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THE HERALD

  • General

    Friday Grab Bag – 11/30/2018

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    Welcome to this week’s Grab Bag!

    Our newsletter goes out later today, so make sure you are signed up to get all the updates on events, community news, and more!

    As always, thanks everyone for your questions, keep ’em coming! You can send in any game related questions you have for our DAoC Devs through our Grab Bag submission form. Please note this is for game questions, feedback/ideas/suggestions should be sent in through our feedback form.

    Read on for glory!


    Why is it that the Bard Crescendo ability is on a 2.8s interruptible cast while the Skald and Minstrel Crescendo ability is instant cast? Is there a reason the Bard Crescendo ability can’t be an uninterruptible cast (not necessarily instant)?

    There are usually a myriad of reasons for why one class gets an ability (or the same ability but in a different form) than other classes in other realms and this case is no different.

    First, we don’t just look at Minstrels’, Skalds’, and Bards’ strengths and weaknesses and then choose their form of Crescendo, we look at the realms and their classes as a whole too. This includes analysing synergies that exist among the various classes within each realm on the small and large scales. Second, we look at the overall performance and popularity of each class across the different playstyles. And finally, we analyse what each class can bring to a fight across the different playstyles.

    Bards’ combination of their casting-focused support role, popularity, synergy with the other classes in their realm across every playstyle, and overall performance mandate that their Crescendo be a normal-casted spell. In short, making the spell uninterruptible would be too near to making it an instant cast and would be too powerful for our liking.

    What caused the lowering of controlled pets hit points? 10% is really significant. Help us understand why.

    When pets were generally increased in effectiveness (including hit-point and other bonuses) in Patch 1.122B they were improved a bit too much. In subsequent versions pets were reduced back down to more acceptable levels. With 1.125, there were still some pets that were enjoying their 1.122B hit-point values while all other pets had been reduced already. The 1.125 reductions merely put the remaining pets in-line with the other pet reductions.

    I understand that the DF bow may be the optimal weapon of choice for archers, but I’m also a fan of the astral bow which along with the DF bow both have good proc rates.  My questions is about other bows:

    Gjalpinulva, Tuscars, and Nychta’s Heartstring Bows.   I like the dragon bow because it has 5% spell pierce and it would be viable except that it breaks mez poison.  And the Tuscars bow has a 204 DD proc and the Nychta’s Hearstring has the 20% abs proc; these hardly proc: 1:30 on the Tuscars and 1:50 on the Nychta’s.  I will say that the endurance drain on the Nychta’s procs more than the abs debuff, but basically these two bows do not proc at the same rate as the astral bow or df bow.  Is this because these two bows overperformed?  Could you make a few adjustments with some of the bows and procs to add a little more flavor to the archery type, so we aren’t using one bow all the time?

    While the Astral Bow of Dismay’s proc rate is indeed high, the Darkness Falls’ Champion Level 15 bows and the other bows listed all have extremely similar proc rates (within 1-2%). This is unlikely to be changed.

    When playing my wizard, I noticed something with the loyalty cloak. When you cast to reset timer on class abilities, why doesn’t this affect class realm abilities as well since some are class specific? All of the toa abilities come back, but realm timers like decimation trap don’t reset.

    The short answer is that it would be too powerful of an ability if it reset realm abilities in addition to the class abilities. There is not a way for it to only reset certain ‘class-specific’ realm abilities and not other realm abilities like Mastery of Concentration, etc.

    For additional context, class-specific realm abilities are still classified as realm abilities and not “class” abilities. Class abilities are only the abilities that a class specializes for or gets as baseline as they level up.

    Any update on when Name changes will be available again?

    Barring any unforeseen circumstances we plan to re-enable them sometime next week.

    That’s it for this week! 

    Don’t forget to tune into my streams on our official Twitch channel on Saturday nights at 5:30PM EST / 10:30PM GMT for all the chat, action, and giveaways!

    Thanks as always and enjoy the weekend 🙂

  • Patch Notes

    Live Server Downtime for Patch 1.125B

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    Update: 9:50 AM EST / 2:50 PM GMT: Ywain and Gaheris are open to all players!

    The Ywain and Gaheris servers will be coming down tomorrow, November 28th (5:45 AM EST / 10:45 AM GMT) to deploy Patch 1.125B.

    Check out the full patch notes by clicking on the image below!

     


  • General

    Harvest Celebrations

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    Update November 27th: Harvest celebrations have drawn to a close. Characters that already have the event quests active may still complete them at the Festival Steward but she will no longer offer new quests.

    It’s that time of season when the leaves have changed color and are steadily falling, when the wind arrives with a chill, and the bounty of the year’s harvest is ready to be served and celebrated!


    Harvest Celebration Event

    • The realms are humming with anticipation for their upcoming feasts and local festivals!

      • Help the realms’ Festival Steward recover a lost shipment of food and root out some secret stores of delicious desserts!

        • The repeatable RvR quests ‘[Harvest] Lost Turkey’ and ‘[Harvest] [Daily] Secret Provisions’ are now available at each realm’s strength relic town at the Festival Steward NPC!

          • Earn bounty points for your efforts!
          • The Tower of Korazh, Deifrang, and Graoch on Ellan Vannin will have sturdier doors for this event’s duration.


    Farmer’s Market Festival

    • The Farmer’s Market Festival makes its return to the following locations:

      • Albion: Ludlow
      • Midgard: Vasudheim
      • Hibernia: Ardee
    • Visit the Festival Matron and go bobbing for apples to earn some house trophies!
    • Let Captain Mack in Albion, Captain Marks in Midgard, or Captain Geddes in Hibernia regale you with their tales of a shark THIS big on the high seas and see if you can avenge their crews to earn the Sharkblood Bracer!

     

  • General

    1.125 Live Hot Fix #2

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    We’ve got a few more fixes and notes for your enjoyment! Once again, thank you all for the continued feedback and bug reports!

    Developer’s note:

    • We’re currently aware of and still working on fixes for the following issues:

      • Autoloot and autosplit not working on characters that have a completely empty backpack inventory.

        • We’re working on a fix for this but for now a way to rectify the issue is to move a new item into their backpack from their /bank and that will allow the loot to once again be split to that character.
        • So long as characters have 1 item in their backpack, autoloot and autosplit should continue to work in the meantime.
    • Molvik’s keep and towers all upgrading when the Stone Quarry is taken instead of just Molvik’s keep.

    Click the link below for some tweaks and bug fixes that are now live!

    Hot Fix Notes

    Client

    Ability Icon Cooldowns

    • Fixed an issue with Master Level and certain class ability quickbar icons showing as active when they were still on cooldown.

      • Players will need to log out and re-launch their client to correct this issue if they are currently logged into the game.

    Dynamic Population Bonus

    • Fixed an issue causing the current bonus amounts to not display in-game on the realmwar map’s bonuses window.

      • Players will need to log out and re-launch their client to correct this issue if they are currently logged into the game.

    Gaheris Keep Wall Damage

    • (Gaheris server only) Keep walls should no longer be taking less damage than normal.


    Realm vs Realm


    Molvik Dynamic Siege Objectives

    • Molvik’s keep will no longer be set as under siege when its towers are attacked.
    • Molvik’s Quarrymaster and Siegemaster now fight back against attackers.
    • Some additional Mercenaries now spawn inside the Molvik center keep when the Mercenary Camp is active.
    • The Mercenary Captain and mercenaries should now switch allegiances properly as the camp changes hands.


    Item Changes

    Bountycrafting

    • Recipes for the Ice Shard weapon have been added to the Frozen Weapons category for all realms.

      • Players will need to log out and re-launch their client to correct this issue if they are currently logged into the game.

    Mithril Shop Satyr Mask

    • Satyr Masks are now dyable with CLOTH dyes.

      • If an already-applied patterned mask says it is not dyable, a relog or zoning screen will correct the issue.
      • Cloth dyes should be used even if the helm is another armor type.


    Bug Fixes

    Pet Abilities

    • Fixed an issue preventing the underhill compatriot’s stun style from firing.

    Pin Style

    • Fixed an issue causing the Pin style to erroneously play its animation when the ability wasn’t being applied.

     

  • General

    Live Server Downtime – Emergency Maintenance

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    Update 5:35 PM EST / 10:35 PM GMT: Ywain is once again open to all players!
    Update 5:15 PM EST / 10:15 PM GMT: Gaheris is once again open to all players! 

    The Ywain and Gaheris servers are coming down now to perform emergency server maintenance involving a crash.

    This downtime should be completed in under 3 hours. 

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

  • Patch Notes

    1.125 Live Hot Fix

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    We’ve been thrilled with the reception of patch 1.125 and want to thank you all for the feedback and bug reports you’ve sent in thus far, keep them coming!

    Developer’s note:

    • We’re currently aware and still working on fixes for the following issues:

      • Master level ability icon timers appearing as though their abilities are not on cooldown even though the ability is actually on cooldown.
      • Population bonuses not displaying on the realm bonuses window.

    Click the link below for some tweaks and bug fixes that are now live!

    Hot Fix Notes

    World

    Alchemy Tradeskill

    • Cauldrons of Tenacity recipes should no longer be asking for extra ingredients when attempting to craft it.
    • Stardust recipes should now show up as available to characters with 1,000 alchemy tradeskill (users may need to re-run their camelot.exe patcher to see this change).

    Knoc Meayll

    • Fixed an issue with some collision holes (users may need to re-run their camelot.exe patcher to see this change).


    Realm vs Realm


    Supplies for the Cause quest

    • This quest has been split into 2 versions as follows:

      • Supplies for the Cause

        • Must be level 50
        • Must not be champion level 15 yet
        • No weekly lockout, can be done as many times as possible until the character reaches CL15.
        • Automatically applies any earned champion levels upon quest completion.
        • Rewards 5,000 bounty points, several hundred gold, and massive amounts of experience per completion.
        • Asks players to gather 25 rubble and 25 supplies.
        • Still obtained from the Cargomaster NPCs near the Merchant keep docks.
      • [Weekly] Supplies for the Cause

        • Now requires that characters be champion level 15 to obtain.
        • No longer awards experience.
        • All other rewards, requirements, and tasks remain unchanged.


    Item Changes

    Mithril Shop Changes

    • Name Change Tokens are temporarily unavailable as we review some character naming processes.

      • They will be back as soon as we are happy with how everything is working!

    Magic Orbs

    • Magic Orbs should now only give out the correct realm’s randomly-generated loot.

    Speed of the Hunt

    • Speed of the Hunt gems have been reduced in cost from 50 to 25 bounty points
    • Greater Speed of the Hunt gems have been reduced in cost from 1,000 to 500 bounty points
    • Superior Speed of the Hunt gems have been reduced in cost from 5,000 to 2,500 bounty points

    Boxes of Rare Potions

    • These have had their cost reduced from 1,000 to 500 points.

    Boxes of Rare Alchemy Components

    • These have been increased to award from 2-5 to 3-5 alchemy components per /use and their cost has been reduced from 2,500 to 1,000 bounty points.

    Curse Sets

    • Hunter’s Rabid Eye Boots now has the correct 3% spell pierce instead of 2%.

    Class Changes

    Champion Level Abilities

    • Anti-venom body magic resist buff can now be cast on the move.

    Friar

    • Friar’s instant taunt no longer shares a recast timer with their Heal-over-Time.

    Heretic

    • Fixed an issue with their instant-cast debuffs triggering a timer while in melee combat.
    • The new ablative buff + effectiveness/melee haste debuff spells have been re-worked and fixed as follows:

      • Cast speed is now 3.0s and can be modified by dexterity and casting stat bonuses.
      • The ablative and debuffs now always apply on the enemy target and last their full 60s duration.

        • However, the ablative and debuff can no longer be re-applied onto the enemy target until the ablative dissipates or its duration expires.

    Mauler

    • The level 45 Gift of Hibernia now correctly costs 25% power when cast.

  • Patch Notes

    Live Server Downtime for Patch 1.125

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    Update 5:00 PM EST / 10:00 PM GMT: Ywain and Gaheris are once again open to all players!

    Update 11:45 AM EST / 4:45 PM GMT: Ywain and Gaheris are down to fix a server crash issue. Thank you for your patience and understanding as we work to resolve this matter!

    Update 11:30 AM EST / 4:30 PM GMT: Ywain and Gaheris are once again open to all players!

    The Ywain and Gaheris servers will be coming down tomorrow, November 13th (5:45 AM EST / 10:45 AM GMT) to deploy Patch 1.125!

    Developer’s Note:

    • All bounty points will be capped at 500,000 bounty points on each character when the servers come back up tomorrow so please consider this your last warning and chance to spend any extra bounty points!

      • Additionally, the bounty merchants will no longer sell their trophies or tokens once the patch is live.

    Check out the full patch notes by clicking on the image below!

     


    Highlights

    • Race, Gender, and Name change services are now available for purchase at the Mithril shop!
    • Your votes have been tallied and 2 new race/class combinations are now available in each realm!
    • Earn end-game gear exclusively through RvR with the new Bountycrafting system!
    • Keep difficulty, ram and siege tower adjustments plus new gatehouse doors spice up siege warfare!
    • Check out the new dynamic objective system in the Molvik battleground!
    • New streamlined RvR quests and rewards await!
    • Buggane’s Obelisk is now found on Ellan Vannin permanently!
    • The Ruined Areas in the Frontier have been significantly expanded and improved!
    • Client improvements and crash fixes galore!
    • Stay on top of the new class adjustments and read the notes!

     
  • General

    Friday Grab Bag – 11/09/2018 – 1.125 Edition

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    With Patch 1.125C hitting Pendragon earlier today, we decided to address some of the most popular queries that have arisen regarding changes in Patch 1.125 🙂 

    As always, thanks everyone for your questions and feedback with 1.125! You can send in any game related questions you have for our DAoC Devs through our Grab Bag submission form. Please note this is for game questions, feedback/ideas/suggestions should be sent in through our feedback form.

    Read on for the Grab Bag: 1.125 Edition!

    Why did the Jade simulacrum get the ability to [taunt] but not the Spiritmaster’s spirit warrior and Enchanter’s underhill compatriot pets?

    This is because the Jade Simulacrum uses an any-time style that debuffs its targets’ damage, preventing it from having an any-time taunt style. The spirit warrior and underhill compatriot have any-time taunt styles already.

    What was the reasoning of reducing the damage of the spec. lifetaps on Spiritmaster and Cabalist?

    Lifetaps at 199 delve were putting out a bit more DPS than intended, more than 219 delve standard direct damage spells due to the way lifetap damage is calculated and their faster cast speed. Combined with these classes’ utility we felt that their DPS needed to be reduced back to its old values.

    Why Climb Wall for Savage over Skald? While its appreciated that savages get climb walls, would putting it at 49 spec instead of 50 have been better?

    We felt that Skalds are already performing at a very high level across multiple playstyles and already bring a lot of different abilities to a fight.

    While it is true that Savages are also a generally strong class, they are much more specialized in DPS and don’t have as much utility on the large-scale. It also allows us an opportunity to differentiate the roles of Savage and Berserker a bit. Depending on the results of this change, there may be more changes made to the Savage class in the future (but likely not 1.125) that further this differentiation.

    Additionally, by adding climb-walls at level 50 specialization, it prevents Savages from going their “optimal” specialization of 44 H2H with 49 Savagery. Instead, they must sacrifice their weapon specialization a bit in order to train climb-walls.

    In the last Grab Bag you said you had Curse adjustments in the works, can you expand on that and will we see the changes in 1.125?

    We’re planning on doing an overall pass on the Curse Campaign’s difficulty that should lower the amount of players needed to complete it. While this likely won’t be in the 1.125 patch we do plan to have it in before the end of the year!

    When can we expect to see 1.125 go live?

    Soon! *wink*

    Enjoy the weekend, all!
    See you on the battlefield 🙂

  • Patch Notes

    1.125C Pendragon Patch Notes

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    Patch 1.125C is now up on the Pendragon test server!

    Click the image below to check out the latest patch notes! We’re nearing the home stretch for Patch 1.125 and look forward to your continued feedback

    Important Note:

    • We highly suggest duplicating your game directory and using the duplicate copy as a Pendragon-only game directory *before* patching and testing on Pendragon.

      • ​This means duplicating the entire “Labyrinth” folder (usually found at C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\Labyrinth) to another location and using that copied folder exclusively for Pendragon testing.
      • If you do not do this, you *will* experience issues when patching from Pendragon back to live.

        • To force the live client to fix these issues, you will need to delete the mft.myp in your game’s directory and then run the camelot.exe patcher again.

    For those interested in testing on Pendragon, follow the character copy process here!

     
     


    Highlights

    • Buggane’s Obelisk is now found on Ellan Vannin permanently!
    • Check out the Molvik Dynamic Keep Objective improvements based directly on last week’s playtest feedback!
    • Several class adjustments based on your feedback!

     
  • General

    Live Server Maintenance (AWS)

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    Update 9:00 AM EST / 2:00 PM GMT: All servers are once again online!

    The Ywain, Gaheris, Pendragon and all archived servers will be coming down tomorrow, November 5th (8:00 AM EST / 1:00 PM GMT) to perform routine server maintenance.

    This downtime should completed in under 3 hours. Intermittent downtime may be noticed with the Account Center and the Herald websites but any issues reaching those sites should clear up within a few minutes.

    We appreciate your patience and understanding as we perform this short downtime.