U58 Preview 2 Overview

[Tolero]

Disclaimer

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

Another Preview of Update 58 will be open today as of 3pm EDT on Tuesday, January 31st! It is expected to remain open into the afternoon (EDT) of Thursday, February 2nd.

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This preview contains a look at another new Archetype, a new free quest, new loot, and other 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 three new Archetypes are available in preview 2! Try them out and let us know what you think in their respective feedback threads:

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

New Quest & Loot

A new quest is available to try on Lamannia, as well as new loot. Speak with The Questgiver in the Test Dojo to be taken to Sharn and visit Frelda Brumlyn near the boat to Morgrave University. To see the loot, speak with The Loot Guy in the Test Dojo

• Quest: Kill Ten Rats (thread)
• Treasure feedback (thread)

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.
• Snowpeaks imbue filigree now stacks correctly
• Battle Engineer cores now properly provide their universal spell power

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 2 Known Issues

• There are stub icons in Acolyte of the Skin: True Patron: Fiend (feat), Fiendish Forms, Fiendish Glare, Eldritch Blast Shape Beam, Drink Their Fear, Skin Adaption, Glare of the Pit, Fiendish Symbiosis,
• There are stub icons in Dark Hunger: Opportune Moment, Death Stalker, Hunter in the Dark, Slayer in the Dark, Snap Trap, Smoketrap (spell icon), Snap Trap (spell icon), Death Attack

[Andu_Indorin]

Disclaimer

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

Another Preview of Update 58 will be open today as of 3pm EDT on Tuesday, January 31st! It is expected to remain open into the afternoon (EDT) of Thursday, February 2nd.

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Looking forward to the preview at ... uh ... 3:00 p.m. EDT

(Very hard for the elderly to read dark red on dark grey.)

; ) ; ) > >

[TPICKRELL]

The drag and drop issues causing items in the bank and cache to lose the correct minimum level needs to be fixed ASAP. The new bank is worse for gearing because level searches don't find the right items!

I can easily recreate it by taking an item in the shared bank that has a correct minimum level and drag it into a named tab, then drag it back. Normal use of the bank's drag and drop cause items to obtain the Min level of slotted augments, or have no min level.

This makes the new bank much worse than the old bank since in that system you could organize items by min level and then find them without manual search by hover text.

[Edwinge]

• 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

Can the -30 Negative Healing Amplification in Knight of the Chalice's Vigor of Life enhancements (tier 4 and tier 5) be changed to negative absorption? This change will make it meaningless if left as is.

[Tap4black]

The drag and drop issues causing items in the bank and cache to lose the correct minimum level needs to be fixed ASAP. The new bank is worse for gearing because level searches don't find the right items!

I can easily recreate it by taking an item in the shared bank that has a correct minimum level and drag it into a named tab, then drag it back. Normal use of the bank's drag and drop cause items to obtain the Min level of slotted augments, or have no min level.

This makes the new bank much worse than the old bank since in that system you could organize items by min level and then find them without manual search by hover text.

LOL, I suppose you want a unicorn for your birthday too........

[TPICKRELL]

LOL, I suppose you want a unicorn for your birthday too........

Heya Jaxx.

No, I wrote a lot of drag and drop code in my day, and this is easy to recreate and should be an easy fix! And it prevents the operation of a primary use case. So it SHOULD BE FIXED ALREADY.

[droid327]

So...is there no changes to the archetypes since P1? Since you're linking the same feedback threads from last preview? Does AotS have a thread?

[Stravix]

So...is there no changes to the archetypes since P1? Since you're linking the same feedback threads from last preview? Does AotS have a thread?

I'm guessing they are waiting till 3 when it goes live, but it is odd

[ahpook]

They also didn't highlight the things that were different from Preview 1 this time around.

I'm guessing they are waiting till 3 when it goes live, but it is odd

Perhaps this went out prematurely?

But it is not odd. It is the disorganized and sloppy approach that has become the standard communication (and release) model of the past year. Not odd at all.

[TPICKRELL]

I'd guess that the Archetype documents are still being finalized towards a 3:00 ish deadline.

I for one would rather they publish this when its ready. Gives me a chance to read this one and digest it while the others are finished. The links can be easily edited in when the other documents are published.

[Axcarth]

The drag and drop issues causing items in the bank and cache to lose the correct minimum level needs to be fixed ASAP. The new bank is worse for gearing because level searches don't find the right items!...

Yes please! Fix this ^

[cru121]

Journals have a slightly more readable font and contrast!

Now that you're touching journals, you could also implement this brilliant idea I had few weeks ago.

Allow Ctrl+F1 to close scrolls/journals.



In case anyone does not know, Ctrl+F1 is the keyboard shortcut that selects the first option in conversations.

[rabidfox]

[*]Snowpeaks imbue filigree now stacks correctly

Still not stacking with the raid imbue augment this preview.

[QuantumFX]

[*]Character Sheet:

• Feats now display in neat categories that are easier to parse and sort through

Hi, could you guys categorize the Epic PL's by Sphere please? It would make finding which PL's work with each other less of a hassle.

[Yamani]

Favored enemies from Falconry (Animal) and Vistani (Undead) should be marked as Temporarily Acquired.

[droid327]

Now that you're touching journals, you could also implement this brilliant idea I had few weeks ago.

And also make it accept the Start Quest interface

Its annoying hitting your "choose first chat option" hotkey to scroll through NPC dialogue to open the quest, then needing to manually click "OK" to get into it...

[kpak01]

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

So you're adding an essentially useless alphabetical sort in both directions, but you can't simply reverse the order on the "Legacy" sort? I want the most recent stuff first!

[Firebreed]

Still not stacking with the raid imbue augment this preview.

Big if true. Please fix.

[gravisrs]

Hi, could you guys categorize the Epic PL's by Sphere please? It would make finding which PL's work with each other less of a hassle.

Or at least prefix them, eg. "Sphere of Arcane: Ancient Knowledge", "Sphere of Arcane: ...." etc.

[LurkingVeteran]

While you are adjusting Warlock anyway:
- The blast shape animations and projectile speeds themselves are slow / clunky and do not chain well with spell casts (e.g. ED SLAs).
- A big issue is that Eldritch Ball and Stunning Blast in TS have always been weak/clunky. If those actually were actually worth using, Warlock blaster would be in much better shape in PUGs due to improved ranged burst.

These would improve game play generally and also improve ranged burst (which seems to be the main complaint by warlocks in PUGs) without any downsides that I can see.