Dungeons And Dragons Online: Weekly Development Activities (September 25, 2006)

Samera has posted her weekly dev activites report over at the official forums:

In QA
These items are in QA and should be a part of 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

* 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.
* You will now get chat feedback in the combat window when you hit someone with a non-damaging spell (like fear or slow).
* The "New Mail" icon will now appear on the Focus Orb even if it is minimized.
* The "To" and "Subject" line of the Compose Mail UI no longer accept carriage returns.

General

* Phantasmal killer is now a fear effect.
* 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.
* Poison dart and poison grenade traps will now actually poison you instead of doing poison hp damage.
* 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

* Spiders
o Some mid- and high-level (mostly CR 7 and up) spiders have new stronger poisons.
o Most spiders on the hard and elite settings have had their attack damage reduced significantly, particularly those on the elite setting.
o Widow type spiders will once again shoot functional webs.
* NEW - The mind flayer and vampire's dominate abilities no longer dispel protection from evil.
* 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.
* Several resourceful enemies have begun using various alchemical substances in battle. In most cases, these will affect players as energy damage over time.
* Elemental Empathy will work properly on Earth Elementals that have used their Earthgrab ability.
* More powerful versions of Mummy Rot are now labeled accordingly: Pernicious Mummy Rot is more dangerous than regular Mummy Rot, and Virulent Mummy Rot is even more lethal.
* 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.

Combat

* All enemy trips and knockdowns now have dual saves (an initial save and a secondary save). Most give you an ability modifier check for the initial save to determine whether or not you fall. This is usually your Strength or Dexterity modifier, whichever is greater on your character. Some knockdowns like grease give a reflex save as the initial save. Once you fall down, your secondary save checks will occur every two seconds and are versus your balance skill to determine when you stand back up.

Spells

Spell Changes

* 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!
* NEW - Protection from Evil has been fixed to work correctly. It no longer protects against *all* charms and compulsions (including Otto's, command, hold monster/person, etc). Rather, it only protects against charms and compulsions that give ongoing mental control, such as the vampire's dominate ability. Also, as per D&D rules, it no longer protects against mental control from evil creatures, but ALL mental control, regardless of the target's alignment.
* NEW - Holy smite will now work damage spiders.
* NEW - The Teleport spell no longer has a Somatic casting component so players will not suffer an arcane spell failure chance for Teleport while wearing armor.
* NEW - Niac's cold ray now uses the proper ray cast animation.

Metamagic Fixes

* NEW - Resistance, Restoration, Raise Dead and See Invisibility spells can now be used with the Eschew Materials feat.
* NEW - Find Traps, Ice Storm, Magic Missile, Scorching Ray and Searing Light no longer consume additional spellpoints while the Heighten Spell feat is active.
* NEW - Holy Smite and Niac's Cold Ray can now be used with the Heighten Spell feat.
* NEW - Dismissal no longer consumes extra spell points while the Maximize or Empower spell feats are active.
* NEW - Feeblemind and Waves of Fatigue no longer consume extra spell points while the Extend Spell feat is active.
* NEW - Ray of Exhaustion can now be used with the Heighten spell feat.
* NEW - Sleet Storm no longer consumes addition spell points while the Heighten spell feat is active.
* NEW - Wall of Fire
o No longer consumes additional spellpoints while the Heighten spell feat is active.
o Wall of Fire can now be used with the Extend Spell feat.
* NEW - Shocking grasp can now be affected by the Heighten Spell metamagic feat.
* NEW - Solid Fog and Grease no longer consume additional spellpoints when under the effects of the Heighten Spell metamagic feat.
* NEW - Melf's Acid Arrow no longer consumes additional spellpoints while the heighten spell feat is active.

Spell Description Updates
(these are just text changes, not changes to spell functionality)

* NEW - Spell descriptions now use color for greater readability!
* NEW - Player spells will now state in their descriptions if the spell has a saving throw to resist, and if so, the results of a successful save.
* NEW - Ray of Enfeeblement description fixed, it had been indicating an extraneous +1 STR damage that it did not do, and was missing max caster level information.
* NEW - Hold spells have been updated to state that they have a save interval.
* NEW - Player spells that have a max Hit Dice cap should now state this in their description.
* NEW - Melf's Acid Arrow description has been updated to list the correct interval.
* NEW - Wall of Fire description now been updated to include damage amounts.

Skills & Abilities

* NEW - The magnitude of the bonus provided by Action Boost: Attack and Action Boost: Skills have been reduced at the higher level enhancements.
* 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.

Under Development
These items are currently in development and are scheduled for some time Module 3.

To come