THE HERALD

Class Changes

Items

• The Arcane Weapon Shard 3 of 3 should be dropping normally once again.
• The Cursed Dream Gauntlet’s The Dream Stone /use2 has had its effectiveness reduced from +33% mez dampen down to +20%.
• The healing-effectiveness spells on the following items have been reduced:
  • Cloak of the Loyal Paladin’s /use2: reduced from +25% to +12% healing-effectiveness
  • Cloak of the Loyal Cleric’s /use2: value remains at 10% but it is no longer a buff to heals cast on its affected targets; it is now a normal healing-effectiveness buff instead.
    • This means it will no longer co-exist or stack with the Cloak of the Paladin’s /use2 ability, or any other healing-effectiveness buffs; the higher value effect will overwrite any lower values.
  • The Cursed Life Gauntlets’ /use2: reduced from +25% to +10% healing-effectiveness. Duration is increased from 5 to 10 minutes.
• The Ghostly Medal of Valor /use Ghostly Regeneration has had its heal value reduced from 10%/tick to 7%/tick.
• Illusion /uses and spells should now only last their intended duration and should no longer become “stuck” on the target for the duration of the first illusion’s effect.
  • This means if an illusion with a 10 minute duration is active, like Shades of Mist, and a 60s illusion is subsequently applied, like the Bat-form from the Halloween Helms, the Shades of Mist form will return when the Bat-form’s duration has run its course.
• Minstrel’s Unyielding and Freezing Vagabond Vests’ Ravage ability now properly gives the Minstrel’s pet the damage boost instead of the Minstrel.

Assassins

Envenom specialization

• Tranquilizing Miasma has had its duration reduced from 10s to 8s.
• The weaponskill and stat debuff poison has been adjusted as follows:
  • The strength and dexterity stat debuff components of this poison have been removed entirely.
  • The constitution stat debuff component and values remain unchanged.
  • The weaponskill debuff component has been increased as follows to compensate:
    • Level 7 – Weakening Poison – weaponskill debuff component increased from 5% to 8%.
    • Level 17 – Inhibiting Poison – weaponskill debuff component increased from 8% to 11%.
    • Level 27 – Enervating Poison – weaponskill debuff component increased from 10% to 15%.
    • Level 37 – Unnerving Poison – weaponskill debuff component increased from 14% to 20%.
    • Level 47 – Touch of Death – weaponskill debuff component increased from 19% to 28%.
  • This change was made to consolidate effects by removing the extraneous strength and dexterity debuff effects.
    • The weaponskill debuff values were increased so that debuffed targets will deal about the same melee damage as they did prior to the removal of the strength and dexterity debuff components.

Cabalist

• The Amber Simulacrum pet now runs at normal + sprint speed.

Enchanter

• The Underhill Stalker pet now runs at normal + sprint speed.

Enchantments specialization

• All levels of the single-target, 30s duration healing-effectiveness buffs have had their healing effectiveness values reduced by half.

Heretic

Enhancements specialization

• All levels of the casted, single-target strength, constitution, and dexterity debuffs have been changed as follows:
  • The strength, constitution, and dexterity debuffs are now instant-cast, PBAoE spells, with a 350 radius.
  • The debuff values remain unchanged.
  • The strength and dexterity debuffs share a 15s timer.
  • The constitution debuff is on its own 15s timer.

Necromancer

• The Umbral Aegis pet should once again land melee attacks on its targets.
• The Plated Fiend pet now runs at normal + sprint speed.

Death Servant Baseline

• A pet-target casted heal has been added as follows:
  • Level 13 – Animate Flesh – Heals pet for 41 hp – 3.0 cast speed – 8 power – 2000 range
  • Level 23 – Animate Blood – Heals pet for 88 hp – 3.0 cast speed – 17 power – 2000 range
  • Level 33 – Animate Muscle – Heals pet for 152 hp – 3.0 cast speed – 22 power – 2000 range
  • Level 43 – Animate Body – Heals pet for 244 hp – 3.0 cast speed – 28 power – 2000 range
  • If currently logged in, please zone or relog to see these new spells.

Shaman

Augmentation specialization

• All levels of the single-target, 45s duration healing-effectiveness buffs have had their healing effectiveness values reduced by half.

Spiritmaster

• The Spirit Hunter pet and its Spirit Avatar now run at normal + sprint speed.

Warlock

Witchcraft specialization

• The group-target heal-effectiveness chant has had its healing effectiveness reduced as follows:
  • Level 34 – Calming Incantation – Reduced from 10% to 8% healing effectiveness
  • Level 45 – Calming Incantation – Reduced from 15% to 10% healing effectiveness

Vampiir

• The Night’s Servant pet now runs at normal + sprint speed.

Bug Fixes

• The Midgard Dragon’s Curse Chapter 9.2 encounter’s barriers now reset properly at the beginning of the encounter.
• Vulcan will no longer occasionally attack Golestandt during the Albion Dragon’s Curse Chapter 7 encounter.
• Several items have had their missing stat value added:
  • The Incandescent Black Jewel, Shrunken Bear Skull, Water Bound Gem, Dark Crystalized Poison Sac, Hob Hunter Gem, and Darkseed Sleeves all now correctly have +20 hits cap.
  • The Hammer and Sword of Evisceration both now correctly have +5% thrust resist.
  • The Envenomed Choker now correctly has +3 envenom skill.
• Players will no longer be temporarily snared when using NPC teleports in housing.

Time for another edition of our bi-weekly Grab Bag, on the weekend where everywhere seems to be celebrating the green!

Don’t forget our Saint Patrick’s Day event started earlier today. I expect to see lots of leprechauns speeding ’round the frontier over the weekend 🙂

As always, thanks for all your questions! If you have any game related questions for our DAoC Devs, please send them in 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 this week’s questions covering con loss, come back campaigns, siege towers, and more! 🙂

Are there any plans or news on when the next come back campaign will be?

Actually our current plans with the Endless Conquest are shifting a bit so that we can include returning accounts along with brand new players into it. We aren’t quite ready to unveil these new plans yet, that announcement will come after Patch 1.125, but with that change in scope for Endless Conquest accounts, we wouldn’t be offering Come Back to Camelot campaigns going forward.

What RAs actually help a Theurgs pets? The RAs listed help the caster, yes, but what correlates into increased pet damage?

Currently, Theurgists do not have access to any realm abilities that enhance their pets. We can look at adding the Wild Minion realm ability to them, which increases a pet’s chance to critical hit, but would need to ensure that it wouldn’t cause any imbalances first.

Hello a 3 part question regarding siege towers in NF. 1) Does it go up faster if entire group stand at the base of it?  2) Is there a buff
ex: skald buff for siege if in the group building siege tower would it increase it leveling? 3) Would siege crafting or woodworking leveling increase the speed of building it?  Thank you for explaining.

In order to build a siege tower, a character needs 200 siegecrafting skill, 200 ironwood wooden boards, and 100 alloy metal bars. Once the siege tower’s construction begins, any player from that same realm that has 200 siegecraft can stand near it to cause it to continue building. If no player around the siegetower meets those requirements, the siege tower will cease its construction.

In answer to your specific questions:

1) Siege Towers go up at the same rate regardless of how many allies or group-mates are nearby; even if those allies have 200 siegecraft too.
2) There are no abilities that increase the speed of a siege tower going up.
3) No, siege towers go up at the same rate, even if a person has a higher-than 200 siegecraft skill level.

                                                                                                                   
My armor and weapons seem to be losing a lot of condition, what changed and why?

Rates of condition loss have not been changed for armor at all. Same for weapons that hit someone in melee. Spell-casts do result in condition loss now though, which would only affect the actively-equipped weapons at the time of the spell cast (and not other weapons that are equipped but not currently readied). That change was made in conjunction with the bug fix that was causing massive condition loss on instruments in patch 1.124. Additionally, we actually reduced the amount of item durability that is lost upon each repair in patch 1.124.

That said, we’ve heard the feedback on condition-loss in general and agree that it should be reduced. We’ve also noticed that the spell-cast condition loss is a bit higher than we’d intended and will reduce that even further in 1.125. Thank you for the feedback!

You mentioned in a recent grab bag as an “Obligatory” for the name/race/gender respecs are coming in 1.125….. my question is, when are the character transfers between servers coming that I read about last year in a grab bag?

The transfer services are planned for later this year as they are a bit more involved than the race, gender, and name change services.

That’s it for this week. Enjoy the event and weekend all! 🙂

If you’re like me and trapped by the weather (snow is great and all but not this much of it) then settle down for the evening with this week’s Grab Bag!

February’s newsletter also went out during the week and includes a new monthly poll. If you aren’t signed up, you can do so here. In the meantime, you can view the full newsletter by clicking this link.

As always, thanks for all your questions! If you have any game related questions for our DAoC Devs, please send them in 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! 🙂

Since curse 7 went in and we kill the dragon it doesn’t count towards the title, can you put this back in?

The dragons from Chapter 7 should once again count towards the dragon-titles when defeated. Thanks!

Did the drop rate for alchemy items get nerfed? Before this last patch I was able to gather quite a few when I farmed for them. The last few times it seems the drop rate was cut around 75%.

Please include the exact area you are farming in so that we can investigate this better but the general rare alchemy component drop rate has not been changed.

With Endless Conquest on the horizon (somewhere), wouldn’t it make more sense that PvE was more streamlined/not require battlegroups to complete, the game is built upon the foundation of RvR – it makes little sense to prolong the PvE experience just to be able to viably compete in RvR with people in top-end templates.

Some of the end-game PvE still requiring battlegroups, is perfectly fine in our eyes. Some players enjoy that sort of thing. Additionally, it can be argued that progressing to the end-game is already too quick for new players, such that newer players are quickly out of their depth. With the upcoming Endless Conquest and the ability to play for free, we would likely increase the time it takes to reach max level to help alleviate that and allow newer players a better chance to learn the game as their characters grow.

We’ll still, of course, be updating and streamlining the Dragon’s Curse campaign as needed (remember, it only ended a few short months ago!) and potentially fleshing out some more ways to spend Aurulite for its rewards. Further, with the introduction of the alternative currency merchants, a great number of encounters and end-game loot is easier to obtain than ever.

Patch 1.125, which is focused on general Realm vs Realm improvements, will also improve on this by streamlining the myriad RvR-related quests and objectives into one holistic system. This system will, in addition to RvR-related rewards, allow players who perhaps don’t have time to join PvE raids an avenue to earn end-game loot through RvR-related tasks. While a PvE raid may only take several hours to complete, those hours are required as one solid block of time, and many players may not have the time to participate. Earning those same rewards via the new RvR system may still take more total time than joining a given PvE raid but will allow players to do so in bite-size chunks of time, over the course of several play sessions.

Do you have plans to update the crafting system to include information about what items do in the item information window in addition to what supplies you need to craft them? It would make crafting easier if you knew what items can do without having to go outside of the game or to the housing market to find out for what they would be used.

We agree that this would be a great improvement and it’s on our list! We will likely tackle this shortly after the release of the Endless Conquest later this year.

Obligatory update on Race/Gender/Name respecs launch date?

Patch 1.125!

A lot to digest this week, indeed!

Stay warm, and see you in the frontiers! 🙂

Grab a cuppa and take a minute out for this week’s Grab Bag!

As always, thanks for all your questions! If you have any game related questions for our DAoC Devs, please send them in through our Grab Bag submission form. Please note this is for game questions, feedback should be sent in through our feedback form.

Click ‘more’ to continue on to the questions! 🙂

What was the reasoning on changing the Mercenary RR5 away from a weaponskill buff to a straight damage buff?

There were several reasons for this change:

A straight damage buff better accomplishes the goal of the original RR5 change to increase their damage burst. The original weaponskill buff did increase their damage too, but it also increased their defensive abilities too much. Secondly, the weaponskill’s damage increase wasn’t as much as we wanted by itself and then was too much when stacked with banespike or the Sorcerer’s Suggested Rage buffs.  Finally, at the time of the introduction of the weaponskill boost, Light Tank stances (since removed) were giving a damage boost that prevented our use of one for the RR5.

The new RR5’s straight boost to damage solves these issues by being strong enough on its own that we can warrant preventing the stacking of the other damage boosts and by better penalizing their defensive abilities when it is active.

How does the Cleric loyalty cloak /use2 (10% Heal efficiency increase) interact with the Cursed Life gloves 25% heal bonus charge? Do they stack or coexist?

These two effects stack because they provide a bonus to heal effectiveness in different ways:

• The Cloak of the Loyal Cleric grants a buff that increases the effectiveness of any heals cast *on* each member of the group.
  • This bonus would not apply to heals cast by a group member onto a non-group member target.
• The Cursed Life Gauntlets grant a self-buff that increases the effectiveness of all heals cast *by* the user.
  • This bonus would apply to any target that the user heals, regardless of whether or not the target is in their group.

The Silver “surprise” boxes we received for Midwinter gave me a surfeit of Pictslayer weapons. I can salvage these on Hib, but not Mid.
What gives?

After double-checking each item, Pictslayer weapons are not set as salvageable on any realm, including Hibernia. As these weapons are still desired by many players, especially in the battlegrounds, we have no plans to make them salvageable at this time.

Our best guess here is that you may have salvaged some Pictish weapons on Hibernia that were already in your pack.

We also double-checked the silver-bound chests and verified that they were giving Pictslayer weapons to each realm.

In the newsletter you mentioned more frequent RvR events…my question is actual new events or just rotating between Ghost Keep/BG/DF? Any teaser if they are new?

It will be a combination of existing and new events.

We aren’t ready to start talking about the details of the new events quite yet, but the big picture idea is a system that utilizes in-game leaderboards. These events would likely run for 1-2 weeks on a rotating schedule and would incentivize various aspects of the game (mostly relating to RvR).

In a previous grab bag you talked about the realm section button for switching realms but what about making a server select button. So that way we don’t have to log out completely to select a different server Like Ywain1 or Ywain2?

Re-working our login and server-select flow has been on our list for quite a while! The reason it hasn’t happened yet is a simple one: it’s quite involved. Luckily, we’ve been making head-way on this and hope to have a new flow around the release of the Endless Conquest this fall!

[Insert question about Assassin and pet-class adjustments here]

Based on the feedback coming in, it seems like we’ve hit the mark on the latest round of changes to pets and assassins. While we understand that some who play those classes think some of the adjustments went too far, we’re still seeing those classes perform well in RvR and PvE. Of course, we’ll continue to monitor things and make further tweaks if necessary. Thank you all for your feedback!

And keep sending that feedback in!

Enjoy the weekend, all 🙂

Welcome to the first Grab Bag of 2018, and what an exciting year ahead we have planned!

Our first newsletter of the year went out earlier in the week, so make sure to check your emails. If you are not signed up, you can do so by entering your email address on this sign up page. In the meantime, you can view the complete newsletter in your browser here.

Thanks to everyone for your questions! If you have any game related questions for our DAoC Devs, please send them in 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! 🙂

Does mastery of focus affect the chance of proc styles to land? If so how is it calculated?

Yes. Mastery of Focus effectively raises the level of the spell by its listed amount for all spells cast (including style procs). Style procs have their resistances calculated based on the level of the style, so a level 39 style has a level 39 spell’s resist rate vs level X targets. The Mastery of Focus realm ability can raise that style’s spell level, depending on the amount of MoF trained, up to a maximum of a level 50 spell.

All spells have a base chance of 10% to be resisted, so a level 50 style proc will still get resisted at around that 10% rate, on average. However, a level 12 style proc with no Mastery of Focus will see around a 30-35% resist rate vs a level 50 target and a level 34 style proc without MoF would have a 15-20% resist rate, on average.

Hi, is there a reason why, in the Enchanter’s enchantment line, the spells Enchantment of Ice, Stone, Fire and Mana cancels my Maddening Scalars wolf shape-shift, while Enchantment of Truth and Zeal do not? Is this by design or a bug? If it is by design, what is the purpose?

Thanks!

The Enchantment of Ice, Stone, Fire, and Mana are offensive proc buffs while the Enchantment of Truth and Zeal are not. Since Maddening Scalars’ shapeshift is connected to an offensive proc as well, it gets overwritten by the more powerful enchantment procs. This same behaviour can be found with the Champion’s Call of the Champion buff or any other group-targeted class-based offensive proc.

One potential solution to this is looking at Maddening Scalars itself (as well as other item-based proc/shapeshift combos like Atlantis Tablet where the proc is rather weak/negligible). The offensive proc (a small Damage-over-time) involved with this shapeshift is fairly outdated now and not really the main reason for using the item – the shapeshift. So we could simply remove the proc aspect from Maddening Scalars and alleviate this issue without too much negative impact or overall change to class abilities.

Why are the procs on the warrior blood seal two-handed weapons damage to power rather than damage to health or damage to endurance?

The short answer is that technically, there are no damage-to-health or damage-to-endurance functions. The longer answer is that even though it’s damage-to-power, the main function of the proc is to reduce damage taken by the warrior and their group as well as restore power to their group.

It’s been awhile since you opened up races for some classes to use like luri bm, are you planning to open more races and when if yes.

Yes, we are planning to open up a few more pairings when the new race respec feature is in. The recent server and client stability issues have pushed back that feature a bit, but it’s still on track for the first half of this year.

We’ve noticed that the drop rate on Frozen Weapons appears lower than last year’s Frozen Caverns event. What gives?

This is correct and a mistake on our part. The reward chance was set so that on average 1 weapon dropped per group, per run through the Challenge mode. That is unintentionally lower than last year and so we’ve upped the chance so that on average 3-4 weapons will drop per group, per run. We’ve lowered the overall chance to get a potion to help compensate the other item drop chances as well. This is live as of this posting. Happy hunting!

Here’s to the year ahead 🙂

See you in the frontiers!

As a token of our appreciation to each and every one of you, all Midwinter festivities (including bonuses and merchants) will be extended until the morning of Monday, January 22nd.

Thank you for playing Dark Age of Camelot and enjoy!

A few hot and ready bug fixes and adjustments, mostly involving A Dragon’s Curse campaign, are below! We’ll have some more class-centric changes coming in the next week or two, so stay tuned and keep sending in your feedback!

Items

• Doppelganger Shards and Magic Orbs can now be used anywhere, including the capital cities and housing zones.
  • This fix should also address the issue with stealth classes that could sometimes /use these shards or orbs and then stealth and not receive their items.
• Nearsight cures will now only remove the nearsight aspect of the Golden Scarab’s Vest proc and not the snare and shapeshift too.
• The following Curse Chapter 9 set bonuses should now properly apply their respective ability upgrades (many of these have been fixed since before the new year but are being retroactively noted):
  • Bainshee
  • Eldritch
  • Spiritmaster
  • Sorcerer
  • Valkyrie
  • Wizard
  • Healer
  • Scout
  • Minstrel
  • Reaver
• Several Curse Chapter 9 chestpiece and leggings icons have been corrected to display the appropriate armor slot.
• Heal procs on Curse Chapter 9 armors should now all fire properly.
• Necromancer Bloodlord’s Armor should no longer drop as “tattered” from the Curse Chapter 9 instance.
• Valewalker’s set bonus has been increased from +33% to +66% additional absorption.

A Dragon’s Curse Campaign 

• All realms Chapter 10:
  • Encounters now award area credit.
    • Please note that to receive area credit, players must be within the magical barriers that are active during the encounters.
    • These encounters will no longer grant credit to any battlegroups that are setup.
  • It is no longer possible to receive the glove reward without first completing Chapter 6’s quest.
• All realms Chapter 8:
  • Encounters now award area credit.
  • The countdowns between attack waves have been reduced from 30-300 seconds down to 30-60 seconds.
• Albion Chapter 9:
  • Janus should always reset his encounter properly now.
  • Some of the normal mobs and Albion’s 9.3 encounter have had their difficulties reduced to better align their difficulty with the Midgard and Hibernia versions.
• All realms Chapter 7:
  • Encounters now all award area credit.
    • Please note that to receive area credit, players must be within the magical barriers that are active during the encounters.
• Albion Chapter 7:
  • The barrier will now properly reset when the encounter is completed.
• Albion Chapter 6:
  • Morella’s ability to mesmerize has been removed.
• Midgard Chapter 6:
  • The Dark Oracle and Dark Drakulv will no longer aggro as a group.
• Hibernia Chapter 6:
  • The Glimmer Ghoul and Dark Glimmer have been relocated to alleviate line-of-sight issues.
  • Additional instructions have been added to direct players to the proper pathway upon clearing the second area in Aerus City.
  • Avriels have had their difficulty reduced slightly.