THE HERALD

Sun is starting to show itself in some parts so hoping a lovely Spring/Summer is on the horizon 🙂 We’re all still recovering from such a hugely successful and massively fun event in Caledonia!

Our new RvR changes to Ellan Vannin have brought some interesting dynamics to Ellan Vannin already! Keep that feedback coming in and let us know your thoughts through our feedback form, official forums, or official Discord 🙂

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 this week’s Grab Bag 🙂

Why do Maulers have a base melee critical hit chance and not a base magic critical hit chance? And why don’t Maulers benefit from endurance regen on omni-regen buffs and siphon endurance from omni-drains?

Maulers are primarily a melee-hybrid class and so only receive the base 10% chance to critical hit with melee styles without needing to specialize in the Mastery of Pain realm ability (though they still can to further increase their melee critical hit chance). They can critical hit with magic by specializing in the Wild Power realm ability though.

After some testing to be extra certain, Maulers do benefit from omni-regen endurance spells and do siphon endurance from omni-drain procs.

Is there any way to influence the portal pads in Treibh Caillte? I seemed to port more consistently to the same place in the dungeon when an Befuddled Rocky Golem was up. Is there any truth to this, or was I just lucky on the rolls?

Each portal location in the dungeon typically has a single portal destination it can send you to when a normal golem spawns. These locations generally teleport players back and forth between 2 areas of the dungeon. Typically, only 1 rocky golem can spawn between 4 nearby portal locations at a given time.

However, a few portal locations have a chance to sometimes spawn a befuddled rocky golem instead of normal golems. Befuddled rocky golems, regardless of which portal location they spawn in will always send players to the same location in the dungeon. When a befuddled rocky golem is already spawned, it has no effect on where other portal locations will send you though.

What is the true health% value of Convoker ML7  Dissonance Traps?

Traps are set to remove 40% of the target’s base health. This means their health value without buffs or +hits from items. Also, because the traps are a ML ability there is no +specialization bonus in regards to damage variance. This is why the damage values can fluctuate on the same target by as much as 10% of the target’s base health. Typically the damage from a storm will be around 20% of a fully buffed and equipped target’s total health.

Question about defense penetration, are defenses cut by just having an offhand out? or do I have to spec into the offhand spec to have increased shield/parry penetration/

They are cut in half by simply using dual-wielded weapons. Increasing offhand specialization does still help your defense penetration though!

My question is what stats control damage taken from archery  shots? Base af seems to not affect it, neither on a leather wearer nor on a caster, but spec af does? Also in my testing I found that abs buffs affect (friar 15% did) but a lvl 39 caster (5%abs) did not affect?

Both armor factor (AF) and absorption (ABS) should affect archery damage in a similar way to how melee damage is affected by both AF and ABS buffs.  Melee and magic resists also further affect damage of their respective archery shot types.

In our testing between 2 level 50 characters, both base and ‘spec’ AF on a cloth wearer as well as their +%ABS buffs did noticeably reduce archery shot damage when using both physical and magic shots. On non-cloth wearers, base AF buffs will do less to mitigate archery shots because high quality leather armor and up will already nearly cap base AF values.

It could be that if your tests were between a level 50 archer hitting a lower level character that the archer was capping out their damage regardless due to the level disparity. This could account for why no difference was seen in those tests!

Regardless, the higher the total armor factor and absorption values on a character, the less damage they will take from all archery shots!

Many thanks, and enjoy the weekend! 🙂
 

Teleport Obelisk Event

Fresh off the heels and feedback from the very successful Catch Up in Caledonia Event, we’re excited to introduce a new temporary RvR feature on Ellan Vannin!

One of the major takeaways from the Caledonia event was the love of its fast action and the ability to quickly get back into the fight. With this new event, we hope to create a similar environment on Ellan Vannin that allows groups to quickly return to the fray!

Depending on the feedback, we may look into making this a permanent fixture on the island!

• An Ellan Vannin Obelisk now stands on the portal pad in each realm’s relic town that will teleport players and their group to random open-field locations on Ellan Vannin!
  • Differing slightly from Caledonia, only members within 3500 radius of the obelisk will teleport.
• All other existing teleports to Ellan Vannin are disabled for the event’s duration:
  • Master Vaughn and his elementalists, Stor Gothi Dagny and her gothis, and Brerend and his seoltoirs are all taking a well-deserved holiday from teleporting players to their safe locations on the island.
  • Tower of Korazh, Tower of Deifrang, and Tower of Graoch one-way ports are disabled.
  • Knoc Meayll teleports to and from the keep are disabled.
• The Tower of Korazh, Tower of Deifrang, and Tower of Graoch are now ruined for the event’s duration.
• Knoc Meayll keep can still be captured normally by the realms and still will be periodically captured by the Manx.
• Ungrouped characters can also use the obelisk to teleport to the ruined areas of Folley Lake, The Trellebourg, or Moydruim Castle (as well as Ellan Vannin still).
  • This is a one-way, random teleport and does not unlock any of the individual ruined area locations, it simply allows players to port into one of the ruined area locations from the relic town obelisk.
• Ruined area ports are now refreshable when all 3 locations have been unlocked and all port-buff durations have been reduced from 6 to 2 hours.
• An anti-camping mechanic has been added to ruined areas.
  • Any grouped characters that remain in the area for longer than 1 minute will take repeated damage until they leave the area for at least 1 minute.
• This event will run until Tuesday, March 30th, 2021.

Traveling Merchants

• The traveling merchants have made their return and now hawk their wares outside Castle Sauvage in Albion, Svasud Faste in Midgard, and Druim Ligen in Hibernia!
• The merchants will remain until Tuesday, March 30th, 2021.

Realm vs Realm Bonuses

On Ywain:

• 50% bonus to RPs from kills
• 50% bonus to normal XP gain in all classic and shrouded isle zones and dungeons.

On Gaheris:

• 50% bonus to normal XP gain in all battlegrounds, classic and shrouded isle zones and dungeons.
• 50% bonus to normal RP gain in the capital cities.

In each Capital City:

• 40% Bonus to Crafting Speed
• 20% Bonus to Crafting Skill Gain

In all Housing Zones:

• 20% Bonus to Crafting Speed
• 10% Bonus to Crafting Skill Gain

Bonuses will last until Tuesday, March 30th, 2021.

The Catch Up in Caledonia Event was a huge hit over the weekend with thousands of characters leveling through the event so far in its first 3 days.

With today marking the start of the 4th day, new character creation for the event is now disabled.

• Characters still in the level 1-4 and level 1-9 areas can now visit their realm’s Teleporter NPC to [advance] to the level 10+ battleground and then speak with the Caledonia Event Coordinator to receive level 10 and some bounty points! 
• Day 4 means a current level cap of 30! Don’t worry if you’re still far behind, with the Caledonia Boost buff, lower levels can still compete!
  • Grouping with any character that has the Caledonia Boost will also grant their entire group (regardless of group member levels) a 400% XP and BP gain bonus!

Thanks to all that have and will continue to participate in the event, we have loved every minute of it and hope you have too!

Feedback on the event has been tremendous and we’ve already made several tweaks to it. We look forward to going over more feedback as the event continues so that we can make the next iteration even better!

Here are some of the updates to the event in case you missed them in our official discord channel:

• Random teleport locations have been improved to no longer send characters into the keep areas.
• Added a Caledonia Boost buff to level 1 characters and characters that are 7 levels or more below the current level cap.
  • This buff drastically reduces damage received and massively increases damage dealt on these characters so that they can better compete against higher levels.
• Resurrection sickness is removable by the Healer NPC in the level 1-4 and 5-9 areas.
• The buff NPC now offers a free buff token to level 1-2 characters.
• The bounty merchant now has power-heal and power-regen potions for sale.
• The pet collector NPC is now available for charm classes.

A mini sort of Grab Bag this week just covering most of the questions we’ve been asked about the Catch Up in Caledonia Event! Make sure you don’t miss out on any of the fun of this event, starts today! 🙂

For regular grab bags please continue to 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.

To the event questions we go!

What pots will be available?

There are endurance regen, endurance heal, water potions, and speed of the hunt gems available on the Bounty Master in Caledonia, among several other goodies!

What about horses/saddles for mount speed?

There are no mounts in the battleground this go around!

What is being done to try to make all 3 realms balanced and prevent portal keep camping?

Caledonia’s zone has been changed slightly for the event.

Players do not start out in their traditional portal keeps and instead are in staging-areas outside of the RvR-enabled area.  In fact, the old portal keeps are completely defenseless now and can be fought over!

Players will one-way teleport (along with their group – think Labyrinth obelisk teleports) to a random location in the RvR-enabled area when they are ready.

This should drastically reduce or wholesale eliminate portal keep-camping and will also make it much more difficult for realms to coalesce as large battlegroups in the zone since there is no guarantee they will port to the same location or even the same side of the zone! To be clear, a grouped player will always teleport along with their nearby group members to the same location, but multiple groups will not teleport together.

Is there a way to quickly find a group?

Yes! Use the /cgf command to flag yourself as looking for a group. Just set your archetype (or several) and click “set” and you’re queued!

Group leaders out there, don’t forget about the /goption (/go for short) command that lets you flag your group as open and able to accept queued players!

What do we do if we’re a pet (charm) class?

Visit the Pet Collector NPC in the staging areas and choose your pet. Charm it quickly as un-charmed pets do not stick around for long!

Can we bind in the zone? How do we get back to the staging areas?

Yes, when you initially zone into the staging area the game will automatically bind your character there. Unlike New Frontiers regions, characters can make use of their Personal Bind Recall stone (and later on, Gateway and Mass Gateway ML abilities) to return to their bind point. Otherwise, your best option may just be a head-long battle charge towards enemy lines – for glory!

Are buffbots allowed?

Yes, buff bots are allowed, but keep in mind that they will need to be levelled too. Please remember that multi-boxing in RvR zones is strictly prohibited. Even just 2 characters that are being actively played with a multi-boxing software or hardware setup qualifies as “multi-boxing”.

What items will be available for purchase and how?

All of the standard battleground bounty point gear is purchasable inside the zone as well as Illustrious gear, doppelganger shards, magic orbs (Random-object-generated gear), and all Bountycraft ingredients that can be used to Bountycraft in the zone!

To obtain the gear players will need to earn bounty points through RvR kills and quest completions and then purchase the gear at the relevant merchants in the staging areas.

In addition to purchasable gear, there is a King’s Emissary who will grant players the ability to train Champion Levels and gift them the free level  King’s Epic gear set, including accessories, as well as the Loyalty Cloak upon reaching level 50!

Will the class Cl15 cloak be available at 50? If so how do you complete the tower quest part?

The Class Loyalty Cloak quests of either Loyalty Rewarded or Loyalty Needed will be given by the King’s Emissary exactly like they are from the King. If the account only qualifies for the Loyalty Needed quest, the character still must complete that tower quest part (after the event is over) to receive the cloak.

Is xp/rp rate increased or same as normal zones?

There is a 200% bonus to experience gain given to Endless Conquest (free) and Veteran (subscribed) characters that are level 10+ in the zone!

In addition, there is a 200% bounty and realm point bonus too!

Will the realm underpop bonus work in Caledonia?

No, the underpopulation system only looks at the New Frontiers region.

Thanks for all the questions and feedback on this event, everyone, wa great to get it all!

Now off to plan my new level 1’s 🙂

See you in Caledonia!

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!?

Join us this Friday, March 5th for your chance to start fresh and rapidly progress to the end-game with players around your level!

What is Catch Up in Caledonia?

When does the event start and end?

How does the event work?

• For the first 3 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 turning in related quests.
  • Charm-pet classes will be able to create a pet to charm at their realm’s portal keep.
• ​After the 3rd day, 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!
• The battleground will use a mix of leveling caps and new instances to maintain populations throughout the event:
  • At Level 5, characters will automatically teleport to a new instance for levels 5-9.
  • At level 10, characters will automatically teleport to a new instance for levels 10+
  • The following level caps will be in place for all characters in Caledonia and will increase by 5 levels every 24 hours:
    • Day 1: Level 15 maximum
    • Day 2: Level 20 
    • Day 3: Level 25 
    • Day 4: Level 30
    • Day 5: Level 35
    • Day 6: Level 40
    • Day 7: Level 45
    • Days 8-10: Level 50
  • Characters that reach a level cap will not be able to earn realm points or experience until the level cap is increased but will still be able to complete quests and earn bounty points towards their gear and other progression goals.

How far will I be able to progress?

A chilly bag of grabs this week. Hope everyone is able to get dry and warm as much as possible!

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.

Onto the wall of text!

For chances to parry/evade/block, is it rolled against weaponskill? Does sequence of attack reduce this chance ? (I.E. the same attacker swing twice in a round, the second attack can be blocked/parried/evaded ? With the same chances as the first?)

Chances to evade, parry, block, miss, or fumble are calculated by a myriad of different factors including class, specialization, character stats, styles used, and much more. Weaponskill is a derived stat that shows a rough estimate of your character’s effectiveness. It can be used to roughly gauge your chance to land attacks or defend against them but weaponskill is not directly used anywhere in the combat code.

For multiple attacks in the same round (such as by a dual wielder), each weapon’s swing is counted like another attacker. A dual wielder that has both attacks blocked would count as 2 attackers in that defender’s combat round.

As for multiple attackers, this was recently answered in our October 2020 Grab Bag: 

For example, if 5 attackers are swinging in the frontal arc of a target wielding a large shield, each attacker will calculate through those combat checks separately at the time of their melee swing. 3 of the 5 attackers will have a chance to be blocked while 2 of the 5 will never be blocked. Which 3 attackers are blocked and which 2 are not is not always the same, but if a target wielding a large shield blocks 3 attackers in the same combat round (defined by the defender’s swing speed), subsequent attackers will not be blocked in that same combat round.

Regarding Combat style bonuses…

In the second case (which I think is more likely, just dismissing doubts), do “defense bonues/penalties” persists until the next attack of the defender or only apply to the next attack? Or to put it differently : does an attack “consume” that bonus or would multiple opponent be suffering that defense bonus until the next swing of the defender?

The bonuses from styles are only valid for the next combat round of the character that performed the style. This includes defensive based bonuses.

Style bonuses are given on a combat-round basis not an attack or melee swing-basis. Combat round durations are determined by a character’s swing speed (which is based on several factors like the quickness stat, haste stats and buffs, celerity, and the weapon’s speed) but combat rounds still count down if a character swings and then sheathes their weapon. This is why characters can’t sheathe and re-style immediately, they must still wait until their next combat round is ready before they can swing again.

For example, if a character performs a style that gives them +15% defensive bonus chance and their bonuses + equipped weapons result in a swing speed of 1.5 seconds, that defensive bonus will only last the 1.5 seconds of that character’s combat round, even if they never swing again.

Additionally, that bonus will apply against multiple attackers for that full combat round (1.5 seconds in this example).

How do magic resist and armor factor debuffs affect bolts?
 

Bolts are treated in a lot of ways like melee attacks that deal a magic damage type (similar to legendary weapon melee attacks). This is why bolts hit for less against higher armor factor (AF) and absorb% (ABS) targets, just like melee attacks do, and why bolts can miss or be blocked.

However, there is one crucial difference with bolts versus melee attacks: magic resists are half as effective against bolt damage.

For example, a target with 50% magic resists to the bolt’s damage type would see damage like 751 (-251). 751+251 = 1,002. 1,002/251 = 25% effective magic resist (or 50%/2). The same target would still have 50% magic resists against a normal direct damage spell. The previous example assumes no spell piercing bonus on the bolt caster.

Spell piercing’s effectiveness is also halved when bolting. With 10% spell piercing against a 50% resistant target, damage would be something like 801(-201) which works out to a 20% resist total (50%/2 = 25% with an additional 5% (10%/2) removed due to spell piercing).

Continuing the example with magic resist debuffs, a 30% magic resist debuff against a 50% resistant target will reduce their resistances to a 20% starting value. A bolt would then be hitting the target as though they have 10% effective resistance. So a bolt that hits for 901 (-100) without spell piercing has 10% effective resistance or 952 (-50) with 10% spell piercing, which removes a further 5% (10%/2) resists has 5% overall effective resistance.

The calculations for damage mitigation of Armor Factor (AF) and Absorb (ABS) are a bit more complex and work almost identically as they do for melee attacks except that there is potentially no damage variance involved with bolts if the bolt caster has 50 composite specialization in their bolt’s line. An explanation on how AF and ABS factor into damage reduction is discussed in our July 2018 grab bag: 

AF debuffs directly subtract the character’s AF, so a 250 delve AF debuff is going to remove 250 *1.25 = 312 AF from the target’s AF total (the 25% delve bonus comes from the AF debuffer’s 50 composite specialization) and the less AF a target has the harder a bolt will hit them.

The amount of AF removed by an AF debuff is not affected by the target’s magic resist to the AF debuff spell. In other words, magic resist debuffs don’t directly increase/compound the effectiveness of an AF debuff.

In conclusion, using both an AF debuff and magic resist debuff will cause a bolt to hit harder than when using none or only 1 of these debuff types!

I’ve read in a previous grab bag that “dual wield halve the chances to be evaded”. So I wonder: Does it halve the chance to be parried? Does two-handed halve the chances to parry? Does something halve the chances to block?

Dual-wielders receive an extra 25% penetration bonus versus evade and block, not a 50% bonus. There is no such penetration bonus versus parry for any weapon type.

Can we get clarification if merc rr5+ banespike stack please? And also clarification on vendo + banespike and trip wield + banespike?

The Mercenary Dissolute Swings (Realm Rank 5) ability and the Blademaster Triple Wield ability do not stack with Banespike because each of these abilities already directly increase the Mercenary’s and Blademaster’s damage.

Berserk (“vendo”) guarantees a Berserkers chance to critically hit on their melee attacks and allows them to critically hit above the 50% critical damage cap, it does *not* increase the berserker’s damage directly. The delve stating that Berserk increases their damage by a % is a bit misleading but it’s taking an average damage increase from all of the additional critical hits that the form grants and is displaying that as an overall damage increase in the delve. We’ll look at adjusting this hard-coded delve to be more clear in the future.

Regardless, because Berserk does not directly increase a Berserker’s damage, it does stack with Banespike.

Phew, that’s a lot of info!

Thanks everyone, and enjoy the weekend! 🙂

Update 11:55 AM EST / 4:55 PM GMT: Ywain and Gaheris are once again live!

Ywain and Gaheris will be coming down today at 11 AM EST / 4 PM GMT to address some issues accessing some dungeon regions.

We expect to be back online within the next 3 hours.

Thank you for your understanding and appreciate your patience as we work to get Ywain and Gaheris back online.