The Dragon's Vault Launches Tomorrow

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Written by BuckGB on April 4th, 2006

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This update contains the first content update to DDO, the Dragon's Vault Module! Can you gain access to the impenetrable Vault of Night?

• Fight in the notorious Tharashk Arena, defeating all other combatants to survive.
• Explore the most dangerous prison of all that of a mind locked in torment, in The Prison of the Mind.
• Discover the hideous secret that has ruined the Haywire Foundry.
• Delve into the subterranean depths of the Jungles of Khyber.
• After you've conquered all four of those dungeons, the most challenging and compelling dungeon experience of all awaits you the Vault of Night, as you face the full array of Kundarak magic and tricks meant to keep you out.or kill you.
• If you somehow manage to defeat the Vault of Night, you can earn your rich rewards.there remains just one last obstacle.

In addition to the Dragon's Vault chain of quests, there is even more great content to explore!

• Fight against the first vampire boss in DDO.you'll love this challenge.
• Stop a planar invasion in (The Xorian Cipher)
• Explore the immense demesne of the Arzag-Khor.can you acquire the Tear of Dhakaan?
• Stop the nefarious plans of the Grave Robber
• Can you uncover all the secrets of Stromvauld's Mine?
• Will you aid the Bounty Hunter and bring down an infamous assassin?
• And more!

We've opened the gates to Kobold Island: a fun and replayable landscape experience for new players still getting a feel for what their characters can do in combat.

Changes and fixes to the game include:

• Founders commemoration! Check the fountain in Aspirants square to view the earliest guilds to arrive in Stormreach and explore the dangers of Xen'drik!
• Weapon Sets shortcuts are now in! You can now set up a single item shortcut to point to both a main weapon and off-hand item. So, for example, you can now equip two daggers, or a sword and a shield all with one shortcut.
  • Drag two different items into the (weapon sets) panel in your inventory panel to create a single shortcut for two items. Now use that shortcut in your shortcut bar to equip the two items.
• Collectibles Most collectible descriptions now tell you not only which collector wants that item, but also how many copies of that item they desire (i.e. (Goldscuttle desires at least 3 Prayer Beads.")
• When you attempt to delete a character, you will now get a confirmation dialog that asks you to type in the character's first name before it will allow you to delete the character. This should help prevent accidental deletion of your favorite characters.
• Potion and Scroll icons all now have a mini-spell icon in their upper left corner (just like wands) to help identify what spell the item casts. Say goodbye to the (I have ten different potions and all of them are blue!) problem.

Performance

• Players should no longer receive falling damage when they are simply walking along minding their own business.
• The number of people allowed in each tavern instance has been lowered to help performance within taverns.
• We have implemented another batch of changes that should help players who are experiencing rubberbanding and (glued to spot) issues.
• A new tab has been added to the Options Panel, the "Troubleshoot" tab, which contains several new options to help tweak game performance. These options should help players who are trying to improve their dialup experience or players whose video cards are overheating.
  • The trouble shoot UI adds the connection speed setting instead of needing to set it in the userpreferences.ini
  • It additionally adds two methods of slowing down graphics for systems having graphics issues
• A number of graphics related crashes have been resolved.
• Update to timing code to better handle Dual Core, HT and dynamic overclocking setups.
• Network latency now properly measures round trip times, instead of one way.
• We have implemented another batch of changes that should help with dialup performance. If you are a dial-up user, we would appreciate your feedback on connectivity performance after the update.

UI Improvements

• The /roll command now simulates dice-rolling and broadcasts results to the Party.
• The shop UI now plays a sound when buying or selling an item.
• Chat improvements
  
  • The enter key will now correctly activate the chat text entry field.
  • There is a new (and louder) sound when you receive a tell.
  • Setting your outgoing message type to "guild" will no longer generate the error "no such command." You will also now be able to correctly chat with your guild while on the guild chat tab.
  • Players should now connect to guild chat more reliably when logging into the game.
  • /General chat channel no longer appends an '˜1' to the end of the user's name.


• Friends List improvements
  
  • You now receive a message in chat when one of your friends goes online or offline.
  • Friends Lists are now specific to a character, not an account.
  • An Invite Button has been added to the Friends UI. Simply open your Friends list, target the person you want to party with, and click (Invite.)
• The Guild list now properly updates members' online status.
• Pawn shops will now be marked on the map with a distinctive marker to make locating them easier.
• The mapnotes for Phiarlan, Kundarak, and Deneith have been updated for greater accuracy.
• You will now correctly see your own Voice Chat status icon in the party display.
• /squelch command is no longer case sensitive.
• The Mic test will now automatically shut off if you close the window.
• Your avatar will now face the correct direction upon zone entry after teleporting while in mouselook mode. The days of zoning in and finding yourself facing some crazy direction are over.
• Magical versions of Light Repeating crossbow and Shuriken now have the correct blue magic background for their icons.
• Battle Axes and Falchions now have the correct icons.
• If a player is affected by Slicing Blow they will now see the correct alert icon.
• Corrected the icon for the Fire Elemental's (Burning Touch) DoT.

Examination Issues

• Many spells should now have their damage ranges and bonus types displayed when examined. This is part of an ongoing effort on our part to provide more detailed spell descriptions.
• Weapons, Shields, and Armor now display their proficiency requirement when examined.
• The descriptions of many items have been improved.
• Certain Immunities (for example elemental damage immunities) now show up on your character sheet under Resistances.
• Thrown Weapon Damage bonuses on character sheet should now display properly.
• Wands now display durability when examined.
• Shields now display their attack penalty if they have one.
• Several typos have been corrected in spell descriptions.

Combat

• Improved Feint now works as an instant AOE bluff, performing bluff checks to all nearby targets. Bluffed targets are open to sneak attack attempts. Please note that the attack animation for Improved Feint is misleading and will be fixed in an upcoming patch.
• Sneak attack bonuses no longer apply to glancing blows since a sneak attack is intended to be a targeted attack and should not apply to collateral damage.
• You can now shield bash if you have a shield and thrown weapon equipped, instead of queuing up a thrown attack for when you release the block button.
• Some improvements have been made to repeating crossbows.

Quest Mechanics

• Some very high-level quests now have a (reset timer) (initially this is just the Vault of Night sequence). The quest reset timer will activate once the quest sequence is completed. You cannot replay the quest sequence until the timer finishes.
  • The timer is indicated in your quest journal.
  • You can use the /quest command to view all active quest reset timers.


• The Plane of Night has a new loot mechanic for dividing treasure from the dragon. For full details please read this thread
• A few different bugs with Encounter XP have been fixed
  • Higher level encounters are now worth more XP than lower level encounters.
  • Certain areas had a bug where their encounters were worth zero XP. This has now been fixed.
• If you are 5 levels or more below the max level of someone in your Party, you will see reduced XP, culminating in potentially zero xp.
• Character files now automatically save after completing a quest and earning XP, or after receiving a quest reward.
• Completing an adventure while at the XP cap will no longer count towards that adventure's repetition count (even if you are carrying a death penalty).

Quests

• Completing many of the longer quest sequences now presents you with a unique reward selection panel where you can choose from a list of special items. Previously only the Waterworks had this type of reward system.
• Several adventure areas have had their treasure tables adjusted to be more in-line with their level of difficulty.
• Small changes have been made throughout the world to help prevent pathing issues.
• Numerous broken traps and control boxes have been fixed.
• Fixed several false danger alerts (warning of traps that were not there etc.).
• Some bugs have been fixed that were preventing certain quests from being completed.
• Many quests have had a revamp of some sort. More details will be posted tomorrow with the update.

Character Abilities & Spells

• We have made improvements to many of the spell effects. Also, many player-cast spells now contain inherent lighting (cast a fireball and you will see the difference).
• Flaming Sphere and Lightning bolt have been changed so that they do more damage. Previously, if monsters were standing in a line the spell would hit the monster at the head of the line and then stop. Now the spells will travel down the whole line of monsters with a chance to do damage to any monster it hits.
• Flesh to Stone is now permanent but, like Hold Person, now grants periodic saving throws to end the effect. Break Enchantment will still remove this status effect. Characters with high Fortitude saving throws will find the average duration lower than before. Characters with low Fortitude saving throws may hope for some good rolls.
• All undead will now properly react to Turn Undead. Turned undead will now properly flee in terror from the cleric or paladin that turns them rather than cower, rebuked.
• When resting, Warforged should now heal at least one point of ability damage, regardless of their repair score.
• The Improved Fortification feat now works correctly.
• Mithral Fluidity now works correctly.
• We fixed a bug with Fear where it would hit no target if no target was selected. It now correctly has a cone radius for its effect, even with no target selected.
• Warforged racial paralysis resistance now correctly applies to ghoul and ghast resistance.
• Max range of Feather Fall and Mass Cure spells now is consistent with other AoEs.
• Flame Arrow spell will now summon 50 arrows.
• Shaken state no longer prevents spells/skills/feats from being used.
• Undead are now immune to Blind.
• Spell Resistance no longer affects your susceptibility to Web.
• Feeblemind now prevents spellcasting.
• If you're immune to an effect due to racial or feat immunities, you will no longer see an irrelevant saving throw roll, but instead just get the immune feedback immediately.
• You now get a save vs. Mindfog.
• Blindness spell is no longer affected by the Extend Metamagic feat.
• Neutralize Poison's immunity effect duration has been reduced to 1 min/level to bring it in line with other immunity effects.
• Hand Axes have been added to Dwarven Enhancements involving axes (Axe Attack and Axe Damage). This is not noted in the tooltips for these enhancements.

Monsters

• Many monsters will now heal and buff themselves and their friends more effectively.
• Monsters should now react more intelligently to inanimate obstacles that are preventing them from moving where they desire, with a greatly increased chance of being able to navigate around objects that may have been impassable barriers to them before. We have also improved monster targeting behavior in doorways and other bottlenecks, as well as their behavior landscape and dungeon areas.
• Charmed monsters should attack enemy creatures more reliably.
• Monsters should no longer clump up into a mob when encountered in large numbers.
• Kobold Shamans no longer cast Bestow Curse when playing dungeons on (Hard) difficulty level. However you should be wary of their replacement spell - you might actually prefer Bestow Curse.
• The Beholder's Scorching Ray eyebeam now functions properly.
• The antimagic cone emitted by beholders now properly strips magical effects from those caught in its front arc and prevents spellcasting.
• All elementals are now immune to Vorpal effects.
• All vermin are now vulnerable to Vorpal effects.
• Previously, there were several instances in the game where using Command Undead on specific undead targets would render the quest uncompletable. These powerful undead are now immune to Command Undead.
• Slimes unable to reach a target will no longer stand in place waiting to die. They will now instinctively retreat if peppered by arrows from an unreachable location.
• Golems and animals should no longer occasionally disappear when attempting to return to their home locations.
• The Aura of Fear of a Thaarak Hound will no longer scare off creatures that are non-hostile to the Hound.
• Spectres that have not entered the world will not prevent players from moving through their ghostly selves.
• The Guardian of Shan-To-Kor will now enter melee combat more often rather than staying at range, and should no longer occasionally stand around doing nothing.
• The third scorpion in the Warders defense should now spawn correctly.
• Zombies should now disappear properly if they explode.

Items

• When you loot an item from a chest, a message is sent to everyone in the Party.
• Banishing effects will now only work on critical hits.
• When picking up a Bind on Acquire item that is not reserved (for example, in a treasure chest from which only 1 pull for the Party is possible), there is a confirmation dialogue box opened. Currently this only applies to the Plane of Night.
• Wands found in treasure chests now start with a random number of charges instead of fixed number of charges. This change does not affect wands purchased from vendors.
• Level 4 Bard components have been added to Arcane Reagent vendors in Kundarak and Jorasco.
• Named docents have had their durability increased.
• Previously items could be generated from chests that had both a temporary damage amplification and an inherent spell effect. This has been corrected and all items should now have only one effect or the other.
• Ghost Touch bows now successfully impart their magic to the missiles they fire.
• Magical Shields no longer add their enhancement bonus to attack and damage rolls for the shield, they only apply to your AC bonus per D&D rules.
• Tower Shields now correctly cap your max dex bonus.
• Scarabs of Absorption and Spell Resistance items can no longer affect your own spells.
• Max stack size for throwing weapons is now 50. Throwing weapons loot will still be found in stacks of 20.
• Bolts of (X) Bane costs have been reduced to be in line with Arrows of (X) Bane.
• Three new weapon effects added to treasure generation system True Law, True Chaos, and Pure Good. Each of these effects gives the weapon an additional 1d6 damage versus non-aligned targets, and requires the wielder to have that alignment. UMD skill of 20 to bypass the alignment requirements.
• Hold Person scrolls can now correctly be scribed by Wizards.
• The Chill Shard Weapon will now function properly.

NPCs

• Lowest level pawnbrokers have been moved to the Marketplace.
• Merchant names are now visible in the Marketplace tent.
• Pawnbrokers have also had their dialogue tweaked to be slightly more useful.
• The Harbor weapons vendors now carry Exotic weapons.
• Guard Healfdene will now always allow players to return to the Newbie Harbor.
• Steppy the Barkeep in Delver's Canteen, Ruins of Threnal will now repair all types of equipment. Of course, he has to charge a little more due to the difficulty of getting parts out in the wilderness.
• Delera will no longer say "The girl was to be spared!" after all her "Return to Delera's Tomb" conversations.
• Hargo Kimmare will no longer offer to sell you information twice. Instead he will proceed with his story arc if you have completed the first part of his quest.

Miscellaneous

• Chests will no longer sparkle after they're opened up.
• Control boxes for traps will now highlight with the normal selection FX when selected.
• You can no longer jump much higher that normal while pushing up against nearly vertical walls.
• Several new light sources have been added throughout the world.
• If you log out while in a dungeon you will now find yourself outside that dungeon when you log back in, unless you log back in before the instance has reset. If you camped in a dungeon the last time you played before this update, the first time you log in your character will appear in the harbor.
• Graphics performance while swimming has been improved.
• Dead players will no longer pop glass spider eggs while they're a ghost.
• Character generation will now look correct in widescreen mode.
• Fixed several collection points that were incorrectly set to reward only one player.
• Fixed many places in the world where players were able to get stuck.
• Clicking on the Fountain in Aspirant's Square will no longer bring up the Stats Portal UI window.

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