In Testing: Sorcerer and Bard Spell Switching

24-Apr-2006

This is a feature that is currently in testing and will appear in a future update. This feature will allow Sorcerers and Bards to swap spells from their spellbooks for a new spell of the same level.

How will it work?

All Sorcerer and Bard trainers will have a new option added to their dialogue box: "I would like to exchange one of my spells for a different one." Selecting this option brings up the Spell Exchange panel. Spell exchange works in the same way as the Action Point system - select the spell you would like to get rid of on the left, and select the desired spell on the right. There is a cash price for each spell swap and you can only swap a spell for another spell of the same level. You can swap as many spells as you like, at any time you like, the only limit is how much money you have in your coin purse.

This screenshot shows the Spell Exchange panel:

This screenshot shows the new trainer dialogue:

How much will it cost?

The following is an example of the pricing scheme. This is subject to change.

Level 1 Spells = 1,000 gp per spell
Level 2 Spells = 4,000 gp per spell
Level 3 Spells = 9,000 gp per spell
Level 4 Spells = 16,000 gp per spell
Level 5 Spells = 25,000 gp per spell

Monster Profile: STORM GIANTS

Creature Name: Storm Giant
Creature Type: Giant
Environment: Any
Attack: Greatsword, Bow
Special Qualities: Freedom of movement, electricity immunity, spell-like abilities, spells
Organization: Solitary

From the personal journal of Azalai Korias, Elven Wizard

27 Barrakas, 998:

I am in excellent spirits today despite my exhaustion. This tomb has proven to be a treasure trove of information about old Xen'drik. The runes deep inside the crypt describe the glorious history of the giants, along with the great deeds (and bloody end) of the general buried within the tomb.

Eighty thousand years ago, the giants owned Xen'drik. We crawl about the decaying remnants of their civilization like insects feeding on a corpse. Stormreach itself rose from the ruins of an ancient port, with great pillars and blocks too heavy to lift without the powerful magic scattered across her cityscape. The greatest of the giant races are the storm giants, over twenty feet tall and twelve thousand pounds or more. They towered over their cousins and led them in creating their ancient empire.

The giant empire fell forty thousand years ago. The quori invaded Xen'drik when the plane of dreams became coterminous with Eberron. The giants unleashed a mighty spell to sever the connection with Dal Quor, but at a terrible cost. Curses and plagues ravaged the continent, and my ancestors seized the opportunity to rebel against their slavemasters. Before the giants could use their devastating spell upon the elves, the dragons intervened, their attack sealing the fate of the ancient empire. The original occupant of this tomb apparently fell in battle against a red dragon.

Contemporary storm giants have the longest memories and the greatest rage at their decline. They look at their primitive cousins and seethe, longing to restore their rightful place in the world as the dominant civilization. They do not consider us equals, making it difficult to deal with them; expect violent treachery as soon as the giant is satisfied that it has acquired all that feigned friendship can provide.

I have taken rubbings of so many walls that even Zarn is complaining from the burden. I must return to Stormreach at once with the information we have found and seek the counsel of minds more knowledgeable than my own. There are references to a great hero's return and a prophecy that I cannot fully decipher. Perhaps there is an interesting story just waiting to be found.

***********************

I've heard elvish scholars quote legends of other worlds. In these worlds, not every storm giant is evil folk. Some of these lost bits of lore maintain that, elsewhere, the storm giants are simply forces of nature, wild and tempestuous but not malicious, not bent on rulership or destruction of the "lesser races" (here they mean all humanoids, not just dwarves and halflings.) Maybe these hypothetical giants-like so many other green-skinned creatures of the natural world-are just defenders of their respective natural worlds. But here in Eberron, there is nothing to justify that supposition. The storm giants were active members, leaders probably, of the ancient giant empire of Xen'drik. After the dragons, it was the first real civilization on our world, say the learned. Long ago, elves served the giants in this empire as their slaves. Only after the giant empire's collapse-some say to infighting, some to invasion, and others blame some magical catastrophe-did the humanoid races rise to prominence on Eberron.

The storm giants remember. It is they, among all the giantkin of Xen'drik, who have best preserved the memory of their largely forgotten dominion. The hill giants, much more common today, have degenerated into primitive and nearly mindless brutality. The fire giants, by comparison, carry relics of an ancient military training and have comforted themselves with their embrace of fire and destruction. But they are pale shadows compared to the enmity that the storm giants bear. While all of the giants love to grind the bones of men and render their flesh into a fine pink mist, the storm giants plan. They plot and they scheme. According to rumors from the jungle, they are organizing as we speak under their most powerful leaders. They're recruiting allies and devising long-ranging plans to bring death to all the humanoids of Xen'drik. That means you. And, more importantly, me. In some sense, the wrath of the giants is understandable. Here we are, for the first time in millennia, back on Xen'drik, the storm giants' home for practically all of history. Most of the newcomers and would-be adventurers are themselves morally bankrupt treasure hunters, tomb robbers, and opportunists.

Okay, enough generalities. What should you do if you encounter one of these olive-skinned titans in the jungle, or in one of the ancient sunken ruins? The key to defeating one of these beasts is refreshingly simple. Thanks to its huge size and arrogant disregard of heavy armor, it's not too difficult to sink your sword or arrow into its hide. The trouble, of course, is that against the creature measuring more than twenty feet in height, your blade is little more than a knitting needle. Think of how many blows from a needle your ankles and shins could take before you fall, and you get the idea. And of course, the creature will be raining powerful blows down on you at the same time. The best advice is this: bring some friends. A small army would be preferable (if a large army can't be found.) But lay out every offensive combat trick-and every spell you can think of. Ordinarily, I'd advise attempting to slow the creature with an arcane spell; sadly, the storm giants seem naturally immune to such enchantments.

WoW Stratics will be opening up the floor to YOU the players of World of Warcraft. We recently were given an opportunity to interview the WoW developers. So we thought why not see what the PLAYERS would ask those crazy developers.

So here you go! NOW its your chance to ask the WoW developers what you want to know! Submit your question to us by filling out our ASK THE DEVELOPERS FORM. We will then pick the best 15 questions and send them on to the WoW Developers!

Please remember one question per person, this is to ensure everyone will have a fair chance at asking their question. The deadline for this will be SUNDAY, MAY 7th 2006.

Make sure you keep checking back to WoW Stratics, to see what questions were sent and what the developers have said!

Hello,

Late Sunday evening (April 23rd, 2006) our primary web server had a catastrophic hardware failure which brought the server offline. This hardware failure was completely beyond our control and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

We had to obtain a new part for the server and did so as quickly as we could. We did not have the item on hand at the time of the hardware failure. However, we are now back up and running and everything should be good to go.

Once again, please accept our apologies for this unfortunate situation.

Regards,

Jhariden
Network Director

Dungeons & Dragons Online 7 Day Free Trial
21-Apr-2006

Battle the evil lurking below the dangerous city of Stormreach™ when you DOWNLOAD THE 7 DAY FREE TRIAL! Begin your journey into the online world of a roleplaying classic, joining a community of adventurers to explore the exciting mysteries of Eberron® for seven days at no cost!

You can sign up for the Trial Program at: trial.ddo.com

PCGamer says that DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE™: Stormreach™ is the "MMO that changes everything..." Create unique and authentic D&D heroes from five races, nine classes, and hundreds of skills, feats and looks. Survive unforgiving dungeons, fiendish traps and foes that punish the foolish. Sway the course of battle through action combat where skill matters and seconds count. Coordinate party tactics with the integrated voice chat system.

Ready for a totally unique online game experience? There's only one way to find out: Play DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE™: Stormreach™ FREE for Seven Days!

Dragon's Vault Module Trailer

A dangerous threat has come to Stormreach. A red dragon has captured the Vault of Night. Explore the Vault of Night in addition to the other brand new dungeons in this, the first major content update to DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE: Stormreach. One of the fastest growing online worlds, just got bigger.

View the all new trailer for the Dragon's Vault Module HERE.

Hello Everyone,

My name is Jesse Smith. My handle here on the forums is Eldorudo, and I am the latest addition to the Online Community Relations team for Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach. I have been reading the forums for several weeks now and getting acclimated with my new surroundings. I look forward to working together with Samera and Sporkfire, and to lend some support to the community.

My main responsibilities will be to update DDO.com with news, information, and player submitted content. You will soon be seeing more contests and content appearing on the site so be on the lookout. I will also have a presence here in the forums, mostly to update you about additions to DDO.com.

I have been an avid gamer since I was old enough to hold a controller. In recent years I have moved away from consoles and spent many, many hours playing MMOs. I really enjoy the community aspect that is inherent in MMOs. What began as an interest has now culminated into a career, and I am incredibly excited to be joining this community, and to work with all of you.

General

• Quest items should no longer get deleted when players go linkdead.
• Players will no longer be able to enter a completed quest for additional experience reward without retaking the quest. Note: Two quests only were broken in this manner. This change only fixes those two broken quests, not our game mechanic as a whole.
• Fixed several stuck points throughout the world.
• Fixed the problem where sometimes scrolling your mousewheel would not zoom your camera in and out.

Items

• The drop rate of all lower level mini-bosses’ named items has been reduced.
• The +1 Returning Byeshk Shuriken now stacks correctly.
• Plate Armor of the Deep has had its extraneous charges removed.
• The Serpentbranch Longbow, Snowstar Shuriken, Ratcatcher Crossbow, Guidance Crossbow, and Swift Demise Crossbow are all now working correctly.
• All items that cast summon monster now share the same cooldown timers as the summon monster spells themselves. Characters are limited to having one summoned creature at a time.

Quests

• Lair of Summoning has been altered to have more variety, both in monster type and trap type.
• Prison of the Mind:
  • It should be much harder for Monsters to fall over the edge.
  • In the "cut scene" with Mistress Orphne and the giant, Mistress Orphne's shadow should now path correctly and not collide with players.
  • The shadowy figure of Marek Malcanus that appears behind Mistress Orphne with the rest of the Laughing Knives should no longer have a quest chalice above his head if you are on the Vault of Night quest series.
  • A bug that prevented Orphne’s Shadow from being completed has been fixed.
  • Recalling from the Prison of the Mind will now take you to the correct recall point.
• Southern Threnal Ruins
  • Fixed some broken monster pathing in the Ruins of Threnal.
• Graverobber Quest: the rewards have been adjusted to meet the difficulty level of this quest. We have also lowered the required number of zombie kills slightly.
• Made some landscape changes to Stormcleave Outpost to help alleviate a problem with the final boss fight.
• Redfang’s Nesting Grounds
  • Fixed some broken monster pathing.
  • Fixed the stinger that was spawning inside a wall.
• Tharashk Arena
  • The entrance to Tharashk Arena has been redecorated to match its surroundings better.
  • Fixed some pathing issues.
• Vault of the Restless: the infinitely respawning skeleton has been fixed.
• Fixed a bug where players received the wrong alert text when approaching the dungeon boss in the Temple of Vol.
• Fixed a broken trap in the Jungles of Khyber
• Fixed a broken trap and a broken door in Gwylan’s Stand
• Fixed a broken door in Arzag-Khor Sewers as well as some broken monster pathing.
• Fixed some broken monster pathing in Xorian Cipher.

Monsters

• Certain boss monsters (dragon, vampire) will now be immune to ability draining.
• Shades in the Chamber of Insanity deal more damage and have more hit points, and have a higher CR noted.
• Incorporeal creatures (such as Wraiths) are no longer solid.
• Vampires, Spectres, and Wraiths should no longer have a chance of disappearing forever in the middle of combat.
• Muck has taken such a beating lately that he has become more reclusive. He will no longer spawn every time you visit the Den of the Kobold Brothers.

NPCs

• Many dungeon-based NPCs will now only converse with one player at a time. This will alleviate a number of quest NPCs who might toggle a door or item twice in succession due to multiple conversations taking place simultaneously (for example, Gate Warden Ironclaw in Stormcleave Outpost.)
• Karnat Thaar (Arzag-Khor Sewer) now properly displays his quest chalice.
• Gatekeeper Chulkash (Xorian Cipher) now properly displays his quest chalice.
• Shen Kulle (Prison of the Mind) now saves his final dialogue for when you have actually completed the quest.
• Grogan (Tharashk Arena) will no longer talk to you after he is dead.

Scheduled Downtime - April 19, 2006

The servers will be down from 7:00 am - 12:00 pm EDT tomorrow, April 19th, for an update. The first draft of the release notes for this update will be posted later today (4/18).

Announcing The Brand New UOStraticsCast Show!

UO Stratics is excited to announce our first venture into the world of Podcasting! The show will be called UOStraticsCast and will feature news from our General News, our Community News, and Featured Quotes from the UO Developers themselves. In addition, we'll be sharing stories from the lore of Britannia and we'll even share a rant or rave along the way that we'll be wanting your input on. So make sure to CHECK IT OUT! With that said, read on for the Show Notes for our first show:

UOStraticsCast Show #1 - April 17, 2006

Direct Link to UOStraticsCast Show #1

Send Joshua an email

• 00:00 - Introduction - Welcome to the very first UO Stratics Podcast!
• 02:03 - General News, Community News, and Featured Developer Quote
• 14:30 - Lore of Britannia - "HUMILITY: The Tale of Katrina and the Noble"
• 25:20 - VOICES Editorial - Player Races - Why Elves And Not Gargoyles or Orcs?
• 29:07 - Conclusion
• 29:51 - Sign-Off Song - "Town Life, Ultima X Odyssey"

To subscribe via you your favorite Podcatcher Program (iTunes, etc), make sure to grab our XML FEED

Friends Don't Let Friends Play Solo
13-Apr-2006

Friends shouldn’t let their friends solo in DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE: Stormreach. Finding a good group to adventure with can be the difference between success and failure. This entertaining trailer shows how it can be dangerous to go it alone in the world of Eberron.

View the Friends Don't Let Friends Solo Trailer Here.

Second Life Stratics Opens Its Doors!

You have all heard about it...

Many of you have dreamed about it...

And some others have thought it would never happen...

But here we are... Second Life Stratics is now open!

Our team of dedicated personnel have been working furiously over the last several weeks to bring you a new and informative look into the world of Second Life, where you can be anyone you want, anywhere you want. If you enjoy the nightlife, you can visit a wide variety of clubs... or, if you have a hunkering to build a medieval stable and work with horses all day, well, I'm sure that could be accomplished, too! From renting a house from your neighbor, to buying and selling land to earn more Linden dollars, Second Life is limited only by your own imagination!

One of the most unique features of this MMORPG is the custom content. The players create everything you see! The furniture, wall hangings, and all else before your very eyes... if you can think it, you can build it! Learn how to build a network of computers so that you can open your very own internet cafe... while online! Or maybe you'd like to drive a sailboat to work, instead of a sports car? You can do it... in Second Life.

And we want to hear about it, at our Second Life Stratics Forums!

We are constantly building our staff-created guides to bring you, the Second Lifer, more information on the how's and where's of your world. And we are striving to be the new place for you to hang out, share your ideas, plan your events, and meet the rest of your Second Life Community!

So join us... Second Life Stratics is waiting for you! So please, come and introduce yourself!

We look forward to meeting you!

Your Second Life Stratics Team

DDO Available for Online Purchase!

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE™: Stormreach™ (DDO) is now available for download on Direct2Drive.com for the purchase price of $49.95. When you purchase and download the software, you will receive a registration key, which you can enter at http://billing.turbine.com to begin your subscription. All purchases come with a 30 day subscription included.

So put your fortitude, reflexes and will to the test as you challenge the deadly secrets hidden across the mysterious continent of Xen'drik. DDO is the first Massively-Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) where you can experience classic roleplaying based on the D&D® 3.5 rules and innovative features like real-time combat, hand-crafted dungeons and fiendish traps. You can be a champion of Stormreach™ in dungeons filled with brutal enemies and diabolical traps like you have never seen in any MMOG before.

Be sure to check out the Online Manual for detailed information on playing the game (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader).
__________________
Victor Wachter
Community Relations Manager

It is now even easier to play DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE™: Stormreach™ (DDO)! To better service its customers, Turbine is pleased to announce a deal with Internet Payment Solutions, Inc. (a/k/a PayByCash), an online alternative payment service that will enable players to subscribe to DDO without using a credit card. PayByCash is currently offering a 60-day game pass on their site (http://www.paybycash.com/ddo/gamepass.php) for $33.19, a convenient option for players who prefer not to use a credit card for automatic billing.

Please join us on Wednesday, April 19th, for a House of Commons with the developers of Star Wars Galaxies at 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern in the #StraticsHoC channel on Stratics IRC.

The focus for this chat will be Publish 29 and the Dev Tour community events.

You can connect to one of our IRC servers through the use of your favorite IRC client, such as mIRC, ircle, xchat, or whichever you prefer. Connect to irc.stratics.com port 6668 or whichever server is closest to you:

stratics.frws.com port 6668, USA - Colorado
irc.glowfish.de port 6668, EU - Germany
stratics.afraidyet.net 6668, USA - Atlanta
irc.epaxsys.net port 6668, USA - Colorado

You may also connect through our handy Java link which may be found right here. You must have Java installed to use this which can be downloaded from the Java homepage.

General chat relating to SWG will take place before, during, and after the chat in room #starwars. We hope to see you there!

UO STRATICS recently had the pleasure of pulling EA's new UO Producer, Aaron "Darkscribe" Cohen, away from his work for a time in order to answer some of our burning questions and enable the player base to know him and his outlook a bit better. We tried to pull our questions and topics from frequently discussed topics on the Ultima Online Stratics U.Hall Forum and other Stratics forums about the future direction of UO and the MMOG industry as a whole. Darkscribe has graciously sent us these answers to our questions and we proudly present them to all of you.

Q: What does the title of “Producer” encompass? In other words, define your job as the Producer of Ultima Online.

AARON: I’m responsible for the entire UO business, and the entire dev team reports to me. The people above me expect us to make our financial goals. The people below me want to make a great game. My job is to make those two goals the same goal. This job is a blast, but it’s also a huge amount of work and complication. The quote from Spider-Man definitely applies: “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Q: What life events brought you to Electronic Arts and the world of online gaming?

AARON: Long, long story. I’ll try and make it short…Newspaper writer. Newspaper editor. Sold out to The Man to become a PR guy at a casino resort in Vegas. Horrific job. Begged for a job at Westwood Studios for about a year and finally got it. Fabulous job for five years. Westwood closed. Headed to Austin and OSI. OSI closed. Headed to EAHQ in Redwood City. Marketing guy for UO, then decided to take a shot at being producer, out of love for the game. Got the job. And here I am.

THANKS

I would like to publicly thank the players that, through Mournlands, gave us thoughtful feedback of Module 1. It is nice to get players playing the game earlier, seeing just how they go about actually playing the game. I know I spent many hours just watching the player groups tackle the new and revised content. It is truly amazing watching some of the tactics and strategies actual players have developed playing DDO.

We will be looking for outstanding players to invite for the next round of invites to Mournlands. We monitor the DDO bug reports, the forums and players in game in inviting players to Mournlands. A couple of suggestions if you are interested in an invite:

1. Do not ask for an invite
2. Write coherent and intelligent forum posts and/or bug reports (spelling counts)
3. Play the game
4. If you find an unique or unusual bugs/issues/exploits, let us know via DDOBugs@turbine.com

Again thanks.

A heartfelt thank you!

I just got caught all the way up with the thread this evening. *pant pant* At this moment, I would like to say 4 things.

1) Warm thanks to all of you for taking the time to post your opinions about the things that bother you in the game in such a constructive fashion. I have read every post in the thread and have taken many pages of notes. There have been a lot of great suggestions and a lot of well-stated criticism.

2) Please resist the temptation to debate a lot on this thread. My intention with this thread is to get an opinion from every player about their pet peeve. It is not very nice to invalidate a person's opinion by telling them "this shouldn't be your pet peeve!" I respect everybody's right to disagree with each other. Please do so privately or somewhere else so that this thread does not become unmanageable for me to keep up with. If it leans too much toward debate, it's value as a direct communication with you is lost to me.

3) I want to communicate what I'm doing with this feedback. As I mentioned before, I'm taking notes. I'm bringing these notes with me to meetings where design, art, engineering, QA, and production discuss the future of character abilities and our bug/feature prioritization. To set some realistic expectations, we can't fix all of your pet peeves. However, we are listening and carefully considering your feedback as we go forward. In the cases where the feedback doesn't relate to combat, spells, feats, abilities, and advancement, I'm forwarding your feedback to appropriate responsible parties.

4) There is nothing new about this process. Sporkfire and Samera have been feeding the engineering, design, and production teams with your feedback since Beta. They have been piecing together great lists from the many threads on the forums. Their lists hit dead on with what this thread exposes as some of the areas we can improve the game. The reason I wanted to post this thread was so that I could read it with my own eyes and feel a greater sense of attachment with you, the players.

Overall, I am very pleased with the level of feedback everybody has been providing here. Hats off to you for being proactive and trying to make the game better. I will continue to read this thread and make my notes.

Thanks again,

Codog Cuisinart

Release Notes: April 12, 2006

• Scorched Caverns/Taming the Flames: The optional objectives will correctly advance. This adventure is now open again.
• Several issues with Velah the Dragon’s spellcasting have been fixed, and we have updated some problem areas in the Plane of Night.
• Glyphs of Ward-Breaking from the Plane of Night will now appear in the trade window when attempting to trade them to a party member.
• Monsters should once again switch targets normally. Intimidate and diplomacy function again.
• Monster’s self-healing behavior should be much rarer than before.
• Class icons should now be appearing properly in LFM want ads.
• Friends who had appeared on your friends list prior to Module 1 should now appear on it again.
• Feeblemind is now curable by casting "Restoration" and will be until players are capable of casting the “Heal” spell.
• You may now use rest shrines while you have an ability scores at 0 or are otherwise helpless.
• Missile Combat has been restored to its previous state – you will now be able to fire arrows while moving again.
• Xorian Cipher: Gatekeeper Chulkash will now allow you to get a reward if you accidentally closed the window.

Introducing the DDO Mournlands Server

We’d like to take a moment to inform the community about the DDO Mournlands server. Turbine uses this server to test new code and content before it is released to the general public. This gives us the opportunity to get people on a server to try out new versions of the game, and gives a select group of community members the opportunity to preview new content and give us their feedback on it.

The Mournlands server is an invitation-only preview server. The DDO QA team sends invitations to select individuals who have shown themselves to be constructive members of the community through comments, suggestions and other postings. The Mournlands server is covered by a Preview and Non-Disclosure Agreement. As this agreement contains confidentiality obligations, you will not be seeing previews from other players on these forums nor will participants be identifying themselves as Mournlands members. At this time, there is no application to the server. Community Relations and QA are always watching for folks who would make a solid addition to the Mournlands community. P>We’re looking forward to using the Mournlands server and to sharing these previews with community members.
__________________
Victor Wachter
Community Relations Manager

How Long Does It Take You to Find a Group?

Hello all,

We're interested in gathering information about forming pickup groups in DDO. We'd like to ask you to answer some questions in this thread:

How long does it take you to find a group once you start looking?

When you try and join or form a group, what do you do? Do you use the LFG panel? Do you send LFG messages in a tavern or anywhere else? Let us know what methods seem to give you the best results.

Most importantly, please include the server you play on and the time of day that you usually play. These are important variables, as the population you have to work with will affect your success in forming a group.

We're looking forward to hearing your replies!
__________________
Victor Wachter
Community Relations Manager

With module 1 coming out right on the heels of launch, we had two things to cover and it is likely that launch coverage overshadowed M1 coverage. However, we're planning our promotion coverage for Module 2 right now, and you will see us covering it quite a bit through teasers, promotional web content, screenshots, wallpapers, etc. early on.
__________________
Victor Wachter
Community Relations Manager

We'll be fixing things along the way. I hope you notice the large number of non-content improvements in Module 1. Expect the same for Module 2.
__________________
Victor Wachter
Community Relations Manager

Known Issues

• We have inadvertently broken archery combat. It is no longer possible to shoot while moving unless you have the Shot on the Run feat. This was unintentional and will be fixed in the next patch. Our apologies to archers everywhere.
• Feeblemind is now incurable (except by death).
• It is possible to become trapped in the monster ready rooms in Tharask Arena. To prevent this from happening to your party you should hold off on exploring the rooms adjoining the arena until after you have fought all of gladiator monsters.
• Xorian Cipher: Gatekeeepr Chulkash does not have a quest grail above his head.
• Xorian Cipher: Gatekeeper Chulkash: If you close the reward window without choosing an item, Chulkash will act like you didn't give him the Cipher.
• Xorian Cipher: Urdak brothers can wander to unreachable areas and never return.
• The icons for the potions and scrolls in your inventory will not update to the new icons until you have logged out and then logged back in.
• Nothing shows in the Focus Orb when targeting the Aspirants Square Founders Commemorative Fountain.

Fixed

• Broken Wands - If you had unused wands in your inventory prior to this update they now have zero out of 50 charges.
• Throwing weapons/Returning weapons should be fixed.

Pet Peeves!

Howdy again friends!

The title of this thread says it all. I have been reading through the forums this weekend a fair amount and have discovered some interesting things that have been vexing some of you. Rather than having me combing through the entire forum for people frustrated by combat and character abilities, I would like you here... on this thread!

The challenge I pose to you is this: If there was one thing that you wished we could fix about combat, spells, feats, or other character abilities, what would that be?

Seeing as how I am asking you what frustrates you the most, I understand that the poster is definitely angry, aggravated, and bothered. I'd ask that you be polite and crisp in your responses to this. Please try to keep in mind that my time as a developer on a live product has to be spent divided between development of new features and fixing existing features. Unfortunately, I have not yet mastered the Time Stop spell in real life.

Long, angry rants will distract me from the root cause of your vexation. I prefer concise factual description of what bothers you. So as to set realistic expectations, I will not be engaging in debate or answering questions here.

However, you have my full attention and I will personally be reading EVERY response posted here.

Best regards,

Codog (Developer)

Glad many of you like this quest so far. However, the others are also right, and unfortunately there are some pretty glaring bugs due to recent tweaks in some of our systems. Those will soon be fixed. In the mean time, I apologize for the inconvenience.

This quest is supposed to be very difficult, as are all of the quests included in the Vault of Night series. It is not supposed to be difficult because of bugs, however. The slimes should not be getting into situations where they heal. Players should not be appearing in the harbor when they fail or exit out of the quest. Monsters should not be falling off the world. It's unfortunate that these problems exist, but we are working very hard to rectify the situation, and we should have fixes in as soon as we can.

Originally Posted by darkgolem
What is the plan to prevent griefing by "accidently" falling victim to the wind trap on purpose multiple times? I have overcome my frustration at the amazing inability of my team to cross the wind traps multiple times... and I expect appearing next to the quest enterance is fine, once fixed. But there WILL be griefing, and you should really consider how you plan to address it.

The only way you can prevent griefing is by choosing your group wisely. If that fails, and someone griefs you anyway, my suggestion is to not group with them ever again. If it becomes a bigger issue, then I would highly recommend contacting in-game customer support and report the player who is harassing you.

Due to the design of this quest, there is no way to distinguish between who is griefing and who simply falls off by accident.

To my knowledge, this is not a frequent occurance, and you would probably have the same chances in any dungeon with people griefing by pulling monsters before you're ready, triggering traps, closing barriers/gates/doors, etc. In other words, try to deal with problem players in a mature, calm manner. If nothing comes of that, remain calm and contact customer support to deal with them. Most Griefers are in it to get a reaction out of people. As soon as you give in to a griefer by reacting strongly, they are encouraged to do it again. If CS catches them, they may be punished up to, and including being banned, dependant on the offense.

New Mechanics for the Dragon’s Vault

We are very excited about the fact that the Dragon’s Vault Module contains DDO’s most challenging raid content. The Vault of Night sequence will truly put player’s skills to the test as you face monumental obstacles. With the introduction of this raid content we wanted you to be aware of two game mechanics that are new to this quest sequence and currently only apply to this sequence.

Quest Timer

The Vault of Night Sequence is comprised of six parts.

1. Tharashk Arena
2. Prison of the Mind
3. Jungle of Khyber
4. Haywire Foundry
5. Vault of Night (dungeon raid)
6. Plane of Night (dragon raid)

When you have beaten the dragon and completed the whole quest series, you can’t start the quest series (1-6) again for 66 hours (real-time hours, not in-game hours). However, you can “tag along” with players who are on phases 1-4 of the quest and help them complete Tharashk Arena, Prison of the Mind, Jungle of Khyber or Haywire Foundry (however, when your quest timer resets, you will need to redo parts 1-4 to advance your own quest). You can’t enter the two raid dungeons (Vault of Night and Plane of Night) unless you are on the correct phase of your quest – even if someone else in your party has the correct quest phase. To see how much time is left before you can restart the entire quest sequence again you can either use the /quest command to view all active quest reset timers or check your quest journal.

Loot Mechanic

When you slay the Red Dragon guarding the Vault of Night, you will have a chance to share in the rewards left behind as loot. The dragon’s chest is protected by a pair of objects called the Glyphs of Ward-Breaking, which you must possess in order to pull items out of the dragon’s chest. Two Glyphs will appear next to the dragon’s chest. Only the leader of the party can pick them up. Once they are in the party leader’s possession, he or she may trade them to another party member, allowing that member to choose an item from the chest.

When you take a piece of loot from the chest, your Glyph will be destroyed and you may not choose another piece of loot unless you have the other Glyph. The items are bind-on-acquire, and display a confirmation window to that effect to prevent accidental looting. As bound items, they cannot be traded.

Currently the Plane of Night is the only place in the game where loot works in this manner. The release note “When picking up a Bind on Acquire item that is not reserved (for example, in a treasure chest from which only 1 pull for the Party is possible), there is a confirmation dialogue box opened.” refers ONLY to the Plane of Night. We have not changed the loot mechanics for the entire game.

Dragon Loot

Well, I'm leaping on a live grenade by posting on this thread. Here goes...

So - some people don't like the dragon loot mechanism. That's fair. But, I think the dragon loot is a trickier design problem than most people give it credit for. Below, I'll offer up the line of thought that led to its design. I'm honestly interested in where players think we went wrong.

But first off - I'm saddened to see how many posts are willing to dismiss DDO as a "typical MMO clone" over this chest. Do you really believe our loot model is the only thing that makes DDO special? If so, that's disappointing. I feel there's so much more that differentiates DDO. Maybe people are just exaggerating to get their point across? If so, I'd rather folks just say "Hey Turbine, I don't like this dragon chest thing for these reasons”. Generally, I pay a lot more attention to a cool-headed critique than an angry rant.

On the other hand, maybe I should be flattered that people think our existing loot mechanism is so awesome, they're willing to cancel their subscriptions over a single misbehaved chest.

Ok, so on to the dragon loot. Let’s talk about some the DDO team’s goals

• A fraction of our high end content will be 12 man raids (our prime focus is still on single party adventures, even at max level.)
• These raids are designed to be very challenging
• These raids will have lots of treasure, including a small amount of special and powerful items - which must be kept somewhat rare, for balance reasons.
• These powerful "dragon items" should be bind on acquire - so it can't be sold (in game or out).

This lead to the current dragon loot model.

So, what could we have done differently?

Idea #1: Give out dragon loot to everyone in the party.

• Critique: Powerful items need to be rare. If we gave them out to every member of the party, we'd have to diminish the power of these items. We thought adding some rare, powerful items (to go along with all the other loot from regular chests) would be more interesting.

Idea #2: Make the dragon chest like a normal chest, and add in the dragon items as rare loot.

• Critique: There’s a chance a raid party would get 0 items.
• Critique: If you do get a dragon item, it would very likely be something you can't use. You can't trade it because it's bound to you. That sounds really frustrating!

Idea #3: Make the dragon items bind-on-equip instead of bind-on-acquire, so they can be traded

• Critique: This would fuel an in-game (and worse, out of game) market for dragon items.
• Critique: It’s cool to know that if someone has dragon loot, they earned it by killing the dragon. They didn’t just buy it.
• Critique: What happens if a sorcerer loots a plate mail dragon item? Does the raid party expect her to hand it over to the fighter? If so, yikes! Now you have to trust everyone in the party not to ninja loot, instead of just the leader you agreed to group with! That’s way more risky!

Idea #4: Figure out some other way to assign the items randomly to players in the party.

• Critique: The bind on acquire issue pops up again
• Critique: If the items are tradable, you inherit all the problems of idea#3

You don't need the dragon items to enjoy or “succeed” at DDO. If you want to form a raid guild, and spend a lot of time earning dragon items, go for it. If you are more casual, feel free to attempt the dragon a handful of times. Maybe you’ll get a dragon item, maybe you won’t. That’s how rare items work. But you will find a lot of treasure, and have a lot of fun along the way. If you hate 12-party raids, you can skip the dragon altogether. Play how you want.

For those would-be dragon killers who are in a small guild, or no guild at all, consider forming relationships with people you trust. The dragon raid is something that requires a considerable amount of coordinated effort and planning to defeat.

My personal recommendation for a PUG that manages to kill the dragon (and congrats to any who do!) would be to use the new /random command to distribute the dragon items. You may decide that only players eligible to use the items get to roll. It’s your choice.

I'd have to quit my job to respond to every post, but I wanted to let everyone know I'm listening.

Last thought – I want to reiterate that the majority of our content (existing and foreseeable future) will continue to be designed for a single party.

-Solas

The Dragon's Vault Opens

Turbine has opened the door to the Dragon's Vault, the first content module for DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE™: Stormreach™! The Dragon's Vault module provides players the opportunity to battle the dangerous Vault of Night that is protected by a ferocious guardian – a red dragon in a large-scale raid encounter, as well as 15 other compelling new dungeons.

For a full list of changes and additions, including quest specific changes and known issues, check out the Release Notes!

This update contains the first content update to DDO, the Dragon’s Vault Module! Can you gain access to the impenetrable Vault of Night?

• Fight in the notorious Tharashk Arena, defeating all other combatants to survive.
• Explore the most dangerous prison of all – that of a mind locked in torment, in The Prison of the Mind.
• Discover the hideous secret that has ruined the Haywire Foundry.
• Delve into the subterranean depths of the Jungles of Khyber.
• After you’ve conquered all four of those dungeons, the most challenging and compelling dungeon experience of all awaits you – the Vault of Night, as you face the full array of Kundarak magic and tricks meant to keep you out…or kill you.
• If you somehow manage to defeat the Vault of Night, you can earn your rich rewards…there remains just one last obstacle…

In addition to the Dragon’s Vault chain of quests, there is even more great content to explore!

• Fight against the first vampire boss in DDO…you’ll love this challenge.
• Stop a planar invasion in “The Xorian Cipher”
• Explore the immense demesne of the Arzag-Khor…can you acquire the Tear of Dhakaan?
• Stop the nefarious plans of the Grave Robber
• Can you uncover all the secrets of Stromvauld’s Mine?
• Will you aid the Bounty Hunter and bring down an infamous assassin?
• And more!

We’ve opened the gates to Kobold Island: a fun and replayable landscape experience for new players still getting a feel for what their characters can do in combat.

Changes and fixes to the game include:

• Founders commemoration! Check the fountain in Aspirants square to view the earliest guilds to arrive in Stormreach and explore the dangers of Xen’drik!
• Weapon Sets shortcuts are now in! You can now set up a single item shortcut to point to both a main weapon and off-hand item. So, for example, you can now equip two daggers, or a sword and a shield – all with one shortcut.
  • Drag two different items into the “weapon sets” panel in your inventory panel to create a single shortcut for two items. Now use that shortcut in your shortcut bar to equip the two items.
• Collectibles – Most collectible descriptions now tell you not only which collector wants that item, but also how many copies of that item they desire (i.e. “Goldscuttle desires at least 3 Prayer Beads.")
• When you attempt to delete a character, you will now get a confirmation dialog that asks you to type in the character's first name before it will allow you to delete the character. This should help prevent accidental deletion of your favorite characters.
• Potion and Scroll icons all now have a mini-spell icon in their upper left corner (just like wands) to help identify what spell the item casts. Say goodbye to the “I have ten different potions and all of them are blue!” problem.

Performance

• Players should no longer receive falling damage when they are simply walking along minding their own business.
• The number of people allowed in each tavern instance has been lowered to help performance within taverns.
• We have implemented another batch of changes that should help players who are experiencing rubberbanding and “glued to spot” issues.
• A new tab has been added to the Options Panel, the "Troubleshoot" tab, which contains several new options to help tweak game performance. These options should help players who are trying to improve their dialup experience or players whose video cards are overheating.
  • The trouble shoot UI adds the connection speed setting instead of needing to set it in the userpreferences.ini
  • It additionally adds two methods of slowing down graphics for systems having graphics issues
• A number of graphics related crashes have been resolved.
• Update to timing code to better handle Dual Core, HT and dynamic overclocking setups.
• Network latency now properly measures round trip times, instead of one way.
• We have implemented another batch of changes that should help with dialup performance. If you are a dial-up user, we would appreciate your feedback on connectivity performance after the update.

UI Improvements

• The /roll command now simulates dice-rolling and broadcasts results to the Party.
• The shop UI now plays a sound when buying or selling an item.
• Chat improvements
  • The enter key will now correctly activate the chat text entry field.
  • There is a new (and louder) sound when you receive a tell.
  • Setting your outgoing message type to "guild" will no longer generate the error "no such command." You will also now be able to correctly chat with your guild while on the guild chat tab.
  • Players should now connect to guild chat more reliably when logging into the game.
  • /General chat channel no longer appends an ‘1’ to the end of the user’s name.
• Friends List improvements
  • You now receive a message in chat when one of your friends goes online or offline.
  • Friends Lists are now specific to a character, not an account.
  • An Invite Button has been added to the Friends UI. Simply open your Friends list, target the person you want to party with, and click “Invite.”
• The Guild list now properly updates members' online status.
• Pawn shops will now be marked on the map with a distinctive marker to make locating them easier.
• The mapnotes for Phiarlan, Kundarak, and Deneith have been updated for greater accuracy.
• You will now correctly see your own Voice Chat status icon in the party display.
• /squelch command is no longer case sensitive.
• The Mic test will now automatically shut off if you close the window.
• Your avatar will now face the correct direction upon zone entry after teleporting while in mouselook mode. The days of zoning in and finding yourself facing some crazy direction are over.
• Magical versions of Light Repeating crossbow and Shuriken now have the correct blue magic background for their icons.
• Battle Axes and Falchions now have the correct icons.
• If a player is affected by Slicing Blow they will now see the correct alert icon.
• Corrected the icon for the Fire Elemental’s “Burning Touch” DoT.

Examination Issues

• Many spells should now have their damage ranges and bonus types displayed when examined. This is part of an ongoing effort on our part to provide more detailed spell descriptions.
• Weapons, Shields, and Armor now display their proficiency requirement when examined.
• The descriptions of many items have been improved.
• Certain Immunities (for example elemental damage immunities) now show up on your character sheet under Resistances.
• Thrown Weapon Damage bonuses on character sheet should now display properly.
• Wands now display durability when examined.
• Shields now display their attack penalty if they have one.
• Several typos have been corrected in spell descriptions.

Combat

• Improved Feint now works as an instant AOE bluff, performing bluff checks to all nearby targets. Bluffed targets are open to sneak attack attempts. Please note that the attack animation for Improved Feint is misleading and will be fixed in an upcoming patch.
• Sneak attack bonuses no longer apply to glancing blows since a sneak attack is intended to be a targeted attack and should not apply to collateral damage.
• You can now shield bash if you have a shield and thrown weapon equipped, instead of queuing up a thrown attack for when you release the block button.
• Some improvements have been made to repeating crossbows.

Quest Mechanics

• Some very high-level quests now have a “reset timer” (initially this is just the Vault of Night sequence). The quest reset timer will activate once the quest sequence is completed. You cannot replay the quest sequence until the timer finishes.
  • The timer is indicated in your quest journal.
  • You can use the /quest command to view all active quest reset timers.
• The Plane of Night has a new loot mechanic for dividing treasure from the dragon. For full details please read this thread
• A few different bugs with Encounter XP have been fixed
  • Higher level encounters are now worth more XP than lower level encounters.
  • Certain areas had a bug where their encounters were worth zero XP. This has now been fixed.
• If you are 5 levels or more below the max level of someone in your Party, you will see reduced XP, culminating in potentially zero xp.
• Character files now automatically save after completing a quest and earning XP, or after receiving a quest reward.
• Completing an adventure while at the XP cap will no longer count towards that adventure’s repetition count (even if you are carrying a death penalty).

Quests

• Completing many of the longer quest sequences now presents you with a unique reward selection panel where you can choose from a list of special items. Previously only the Waterworks had this type of reward system.
• Several adventure areas have had their treasure tables adjusted to be more in-line with their level of difficulty.
• Small changes have been made throughout the world to help prevent pathing issues.
• Numerous broken traps and control boxes have been fixed.
• Fixed several false danger alerts (warning of traps that were not there etc.).
• Some bugs have been fixed that were preventing certain quests from being completed.
• Many quests have had a revamp of some sort. More details will be posted tomorrow with the update.

Character Abilities & Spells

• We have made improvements to many of the spell effects. Also, many player-cast spells now contain inherent lighting (cast a fireball and you will see the difference).
• Flaming Sphere and Lightning bolt have been changed so that they do more damage. Previously, if monsters were standing in a line the spell would hit the monster at the head of the line and then stop. Now the spells will travel down the whole line of monsters with a chance to do damage to any monster it hits.
• Flesh to Stone is now permanent but, like Hold Person, now grants periodic saving throws to end the effect. Break Enchantment will still remove this status effect. Characters with high Fortitude saving throws will find the average duration lower than before. Characters with low Fortitude saving throws may hope for some good rolls.
• All undead will now properly react to Turn Undead. Turned undead will now properly flee in terror from the cleric or paladin that turns them rather than cower, rebuked.
• When resting, Warforged should now heal at least one point of ability damage, regardless of their repair score.
• The Improved Fortification feat now works correctly.
• Mithral Fluidity now works correctly.
• We fixed a bug with Fear where it would hit no target if no target was selected. It now correctly has a cone radius for its effect, even with no target selected.
• Warforged racial paralysis resistance now correctly applies to ghoul and ghast resistance.
• Max range of Feather Fall and Mass Cure spells now is consistent with other AoEs.
• Flame Arrow spell will now summon 50 arrows.
• Shaken state no longer prevents spells/skills/feats from being used.
• Undead are now immune to Blind.
• Spell Resistance no longer affects your susceptibility to Web.
• Feeblemind now prevents spellcasting.
• If you’re immune to an effect due to racial or feat immunities, you will no longer see an irrelevant saving throw roll, but instead just get the immune feedback immediately.
• You now get a save vs. Mindfog.
• Blindness spell is no longer affected by the Extend Metamagic feat.
• Neutralize Poison’s immunity effect duration has been reduced to 1 min/level to bring it in line with other immunity effects.
• Hand Axes have been added to Dwarven Enhancements involving axes (Axe Attack and Axe Damage). This is not noted in the tooltips for these enhancements.

Monsters

• Many monsters will now heal and buff themselves and their friends more effectively.
• Monsters should now react more intelligently to inanimate obstacles that are preventing them from moving where they desire, with a greatly increased chance of being able to navigate around objects that may have been impassable barriers to them before. We have also improved monster targeting behavior in doorways and other bottlenecks, as well as their behavior landscape and dungeon areas.
• Charmed monsters should attack enemy creatures more reliably.
• Monsters should no longer clump up into a mob when encountered in large numbers.
• Kobold Shamans no longer cast Bestow Curse when playing dungeons on “Hard” difficulty level. However you should be wary of their replacement spell - you might actually prefer Bestow Curse.
• The Beholder's Scorching Ray eyebeam now functions properly.
• The antimagic cone emitted by beholders now properly strips magical effects from those caught in its front arc and prevents spellcasting.
• All elementals are now immune to Vorpal effects.
• All vermin are now vulnerable to Vorpal effects.
• Previously, there were several instances in the game where using Command Undead on specific undead targets would render the quest uncompletable. These powerful undead are now immune to Command Undead.
• Slimes unable to reach a target will no longer stand in place waiting to die. They will now instinctively retreat if peppered by arrows from an unreachable location.
• Golems and animals should no longer occasionally disappear when attempting to return to their home locations.
• The Aura of Fear of a Thaarak Hound will no longer scare off creatures that are non-hostile to the Hound.
• Spectres that have not entered the world will not prevent players from moving through their ghostly selves.
• The Guardian of Shan-To-Kor will now enter melee combat more often rather than staying at range, and should no longer occasionally stand around doing nothing.
• The third scorpion in the Warders defense should now spawn correctly.
• Zombies should now disappear properly if they explode.

Items

• When you loot an item from a chest, a message is sent to everyone in the Party.
• Banishing effects will now only work on critical hits.
• When picking up a Bind on Acquire item that is not reserved (for example, in a treasure chest from which only 1 pull for the Party is possible), there is a confirmation dialogue box opened. Currently this only applies to the Plane of Night.
• Wands found in treasure chests now start with a random number of charges instead of fixed number of charges. This change does not affect wands purchased from vendors.
• Level 4 Bard components have been added to Arcane Reagent vendors in Kundarak and Jorasco.
• Named docents have had their durability increased.
• Previously items could be generated from chests that had both a temporary damage amplification and an inherent spell effect. This has been corrected and all items should now have only one effect or the other.
• Ghost Touch bows now successfully impart their magic to the missiles they fire.
• Magical Shields no longer add their enhancement bonus to attack and damage rolls for the shield, they only apply to your AC bonus per D&D rules.
• Tower Shields now correctly cap your max dex bonus.
• Scarabs of Absorption and Spell Resistance items can no longer affect your own spells.
• Max stack size for throwing weapons is now 50. Throwing weapons loot will still be found in stacks of 20.
• Bolts of “X” Bane costs have been reduced to be in line with Arrows of “X” Bane.
• Three new weapon effects added to treasure generation system – True Law, True Chaos, and Pure Good. Each of these effects gives the weapon an additional 1d6 damage versus non-aligned targets, and requires the wielder to have that alignment. UMD skill of 20 to bypass the alignment requirements.
• Hold Person scrolls can now correctly be scribed by Wizards.
• The Chill Shard Weapon will now function properly.

NPCs

• Lowest level pawnbrokers have been moved to the Marketplace.
• Merchant names are now visible in the Marketplace tent.
• Pawnbrokers have also had their dialogue tweaked to be slightly more useful.
• The Harbor weapons vendors now carry Exotic weapons.
• Guard Healfdene will now always allow players to return to the Newbie Harbor.
• Steppy the Barkeep in Delver's Canteen, Ruins of Threnal will now repair all types of equipment. Of course, he has to charge a little more due to the difficulty of getting parts out in the wilderness.
• Delera will no longer say "The girl was to be spared!" after all her "Return to Delera's Tomb" conversations.
• Hargo Kimmare will no longer offer to sell you information twice. Instead he will proceed with his story arc if you have completed the first part of his quest.

Miscellaneous

• Chests will no longer sparkle after they're opened up.
• Control boxes for traps will now highlight with the normal selection FX when selected.
• You can no longer jump much higher that normal while pushing up against nearly vertical walls.
• Several new light sources have been added throughout the world.
• If you log out while in a dungeon you will now find yourself outside that dungeon when you log back in, unless you log back in before the instance has reset. If you camped in a dungeon the last time you played before this update, the first time you log in your character will appear in the harbor.
• Graphics performance while swimming has been improved.
• Dead players will no longer pop glass spider eggs while they're a ghost.
• Character generation will now look correct in widescreen mode.
• Fixed several collection points that were incorrectly set to reward only one player.
• Fixed many places in the world where players were able to get stuck.
• Clicking on the Fountain in Aspirant’s Square will no longer bring up the Stats Portal UI window.

Here is a sneak peek at some of the many items included in the Module 1 release notes. Please note: this list is neither final nor complete, we just wanted to give you an idea of some of the changes you can look forward to.Performance

• Players should no longer receive falling damage when they are simply walking along minding their own business.
• We have implemented another batch of changes that should help with dialup performance.

UI Improvements

• Weapon Sets shortcuts are now in! You can now set up a single item shortcut to point to both a main weapon and off-hand item. So, for example, you can now equip two daggers, or a sword and a shield – all with one shortcut. Simply drag two different items into the “weapon sets” panel in your inventory panel to create a single shortcut for two items. Now use that shortcut in your shortcut bar to equip the two items.
• Potion and Scroll icons all now have a mini-spell icon in their upper left corner (just like wands) to help identify what spell the item casts. Say goodbye to the “I have ten different potions and all of them are blue!” problem.
• The enter key will now correctly activate the chat text entry field.
• There is a new (and louder) sound when you receive a tell.
• You now receive a message in chat when one of your friends goes online or offline.
• The Guild list now properly updates members' online status.

Examination Issues

• Many spells should now have their damage ranges and bonus types displayed when examined. This is part of an ongoing effort on our part to provide more detailed spell descriptions.
• Weapons, Shields, and Armor now display their proficiency requirement when examined.
• The descriptions of many items have been improved.

Combat

• Improved Feint now works as an instant AOE bluff, performing bluff checks to all nearby targets. Bluffed targets are open to sneak attack attempts.
• Sneak attack bonuses no longer apply to glancing blows since a sneak attack is intended to be a targeted attack and should not apply to collateral damage.
• You can now shield bash if you have a shield and thrown weapon equipped, instead of queuing up a thrown attack for when you release the block button.

Quest Mechanics

• A few different bugs with Encounter XP have been fixed
• Higher level encounters are now worth more XP than lower level encounters.
• Certain areas had a bug where their encounters were worth zero XP. This has now been fixed.
• If you are 5 levels or more below the max level of someone in your Party, you will see reduced XP, culminating in potentially zero XP.
• Character files now automatically save after completing a quest and earning XP, or after receiving a quest reward.
• Completing an adventure while at the XP cap will no longer count towards that adventure’s repetition count (even if you are carrying a death penalty).

Quests

• Several adventure areas have had their treasure tables adjusted to be more in-line with their level of difficulty.
• Small changes have been made throughout the world to help prevent pathing issues.
• Numerous broken traps and control boxes have been fixed.

Character Abilities and Spells

• We have made improvements to many of the spell effects. Also, many player-cast spells now contain inherent lighting cast a fireball and you will see the difference.
• Flaming Sphere and Lightning bolt have been changed so that they do more damage. Previously, if monsters were standing in a line the spell would hit the monster at the head of the line and then stop. Now the spells will travel down the whole line of monsters with a chance to do damage to any monster it hits.
• Flesh to Stone is now permanent but, like Hold Person, now grants periodic saving throws to end the effect. Break Enchantment will still remove this status effect. Characters with high Fortitude saving throws will find the average duration lower than before. Characters with low Fortitude saving throws may hope for some good rolls.
• All undead will now properly react to Turn Undead. Turned undead will now properly flee in terror from the cleric or paladin that turns them rather than cower, rebuked.
• When resting, Warforged should now heal at least one point of ability damage, regardless of their repair score.
• We fixed a bug with Fear where it would hit no target if no target was selected. It now correctly has a cone radius for its effect, even with no target selected.

Monsters

• Many monsters will now heal and buff themselves and their friends more effectively.
• Monsters should now react more intelligently to inanimate obstacles that are preventing them from moving where they desire, with a greatly increased chance of being able to navigate around objects that may have been impassable barriers to them before. We have also improved monster targeting behavior in doorways and other bottlenecks, as well as their behavior landscape and dungeon areas.
• Charmed monsters should attack enemy creatures more reliably.
• Monsters should no longer clump up into a mob when encountered in large numbers.

Items

• When you loot an item from a chest, a message is sent to everyone in the Party.
• Banishing effects will now only work on critical hits.
• When picking up a Bind on Acquire item that is not reserved (for example, in a treasure chest from which only 1 pull for the Party is possible), there is a confirmation dialogue box opened.
• Wands found in treasure chests now start with a random number of charges instead of fixed number of charges. This change does not affect wands purchased from vendors.
• Level 4 Bard components have been added to Arcane Reagent vendors in Kundarak and Jorasco.
• Named docents have had their durability increased.
• Previously items could be generated from chests that had both a temporary damage amplification and an inherent spell effect. This has been corrected and all items should now have only one effect or the other.
• Magical Shields no longer add their enhancement bonus to attack and damage rolls for the shield, they only apply to your AC bonus per D&D rules.
• Three new weapon effects added to treasure generation system – True Law, True Chaos, and Pure Good. Each of these effects gives the weapon an additional 1d6 damage versus non-aligned targets, and requires the wielder to have that alignment. UMD skill of 20 to bypass the alignment requirements.

NPCs

• Lowest level pawnbrokers have been moved to the Marketplace.
• Merchant names are now visible in the Marketplace tent.
• Pawnbrokers have also had their dialogue tweaked to be slightly more useful.
• The Harbor weapons vendors now carry Exotic weapons.

DDO Billing Support Extended Hours - April 6, 2006

Turbine Billing Support will be open for extended hours on Thursday April 6, 2006, from 9 AM until 10PM Eastern. Billing support’s regular hours are from 12 PM to 9 PM Eastern, seven days a week. You can contact billing support at 781-407-4020.
__________________
Victor Wachter
Community Relations Manager

We will be changing the process for character deletion very soon (it is slated for Module 1 unless it fails testing, in which case it could be pushed out a patch).

Moving forward you will have to type the name of the character you wish to delete into a confirmation box before you will be able to delete the character.