Maze Engine Preview Patch Notes NW.60.20160307a.3

terramak

Differences in the .4:
Castle Never: On low-end settings, there should no longer be large blocks of untextured geometry (without collision) blocking your view.
Castle Never: The Death Sphere phase no longer becomes stuck.


Release Notes

Content and Environment
Strongholds

• Stronghold Siege Tutorial: Players may no longer destroy the enemy depot before the objective to do so, and become stuck as a result.

General

• Chapter 4 of the Dwarven King quest arc no longer has skill nodes.
  
• Dungeon doors now properly say "3-player" instead of "5-player."
  
• Prophecy of Madness: The skirmish phase timer now properly moves at the speed of real time.
  
• Throne of the Dwarven God: This skirmish now more consistently gives credit for prisoners rescued. It should be easier to achieve Gold rank in the first phase of this skirmish when rescuing prisoners.

Castle Never

• Bosses in Castle Never no longer drop double the usual rewards.
  
• Orcus now has a unique boss health bar.
  
• Players can no longer fall out of the world by walking through an unassuming but scary door in Orcus' room.
  
• The artifact equipment rewards from this dungeon have been spread to other content.
  
• The range on several of Orcus' attacks has been increased
  
• Visual and audio improvements have been made to various cutscenes in Castle Never.

Caverns of Karrundax

• Several locations where visual effects drew under the ground now properly display above the ground.

Cloak Tower

• Players may no longer bypass boss doors in this dungeon without interacting with them.

The Frozen Heart

• Grast the Gut-Cruncher's arena no longer has perfectly safe areas to attack from.
  
• The pickaxe in this dungeon can now be interacted with by all players in the party.

The Maze Engine Campaign

• A View of Menzoberranzan: Defeat at the boss now properly brings the player back to the most recent respawn point.
  
• A whole bunch of voice-over audio has been implemented and improved throughout the Maze Engine campaign.
  
• Ballad of Baphomet: This quest can now properly be completed.
  
• Boundless Ability: This achievement no longer gives the player a placeholder item.
  
• Escape the Maze: Linu now properly accompanies the player instead of Drizzt.
  
• In Defense of Gauntlgrym: The Journal text now properly matches the quest dialog.
  
• The final encounter of the campaign now has a unique boss health bar.
  
• The Stuff of Legends: Abyssal Tears now properly remain closed once the invading demons are defeated.
  
• The Stuff of Legends: Defeat at the boss now properly brings the player back to the most recent respawn point.
  
• The Stuff of Legends: The Balor in this quest is no longer quite as difficult.
  
• Visual and audio improvements have been made to various cutscenes in the Maze Engine campaign.
  
• Vizeran DeVir now has updated character art.

Combat and Powers
Class Powers

• Great Weapon Fighter: Unstoppable: The Temp HP granted by damage bonuses now caps at 200%. This means that if a player has a lot of damage bonuses and is at maximum Determination, they can receive up to 32% of their Max HP as Temp HP.

Mount Powers

• Armored Bulette and Champion's Armored Bulette: The Combat powers of these mounts now require a target to use.
  
• Various Mount Combat Powers have had visual, audio, and timing improvements.

Items and Economy
Artifacts

• Sigil of the Guardian: At Mythic quality, now properly blocks 90% of incoming damage, as stated in the tooltip, instead of only 80%.

Mounts

• Armored Axe Beak: This mount's combat power now properly has a tooltip.
  
• Demon Sled: This mount no longer uses the wrong icons after being opened.
  
• Imperial Rage Drake: The timing on this mount's combat power has been significantly improved.
  
• Small Forest Stag: This mount now has Regal, Barbed, and Illuminated slots, allowing for an Insignia Bonus.

General

• Older Seals can no longer be purchased from bounty vendors.
  
• Alchemy profession crates now have the proper name for the resource they provide.
  
• Dread Ring: Adamantine Gauntlets now properly give a chance to receive Superior Marks from Astral Coffers.
  
• Dread Ring: Star Metal Gauntlets now properly give a chance to receive Greater and Superior Marks from Astral Coffers.
  
• Dread Ring Store: "View Wares" and "Legacy Wares (Level 60)" now properly lead to separate sets of wares.
  
• Dread Weapon Enchantment: This enchantment now properly plays visual effects when it activates.
  
• Seal of the Adventurer: This item now has an icon.
  
• Seal of the Adventurer trader: Bags of Rough Astral Diamonds now cost 500 seals, up from 400.
  
• Seal of the Adventurer trader: This vendor now has a unique overhead icon.
  
• Seal of the Adventurer trader: This vendor now has equipment for classes that were missing certain slots and level combinations that other classes had.
  
• Transcendent Shadowclad Enchantment: When the stealth effect occurs, it now properly shows stealth visual effects, rather than the Daze screen effects.

User Interface
Campaigns

• When attempting to claim campaign reward items with a full inventory, an error message now properly appears.

Collections

• Opening the Collections screen while it is glowing now more reliably directs the player to one of the items they recently received.
  
• Preview art has been added to the Maze Engine campaign collections.

HUD

• NeverwinterPreview only: The ShowFPS command once again properly defaults to off. To turn it on, type: /showfps 1

Mounts

• The Mount Preview window has had visual improvements.
  
• The Mount Reward window no longer incorrectly says to "double-click to equip" despite not having anything to equip.

Professions

• An error window no longer pops up when opening certain Professions with a high count of tasks.
  
• Profession Assets no longer cover their scrollbar on the Profession Overview screen.

Queues

• A queue's Collection may now be opened up directly from the Queue UI.
  
• "Abandon Quest" now properly works when in a queued instance.
  
• More information has been added in cases where it's unclear how to proceed in the new Queue UI.
  
• Players may no longer "leave" queue groups that consist solely of themselves.
  
• Players may now click on the tutorial tips to advance.
  
• Queues are now sorted into categories for more focused browsing.
  
• The "Abandon Match" no longer incorrectly appears while waiting for a queue to pop.
  
• The art for this UI has been improved.
  
• The Queue tutorial can now be completed.
  
• There is now a "My Queues" list for players who have joined a queue.

Stability and Performance

• Players may now use the -NoAutoRotateLogs command line option when launching the game.
  • This option allows the player to retain any log files the Neverwinter game client creates, instead of automatically overwriting old ones after a certain point.
    
  • WARNING: This will cause the log files to take up more and more disk space over time if they are not properly deleted.
• Several issues that could cause unexpected disconnects have been resolved.

whitestarua

@terramak
on lurker?cmon....

whitestarua

terramak said:

@whitestarua : I aim to get Lurker updated with the Module 9 build next time we patch Preview. I know it's pretty late in the game for this module release, but I'll see about getting an earlier preview to our Russian players for the next module release.

terramak

Yeah. Lurker's being patched tonight too.

whitestarua

Finally... thx...

whitestarua

I thought that this will not happen when saw preview update but don't saw lurker)

hustin1

Working late on a Friday? Yeesh.

I've got my client patching from Preview as I type. Will post any issues I see. Anything in particular you want checked out? I still want to do a run-through of Cloak Tower, but getting anyone to queue up for it has been impossible so far.

terramak

Thanks. The most important stuff to me is "This stops my gameplay experience - I cannot advance the way I expect to," like crashes, getting stuck, getting disconnected, etc. But like any Preview build, any issues or feedback you find are fair game.

Example on Preview now (which I hope is localized ONLY to the CTA: Pit Fight event, which is thankfully running before the build that breaks it): "When I play Call to Arms: Pit Fight, the X key pops up a PvP scoreboard instead of a PvE one. When my party completes the skirmish, the PvP scoreboard pops and we cannot leave the instance."

(I've had CTA: Pit Fight disabled on Preview so nobody gets trapped here.)

hustin1

One annoyance that I noticed a few days ago was that I couldn't close the queue window by hitting the movement keys.

EDIT: never mind, the movement keys close the window now.

My client just finished patching, so in I go. I'll be playing as my 4.2k HR (Thia Duskwalker 2), if it helps.

If it's any consolation, while it's 8:12pm for you, its 11:12pm for me...

hustin1

BUG: The demon sled and frozen demon sled are still FUBAR'ed. They show up as the normal sled. Also, the frozen demon sled should have a blue icon border instead of green (though the icon itself is incorrect as well).

ANNOYANCE: Can't open the mounts window with the hotkey while the inventory window is visible (or while most if not all other windows are visible, for that matter).

terramak

@hustin1 : Could you try copying your character over again? They might have been left in a borked state from when you opened them pre-patch. (If you already did that, please let me know.)

Thanks for the feedbacks.

anim3k

O right Terramak, couple questions if you still here.
1-Event to buy(zen promotions) A companion "Cambion mage" will be soon?
2- Any chance to make Legendary rings +5 "Bind in Equip? Players//folks have a chance make some money, doing 1231212313 times Demo//Pom is disgusting without any profit
3- Rare mount like legendary is a chance to be BoA?
Last, thanks for fixing Double//triplle kills in pvp GG mode.Is awesome, is one small problem, actually nobody doing it;/ waiting 1.5 years for fix and still i cant do it beceause i wait 1 hour in Queue and nothing;/ Maybe some small rewards made it moore atractive for people.

Sorry for bad english;/

hustin1

BUG: Whoa...something is really screwy in the Sharandar campaigns window. Look at the faint lines being drawn on the left side of the screen to the task requirements. I'd post a screenshot except it won't let me give focus to the chat window.

Open the campaigns window and click the Sharandar button. Then click the Assist Ritual Magic task. When the modal window pops up, drag it around. You'll see lines being drawn from the upper-left corner of the screen to each of the required reagents.

EDIT: it also happens on some tasks for all other campaigns.

ANNOYANCE: Drat! I can go up to the Cloak Tower entrance and interact with it to queue, but I still cannot enter it solo. Bug or intentional? That was one of my favorites to solo for Foundry inspiration...

Aha! I got a screenshot of the weirdness...

hustin1

BUG: When taking the quest "Trouble in Neverwinter" from Bruenor, the text doesn't match the audio.

Still testing stuff...

hustin1

BUG/ANNOYANCE: I'm in Blacklake ready to repel some demons, but it took a while to see that I needed to interact with the skull pile on the ground to kick it off. The map only showed a blue circle, which sort of implies that something will happen merely by going there.

QUESTION: Will the appearance of level-71 enemies in Blacklake pose a danger to the level-6's adventuring there?

BUG: When you kick off one of those "repeal demons" events in Blacklake, EVERYTHING in the combat area aggroes you, including any level-8 enemies that happened to be in the area.

BUG: The Zhentarim Ferryman's dialogue text doesn't match the audio (in Mantol-Derrith).

terramak

@hustin1 :
Whoa, lotsa good stuff. Repro'd the campaign one and got it into the system. Should probably get back to patch notes though, hahah.

Regarding the blue circle on the minimap: That visual language has generally been used in Neverwinter to define "Objective is within this area" rather than "Something automatically happens" - but now that I think of it, we do use that language to suggest "something automatically happens" in the case of particularly small blue circles. Definitely food for thought on how we want to implement things going forward.

Cloak Tower entrance: As designed (currently), but we've heard a lot of feedback from players who wish to enter these dungeons solo. I don't know whether we plan to change it up in the future, but we hear you.

@anim3k : Those questions are, unfortunately, the kind I'm not properly able to answer unless we've announced something along those lines already. That being said, I take your questions as feedback that you want those things, so thank you for the feedback.

@defiantone99 : You're confirming that you've reproduced the Unstoppable bug (Your Determination meter is past the halfway point but you cannot trigger Unstoppable) on this build, even without having any Temp HP active? Oof. Good to know, thanks for the report.

hustin1

BUG: No enemies in this region of Fiery Pit (Merchant District, center). You have to wait around for 30-60 seconds before they appear.



I've been trying to see if I can reproduce the bug where enemies in Fiery Pit would be at Heroic Encounter difficulty even when there is no HE (or even where there is never one). The problem is ubiquitous on Live.

mamalion1234

why i cant see the patch notes?

terramak

mamalion1234 said:

why i cant see the patch notes?

Haven't finished 'em yet!

hustin1

Is there a way to eliminate the cooldown on Maze Engine quests on Preview? I can't continue testing the campaign because I can't accept another quest from Bruenor.

So far I haven't been able to reproduce the Fiery Pit difficulty bug. I know it's presently a real impediment to new players on Live. I've had to break Thia out and shepherd new guildmates through the zone because so many enemies were at Heroic Encounter difficulty.

On to thinking of something else to test...

ANNOYANCE: When we have a hotkey bound to the Campaigns window, it won't display the window if any other window (e.g. inventory) is open. This is also the case on Live.

terramak

hustin1 said:

Is there a way to eliminate the cooldown on Maze Engine quests on Preview? I can't continue testing the campaign because I can't accept another quest from Bruenor.

So far I haven't been able to reproduce the Fiery Pit difficulty bug. I know it's presently a real impediment to new players on Live. I've had to break Thia out and shepherd new guildmates through the zone because so many enemies were at Heroic Encounter difficulty.

On to thinking of something else to test...

Sadly, I've got no campaign speed-up suggestions that will work without side effects in the Preview environment.

I've definitely seen the Fiery Pit difficulty bug in several places (Icewind Dale has some super buff enemies wandering about IIRC, and the Winter Festival occasionally had silver-bordered HP bar enemies spawn in the Demons on Ice event), but I haven't been able to get a good reproduction case. My assumption would be "Kill a bunch and a buff encounter has a rare chance to spawn," but my hypotheses aren't correct often enough to act directly on it, hehe.

hustin1

Bummer. As an FYI, I like what you guys did with the extra Knox quest (I won't spoil the surprise for others). I only advanced a little bit, and it's not clear if I need to do some more hunting around for clues or advance in the M-E campaign further. Maybe that's not such a bad thing, though.

As for Fiery Pit, I killed a bunch of stuff and soloed Rocks Fall a couple of times, but that didn't trigger anything. You might need to have the Live server log the instancing of any H-E difficulty enemy (I'd suggest a Hell Hound as I don't think any HE's spawn them).

I checked Regis' dialogue in M-D and the audio matches the text. Trying to think of something else...

QUESTION: is the Thayan Servitor's tunic still too long for a female TR halfling? It is on Live, but I can't test it on Preview as my character isn't a halfling.

Ah...I know a bug I want to test, but this character doesn't have the right equipment. If you go into the Witch Fen and then summon a Quickling companion, he will sometimes appear wearing the cloak that you gave him (i.e. the cloak will actually be visible). I know this happens with the Abolethic Cloak and the Cloak of the Half-Orc. Unfortunately, my HR archer has neither.

hustin1

Yikes. Disconnected as soon as I neared the campfire at the Sharandar Dark Fey Enclave. Trying again.

terramak

Thayan Servitor's Tunic: I don't remember anyone changing it, so I suspect that bug still persists. (I'm not sure whether it's tracked in our system.)
Quickling companion wearing the cloak the player gave them: I didn't know this was even possible, haha. I don't imagine this has changed since the Underdark module. Unless it looks particularly wonky, seems like a "Too neat to fix" bug to me. (But that's just my opinion!)

hustin1

terramak said:

Thayan Servitor's Tunic: I don't remember anyone changing it, so I suspect that bug still persists. (I'm not sure whether it's tracked in our system.)
Quickling companion wearing the cloak the player gave them: I didn't know this was even possible, haha. I don't imagine this has changed since the Underdark module. Unless it looks particularly wonky, seems like a "Too neat to fix" bug to me. (But that's just my opinion!)

I agree, it's way cool. Let me see if I have some old screenshots...

terramak

hustin1 said:

Yikes. Disconnected as soon as I neared the campfire at the Sharandar Dark Fey Enclave. Trying again.

Oh dear. On random disconnects: If you can report what time you disconnected for future occurrences, that'd be super helpful. It's easier to look into if we know what time something occurred. In this instance, I think I've got a relatively safe assumption since you posted about it quickly: Between 2016-03-11 21:43:00 - 21:48:00 (UTC-7), or around 2016-03-12 00:43:00 - 00:48:00 (UTC-4).


@defiantone99 : D'oh. Thanks for calling that out.