Dungeons And Dragons Online: Weekly Development Activities (September 5, 2006)

Samera has posted the goods on this weeks development activities:

In QA
These items are in QA and should be a part of the next scheduled update - Stormreach Under Siege.

General

* NEW - The tavern in Necropolis is now named "One Foot Inn" and has a new flavor NPC to relate the tale of how it got the name.

Monsters

* Dead mummies will no longer cause despair.
* Charmed mummies will no longer cause despair in allied players.
* The Warrior of the Six is now correctly tagged as Neutral Evil.

Items

* NEW - Repeating crossbows should once again be functioning properly.
* NEW - All adamantine weapons have been given a boost to their Hardness. This change will affect all existing weapons as well as newly created adamantine weapons.
* The new brigandine armor introduced in the Twilight Forge Module will now appear properly on Drow.

Quests

* Gwylan's Stand
o An influx of foolish adventurers into the area surrounding Gwylan's Stand has allowed the various monsters in the area to accumulate a little more treasure.
* Necropolis
o Bloody Crypt
+ The Lich is now the Black Abbot and not a generic lich.
+ Using the levers to open the east and west wings will correctly report that you used a lever, and not a book.
+ Salasso now wears the correct robe.
o Bloody Crypt Junction
+ Using the waypoint to the burning heart will correctly place you at the side entrance room.
+ You can now see Brother Salasso at work on the Heretical Path from the junction.
o Graveyard
+ Julia has outfitted her tavern with new tables and glassware.
+ The tavern now has a mapnote.
+ Kai-Teng and Dame Calla have unpacked many of their books and papers.
o Tomb of the Burning Heart
+ Fixed several untargettable sarcophagi.
+ Fixed a group of inactive wights.
o Tomb of the Crimson Heart
+ Several undead will no longer spawn on a wall.
o Tomb of the Immortal Heart
+ Only one of each book will spawn.
+ Hell Hounds and Earth Elementals will no longer respawn.
o Tomb of the Sanguine Heart
+ Fixed a broken trap.

Under Development
These items are currently in development and are scheduled for some time after the next update (most likely Module 3).

Performance

* The landscape renderer has been overhauled to provide better performance (especially load times). In addition, the new landscape engine enables huge draw distances that were not possible before.
* The overall frame rate has been improved and 'hitching' reduced.
* Avatars and monsters are now a bit brighter than other objects (the intensity depends upon the environment and lighting conditions).
* Overall bandwidth of the game will be reduced another 1-3%, and certain problematic dungeons and laggy areas will be significantly improved by 20-50% (when your client gets flooded with information about objects in your local area).

UI Improvements

* NEW - The text on the XP bar has been clarified to make it more obvious that you have not lost the XP you were accruing toward your bonus AP when you die and get an XP debt while you are working toward bonus action points.
* NEW - You will now get chat feedback in the combat window when you hit someone with a non-damaging spell (like fear or slow).

General

* Phantasmal killer is now a fear effect.
* NEW - The Silver Flame has recognized that the brothers stationed in Taverns have been casting an inferior version of Restoration. From now on, the spell cast in taverns will remove 1 negative level in addition to all the other Restoration effects.
* Players will no longer get stuck while dismounting from ladders.
* We are pleased to announce the addition of the /showhelmet <on | off> command which can be used to hide your helmet graphic.
* We are improving the combat/damage feedback mechanism. This will not only eliminate "false" hits where the target would flinch but no attack roll would take place, but also give better feedback as to the strength of the hit.
* When you successfully swap a spell, you will now get an alert telling you that it worked.
* Lava Cam! When your camera is in lava, it now looks more like it's in lava, as opposed to water.
* Made some small tweaks to our avatar animations. For example, human female's wrists won't twist in the dual weapon combo attack, dwarven arms won't over-extend when they use an axe to cleave, etc.

Monsters

* NEW - Some ogres have been eating their veggies and will be able to see and hear better than they could before.
* Several bow wielding enemies will now shoot various energy arrows like flaming arrows or cold arrows. These will do the typical piercing damage (1d6 and up) in addition to various amounts of energy damage.
* Widow type spiders will once again shoot functional webs.
* Elemental Empathy will work properly on Earth Elementals that have used their Earthgrab ability.
* Female humanoid villains will no longer charge into melee range if armed with spells or bows.
* We are fixing an issue with the death animations of Arcane Skeletons. They will no longer "eat collectables" they should be creating.

Spells

* NEW - Resist Energy is now available for clerics, paladins, rangers, and wizards. Protection from Energy is now available to Rangers, Wizards, and Clerics. This change allows these classes to cast Protection From Energy and Resist Energy the same way a sorcerer can, by memorizing a single spell and then choosing which damage type to ward against. The days of memorizing several Resist Energy: (Element) are no more!

Skills & Abilities

* Bards can now activate their singing abilities while moving! The activation time on their singing abilities has been reduced significantly as well. An animation glitch has also been fixed!
* The description for the Paladin's Lay on Hands ability has been corrected to better describe the amount of healing/damage that the ability does.