The following events are now live until February 13th, 2018!
 

Frozen Cavern Event

• Venture to the Frozen Cavern and test yourself against the chill... and its cunning inhabitant: Jack Frost!
• Visit Njord in the following locations to enter the instance of your choice:
  • Albion: near Merlin's Tower in Camelot
  • Midgard: near the Burial Grounds in Jordheim
  • Hibernia: near the Chamber of Magic in Tir na Nog
• Two modes exist for this instance: Normal and Challenging
  • The Normal mode has a chance to drop 1 of the following rewards:
    • Frozen chestpieces
    • Frozen and other mythirians
    • Infernal sleeves
    • Darkness Falls jewelry
    • Supremacy, celerity, or omni-regen potions
    • A Cracked Ice Crystal
  • The Challenging mode has a chance to drop 1 of the following rewards:
    • Frozen weapons
    • Frozen chestpieces
    • Frozen mythirians only
    • Darkness Falls jewelry
    • Supremacy, celerity, or omni-regen potions
    • A Cracked Ice Crystal
    • In addition to having a chance at the weapons, the chance at the mythirians and darkness falls jewelry is much higher. The chestpiece chance is the same in both modes.
• Loot no longer drops directly from Jack Frost, instead a loot chest is spawned when he is defeated.
  • Players can interact with the chest and receive 1 guaranteed reward per day but can still participate in the instance as many times as desired.
  • This chest will despawn after 20 seconds, so be sure to grab your loot quickly!
• The Frozen Cavern instance will be available until February 13^th, 2018.

Ghost Keep Event

• Members of each realm should make haste to their ghostly ambassador to strengthen their realm's cause:
  • Albion - See the Ancient Paladin in the Catterick Hamlet relic town
  • Midgard - See the Ancient Thane in the Godrborg relic town
  • Hibernia - See the Ancient Champion in the Crair Treflan relic town
• Players should ask the 'Ancient' NPCs for a [progress] report to be directed to the current task at hand.
  • These NPCs offer two quests during the 'supply' phase of the event that can only be obtained and completed during that phase.
  • Once a ghost keep has been triggered by a realm, the 'supply' phase ends for all three realms and these NPCs will direct players to defend or attack the appropriate ghostly keep lord!
  • Be sure to visit this NPC at each phase to ensure you pick up any available quests.
• Earn extra realm points for completing the tasks throughout each phase of the event!
• A successfully summoned ghostly keep lord will offer the Ring of the Summoned reward, along with a quest for the Ghostly Medal of Valor!
• For more in-depth information, our handy guide explains the phases of this event in detail!
• Please note that realm point bonuses do not affect the RP rewards from this event's quests. 
• Players who obtained the Ghostly Medal of Valor last year can obtain one more with this event.
  • The Ghostly Medal of Valor is now able to be traded.
• The Ghost Keep event will be available until February 13^th, 2018.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

See you in the frontiers!

Highlights

• Love and bonuses are in the air!
• Pets and pet-based classes have received much-warranted attention!
• Improved Mercenary and Hunter RR5s!
• Assassin and several other class changes abound!
• Item changes and bug fixes, galore!

Click 'more' to continue on to the questions! :)

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.

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.

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.

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).

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!

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!

On to the questions! :)

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

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.

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.

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.

Patch 1.125!

 

• As part of the quest, players will be shapeshifted into a realm-specific "leprechaun" but have ALL of their stats debuffed by 75%.
• But fear not, leprechauns may be weak but they are also nigh impossible to catch: shapeshifted players will also have an unbreakable CC-immunity and speed buff for the duration of the shapeshift.  
• Oh, and we hear the real leprechauns love hiding their treasure in dangerous lands and ancient ruins. Enjoy some zany RvR through the weekend!
• The ROG reward is a choice between a ring or a bracer similar to the Valentine's Day event with some slight differences. These ROGs will only allow up to 5 slots for stats but will also have 1 of 6 possible /uses.

      

Read on for this week's questions covering con loss, come back campaigns, siege towers, and more! :)

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

• The killer bunny makes his annual return!
• The Gem of the Harbinger now has 7 new stat-variants to choose from!
  • As such, the gem no longer drops as a One-Time-Drop and instead is a loot-choice on the Rites of Spring quest.
  • Killing the Harbinger of Spring mob (battlegroup-credit) still grants the quest automatically.
  • There will be no item exchange service for the Gem of the Harbinger or any of its variants, choose carefully!
• The Traveling Merchants have made their way through the muddy roads and set up shop in their usual spots; but this time with some price changes and new wares!
• Enjoy Spring with some RvR bonuses!

Rites of Spring Event

Traveling Merchants

 

Bonuses

• 25% bonus to RPs gained from RvR kills
• 100% bonus to normal XP gain in all classic zones and dungeons
• 50% bonus to normal BP in all NF zones and battlegrounds

• 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

• 40% Bonus to Crafting Speed
• 20% Bonus to Crafting Skill Gain

• 20% Bonus to Crafting Speed
• 10% Bonus to Crafting Skill Gain

Read on for this week's questions!

There are several (very) long-term plans to improve the game’s graphics; specifically involving shader-optimization, higher-resolution textures, grass/tree updates, and some mob/character model improvements. However, graphical updates are not the immediate priority. RvR improvements, Endless Conquest, and UI/UX updates all take precedence for now.

This is on our list of things to tackle! While allowing horses into vaults/house vaults is one potential solution, another one we’ve discussed is adding a (potentially summon-able) stablemaster NPC that will keep track of your available mounts. That would have the added benefit of your mounts not taking up any inventory (or vault) space until they’re needed.

We'd love to hear your feedback on that idea or any other solutions you all might have! 

For those that don’t know, the Blood in the Water quest was part of an old live-event, the Harvest Festival, that involved killing Megaladon in the Irish Sea to receive the Harvest Medal of Honor.

We can take a look at resurfacing (pun intended) this event in the coming fall, likely with an updated reward. For now, you can visit the festival NPCs in Ludlow, Vasudheim, or Ardee to turn-in the Blood in the Water quest if you already have it completed! They won’t offer any new quests, though.

This spell was introduced in Patch 1.121 as a way to help debuff enemy targets prior to landing a mez or root on them. In conjunction with that change in 1.121, all of Hibernia’s mez/root spells were changed to spirit damage. These spells were also added to Reavers (energy), Valewalkers (spirit), and Valkyries (body) in patch 1.121 and their realms’ mez/root spells were changed accordingly too.

However, the spells have since been removed from those classes due to their synergy with legendary weapons and difficulty in coordinating the debuff with a crowd control class.

The Eldritch version yet remains because they have access to a mez; similarly to how Bonedancers have an instant body resistance debuff that can be used with their root.

That would be nice wouldn’t it!?

Alas…

However, 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.

2 PM EST / 7 PM GMT: Wednesday's maintenance complete.

The Account Center will be down today, Wednesday, April 4th AND tomorrow, Thursday April 5th at 10 AM EST / 3 PM GMT for maintenance. 

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this causes and appreciate your patience as we deliver two updates to the account center that will pave the way for more comprehensive improvements in the future.

Each downtime is estimated to last no more than 4 hours. This post will be updated upon completion of each maintenance.

We are very pleased and excited to announce that the Dark Age of Camelot official forum is now open!

While Discord has proven to be a key tool in reaching and helping players, these forums will help us engage with the community, and you with us, even more!

Connect and discuss all things DAoC with the whole community in one place. We have many boards covering various topics which should encourage engaging (and civil) discussions and feedback. 

Please make sure you read our Code of Conduct on the forums, as your game account could be effected if you ignore these rules! Remember to be be civil and constructive at all times. While everyone can read the forums, only active DAoC accounts can post.

Register with your (not anyone else's) game account on forum.darkageofcamelot.com now!

 

Read on for this week's questions!

There are currently no plans to adjust DoT cures to remove all applied DoTs instead of one at a time.

For Doom specifically, curing any 1 of the 3 preceding DoTs will prevent the application of Doom entirely, so that would be how just one DoT cure can prevent it already – in a way. Additionally, once Doom is applied, curing it won’t prevent its last direct-damage blast from firing regardless. Even multiple poison cures will only remove the applied DoT effects but Doom’s ending DD will still occur as soon as it’s cured.

When New Frontier’s launched in patch 1.70 the following bonuses were announced for guilds claiming a keep or tower:

For each hour that your guild has a keep or tower claimed, the guild earns a guild realm point award that is based on the keeps' difficulty level. For keeps, the guild realm points rewarded per hour is equal to 1000 times the difficulty level. For towers, the guild realm points rewarded per hour is equal to 100 times the difficulty level.

At certain upgrade levels, the Keep Lords have a chance to drop special keys that can be used to open supply chests located inside the keep. The supply chests may contain contracts, potions, and special ammunition that can be used for siege engines.

To be clear, this was just a bonus to the guild realm point total and not an actual realm point award to each member of the guild. Investigating this matter, it looks like the guild realm point bonus was removed in patch 1.90 when the keep and tower upgrade costs were removed. Unfortunately, the bonus being removed doesn’t appear to have been noted.

As it stands now, the only benefit to claiming a tower/keep is that it enables the structure to upgrade its level. This is something we can look at improving in the future:  perhaps awarding guilds some merit points for every hour a claimed structure is held.

Yes! It’s about time these were able to be placed into your personal vault, destroyable, and made available elsewhere.

And so they are:

• Players can now place their Personal Bind, Personal House, and Guild House Bind Recall stones into their personal vaults (/bank) and can now destroy them.
  • Players wishing to obtain another of the Recall Stones can visit the following NPCs:
    • Quartermaster Mills – Albion Throne Room
    • Quartermaster Dreiki – Midgard Throne Room
    • Quartermaster Kindrey – Hibernia Throne Room
  • Make sure to check your /bank for the Recall Stones if you speak to the Quartermasters and they won't give you a new one!

The Mastery of Focus realm ability raises the base level of a given spell by the listed amount. In your example, the starting point would always the same regardless of your +specialization bonus to the Pacification line, because 34 is the base level of the spell.

We’re full-steam ahead on Patch 1.125 development and are still targeting a Spring launch date! Here are some of the highlights that are planned for it:

• Race, Name, and Gender respec feature along with at least 1 new Race/Class combination in each realm!
• New Realm vs Realm based alternative currency system that will enable players to obtain certain high-end loot through RvR!
• A general streamlining of the myriad RvR-related quests and rewards under the new currency system!
• Keep and tower difficulty adjustments, including attackable ‘postern’ doors that protect keep gatehouses’ boiling oil areas!
• A new keep-siege dynamic objective system which will be implemented in the Molvik battleground in 1.125 and will potentially be extended in later versions to the other battlegrounds and the Frontier keeps if well-received.
• Mithril-purchaseable masks that even Minotaurs can wear!
• Visible cooldown timers on spell icons on the quickbar and on the active buff/debuff area!

There is of course much more but you’ll have to stay tuned for the full patch notes later this Spring!

 

• As part of the quest, players will be shapeshifted into a realm-specific "leprechaun" but have ALL of their stats debuffed by 75%.
• But fear not, leprechauns may be weak but they are also nigh impossible to catch: shapeshifted players will also have an unbreakable CC-immunity and speed buff for the duration of the shapeshift.  
• Oh, and we hear the real leprechauns love hiding their treasure in dangerous lands and ancient ruins. Enjoy some zany RvR through the weekend!
• The ROG reward is a choice between a ring or a bracer similar to the Valentine's Day event with some slight differences. These ROGs will only allow up to 5 slots for stats but will also have 1 of 6 possible /uses.

      

Read on for this week's questions!

We currently have no plans to adjust the cast-speed of the quickcast ability or make any adjustments to the core line-of-sight mechanics for casts or melee attacks. Sticking and facing targets can be immensely useful in combat but are not meant to be the end all be all of combat movement.

Manual movement should be and is rewarded over using movement assists like stick and face in many situations. Skillful manual movement can drastically reduce the amount of not-in-view messages seen by casters trying to cast on targets as well as by melee users trying to hit certain targets.

+Envenom  is not currently beneficial over level 50 specialization. It does still help variance prior to level 50 spec. This *may* change in the future and any such change will of course be included in patch notes here.

+Stealth is still effective at reducing the distance at which your Assassin or Archer is detected by other stealthers and by increasing the distance you can detect other stealthers. The new values are outlined as follows from the Patch 1.121 notes:
 

• Assassins at 50 stealth specialization (with Shadow Seek IX) will detect other Assassins with 50 stealth specialization (with Shadow Seek IX) between 325 and 500 in-game units.
  • This value can be influenced by the detected assassin’s +stealth skill over level 50.
    • In other words, +stealth skill over level 50 will increase the ability for an assassin to hide from all stealthers using a stealth detection bonus like Mastery of Stealth, Shadow Seek, or Track; +stealth skill does not give any bonus to detection.
    • A 50+24 stealth specced assassin will be detected at 325 units by other 50 spec assassins using Shadow Seek IX.
    • A 50+11 stealth specced assassin will be detected at 425 units by other 50 spec assassins using Shadow Seek IX.
    • A 50+0 stealth specced assassin will be detected at 500 units by other 50 spec assassins using Shadow Seek IX.
• Assassins at 50 stealth specialization will detect Archers with composite 50 stealth specialization (and free MOS9) at around 400 in-game units.
  • This detection value is not influenced by +stealth skill over level 50 for either party.
• Archers at level 50 (with free MOS9), and composite level 50 stealth specialization will detect other Archers at around 725 in-game units.
  • Archers using the level 50 Track ability will detect other Archers at around 1000 in-game units.
• Archers at level 50 (with free MOS9), and composite level 50 stealth specialization will detect Assassins with 50 stealth specialization between 675 and 750 in-game units.
  • These values are influenced by the detected Assassins +stealth skill over level 50:
    • A 50+24 stealth specced assassin will be detected at 675 units by MOS9 archers with 50 composite stealth spec.
    • A 50+11 stealth specced assassin will be detected at 713 units by MOS9 archers with 50 composite stealth spec.
    • A 50+0 stealth specced assassin will be detected at 750 units by MOS9 archers with 50 composite stealth spec.
• Archers using the level 50 Archery Track ability will detect Assassins between 950 and 1175 in-game units.
  • These values are influenced by the detected Assassins +stealth skill over level 50:
    • A 50+24 stealth specced assassin will be detected at 950 units by MOS9 archers with 50 composite stealth spec.
    • A 50+11 stealth specced assassin will be detected at 1063 units by MOS9 archers with 50 composite stealth spec.
    • A 50+0 stealth specced assassin will be detected at 1175 units by MOS9 archers with 50 composite stealth spec.

Yes, adding some specialization points into Regrowth will help your baseline heals in terms of variance. Without any specialization in Regrowth, baseline heals will have extremely high variance in the amount your targets are healed for on a given cast. The more specialization into Regrowth, the lower the variance will become and that range of variance will move closer to the heal’s max potential value as spec increases too.

At extremely low specialization values, even though the amount of variance reduced will be hard to notice, it is still helping.

No, the Ring of the Summoned will remain un-tradable as it’s a crucial reward and incentive to do the Ghost Keep event when it comes around. Allowing it to be traded on house vaults is not a viable solution either since other accounts can be allowed access to a house’s vaults.

Based on the multitude of feedback regarding PvE over the past few years, we have decided to hold off for a good while on adding in or improving large-amounts of loot/equipment. We may still introduce a few items or existing item-variants for special events over the next year or so but we have no plans for massive PvE-based overhauls or revamps. Instead, we’ll be focusing on RvR improvements, streamlining the returning player experience, and client updates in conjunction with the Endless Conquest update coming.

Over the longer-term (1-3 years) we will of course be looking at all aspects of the game for improvement with Housing, Catacombs, Trials of Atlantis, and Shrouded Isles all on the table (and likely in that order).

Read on for the questions!

This is correct, the radius is only applied to single-target direct-damage spells. The cloak’s delve should now reflect this information.

This was answered in March’s Grab Bag last year:

There should be no difference in damage when using a Left Axe, Dual Wield, or Celtic Dual style whether the main weapon spec is 50+11 or 40+11. In other words, once you reach the 51 composite on Sword, Slash, Blades etc. and are using a dual-wielding style your damage won’t be increased by adding more Sword, Slash, or Blades spec.

However, your Left Axe, Dual Wield, and Celtic Dual specs do have their damage (and in the case of Celtic Dual and Dual Wield their offhand swing chance) increased with a higher specialization in them. A Mercenary with 25+11 Dual Wield and 51 composite Slash will hit for less than a Mercenary with 50+11 Dual Wield and 51 composite Slash when using a Dual Wield style; they will also swing with their offhand less often.

Heightened Awareness affects everyone in the group in terms of seeing stealth and only affects stealthers in terms of granting better stealth. However, the Shadow Seek ability for assassins also grants a detection bonus and is generally at a higher delve than Heightened Awareness for level 50 assassins. Therefore, Shadow Seek’s bonus to detect will take precedence over that of Heightened Awareness’ detection bonus; but Heightened Awareness will still provide its bonus to hide.

It does look like both of these remains were accidentally disabled. They should once again drop now, thanks!

Patch 1.125 is largely focused on Realm vs Realm improvements and systems. Some class changes can always be expected in every patch but they are not the focus of this version.

Have a wonderful weekend all! :)