U55 Preview 2 (6/1 - 6/3)

[Steelstar]

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

Hello, folks! Preview 2 of Update 55 for the Isle of Dread is now open to everyone! We expect Lamannia to remain open until 3pm Eastern (-4 GMT) on Friday, June 3rd.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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 Content
  
  • To access the Isle of Dread, enter the Isle of Dread dimension door inside the Test Dojo. Then speak to The Questgiver: he'll send you to the Isle of Dread proper.
  • This preview gives you a sneak peek of the Isle of Dread itself, including the landscape and 8 of the 12 new quests. (The remaining quests and the raid will be in an forthcoming preview.)
  • You're getting an early glimpse at the Isle of Dread, so here are some of the things we're working on that you may notice:
    
    • Questgivers and other NPCs don't have real text yet.
    • The landscape has relatively few monsters in it. More are on the way (including more dinosaurs.)
    • Not all monsters have the correct stats or behaviors yet; quests have not been assigned the correct experience values.
    • Not all of the quests have been fully decorated or lit yet.
    • The village public area is still under construction. Many of its residents haven't arrived yet.
    • In the landscape, the placement of monsters, quest journals, etc. is not final.
    • The music and sound is not fully hooked up yet.
    • Various climbing and jumping spots are still being calibrated. If you get stuck somewhere, please let us know (and be sure of include a /loc of where it happened.)
  
  
• Isle of Dread Itemization
• The Level Cap Increase

(Changes new to this preview are in blue.)

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 now never 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 chargen bug (bow backwards)
• Fixed typos in vampire ascendent shroud
  
• FVS grace of battle and knowledge of battle's effect on items now have slightly better effect nomenclature
  
• the horseshoe crab shield now has a description
  
• the golden orb of death's description now has punctuation
  
• some collectibles are categorized better
• Resist Energy: Sonic now gets bonus caster levels from air sorc correctly
• Fixed a string table error with the NPC Hada D'Jorasco
• Horizon Walker's 4th core no longer spells fortification wrong
• Shadowdancer's Shadowstrike (Melee) has a snappier animation
• Male Tabaxi no longer get stuck in a casting animation forever when casting particular Alchemist spells.
• Some old ED ability scripting has been removed from Exalted Angel
• Runearms with Reaper bonuses now work 100% of the time
• Magus destiny mantle no longer drops on zone transitions
• Flamestrike now does its proper damage, respects its LOS requirements, and no longer gets supercharged when cast by a monster
• The 10% bonus to Ability Score Modifier to Damage granted by wielding a Bastard Sword or Dwarven Waraxe now applies properly regardless of exactly how you're using those weapons.
  
• Fixed an issue where bonuses to Ability Score Modifier to Damage while using a Bastard Sword or Dwarven Waraxe would not apply correctly in some circumstances.
  
• LAMANNIA ONLY: Fixed an issue from Preview 1 where characters were losing their last 4 Heroic Action Points (leaving them at 76 total). Seeing this fix on existing Lamannia characters may require resetting your Enhancements.

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! The following items are affected:
  
  • Isle of Dread Treasure Map
  • Saltmarsh Compass
  • Feywild Tuning Fork
  • Sharn Boarding Pass
  • Bottle of Mist
  
  
• 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 Wonderous Ring in the Sands adventure Pack is now a little cooler!
• There are new Cannith Crafting recipes!
• Many effects in the game that used to scale with Epic level now scale with the total of your Epic AND Legendary level. Effects that have changed this way specifically say so in their text.
• Bonuses to Ability Score Modifier to Damage are now described the same way in tooltips for both the Single Weapon Fighting and Two Handed Fighting feats.
  
• If you now have bonuses to Ability Score Modifier to Damage from Single Weapon Fighting feats AND Two Handed Fighting feats (including the new ML31 Specialty feats), only the highest of those two sets applies.
• Hamstring effects are now considered bleeds and can be removed with effects that remove bleeds such as close wounds and regeneration
• The dreaded exploding spider of sharn has had its hitpoints reduced to 25% of it's original value. They also give a little more time before they explode. Blast them before they blast you.

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 we display a simplified view so that its 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.
• Hovering over your character's build type on the character sheet will now display that character's total past lives earned.
• The party display UI no longer makes players with temp HP appear to be at a higher percentage of health than they really are
• Searching in any search bar no longer also sorts your shared bank and Details+ Tab
• Newly created glamered shields will now cleanly equip to your cosmetic offhand without reporting that there's an inventory error when trying to double-click them.
• Glamered items will no longer improperly show their weapon dice or their augment slots
• Newly glamoured items no longer erroneously display a caster level and have slightly prettier descriptions
• The Quest Selector UI now has a search bar! This also works for searching by level. You may also now search for a specific level in the Adventure Compendium.

Quests:

• Black and Blue: The number of monsters has been reduced. Several groups of monsters were also removed entirely.
• Newcomers: The number of monsters has been reduced. Several groups of monsters were also removed entirely.
• Creeping Death: Some Traps have been updated to affect monsters, and the number of monsters has been reduced.

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

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

Hello, folks! Preview 2 of Update 55 for the Isle of Dread is now open for an invitation-only preview!

We will open Lamannia to the general public Wednesday morning (June 1st) starting around 11am Eastern (-4 GMT). We expect Lamannia to remain open until 3pm Eastern (-4 GMT) on Friday, June 3rd.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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 Content
  
  • To access the Isle of Dread, enter the Isle of Dread dimension door inside the Test Dojo. Then speak to The Questgiver: he'll send you to the Isle of Dread proper.
  • This preview gives you a sneak peek of the Isle of Dread itself, including the landscape and 8 of the 12 new quests. (The remaining quests and the raid will be in an forthcoming preview.)
  • You're getting an early glimpse at the Isle of Dread, so here are some of the things we're working on that you may notice:
    
    • Questgivers and other NPCs don't have real text yet.
    • The landscape has relatively few monsters in it. More are on the way (including more dinosaurs.)
    • Not all monsters have the correct stats or behaviors yet; quests have not been assigned the correct experience values.
    • Not all of the quests have been fully decorated or lit yet.
    • The village public area is still under construction. Many of its residents haven't arrived yet.
    • In the landscape, the placement of monsters, quest journals, etc. is not final.
    • The music and sound is not fully hooked up yet.
    • Various climbing and jumping spots are still being calibrated. If you get stuck somewhere, please let us know (and be sure of include a /loc of where it happened.)
  
  
• Isle of Dread Itemization
• The Level Cap Increase

(Changes new to this preview are in blue.)

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 now never 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 chargen bug (bow backwards)
• Fixed typos in vampire ascendent shroud
  
• FVS grace of battle and knowledge of battle's effect on items now have slightly better effect nomenclature
  
• the horseshoe crab shield now has a description
  
• the golden orb of death's description now has punctuation
  
• some collectibles are categorized better
• Resist Energy: Sonic now gets bonus caster levels from air sorc correctly
• Fixed a string table error with the NPC Hada D'Jorasco
• Horizon Walker's 4th core no longer spells fortification wrong
• Shadowdancer's Shadowstrike (Melee) has a snappier animation
• Some old ED ability scripting has been removed from Exalted Angel
• Runearms with Reaper bonuses now work 100% of the time
• Magus destiny mantle no longer drops on zone transitions
• Flamestrike now does its proper damage, respects its LOS requirements, and no longer gets supercharged when cast by a monster
• The 10% bonus to Ability Score Modifier to Damage granted by wielding a Bastard Sword or Dwarven Waraxe now applies properly regardless of exactly how you're using those weapons.
  
• Fixed an issue where bonuses to Ability Score Modifier to Damage while using a Bastard Sword or Dwarven Waraxe would not apply correctly in some circumstances.
  
• LAMANNIA ONLY: Fixed an issue from Preview 1 where characters were losing their last 4 Heroic Action Points (leaving them at 76 total). Seeing this fix on existing Lamannia characters may require resetting your Enhancements.

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! The following items are affected:
  
  • Isle of Dread Treasure Map
  • Saltmarsh Compass
  • Feywild Tuning Fork
  • Sharn Boarding Pass
  • Bottle of Mist
  
  
• 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 Wonderous Ring in the Sands adventure Pack is now a little cooler!
• There are new Cannith Crafting recipes!
• Many effects in the game that used to scale with Epic level now scale with the total of your Epic AND Legendary level. Effects that have changed this way specifically say so in their text.
• Bonuses to Ability Score Modifier to Damage are now described the same way in tooltips for both the Single Weapon Fighting and Two Handed Fighting feats.
  
• If you now have bonuses to Ability Score Modifier to Damage from Single Weapon Fighting feats AND Two Handed Fighting feats (including the new ML31 Specialty feats), only the highest of those two sets applies.

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 we display a simplified view so that its 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.
• Hovering over your character's build type on the character sheet will now display that character's total past lives earned.
• The party display UI no longer makes players with temp HP appear to be at a higher percentage of health than they really are
• Searching in any search bar no longer also sorts your shared bank and Details+ Tab
• Newly created glamoured shields will now cleanly equip to your cosmetic offhand without reporting that there's an inventory error when trying to double-click them.
• Glamoured items will no longer improperly show their weapon dice or their augment slots
• Newly glamoured items no longer erroneously display a caster level and have slightly prettier descriptions
• The Quest Selector UI now has a search bar! This also works for searching by level. You may also now search for a specific level in the Adventure Compendium.

New Cannith crafting recipes?

Is there now one that can unlock the fourth effect slot?

How about cursespewing? Has it been added yet?

Feeding? Has it been added?

I'll be one happy Camper if I can have a weapon with feeding, vampirism, and improved cursespewing at the same time!

Even happier if some recipes require raid drops to craft, for example you could make a trap the soul ingredient but make it drop only in a raid.

[Arkat]

• Newly created glamoured shields will now cleanly equip to your cosmetic offhand without reporting that there's an inventory error when trying to double-click them.
• Glamoured items will no longer improperly show their weapon dice or their augment slots
• Newly glamoured items no longer erroneously display a caster level and have slightly prettier descriptions
  

Glamered

[rabidfox]

New Cannith crafting recipes?

Is there now one that can unlock the fourth effect slot?

They're double-effect shards (rather than adding another slot).

[droid327]

The Wonderous Ring in the Sands adventure Pack is now a little cooler!

The what now? RoSS? I dont see any "Wonderous Ring" or "Wondrous Ring" on the wiki...

[rabidfox]

The what now? RoSS? I dont see any "Wonderous Ring" or "Wondrous Ring" on the wiki...

Mysterious Ring. It's being made craftable from what I understand.

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

They're double-effect shards (rather than adding another slot).

Nice, any constitution damage/vampirism ones?

[rabidfox]

Nice, any constitution damage/vampirism ones?

These are the ones Ying posted on discord:

New Cannith Crafted double-effect Unbound Shards. All Prefixes:

Seeker + Deception (uses 5 Mystical Urns)
Spell Pen + Wizardry (5 Mystical Bottles)
Curse Resist + Pro Evil
Speed + Combat Mastery (5 Mystical Goblet)
Turn Undead Level + Turn Undead Dice (5 Mystical Fish)
Dodge + Heightened Awareness (5 Mystical Plant)
Armor Piercing + Destruction (5 Mystical Band -- new)

[chorsil]

Teleport Items found within Expansion Packs have been upgraded! The following items are affected:


Isle of Dread Treasure Map
Saltmarsh Compass
Feywild Tuning Fork
Sharn Boarding Pass
Bottle of Mist

Not adding the Evenstar key? God awful timer, huge freakin pack/world.

[Seph1roth5]

I'll be one happy Camper if I can have a weapon with feeding, vampirism, and improved cursespewing at the same time!

Please don't quote the whole post, makes the thread gigantic. Also, why do you want vampirism? I thought it super blows monkey chunks now because of internal cooldown.

[Arkat]

Teleport Items found within Expansion Packs have been upgraded! The following items are affected:

...

Not adding the Evenstar key? God awful timer, huge freakin pack/world.

No, because the Eveningstar Key is the only teleport items in a pack that can be gotten by favor. It's not automatically given to anyone who has purchased the required level of the pack.

BTW, that really long timer was made that long so that WotC would agree for it to be able to be used to get from Eberron to Eveningstar. Clearly some lore issues there that they thought an extraordinarily long timer would mitigate.

[Chacka_DDO]

What I still REALLY hope for is that you finally change the Stunning Fists feat to also work with all Ki weapons (working when you are centered), Trailblazer is a LOT of fun but it really needs a working single target stun with a cooldown that takes not ages.

Of course, I would also like to see that the normal Stunning Blow, Trip, Sunder, Improved Trip, and Improved Sunder feat is updated to a modern DC calculation (10 + half Character level + highest ability modifier + bonus) and the cooldown is lowered to 6 seconds for Stunning blow, 6 seconds for Trip and 4 Seconds for Improved Trip.

This is what melees need to be more fun without being overpowered, I don't care that much about DPS, even if this is also important for the fun that monsters die fast enough so it doesn't get boring but this is for me not most important.

The next on my wish list is that quivering palm should be finally unnerfed, this means the DC should get at least the bonuses for all tactical feats from items.
I also wonder if you are aware that Quivering Palm is not working with Strike Trough, this makes logical no sense even when I can understand that you might think its too powerful but when you compare that to the instant death speed a caster has, a monk is for sure in comparison not overpowered even if he can hit up to 3 targets with instant death (and this is often not easy at all)

The next thing I notice at the moment when I play Trailblazer is that the hitbox is too often not working, I don't know if this is a Trailblazer-only problem or if this is related to a general DDO problem (also spells sometimes "dryfire").
It is hard to tell how you can reproduce it but it seemingly happens more often if you try to hit monsters while you still move.
I don't know if you can fix that but it is very important that your hitbox is working when you do everything right and you should clearly hit your target because you are clearly close enough.

Another general wish of mine is that reaper should NOT reduce the duration of CC spells and abilities and honestly, the self-heal restriction is also NOT good even if I can understand that you have no other good idea to make more skulls more difficult.
BUT this is a difficult increase that lowers the quality of the DDO game experience if your CC ability turns useless and you rather only focus on DPS and instant kills, this removes variety and fun from DDO!
The same for self-heal nerf in reaper, a lot of classes have the ability to heal themselves and if you remove this ability you basically remove the purpose of many builds who rely on their ability to self-heal.
Therefore the self-heal nerf in reaper is also something that lowers the DDO game experience and should be removed.
And even if most likely players now accuse me that I just only want it easier, NO this is not the point, I would like if the DDO developers get creative ideas to make reaper harder in a way that raises the DDO gameplay and quality, a very good example is the new reapers you see in r5 and higher, THIS is more fun but striping and nerfing the power of the characters is NOT fun and boring!.

And sorry when I sound negative but all I want is to help to make DDO a better game and I can only hope you understand that there is a need to tell you what is wrong with DDO in my opinion.

[GoldyGopher]

Not adding the Evenstar key? God awful timer, huge freakin pack/world.

Steelstar explained this once to me. The problem is the Eveningstar Key is specifically listed in the contract for the First Expansion, MotU. To make a change WotC would need to agree to an amended contract for MotU, and as of today WotC refuses to budge and adjustments to the key, so SSG cannot make the change.

[Steelstar]

Just added a few more things to this set of notes that are also present in this preview:

• Hamstring effects are now considered bleeds and can be removed with effects that remove bleeds such as close wounds and regeneration
• The dreaded exploding spider of sharn has had its hitpoints reduced to 25% of it's original value. They also give a little more time before they explode. Blast them before they blast you.
• Black and Blue: The number of monsters has been reduced. Several groups of monsters were also removed entirely.
• Newcomers: The number of monsters has been reduced. Several groups of monsters were also removed entirely.
• Creeping Death: Some Traps have been updated to affect monsters, and the number of monsters has been reduced.

[YUTANG75]

Just added a few more things to this set of notes that are also present in this preview:

• Hamstring effects are now considered bleeds and can be removed with effects that remove bleeds such as close wounds and regeneration
• The dreaded exploding spider of sharn has had its hitpoints reduced to 25% of it's original value. They also give a little more time before they explode. Blast them before they blast you.
• Black and Blue: The number of monsters has been reduced. Several groups of monsters were also removed entirely.
• Newcomers: The number of monsters has been reduced. Several groups of monsters were also removed entirely.
• Creeping Death: Some Traps have been updated to affect monsters, and the number of monsters has been reduced.

I love all of these changes, thank you!

[Arkat]

Just added a few more things to this set of notes that are also present in this preview:

• Hamstring effects are now considered bleeds and can be removed with effects that remove bleeds such as close wounds and regeneration
• The dreaded exploding spider of sharn has had its hitpoints reduced to 25% of it's original value. They also give a little more time before they explode. Blast them before they blast you.
• Black and Blue: The number of monsters has been reduced. Several groups of monsters were also removed entirely.
• Newcomers: The number of monsters has been reduced. Several groups of monsters were also removed entirely.
• Creeping Death: Some Traps have been updated to affect monsters, and the number of monsters has been reduced.

Good changes, especially the number of monsters being reduced.

Thank you.

[Aelonwy]

Just added a few more things to this set of notes that are also present in this preview:

• Hamstring effects are now considered bleeds and can be removed with effects that remove bleeds such as close wounds and regeneration
• The dreaded exploding spider of sharn has had its hitpoints reduced to 25% of it's original value. They also give a little more time before they explode. Blast them before they blast you.
• Black and Blue: The number of monsters has been reduced. Several groups of monsters were also removed entirely.
• Newcomers: The number of monsters has been reduced. Several groups of monsters were also removed entirely.
• Creeping Death: Some Traps have been updated to affect monsters, and the number of monsters has been reduced.

These sound like great changes. Good job.

[droid327]

Wish it was as easy to reduce the size of the map in B&B and Newcomers too...

[TheMaxpower]

I actually liked having the opportunity to kill all those mobs in those quests. A bit sad about that change. Also, I think they forgot to add the following to the notes:

"Reaper Fragment Crafting: The ridiculous amount of fragments needed to craft an item has been reduced to a less ridiculous amount." LOL

[Kielbasa]

[*]Creeping Death: Some Traps have been updated to affect monsters, and the number of monsters has been reduced.[/LIST]

Thank you. Nothing is more satisfying and immersive than training mobs through a heavily trapped area in a quest as an evasion character. I hate when newer quests don't respect this rule the player learns while leveling through classic content. It is very enjoyable to have the environment effect players and mobs equally.