THE HERALD

It’s Grab Bag time!

Our August newsletter goes out later today, so keep an eye on your inboxes! We have some more sneak peeks you won’t want to miss 🙂 If you haven’t signed up yet, you can do so by entering your email address here!

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.

Continue reading below for the questions!

Does mastery of focus affect witchcraft dots? I seem to have an unusually high resist rate on the first 3 dots in the Doom chain. It seems that mastery of focus 3 would be enough according to its description but it doesn’t seem to do anything for my resist rates.

Yes, Mastery of Focus would raise the spell level of DoTs for resist purposes. Remember though that level 50 spells still have a 10% chance to be resisted.

Is it possible to add another feasible method of obtaining Orb/Cache of Reforming Energies? Perhaps via bps or the currency exchange merchant?

Right now, one of the best ways to obtain reforming energies is by defeating doppelgangers in the frontiers and earning doppelganger shards, which have a chance to drop reforming energies.

With 1.125, we’ll be removing the doppelganger shards as drops (to help alleviate inventory issues when in RvR) and instead allowing the shards to be purchased directly for bounty points. This should effectively increase the overall supply and availability of doppelganger shards and therefore the supply of reforming energies too.

Hi, I was wondering when are you activating Catacombs again? All of the Dragon Curse chapters have been released already. Some of us miss hunting there (zones, dungeons etc).

Catacombs regions are still under construction and are currently planned for release after Endless Conquest is out. While these areas do and did have lots of great content, much or all of it ran parallel to many other encounters and content in the rest of the world, which contributed to splitting up the game’s population too much.

Catacombs’ re-release will be focused on high-level single-player to group-size encounters that reward *cosmetic* options for existing loot. That said, we have heard your feedback regarding access to the Darkspire instance and will be providing access to the instance only, with patch 1.125!

I have a level 50 Bainshee. Is there any way in the future you can fix it where the volume on the Banshees be turned down some? The screaming is so annoying and loud. Several of us hate to turn down the game volume for just for one character. Thank you.

Noted! We’ll take a look/listen and adjust accordingly.

Can you please confirm that “alacritous” weapons proc in RvR zones.  I tested them recently, and they seemed to fire are a reasonable rate on the test dummies, but I never saw them go off in a couple of days of RvR, and assumed the proc only worked in PvE.  Others have told me they do work in RvR, but have an abnormally low proc rate.  Perhaps you could confirm this as well?  Thanks.

Yes, these weapons do proc in RvR. Their proc rates are set to fairly standard values as well, so it may have just been an unlucky streak.

That’s it for this week!
Have a good one, and enjoy the bonuses 🙂

On Ywain:

• 25% bonus to RP gain in all NF zones (including the Labyrinth)
• 100% bonus to normal XP gain in all classic zones and dungeons
• 50% bonus to normal BP in all NF zones

On Gaheris:

• 100% bonus to normal XP gain in all classic zones and dungeons
• 50% bonus to normal BP gain in the capital cities
• 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

Time for another Friday Grab Bag!

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.

Continue reading below for the questions!

I’ve heard that the Minstrel pulse charm (and the ability for the Minstrel to hold higher con pets) is determined by Instrument + Realm Rank; years ago I heard that charisma also played a role. What’s the determining factor?

For both the Minstrel and Mentalist pulse charms, the resistances to the charm pulses after their initial cast are only affected by the level of the character and their composite Instrument or Light specialization values. Having a maximum composite specialization level allows for fewer resistances and allows Minstrels and Mentalists the ability to charm higher level mobs. Charsima and Intelligence have no effect on the pulse charms’ resistance rates.

As an additional note, the Mastery of Focus realm ability also does not affect the resistance rates on the subsequent pulses of the charms but does affect the initial cast on the mob that starts the charm song.

There has been some controversy regarding Hand to Hand and Fist Wraps – do they benefit from the same penetration bonus as CD/DW/LA (vs Block and Evade)?

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.

Can you explain how Mauler’s cast damage works? There is not a whole lot of knowledge regarding the class, so some people say that stats affect the magic damage of the mauler and others say that stats do not affect it, it seems as though there is not general knowledge when it comes to Caster Maulers.

There is no “casting-stat” for Mauler Aura Manipulation casts. This is why the delves on their abilities are generally much higher than other classes.

Damage variance is affected by the Aura Manipulation specialization value, just like how all other casting specializations work. TOA stats like spell damage%, resist pierce%, etc and realm abilities like Mastery of Magery also still affect its damage potential, just like how they work in all other cases. The only difference for Aura Manipulation damage-spells is that normal stats like strength, acuity, etc do not affect their damage.

Hello!  I’ve noticed a discrepancy in the stated power cost and the actual power cost percent power cost spells.

Thanks

After running some tests it seems like you may have a sword/shield equipped instead of a staff with a focus bonus stat. Going s/s on your Warlock does have its benefits but without the focus bonus, the power cost is going to be much higher than it would be with a staff equipped. For instance, with a sword/shield equipped, the spells were costing 36% and 30% as reported; but with a focus staff the level 46 group heal only takes 25% power when using Solid Cast and only 22% power when using Solid Cast+ from the Curse set.

Midsummer’s Wrap’s 10% self abs overwrites cl 5% abs, any chance we can change this?

The Champion Level ability, Damage Ward, a self-ABS% buff is now changed to not be overwritten by other ABS% of the same type. This will affect very few other ABS% abilities like Battler and Midsummer’s.

Have a great weekend all! 🙂

Welcome to this week’s Grab Bag!

Just a reminder to not miss or forget our giveaway streams live on Twitch on Saturday nights at approximately 10:30PM GMT / 5:30PM EST! Join me as I stream the frontiers (lengthy delay, don’t worry) for some chat, fun, and giveaways including a 1 month game time, 425 Mithril pack, and a chance to spin the Wheel of Loot where you could win game timecodes, Mithril, dragon-egg pet, or some of the new BP items added recently! 

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 should be sent in through our feedback form.

Read on for the questions!

In the Friday Grab Bag from 7/20/2018 you mention changes in patch 1.124 for setting prices on a consignment merchant. However, I tested these changes today and the only thing I can do is hold SHIFT + click the number increment spin control and have values increment by 10’s. Increment by 100’s and 1000’s as described are not working. Is there something that I am missing?

Our mistake.

The Incrementing with CTRL+Left-click and CTRL+SHIFT+Left-click for now only works on the “default” value chooser window (the one you see when selecting money from your paperdoll, on the trade window, or when editing stacks of items). We have the consignment merchant money selector window on our list for this update too, but it’s a bit more involved and so isn’t part of 1.125.

Apologies for the confusion!

Should the “Bonus to Heal Effectiveness” increase the healing of the Animist:

What about “Life tap” spells in general?

The Grove Druid and the Shroom of Life fire and forget pets are not affected by a character’s heal bonus stat simply because they are duration-based pets that can select their own targets once spawned and are not a directed at a specific target from the Animist. It’s a nuanced difference because the Rejuvenating Spirit line of heals are also a duration-based pet but they are specifically directed towards a target by the Animist and so are affected by the Animist’s healing effectiveness stat.

Regen spells are not affected by the Animist’s healing effectiveness stat since health regeneration spells are separate from healing spells. The stat that would coincide with a regen spell would be the mythical health regeneration stat; which would stack with a health regen buff (if a pet could have the stat). The Healing effectiveness stat would only affect heal-over-times or “regen” spells that actually print out a healing value to the target each tick, and not ones that simply increase the rate of base health regeneration.

Lastly, lifetaps are not considered “healing” spells. They heal a straight percentage value based on the damage dealt. They are not affected by the healing effectiveness stat at all.

Does the 15% abs debuff from pict/Ancient Longsword stack with the Hallowed Sword 10% abs debuff?  Both icons appear in a test duel, not sure if it is stacking or co-existing, if they do stack does this give a 25% abs debuff?

No, they co-exist but the ABS% debuff that was applied *first* taking precedence, regardless of the delve value. The same can be said when there is an absorption debuff that has a delve of “-X%” instead of “X%”. The debuff that is applied first is the one that is used for damage calculations.

The lone exception to this are the special ABS% debuffs for assassin Critical Strike styles that can stack with each other and the normal ABS% debuffs too.

Does the CL 5% abs buff stack with casters self abs buff?

Yes.

Is there any way you can create a new potion in Alchemy – Cauldron of Supremacy/Celerity etc. which has higher charges with the corresponding ingredient increase?

This is something planned with the 1.125 patch, stay tuned for details!

Until next time…..see you in the frontiers! 🙂

Midsummer Event update: The Spirit of War’s Mark buff now applies to all players in the same zone that the Spirit of War is in, instead of just in a radius immediately around the keep. This also extends credit out to the entire zone for the [Midsummer] Spirit of War kill-quest. Happy hunting!

The Midsummer celebration is upon us with a brand new event! Midsummer and the traveling merchants will run from today, July 26th, 2018, through August 28th, 2018.

Read on for the full notes, including some Hot Fixes which are now live!

Midsummer Event

A brand new Midsummer Event is now live!

Find and speak with the following NPCs to participate:

• Guy in Albion’s strength relic town (Catterick Hamlet)
• Garmr in Midgard’s strength relic town (Godrborg)
• Salle in Hibernia’s strength relic town (Criar Treflan)

The event is made up of 2 stages:

• During Stage 1 of the event, level 50 characters will be offerred the [Midsummer] Dragon Eggs quest from Guy, Garmr, or Salle.
  • Each completion of this quest grants 1,000 realm points!
• The first realm to complete 150 of the [Midsummer] Dragon Eggs quests wins the first stage!
  • When one realm wins, the other 2 realms’ progress is not lost and they can pick up where they left off after stage 2 is complete and the event has reset.
  • After a realm wins, no realms will be able to turn in the [Midsummer] Dragon Eggs quest again until the next stage is completed and the event has reset.
  • Players can speak with Guy, Garmr, or Salle in their relic towns to check the event’s current [status].

When a realm completes Stage 1, Stage 2 begins.

• During Stage 2 of the event, level 50 characters will be offerred the [Midsummer] Spirit of War quest from Guy, Garmr, or Salle. A Dark Dragon will spawn and CAPTURE one of the following enemy realm keeps:
  • Albion is victorious: Nottmoor Faste, Blendrake Faste, Hlidskialf Faste, Dun Crimthainn, Dun Bolg, or Dun da Behnn
  • Midgard is victorious: Caer Berkstead, Caer Erasleigh, Caer Sursbrooke, Dun Crimthainn, Dun Bolg, or Dun da Behnn
  • Hibernia victorious: Caer Berkstead, Caer Erasleigh, Caer Sursbrooke, Nottmoor Faste, Blendrake Faste, or Hlidskialf Faste
  • The captured keep is chosen randomly.
    • However, a keep can only be captured if the winning realm does not already own it.
• Dark Dragons repeatedly destroy the outer walls of any keep they are flying over.
  • For the duration of this event, keep walls on all keeps will not provide realm points when repaired. Keep doors still provide realm points when repaired.
• Once a keep has been captured by the Dark Dragon, any realm can take it and defend it.
  • Once a realm has taken the keep, the keep behaves as normal and the Dark Dragon will not ever re-capture it; however the outer keep walls will still be repeatedly destroyed as long as the Dark Dragon is alive.
• The Spirit of War will spawn to battle the Dark Dragon at the keep.
  • Players that fight within the same zone that the Spirit of War is currently in will receive the “Spirit of War’s Mark” – a 75% realm point buff that lasts 30 seconds and refreshes instantly so long as you remain in the same zone.
    • This buff does not stack with or overwrite Buggane’s Folly or Lone Wolf buffs; however if either of those buffs are currently active they will need to be dropped for the Spirit of War’s Mark buff to affect the character.
• Once a Dark Dragon has spawned and captured a keep, the [Midsummer] Spirit of War quest will become available from Guy, Garmr, and Salle.
  • This quest asks players to earn 25 enemy realm kills while they have the Spirit of War’s Mark buff active.
    • Players can also receive the quest by heading to the keep that the Spirit of War is flying above (8,000 units). 
  • To receive quest kill credit, players will need to fight in the same zone that the Spirit of War is currently in.
  • Complete this quest to earn the Midsummer’s Triumphant Wrap!
• After the Dark Dragon and Spirit of the War have battled over a keep for 45 minutes, the Spirit of War will summon Dragon Ballista siege weapons that can be used to kill the Dark Dragon.
  • These Dragon Ballista will do negligible damage to everything except the Dark Dragon – but beware, the Dark Dragon doesn’t like their attention!
  • Killing the Dark Dragon will cause the inner keep to be destroyed and it’s door to be opened!
  • Once the Dark Dragon is killed, the Spirit of War will only remain so long as there is still a battle being waged at the keep.
• If, after roughly 3 and a half hours, the Dark Dragon has not been killed, it will retreat from the battlefield.
  • Once the Dark Dragon has retreated, the Spirit of War will only remain so long as there is still a battle being waged at the keep.
  • If the Dark Dragon retreats, the inner keep and its door are not destroyed.
• Once the Spirit of War leaves a keep, the event resets and the [Midsummer] Dragon Eggs quest can be obtained and completed again.

Let the siege battles begin!

Traveling Merchants

• The Traveling Merchants make their return and hawk their wares in the following locations:
  • Albion: just outside Castle Sauvage
  • Midgard: just outside Svasud Faste
  • Hibernia: just outside Drium Ligen

Hot Fix Notes

• The [Daily] Battle of Buggane’s Obelisk quest now grants credit within the entire zone that the obelisk currently resides.
  • As such, the chance for the obelisk to spawn in Ellan Vannin has been lowered slightly. It still has the highest chance but the other locations should happen a bit more frequently now.
• The Buggane’s Obelisk no longer spawns in Emain Macha at the Hibernia maze, instead spawning in Breifine at Cavana’s Drift location on the map.
• The [Daily] A Solo Road has had its requirements changed as follows:
  • Players can now earn 1 solo kill on Ellan Vannin or at any Ruined/Maze area.
  • Players must still earn 5 solo kills anywhere in the Frontiers.
• Curse Campaign Glove reward /use timers should now behave correctly.

Time for another Grab Bag (yay!).

Midsummer’s Celebration is also just around the corner, coming next week!

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 should be sent in through our feedback form.

Read on for the questions!

My toons have only modest amounts of BP. But my guild has over 41million. How can I use some of these to buy the new BP items? Will the Guild BPs be capped after the latest update?

Guild bounty points are directly derived from the characters in the guild that have earned BPs while being members. In other words, while your character earned 10,000 bounty points, your guild’s bounty points also went up by 10,000. As such, we won’t be allowing guild BPs to be used to purchase any of the BP items or loot; nor will we be capping or lowering them after the 1.125 patch.

Guild BPs were previously used to maintain ownership of claimed keeps in the Frontiers but have not been required to that end for many years now. Right now guild BPs can only be used to buy guards and siege weapons at their claimed keep or tower. Similarly to guild merit points, guild BPs are a currency we would like to make more useful down the road!

What is the Soft and hard cap for melee DPS, not including Critical Hits. I realize every class for Melee are a little different but generally speaking how much Strength, w/styles with high damage etc would one require to achieve their optimal soft/hard damage caps. Seems like everyone has their own numbers for damage caps, i like to hear it straight from the source if you would. Thank you

The simple answer is the more strength stat you have (or strength/dexterity for the Str/Dex-based weapon skills) the closer to the melee cap your character will hit.

The style used, the character’s weapon specialization of the style being used, the character’s swing speed, and mythical melee DPS, style damage% and melee damage% stats all determine and affect what a class and character’s melee cap is. In other words, those variables actually raise or lower the character’s melee hit cap (as well as the melee damage on a given swing).

For instance, the slower your character’s swing speed (which is affected by haste/celerity buffs and the melee haste% and the quickness stats), the higher their melee cap on a given hit. Albeit, their overall melee damage-per-second (DPS) will decrease with a slower swing speed.

Strength, conversely, does not raise or lower the melee cap at all but instead determines how close to that melee cap your character will hit on a given swing.

For the vast majority of melee classes you will want as close to 400 strength as is possible, or if it’s a Str/Dex weapon skill, as close to 400 strength and 400 dexterity as possible since the average of the two stats is used for those weapons. There are diminishing returns over the 400 threshold but in some cases it can still be worthwhile to get even more strength; especially if there are no other stats/resists that are low in your character’s gear template.

Would it be possible to hand in more then 1 afrit at a time to trogo zontanos mageia? And could the /mbuy 100 cap ever be increased?

Not without significant changes to our item-stacking code unfortunately.

We can look at increasing the /mbuy cap in our next round of client updates.

I love crafting. Alchemy mostly. Twice a day every day I’m replacing bought potions on my consignment merchant, demand is high. Problem is my mouse is gonna wear out due to repetitive clicks to set some prices.
For example, pot x is set at 480g. That’s 50 mouse clicks (at the 10g per click) to 500g then 2 down to 480.  I know there’s also a way to set prices by text macro but that’s worse trying to figure out the slot no. Could the pricing process be simplified?

There are some new keyboard shortcuts (added in Patch 1.124) that will help your weary finger from all that clicking:

• The “value chooser” windows that pop up when needing to adjust currency amounts for trades, item stack amounts, or pricing now have the following keyboard shortcuts:
  • Shift+Left-click will increment the values by 10, as it always has.
  • Ctrl+Left-click will now increment the values by 100.
  • Shift+Ctrl+Left-click will now increment the values by 1,000.
  • Continuing to hold down the Left-click while engaging any of these shortcuts for more than ½ second will cause the value to continuously change without needing to re-click.

My question is about why infiltrator chest is the only item that has different toa stat caps from the stats its provide. Its 30str/10dex cap. Atm the infiltrator complete set provides 15dex/0str cap which is unbalanced compared to Nightshade (I only mention ns because both those sneaks can benefit from str/dex)

This does look like an oversight and the Infiltrator’s Darkwalker Vest should have strength cap instead of dexterity cap. We’ll put in a fix for this with the upcoming 1.125 patch in order to give players who may have setup their gear template to use the dexterity cap time to prepare any changes. Thanks for the report!

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

The Mithril Packs are once again available for purchase on the EA Origin Store!

Thank you all once again for your patience as this matter was resolved. 

Update2: According to the EA Origin team this issue is scheduled to be fixed in the evening of Monday, July 23rd.
Update: Unfortunately this issue will not be resolved today, July 18th as hoped. We’ll continue working with the EA Origin team to get this resolved as soon as possible. 

We’re currently working with the EA Origin store to correct an issue preventing the purchase of the Dark Age of Camelot Mithril packs. A few other Origin packs are also affected, including Ultima Online’s Sovereign packs, but game-time code purchases should function normally.

We hope to have this corrected no later than Monday, July 23rd and will update this post here if anything changes. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this causes and thank you for your patience and understanding as this matter is resolved.
 

It’s Grab Bag Friday!

Don’t forget about our giveaway streams live on Twitch on Saturday nights at approximately 10:30PM GMT / 5:30PM EST! Join me as I stream the frontiers (lengthy delay, don’t worry) for some chat, fun, and giveaways including a 1 month game time, 425 Mithril pack, and a chance to spin the Wheel of Loot where you could win game timecodes, Mithril, dragon-egg pet, or some of the new BP items added recently! 

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 should be sent in through our feedback form.

On to the questions!

Is the Black Weapon Enamel still on Kertom’s loot table? If so, are you able to get the dye by handing in afrits and selecting Kertom? I heard you couldn’t get the dye from handing in afrits for him.

Yes, Kertom still drops the Black Weapon Enamel and many other weapon enamels. However, it is correct that turning in reforming energies will not grant the dyes. This is because the reforming energy turn-ins only grant the realm-specific treasure and not the treasure shared across all 3 realms for a given encounter. This is something we can look at rectifying for all turn-ins down the road!

Does the Berserker’s Howling Predator Vest proc (25% melee dmg increase for 10s) stack with vendo or banespike?

Banespike and the damage proc from the Howling Predator Vest do not stack, they apply the same type of damage buff. The higher value proc will overwrite or prevent the lower value banespike from applying.

How does the 50/50 af in your template affect damage reduction? Are there any formulas you can share?

Base AF on a level 50 naked character is capped at 510 AF (or more precisely: (character level + 1) * 10). Then, an armor type’s absorption% is added onto that base to determine the base armor factor cap for that character when they are wearing their equipment. Level 50 cloth wearers would have the same cap of 510 base AF and a level 50 plate user would be capped at 683 base AF. The universal formula for this is ((character level + 1)*(armor absorption% + 1)*10).

On leather armor and up, reaching the base AF cap is possible without a base AF buff at all if each armor piece is of 100% quality and made from the highest level material for a character’s level. This is because leather armor and up have (character level+1)*2) base factor values whereas cloth armor only has character level+1 base factor and would need a base AF buff to reach its base AF cap.

The item stat of Armor Factor (capped at 50/50) is added directly to that base AF value, but is able to go over the base AF cap, just like a “spec” AF buff can.

So a Cloth wearer with a capped base AF of 510 (from their armor + base AF buff) and 50/50 AF stat on their items will see an total of 560 AF on their character; with spec AF buffs able to take their total AF even higher.

In terms of melee damage reduction, the simple answer is to say that the more AF your character has, the less damage you will take in melee. A more encompassing answer becomes complicated quickly because there are other factors like armor quality and condition that also determine how much damage is taken when a given armor piece is hit.

Armor quality affects both the chance that your armor will absorb the blow at all and if that roll is successful, how much damage will be mitigated. Armor condition also affects how much damage is mitigated.

These effects are then lumped in with the effective armor factor of the piece, its absorption, a character’s spec AF/item AF stat values, and then a host of variables from the attacker, including damage variance, to determine how much damage ends up being mitigated. And that’s about as detailed as we’re willing to get with the combat algorithm.

The 50/50 AF stat being a way to go over the base AF cap means it can be one of the few ways to directly increase your character’s melee damage mitigation though, so again, the more the better!

What is the order in which you block/parry/evade?

The order of resolution in combat is Evade, Parry, Block, Guard, Miss, Bladeturn.

Damage Conversion Question – with the new set bonus for the minstrel, 2 items have 2% conversion and in reading the specifics says:
Conversion: 2% of all damage dealt heals your POWER and ENDURANCE instead hence the implication of DAMAGE MITIGATION.

The Croc Tear Ring has been around for well a long time and introduced this concept with 5%. The otherworldly campaign brought 3% more in a belt and now 2+2 in the set pieces.  Can you confirm that this is maxed at 10% or if 2+for whatever reason I was able to get it all to work in a template, would 12% of the damage dealt be mitigated per swing/cast linearly?

Don’t forget about the newly added Gem of the Harbinger variations with +5% conversion too!

The item stat cap for conversion is 10%. Any amount over that does not affect your character.

Enjoy the weekend everyone, and see you in the frontiers! 🙂

Hot on the heels of our Producer’s Letter yesterday comes the Grab Bag!

We’ve had a lot of feedback and questions on yesterday’s Producer’s Letter so you’ll find answers and info to the most asked below 🙂 There is still a lot in the works so make sure you send in your thoughts and feedback to our feedback form!

As always, thanks for all 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. 

Read on for the questions!

Hello, I was wondering if you’d still be able/willing to check to see if either Marquis Halphas or Earl Serapis or any other mobs from  Brimstone Caverns (Alb) still drop the Belt of Deepest Darkness  or other “Deepest Darkness” items? I have been killing them but with no such items.

The drop chance for the belt is fairly rare, but it is still dropping on both Marquis Halphas and Earl Serapis.  Good luck!

How does the armor debuff on CS styles function? I see in a grab bag that the %ages can stack, but is it like an ABS debuff or is it a chance to penetrate armor (wither effect)?
Follow up: can any armor piece be withered? Or just head, chest, legs?

The Critical Strike styles use a special, stackable absorption debuff. They do not target a specific piece of equipment like armor wither debuffs but instead reduce the absorption of all equipped armor on the target by their listed amounts; just like normal ABS debuffs except that these also stack with each other.

As for armor wither debuffs like those used by Vampiirs:  only the head, chest, and legs can be targeted by them.

I’ve got my /disband macro ready for whenever I’m near death based on the plan to require targets to be grouped for the Roaming with Friends and For the Realm daily quests!

This is something that we’ve already received a lot of thoughtful feedback on and are planning on changing our approach. We’ll likely leave these quests as they are currently with no requirement that the target be grouped. Thanks again for all of your feedback!

I’m a bit confused about the newly announced in-game Race and Gender change process. Are these changes only going to be cosmetic now?

No. The in-game Race and Gender changes will still change the actual race and gender of your character; however we are planning on a cosmetic-only previewing system that players can use prior to confirming the change(s) to their characters’ race and gender.

I’m curious about the change to Otherworldly Essences and them only dropping Essences of Supremacy and Celerity or nothing at all? What is the reasoning for that?

Some of the changes to RvR rewards are aimed at de-cluttering player inventories when out RvRing more than adjusting the actual rewards. Players who run around picking up Otherworldly Essences, Otherworldy Ores, and killing Doppelgangers quickly fill up their inventory which makes for a bad experience. By moving many of these rewards to the Bounty Point merchant, players get to choose when they are filling up their inventory.

Players will still be able to gather Otherworldly Essences and have a small chance at getting an Essence of Supremacy/Celerity (same chance as they have now) or killing Doppelgangers and getting their realm point rewards without also filling up their inventory with the much more common essences or doppelganger shards that are going to be made available on the BP store.

That said, it likely won’t be exactly nothing when there isn’t a successful roll for an Essence of Supremacy/Celerity. It will more than likely be some sort of small gold or bounty point reward.

You mentioned that players would lose their extra bounty points beyond the new cap coming in Patch 1.125. Can you give us something to spend some of those extra bounty points on prior to the patch?

Absolutely! We’re planning on putting out a small hot fix next week with some goodies to purchase with those extra, hard-earned bounty points. Your ideas are welcome!

Thanks all, every bit is read and appreciated! 

Enjoy the weekend 🙂