Bling Gnome
Bling Gnome support for our retail box is going out in this heave. The retail box is planned for late June release! The Bling Gnome is a new passive skill that, when equipped, summons a little gangster gnome that picks up all your gold. You can occasionally activate the gnome to pick up all of your nearby loot (below Uniques) and convert it to gold. Each time your gnome does this conversion, he has a chance to poop out a powerful item. The more items he picks up at once, the better chance you have of getting a powerful item. Items that have been picked up by you and later dropped will not be converted to gold by this skill.
The Bling Gnome will only be available to players that buy the retail box.
New Social Window
We've totally reworked the social window. You know the social window -- it's got your friends list and who's online. We've made the lists sortable, added more information to the friend's list and added a new group tab. The group tab shows all groups on your world and allows you to join any open group that is within your level range.
Noob Channel
We've added a Noob channel to the game. All non-members that are below 15 are no longer allowed to use World or Market chat channels. They can only use the Noob channel (/n or /noob) to reach the entire world. Other players can optionally join the Noob channel to help folks if they so choose.
Announcement Channel
We've added an optional announcement channel to the game. This channel will be used to display gameplay announcements to anyone on the world. Currently, this only shows the results of PvP matches and duels.
New Items
We've added several new items to the game. New weapons... new armor... So nice! Some are even starting to have particle effects on them.
New Skills
We've added five new skills to the game for your pleasure:
Barf-O-Rama
Equip this skill to passively upgrade all of your poison ranged skills. Every time an enemy takes poison damage from your poison ranged skills there is a chance that they will become ill and start barfing! Once an enemy starts to barf, other nearby enemies may get disgusted and start barfing too! Each barfing enemy will take poison damage over time and may also get knocked back due to their heaving.
I'm Rubber, You're Screwed (Requires Shield)
Equip this passive skill to upgrade your shield. Every time you block a melee attack, you have a chance to knock your attacker down.
Dark Conniption (Requires Shield)
Activate this skill to power up your melee attacks with the power of darkness! Each time you strike your enemy, your attack speed is increased, your defense rating is reduced and you have a chance to cause additional shadow damage to your enemies. The conniption effect can stack up to 9 times.
Shiver Shot (Requires Ranged Weapon)
This ice-enhanced shot explodes into a veritable snow storm on impact! The initial target takes some damage and nearby enemies will take some ice damage as well. All enemies that take damage from this shot will have their movement speed reduced by 10% and their attack speed reduced by 4%. The slowing effects can stack up to 5 times.
Crispy Critters
This active skill releases a short-range jet of fire from your hands that will roast all enemies within its area.
Skill Balance Changes
We've made a few tweaks to some skills for both players and monsters:
Blue Screen of Life
We've decreased the percentage of damage absorbed by 5% and increased the damage magnification by about 3% at the top rank of this skill.
Creature Charge
Creatures that charge and knock you back or down now have greater reach.
Poison Shot
The effects of Poison Shot may now stack once for each player in your group.
Gaseous Blast
The effects of Gaseous Blast may now stack once for each player in your group.
Ring of Fire
The damage over time effects for Ring of Fire may now stack once for each player in your group.
Teleport
We've added a second rank of teleport that halves its cooldown to 15 seconds.
Spontaneous Regeneration
The cooldown on this skill has been reduced to 80 seconds (down from 180). It also has an 85% chance to be interrupted when taking damage.
Gym Freak
Equipping this skill now reduces your ranged attack speed by 10%.
New Quests
We've added new quests to Shadow's Embrace and Balzack's Burrow. We've also reworked about 35 of the Algernon quests to make them more fun. Dew Valley has also recieved a healthy dose of new and improved tutorial quests. Enjoy!
Experience for Quests!
Each time you complete a quest you will gain a new modifier called "15% More Cowbell" for 5 minutes. This modifier increases the experience you gain from killing monsters by 15%. The duration of this modifier stacks up to 5 times for a total of 30 minutes of extra experience. The duration of this modifier does not elapse in town. This modifier is lost if your character dies.
Ad Changes
We've removed the login and logout movie ads from the game.
We've changed the rotation time on the banner ad to 2 minutes.
We've significantly reduced the frequency of zone change and death ads. Death ads now cap out at 40% after 5 hours of play (down from 100%). Zone change ads now cap out at 20% after 5 hours of play.
Membership Perks
We've made several changes to membership status to make it more valuable and attractive to you free players.
* Members now gain experience 15% faster than free players. This is implemented as a nerf of free player experience. In actuality, free players receive 13.6% less XP than members
* Members now find 15% more gold than free players.
* Free players pay 50% more King's Coin when buying items.
* Chance for a dropped mythic item to be usable by a free player has been reduced to 5% (down from 25%)
* Chance for a dropped rare item to be usable by a free player has been increased to 100% (up from 75%)
* Two more level-limited bank pages have been added for members. You can access the first one at level 50 and the second one at level 100.
PvP Matchmaking
There are several changes coming for PvP to help with matchmaking, fair battles and gear guidance:
We're now displaying your PvP power rating on your tooltip as well as your character sheet. This is a percentage number that tells you how close you are to the top of the power curve for your level. Higher is better.
We've added a new rating system to the PvP game. Every player will start out with a rating of 1500. Winning matches will increase your rating. Losing matches (or quitting matches) will decrease your rating. Points lost by the losers will be gained by the winners.
We will use these ratings to decide how to match you in PvP. Your base rating (displayed on your character sheet) will serve as the starting point for your matchmaking rating.
Each player's matchmaking rating is currently computed like this:
MatchRating = BaseRating + (PowerRating * 4) + (Level * 2)
A group's MatchRating is equal to the average of its member's MatchRatings plus 200 for each group member other than the leader.
When a group enters the PvP queue, matches will be found based on a widening rating tolerance. This tolerance currently starts at 50 points and increases by 1 point every second. This will ensure that closer matches are favored early in the queueing process, but allows for further matches the longer you're in the queue.
PvP Rewards
Winners of PvP matches now receive 3 King's Coin (up from 1). Losers now receive 1 King's Coin (up from 0).
We've added an XML data feed for leaderboards in PvP. We have bracket leaderboards based on rating as well as win-count leaderboards.
PvP Duels
We've added the option for group dueling on a PvP world. Simply right-click the name of someone that you'd like to duel. Your request will be sent to the leader of their group. Once accepted, you'll be whisked away to a special PvP arena to commence the beat-down in a seven minute match for superiority! No rewards are given for this style of combat.
PvP Balance Changes
The duration of fear immunity gained after being feared in PvP now scales based on your damage modifier. This means that if you're outnumbered you'll get more bravery. This also means that if you're on an advantaged team, your bravery will not last as long.
The duration of stun immunity gained after being stunned in PvP now scales based on your damage modifier. This means that if you're outnumbered you'll get longer stun immunity. This also means that if you're on an advantaged team, your stun immunity will not last as long. Players under the effects of stun immunity now have a particle effect surrounding them.
Your stun resistance now scales based on your damage modifier. This means that if you're outnumbered you'll have a higher stun resistance. This also means that if you're on an advantaged team, your stun resistance will be lower.
Optional Nameplates Added
We've added the option to show nameplates and health / mana bars for nearby players and monsters. The default key mapping is "~". Simply press that key to show player / monster names and status above their heads.
Damage Number Display Improved
Damage done during combat now displays in a much less cluttered way. The numbers are now accumulated for a period of time, showing you the total damage done to a creature over a short period of time.
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This build is on it's way to the PTS now!
After a short stay on the PTS, we'll push it to live! I expect this to happen over the next week.
I'll post more information as it becomes available.
Dungeon Runners Next "Heave" Out for Testing
Dungeon Runners devs have announced that the latest "heave" (patch) is on its way to the player test server.
Here are the patch notes:
A bling gnome? COOL!
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