This month's patch includes a number of fixes, balance adjustments, and the first pass at our weather simulation. In addition, we are continuing to move all in-game textures to a higher quality compression format so this patch may be a bit chunkier than previous ones.
Updates:
Target dummies in Newhaven City are now functional.
Renamed options tab "Input" to "Controls".
Moved all camera options to the Controls tab.
Added "(click to accept task)" text to bulletin board envelopes.
Added a tooltip to components in the crafting window.
Added level 40 Elk Tea.
Added level 40 Mandrake Tea.
Added Dense Skinning nodes to Highlands.
Added the remaining pieces of the Timeworn Set to loot tables.
Added a Woodsman spawn in Northreach where quests say one should be.
Added weather (WIP) to the Time tooltip & window.
Increased vanity pet consumable execution time from 1s to 10s.
Increased culling distance on Ravenrock skull torches.
Increased damage of non-mace Ibaxian Supporter/Defender Hatchets, Swords and Curved Swords. Slight increase to Quarterstaves as well.
Increased "Type" dropdown menu size on the Auction House.
Reduced mail & auction house costs for stacked items by a factor of 10.
Reduced drop rate of Mantor's Hatchet. This piece was originally only meant to come from Dryfoot with its handful of Drolsc. With the substantial quantity of Drolsc in Grimstone canyon the drop rate of this item had not been adjusted to account for the larger draw pool. As such the item had been far too common.
Reduced amount and difficulty of the random spawning Basilisks in Basilisks Run. These frequently would get interpreted as rooms respawning too quickly, but now should be more the nuisance that they are intended to be than halting groups in their tracks.
Reduced amount, difficult and respawn rate of roaming Redmanes in Grimstone Canyon, these mobs were often unavoidable in the narrow canyons and made leveling in the area harder than desired.
Clarified tooltip for Lingering Strikes to indicate that it deals Chemical damage.
Returned the more menacing icons for large bears.
Updated vanity pet max speed so that they are less likely to be left behind when buffed and/or on a path.
Adjusted rock LODs in Grizzled Peaks & Ibaxus (still a WIP).
All far tree imposters have been rebaked at lower densities to reduce memory and rendering overhead.
Fixes:
Fixed mobs with intro animations (Emberflies, Ants, others) from getting stuck if those intro animations played when you were not looking at them.
Fixed death animations replaying when you enter a scene if the npc/player was dead/unconscious.
Fixed animation culling line of sight checks to be to the overhead position of the mob.
Fixed an issue where auto run would not disable when looting or interacting via keybind.
Fixed collected pets not being linkable in chat.
Fixed an issue with the /inspect chat command.
Fixed a bug where the "can craft" value was incorrect after acquiring new supplies.
Fixed typo on Raven calls for help.
Fixed typo in Banton's quest text.
Fixed typo in a Blightroot Grove lore doc.
Fixed typo in Redshore Ridgeback task.
Fixed name of Knight Relic Curved sword.
Fixed issue where multiple levels of Rejuvenating Hymn could stack.
Fixed an issue where some quest items were not included in loot rolls. This impacts Notes/Pages which previously were not rolled as well as the Unsettling Staff.
Fixed issue that caused Knight's Alchemy Duel to not always Enrage the target.
Fixed Defender NPC Resistant buff to now be more similar to players.
Fixed a bug where you would die while using a teleporter (i.e. shaper room) while in the air (i.e. jumping).
Fixed a stuck spot in Grizzled Peaks.
Fixed border colliders in Grizzled Peaks colliding with the camera.
Fixed offhand attack chance and positional bonuses no longer showing on the class tooltip.
Fixed Hollow grinding audio to be under the Environment audio slider.
Fixed mixer group on Ember Rings, camp fires, Ember Drifts, and torch audio to be under the Environment slider.
Slightly increased Ember Ring fire audio volume.
New fire audio clip for Ember Rings.
New Stuff:
The Highlands have been split into two independent zones:
Highland Basin: the southern portion of the zone. There have been some minor area expansions where the border has been pushed back. Level level range of this zone has been expanded slightly as well. The monolith has been moved to a midway point between the east lake and the tree fort.
Highland Hills: the northern portion of this zone. A few water features have been added to break up the monotony and add some additional character. Each lake has a series of boat teleporters (similar to Meadowlands & Highland Basin) that will help you get around more quickly. The level range of this zone has also been expanded slightly. A new Monolith has been added just south of the main camp.
With the addition of a new Monolith the Ley Pylon in the city has had an additional control added.
Basin & Hills both have an independent Ley Compass that you will have to find and track.
NOTE you characters have been migrated to account for the new zone.
If your character was in Highlands it has been moved to the safe spot within Highland Basin.
If you had a corpse in Highland it has been returned to you.
The new Monolith in Highland Hills will need to be discovered before it can be used.
Added new camera recenter options for the horizontal and vertical axis as dropdowns in the Controls tab. These settings dictate how the camera responds to being rotated away from center with left mouse drag. The three available modes are:
None: no recentering occurs. up until now this has been the default behavior.
When Moving: when your character begins to move, the camera starts to recenter. This is now the default behavior to more closely align with player expectations from other MMOs.
Always: As soon as you release your left mouse camera drag the camera will begin recentering.
Most UI window open states are restored upon zoning. This means that if you have your inventory open when you zone, it should remain open after the zone. If we missed a window that you would expect to remain open let us know!
Weather V1: This patch includes the core components of the new weather sim. Precipitation (snow + rain) is not quite ready and has been disabled. However, you should begin to notice varying cloud densities and wind speeds. Higher wind speeds should correspond to increased motion in vegetation, clouds, and spiderwebs, along with increased wind audio. We expect V2 to include precipitation and storms - at which point we will dive in a bit more to the nuances of how the weather sim works under the hood.
If you try and cross the bridge in NHV it will teleport you back to the starting spot and deliver some emote flavor text.
Balance changes:
Sentinel
Night Watch now triggers on loss of health rather than upon getting hit. This change will allow Sentinels to better heal groups taking damage from sources that previously would not trigger properly such as damage shields. Note that the heal will not trigger if the damage causes the target to become unconscious (health drops below 0).
Duelist
Triage was overperforming as a quick group heal, and has been adjusted to be more effective on targets with lower health, but less effective on targets with higher health. Ideally the usage does not change much, but adds a bit more nuance to the usage of the ability to favor low health recovery than topping targets off.
Alchemy 2 version of Triage previously had this scaling health effect component and now the effect is greatly increased (x5) compared to the base execution.
Serration, Combined Strike and Alchemy Hemorrhaging Strike
These damage over time effects now scale with the Duelist's Physical +DMG stat. The highest type of physical +dmg that the duelist has will be the value used for determining the % increase to damage. The +dmg value at the application time of the dot is used for the calculation of the entirety of the effect.
Warlord
Open Wound no longer has a trigger count and the effect will trigger an unlimited amount of times for its duration. Triggered damage has been increased at higher levels. Alchemy versions have been updated to increase the duration rather than increasing the trigger count. We hope these changes work to keep the identity of Open Wound while making its usage worthwhile into higher levels and raid situations. As before only a single application of Open Wound may be present on a mob at one time.
Brigand
With various abilities that didn't scale well with weapon damage Mark would often quickly fall out of favor with Brigands. The general idea of Mark should remain the same that its a preparation of damage that can be done while targets are stunned or while targets in incoming.
Mark is now "Premeditate" and instead of it being applied to a target to deal instances of extra damage it is now a buff on the Brigand themselves. Ability attacks from the Brigand will trigger additional weapon damage plus a static bonus for a set count of attacks.
Alchemy 1 version of Premeditate deals extra damage.
Alchemy 2 version of Premeditate removes the trigger count and allows the additional damage on Ability Attacks to continue for the full duration.
Warden
Removed the trigger count from Quillback Spines, it will always last its full duration. Additionally increased the damage values at higher levels.
Knight
Enrage as a mechanic is a bit unique in the MMO space and is something we think might be a bit too confusing as new players are learning the game. Enrage forces a mob to attack the player who applies the effect, however it does not change threat values at all. We think this has caused some confusing usage of the ability and the demotion of Knights to being nothing more than off-tanks as their primary ability can only temporarily maintain threat, making it looks like they always "lose threat" because Enrage was only ever a temporary target change. We are hoping to change the way these abilities work to be more consistent with player expectations of what a forced change of target means.
Enrage and Duel now move the Knight to the top of threat list along with the temporary forced duration of Enrage.
Recent feedback has been provided related to the imbalance between the Defender classes and their defensive cooldowns. We want to maintain a health split between the classes and make sure each feels unique but also generally balanced in their own way.
Bulwark now gives 100% block chance and additionally increases Physical Damage Resists and Physical Status Resists by 35%
Alchemy 1 Version of Bulwark adds resist to all damage types
Alchemy 2 Version of Bulwark shares the effect with your group.
Marshal
Similar to the Knight Section, Draw Fire now sets the Marshal to the top of the threat list immediately as well as forcing mob targeting for its duration.
Similar to the Knight Section, Parry now it balanced against other defensive cooldowns:
Parry now gives 100% parry chance, 35% damage resists and additionally grants the Marshal Advantage for its duration
Alchemy 1 Version of Parry adds resist to all damage types and regenerates stamina.
Alchemy 2 Version of Parry adds 100% Riposte and faster stamina regeneration.
Juggernaut
Similar to the Duelist Perforate and Rip now scale their over time damage components with the juggernaut's +DMG. The highest +dmg value of the Juggernaut will be used to determine the extra over time damage of the effect at the time the effect is applied.
Note that Alchemy versions of Perforate will not increase the amount healed with +dmg, only the damage dealt will be increased.
With the move of the +dmg component to Momentum, Roar's stamina cost was a bit too high for its new purpose. Stamina cost reduced by 5 across all levels.