THE HERALD

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!?

We’re excited to announce our 2nd Catch Up In Caledonia event coming Monday, May 17th and starting at 3 PM EST / 9 PM CET!

We’ve made a host of improvements since the last event and hope to see this iteration as the one we use going forward on a quarterly basis. 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, May 21st 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 9 maximum
    • Day 2 (Tuesday): Level 19 
    • Day 3 (Wednesday): Level 29 
    • Day 4 (Thursday) : Level 39
    • Day 5 (Friday): Level 49
    • Days 6-7 (Sat-Mon): Level 50
  • Characters that reach the day’s level cap will still be able to earn realm and bounty points this time!

What improvements have been made?

We made several updates during the previous event and have several new ones for this iteration:

• 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.
• Random teleports into the zone are now all in open field locations!
• The buff NPC offers a free of cost Full Buffs token to level 1-9 characters!
• Level 1-5 characters will no longer receive resurrection sickness after death and its duration is set to 60s for all other levels in the zone.
• The /xp off and /rp off commands no longer stop XP or RP gain in Caledonia.
• Crowd control durations now have a reduced starting duration, scaling down by 1% for every level below 50!
  • This reduction starts at a 2% reduction at level 49 and scales down to a 50% reduction at level 1.
• A new realm point penalty system has been introduced to the Caledonia zone for kills done by overwhelming forces!
  • Realm points are drastically reduced for kills where a realm outnumbers the other by 3 to 1 odds or more.
  • This penalty currently only triggers when the attacking realm has 25+ members in the area of the kill.
  • This system is designed to encourage groups to roam around separately more during the event!
• The kill counts for completing quests have been reduced at the early level ranges.
• Champion Level experience rewards for quests at level 50 have been drastically increased!

How far will I be able to progress?

Time for another Grab Bag! Yay!

Remember to get your Doppelganger daily quest in, and look out for our April newsletter coming to your inboxes later today! 🙂

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.

Grab a cuppa and read on!

How many styles can be backed up in daoc? Is it 3 or more? I always thought it was 3 styles like anytime + reactionary + follow up to reactionary but someone told me it’s more. So I didn’t know if there was a specific number of input commands that can be backed up or not.

The melee combat system will only queue up to 2 *valid* styles to try in a given combat round. This means if you hit the style hotkey for an Evade-based reactionary style and then an Anytime style, the system will try to use the Evade-based reactionary style first and then the Anytime style on the next melee swing.

The order in which the styles are queued is the order that the system will attempt to fire them. If an anytime style is always queued first, it’s always going to be attempted first and anything queued behind it will be ignored, so melees need to ensure that they queue up their styles in the right order!

The key word here though is “valid”. Valid styles mean any style that is eligible to be used in the next round due to your actions in the previous melee round.  When initially engaging in melee combat, the only valid styles are the 1st styles in a chain (positional-based, evade/parry/block reactionary, or anytime styles). Once engaged in melee, a valid style could also be a 2nd or 3rd style in a chain (also known as follow-ups) if the prerequisite for that style was met in the previous combat round.

As soon as a melee queues up 2 styles that are “valid” for the next round, those 2 are queued and cannot be changed (and no other styles can be queued) until after the next melee swing. If a melee has style cancelling enabled and has only queued up 1 style they can re-select a style to un-queue it but once 2 are queued they cannot be cancelled either.

However, there is NO limit to the number of *invalid* styles in a melee round that can be attempted prior to queuing the 2 valid styles. Obviously, an invalid style is one that will fail if it is not immediately backed up with a valid style before your next melee swing, but over the course of a fight it may be useful to continually attempt to queue up a follow-up style so that it will fire as soon as its prerequisites are met. This allows the melee to not have to watch their combat log as closely allowing them to focus more on their surroundings and other combat tasks!.

For example, when performing a side-positional, a melee may first hit their 2nd in chain side positional follow-up style, then their side positional (1st in chain), then their anytime to ensure that the side positional’s follow-up style will always fire when its prerequisites are met.

In theory, there is no limit to how many of these follow-ups a melee attempts before queuing their 2 valid styles.

Another example would be where a melee hits their style hotkeys for the 3rd and 2nd side positional follow-ups, then the 3rd and 2nd rear positional follow-ups, and then the 1st in chain side and rear positional styles.

The melee system will only ever queue up the first 2 valid styles of those 6 that are attempted, but if they are continually attempted in that order, the follow-ups will always fire when their prerequisites are met! One has to be careful though because in this last example, if the melee is not behind or to the side of their target, all 6 of their styles will fail.

So in summary, there’s no limit to how many follow-ups or invalid styles can be attempted each round before that limit of 2 valid styles is reached.

Is amnesia supposed to interrupt casters that are under mastery of concentration?

The Mastery of Concentration (MoC) realm ability only protects the caster from interrupts and Amnesia does not technically interrupt (unless resisted). When Amnesia applies to the target it causes them to “forget” the spell they were actively casting. Amnesia is a very powerful tool when used to counter a MoC’d caster but Amnesia itself must be continually cast to fully counter them and can be interrupted (or Amnesia’d) itself!

HI, I have one question concerning root from archery. How is it possible that a lvl 50 pet gets rooted 40 seconds from lvl 48 shot that has 15sec (+25% dur)? I tested SM pet and it wasnt rooted not even close to 40 seconds

The level 48 archer root shot (Bola Shot 4) has a starting duration of 36 seconds, not 15. With +25% duration, this works out to a starting duration (before resistances, etc.) of 45 seconds. If the pet did not have resistance buffs up at the time of the root and the archer had only +10-13% duration then the root would last exactly 40 seconds.

Item stat cap on conversion is 10% How about procs from Astral legs and Frigid Soul Quencher ? Does it stack ? So I could technically get 30% conversion if I’m lucky with the procs?

The damage conversion from abilities on the Astral Leggings of Fortification and Frigid Soul Quencher items do stack with the item-stat “Conversion”. However, the item abilities do not stack with themselves, so in theory 20% is the highest amount of conversion one could have.

If I was to use a Cold Leggy Staff debuff and dmg use and use the LVL10 Stormlord ability that makes a damage spell AOE. It’s not doing the AOE part, am I doing something wrong?

The Stormlord Arcing Power ability only applies to your next cast, not an item’s cast.

Is there a way to tell when a guild was founded?

Unfortunately there is not a way to tell currently. Perhaps in the future we can look at adding this in!

A lot of reading and info for this week 🙂

Thanksall, and enjoy the weekend!
 

Welcome to this week’s Grab Bag!

Don’t forget to face down the bunny by April 27th!

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 🙂

Does myth DPS from skull of the soulkeeper (for example) increase the dmg from melee necromancer?

Yes, mythical DPS stats increase melee Necromancer damage.

Can you please confirm if Esbjorn and Enar still spawn in Oceanus Notos?

Hmm, the only NPCs named Esbjorn or Enar are redcaps found in Midgard Shrouded Isles’ zone Modernagrav. These two, along with the named redcaps Erland and Evert do still have an extremely rare chance to spawn as outlined below.

Get your pen and paper out…

Killing skadedjurs anywhere in Modernagrav will cause a ‘Named’ fengarus (Xothra, Zanguirus, or Yigan) to spawn around 48100 16400 in the zone. There’s a small chance that killing the skadedjurs will only spawn a normal fengarus so be sure to clear those out too!

When a ‘Named’ fengarus is killed, it has a chance to spawn 1 of the 4 ‘Named’ redcaps (Esbjorn, Enar, Erland, or Evert) at the redcap camp (1 spawns at each crystal cluster). It also has a chance to spawn normal redcap bestigars so these will need to be cleared out if a named does not spawn and the process begun again!

Lastly, when a ‘Named’ redcap is killed there is a chance a ‘Named’ reanimated howler (Yngve, Ingvar, or Ingegard) is spawned around 34,500 34,500 in the zone with a small chance that a normal reanimated howler is spawned instead.

Par for the course, if any of the ‘Named’ mobs in this chain (or their normal mob placeholders) are already spawned anywhere in the zone, they will need to be cleared out first before killing a skadedjur will cause the first mob in the chain to spawn.

Happy hunting!

I’m very tight on inventory space these days, mainly due to items that aren’t tradeable which means I can’t dump them in my house vaults.  Needless to say, this doesn’t mesh well with my OCD.  Are there any sources of personal storage that I’m overlooking?  The only ones I know of are personal vault and mount saddlebags.

Great game, thanks for all you guys do!

The personal Vault keepers and your mount’s saddlebags are the only direct areas to store *most* non-tradable items currently. For non-tradable mounts specifically, there is a Royal Stablemaster in each capital city (or a portable one can be purchased at the Mithril MTX Shop) that will store those items for you so that they are not taking up inventory space.

We hope to introduce additional features like the Royal Stablemaster for other categories of non-tradable items in the future!

In response to a previous Grab Bag question about scripting and multiboxing (here), is the following scenario legal: In NF, a player has a bot on a separate computer that is spamming heals using a pre-recorded automated sequence of keystokes (for example over 30 seconds) while they play another character on another computer. Where is the line drawn for having multiple characters in NF?

No, this would not be legal. Any playing of multiple characters by the same person via scripts is not allowed in New Frontiers or RvR Battleground zones. Normal “dual-logging” of accounts is perfectly fine so long as their actions are in no-way automated while they are both being played.

I’m having a really hard time finding BP merchants for all the crafting components I need for level 51 recipes.  Can you list all of the BP merchants and their locations?  Right now, I can’t find the merchant that sells ToA crafting components and all Google searches lead to Sage Gilda, who only accepts glass–a currency I can’t obtain.

• ToA Legendary Weapon components
  • These be obtained with bounty points by purchasing Doppelganger Shards at Garett, Mirren, or Breagh’s <Bounty Master> store in each realm’s relic town.
    • Doppelganger shards have a chance to drop reforming energies which can be used to receive these components from their respective TOA encounters at the trogo zontanos mageia NPCs in TOA zones.
  • These are also purchasable in Housing with gold or with Atlantean Glass in the Hall of Heroes.
    • Glass can still be obtained via trades with other players or converted from other old alternate currencies at the Alternate Currency Conversion NPC in each realm’s capital.
  • Please note that the Orb of Entropy and Pound of Flesh legendary weapon components are not sold anywhere and must be farmed via Otherworlds encounters.
• Rare Alchemy components
  • Garett, Mirren, or Breagh’s <Bounty Master> store in each realm’s relic town
• Perfected Armor patterns
  • Garett, Mirren, or Breagh’s <Bounty Master> store in each realm’s relic town
• Otherworldly Ore
  • Garett, Mirren, or Breagh’s <Bounty Master> store in each realm’s relic towns
• Otherworldly Essence
  • These can only be obtained by gathering them in Otherworlds or Frontier zones.
• Bountycraft recipes and molds:
  • Garett, Mirren, or Breagh’s <Bounty Master> store in each realm’s relic town
• Broken Dragonsworn Armor and Weapons
  • Currently only purchasable with Dragon Scales in each realm’s capital or with gold in Housing.
    • Similar to Glass, Scales can still be obtained via trades with other players or converted from other old alternate currencies at the Alternate Currency Conversion NPC in each realm’s capital.
  • The Dragonsworn Armor and Weapons can also still be directly farmed by killing dragonsworn mobs at their camps in the dragon zones.

Thanks everyone! 
Have a great weekend 🙂
 

Welcome to this week’s chocolate covered Grab Bag! Hope you enjoyed our little April Fool’s in-game yesterday 🙂 

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.

Hop on for the questions!

Does spell pierce from doppel arcane mace stack with spell pierce from gear or is it all counted at cap 10%?

All spell piercing bonuses are capped at 10% regardless of their source.

Hello! There was an old grab bag that discussed how the casting cost of spells works, specifically mentioning focus and its impact. Can you provide insight into the factors that go into how much a spell costs and how much or little using a mace/shield over a staff affects different types of spells? Thank you.
Old Grab Bag details.

First, a quick reminder on what classes are set as a “focus caster” (note: a focus caster is not the same as a list caster; for example a Valewalker is a list caster, but not a focus caster):

Albion	Midgard	Hibernia
Cabalist	Bonedancer	Animist
Necromancer	Runemaster	Bainshee
Sorcerer	Spiritmaster	Eldritch
Theurgist	Warlock	Enchanter
Wizard		Mentalist

As that old grab bag states, if you do not have a focus staff equipped and are casting a spell on a focus caster your power cost will be increased by 120% of the spell’s normal power cost value.

For example, a spell that costs 70 power (in the delve) will cost 84 power when not using a focus staff on a focus caster.

When a focus staff is equipped, has a focus stat that is higher level than the spell being cast, is of the right spec. line, the staff’s condition is 100%, and your character’s composite specialization level is higher than the spell’s level then the power cost is reduced to 80% of the delved power cost.

Continuing the example, a 70 power cost spell now only costs 56 power with the (fully repaired) focus staff equipped and a higher composite spec. than the spell’s level.

These days, one doesn’t have to worry as much about having the right Focus specialization or +level stat, as almost all focus staffs have a +50 to all magic lines. So just make sure your focus staff is equipped,  fully repaired, and that your composite specialization of the spell’s skill line is above the spell’s level to get that full 80% power cost reduction.

Using the same example again, if a focus caster was casting a level 45 spell that cost 70 power and that spell was in a line that the caster only had +30 composite spec in, and they had a fully repaired +50 all focus spells staff equipped they would use 65 power; so getting some reduction but not the full 80% due to the spell’s level being higher than their composite spec. in that line.

Other than +focus and some minotaur relic bonuses, there are no modifiers that reduce the cost of casted spells though Cave Shamans do have an a debuff that increases the power cost of spells cast by their enemies. There is also the arcane siphon stat on some items that will give your character a chance to not use any power when casting a spell.

Otherwise, having high power regeneration (from mythical power regen stats or class’ power regen abilities) and obviously a higher overall power pool from equipping power% and power% cap gear will allow a character to cast more spells for longer too and with enough power regen and power pool% a character can largely offset the power cost of spells even when not using a focus staff!

As for the different types of spells that use this focus power cost mechanic, it’s actually less confusing than it may seem based on that previous grab bag answer:

For focus-caster classes, *all* spells found in their base and specialization lines use the focus power cost mechanic; including heal spells! 

As for non-focus caster classes, other than those other power cost modifiers mentioned above their spells will cost the exact same as the delve shows. If a spell delves for 30 power, it will cost 30 power when cast by a non-focus casting class.

For classes that can cast Mesmerize, does +skill (+Pacification, +mind, +music) assist with your chance to land said spell?

It does not and these +skills do not increase the effectiveness of crowd control either. +Pacification actually provides no benefit to any spells in its line while +Music does affect the damage of a Bard’s damage shouts and +Mind does affect the power cost of Mind spells since Sorcerers are a focus caster.

A previous grab bag stated that weaponskill isn’t used in any combat equations.  What benefit does envenom weaponskill debuff then have in combat?  What exactly is debuffed?  Does melee dmg debuff in envenom modify style proc damage in any way?

The Weaponskill debuff is technically reducing the underlying aspects of the character that contribute to their weaponskill totals – such as how much they are specialized into a weapon line, among other things. It’s just displayed through the weaponskill stat. This debuff will cause targets to land less of their melee attacks and block/evade/parry fewer melee attacks against them as well as reduce the target’s overall melee damage dealt.

The melee damage debuff only reduces damage done by the target’s melee portion of their style. Style procs are spells that are attached to a style and so they derive their damage from the proc’s spell delve amount. All spells are treated as casted/magic damage (regardless of the damage type). This is why stats like spell piercing help style proc damage and why melee damage debuffs don’t affect them.

Why can’t Maulers use Polaris? It’s a staff

Maulers use the specialized staff skill ‘Mauler Staff’ which are staffs that can only be wielded by them. Polaris requires the ‘Staff’ skill (same skill that all casters and the Friar class has). It’s maybe a small distinction on paper but it’s similar to how a ‘Polearm’ is a two-handed weapon but Paladins can’t wield them even though they can specialize in “Two-Handed” weapons.

We do realize that Aura Manipulation specialized Maulers are largely caster-hybrids now and would like to have more caster staff-options. We’ll keep monitoring things but right now Maulers are performing quite well with their existing itemization options and so have no immediate plans to introduce more caster-centric gear options.

What is the buff cap on summoned pets and non-summoned pets?

Neither summoned nor non-summoned (charmed) pets have hard-caps on their buffs.

Remember, buffs don’t affect pets identically as players, here’s a link to a previous grab-bag answer on this very subject: Grab Bag 05/05/2017 
 

Enjoy the weekend everyone – I’m off on an egg hunt! 🙂

Thank you all for your feedback on the teleport obelisks in each realms relic town!

It’s been great fun to watch the new dynamics created with groups enjoying some great combat on Ellan Vannin as well as the constant action at the ruined areas! We have also really enjoyed the epic keep battles this dynamic seemed to encourage!

As such, the following remains in effect for the foreseeable future:

• Teleport to and from Knoc Meayll has been re-enabled.
• Teleport to the Towers of Korazh, Deifrang, and Graoch remain disabled but the towers are no longer ruined.
• Teleport to the safe areas on Ellan Vannin remains disabled.
• Players of any group-size can visit their realm’s relic towns to use the Ellan Vannin Obelisk to teleport to a random location in the central area of Ellan Vannin.
  • Groups of 6+ members who use this obelisk will receive a 100% bounty point bonus buff that will auto-refresh as long as they stay in the central area of the island.
    • Please note that this buff will *not* stack with mithril-purchased bounty point bonuses but will stack with all other BP bonuses.
    • Please note that this buff will affect Endless Conquest accounts as well as subscribed accounts.
  • This buff will dissipate if the group leaves the area but will return if they return to the area and still have the Ellan Vannin Port buff.
  • Groups of 6+ members with the Ellan Vannin Port buff will continue to get updates on the number of other 6+-person groups in the central area of Ellan Vannin.
• The obelisk in each realms’ relic town will also still teleport ungrouped characters to Folley Lake, The Trellebourg, or Moydrium Castle and the 1 minute anti-group camping timer remains in place at the ruined areas.

We look forward to your continued feedback!

Update 11 AM EST / 4 PM GMT: Ywain and Gaheris are up!

The Ywain and Gaheris servers will be coming down tomorrow, March 30th (5:45 AM EST / 10:45 AM GMT) to perform Amazon server hosting maintenance.

We appreciate your patience and understanding!