Tomb of Annihilation Rolling Patch Notes

terramak

This thread is meant to read as, "What would the patch notes look like if Module 12: Tomb of Annihilation were released today?"
These notes do not include changes to Chult content, for example, as Chult is not yet on the live shard. There are also Preview-specific notes at the bottom that will not be included in the final notes.


Notes current as of NW.85.20170711b.2 - On Preview as of Friday, 2017-07-14, at 17:00 PDT (UTC-


Highlights

New Campaign: Jungles of Chult
A mysterious plague has claimed the lives of many across the Sword Coast, and there's no sign of a reprieve to come. A hint, carried by a suspicious source, points toward the peninsula of Chult, far to the south of Neverwinter. Build a team, start an expedition… and try not to die.

Get more detail and provide feedback here: Official Feedback: M12 Campaign - Jungles of Chult
And here: Official Feedback Thread: Chult Adventure Zones
Also here: Official Feedback Thread: Chult Rewards
Here too: Official Feedback Thread: Monster Hunts, New Enemies, and Difficulty Feedback

Dev Blog: Developer Blog: Jungles of Chult Campaign


New Dungeon: Tomb of the Nine Gods
Delve deep into an ancient tomb and square off against the horrors within! New puzzles and challenges await within the Tomb of the Nine Gods. Dare you face the terror within?

Get more detail and provide feedback here: Official Feedback Thread: Tomb of the Nine Gods


Quest Journal Improvements
The Quest Journal has seen an update in a similar fashion to Sword Coast Chronicle in the previous module! Among the improvements are the ability to group quests by zone, to search for a specific quest, and to filter quests as well.

Get more detail and provide feedback here: Official Feedback Thread: Quest Journal Improvements


Armor Penetration and Damage Vulnerability Debuff Changes
A backend overhaul has been made to how Armor Penetration works, both to improve server performance and make powers interact more consistently with the stat. In addition, damage vulnerability debuffs have been made more consistent as well.

Among the changes, Armor Penetration can no longer exceed the enemy's armor value, and the 200% hard cap on damage vulnerability debuffs has been changed to a 300% soft cap, though it will be more difficult to reach the 200% point.

Get more detail and provide feedback here: Official Feedback Thread: Armor Pen and Damage Vulnerability Debuff Changes
And here: Official Feedback Thread: M12 Armor Pen Changes and PvP


Shimmering Lockbox
Players who open their Adventurer's Reward box at level 20 will now receive three Shimmering Lockboxes! A pack of three free Shimmering Keys may be claimed from the Zen Market in order to open these Lockboxes.

Get more detail and provide feedback here: Official Feedback - M12 - Shimmering Lockbox


Private PvP Queues
Players may now use the Queue system to create private PvP matches between pre-arranged teams! 5v5 and 10v10 matches are currently supported. This should allow player teams to engage in PvP under their own terms, whether for build, power, or composition testing, or just for fun or practice.

Private PvP matches do not have victory or loss rewards associated with them.

Get more detail and provide feedback here: Official Feedback Thread: M12 Private PvP Queues

terramak

Release Notes

Content and Environment
General

• Lair of Lostmauth: There is no longer an occluding plane causing visuals to go wonky in the entrance to the boss room.
  
• Mount Hotenow Domination: It should now be more difficult to escape the gameplay space.
  
• Protector's Enclave: The carpets spanning either side of the Hall of Justice fountain have been improved, as has the water in the fountain.
  
• River District: Music now begins when spawning into the zone, rather than when crossing into the Riverfront.
  
• Strongholds: The Milling Yard no longer incorrectly claims to boost Stone production; it now properly states that it boosts Wood production.
  
• Various typos in a variety of content and lore have been addressed.
  
• When players log out in the open world, they should now less frequently spawn across collision or an object.

Combat and Powers
Boons

• The fifth boon task of the Underdark campaign can no longer be claimed without completing the fourth.

Classes and Balance

• Another attempt to address the respec loop has been made; player characters who have recently respecced should no longer be asked to respec again upon opening the Powers UI.
  
• Oathbound Paladin: Divine Protector now properly prevents 60% of incoming damage, rather than only 40%.

Piercing Damage

• Certain Piercing attacks that deal damage based on another attack no longer "double-dip" damage resistance against higher-level enemies.
  • Example: The Hunter Ranger feat, Piercing Blades, deals an extra 50% piercing damage to an enemy.
    
  • If an attack would normally deal 200 damage, but is reduced to 150 by an enemy's level difference, then Piercing Blades now deals 75 damage (50% of the damage dealt).
    
  • Prior to this fix, Piercing Blades would deal around 56 damage (50% of the damage dealt, then reduced again by the level difference).
• Piercing damage powers now work as described in (most of) their tooltips: "Piercing Damage cannot be deflected and ignores armor." This means:
  • Piercing damage will no longer penetrate defenses that are not armor (such as Tenacity-based defenses).
    
  • Piercing damage will now be able to benefit from damage vulnerability debuffs on the target (such as the Lantern of Revelation debuff).
    
  • The net effect should be to make these powers less overwhelming (but still potentially very strong) in PvP, and much more useful in PvE.

Companions

• Armor Penetration now properly has an effect when used by Companions.
  
• Certain Companions no longer incorrectly gradually gain stats over time.
  
• Crab: This companion now properly plays a "near death" animation when its health is reduced to 0.
  
• Legendary companions now give 16% stat bonus (up from 15%).
  • Each additional active Legendary companion now gives a stat bonus half the size of the previous one. Examples below.
    
  • Two active Legendary companions: 16 + 8 = 24%
    
  • Five active Legendary companions (Max): 16 + 8 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 31%
• The Active Companion Bonus for Archons now properly counts the number of Archons a player has active.

Items and Economy
Artifacts and Artifact Weapons

• Sigil of the Great Weapon: This artifact's buff icon now properly lasts the duration of the buff, rather than a steady 10 seconds regardless of debuff time.

Enchantments, Enhancements, and Runestones

• A particular rank of the Eldritch Runestone no longer incorrectly affects the player with an extra share of a companion's Resilience and Movement.
  
• Bilethorn, Lifedrinker and Plaguefire Weapon Enhancement Shards can now be purchased from the appropriate vendors with Seals.
  
• Bronzewood Enchantment: Ranks 11 and 12 now work as described in the tooltip.
  
• Transcendent Flaming Enchantment: The tooltip now properly states that the Fiery Attack pops when dealing damage to an enemy who already has three stacks, rather than on application of the third stack.

Professions

• Characters who were stuck mid-level in Alchemy should now be fixed.

Zen Market

• A new, smaller pack of Companion tokens at a lower price point is now available in the Zen Market.
  
• Campaign boost tokens can now be traded when purchased from the Zen Market.
  
• Elite Shadow Wolf is now consistently named Elite Shadow Wolf in the Zen Market.
  
• New campaign boosts can now be purchased on the Zen Market!
  • Prices have been updated for all boosts.
    
  • The available campaigns are: Elemental Evil, The Maze Engine, and Storm King's Thunder.
    
  • The Elemental Evil campaign boost can be purchased in two varieties: One with an XP boost that brings a character to level 70 from any level 60 or above, and one without.
• The "50 Enchanted Keys & 1 Month VIP Bundle" purchase now states that it does not increase the player's VIP rank, and its benefits are based on the player's current VIP rank.

General

• Illusionist's Gambit Skirmish: The drop rates for Companion rings have been adjusted for Silver and Gold tier rewards.
  
• Seals of the Elements no longer drop from dungeons. Seals of the Protector now drop in dungeons instead.
  
• Seals of the Elements can now be exchanged for Seals of the Protector in the Miscellaneous tab of the Seal vendor.
  
• Various typos in a variety of items and powers have been addressed.

terramak

User Interface
Auction

• Having too many items in the Overflow Bag no longer prevents players from posting auctions.

Bank

• Both the Personal and Shared Banks now have Sort functionality.
  
• The Guild Bank now properly has a sort button.

General

• When players have quests in a location that requires teleportation, the Quest Path now more consistently points to the portals or other object that moves the player character.
  
• Warning prompts when attempting to destroy enchantments are now much more prominent.

Guild

• The Alliance Roster now consistently displays all players in the selected guild, even if the player's own guild has fewer members.

HUD

• A new damage floater icon now appears next to damage that cannot be avoided (e.g. by dodge rolling).
  
• CTRL + "]" now opens the most recently viewed Campaign this session.
  
• Players may now zoom the camera in and out by scrolling the mouse wheel up and down.

Inventory

• A new bag slot has been added. Players may now equip up to 7 bags, increased from 6.
  
• The "Unlock Other Item" context menu selection for Enchanted Keys no longer appears, as it's no longer reasonably usable now that keys are in the Useful Items tab.

Journal

• The "Out of Character" text style now looks better in this UI.

Options

• Dropdown menus are now properly clickable when their options are outside the bounds of their parent window.
  • This allows players to always show their health bar in Interface -> HUD, for example.
• The Boons window can now be bound to a key in the Options menu.

Zen Market

• Empty categories no longer show up if the player manages to get a coupon for them.
  
• The framerate no longer significantly drops in the Zen Market while the player is holding a coupon.
  
• The Zen Market category list now consistently shows all banners if, for example, an entry is new, featured, and on sale all at the same time.

Art and Effects
Animation

• The Lion companion no longer tilts and jitters in strange ways in certain locations.

Character Art

• Certain NPC-named entries available in character creation have been renamed to "Face Long" and "Face Bulky."
  
• Ponytail hair styles are less likely to jitter off characters' heads when running or riding quickly up and down stairs.
  
• The standard horse tails have been improved on existing horse mounts.

Graphics, Performance, and Stability
General

• An animation-related crash has been addressed.
  
• A cap on the number of VFX objects with client-side physics has been introduced. This should improve general performance when certain powers are used.
  
• A physics-related type of crash has been neutralized.
  
• Various UI crashes have been updated.

Preview-only notes
General

• A large number of player powers received a fix to a minor setup issue. This should not result in any significant player-facing changes or bug fixes.
  
• A variety of unused objects have been removed from the game files. While this should not result in any player-facing changes, any bugs in this process could result in vanished objects throughout the game.
  
• An outdated system identifier that affected combat AI was removed from various enemy encounters. This should have no noticeable player-facing effect.
  • The most likely places for unexpected changes to appear are in older content, such as the Spellplague story arc, Blackdagger Ruins, or Ebon Downs.
• The Animation system has had some various backend changes. There should be few, if any, significant noticeable differences.
  • If you see animation issues in Chult, they're unlikely to be caused by this change.
    
  • If you see animation issues in previously-established content, that may be related to this change.
• In previous builds on Preview, we had enabled the ability to use, while jumping, certain powers that had lunge components.
  • However, this resulted in some moon-jumping behavior, so this change has been reverted for the time being.
    
  • For the time being, abilities like Marauder's Escape will continue to fail to move the player while they are in the air.