THE HERALD

It’s a wet and windy Grab Bag this week! 

Our August newsletter goes out soon so make sure you are signed up to get the latest DAoC news direct to your inbox 🙂

RamikOaken’s amazing generosity continues with a 10 hour DAoC Charity Stream today supporting http://GamersOutreach.org a charity that provides equipment, technology, and software to help kids cope with treatment while in hospital. Ramik will be jumping between realms, soloing, grouping & zerging, with special guests and giveaways! Tune in to Ramik from 1PM EST/7PM CET on his Twitch channel.

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 🙂

With 1.127 and the stormlord changes, if I MOC and cast a storm, is its effectiveness reduced in any way or are storms as is?

Great question! The Mastery of Concentration realm ability will only allow the caster to summon the storm uninterrupted. The RA does not affect the duration of the storm itself nor the duration and effectiveness of what a storm casts.

Storms are unique in that their effectiveness or duration are not modified at all by their caster since they are an object. Once summoned, the storm’s spells are also cast by the object and are hard-set in their values (with normal variance on damage spells). Therefore the caster of the storm having buffs, duration gear, resurrection sickness, or MoC will not affect the storm at all.

What is the duration on warden loyal cloak block/parry buff use, and does duration gear make item use group pulses last longer?

The group aura will last around 10 minutes. There is a hard-cap on the number of times the aura can pulse and so duration% gear does not increase its duration. This is the same for all aura’s cast by items.

Does the RA serenity work in combat?

Yes.

With the resist buffs change in 1.127, what if you have the 3 piece set.   Does that still apply to the resists meaning that the 5k radius is void?

After 1.127 all versions of the Bard, Paladin, and Skald resist buffs will last forever so long as the targets of the buff stay within 5,000 units of the caster. The 3 piece curse set bonus grants +4% to the magic resists and that will remain after 1.127. Players that move further than 5,000 units from the caster will lose all versions of the buff.

Is the change to the Ranger R5 intended to kill or just scare theurgist pets? Other pet scares kill them.

The pet scare on the Ranger RR5 works  identically to all other pet scares. Theurgist pets are not directly killed by any pet scare (or confuse spell for that matter).

What kills theurgist pets is when they try to switch targets. If you’re testing the new pet scare in a 1v1 situation on Pendragon where the theurgist pet’s target isn’t grouped and being healed or the theurgist pet isn’t being attacked by another player, the theurgist pet will simply be scared and then return to its original target after the fear’s duration. 

I started leveling a mentalist speccing in dots. I am level 39 and full spec in the dot line, but I notice that while the spec dot ticks for a consistent amount, the baseline dot ticks are all over the place on the same target.
Sometimes its equal to the spec dot, other times its 2/3 of the delve damage of the dot. Why does the baseline do inconsistent damage when the spec has points equal to my level? 

Baseline spell damage variance is determined by how far away from composite level 50 your character’s specialization is and not whether your character has the maximum specialization for their level.

For instance, a level 24 Mentalist that has 24 specialization in Mentalism and +4 to their Mentalism magic skill has only 29 composite specialization in Mentalism and so baseline damage variance will still be quite large. At level 39, a character can have a maximum of +8 from items and +2 skills from realm rank for a total of 49 composite in a specialization. There will therefore still be some variance when using the baseline damage spell, although very little. Once the composite specialization hits 50 or more, baseline spell damage variance should be zero.

Mind yourselves out there, and enjoy the weekend 🙂
 

Update 10:00 AM EST / 3:00 PM GMT: The Ywain server is up, thank you for your patience!

The Ywain server is coming down now to perform emergency server maintenance to fix an issue accessing some battleground and housing regions.

This downtime should be completed in under 2 hours.

We appreciate your patience and understanding as we resolve this matter!

The Grab Bag is here with your questions and our answers!

Hope you’re all planning on hopping over to Pendragon to check out and try our latest changes in the Patch 1.127b update! 🙂

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.

On to the questions! 

How long will there be between when the patch goes live and houses being repossessed?

Here’s a full breakdown of how house repossession will work when 1.127 goes live:

1. Any houses that are currently showing as condemned and with a repossession timer on live now, but have active accounts will have their repossession timers cleared on 1.127’s launch.
2. Accounts that have been inactive for >90 days at the time of 1.127’s launch will have any houses set to a 3-day repossession timer. This will give those accounts some time to reactivate if they so choose and ensure that nothing is immediately repossessed by mistake.
3. Accounts that have been inactive for 30-90 days at the time of the launch will have any houses set to a 59-day repossession timer.
4. Accounts that have been inactive for less than 30 days at the time of the launch will not have a repossession timer set. When those accounts hit the 30-day inactivity mark their houses will be set to the normal 59-day timer.
5. After 1.127’s launch, any newly inactive account will have no action taken for 30 days. At 30 days of account inactivity, the account’s house(s) will be set to the 59-day repossession timer (for a total of 90 days of account inactivity before repossession).

Recent tests have shown that equipping the Freezing Winter mythirian increases melee resistances past the cap. In a June 2017 Grab Bag, you mentioned that mythical physical defense does not allow resistances to go past cap. Is this a bug?

Yes, it looks like a display bug on the client where it shows the resists not going above the cap. The Myth: Physical Defense stat does indeed work above the traditional resist caps. Because this is on so few items and the bonuses are relatively small, this is likely to stay as is.

After a fight has happened at a tower or keep I have noticed a couple things but I wanted to be sure. 1) EV towers keeps seem to give a bigger bonus than those in the frontiers. 2) The longer it takes for people to move storms out or they just stand in the damaging storms to delay the bonus for the enemy it also hurts their bonus too. Is any of this true or just a bad coincidences ?

You have a good eye! Towers on Ellan Vannin are defined as “keeps” in the outpost system since they allow teleportation. And the outpost contribution system treats keeps and towers differently, per the 1.121 patch notes:

• 50% of RPs earned through kills/rezzes at a keep will be added to a player’s individual contribution pool
• 20% of RPs earned through kills/rezzes at a tower will be added to a player’s individual contribution pool

There is no penalty for delaying the contribution rewards. The only requirement is that participating players be within 8,000 in-game units of the outpost to receive their reward when the successful defense or capture occurs.

Most cursed 3 piece sets give a composite 5% to one stat or another, for example the cabalist set provides 3% spell pierce off of one item, and 2% off another, this goes for all classes that I know of with one exception, the minstrel, who (like many other classes get conversion and spell pierce) however his bonuses only add up to 4% rather than 5%. I’m curious as to why this is. It is a minimal difference, but it is a factor in template building. Thank you in advance

Yes, these bonuses of either resist piercing OR conversion should add up to 5% on all class curse sets. The Minstrel’s set is being adjusted in 1.127!

With the change in Stormlord adding a stun feedback storm, does this storm affect Static Tempest also?

No, Static Tempest and other Realm Ability-based stuns like the Theurgist’s Realm Rank 5 ability Minion Rescue have been changed to bypass all stun feedback spells. This change includes stun feedbacks from the new Dazzling Array storm as well as those from item /uses.

Have a great weekend! 🙂
See you in the frontiers, and Pendragon! 

It’s a patch week Grab Bag!

Don’t forget to check out the full 1.127 patch notes and pop on our Pendragon test server to try them out 🙂

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.

Onward to the questions! 

Just curious about the % on quad/triple attack and what chances are plus if anything can effect it. Some say going 50 H2H gives you a higher chance but is there also a stat that will increase the chances etc?

First, only your composite Hand to Hand specialization level (including any amounts over 50) affects triple or quad attack rates.

10,000 swing tests:

The rates at 50+16 are as follows:
Triple: 16%
Quad: 5.75%

The rates at 44+16 are as follows:
Triple: 14%
Quad: 4.75%

Is the proc rate of a ROG weapon dependent on the quality of the item?

No, the proc rate of a ROG item is randomly generated, regardless of the item’s quality. For example: a 96% quality weapon could have an 8% proc rate and a 99% quality weapon with the same exact proccing spell could have a 5% chance; it’s entirely random.

I’ve been wondering atm how haste debuffs actually work, or rather where they kick in. For example if I had this with a sav haste buff up:

Thanks!

The example provided is almost exactly correct. The only small correction is that in the -40% attack speed reduction example, there would be an additional 1% removed from the celerity stat.

Before any debuffs:

• Weapon: 4.4
• Qui: 250
• Haste: 39
• Celerity: 15
• ToA: 10
• Speed: 1.5

-40% ASR:

• Weapon: 4.4
• Qui: 250
• Haste: 0
• Celerity: 14
• ToA: 10
• Speed: 2.04

Re the new GT system from patch 1.127….. I LOVE it but I can foresee issues when in crowded spaces such a towers/lord rooms when there are a ton of people and you can’t get a LOS to the ground. Is there a way to allow the targeting of a person to set a GT? Otherwise in those situations without pre-setting your GT as a defender you are screwed and the attacking force will have it worse when charging into a lord room/tower.

Thank you for the feedback! We’ll take a look into changing the behavior to account for crowded areas.

“Guild emblems and color schemes are no longer unique. Multiple guilds or all guilds from an alliance can now have the same emblem if they so choose.”    So does this just mean Alliance guilds can share emblems or ANY guild can have ANY emblem?

This means that any guild can have any emblem or color scheme.

Take a trip over the Pendragon over the weekend and let us know your thoughts!

See you in the frontiers! 🙂
 

Time for another edition of the Grab Bag!

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.

Let’s dive on into the questions! 

Does ranger melee ASR from lvl 50 pierce or any ASR for that matter stack with Ranger RR5?

No, the Ranger’s RR5 attack speed reduction works just like all other casted haste debuffs or melee style ASRs and does not stack with them. The higher version ASR will overwrite the lower version. In the case where both ASRs have the same debuff value, the newest debuff will overwrite the oldest.

Does wild minion also give you crit heals on your BD healing pets ? Or will WP do that since they are a spell-ish ?

Wild minion only causes critical hits from pets when they perform melee attacks, not on heals or spell casts. There is no ability that allows pets to critical hit on heals (or spell casts).

How does mastery of magery and wild power affect Heretic focus spells? Also how do basic stats like Dex, Acuity, and Piety affect the focus spells?

In general, each pulse of a Heretic’s Focus DD independently calculates the Heretic’s bonuses to magic damage (from Realm Abilities like Mastery of Magery or stats like Piety), critical hit chance, as well as the target’s resistance to the damage type. This means if mid-pulse your target were to get a debuff to their Heat magic resistance, you would see an increase in damage on your next pulse.

The dexterity stat (or other cast speed bonuses) only affects the cast speed of the initial cast of the Focus DD. Subsequent pulses have a hard-set interval that are not affected by dexterity or cast speed bonuses.

The Mastery of Magery realm ability will increase damage done by your spell casts, including the Focus DDs. That damage increase gets baked into the base damage of a pulsing Focus DD. This means that with Mastery of Magery Heretics will hit harder on their initial cast and the pulsing DD’s inherent increase will use that higher starting point to determine the subsequent pulses’ damages.

The Wild Power realm ability affects the pulsing Focus DDs a bit differently than more traditional Damage-over-Time spells. Unlike DoTs where a critical hit on application will cause each successive tick of the DoT to hit at that critical damage level, each pulse of a Heretic’s Focus DD independently calculates its chance to critical hit while only referencing the previous pulse’s base damage (sans critical damage) to determine the damage increase on the next pulse.

In other words, if you critical hit on the first pulse of a Heretic Focus DD for 100 damage + 25 critical damage, the next pulse will only reference the 100 damage and not the critical damage in determining how much it should hit for. However, if you don’t critical hit on the initial cast of a Focus DD, fret not because each pulse has its own chance to critical hit still!

Hello, what is the critical hit damage (spell) based on? Sometimes I hit for 50 another for 200… thank for your support

It is random. When attacking players, each critical hit (melee or spell) can hit anywhere from 10% to 50% of the original damage dealt. 50% of the original damage is the maximum for any critical hit except for Berserkers who can critical hit for up to 100% of their original damage when actively using their Berserk ability.

When attacking monsters, the critical hit damage cap is 100% of original damage for all classes.

One thing I’ve been really wondering is how snares and ASRs interact with speed buffs. For example, if a target running at 170% speed gets hit with a 40% snare, is it now running at 102% (170 – 40%) or 130% (170 – 40)?

Snares debuff the run speed by percentage, so using the example provided a player moving at 170% in-combat speed gets reduced by 40% down to 102% speed.

That’s it for this week. Have a great weekend! 🙂

See you in the frontiers, or maybe even Caledonia!
 

Time for the Grab Bag!

Just a note to remind everyone that you can keep up to date on reported game bugs and track their progress on our official DAoC Bug Tracker! Should you know of a bug/issue not listed, please report it via the bug-reports channel in our official Discord, or using our official forums!

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.

Onward to the questions! 

Does savage h2h and mauler fist wraps reduce shield like other dual wield lines?

From our August 2018 grab bag:

Yes, both Hand to Hand and Fist Wraps have the same penetration bonus as Celtic Dual, Dual Wield, and Left Axe as they are also considered “dual-wielding” specializations. Block and evade chances are reduced by 25% vs dual-wielders.

In testing this, the Savage and Mauler will still likely show more blocks and evades over the same number of tested styles than one of the Light Tanks would but this is because of their comparatively lower weaponskill and not due to a difference in their penetration bonus.

Does the bonus level on weapon(s) affect the chance to proc? Ex. Drakulv axe has a bonus level of 50 vs. Hollowed cleaver bonus level 46?

No, the bonus level does not affect an item’s proc rate chance. Only a given weapon’s (or armor’s) proc rate chance value controls this.

Proc rates are set individually on each item and so this can depend. Typically weapon (and armor) proc rates are between 7 and 12%. Some two-handed weapon procs do have a 3-5% higher proc rate but most two-handed weapons have identical proc rates to their one-handed versions.

Could you explain why Theurgist pets don’t die when the theurgist does?

The technical reason is because Theurgist pets (and Animist fire and forget turrets) are non-controlled pets that receive their instructions when summoned. This means that once summoned they have their own AI and are disconnected from their owner and so are unaffected if their original caster dies.

Conversely, controlled pets on classes are directly under control of their caster. This means the pet follows the caster, the caster can direct if the pet is in aggressive, defensive, or passive mode and can direct where it moves and who it attacks at all times, but does nothing on its own without those real-time instructions. Without a controller, this sort of pet has no one to direct it and so is set to be de-summoned whenever its controller dies.

In terms of balance, there are many limitations Theurgist pets have specifically:

• Can only attack 1 target for their entire duration
• Low hitpoints
• Only survive for their duration contrasted to controlled pets which last indefinitely
• Limited to how many can be summoned at once

Animist FnF pets have similar limitations as well:

• Can switch targets but cannot move
• Ground-targeted
• Low hitpoints
• Only survive for their duration contrasted to controlled pets which last indefinitely
• Limited to how many can be summoned at once

The above limitations are just inherent to the pets themselves but there are also many counters such as interrupting their casters before they can get the pets out, killing the pets directly with 1-2 casts or melee swings, and the myriad AoE and single-target pet-clearing abilities available.

Both are iconic classes and provide a unique strategy and playstyle to their respective realm. These differences are part of what makes DAoC so great! Changing this fundamental aspect of these pets living beyond their caster is not something we think warrants changing. That said, if you have constructive feedback regarding these, or any classes, we would love to hear from you!

On the DAOC website ‘search tool’ I can search for “Howling Wraith Bracer”, select the “Midgard” realm, and it displays several results.
The top option, Howling Wraith Bracer shows it drops on ALL 3 REALMS and that it drops from “Kertom”. However, after spending roughly 50 orbs (1 orb = 5 tries. Each try yields 3 random items. So a total of 750 random items) not once did a Howling Wraith Bracer drop.

Additionally time was spent farming KERTOM directly (30+ kills, no bracer). So the question is, is the database faulty (displaying an item for a realm that doesn’t exist on that realm) or is there an issue with the drop rate? Does this item even drop on Mid? A 3rd-party website shows this as a “Hib only” drop. A second item with this issue was also found, Grymvag Mithril-capped Fang. Says it drops on ALL 3 realms, looks like a “Mid only” drop though.

The Howling Wraith Bracer has +Shadow Mastery skill on it, which is for Vampiirs. It is therefore a Hibernia-only drop. Similarly, Midgard only gets the Howling Soothsayer Bracer to drop from Kertom.

The “realms” flag on the item search is looking at the item itself to see if it is flagged for a specific realm. Since accessories can work across realms (unlike armor which has different resistances depending on the realm or weapons that have realm-specific skills), most of it is flagged as usable by all realms even if it only drops in or has stats that apply to a single realm.

For now, the database simply returns which monster or quest the item comes from but does not differentiate which realm’s monster drops it if there are multiple versions. This is something on our list to improve with the search!

Previously there was a push to get DAOC on Steam.  It was Greenlit by Steam but never progressed because of the EA – Origin – Steam dynamic at the time. It appears that EA is now again allowing their games on Steam.   Any chance that DAOC will be allowed on Steam?   Are there any discussions with EA to do so?

Yes, this is still under discussion. We are still working towards getting Dark Age of Camelot onto Steam as soon as possible!

 

Have a great weekend, everyone!
And to our US players, Happy 4th of July! 🙂