U62 Preview 2 Overview

[Torc]

Preview 2 of Update 62 is now available on Lamannia! This preview will remain open until 3:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT) on Thursday, September 28th.

Focused Features:

• Active Attacks Rebalance
• General class balance work
• [W] Scaling Update

Changes from the previous version are in blue!

Balance and Gameplay Changes:

• Amber Temple: A series of changes have been made to the Sealed in Amber quest from Ravenloft to improve the experience. Please try out the quest on Lamannia and let us know what you think of the adjustments in our discussion thread (link). NOTE: The NPCs in the Testdojo are not configured to take you directly to the quest, you'll need to enter it the old fashioned way through the Ravenloft content. Specific changes include:
  
  • A couple secrets are easier to find.
  • Optional objectives XP increased across the board.
  • Clarification: you can still find random scrolls as you explore in addition to guaranteed ones.
  • The quest is now less random, with a reasonable main route to completion. Random routes can still be pursued, although some doors have been adjusted.
  • The cut scene can now be skipped by interacting with Zhudun's amber slab a second time.
  • There are now fewer Flameskulls per square mile.
  • The Dark Gifts are less likely to escape before the heroes get to hear them out.
  • There are now markings near the doors on the floor for easier identification.
  • Icons on the map have been improved, The three Guardians have map notes that should help people find them better, and doors have clearer icons on the map as well.
  • Optional objectives XP increased across the board.

• The following raids now have a small chance to drop +8 Tomes:
  
  • Hunt or be Hunted
  • Dryad and the Demigod
  • Skeletons in the Closet
  • Fire Over Morgrave

Bug Fixes:

• Using Machrotechnic's Mending Burst with the Dissonance Drive upgrade no longer applies debuffs to you and your party members; only to enemies.
• Barbarian's Enhancement Trees have had a few icons corrected
• Corrected icons for the Blightcaster imbue effects
• Corrected text in Draconic Incarnation's Epic Strike
• Iced Edges no longer falls off you when you die
• Vile Chemist's Poisoned Shot now works correctly with crossbows and more reliably applies the Red spell state.'
• Brightbane Emerald now correctly gives Insightful bonuses instead of Competence
• Feral Charge now correctly appears on the character sheet.

Engineering:

• A few changes have been made to how we automatically generate tooltips for active attacks. The following statistics are now automatically placed within active abilities' tooltips and no longer need to be added in by hand:
  
  • Bonuses to critical threat or multiplier for that attack
  • Cooldown
  • (new) Bonus percentage damage increase for that attack (see the Active Attacks Rebalance for more info!)
  • If you spot any active ability with duplicate information, or information you believe to be incorrect, let us know and we can correct that ability's tooltip!
  • Known Issue: This is not currently functioning for Feats!

 

[rabidfox]

The cut scene can now be skipped by interacting with Zhudun's amber slab a second time.

Yay!

 

[Fhrek]

The cut scene can now be skipped by interacting with Zhudun's amber slab a second time.

Noice!

 

[seph1roth5]

Love the amber temple skip fix. I won't be able to hop on lam for hours though, does it skip the dialogue and chest and basically turn off that part so you can complete? Or does it fast forward the dialogue to the end fight part? If it's the second one, we need that tech in like...30 more quests lol.

 

[rabidfox]

Love the amber temple skip fix. I won't be able to hop on lam for hours though, does it skip the dialogue and chest and basically turn off that part so you can complete? Or does it fast forward the dialogue to the end fight part? If it's the second one, we need that tech in like...30 more quests lol.

You choose skip. Go right to the fight. Then talk to Kasimir and the quest ends (he drops a symbol on the ground next to him). Finding the symbol is now an optional.

https://imgur.com/mUND2cM

 

[rabidfox]

Still can't backdoor the Lich fast like on live. But with not needing to hunt down the symbol that'll shave time off elsewhere. Hard to say where overall completion times will be at; does feel like a little loss of flavor with the Lich needing extra passwords to get to (by the time I could pop that door, it didn't really seem to matter as I'd already run over almost the entire quest).

 

[Spook]

Still can't backdoor the Lich fast like on live. But with not needing to hunt down the symbol that'll shave time off elsewhere. Hard to say where overall completion times will be at; does feel like a little loss of flavor with the Lich needing extra passwords to get to (by the time I could pop that door, it didn't really seem to matter as I'd already run over almost the entire quest).

Sounds like you are still missing the (not so) obvious teleport

 

[rabidfox]

Sounds like you are still missing the (not so) obvious teleport

The teleport to the room with Slaads just before the Lich room?

I didn't forget about it. But a few things have changed: you need Mrak to get to the lever room and the door between the slaad room & the Lich's room require having etherna as a password now. But I just noticed on my latest run thru that they put etherna password on pedestal by Heinrich Stolt.

So you grab Mrak, go to the lever room, kill Heinrich, grab Etherna, backdoor to the lich room (since one now has both passwords that are required), grab the next password. Skip cutscene, kill mobs, and poof done.

 

[canicus]

• • The cut scene can now be skipped by interacting with Zhudun's amber slab a second time.

Thank you. I am fine with tweaking quests here and there and I don't really care if the average completion time is increased some for more engaging gameplay. Please always avoid non-skippable, long cut-scenes. In fact, please look into making more cut-scenes skipable. or better yet, adding a hotkey to advance through cutscenes and activate the next wave when we are ready. I realize the tech may not be there for this.

I know I sound like a zerger, and that may be fair. Please understand that I am less concerned with xp/min or completion time and more concerned with standing around with nothing to do. I don't care if Amber Temple takes 20 min every time as long as what I am doing is active and engaging. Having that downtime is good to be in the game as an option for those that want it, and if you want us to watch the story beats more than just once or twice, offer an appropriate incentive. I love the story in this game. You guys do a great job and it deserves to be seen/heard/read but after the 50th or so time it makes we reconsider playing the quest at all.

 

[Gavaleus]

So you grab Mrak, go to the lever room, kill Heinrich, grab Etherna, backdoor to the lich room (since one now has both passwords that are required), grab the next password. Skip cutscene, kill mobs, and poof done.

Yeah, not really drastically different from live. I think it's pretty reasonable. Since there's now a guaranteed Mrak down below, that can even save a bit of time if you weren't lucky and had to look at the other spots. So that kinda offsets the short amount of time needed to hop in the lever room to kill Heinrich and grab Etherna anyway.

 

[Gavaleus]

The smaller QoL changes for Amber Temple are pretty nice. The markers by the doors and on the minimap are great so we don't have to have which door takes which password memorized (I mean, after so many years I do have them memorized, but at least now I can forget!). And when you open a door, its minimap icon disappears, too. Neat.

But obviously the biggest change is being able to skip the cutscene. Thank you!

 

[seph1roth5]

Tbf everyone skipped the cutscene already, because 99% of people never bothered with that optional lol. So this is more of...a nice backpedal on an awful change, but the silver lining is maybe this could be implemented in just business, spinner of shadows, etc.

 

[Douglas Glyndwr]

It's still garbage. The randomness wasn't hard to learn. The path to check the spots wasn't hard to learn. This quest is far from the worst in terms of new player experience. This was a massive waste of time and resources, all to ruin what was one of the more replayable quests in the game.

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

Yes, all in all U62 is feeling more and more like a pointless shtshw of an update now.

No new quests. The P2 active attacks rowbacks are frankly now disgusting and worse than doing nothing. The unnecessary changes to this quest are a waste of time and resource. The W changes to weapons are almost an irrelevance.

Only thing worth a light is the balance changes.

Just forget about this filler of an update and focus on the next thing. Hopefully that will be substantive.

 

[Douglas Glyndwr]

Yes, all in all U62 is feeling more and more like a pointless shtshw of an update now.

No new quests. The P2 active attacks rowbacks are frankly now disgusting and worse than doing nothing. The unnecessary changes to this quest are a waste of time and resource. The W changes to weapons are almost an irrelevance.

Only thing worth a light is the balance changes.

Just forget about this filler of an update and focus on the next thing. Hopefully that will be substantive.

I figured the W changes were all in alignment to the "reduce effects" kick they've been on, and for the most part, they've been effective. Still trying to see how it will work out. I'm all for chipping away at lag.

 

[SpardaX]

• Vile Chemist's Poisoned Shot now works correctly with crossbows and more reliably applies the Red spell state.'

Does the melee Poisoned Strike also more reliably apply the red spell state?

 

[The Blonde]

Engineering:

• A few changes have been made to how we automatically generate tooltips for active attacks. The following statistics are now automatically placed within active abilities' tooltips and no longer need to be added in by hand:
  
  • Bonuses to critical threat or multiplier for that attack
  • Cooldown
  • (new) Bonus percentage damage increase for that attack (see the Active Attacks Rebalance for more info!)
  • If you spot any active ability with duplicate information, or information you believe to be incorrect, let us know and we can correct that ability's tooltip!
  • Known Issue: This is not currently functioning for Feats!

It would be nice if Spellpoint Cost could be included in this list!

 

[Jeronimo]

Yes, all in all U62 is feeling more and more like a pointless shtshw of an update now.

No new quests. The P2 active attacks rowbacks are frankly now disgusting and worse than doing nothing. The unnecessary changes to this quest are a waste of time and resource. The W changes to weapons are almost an irrelevance.

Only thing worth a light is the balance changes.

Just forget about this filler of an update and focus on the next thing. Hopefully that will be substantive.

IMHO the balance changes is not worth a light... my EK imbue build will have his imbue damage reduced with 25%. At least for me, that's not a positive thing. U62 will be a very crappy update IMO.

 

[The Blonde]

Masterwork Gauntlet (U61 raid item) has a couple of issues:

1) It should have "Exceptional Nimble Skills Bonus +10", instead of the deprecated "Dexterity Skills - Exceptional Bonus +6".
2) Its listed values for "Insightful Assassinate" (7) and "Quality Assassinate" (3) are wrong. They should be 8 and 4 respectively. This only affects the item's description, it is actually granting the correct values.

 

[PurpleSerpent]

Yes, all in all U62 is feeling more and more like a pointless shtshw of an update now.

No new quests. The P2 active attacks rowbacks are frankly now disgusting and worse than doing nothing. The unnecessary changes to this quest are a waste of time and resource. The W changes to weapons are almost an irrelevance.

Only thing worth a light is the balance changes.

Just forget about this filler of an update and focus on the next thing. Hopefully that will be substantive.

I mean, expecting new quests in this update was probably overexpecting. It's coming out a month after the release of a raid, the next free quest is being developed on a livestream which severely limits how quickly they can introduce it, they've had Crystal Cove and expansion bug-fixes to do in the meantime, and the next big thing they're working on is an adventure pack, which always take at least two months to do.

Most years have one update that doesn't introduce much straight away but mostly does behind-the-scenes work. U62 is this year's. (And it will also be the update including this year's Night Revels, so if we just forget about it then that won't be happening at all this year.)