Patch NW.80.20170417a.3



Patch Notes: NW.80.20170417a.3

=Highlights=

New Storyline: Shroud of Souls
The illusionist Lukan has stumbled upon something beneath Neverwinter and has broken a ward keeping it sealed away. Join with unlikely allies and help keep the Sword Coast safe! In order to start this storyline, players must have completed the Cloaked Ascendancy campaign story arc.

Dev Blog: Featured Quests

Item Level Update
We've made an update to the Item Level system to make it a bit more accurate representation of player power, in terms of taking into account more varied sources and making the general rules more accurate. Boons, companions, companion gear, mount powers, and insignias now contribute to total Item Level, and the values given by gear and artifacts have been significantly increased. The Queue requirements have also been scaled in line with the item level increases.

We acknowledge that certain outliers, such as Bonding Runestones, will not be accurately represented in this system, but hope that the general improvements lead to a better experience for everyone.

The original feedback thread can be found here, and provides more detailed information on the intent and specifics of the changes.

Loadouts
The Loadouts feature is now available! Set up different sets of Feats, combinations of slotted powers, equipment, and more for a quick and easy swap to a variety of preferred play styles. Additional Loadouts beyond the default number can be purchased on the Zen Market for 500 Zen, and are available for free on NeverwinterPreview if you want to test out your changes beforehand.

Dev Blog: Loadouts

Stronghold Updates
Somebody finally cast a Grease spell on the doors of the keep. The Great Hall is now open! Enjoy a social space with functional seating and decor customizable by any guild rank with the appropriate permissions.

In addition, there's a new challenge available to the guild. Once the challenge has begun, guild members will be tasked to protect three supply cache drop-off points while waves of enemies assault them. Protect the supplies and get plenty of loot and vouchers, with a vote every five waves to risk continuing for greater rewards, or to call it a day and keep the rewards already earned.

On top of that, there are new Stronghold structures available to build. In the same vein as the ones that made an appearance in the last Protector's Jubilee, these structures will stick around for a set period of time, and provide a variety of services while available.

Dev Blog: Great Hall

Dev Blog: Stronghold Siege Event

Dev Blog: Stronghold Structures

Sword Coast Chronicle Update
The Sword Coast Chronicle has been redesigned to make it easier and faster to navigate, and to allow players to filter it by certain criteria as well! This interface is now a tab in the Quest Journal, but can still be reached via the previous methods as well.

=Release Notes=

Content and Environment
Spellplague Caverns


 * When Nostura flickers away from the fight during Fey Gate summoning, damage over time effects are dispelled and damage floaters no longer appear unexpectedly in the arena.
 * When Nostura shifts to another realm during Feywalk, damage over time effects are dispelled.

Stronghold


 * The Artisan and the accompanying vendor now spawn at Rank 10, decreased from Rank 12, to match the lowered requirements to get into Masterwork Professions.
 * The travel wagon has been replaced by a signpost.

General


 * Brother, Can You Spare a Copper?: Players may now properly return to the River District when this quest is complete, but hasn't been turned in.
 * Castle Never: The Illithilich's voice is now a little louder, in order to be more audible over combat.
 * Nostura's demiplane: When logging out and back in at a certain location, players should stand much less of a chance of becoming trapped behind an invisible wall.
 * Return to the Plague Tower: Enough enemies should now properly spawn to allow quest completion in all cases. In addition, the required number of enemy kills to complete this quest has been reduced to 20, down from 25.

Combat and Powers
Classes and Balance


 * Oathbound Paladin: Aura of Courage and Aura of Vengeance no longer cause the Paladin to deal large amounts of damage to themselves when Marked by a Guardian Fighter or Great Weapon Fighter.

Items and Economy
Artifacts and Artifact Weapons


 * Forgehammer of Gond: This artifact power's cooldown is no longer affected by cooldown reduction.
 * Lantern of Revelation now provides the stated reduction to the target's damage resistance.
 * The Mirage set bonus no longer sometimes turns the player's companion into a Paranoid Delusion.

Companions


 * Ice Sprite: This companion once again properly uses its own summon audio, rather than the Fire Sprite's.
 * Phoera: This companion's Active Bonus now properly works as described in the tooltip.

Enchantments, Enhancements, and Runestones


 * Certain Enchantment powers that did not take Armor Penetration and Resistance into consideration now properly do so.

Mounts and Insignias


 * Legacy mounts can now be claimed even if the player has a current version of the mount stabled, so that players with both can claim both versions of its Equip power.
 * The Griffon mount no longer shows the Armored Griffon briefly when summoned.

Professions


 * A new tier of Masterwork Professions has been added, with many new rewards.
 * Masterwork Professions now require Guild Rank 10, down from 20, to unlock.
 * The Profession resource, Vellum, now stacks.
 * The Profession Resources section of the inventory can now hold up to 240 individual stacks, increased from 160.

Strongholds


 * The following coffer value adjustments have been made:
 * Seals of Triumph can now be handed in for Conquerer's Shard credit (10 Seals per coffer point)
 * Guild Mark awards for Gold increased by 100%.
 * Guild Mark awards for Glory increased by 150%.
 * Guild Mark awards for Astral Diamonds increased by 150%.
 * Frozen Treasures donations had incorrectly given fewer Guild Marks, despite Treasures of Tyranny items being much more numerous.
 * To address this, players now receive x3 Guild Marks when donating Frozen Treasures, and 1/3 as many Guild Marks when donating Treasures of Tyranny.
 * The end result should be that all four campaigns are now roughly equal as sources of Guild Marks.
 * Coffer points are not affected by this change.
 * The maximum amount of Food, Metal, Stone, and Wood that Strongholds can hold at ranks 1-5 has been significantly increased.

General


 * Lifesilk Spinneret: The skirt on this armor piece has been restored, after having been removed in the Cloaked Ascendancy release.
 * Several other similar changes for Dungeon Chest rewards have been reverted to their previous appearance.
 * Many items which previously could not be sold or discarded have been changed to use a new "safe discard" feature. When discarding these types of items, the player will need to confirm the discard by entering the word "discard" into the confirmation box.
 * Various item and power tooltip typos have been addressed.

User Interface
Auction


 * Searches that include gem slots now properly return items with the expected number of slots.

Boons


 * Stronghold boons now appear at the top of the Boons categories.

Campaigns


 * Campaigns should no longer show completion values above 100%.
 * The "Benign Order of the Third Eye" campaign is no longer stuck at 86% for those who completed it near the launch of the campaign.

Character Sheet


 * Various characters that were incorrectly shown as from the Dalelands now have their proper character backgrounds restored.

Fishing


 * Players can now properly switch to another type of bait after running out of one type.

General


 * Various minor fixes have been made around the UI, such as text display improvements.

HUD


 * The Invocation button is now properly grayed out after the final Invocation of the day has been made.

Inventory


 * Items in choice packs (packs that provide a choice when opened) can now be previewed.
 * The Salvage and Restoration windows can no longer coexist; when opening one, the other closes if it was previously open.
 * When attempting to equip or unequip gear while in combat, the context menu now grays out the relevant options.

Options


 * The Quest Path is no longer bound to a key by default. This should only affect new characters, and the toggle can still be found in the Key Binds options for those who wish to bind it.
 * Various options no longer inexplicably revert to default after being changed and applied.

Vendors


 * The "Sell" option is now properly disabled in the item context menu if the item cannot be sold.

Zen Market


 * Profession Packs no longer sometimes open immediately upon purchasing if the player purchases them through the Zen Market.

Art and Effects
Character Art


 * Drowcraft shirts no longer appear to give Dragonborn characters mismatching torsos.

Visual Effects (VFX)


 * The Heavy Howler mount once again spawns with a purple emblem on the ground.

Graphics, Performance, and Stability
General


 * As part of various improvements to our graphics system, the following options have been removed:
 * Lighting Quality: This option has been removed, as the performance gained from this option is no longer significant.
 * Shadows: The "Low" setting has been removed, as the performance for Low was not consistently better than Medium.
 * GPU Accelerated Particles: This option has been removed, as the performance gained from this option is no longer significant.
 * Use Full Detail Character Animations: This option has been removed, as the performance gained from this option is no longer significant.
 * Advanced > Video Memory Limit: This option has been removed, as its functionality is no longer supported.
 * The Quest Path now properly displays even with certain options settings combinations that unexpectedly prevented it from displaying before.
 * "Unsupported video card" warnings should no longer appear for certain systems that have supported video cards.
 * Various backend adjustments and improvements have been made to the graphics system.
 * Various stability improvements and crash fixes have been made.