Dungeons And Dragons Online: Weekly Development Activities (June 11, 2007)

Samera has posted her weekly development report:

In QA

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

General

• 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 - The XP bar should no longer disappear on larger monitors.
• 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.
    
• Friends List
  
  • 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.
• The fire elemental's Aura of Flame has been fixed. It can no longer be blocked by spell resistance.
• NEW - Duergar barbarians, bandits, and bards had their alignment corrected. They are now Neutral Evil instead of Lawful Evil.
• NEW - Higher level wights and ghouls (CR 10 and above) will be able to use their innate abilities like level drain and disease on more of their attacks, rather than only doing these on their "rear back and jump forward" attack. This makes them more like their pen and paper counterparts and will make them a little more challenging. Players will of course still get their saves to resist these effects.

Combat

Spells

• NEW - New Spell:
  • Holy Sword
    • Paladin 4
    • Channels holy power to turn a Blessed Cold Iron weapon into a +5 Holy Cold Iron weapon that grants its wielder a continuous Protection From Evil effect while equipped. The holy weapon is permanent, but is destroyed on dungeon exit.
• 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.
• Tenser's Transformation now grants Simple Weapon Proficiencies in addition to Martial Weapon Proficiencies.
• Fixed Mind Fog's spell school. Mind Fog is an enchantment, not a conjuration.
• NEW - The description for the Symbol of Flame spell has been fixed to accurately describe the amount of damage the spell does. The reflex save for this spell has also been fixed. Players and enemy npcs can now attempt a reflex save to reduce damage by half. The spell has always done 5d6 damage, and this has not been changed.

Skills, Feats, & Abilities

• NEW - Reduced difficulty of detecting traps with Search and Spot, especially at low levels (5 and under).

Enhancements

• NEW - The Toughness enhancement lines for dwarves, barbarians, fighters, and paladins have been upgraded. They now give you 5, 10, 15, and 20 additional hit points respectively instead of 5, 5, 5, and 5. They all still have the Toughness feat as a prerequisite.
• NEW - The Follower of the <diety> Enhancement Lines now grant sub-abilities:
  
  • Tira's Champion: (Associated with Follower of the Silver Flame) Activate this ability to grant weapon proficiency in longbows to yourself or a friend until the target next rests. Consumes a use of turn undead.
    
  • Similar sub-abilities exist for the other faiths.
    
• Rogue Subtle Backstabber is now an active enhancement that has a toggled stance. While turned on, you will generate less hate on melee attacks.
• 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.
      
• NEW - Undying Call now properly differentiates between Drow and "real" elves.
• NEW - The various enhancements that summon creatures (Iron/Steel/Mithral Companion and Vulkoor's Avatar) can now only be summoned in dungeons. You will no longer trigger the cooldown (and lose the attempt) if you try to summon them elsewhere. Summoning these creatures will now also break stealth.
• NEW - Iron Companion no longer lists Cannith Repair II as a potential prerequisite, since a character with Cannith Repair II has already unlocked the enhancement through the Least Mark of Making.

Items

• NEW - The House Jorasco Divine Reagent Vendor now carries Blessed Cold Iron Greatswords, Bastard Swords, Longswords, Shortswords, Scimitars, Warhammers, Rapiers, Dwarven Waraxes, Khopeshes, Mauls, and Heavy Picks.
• NEW - Corrected the caster levels for Wands of Flame Arrow and Wands of Holy Smite to appropriate values for their spell level. Wand of Flame Arrow was reduced to Caster Level 5. Wand of Holy Smite was increased to Caster Level 7. Wands of Resist Energy was changed from Caster Level 1 to 3. These changes will affect the UMD difficulty of activating the wands as well as the wands gold value.
• NEW - The Helm of the Black Dragon and the Helm of the Blue Dragon will now appear in the correct Clothing section of the Auction House. They were so pretty they were mistakenly put in the Jewelry category.

NPCs

• NEW - Several enemy characters from the Aurum have had their alignment changed to Lawful Evil.
• Many npcs were incorrectly insisting that they were "Race: Elf" in the examination window. This information has been removed from these lying npcs.
• Niles Cage (Stormreach Harbor) is no longer performing an appendectomy on himself.

PVP

Quests

• Made a change to help prevent quest items from becoming inaccessible if the party member who was carrying them dies or leaves the quest.
• Cerulean Hills
  
  • Rare Encounter Garunt will now have a treasure chest.
    
• NEW - The Missing Ward
  
  • The hard and elite versions of Necromancer Gerti have had their spell lists fixed. They will no longer repeatedly cast the sleep spell.
    
• NEW - Stormcleave Outpost
  
  • Made several changes to the pillars:
    
    • The Mephits have had their hide skill lowered so they should be easier to find
      
    • The Mephits now have a 60 meter leash so they shouldn't wander away
    • Changed an objective to read 'Alight the Pillars' to make it more clear that they need to be fully lit and fully active rather than just partially lit.
      
• NEW - Xorian Cipher
  
  • The three named spectres in the Xorian Cipher quest, the Urdak brothers, have been changed into skeletons so they can no longer occasionally flee and leave you stranded in a locked room. They will be slightly more challenging to beat than they were before.
    

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

• Added active/toggle/passive usage to action tooltips.
• Tooltips that display long cooldown periods will display them in minutes and seconds - e.g., 2 minutes 30 seconds instead of 150 seconds.
• 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.
• Tooltips for skills now include the key ability.
• Tooltips for spells and feats now include the save DC and save type(s).
• 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.
• 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.