Module 11 Preview Patch Notes: NW.75.20170104a.1 (Updated 1/17)

terramak

Overview: Developer Blog - Upcoming Expansion Features


Known Issues
As others have found and brought up in bug reports, one of the instanced quests following Gyrion currently becomes stuck at 21 of 25 enemies defeated. Our next Preview build should resolve this.



Highlights
Note: Details for the below features will be released in upcoming blogs!

New Adventure Zone: River District
Face off against the armies of powerful wizards in this new zone. Take control of strategic points throughout the River District, and reclaim riches, weapons, and magic for the betterment of Neverwinter as a whole.

Feedback thread: Coming Soon!


New Campaign
Learn the true aims of this sinister cabal, and foil their attempts to lay claim to Neverwinter before it's too late. Stabilize Neverwinter's trading routes, confront your foes, and claim a portion of their power as new Boons.

Feedback thread: Coming Soon!


Skirmish: Illusionist's Gambit
An illusionist has begun experiments within the sewers of Neverwinter, setting adventurers through trial after trial in settings old and new. When completing a wave, players may vote to continue for greater challenge and new twists to the experience!

Feedback thread: Coming Soon!


Weapon Enhancement Changes
We've increased the damage output of some of the weaker weapon enhancements to bring them into the same realm as certain well-scaling enhancements. On the NeverwinterPreview shard, these enhancements are available on the Preview tab of the Wondrous Bazaar for ease of previewing and giving feedback.

Please give us your feedback here: Official Feedback Thread: Weapon Enhancement Changes




Release Notes



Content and Environment
Storm King's Thunder

• Character behavior has been improved for the final cutscene in Red Ice.

Dungeons and Trials

• Demogorgon: Players may now queue for this trial at any time.
  • As a result, Drizzt no longer runs to Demogorgon's cave entrance in Mantol-Derith.
• Tiamat: Players may now queue for this trial at any time.

General

• Icewind Pass: Certain Barbarian enemies as part of Heroic Encounters now properly have Heroic Encounter level difficulty.
  
• PvP Tutorial: This quest now states that players do not need to engage in PvP in order to complete the tutorial.
  
• The "Storming the Keep" achievement now properly shows the "Storm the Keep" skirmish name in its description.

Future Events

• Call to Arms: Gate Crashers: Players may no longer attack enemies from the respawn area with ranged attacks.
  
• Portobello's Game: The foot race should act more reliable when warping players to their starting points.

Combat and Powers
Classes and Balance

• (Preview-only note) On the backend, a lot of powers have had minor fixes and tweaks to their setups in order to improve their performance and reliability.
  • There should be no player-facing changes as a result of this, except changes specifically called out in these notes.

Control Wizard

• Maelstrom of Chaos: This Daily power now properly triggers the Lifesilk Spinneret's powers.

Scourge Warlock

• Gates of Hell: This Daily power now properly triggers the Lifesilk Spinneret's powers.

Enemies and Allies
General

• Mimics now have identical interaction text to treasure chests.

Items and Economy
Bounty Stores update

• Bounty Stores have been updated with more rewards for a leveling adventurer! The zones with bounty store changes are:
  • Tower District
    
  • Blackdagger Ruins
    
  • Neverdeath Graveyard
    
  • Helm's Hold
    
  • Ebon Downs
    
  • Vellosk
    
  • Pirates' Skyhold
    
  • The Chasm
    
  • Rothé Valley
    
  • Mount Hotenow
    
  • Whispering Caverns
• The Bounty Treasure Cache packs now only give class specific gear.

General

• (Preview-only note) On the backend, a lot of items have had minor fixes and tweaks to their setups in order to improve their performance and reliability.
  • There should be no player-facing changes as a result of this, except changes specifically called out in these notes.
• Contests now give Experience and Bounty Currencies as additional rewards!
  
• The seal vendors in various lower-level zones no longer offer items for Seals of the Lion. Instead, they now properly sell the standard stock for Seals of the Adventurer.
  
• When attempting to drink a potion while at full health or in PvP, the error message has changed to emphasize the "full health" case first.

Companions

• Damaran Shepherd: This companion's loyalty can now be purchased in the Wondrous Bazaar.
  
• Slyblade Kobold: This companion's slash power now has an attack rate equal to its cooldown.

Enchantments, Enhancements, and Runestones

• Barkshield Armor Enchantment: Amount shielded dramatically increased (at all ranks).
  
• Partially-used overload enchantments can no longer incorrectly stack with unused overload enchantments in certain occasions.
  
• Weapon Enhancements that do damage based on a percentage of a player's weapon damage will now scale with things that affect a player's damage (like Power). This should make these Weapon Enhancements a better chance to be competitive with those that in effect scale already (Dread, Vorpal).
  • Affected enhancements include: Bilethorn, Feytouched, Flaming, Frost, Holy Avenger, Lifedrinker, Lightning, Plague Fire, Terror
    
  • Cleaned up tooltips for Weapon Enhancements.
    
  • Frost Enchantment wording clarified to show some effects that it had that were not previously mentioned in the tooltip. Functionality was NOT changed.
    
  • The different gems now use similar wording for their basic damage bonus effect.
• (Preview Only)
  • This special preview build includes a store where you can get cheap items for testing (Weapon Enhancements and some test weapons).
    
  • You can find the preview store by going to the Wondrous Bazaar.
    
  • Note these items are set to be bound (as a safety feature) for preview only. No changes to binding for these items are currently planned for the live shard.

User Interface
Powers

• Players may once again swap powers while in a power tray replacement mode (for example, while on a khyek).
  • Instead of the previous behavior where it would display the overridden power name (e.g. Reel Left), the power swap dialog now displays no power name, and explains as such.

Art, Effects, Animation, and Audio
Animations

• Minor updates have been made to fishing and sailing animations.
  
• The Gelatinous Cube promo companion now has appropriate animations when affected by control abilities.

Character Art

• Certain head items, including Dragon Cult masks and Orcus' mask, now fit better on more character races.

Visual Effects (VFX)

• Devoted Cleric: Lance of Faith no longer impales the player in the cutscene where Wilfred meets Valindra.
  
• Devoted Cleric: Punishing Light's beam is now consistent in width regardless of the weapon wielded.
  
• Kenku Archer: This companion now shows an arrow in hand when using Hide and Shoot, as well as Malicious Shot.
  
• Legendary Flail Snail: The solid shadow that occasionally appears on this mount is now properly diffused.
  
• Orcus' deadly sphere attack now consistently displays, regardless of the number of visual FX currently displaying on the client.
  
• Various contact icons now consistently display over the character's head.

Audio

• Certain companions no longer play defeat audio multiple times upon being defeated.

Graphics, Performance, and Stability
Graphics

• Certain props no longer flicker on a GTX 560 card.

General

• A crash when clearing a slot in the Item Refinement UI has been resolved.
  
• Various other crashes and performance issues have been resolved.

EDIT 1/17: Finally pulled these together. Deleted two of the unused "reserved" posts.

terramak

Reserved for extra notes, just in case.

Edit: >:( at Nitocris.

nitocris83

*considers using admin powers to take away a reserved*

tripsofthrymr

Waiting for Spellplague Caverns to be up. Waiting. Waiting... (hoping this is the stuff from the dev blog)

terramak

Leveling version will be up, the Master version still needs a little more love before it's ready for Preview.

daniloslv

Someone send this man some coffee!

tripsofthrymr

All three of us that ran Spellplague Caverns just now had a blast, even though we hopelessly overpowered everything in there. Can't wait for the epic version. Please let Control Wizards have a meaningful amount of, well, control in the dungeon. Seems most everything that one would want to control can't be these days.

Looking forward to exploring more of the new module and checking out the weapon/armor enchantment changes (thanks for doing that!)

ghoulz66

Please DEVs, I hope you understand how many players felt when playing this old dungeon. If you plan on making it somewhat shorter, at least make it a total horde fest. Those portals spitting out servitors non-stop along with waves of tough elites to stand in your way. Then you have the blue fire cultists that summon skeletons. There aren't many dungeons in the game where you can ignore a particular type of enemy. That was one tough thing about the dungeon back when people weren't so drastically powered up. Normally only boss fights would spawn countless adds, but that dungeon could drown you in mobs.

rlima18

ghoulz66 said:

Please DEVs, I hope you understand how many players felt when playing this old dungeon. If you plan on making it somewhat shorter, at least make it a total horde fest. Those portals spitting out servitors non-stop along with waves of tough elites to stand in your way. Then you have the blue fire cultists that summon skeletons. There aren't many dungeons in the game where you can ignore a particular type of enemy. That was one tough thing about the dungeon back when people weren't so drastically powered up. Normally only boss fights would spawn countless adds, but that dungeon could drown you in mobs.

+1

cilginordek

Please don't make new artifact weapons superior to the relic weapons. Variety is good, having a single BiS pick isn't.

beckylunatic

cilginordek said:

Please don't make new artifact weapons superior to the relic weapons. Variety is good, having a single BiS pick isn't.

@asterdahl had previously expressed that they had no imminent plans to introduce a set more powerful than the Relic weapons, though this also implied that there might be an upgrade set coming for players who didn't pursue those. That's kind of what I'm expecting is something in between.

cilginordek

@beckylunatic
I'll look for a link to that, thanks.

On another note, we need more fashion items! I was really disappointed that SKT didn't have any.
Also please please please bring in some "light armor" transmutes for GF. There are enough armor with gigantic pauldrons. A leather armor would be a nice change.

beckylunatic

The campaign interface has a bunch of indicators for a different set to restore but there are no M11 collection entries in place yet so no easily accessed info at this time.

reds351

Please add the loadout token to Zen store on preview so we can test the new loadout mechanic

reds351

Loadouts swap equipment perfectly but they do not seem to swap out you ability on bars, Are they meant to or WAI?

gankdalf

DUAL SPEC NEEDS TO BE BOONS/POWERS. NOT only gear. Only gear is kinda useless and its also very annoying that the gear you switch off appears in the first free space in your bags. I dont like chaos in my bags everytime i switch spec....

beckylunatic

A very early and frustrating observation is that the bug currently on live which can cause all ground splat powers to not work persists in this build, coupled with a bug that unflags double-tapping a movement key to dodge. As a result, I missed a whole bunch of context from the initial story quest trying to get things sorted out so my DC was capable of combat.

beckylunatic

Nostura's creature design is incredible.

A bug persists in which certain emotes cause characters to make this face:



The ones I know are affected are a cheer used by PCs completing the Twilight Run and by freed sacrificial NPCs in some Underdark chapters, and by the PC as an emphatic no in a cutscene near the end of this new Ch. 2.

I'm not sure if these are correct character proportions. I am currently playing a half-elf female, and Lord Neverember is more than a head taller than she is. Not sure if same issue as Big!Linu.

beckylunatic

Private Hawthidon in Blacklake has not been updated to the appearance used for him in the new questline. Mixed feelings about this. You get used to how longstanding NPCs look, even if they use the old heads. It's disconcerting to have them changed.

On that note, the water balloon thing was very WTF, which may have been the intended reaction. I did not find a way to actually do this, which may also be intentional.

The gift of 2 appearance changes along with not being forced to use them was a nice touch.

beckylunatic

The Missing Link - Aberration is misspelled throughout (double B, single R). The cult leader boss must have the wrong level as I one-shotted him; slightly anti-climactic. Most mobs in the module are level 73 and at least have the innate resistance for combat to last a little while (there are a few exceptions that make sense in context).

Overall, I am really impressed with the worldbuilding I am seeing here. I have so many questions about what's going on around me and I love it.

Edit: Ok, seriously, with the complaints I've had about shallow, hollow questing in SKT and SoMI in particular, I know I'm not very far into this and dailies might still end up feeling very same-old, but right now, the immersion is very much working. I am entertained.

c3rb3r3

Any balance changes like the GWF rework ?

lordseth1985

So, when we'll have epic versions of every dungeon on live? Any dates?

EDIT: I played the the new campaign, and I can say it's the best mod so far. The story is awesome, activities on new zone are nice, and the changes on enchantments seems ok.

weaver936

Pleas don't DEFILE any more of the old dungeons by chopping them in half and filling them with HE's and calling that bringing them back... and PLEASE don't waste all the effort I put into getting rleic gear and new weapons on my 5 toons this mod by adding gear that takes a week to get but is just as goo without decay even... ty.

ruffneck

@terramak
@nitocris83

with all due respect if i can ask why are we getting a new module when you * the company have SOOOOOOOO much to fix?

W-E changes will be nice sure but I dont get why you are creating more coding issues without fixing previous ones

1: Rendering issues
2: skill lag / animations / pet behaviour
3: connecitivity and server side issues

Im on FTTC 40mbps down 10mbps up and in the EU ( UK Scotland) and even on 3 different ISPS this game has went from reasonable to OMFG awful in the last 3-6 months

would it not be more sensible to work on the game without trying to get more money (new keys packs etc)...........

treesclimber

@terramak any chance you can put in game some mold armours? By this i mean a armour that no matter what i transmute it to always stays bound to account. I found some equipment questing and it's btc but wrong class, all that i transmute it into get btc as well, im willing to spend some millions to get that armour on the class i want it, im sure other players too.

mystikmiami

For some reason, NO ONE has mentioned the bugged Plague Tower quest, maybe not bugged, but missing 4 mobs to continue. Everyone I know is stuck at 21/25 to continue the quest.

Edit: Disregard, its in bug reports.

shiani1

I thought I just posted something about this, but then came back after testing and couldn't find it. I just worked through part 3 of the new quest line and was seriously beyond disappointed that we will permanently lose our "look" if we have a character built before the character look changed for good. We have to change the look of our character to complete the quest, but when we go to change back, we're only given choices that are available now and not our original look. Please, please find a way to just save our look before we have to change and then revert it back when the quest is finished. I have worked hard to preserve the original look on my HR and will be really bummed to have to give it up because it's required to complete one quest!