]

I didn't see any mention of iconic TRs in the update. Are they still going to be TRing at 30 or have to go to max level at 32 and use the legendary exp?

[caellwin]

some of the epic destinies 4th cores are all over the place at 30, 31 , or 32

[Steelstar]

some of the epic destinies 4th cores are all over the place at 30, 31 , or 32

They aren't finished in this preview, but all 4th Cores in Destinies will be ML32.

[Lynnabel]

I didn't see any mention of iconic TRs in the update. Are they still going to be TRing at 30 or have to go to max level at 32 and use the legendary exp?

Iconic and Epic TRing aren't changing. I'll get this added to the Level Cap Increase post asap.