Dungeons And Dragons Online: Weekly Development Activities (June 4, 2007)

While I am a day behind on posting the news, Samera was right on time with her weekly development report:

In QA

These items are in QA and are scheduled for Update 4.2: Searing Heights.

General

• NEW - Fixed an Auction House bug where it was possible to bid on an auction and receive a different quantity of the item than expected.

UI Improvements

• NEW - Auction House
  
  • You can now filter your auction house searches by item level. This search is based on the minimum level to use the item. Items with no level requirement are considered level 1 by the filter.
  • Clothing and Jewelry sections in the auction house are now broken up into multiple categories based the slot the item equips to. There are now a total of ten categories for both of these two sections. Note: Only newly posted auctions will appear in these new categories.
    
• NEW - Friends List
  
  • Importing a friends list will now show the notes for those friends.
  • Friends will no longer get stuck in an offline state due to their anonymous status.
  • Offline friends will no longer show up in the friends list when added or imported if "Hide Offline Friends" is checked.

Monsters

• Razor cats have a coat that is covered with a combination of sharp spines, bone-like blades, and fine quills. As a result, anyone who hits a razor cat in melee combat is at risk of being injured by these spiky projections. For every successful melee hit, the attacker must make a reflex save or be injured by the spikes. This effect was always intended to be used with the razor cats but has not been working properly. Consequently, razor cats are currently significantly easier than their CR 10 / CR 13 numbers would indicate. This will be fixed in update 4.2 so get ready to try some new strategies when fighting these foes.
• NEW - The fire elemental's Aura of Flame has been fixed. It can no longer be blocked by spell resistance.

Spells

• NEW - Potentially long-lasting debuff spells like crushing despair, bane, doom, and ray of enfeeblement have been changed so that they are removed by resting at a rest shrine.
• NEW - Tenser's Transformation now grants Simple Weapon Proficiencies in addition to Martial Weapon Proficiencies.
• NEW - Fixed Mind Fog's spell school. Mind Fog is an enchantment, not a conjuration.

Skills, Feats, & Abilities

• NEW - Fatigue from Barbarian rage can now be removed by any effect that removes fatigue.

Enhancements

• NEW - Rogue Subtle Backstabber is now an active enhancement that has a toggled stance. While turned on, you will generate less hate on melee attacks.
• NEW - Warforged
  
  • Warforged Brute Fighting I
    
    • Cost: 1 Action Point
    • Prereqs: Warforged Level 2, 3 Action Points Spent
    • Benefit: Activate this ability to cause your melee attacks to generate 10% more hate, making enemies more likely to attack you.
      
  • Warforged Brute Fighting II
    
    • Cost: 2 Action Points
    • Prereqs: Warforged Level 6, Warforged Brute Fighting I, 18 Action Points Spent
    • Benefit: Activate this ability to cause your melee attacks to generate 15% more hate, making enemies more likely to attack you.
      
  • Warforged Brute Fighting III
    • Cost: 3 Action Points
    • Prereqs: Warforged Level 10, Warforged Brute Fighting II, 33 Action Points Spent
    • Benefit: Activate this ability to cause your melee attacks to generate 20% more hate, making enemies more likely to attack you.
  • Warforged Brute Fighting IV
    • Cost: 4 Action Points
    • Prereqs: Warforged Level 14, Warforged Brute Fighting III, 48 Action Points Spent
    • Benefit: Activate this ability to cause your melee attacks to generate 25% more hate, making enemies more likely to attack you.
      

Items

• NEW - Mithral Tower Shields will now correctly benefit from the +2 Max Dex bonus from being Mithral.

NPCs

• NEW - Many npcs were incorrectly insisting that they were "Race: Elf" in the examination window. This information has been removed from these lying npcs.
• NEW - Niles Cage (Stormreach Harbor) is no longer performing an appendectomy on himself.

Quests

• NEW - Made a change to help prevent quest items from becoming inaccessible if the party member who was carrying them dies or leaves the quest.
• NEW - Cerulean Hills
  
  • Rare Encounter Garunt will now have a treasure chest.
    

In Development

These items are in development and are scheduled for Module 5: The Accursed Ascension (Litany of the Dead Parts 3 & 4).

UI Improvements

• NEW - Added active/toggle/passive usage to action tooltips.
• NEW - Tooltips that display long cooldown periods will display them in minutes and seconds - e.g., 2 minutes 30 seconds instead of 150 seconds.
• NEW - Action tooltips will inform the user when an action is useable in water, not useable in a brawl, or when it is useable only in public. They will also display the target type for the action.
• NEW - Tooltips for skills now include the key ability.
• NEW - Tooltips for spells and feats now include the save DC and save type(s).
• NEW - Shopping
  
  • You can now ctrl-click on an item in a shop to purchase the item in bulk. A pop-up dialog will prompt you to enter the number of items to purchase. Note: This dialog is only used when purchasing items. There is still no way to control the number of items you sell from a stack.
  • When items in a shop are alphabetized, they are sorted first by base name (e.g. sword, dagger) and then by prefix (e.g. masterwork, vorpal).
  • When you add items to the shopping cart, the cumulative cost of the items in the cart will affect the "can afford" status of the items available for purchase / repair.
  • If a player's haggle skill changes, then the shopping cart display price will now update to reflect the change.
• NEW - Spells
  • Spell tooltips now include blocks that describe whether or not a spell can be resisted, and what the specific material component is for a given spell (if any).
  • Spell tooltips now include a metamagic information block. This block lists the kinds of metamagic that can affect this spell.