Chunk #2 (build 97) is now on the PTS. Please feel free to download and play this new and exciting version! The changes are listed below:

In-game Advertising
We’ve added in-game advertising to this build of Dungeon Runners. These ads are only visible to free players and they add a whole host of new functionality for our non-paying guests:

Bank Space
Free players now have one bank page available to them. Paying members now have three bank pages.

Stacking Potions
Minor mana and health potions now stack to 5, giving free players more room to hold loot. Major potions now stack to 10, making them twice as good as the free player potions!

Improved Loot Access
Free players may now use what was previously members-only loot. Of course, there has to be a catch… or else why would members be members? This is how it works: 75% of yellow items that drop may be used by free players and 25% of purple or rainbow items that drop may be used by free players. You’ll know if an item can be used because it won’t have “Requires Membership” in the tooltip. All items received from King’s Coin vendors are usable by free players – but are, of course, soulbound on delivery.

Secure Trade
We’ve added secure trade to Dungeon Runners, by popular demand. This new feature allows you to easily trade items with other players through a simple interface. You may not trade gold, however, only items!!!

Initiating a Trade
You can start trading with another player by right-clicking their name and choosing “Trade”. You can also type “/trade <player name>” to do this if you like typing. The receiving player will be asked to accept the trade request. If they do, you will both see a neat trade interface pop up on your screen. You must be in the same zone and close to your target to trade.

Managing Trade
Simply drag items from your inventory to the area labeled “Yours” in the trade interface. You will see items being offered by your trade partner in the area labeled “Theirs”. Click the accept button when you are happy with your trade. Once both of you accept, the items are exchanged.

After making a change to the items offered, everyone’s acceptance is cleared. You must also wait about a second between making a change in trade and clicking the accept button. Finally, as items are added and removed from the trade window, you receive information about that. These features stop folks from pulling a fast one on you.

Trade Chat
The trade window has a special area where you can exchange private messages with your trading partner. Simply hit ENTER to start talking to them and hit ENTER to send the message.

The Trade Stash
When a trade is completed, the received items go into your trade stash. You can access your trade stash if it has items in it by clicking the “View Trade Stash” button off of your main inventory screen. If a trade is canceled, any items you offered will be found in your trade stash. Also, if you have items in your trade stash when starting a trade, those items will be automatically offered to your trade partner (of course, you have to click “Accept” before the trade is complete).

Chat Changes
We’ve made some changes to how world chat works to help facilitate trade and clean up tons of spam you may have been experiencing.

Market Channel
We’ve added a new world-wide market channel that you can use to offer items for trade. You may only link items in the market channel – world chat no longer allows item linking. Access this new channel with “/m”.

Joining and Leaving Channels
You can now join and leave the world and market channels with some fancy new commands. Type “/leave world” or “/leave market” to leave the world or market channel. Type “/join world” or “/join market” to rejoin the world or market channel if you have left them. Your channel preferences are now saved on your character and persist between logins.

PvE Balance Changes
We’ve made a host of balance changes to the game to help improve difficulty and increase skill usefulness:

Holy Roller’s mana cost has been reduced.

Shadow Bolt’s mana cost has been significantly increased.

Shadow Lightning’s mana cost has been significantly increased.

Shadow Word: Smackdown’s mana cost has been increased.

Ice Shards’s mana cost has been significantly increased.

Fire Bolt’s mana cost has been increased.

Ice Bolt’s mana cost has been increased.

Shields can no longer block magically-enhanced attacks.

Blue Screen of Life’s damage-to-mana inflation percentage now reduces as you rank the skill up. This makes the skill more efficient and causes less mana damage at higher ranks.

When under the effects of fear, your character will no longer get stuck running in a corner. In fact, your character will turn around in such situations.

Monster attack rating has been increased.

Defense rating for scale, plate and crystal armor has been significantly increased.

Way of the Roo now passively increases melee attack rating by 100%.

Non-combat health regeneration has been reduced by 33%.

The time before health regeneration begins after taking damage has been increased to 10 seconds. This applies to monsters as well as players.

The time before mana regeneration begins after casting a spell has been increased to 5 seconds.

Ratsputin’s boss encounter has increased difficulty.

Monster groups from Frump’s Misfortune and up have been improved for difficulty and entertainment value.

Light in the Loafers now has a fixed duration of 15 seconds regardless of skill rank. Also, as the skill is ranked up, the cooldown is now decreased. Light in the Loafers is no longer an instant cast spell.

All damage buff skills have had their cooldowns and durations adjusted. These adjustments allow you to use the skills more frequently than before. Upper ranks of elemental damage buff skills have been increased in power.

All attack speed buff skills have had their cooldowns and durations adjusted. These adjustments allow you to use the skills more frequently than before. The overall strength of the speed increases have been reduced on these skills.

We've reduced the travel speed of ranged weapon projectiles to 180 units per second (down from 200).

The range for all ranged weapon projectiles has been increased to 115 (up from 90). However, the maximum travel distance for ranged weapon projectiles has been decreased to 115 (down from 180). You could only achieve this maximum travel distance by holding SHIFT when firing. This was an unintentional bug that caused us greate consternation.

Players now receive 60 seconds of damage immunity when changing into a non-PvP combat instance. This immunity causes all monsters to ignore your presence. Any action taken by the player will immediately remove this immunity.

The damage per point of intellect for skills has been increased to 1.5 (up from 1.17).

We've fixed a terrible bug in our damage over time skills that caused one damage tick not to be applied.

PvP Balance Changes
We’ve made some changes to the PvP experience based on play-testing and user feedback:

Low-level PvP “twinks” have been nerfed. Their damage potential, health and remapped attack ratings have all been reduced. We highly recommend that you achieve at least level 10 before heading over to the PvP server.

Skill cooldowns are now reset when the match begins and the doors are opened. This lets you adjust your skills based on who you’re fighting.

Damage reflection effectiveness in PvP has been halved.

Yellow Belly now lasts 5 minutes and no longer allows the affected player to enter into the PvP queue.

We've added "skunk" rules to PvP. Teams may now gain an immediate win if they get 7 kills to 0 or if they lead in kills by 10.

Outnumbered players in PvP have been given a mana bonus equal to 15% per additional player on the opposing team. This shows in the descriptive text during PvP and on the tooltip.

The chance to get a King's Coin for winning a full-length PvP match has been increased to 100% (up from 75%).

Magical skill shots involving weapons no longer cause damage reflection (i.e. butcher, fear shot, poison shot, etc).

References to "Red Team" and "Blue Team" in PvP are now colored to match their name.

Skill Aiming Improvements
Most projectile skills have had their aiming code modified to help improve your ability to hit with such skills. If you use a position-targeted skill (i.e. Fire Bolt or Poison Shot) and are clicking on an enemy then your projectile will be aimed properly at the enemy you click on. Holding SHIFT down when clicking overrides this behavior and causes your skill to be aimed where you are clicking on the ground. Position-targeted skills should behave more correctly when aiming at a monster’s head now.

Several ranger skills have been modified to be position-targeted to take advantage of this improved targeting: Poison Shot, Fear Shot and Putrid Penetration. Rangers, remember that this change will allow you to shoot a skill simply by clicking on the ground (just like mages). So, be careful where you aim that thing!

Mythic King’s Coin Vendors
Some new King’s Coin vendors have been hidden throughout the dungeons. These vendors will sell you a specific category of Mythic item for a substantial King’s Coin cost. We’ve increased the stack size for King’s Coins to 100 to help you take advantage of this new feature more easily.

Wow? I idnt ahd time to see it yesterday but..
Rangers range is nerfed, rangers dmg on jewelery is nerfed, ttf is totally nerfed, the damage is significantly increased by that. Monster bait is nerfed, the %s speed is also nerfed, while I got a nice Smusher with still 13%? They already got highr damage output if you ask me, but now they get same speed as rangers, which is really bad. More damage output for less effort, thereby possible to get more hp, AND same speed.

I will see how this goes into PTS, I have made my decision, I change fighter, and so will the population of DR folow I think.

wow LR, never thought I'd see you angry.

Coming soon to a server near you (about 3 patches later): Fighters! Nerfed!

Well, the poison arrow type low lvl spell's screwy... it'll shoot even if nothing's in range

I logged onto PTS yesterday and saw the EXACT same thing on my ranger and was quite sad. My ranger is built around attack speed and maintaining a RANGED distance from my prey(imagine that). Now, I am being forced to fight closer against monsters/fighters that got their defenses and damage buffed. The only problem is my damage output has not increased to accommodate the changes, but rather reduced maybe by as much as 30%. I am glad that I am already 100, because leveling with this class just got exponentially harder.

I am glad that fighters got a little buff and I thought it was needed to help them in PvE. I have always advocated +strength being the +hit and +damage for fighters to make things more balanced. I have never requested that mages or fighters get nerfed, but now the way I play my class has been destroyed (at least on PTS).

I just hope the the DEVs reconsider some of the crippling changes made to the ranger class, before the majority of rangers reconsider it.

We're making some more adjustments to the ranger balance to address these issues. I'll post more when the changes are finalized.

steve

Stephen,
Thank you for responding to us. DR devs are among the most involved in the industry and we do appreciate it. The day I get paid 25-30% less my boss will see me 100% less of the time.

I am looking forward to testing with the adjustments you have pending.

Thank you from the barrel of my gun ... errr ... bottom of my heart?!? hehe ... you know, Thanks!

so how do I play chunk #2 on the PTS?

Stephen, you forgot to add stacking Waypoint scrolls to the patch notes. Neat suprise

:O really? Awesome! Didnt noticed that myself.

I appreciated it :}

when is this patch coming no hurry just wondering

Build 99 was sent to QA late today. It's got a few critical fixes in it as well as further balance tweaks. I expect we should get it up to PTS rather quickly.

If all goes well, this build could go live early next week.

steve

I am hearing quite a bit about the hits that Rangers have taken, but I would like to point out that the nerf to 1h and 2h Swivel Arm for Warriors is just as bad. It is my hope that when TFF goes up for review, that this is kept in mind.

As it stands, my 100 Warrior can not even kill Abby on Formidable. This is due to the increased difficulty on mobs in part, but in larger part the damage delt is significantly reduced by the lesser speed buff and much shorter duration. Further, Butcher works 0% of the time to knock Abbdy down, meaning that a primary and useful tool has effectively been taken away.

I certainly appreciate the desire to make the game more of a challenge, but doing so by cutting damage dealing potential and really the ability to successfully solo at higher levels is frustrating, to say the least.

I hear a lot of rangers upset, which is certainly understandable, but there is little difference with regards to damage output being significantly reduced between the classes of Ranger and Warrior. I suppose I am confused by the decision to fix what was not broken in order to provide additional challenge, rather than add features.


Tendadar lvl 100 Warrior
W7 FTW!



Edited by Tendadar (12/06/07 03:21 AM)

Is there going to be a way to gift using the trade widow.....on world 7 we dont do a lot of trading but we do gift a lot......it would be nice to have that ability with the trade widow............will help stop meeting at the pen and dropping things

thanks I had not tried it

Any chance that build 99 is going to the PTS today?

QA is finishing up their testing today. It's being copied to the PTS machines this afternoon. It looks like early tomorrow for PTS release.

If all goes well, Monday to live!

steve

Cool- thanks for the update:)

LegendRunner,

Grandma or ludicrous is irrelevant other than a chosen play style. DPS is DPS. 99% of the time, two 1h Ludi weapons will have a higher DPS than a 2h Grandma weapon. That being said, even a higher damage 2h is going to put out MUCH less damage due to the lowered speed buff, then you take into account the fact that if you miss once, it has a much bigger impact on a slow 2h than two fast 1h's.

Ultimately, regardless of what weapon is chosen, the DPS is cut significantly for both Rangers AND Warriors.

Last sentence is true, but put the logic in the theory. We use % speed buffs right?
Always and always mind the %. The % speed added for a 1.00 speed weapon, with a 5% speed buff is 0.05. Now take that 5% to a weapon with .30, thats 0.015. Continually getting % speed stuff, makes the advantage better at the end.

I got a speed of .47 with my The Judge, 1.4 - 7k dmg (pre-chunk), a speed ranger? Make it .30 as average, damage? Max 1.4 - 2.8k
That means the min damage is the same, so when I do 1.4k with a shot, I do less damage beause of my .17 less speed. But its far way more likely I hit 3-5k damage every time. Makes it far way stronger.

Same applies to fighter, only difference is that grandma fighter weapons can have over 1k more max dmg base, and with % dmg stuff it goes even higher. Try it, you might like it. Because.. why ever would grandma weapons be in the game? Everything is balanced right.

Ive only played a Shadow Mage, but I signed up cause I like being able to stomp through the dungeons solo with little downtime. Apparently, 90% of the next patch is meant to ruin the game for solo players. Chunk 2 might just precede my cancellation.

i also thought at first it would ruin the mage. However you have to use the increase spell range to your advantage and its a pretty big one.

when you install PTS there is a point in the install process to install it as a seperate instance of the game so you dont have to patch and repatch every time you want to go between live and pts. the instructions are in the section on downloading and installing the game.

Interesting changes in the new build, I'm sorry to see the loss of effectiveness with shadow lightning which I depended on through much of my growth to 100 as a shadow mage. Was thinking of making a warrior out of him to change things around, but after this i may hold off a little longer. I'll wait and see the nerfs to the ranger when they roll out, sounds like its going to take a little longer to get from 60-100.

Thanks for the bank space, its about time. There is little enough space in 1 page to hold the necessities of a single class character, i've been hanging on to a few nice rainbows in case i decide to go fighter, but its getting tight lately.

Just a quick Q:

I read here that it's 75% yellows and 25% purple/rainbows available to nonmembers on drops, however several people were claiming on the regular servers that NMs will not get any rainbows at all due to members complaining, is that true? I've played PTS and the ratios for yellows and purples are about right, obviously I haven't played so much to check the ratio for rainbows..

rbs are in the mix as well.lol the vendors if nothing else will sell rbs that can be used for non members

if you get anything from a vendor it will work for you yellow/purple/rainbow. all of it. as for dropped rainbows, we'll find out. I'd rather have all yellow/purple and no rainbow personally.

Wow, I cannot login for some reason. It's telling me I have the wrong password and or ID, When of course I am not. Like I can't remember my own ID . Never the less, I cannot wait until These changes become full in the main server. Good luck testing. I'll get on once I can figure out my problem.

Sprite, accounts and characters are generally copied over to the PTS only when a new major build is being tested. In this case, the accounts were copied over from a snapshot from at least two weeks ago. If you're brand new, your account won't exist on the PTS.