The Warlock class is now available for preview on Lamannia. Character copy is not working but they are focusing on testing the Warlock class so there is not much need to copy a character from live servers. If you have access, download Lamannia and test them out. Help Turbine test everything so we can have a bug free release of the new class!
Check out Gemini166 on his twitch stream http://www.twitch.tv/gemini166. He plays on my home server of Argo. He usually streams 6pm-8:30pm central time daily. I have a good time watching his stream. He does a good job of interacting with the people watching the stream. A good time all around!
So, work has been kicking my butt and I haven’t been able to play much DDO let alone run Temple of Elemental Evil. I’ve heard some pretty good things about it but I’ve also heard that it can take a long time to complete and time is something I’ve been short on lately.
In the small amount of time I have had I have played with the new crossbow “feel” and I think it’s a vast improvement over the old way. Although I sometimes end up shooting and extra volley of arrows. I figure that with some practice I’ll figure out when to let my finger off the trigger in time time to avoid that. I suspect that it’s just my old habit of holding the trigger to load the next arrow in the chamber so to speak.
In any case here are links for the Update and Patch notes.
Some bad news with Patch 2 though. With it’s release some ladders have not been cooperating. Cordovan say’s the issue is being looked into.
Also, Cordovan talked about some things to come in Update 26 (aiming for June). It looks like some new heroic and epic quests are coming. Amrath. Also, they are aiming to release warlock then too. As with anything though, I would not count that as a promise. Sometimes things get mucked up and things might get pushed back.
Before the downtime on March 4th I was thinking about airships. I really like what they did with the airships in Update 22. The amenity bar is awesome. If I’m in a hurry I don’t have to spend 5 minutes buffing on the airship. If I have a bit more time I can go to the cargo hold and get the old buffs that still work. The only thing is that when I have some downtime. If there are no groups up doing something I want or if I’m not in the mood to put a group up I’m looking for a reason to spend time on the ship. My guild has purchased the Kraken and I noticed this unused door with barrels piled up. I haven’t spent time on other ships lately so I don’t know if they have this door but I think it would be a good idea to use this door for something. Guild leaders quarters, captain quarters, PVP pit, anything interactive that gives us a reason to stay on the ship. Maybe with some kind of daily guild reward given away. Even if it’s something as small as a +5% guild XP bonus potion.
I’m really having fun with the mimic event. After the anniversary event time ends I think I would still like random chests becoming mimics even if there were no special awards given. It keeps me on my toes. Although, it did screw me up in one quest but it was totally my fault. I was soloing The Haunted Library in House Jorasco and the chest that had the first tome was a mimic. I thought I clicked the “Loot All” button but I guess I pressed the close button while trying to kill the mimic so I never picked up that tome. I didn’t realize it until I was almost to the end of the quest and I didn’t have a dimension door to get back to the beginning. I asked a guild member to log on to a lower level character but they didn’t have D-Door either and since they were out of the quest when I opened the chest they couldn’t get the tome themselves. I ended up having to recall out and re-enter loosing the 10% bonus.
During the downtime today Cordovan couldn’t do his regular Wednesday DDO livestream so he spent the hour answering questions. A lot of tough questions were asked that he didn’t have the answer too but he also had a lot of answers too. It’s a bit long but it’s worth the watch.
Story Time: A while back I joined a group doing Epic Elite High Road. Most of the characters were not self sufficient. I know I wasn’t. I had rolled up an experimental 2 rogue/18 fighter. I was on my first life and I was still in the melee destiny circle so my self healing options were limited. I think all of the other members of the group were in the same boat.
Needless to say, we didn’t do very well. It ended up being a wipe. I wasn’t too focused on this particular character so I swapped to my healer. He’s a total nanny-bot. Pure radiant servant. He’s an elf so there’s not even any need to waste action points in his elf tree because not much in there is useful for a healer. All the other characters in the group were the same. When we restarted we completed the whole chain easily.
I think too much emphasis is put on being self-sufficient. Epic Destinies are making it very easy to be self-sufficient. People aren’t rolling up healers as much as a result. Groups aren’t waiting for healers to join anymore. Characters that are new to Epic Destinies can’t survive. I find that groups that have a healer tend to go well. The melee can focus on killing things because they don’t have to stop to heal themselves. Epic level raids do tend to need at least one healer so I don’t think we will be seeing healers go away totally.
This somewhat extends to heroic content as well. Most groups don’t wait for a healer anymore. Actually most groups don’t wait to even fill. There are so many times when I join a group the quest is almost done when I enter and I have a penalty to xp. This seems like something that would frustrate new players and lead to a lot of people quitting before they even get to know how awesome DDO can be.
I mostly play on one server, Argonnessen, so I don’t know if things are different on other servers. Let me know if your server is different of if this is happening all over DDO.
A small hotfix was released. There were only a few changes.
There were just a few more things fixed and you can read about them here.
Deathwyrm Pumpkin Head for no reason.
A hotfix was pushed today which, at least for me, fixed the issues with stack-able items and scroll use. I’m glad that was fixed right away. While the stacking bug was annoying the inability to equip/use scrolls was pretty much game breaking for a handful of my characters. It did take longer for the servers to recognize my password and it took longer to log in so that might be something they need to look at but it could just be my connection or computer.
While I was browsing the Dev Tracker I saw this nifty response by developer/producer Severlin. He was responding to someone on the forums that was upset with how bad the fighter saves are. He was breaking an unwritten rule by posting this so nothing he said in this post should be taken as a promise but it’s nice to see what direction the developers are looking. It looks like fighter kensai might get a enhancement pass sometime in the future. Hopefully saves will be part of that. There are a bunch of other ideas too. It’s a short post so it’s definitely worth the read.
U24 patch 1 dropped today. Release Notes here. Barbarians got a bit of tweaking but I think the most notable thing was the addition of Champion Hunters and Mysterious Fragments. You get Mysterious Fragments from killing Champions and you turn them into the Champion Hunters located in the two Halls of Heroes (one in Eberron and one in Forgotten Realms). The items available for trade are pretty slim at the moment but offerings will be changed over time.
An unintended side affect of the patch was the breaking of stack-able things in inventory. Certain items can’t be moved and certain items, most notably scrolls, can’t be moved or used/equipped. I found that if you want to consolidate stack-able items in your inventory you can drop one stack in a shared or guild bank then taking it out and putting it on the other stack. That seems to work for me most of the time. The only problem with that is that you can only do that with items that are not bound to character. A hotfix is being worked on now but hopefully it will come soon
Update 23 Patch 1 was released today. A lot of little fixes here and there. You can read the full list here.
The ones I took notice of were:
The one that I didn’t see that I was hoping for was the fixing of the phantom floors. I cannot for the life of me get past the falling floor part in crucible. Unless someone leaves all the hobgoblins in that area alive so I can see where I can step I have to wait at the gate for someone else to open it and let me past. I’d think that I’d know were the floor falls from memory seeing that I’ve played that quest countless times but no…. I really hope this was fixed and it was not put in the patch notes or that it will get fixed in the very near future.
On a side note, and I know I’m late to the party on this (due to real life and job I haven’t been able to play much lately), playing my pure paladin is fun again. I really like the changes to the Holy Sword spell. In Divine Crusader I’m critting for above 2000 points of damage on a regular basis (with Epic Antique Great Axe). I’m looking forward to getting over to Dreadnought and seeing what I can do in a blitz.
Before the paladin changes a few updates ago I could solo Epic Normal Devil Assault but now I can do it with no difficulty at all and I’ll probably try Epic Hard soon.
On a side note Astral Shards are on sale right now (October 24- October 30 2014) and I had some Turbine Points saved up so I bought a 1000 bundle. I’m really contemplating spending $60 and buying enough Turbine Points to buy 1500 more astral shards to get the Daedalean Kraken for my guild. I’m finding it hard to spend real money on something that doesn’t actually exist in real life. I’m probably going to do it anyway. Well played Turbine, well played…. 🙂
Does anybody know know if there are discounts for higher tier ships if I spend astral shards on lower tier ships like used to be in the old upgrade system? I’m thinking the answer is no but comment here, on facebook or tweet me @ddogaming if you happen to know the answer.
A deer in The Storm Horns under ranger Wild Empathy. He didn’t attack anything but he followed me around until he was eviscerated by a Owlbear.
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