U81 Preview 2 - Loot

[SteelStar]

Hello, everyone!

This preview has your second look at the loot for the Terror of Demogorgon expansion! The items for this expansion can be found in the Test Dojo, so feel free to leave your feedback here!

For those of you who participated in Preview 1, thank you! Your feedback was very useful. We've tracked down bugs, rounded some things out, and made adjustments based on feedback. Here's a list of the biggest changes (though there were many, and a few smaller fixes may not be in this list):

• Twelve new items have been added, which can be found in optional chests in the expansion pack's content and the Test Dojo. These include variants of the new Helms ("Shaped Duergarcraft") and Cloaks ("Stitched Duergarcraft"), and a few new weapons.
• Nine new Artifacts can now be found in the Test Dojo
• Crafting devices for Nearly Completed items and Catalysts can now be found in the Test Dojo and the new public area.
• Legendary Catalysts now have "Legendary" in their names
• Madness of the Demon Lords is now 50% bigger, in line with the sword it's based on
• Abyssal Gems are now Bound to Account. (Catalysts, tentatively, will remain Unbound).
• New items from this expansion that have clickies now have charges, more appropriate caster levels, and are Exclusive.
• New items from this expansion that have Spell Absorption now have charges and are Exclusive.
• Wave of Despair (the new one in this expansion) has been renamed "Wave of Wailing"
• New items from this expansion that had Regeneration now have Strength of Purpose
• New items from this expansion that had effects that did not stack with each other have had some of those effects replaced
• Legendary Deadly's tooltip now correctly states that it grants a bonus to Damage.
• Some new items that had Saves vs. Enchantments now have Saves vs. Spells
• Items such as Ruler of Ruin that had multiple copies of Spell Intensity have had one of those copies replaced with the appropriate Spell Lore.
• Items such as Fiendish Requisition that were missing effects have had those effects fixed - Please let us know if you see any remaining new items with fewer than four effects.
• Staff of the Demonic Resurrector now has Arcane Augmentation instead of its lesser version.
• Duergarcraft Bucklers and Small Shields now have Diversion instead of Incite.
• Lolth's Protection now has more level-appropriate stats.
• Hooves of Orcus now has a Shadow Walk clicky instead of Expeditious Retreat.
• New scaling Smokescreen has had its numbers at any given minimum level adjusted.
• The Piwafwi of the Drow Assassin has had a mispelling in its name corrected.
• Adjusted effects on Planar Lariat, Dream of the Worldshaper, and other items based on player feedback.
• Raging Inferno on The Blood of Demons should now work
• Jet Propulsion on Demonic Rush should now work
• New throwing weapons should be significantly more throwable in this Preview

Preview 2 Known Issues:

• Chest drops aren't reflective of the correct drop rates in this build due to an error in the chest/table associations - Final rates will be identical to Myth Drannor and Lamordia for most kinds of drops (main exception being the Artifact list, which will work like Sharn's).
• Many items are not yet using the correct icons
• Flavor text is not present on loot yet
• Tooltips for Nearly Complete recipes don't yet accurately reflect the numbers for the stat they're applying. (They do functionally apply a level-appropriate value).

The below is the original post from Preview 1 explaining the loot in this pack, for those just joining us! Thank you for taking a look, and feel free to leave your thoughts below!
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For a framework for the items you're looking at, here's an overview on a few new and interesting things that can be found in this expansion pack's loot. There are a few features not yet appearing in Preview 1, but will be important to know about to understand the context of what's going on with these items.

Level
The items in this expansion pack are ML11 in Heroic and ML35 in Legendary.

New DC Proc Effects
We've made a suite of new item effects for the loot in this expansion. These largely resemble some existing effects, such as Paralyzing and Telekinetic, but using a system that lets us create them with level-appropriate DCs more easily. These are still a work in progress - We'll be adjusting things like DC numbers, cooldowns, and chance to apply on hit with these throughout the U81 Preview process. In the end, they may not be 1:1 identical to their older counterparts, but the hope is to be able to add these kinds of effects more easily to items with DCs that are useful in content near their minimum level.

Crafting Overview
There are two kinds of crafting in this expansion:

• Items that drop with Nearly Completed effects, allowing you to select a 4th affix
• Catalyst Crafting, in which you collect Rare Abyssal Catalysts and Deep Catalyst ingredients and combine them with legacy Named Items to create powerful new versions

Nearly Completed Items
Many items in this expansion drop with a "Nearly Completed" effect for their 4th effect. If you're familiar with Nearly Finished in previous content, this is a very similar (and Forgotten Realms-friendly) system. There are six kinds of Nearly Completed present on items in this expansion:

• Spell School: This allows you to craft on an Equipment bonus to your choice of Spell School.
• Skill: This allows you to craft on an Exceptional Bonus to a group of skills based on an ability score of your choice (STR skills, INT skills, etc)
• Healing Amplification: This allows you to craft on your choice of Competence Bonus to Positive Amp, Enhancement Bonus to Repair Amp, or Profane Bonus to Negative Amp (the normal bonus types for those amps found on named items)
• Ability Score: This allows you to craft on your choice of Enhancement Bonus to Ability Score.
• Insightful Ability Score: This allows you to craft on your choice of Insight Bonus to Ability Score.
• Quality Ability Score: This allows you to craft on your choice of Quality Bonus to Ability Score.

To do so, you will collect Abyssal Gems (BtA) from chests, then use those with these items in a crafting station.

Rare Catalysts & Catalyst Crafting
The powers of the Abyss and Underdark are manifesting in strange ways! The Rare Items in this expansion pack's chests are Abyssal Catalysts and Deep Catalysts. Each of these thirty items relates to a specific item from DDO's history, and when the two are brought together, they can be combined into a powerful new form at either ML11 (for Heroic Catalyst ingredients) or ML35 (for Legendary Catalyst ingredients).

To do so, you will need:

• One of the Rare Catalysts
• The specific named item it is associated with - In some cases, this may require the Heroic version of the item for crafting a Heroic item and the Epic or Legendary version for crafting the Legendary one.
• A number of Abyssal Gems

This will consume all of those (including the named item) to create the new item. These items, generally speaking, are stronger than other quest items at level, skewing closer to the power of at-level Raid loot.

All thirty Catalysts can be found in Rare Loot in the Test Dojo, and the items they create can be found under "Transformed Items" (a temporary name) there as well. Give them a spin!

 

[SteelStar]

Bump now that we're open!

 

[Lominal]

Might edit to add more later but:
- Artefacts aren't present in vendor list
- Dream of the worldshaper needs more than 20 SA charges for how difficult it is to obtain
- can we please get more runearms for weapon users (every runearm except dino is caster focused)
- Nearly complete has two copies on webs of the drow penitent (the non-ability one does nothing)- Demon;s arc still has 3 effects and 1 negative effect
- Generic armors have nearly complete that doesnt do anything


-Specifically, good job on the wicked pull having 8 effects, this is how you bring 2h weapons back into use.
-Ele victory isnt currently droping, can this be fixed befor the update?

Overall, most items are quite well designed, so the feedback I have is more specific.

 

[Qubert]

Lots of the bugs I reported look fixed. Thank you for that! Here are a few more I found.

- Drow Captain's Mask (both heroic and legendary) are missing an enhancement
- Duergar Completion Forge and Strange Catalyst Forge it has the Quorforged Docent of Victory from the Time Flies event
- Unable to view Minor Artifacts from the Vendor List
- Unable to buy crafting materials for the forges either. Abyssal gems I believe but sure if there are more

 

[SteelStar]

-Specifically, good job on the wicked pull having 8 effects, this is how you bring 2h weapons back into use.

As a general note: This item has 7 effects because the original item it's based on was an item that could do very well for both weapon-users and Sonic casters, and we wanted to preserve that in this special version. I would not expect it to be the norm going forward; if 2h weapons need further balance, it will be achieved in ways other than doubling the standard number of effects.

 

[Ratatoskr_Mikew]

No new Sentient jewels?

This is one expansion that really should have at least three new sentient jewels...........

Was hoping you'd finally release a runearm with legendary affirmation on it, thematically such would fit well with this expansion.

Calling those weapon master swords perfected is kind of laughable, you chose weaker alternatives to other effects you could have chosen, restricted the augment slot count to two rather than including a red and a colorless along side the purple and orange, you included an effect that already comes in augment form (Improved destruction), and there appears to be no upgrade path to add in a raid tier effect.

The armors should not force you into positive healing amp, give us a choice or bundle all three healing types for them!

While I do like the option to upgrade old gear, I am disappointed to see that cannith challenge gear is not on the list of gear we can farm for an ultimate upgrade to.

Praise on adding another sticky goo guard item, was always a fun effect

HUGE NO, DO BETTER: Legendary Karazikar's Cube

Remove repair lore and repair intensity, Life For The Lifeless covers these well enough. Ruining this new item with effects that do not stack with that while this is literally the only repair themed item in this expansion is intolerable to anyone who values repair based specs.

Instead use two of these, any two will do!:

Legendary Repair Systems (Needs created, just modify Strength of purpose to be repair based)
Greater Auto-Repair (Lacking in newer gear, latest item with this effect is way back in the Feywild expansion)
Quality repair amplification
Quality repair spellpower
Machrotechnic Converter (Allows you to use the higher of electric or repair spellpower and use that for both)
Rust Plague (Enemies struck with your weapon become vulnerable to rust damage for a short period of time)
Tetanus (Just create a DDO disease around the real world one)

 

[Leesun]

To clarify, the artifacts being worked like Sharn's mean that they aren't going to be flagged as rare? Or will they have a chance to drop from various chests as a rare drop?

Since they will be worked similarly to Sharn's setup, does this mean that saga rewards will have a chance of listing artifacts?

 

[Gruben]

the insight negative lore artifact belt has three affixes i know the three it gets are super strong so thats okay just wondering if there should be a fourth affix on it.
Masive W with the loot so far im very satisfied with how its been looking.
all the other other artifacts have four or five affixes so was curious if there was one more on Orcus' reign.

If you want to leave it at 3 affixes make the insightful 18% so its double what you get at level 15

 

[Hobgoblin]

is grazzts supposed to be missing a slot?

 

[BuckGB]

+1 to the earlier feedback that we need more runearm options. Please include at least one that focuses on melee/ranged and one that is defensive in nature for Machrotechnic tanks.

Also +1 to the feedback that we need more support for Warforged and repair in general. There is one item in this entire expansion that has repair-related enhancements on it, and it also includes Rune Arm Focus which puts it into a specific niche. We need more repair variety here - even the docent you added has Healing Amplification only on it, but ideally it would be Convalescent (HAMP + RAMP).

 

[Oriathim]

And we need gish items. I want my EK to do 50% of dps of real dps character, please (while benefiting from self heals and decent cc).

 

[Ratatoskr_Mikew]

+1 to the earlier feedback that we need more runearm options. Please include at least one that focuses on melee/ranged and one that is defensive in nature for Machrotechnic tanks.

Also +1 to the feedback that we need more support for Warforged and repair in general. There is one item in this entire expansion that has repair-related enhancements on it, and it also includes Rune Arm Focus which puts it into a specific niche. We need more repair variety here - even the docent you added has Healing Amplification only on it, but ideally it would be Convalescent (HAMP + RAMP).

The one item they include for repair based functions also conflicts with the only repair based artifact in the game, meaning non-stacking effects. It's a real slap in the face!

 

[Zavina]

No new Sentient jewels?

This is one expansion that really should have at least three new sentient jewels...........

Yes, i fully expected to see more sentient jewels, and an increase in sentient xp with a new spark pushing the next ceiling. Was quite disappointed there wasn't.

I'm just in the process of putting together the snapshots (had problem with graphic card, so had to get another before finishing this preview images).

 

[Arahabaki]

I hope the cosmetics aren't finished yet, because some of them are a little disappointing.
Sporesphere is a generic 20 sided die instead of anything fungal related.
Mycelic Mauler looks like a generic hammer, when it could be a giant mushroom.

Null Blade, Heart of Gauntlgrym, Demon's Door, and Fiendish Requisition look nice, and Ioun enjoyers will probably glamer the Ioun crown, but I was really hoping to get some more mushroom themed cosmetics to pair with the Mushroom Cap.

 

[Lotoc]

As a general note: This item has 7 effects because the original item it's based on was an item that could do very well for both weapon-users and Sonic casters, and we wanted to preserve that in this special version. I would not expect it to be the norm going forward; if 2h weapons need further balance, it will be achieved in ways other than doubling the standard number of effects.

considering using a 2h weapon (bow, staff or any of the 2h melees) inherently costs you a LGS/Dripping With Magma level effect if you're using raid level weapons due to no offhand, nevermind that for ranged and melee the 2h options are just mechanically inferior on top of costing you effects and they've needed further balance for 4 years at the least.

 

[Zavina]

And my snapshots for U81 P2 can be found here.

 

[Gemini-Dragon]

Level 35, Legendary Drow Priestess Mantle has +300 undying and Level 35, Legendary Lolth's protection has +315 undying. Not sure why they are different values at the same level. Heroic versions have different values as well.
Legendary Drow Captains Mask has smoke screen +40%, Legendary scales of the Demogorgon has smoke screen +39%. Previously the highest concealment value on an item was +25% lesser displacement. This seems like a huge jump in power? Legendary Duegarcraft shroud has Lesser Displacement (25%), are some end game items going to have near displacement level concealment?
Legendary Stitched Great Forged Shroud has Magical Efficiency +5%, I think it should be 10%?
Legendary Stitched Duergarcraft Cloak has Exceptional Fort +10% while Legendary Duergarcraft Cloak has Expection Fort +25%? Is that intentional?

 

[Tharkeen]

No new Sentient jewels?

This is one expansion that really should have at least three new sentient jewels...........

Was hoping you'd finally release a runearm with legendary affirmation on it, thematically such would fit well with this expansion.

Calling those weapon master swords perfected is kind of laughable, you chose weaker alternatives to other effects you could have chosen, restricted the augment slot count to two rather than including a red and a colorless along side the purple and orange, you included an effect that already comes in augment form (Improved destruction), and there appears to be no upgrade path to add in a raid tier effect.

The armors should not force you into positive healing amp, give us a choice or bundle all three healing types for them!

While I do like the option to upgrade old gear, I am disappointed to see that cannith challenge gear is not on the list of gear we can farm for an ultimate upgrade to.

Praise on adding another sticky goo guard item, was always a fun effect

HUGE NO, DO BETTER: Legendary Karazikar's Cube

Remove repair lore and repair intensity, Life For The Lifeless covers these well enough. Ruining this new item with effects that do not stack with that while this is literally the only repair themed item in this expansion is intolerable to anyone who values repair based specs.

Instead use two of these, any two will do!:

Legendary Repair Systems (Needs created, just modify Strength of purpose to be repair based)
Greater Auto-Repair (Lacking in newer gear, latest item with this effect is way back in the Feywild expansion)
Quality repair amplification
Quality repair spellpower
Machrotechnic Converter (Converts repair spellpower, spell crit, and spell crit chance to the electric varients)

This is a Forgotten Realms expansion. Why would you think runearms or any Eberrron specific stuff would fit well thematically?

Thematically, there should be no repair, runearm or warforged related content whatsoever. Be careful what you ask for.

 

[Fizzix]

Drow Wizard Greaves contrasted with Grip of the Marilith

Grip has Enchant, insightful enchant and heighten... well done! makes sense!

and then there's:

DWG is one of the only real decent sources of insightful transmutation in that level range (in the game for that matter), yet has Enlarge Metamagic. The only two classes that would really benefit from transmutation DC boosts are Druids and Alchs, I guess rangers and acid DDM could be thrown in there.

Alchs have zero? spells which are affected by Enlarge.

It kinda stinks to have a druid item labeled Drow Wizard Greaves? Give Alchs some love.

Maximize, Empower, Quicken are all better choices (edit: Quicken is already on Conj item so Max/Emp prob best choices.)

 

[woq]

I repeat the feedback from late in thread Preview1:

Gauntlets of Devoured Divinity are too similar to Elises Grasp from Chill of Ravenloft : it would be fitting for at least the mrr to be changed to the prr variant, or change something else. It's 3/4 same modifiers on the same slot (except elise is better because elise can craft more than just ability score) - and then it's only FoM left against a dolorous slot - in back to back expansions.