Maze Engine Preview Patch Notes: NW.62.20160427a.4

terramak · May 2016

Patch Notes: NW.62.20160427a.4
Cyan: New since NW.62.20160427a.3 build.
Light Green: Missed documenting in NW.62.20160427a.3 notes, but existed in that build. (Should be all caught up now. If you see changes that aren't in these patch notes, feel free to let me know / call it out in this thread.)
Not included: Patch notes from NW.60.20160410a.8, which went live on May 12, 2016. Updates in that build are also in this build.

Highlights

Guild Alliances
Guilds will now be able to band together into an alliance! This feature provides the opportunity for alliances of up to 13 guilds to contribute to each other's growth and band together for challenging tasks.

With this update, players will be able to visit allied guilds' Strongholds, take part in Alliance-wide chat, and gain benefits from their guild's spot in the alliance, based on the level of all guilds combined. Players may also shop at allied guilds' stores and contribute to allied guilds' coffers, if they so choose.

Known issues:

Players are not properly kicked from ex-alllies map if their guild is booted from the alliance.
The initial alliance leader is placed on probation when starting an alliance.
Alliance chat channel displays debug text when joined, instead of its correct name.
Alliance invitations can appear spontaneously when changing maps.
“Invitations Sent” and “Invitations Received” buttons appear as active on the UI when they should be greyed out (for non-leaders).
Sometimes the alliance chat channel does not appear as a selectable channel (if you can tell us exactly when, that would be helpful!).

View more info on this feature and give your feedback here: Official Feedback Thread: Guild Alliances

Sword Coast Chronicle
Two new campaigns are now available! The Sword Coast Chronicle campaign brings together all the other campaigns into a recommended order. This should make progression through post-70 content more guided, while leaving the option open to branch out for a more challenging experience.

The Benign Order of the Third Eye campaign provides a recommended flow through lower-level content, and gives the opportunity for new rewards.

Known issues:

The Chronicle UI is not final.
The Benign Order of the Third Eye campaign UI is not final.
The Benign Order of the Third Eye repeatable task, Assemble Orb Quadrants, takes 10 seconds. The final version is expected to take 15 minutes.
Clicking Claim on a deed, then declining, can cause the UI to get into a strange state until you ESC out of the Campaigns UI and hit ESC one more time.

View more info on this feature and give your feedback here: Official Feedback Thread: Sword Coast Chronicle

New to NW.62.20160427a.4

Completed Deeds now show their level in the Campaign UI.
Globe of the Third Eye (artifact) is no longer purchasable a second time from the Sword Coast Chronicle store.
- This artifact can no longer be refined past its maximum (Epic) quality.
Grey Horse (mount) is now Bind on Pickup. (May not be working in all cases in the current build - Will make consistently BoP before launch.)
Minstrel (companion) is now Bind on Pickup.
- The Minstrel's Tragic Tale power no longer stacks.
Respen's and Portobello's Campaigns now properly display in the Campaign UI.
The total number of Symbols of Savras gained from Deeds is now properly sufficient to purchase everything from the Sword Coast Chronicle store.

Release Notes

Content and Environment
Campaigns

The Sharandar campaign and its related content now spans levels 64-68, reduced from 70.
Sharandar Campaign: The "Reinforce Protective Wards" task no longer awards Power Points. They are instead given through the task, "Assist War Effort."
- This task requires 10 of each area's currency, along with 150 Feywild Sparks, 15 Gold, and 15,000 Astral Diamonds.

Elemental Evil

Assaulting Blackdagger Keep: This quest no longer incorrectly claims it gives Elemental Water as a reward.

Events (Changes for future runs)

Call to Arms: Garrundar the Vile: The terrain in this skirmish has been smoothed out to better display danger zones (a.k.a. "splat attacks")!
Challenge of the Gods: Blessed Gift of the Gods: When the Eye of Lathander is gained from this pack, it is now given as Bound to Account instead of Bind on Pickup.
Summer Festival: The off-hand weapon of Sunite Dagger now properly shows up in the Petal Store and Collections.

General

The Professions vendor summoned via VIP rewards now appears in the contact dialog cutscene when speaking to her.

Combat and Powers
Classes and Balance

To bring certain movement-based powers in line with others of that type, the following powers are now disabled when the player is rooted.
- Threatening Rush
- Shadowy Disappearance
- Fox Shift
- Boar Charge
- Bull Charge
- Radiant Strike

Companions

Astral Deva: This companion's tooltip has been updated to clarify that its Active Companion Bonus triggers when the summoned companion deals damage, rather than when the player deals damage.
Repentant Dragon Cultist: Acidic Stab now properly works as described.
Repentant Dragon Cultist: Various text issues in this companion's powers have been cleaned up.
Bonding Runestones now grant their combined effect in a single stack.
- For example, if a summoned companion has two Bonding Runestones (Rank 12, 95% each) equipped, the related buff now gives the player 190% of the summoned companion's current stats.
- This effect no longer stacks. This gives the effect a maximum of 285% of the summoned companion's current stats (with three R12s equipped).

Items and Economy
General

Dusk Boots packs now properly show up in the Equipment section of the Auction House, rather than the Enchantment section.
Mace of Elemental Fire no longer calls itself the Longsword of Elemental Fire in its flavor text.
Players may no longer obtain two High Forest Bears on the same character, which could result in an inventory slot being permanently held by the mount.
Several minor typos have been addressed.
Several remaining cases of "Epic Demogorgon" have been updated to "Demogorgon (Master)" to reflect the queue's new name.
The buff gained by Squash Soup is no longer called Corn Chowder.
The Sword Coast Potion Pouch, from Sword Coast Adventures, now properly includes Superior Healing Potions.

Campaigns

Gear from the Sharandar campaign and zone is now equippable starting at level 64, and scales with the player's level.
Players may now purchase Gold Crescents directly from the Sharandar campaign vendor, rather than through campaign tasks.
The Sharandar repeatable campaign task, Assist War Effort, has been changed to award one Power Point per completion.

Professions

Leadership: The "Kill Rogue Elemental" task now gives 2500 Experience, up from 500.
Masterwork Profession tools may no longer be sold to vendors.
The "Worn Gauntlet" asset in Black Ice Shaping may no longer be sold or discarded.

User Interface
Character Sheet

History tab: A wave of a very specific form of magical amnesia has been dispelled, allowing all adventurers to remember their original homelands and backgrounds, rather than thinking they're from the Dalelands.
Stamina Regen rate now properly updates when the player gains the Underdark boon, Dwarven Stamina.

Rewards

Strongboxes now have an appropriate background image.
The visual treatment has been improved for receiving a title as a campaign reward.

Stores

The Wondrous Bazaar now remembers the tab the player was on when they last browsed it in the same play session.

Graphics, Effects, and Animation
General

Horses no longer pop slightly during their flourish animation.
Support for Razer Chroma has been updated.
- The list of supported features now includes temporary health and damage taken indicators, an action bar meter, lit keys for dailies and artifacts when usable, and a combat color shift.

Performance and Stability
General

Another case that could lead to interrupted Queue service has been addressed.

awrex1977 · May 2016

On paper, the bonding fix seems fair

two30 · May 2016

terramak said:
This task requires 10 of each area's currency, along with 150 Feywild Sparks, 15 Gold, and 15,000 Astral Diamonds.

Leaving aside the 30 area dailies and the Astral Diamonds, that's too many Feywild Sparks.

Unknown · May 2016

This content has been removed.

mrvincent1959 · May 2016

Part of me is happy that there is a way to get Power Points by playing the game instead of rng after the Experience reward. The other part of me is a bit sad that we are doing it by grinding old content. However, I will take what I can get. thx

scathias · May 2016

terramak said:
This task requires 10 of each area's currency, along with 150 Feywild Sparks, 15 Gold, and 15,000 Astral Diamonds.

Echoing what others have said, since you get 3 of each currency per day it should be 9 rather than 10 each. and then 3 days of the daily spark quest, so 45 sparks total. The AD cost should also be reduced or removed as well. We just went through the process of removing AD costs from campaigns and this one has been added back in? Maybe it was being designed back before the sharandar rework, if so it needs to be updated.

And honestly, having to do 30 quests for the currencies, and get 150 sparks, that is an insane amount of time in sharandar, old content, that we are tired of. All that currency needed also prevents new players/characters from contributing as much to their guild since they are spending all their time on personal progression. Trade offs between personal vs guild are acceptable, but when they are so high it becomes a burden. If you are trying to limit the number of power points a player can get then just make it a weekly quest, and reduce the items needed to 1 round of dailies, so 3 of each and 15 sparks. no AD cost. That way the power points are limited, but still obtainable

imperiousshini · May 2016

the duration on bonding is still 20s?

scathias · May 2016

Another option would be to create a new currency and award it through the Arcane Reservoir weekly . Make the power point task cost XX of the currency and have AR grant XX/x of the currency so that the power points are time limited that way. For example, AR would drop 3 currency and the power point would cost 2. So the player can obtain 3 power points every 2 weeks.

What is nice about the currently method (though horribly gated by RNG) is that you get power points by doing content that you already play. in its current form, the assist the war effort just adds grind, and limits what that player can do with his time.

Unknown · May 2016

This content has been removed.

scathias · May 2016

Also, i am going to have to test the bonding change, but on paper it looks fantastic. This change opens up every companion to be usable rather than just a small amount of fast attacking companions.

I do see it being overpowered perhaps though. Right now bonding pets do not have 100% uptime with the max amount of stacks, and sometimes they have no stacks at all. the stats they provide are very dynamic. by providing all the bonus up front the bonding pets gain a very clear advantage over augments. 285% from r12s vs 100% from on augment. You can argue that the 66% uptime the bondings have now which would reduce the average stats provided to 188% (20s on bonding stack / 30s cooldown = .66 x 285 = 188%) but i dunno. we shall see. please be prepared to make changes

icyclass · May 2016

two30 said:

terramak said:
This task requires 10 of each area's currency, along with 150 Feywild Sparks, 15 Gold, and 15,000 Astral Diamonds.
Leaving aside the 30 area dailies and the Astral Diamonds, that's too many Feywild Sparks.

Arcane Reservoir gives 100 sparks, so this is 3⅓ days of all of the dailies plus the weekly. I'm ok with pacing one power point a week, but needing 3⅓ of ALL the dailies is a little grindy. (15k AD, being ~½ the daily refining cap, is not really so much once a week too.)

Unknown · May 2016

This content has been removed.

kieranmtorn · May 2016

So with no cool down, it's 3 bonding stones all the time, no point to an augment now, once you have the AD.

scathias · May 2016

defiantone99 said:
I noticed no cooldown on the new Bonding stones, but all pets will be the same now and active bonus will be what matters, not attack speed. But, it is a hard nerf for those without 3 rank 12s. I hope we get more dungeon rewards now that things will take much longer for most players.

how is this a hard nerf for anyone who doesn't have r12s? they still get the same benefit as before, all 3 of their bonding values in 1 proc, so 240% for r11s, 195% for r10s, 150% for r9s, 105% for r8s. there is no nerf here that i can see. If anything people with lower ranks get more benefit than before since they get all the stats upfront instead of maybe only 1 or 2 stacks to start with

Unknown · May 2016

This content has been removed.

scathias · May 2016

defiantone99 said:
Because in a long battle you get up to 6 stacks currently.

which was not intended in the first place... leading to power creep and the problems everyone is complaining about of content being too easy...

Unknown · May 2016

This content has been removed.

Unknown · May 2016

This content has been removed.

scathias · May 2016

Ok, i have tested this on preview on dummies and on mobs and found a bug. While the unified bonding stack still has a 20s duration, currently the bonding stack duration will be refreshed every time your pet attacks. This means 100% uptime on the bonding stats.

This is bad because it makes bondings way way better than an augment at nearly every level. the idea behind bondings as i understand it is that they give better stats, but they are variable and not as dependable as an augment.

flyingleon · May 2016

I think no cool down is a bug! I hope so, bonding does not need to be buffed.

torontodave · May 2016

terramak said:

Sharandar Campaign: The "Reinforce Protective Wards" task no longer awards Power Points. They are instead given through the task, "Assist War Effort."
This task requires 10 of each area's currency, along with 150 Feywild Sparks, 15 Gold, and 15,000 Astral Diamonds.

Who came up with these numbers? What color is the sky on their world? I think they're drunk.

Maybe 3/3/3, 100, 50 gold, and ZERO astral diamonds.

sockmunkey · May 2016

I'm unaware if anyone has asked this yet, but I just want to be sure. Will we still be able to get power points via level up rewards? This new Sharandar reward is an additional means to earn power points, not a complete replacement. Correct?

aimsies · May 2016

Love these changes and I think the cost for a Power Point is fair. Before now the only way to get one after maxing out on the level was to get an XP overflow reward and cross your fingers.

two30 · May 2016

icyclass said:
Arcane Reservoir gives 100 sparks, so this is 3⅓ days of all of the dailies plus the weekly. I'm ok with pacing one power point a week, but needing 3⅓ of ALL the dailies is a little grindy. (15k AD, being ~½ the daily refining cap, is not really so much once a week too.)

We should assume that players will want to do the task more than once. So the calculation needs to use average Feywild Sparks per day not burst Feywild Sparks. Players can average 29.3 Feywild Sparks per day. ((15 * 7 + 100) / 7 = 29.3) So it takes 5.1 days to grind enough Feywild Sparks while only taking 3.3 days to grind enough area currency. The Feywild Sparks requirement should be reduced to 100, so that it takes 3.4 days on average.

fdsakhfduewhfiuf · May 2016

Having to spent Sharandar currencies for a power point really sucks. We need those currencies for the Stronghold. Now players have a hard time to decide what's more important. My guess is that they will go with the power points first.

A player-friendly solution would have been to make overflow experience always give a power point.

This solution is just stupid.

My hope is that they don't remove the power point from the overflow experience awards.

goatfaceone · May 2016

terramak said:

Sharandar Campaign: The "Reinforce Protective Wards" task no longer awards Power Points. They are instead given through the task, "Assist War Effort."
This task requires 10 of each area's currency, along with 150 Feywild Sparks, 15 Gold, and 15,000 Astral Diamonds.

as others have said, this is just bad.
sharandar currencies are already hard to come by for stronghold coffers
why charge 15,000 AD, that seems to a 180 from the stance a few weeks ago to remove AD costs
if you want to limit for fast people gain power points and make them grind daily
make a single daily mission that rewards a new currency
and have the war effort take 4 or 5 of them.
you could also add 1 of these new currency items to genie's gift

masteroga · May 2016

Bondings just need an entire rework. Whatever magic number the developers want 3x Rank 12s to average out to, just make that a permanent number that doesn't require triggering or anything (If they wanted a R12 to average 45% of companions stats for example, just make it a permanent static effect that is up all the time.....like giving your companion an Ioun Stone essentially). It would allow for a MUCH wider selection of companions, and less spikey results in performance, making planning a character easier.

scathias · May 2016

masteroga said:
Bondings just need an entire rework. Whatever magic number the developers want 3x Rank 12s to average out to, just make that a permanent number that doesn't require triggering or anything (If they wanted a R12 to average 45% of companions stats for example, just make it a permanent static effect that is up all the time.....like giving your companion an Ioun Stone essentially). It would allow for a MUCH wider selection of companions, and less spikey results in performance, making planning a character easier.

as it now works on preview, as soon as the companion attacks you get 1 bonding buff worth as much as all of your bonding stones total up to. So, companions all attack right at the start of a fight, therefore all companions are now viable as bonding pets. bonding stones are supposed to provide stronger, but variable stats than an augment. making them the same as an augment like you are suggesting defeats the whole purpose of a bonding pet

scathias · May 2016

Challenge of the Gods: Blessed Gift of the Gods: When the Eye of Lathander is gained from this pack, it is now given as Bound to Account instead of Bind on Pickup.

Can this BoA status be applied to the other gear and equipment that drop from the blessed gift of the gods pack as well please? There is the lathander belt and neck, the Gond artifact, 3 different pets and other items as well. most of these were BoP IIRC (some of the minor items like the Lliira's Bell were boe i think). If you are willing to make the Eye of lathander BoA then the rest of the items should have the same treatment

julianalz55 · May 2016

terramak said:
Patch Notes: NW.62.20160427a.4

The Sharandar campaign and its related content now spans levels 64-68, reduced from 70.
Sharandar Campaign: The "Reinforce Protective Wards" task no longer awards Power Points. They are instead given through the task, "Assist War Effort."
This task requires 10 of each area's currency, along with 150 Feywild Sparks, 15 Gold, and 15,000 Astral Diamonds.

$%&/ u guys

forumnamesuxs · May 2016

sockmunkey said:
I'm unaware if anyone has asked this yet, but I just want to be sure. Will we still be able to get power points via level up rewards? This new Sharandar reward is an additional means to earn power points, not a complete replacement. Correct?

An answere to this question would be great.

Maze Engine Preview Patch Notes: NW.62.20160427a.4

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