U58 Preview 1 Overview

[Tolero]

Disclaimer

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

An early Preview 1 of Update 58 will be open today as of 3pm EDT on Wednesday, January 18th! It is expected to remain open into the afternoon (EDT) of Friday, January 20th.

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This preview contains an early look at two new Archetypes as well as a portion of U58 game changes and bugfixes.

To access any new content that exists in the DDO Store during a preview, speak to Lord Poincelot in the Test Dojo to be granted preview server specific DDO points and then "purchase" the content/feature in the "New to DDO" category of the DDO Preview Store. You can speak to The Questgiver in the Test Dojo to be teleported directly into any new quests available in a preview.

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

New Archetypes

An early look at two of three new Archetypes are available for preview 1! Try them out and let us know what you think in their respective feedback threads:

• Archetype: Blightcaster (thread)
  
  • Blightcaster can be chosen as an option from the "Druid" class
  
  
• Archetype: Dark Hunter (thread)
  
  • Dark Hunter can be chosen as an option from the "Ranger" class

Bug Fixes

• Level 32 augments now grant the correct amount and type of elemental resistance
• Purge the Wicked's bonus critical confirmation no longer drops on Death.
• Sorcerer's Eldritch Knight's capstone now provides its +2 Constitution
• Wellspring of Power now shows the correct duration
• Artificer Imbue now stays on through login/logout
• Corrected text in Vile Chemist and Eldritch Knight (made sure that the level 3 imbue dice was spelled out in text)
• Corrected text in Shiradi (Stay Toxic had a line about cold damage)
• Shifters should no longer see a duplicate feat under their Shifter racial choice in the character sheet
• Barbarians' Frenzied Berzerker's first core no longer says "duration: permanent" for no reason
• The first core of Tiefling and Tiefling Scoundrel grants its +5 Spell Power again
• Primal Avatar Mantle of Nature: Thorn now has its correct tooltip on the buff bar
• Healing/repair/negative amp now only applies if you are actually healing from that damage type instead of if you are healing or taking damage from that type
• Unquenchable Rage from Primal Avatar now does its intended effect
• Luck of Olladra may now be used on friends
• Divine Energy Resistance in Sacred Fist now correctly scales with Paladin level instead of Cleric level.
• Absorption effects are now calculated nicer so that things apply more predictably
• the chat feedback for absorption items now gives you better and more accurate number
• Negative Energy Burst no longer consumes spell resistance charges when cast by undead players
• A large variety of Cleric, Favored Soul, and Paladin abilities may now be used while moving.
• The effects of Smoke Bomb are now correctly removed when you attack.
• Ameliorating Strike from Warpriest now correctly heals undead players
• The Inventory Heavy alert now has its correct text again
• The Shield Specialty feat now grants its correct prr
• Fixed some sound effects for Raptors and other Isle of Dread creatures that had bitrates that were much higher than normal, in the hopes that it may fix an issue where the game client crashes in Isle of Dread for some players when sound effects are enabled. If this bug had been affecting you in the past, please try playing Isle of Dread with sound effects on and let us know whether this helps.

Gameplay Changes

• Smoke Bomb's SP cost has been reduced to 6 SP.
• The Destiny Feat Spirit Blades now has a faster casting time, faster projectile speed, and better homing.
• Warlock:
  
  • Base Eldritch Blast dice are now 1d8
  • Base Pact dice are now 1d6
  • The single-target basic Eldritch Blast now scales with 125% Spell Power
  • Enervating Shadow stance now scales with 150% Spell Power
  • All other Eldritch Blast Shapes now scale at 100% Spell Power
  • The level 15 Warlock Pact Special abilities now scale as if they were spells and are modified by bonus Spell DCs.

UI Changes

• There is a new gameplay option: Show Detailed Chest Information (Default: false)
  
  • While true, the first time you touch a chest (and generate its loot) the chest will print out some information about its ransack info into your chat log. Only you can see this info.
  
  
• A series of changes have been made to tooltip generation.
  
  • The names of Feats and Enhancements are now bigger in their tooltips to make it easier to parse what they are
  • SLA tooltips now display spell info, such as their spell point cost, spell DC, and spell school, automatically
  • Certain aspects of enhancements no longer show in the tooltip (such as prereqs) if you own the enhancement and are looking via your character sheet. when hovered over in the tree they will show their AP cost and prereqs as usual
  
  
• A series of large changes have been made to how we display Feats to the players. See below for more info.
  
  • Character Creation:
    
    • Feats now display in neat categories that are easier to parse and sort through
    • The summary at the bottom and at the last stage in advancement shows you all feats without category view so that you just get a list of what feats you have without them being condensed underneath a click block
    • The collapse/expand button uptop plays nice with them so you can collapse all/expand all with one click
    
    
  • Character Sheet:
    
    • Feats now display in neat categories that are easier to parse and sort through
    • Collapse/expand button works with them
    • Feats that are acquired on a temporary basis now display an indicator below their name stating as such
    
    
  • Level Up Screen:
    
    • This largely looks exactly the same because the categories here were already visible in the same way they were before
    • Categories now have well formatted labels that actually match the +/- button in relative vertical area, which makes everything look a little nicer
    • You may now click anywhere on the category to open and close it which means you no longer have to press the tiny little +/- button to open/close things
    • There is a new check box at the top that is checked by default. when unchecked, the feat window will hide all feats that you are not actually able to train. in practice this cuts about 60% of the elements out of the window making it a lot easier to find what you want but this will obviously shift up and down depending on test cases
    • There are two new buttons up top, collapse all and expand all. they collapse all and expand all categories, just as they do in the other two panels.
    • Slightly modified the list of feats showed to the player during level up to exclude even more feats that they will never qualify for (right now we only show you a subsection and this cleans the subsection up just a bit)
    • The Granted Class Feats section at the top now shows the feats as they exist on you and not just their category, meaning that you actually see those feats and their icons right at the top without them being under a click block
    • The summary panel on the following page also now shows the feats as they exist sans category, meaning you see the feats and their icons without seeing the category and the feats are no longer under a click block
    
    
  • Feat Swap Screen:
    
    • Feats now display with the levels taken next to them at a glance so it's easier to parse what levels you took feats at
    
    
  • Journals have a slightly more readable font and contrast!
  • Bank - Crafting storage now has a sorting option: Alphabetical (A-Z) or (Z-A) or Legacy Sort (the old way)

Preview 1 Known Issues

• An Archetype is listed under the Warlock UI but is not ready for feedback or usage on Lamannia in Preview 1.
• There are stub icons in Dark Hunter for: Opportune Moment, Death Stalker, Hunter in the Dark, Slayer in the Dark, Snap Trap, Smoketrap (spell icon), Snap Trap (spell icon)
• Dark Hunter's Enhancement "Death Attack" description is missing

[cmecu]

yaaaaa

Im ready to stream this stuff.. lets get this thing up and rocking.. come on man.. Do it .. Do it..... sniff sniff... huu huuu DO IT>>>!!

[Wahnsinnig]

Some very nice QOL changes there. Awesome.

[QuantumFX]

An early look at two of three new Archetypes are available for preview 1! Try them out and let us know what you think in their respective feedback threads:

• Archetype: Blightcaster (thread)
  
  • Blightcaster can be chosen as an option from the "Druid" class
  
  
• Archetype: Dark Hunter (thread)
  
  • Dark Hunter can be chosen as an option from the "Ranger" class

I take it one of your systems devs is feeling like they're back in high school, cramming in all their edits to the paper they were supposed to hand in yesterday?

[mikarddo]

I do hope there will be new quests as well. Only adding archtypes and a few minor misc would be a rather shallow update.

[cmecu]

Someone needs to tell them a server works better if they plug it in Lets get lammania open...

The Warlock love is MUCH MUCH MUCH appreciated.

[Kelledren]

So Dark! It’s like DDO and the DC universe had a baby!
QoL changes are excellent (appreciated). The archetypes look super fun, but we have Dark Clerics, Dark Rangers, Dark Druids and Light Paladins! Dark (anti) Paladin would be the coolest of all the Darktypes! I guess once we get dark versions of all the other classes then I will push for Anti-Pallys.

[Baahb3]

[*]Warlock:

• Base Eldritch Blast dice are now 1d8
• Base Pact dice are now 1d6
• The single-target basic Eldritch Blast now scales with 125% Spell Power
• Enervating Shadow stance now scales with 150% Spell Power
• All other Eldritch Blast Shapes now scale at 100% Spell Power
• The level 15 Warlock Pact Special abilities now scale as if they were spells and are modified by bonus Spell DCs.

Someone better at math can do the crunching but this looks like a null change in damage to me.

As a cone blaster for the most part: (level 30 warlock)

Blast:
Current:
6 Eldritch Dice + 2 Enhancement + 7 Epic Feat = 13d6 * 3.5 = 45.5 * 1.3 (current 130% for Cone) = 59.15
Change:
Same 13 dice but now * 4.5 = 58.5 with no additional since it is now 100%
--A small reduction

Pact:
Current:
10 Pact Dice + 4 Enhancement + 6 Epic Destiny Feat -1 Stance = 19d4 * 2.5 = 47.5 * 1.3 (Cone) = 61.75
Change:
Same 19 dice but now * 3.5 = 66.5 with no additional since now 100%
--Small Increase

Combined before = 120.9
Combined after = 125

With the increase coming from an element that can be resisted or is immune.

Why make this change for a measly 4 points?

[Smokewolf]

Nice to see that Warlocks are getting some love with the Eldrich / Pact increases.

[Martininice]

Nice to have more lives to play through, but really, and that coming from someone listing Melmoth the Wanderer among his favorite novels: Enough with the dark, "edgy" stuff.

[Diracorvus]

Someone better at math can do the crunching but this looks like a null change in damage to me.

As a cone blaster for the most part: (level 30 warlock)

Blast:
Current:
6 Eldritch Dice + 2 Enhancement + 7 Epic Feat = 13d6 * 3.5 = 45.5 * 1.3 (current 130% for Cone) = 59.15
Change:
Same 13 dice but now * 4.5 = 58.5 with no additional since it is now 100%
--A small reduction

Pact:
Current:
10 Pact Dice + 4 Enhancement + 6 Epic Destiny Feat -1 Stance = 19d4 * 2.5 = 47.5 * 1.3 (Cone) = 61.75
Change:
Same 19 dice but now * 3.5 = 66.5 with no additional since now 100%
--Small Increase

Combined before = 120.9
Combined after = 125

With the increase coming from an element that can be resisted or is immune.

Why make this change for a measly 4 points?

For cone it might be barely a change but now cone and aura will finally have some good competition. Finally a big boost for chain and enervating shadow!

[Alternative]

The effects of Smoke Bomb are now correctly removed when you attack.

WHAT, that wasn't working as intended? What's the point of a 12 second buff then, if you can just cast longer displacement and invis when needed?


Also what about people killing one another after the Skeletons raid, was expecting something like that to be pretty high on the to do list.

[Smokewolf]

Would like to see a Boost in Eldritch Blasts projectile speed, too.

I am so tired of mobs being able to outrun or side-step the Eldritch Blasts as this ends up being a significant DPS loss across all levels of play.

[Zitaloc]

Fixed some sound effects for Raptors and other Isle of Dread creatures that had bitrates that were much higher than normal, in the hopes that it may fix an issue where the game client crashes in Isle of Dread for some players when sound effects are enabled. If this bug had been affecting you in the past, please try playing Isle of Dread with sound effects on and let us know whether this helps[/list]

Unfortunately I still crash in wilderness of IoD when the sounds is turned on

[Edwinge]

• Bank - Crafting storage now has a sorting option: Alphabetical (A-Z) or (Z-A) or Legacy Sort (the old way)

Can the crafting storage get Oldest First and Most Recently Added sort options like the other banks have?

[Epzilon123]

So, in Eberron we have the Children of Winter; this is their description from the Eberron fandom wiki:


"The Children of Winter are a small druidic sect who embrace death and decay as part of the natural cycle of life. The Children believe that diseases and famines are sacred, as they aid the natural cycle in culling the weak.[1][2] Some Children of Winter focus on preserving the natural order, and fight undead, while others spread diseases and plagues.[3][4] The children have no formal organizational hierarchy, instead operating in packs, each led by a single leader[3] Most Children of Winter reside near the Gloaming in the Towering Wood of the Eldeen Reaches, a holy place for the sect.[3][5]

Many Children of Winter are fascinated by the Day of Mourning and see as a harbinger of the destruction of Eberron that will usher in the spring of a new age.[1][3][4][6] Since the Day of Mourning occurred some Children have left to travel across Khorvaire to aid in bringing this age to an end, while other Children seeks to uncover the cause of the Mourning and prove that it isn't a sign of the age to come.[1][3][4] "


I know the association with winter and cold (as well as confusing people with the abilities in Season's Herald). Still, I wish we'd get more Eberron-specific names in our Eberron game. This game being in Eberron is one of the reasons why I like it so much. Also, I assume this is inspired by the blightcaller PRC, which is why it has that name. Ah, well, just a minor nitpick.

[Yamato-San]

Someone better at math can do the crunching but this looks like a null change in damage to me.
....
Why make this change for a measly 4 points?

It's indeed a complete nonsense change.
All is more or less the same except for a ~20% boost for Enervating Shadow and a meager 5% boost for chain.

It makes no sense at the moment.

[Axcarth]

[*]Warlock:

• Base Eldritch Blast dice are now 1d8
• Base Pact dice are now 1d6
• The single-target basic Eldritch Blast now scales with 125% Spell Power
• Enervating Shadow stance now scales with 150% Spell Power
• All other Eldritch Blast Shapes now scale at 100% Spell Power
• The level 15 Warlock Pact Special abilities now scale as if they were spells and are modified by bonus Spell DCs.

Thank you very much, Tolero, for this WLK attempt of love. This is a step forward, although we have to check the calculations, specially for cone eldritch blast shape!

[droid327]

Chain locks rejoice! Finally! And just when I TRed my lock to a fist lol

It's indeed a complete nonsense change.
All is more or less the same except for a ~20% boost for Enervating Shadow and a meager 5% boost for chain.

It makes no sense at the moment.

How is it only 5% for chain? They get a big boost to base die plus better scaling - I think this was meant to bring other shapes up to par with cone, with basic shape being the single target focus stance and shadow being the specialist version of it

[Smokewolf]

Chain locks rejoice! Finally! And just when I TRed my lock to a fist lol



How is it only 5% for chain? They get a big boost to base die plus better scaling - I think this was meant to bring other shapes up to par with cone, with basic shape being the single target focus stance and shadow being the specialist version of it

Well, if the other shapes didn't have such a horrible miss rate due to mobs outruning or side stepping eldritch projecticles, then they see greater use. As things currently stand, cone is the preferred shape simply because it far more reliable, hits harder, and can hit more targets than other shapes.

This all comes from the projectile speed nerf years ago, which basicly hobbled all the shapes other than cone.