THE HERALD

Friends, players, realm-mates – lend me your eyes! What follows is an update on how Dark Age of Camelot is faring, and the updates you may expect, and it begins with communication.

You, the greatest community that ever was or will be, have sustained DAoC for 20 incredible years. I recall celebrating DAoC’s 5, 10, and 15-year milestones, and the one constant through it all has been our sentiment that we owe Camelot’s expectation-shattering longevity and success to you – and that we the devs are immeasurably grateful for your loyalty and your trust.

Dark Age of Camelot has certainly undergone its share of changes, and one needs only examine the stratified layers of its evolution to understand the nuance and complexity of the game. It is that complexity that draws in players who appreciate engaging in and mastering the RvR dynamic that has set DAoC apart from all other PvP MMOs.

After 20 years in operation quite a few original features have evolved, yet the beating heart of what makes DAoC so special has remained largely unchanged – three realms engaging in fierce RvR battles for pride, for glory, and domination of the Frontiers. We intend to preserve foundational RvR elements as well as to protect and respect the progress that so many have made since October 2001. Players and guilds from Camelot’s original game servers transferred to Ywain and re-formed to carry forward their progress, maintain their comradery, and to continue to fight in service of their realm. We will continue to update Ywain with class balance modifications, RvR changes, and quality of life improvements – but this is not our exclusive direction.

The core of Dark Age of Camelot is powerful and timeless. The experience of three-realm RvR can – and has – succeeded in a number of different dynamics. You need look no further than the legendary PvP combat on Andred and Mordred or the immense Battlegroup PvE encounters on Gaheris to agree that there are yet more possibilities ahead.

In this spirit, we have been working on a new server type. It wouldn’t be precisely accurate to call it an ‘Event Server’, though in some ways it can be thought of in that way. The scope and scale of the content will be larger, and access to the dynamics of the new server will be available for longer periods than our typical events or campaigns on Ywain. Simply put, we will provide the opportunity to start your journey on a level playing field, to focus on (or remove) specific expansion content and have wholly new and very exciting objectives!

This is our goal, and I hope it’s enough (for now) to know that we’ve made a solid beginning toward achieving that goal. Trust me, old friends, when I tell you that we’re aware that you are itching to know more – I certainly cannot wait to share more with you! Until that time, however, it is my fervent hope that we may rely on the trust and good faith with which you have honored us for so long. I will be providing regular updates here on the Camelot Herald, in our monthly Newsletters – and you can catch us lurking in our official Discord channel!

With the utmost sincerity and gratitude, the team here at Broadsword thanks you for being a part of this community, and we are looking forward to yet another chapter in the history of our beloved Dark Age of Camelot.

Faithfully yours,
Eldariian

Welcome to the final Grab Bag of the year! Worry not, the Grab Bag will return after the new year! 🙂

Our Midwinter Event starts next Thursday, Dec 16th, with the return of the 12 Days of Midwinter on Dec 21st! Gifts or coal for you this year?!?! 

Thanks, as always, to everyone for your questions! You can submit any questions relating to current development plans, to request clarification on basic game mechanic questions, or questions on community issues through the Grab Bag Submission form. For any other feedback or suggestions please use our feedback form.

Continue reading for the questions 🙂
 

Can you explain the difference between shadowstrike in keeps and blur in keeps? I know blur has restrictions, but why does shadowstrike not?

While both abilities allow assassins to teleport to their target from distance there are a few key differences.

Blur is an instant-cast spell that can be used in and out of stealth on both friendly and enemy targets and is on a shorter cooldown (90s). Conversely, Shadow Strike requires the assassin to be stealthed and stationary for 10 seconds before it will fire and it can only be used against enemy realms while being on a longer cooldown (180s).

The main reasons that Blur has more restrictions on its use in keeps are the friendly-target and ease of use aspects. Shadow Strike only being able to be used on enemies and requiring the assassin to be stationary for 10s means it’s much harder to perform the ability in keep sieges and so there are less restrictions.

If playing a BD I have my commander+pets and I use a Guardian’s Stalwart Myth do those bonuses transfer to my commander and his subs?

No, the To-Hit and Defensive bonuses only apply to the character, in this case a Bonedancer, wearing the mythirian.

Would it be possible to get a token in the mithril shop to max a craft?

Potentially, yes!

Why is it on some weapons the glow effect is not seen by other people only you? Longsword of the Adept when I patterned it no one else sees the weapon aura.

This is intended to help make the game as latency and lag-free as possible! While we’d love to have all effects show to everyone all the time, the reality is that this would cause many issues in large-scale fights. While weapon effects are very cool-looking, they are not as important to see in the heat of battle as the various ability and spell effects that are going off, which we would never want to intentionally hide. As the client and server are improved over time perhaps we can look at showing more of these weapon effects to all players!

Is it normal moc is actually impacting bainshee pbae spell even if it can not be interrupted?

Yes, Mastery of Concentration lowers the effectiveness of all abilities cast while it is up, including instants and uninterruptable spells.

That’s it for this week, and this year! Thank you for all the questions over the last 12 months!

Enjoy the weekend 🙂

Have you or your friends been thinking of coming back to Dark Age of Camelot? Or are you a veteran player just looking for a change of pace!?

Our 4th Catch Up In Caledonia event begins today, Monday, November 29th at 3 PM EST / 9 PM CET!

Read on for the full details!

What is Catch Up in Caledonia?

It’s a way to start fresh and rapidly progress to the end-game with players around your level!

When does the event start and end?

How does the event work?

• For the first 4 days of the event, newly created level 1 characters will be automatically zoned into the Caledonia battleground where they will vie for control against the enemy realms!
  • This will be the ONLY way to get inside the battleground zone. Once inside, characters can voluntarily leave but CANNOT return!
  • All monsters, center-keep guards, and siege weapons are removed for the event. The only way to progress is by defeating realm enemies in battle and completing the related quests.
  • Charm-pet classes will be able to create a pet to charm at their realm’s portal keep.
• ​At 3 PM EST / 9 PM CET on Friday, December 3rd, character starting locations will reset to their default zones and no new characters will be able to join the event. Everyone still inside Caledonia will be able to continue progressing for the remainder of the event’s duration.
• Experience, bounty, and realm point bonuses will be granted to both free and subscribed accounts in the battleground to help them progress!
• Earn bounty points for completing quests and defeating enemy realm players and use them to purchase level-appropriate gear as you strive to 50 and then master and champion levels!
• All characters will begin and remain in the same Caledonia zone for the entirety of the event.
  • The following level caps will be in place for all characters in Caledonia and will increase as follows every 24 hours:
    • Day 1 (Monday): Level 19 maximum
    • Day 2 (Tuesday): Level 29 
    • Day 3 (Wednesday): Level 39 
    • Day 4 (Thursday) : Level 49
    • Days 5-7 (Fri-Mon): Level 50
  • Characters that reach the day’s level cap will still be able to earn realm and bounty points.
• Characters that are 5 levels or more below the day’s level cap will receive the Caledonia Boost buff.
  • This buff greatly increases the damage dealt and greatly reduces damage received from characters that do not have the buff (higher level characters)!
  • Characters with the Caledonia Boost buff active will also DOUBLE the XP and BP rewards for themselves and their group!
  • When the level cap reaches 49 the buff will be given out to characters 3 or more levels under the cap.
• Overwhelming Force system:
  • When 1 realm outnumbers another by 3 to 1 odds or more and has at least 25+ members in the area of the kill(s), the deathspam will change to “killed by overwhelming force!” and the following restrictions will apply:
    • Quest kill-credit will not be given for overwhelming force kills.
    • Realm points are also drastically reduced for overwhelming force kills.
    • This system is designed to encourage groups to roam around separately more during the event!
    • These restrictions only apply within Caledonia and not in any other RvR zone.

What improvements have been made?

• An extra day at max level has been added to the event by changing the starting level cap on the 1st day from 9 to 19 as well as increasing the starting level from 1 to 10.
  • Level 1 characters first zoning in should visit the Caledonia Event Coordinator NPC to automatically reach level 10.
• Any realms found to be at an overall population disadvantage by the 5th day of the event will have their starting level adjusted to level 30 and receive extra bonuses for the duration of the event and depending on population disparity may have the number of level 50 quest kills required reduced.

How far will I be able to progress?

Time for another installment of the Grab Bag!

Hope you’ve all worked out what realm and characters you’ll be playing in the last Caledonia event of the year, starting Monday, Nov 29th! 🙂 I’m still thinking!!

Thanks, as always, to everyone for your questions! You can submit any questions relating to current development plans, to request clarification on basic game mechanic questions, or questions on community issues through the Grab Bag Submission form. For any other feedback or suggestions please use our feedback form.

Read on for the questions 🙂
 

When killing the Green Knight for the quest recently, a question kept coming up: do the trees around him heal him or not? He runs around and ports a lot,  but we weren’t sure what heals him. Can you clarify, do they heal/help him in any way?

No, the trees are not part of the encounter. The Green Knight simply heals himself.

Hello,
With the new implementation of UI scale, most of my fights are disturbed due to UI scaling mid fight because I often use mouse look key and happens to have my mouse in the top left corner. Is there any way or plan to disable this UI scale functionality in a short term ?

Currently there is not a way to disable the UI scaling feature but we can certainly look into implementing a setting to disable it on the character selection screen. We don’t want to do an in-game setting to enable/disable it since there are too many scenarios where users could scale-up and then accidentally lock themselves out of being able to scale-down again in-game.

Can a paladin gain a bonus to evade from the evade mythirian if they have the champion evade buff?

No, when using the Champion Level ability evade/parry buffs to grant the ability to evade or parry, the evade/parry rate is capped at the buff’s value.

Does mythical evade/block/parry increase stack with the champion buff spells of the same type?

There is no Champion Level ability that increases block chance with the ability to block being granted to anyone who is wielding a shield. So the +blocking Mythirian will certainly increase their chance to block further.

The evade and parry buffs grant users the ability to evade and parry and so they will actually cap the caster’s ability to evade or parry to the buff’s values. For instance, a class like the Friar that has Evade 5 is not recommended to use the Champion Level evade abilities Faded Quickness/Nimbleness in combat as their total evade chance will be clamped to the buff’s 11% and 17% values. The same goes for the Champion Level parry abilities Soldier’s Anticipation/Retaliation on classes that can already parry. If they have a high parry specialization that would put them above the 11% or 17% chance to parry, they won’t want to use those abilities.

Hello, there is a TOA proc from a weapon RoG which gives a self damage add.
The info tells ” damage : 20% “
But when i hit for 300, the damage added from the self damage add buff is only of 10.
Is that the correct value of this proc ?

After some searching we were able to track down the proc mentioned: a 20% damage add spell, Purestrike.

Damage add damage values are notoriously inconsistent to their delves because their damage gets capped after a certain point and because they are based around unstyled damage swings. Their damage is also lowered the faster the character swings. For instance, a haste buff will decrease the damage add’s damage even while the unstyled melee swing’s damage might be increasing due to strength buffs. So in summary, yes the damage add is working correctly and consistently with all other damage adds, but it is not intended to add 20% extra melee damage to a typical melee swing.

Enjoy the weekend all 🙂

Bonus Extension

• Halloween and Anniversary festivities have come to an end, thank you for helping us celebrate 20 years!
  • The current RvR Bonuses will be extended until Tuesday November 23rd.

Live Hot Fix Notes

• Players can once again teleport to the Tower of Korazh, Deifrang, and Graoch on Ellan Vannin via the /realmwar map with the following new supply line requirements:
  • Realms must own their tower on Ellan Vannin as well as their normal merchant keep in order to teleport to the other realms’ EV towers:
    • Albion can only teleport to the Towers of Deifrang and Graoch if they own the Tower of Korazh and Caer Benowyc.
    • Midgard can only teleport to the Towers of Korazh and Graoch if they own the Tower of Deifrang and Bledmeer Faste.
    • Hibernia can only teleport to the Towers of Korazh and Deifrang if they own the Tower of Graoch and Dun Crauchon.
  • Realms may teleport to their own EV Towers by simply owning their merchant keep as before.
• The [Daily] Roaming with Friends and [Weekly] Roaming with Friends quests have had their kill counts reduced from 50 to 30 and 500 to 300 respectively.

Halloween is upon us and we look forward to seeing your costumes in RvR over the weekend (starting today!) and don’t forget that the Halloween event and 20th Anniversary bonuses, merchants, and quests end this coming Tuesday, November 2nd! 

Thanks, as always, to everyone for your questions! You can submit any questions relating to current development plans, to request clarification on basic game mechanic questions, or questions on community issues through the Grab Bag Submission form. For any other feedback or suggestions please use our feedback form.

Continue reading for the questions!
 

Is there a reason why you cant just make ToA scrolls sell for even zero coin ? Its seems like a small issue but it really is pain to have to constantly drag and drop them on the floor or even constantly destroying them. 

We’ll see about adding this to our list! In the meantime, we’d suggest setting up a keyboard shortcut for destroying items, as this can be done just as quickly as selling them.

Has there been any consideration to increase offense keep bonus realm point ticks to be 100% (instead of 50%) to match that of defensive ticks? There can be a lack of incentive to attack keeps if there are several defenders. The time spent may end in an unsuccessful attempt with little realm point reward.

We can certainly consider this but under the current system we do want to favor incentives for defense whenever possible since they are usually the outnumbered force. However, perhaps a better long-term solution would be to base this bonus multiplier on the population of attackers vs defenders instead of hard-set values. We’ll be looking into this!
 

When will the DF imp stores be available again? I thought these were going to be converted to BP’s at some point, per the patch notes where DF was changed to a BP system…

When will the Dragonscale merchant’s items be added to the bp crafting list?

This conversion will occur when the existing alternate currencies are mostly used up. Even though it’s been a while, there is still quite a few atlantean glass, dragon scales, aurulite, and blood seals out there. Additionally, all of these can be converted to and from each other at the Currency Exchange NPC in each realm’s capital city and used at their respective stores.
 

What are the exact conditions that consider a kill (or a series of kills) as RP farming? What is the precise definition of RP farming? What actions must a player take to avoid being in a position of RP farming? What actions would lead to a RP reset or a ban?

While we’re happy to provide some general context, RP farming can come in many forms and is always handled on a case by case basis. It also falls under our “spirit of the game” (#16) clause in the Rules of Conduct.

In general, realm point farming could include any actions where characters are acquiring realm points without participating in normal or intended Realm vs Realm (or Realm vs Environment on Gaheris) gameplay. What this typically looks like is one or more characters repetively killing one or more other characters who make no attempt to fight back but that is by no means the only definition or criteria.

A good rule of thumb if you’re considering any action that could potentially be a violation is to err on the side of caution: if you have to ask, it’s probably not a good idea!

Can we see the level of a keep on the /realmwar map?

We’d love to hear feedback on this but our instinct is to keep this data hidden. It would become too easy to identify which keeps or towers to go after if players could see their levels from the /realmwar map even if it may also help defending realms to monitor their own.

Hope everyone has a safe, fun, and happy Halloween! See you in the frontiers!

It’s time for another Grab Bag!

Lots of info out this week as we celebrate Dark Age of Camelot’s 20th anniversary! Bonuses, merchants, new quests, new mounts, new cosmetics, and more! Our Halloween event also started yesterday and with everything ending November 2nd, make sure you don’t miss out on anything 🙂

Thanks, as always, to everyone for your questions! You can submit any questions relating to current development plans, to request clarification on basic game mechanic questions, or questions on community issues through the Grab Bag Submission form. For any other feedback or suggestions please use our feedback form.

Continue reading for the questions!
 

Is it intended that assassin (60%) snare poison stack with side snare (40%)?

Currrently, yes it is intended. These have always stacked with each other, even prior to the Envenom changes. We of course would love to hear feedback on if you think these shouldn’t stack or if the snare poison’s snare% should be reduced or if it should be kept as is!

Using my bard heal proc buff had me wondering if heal procs, class abilities not uses, apply to/on pets? Either charmed or class pets.

Yes, most group-based abilities apply to members of the group and their pets and the Bard’s group heal proc is no exception. Both charmed and summoned pets receive the Bard’s heal proc buff and melee attacks against those pets from monsters or players will have a chance to trigger a heal.

Hey there

Is it just missing or am I missing a further update on this?

Thanks for this report, the studded version of the Mighty Eyes do indeed drop in Albion.

The delve for this item has been updated and it has been added to both the traveling merchant stores and the Bountycraft menu (make sure to run your in-game patcher to get this update)!

4 – I am curious if there are any plans to update some of the more underutilized/undertuned Realm Rank 5 abilities–specifically, the Warlock R5, Burning Cauldron, and the Bainshee R5, Sonic Barrier. The Warlock Rank 5 does very low damage on a ten minute cooldown after a delay. As for the Bainshee R5, it appears to have no effect on you or your caster groupmates. It seems out of place that most Caster Rank 5 abilities are designed to be defensive and these are not.

In short – yes!

Improving some of the underutilized class Realm Rank 5 abilities is on our list. We’d love to hear some ideas about how you would improve them!

One Teammate mentioned, that Thanes direct damage spells would benefit from adding points into dexterity. Others mentioned that adding piety would increase damage while dex only increase casting speed but not damage per one single cast. Which is correct?

For casting classes, there is one stat (in the case of Thanes it is Piety) that increases the damage of each cast and then they all use the Dexterity stat to increase the speed of their casts.

So from a per-cast perspective, Dexterity does not increase the damage of a single casted spell. However, more Dexterity means more spell casts so it will increase the damage per second of a spell caster.

That’s it for this week! Hope everyone is enjoying all the activity so far 🙂
See you in the frontiers!