Discussion: Issue 22: Death Incarnate - March 20, 2012 [Live] Patch Notes

Issue 22 Patch 1 Notes

COMBINED

General

• Fixed a crash when opening the LFG chat tab right after you had it open with a higher level character with more mission options.
• Players can no longer choose or join trials before Quick Downloader Stage 4 is complete.

• The Beast Mastery power set is available for purchase on the Paragon Market.
• Beast Mastery is a new primary pet summoning set for Masterminds. This power set gives the player the ability to summon various beasts of natures such as: swarms of stinging insects, hawks, wolves and lions. This power set's unique mechanic is called Pack Mentality. Each time you attack with one of your damaging powers in Beast Mastery or when one of your pets attack you have a chance to gain 1 stack of Pack Mentality. Each stack grants a 2% damage bonus to nearby ally beasts. Additionally, the power Fortify Pack gives the player's pets a chance to critically hit.

• Enhancement Converters (ECs) allow you to convert one Archetype Origin or Invention Origin enhancement (but not Store Bought Enhancements) randomly into another enhancement. You can convert an enhancement into another within the same set (for 3 ECs), same rarity (for 1 EC) or same category (for 2 ECs).

• The Daily Repeatable mission reward has been increased to 10 threads from 2 threads.
• Players can now earn two Empyrean merits a week by completing all Dark Astoria arcs every week. They can speak with Taskmaster Gabriel, who is outside of the Dark Astoria hospital, in order to claim these merits.
• Taskmaster Gabriel will inform players on how long they have until they can earn their next Empyrean merit, along with which arcs they still need to complete for their next reward.
• Adjusted the maximum merit reward in Dark Astoria's Repeatable Missions to 2 Reward Merits. This is attainable once per 20 hours. After that, each Repeatable mission will only offer one Merit.

• Players will no longer fall past the volume that will teleport them to Dark Astoria if there is more than one instance of Dark Astoria available.

• The LFG description of TPN Campus and Minds of Mayhem now list the correct iXP awards.

• Players that made the first two choices regarding the permanent powers such as Ghost-Slaying Axe and the Blackwand before the Freedom launch will now be able to claim the third choice.

• Added check box to costume and tailor screens to show only free and previously purchased costume pieces.

• Customizing the effects for the Mastermind power Thugs - Call Bruiser will no longer cause a client crash.
• Character creation will reset properly when returning to the login screen and switching users.
• The Pocket D Pack Metallic Mini Skirt now matches with Dress Top and Strapped Heels on low graphic settings.
• The Pocket D Valentine Pack studded leather belt should have less clipping with huge models.
• The Pocket D Valentine's Pack Casual Dress Shirt should have less clipping during dance emote animations on all body types.
• Metallic Dress Top now appears under Jackets, Shirts, Robes, Trench Coats, and Unique tops for Female characters.
• The Barbarian costume set is now included in the costume set scrolling menu.
• Elemental Order - Covered up the see-through sections on elemental order gloves on all body types.
• The Dragon Pattern should no longer be mirrored on the Female Baron Jacket
• The Dragon Pattern has been added as an option to the Male and Huge Baron jacket
• Added Gunslinger belts without bullets to Male and Huge in jackets categories.
• Imperial Dynasty Female Imperial Top w/skin will now appear under jackets, sleeveless jackets, sleeveless robes, bolero or trench coats
• Imperial Dynasty Male top now appears under Tight and Shirts.
• Fixed Imperial Dynasty Bolero sleeve clipping when choosing another chest option.
• Using Imperial Dynasty 2 and Imperial Dynasty 3 Chest, the Sleeves for Jackets should no longer clip into the arms for Short Sleeve, Military Long, Classic Steampunk 01
• Fixed an issue with Autumn Aura color customization which was causing it to display different colors.

• Finishing a respec will no longer cause the system to open a Super Pack if you had one in your salvage inventory.

• Resolved some potential situations where a Mastermind could enter an map where they are exemplared with more than the allowed pets and with pets having access to higher levels of upgraded powers.
• Using Secondary Mutation or Mystic Fortune will no longer trigger the loot drop sound.
• Fixed a bug that caused vanity pets to be unsummoned if you are held, slept or stunned.
• Powers in macros that are disabled by powers that are toggled off earlier in the macro will now activate again, as intended.
  • An example of this is a macro that disables the Black Dwarf toggle and enables the Dark Nova toggle afterwards.
• Fixed a bug that would cause the Leprechaun pet to move more slowly than was intended.
• Fixed a bug where Dimension Shift's initial activation sound effects would re-play on every pulse of its effects.
• Added dismiss animation for Wolf and other vanity pet such as Blackwolf, and German Shepherd.

• Flying Disc can no longer be used on characters that have shape shifted using a travel power like the Coyote Travel Power.

• For power sets that use weapons, Assassin's Strike will now animate if used out of hide if weapons are not yet drawn.

• The unlockable Maelstrom Pistol can now once again be chosen in the tailor screen by female Thugs Masterminds.

• Assassin's Strike will now animate after using Build-up.

• Fade: Fixed a bug that would cause this power's benefits to only affect the caster.
• Soul Absorption: Fixed a bug that would cause Soul Absorption's initial frontload regeneration and recovery boost to stack.

• Haunt: Shades will no longer have multiple stacking "Taunt" buff icons show up in the pet window when near their original target.
• Umbra Beast: This pet should now be more aggressive and will not wait until it or its owner is attacked. Additionally, the Umbra Beast's movement speed has been increased by a fair amount and it will fade out almost immediately after being defeated.
• Targets affected by Darkness Control's Possess should remain solid black for the duration of their confusion, instead of flickering between the black and normal states.

• Dimension Shift now phases allies as well as enemies. Allies are not immobilized by the patch and can freely move out of it to become un-phased. This allows allies to choose whether to phase and attack the phased enemies, or to stay unphased and be protected from the phased enemies.
• Dimension Shift's recharge is now 60 seconds, down from 90 seconds.
• Dimension Shift can now be slotted with ATO sets as well as Immobilize sets.
• Propel now "splashes" knockdown on three additional targets nearby the primary target, within a 15' radius.
• Fixed a graphical error with a streaking particle on Dimension Shift.

• Ice Control/Block of Ice: This power should now accept the Ascendency of the Dominator ATO set.

• Fixed an issue with Tanker single-target powers where their proc chance for PPM enhancements was erroneously being penalized for Gauntlet's AoE. Tanker attack powers should now have the same proc chance on PPM enhancements as other Archtypes' versions of those powers.

• Running to the right with Ninja Run active should no longer compress the player's chest into their stomach.

• Fixed an issue with the front leg during the sit animation.

• Fixed an issue where players could slot regular Kheldian's Grace while having superior Kheldian's Grace already slotted, causing their Superior ATO to be deleted.
• Might of the Tanker: Recharge/Chance for +Res(All) and Superior Might of the Tanker: Recharge/Chance for +Res(All) are now slottable into Electric Armor/Lightning Field, Fiery Aura/Blazing Aura, Ice Armor/Icicles, Stone Armor/Mud Pots and Dark Armor/Death Shroud.
• Stalker's Guile: Recharge/Chance to Hide will no longer apply its Hidden state inconsistently or multiple times.

• Fixed a bug where completing a Signature Story Arc while alone would drop the player from the Team-Up Teleporter queue. ** Note that completing the SSA while on a team of two or more will still cause the players to be dropped from the queue. This is intended, because the team that queued is broken up at the end of the arc.
• The following tasks had certain spots where the walls were disappearing inside the mission map. They have been fixed.
• Dark Astoria - Mu'Vorkan - During the mission, "Save the Suited Man from the knives of Vengeance"
• Dark Astoria - Heather Townshend - During the mission, "Investigate the Tsoo"
• Dark Astoria - Max - Director 11
• Tip Mission - My Other Selves
• Signature Story Arc 1: Episode 5 Hero Side in the tunnels under Blackbeard Bar.
• Incarnate Trial - The Underground

• Masterminds should no longer lose control of their pet when entering the giant Shivan area.

• Players that complete the Praetorian tutorial will now have a waypoint leading them to Praetor White.

• Officer Kuwalski can be conversed with again properly on the tip mission "Violent Cartoon, Moral Lessons"

• Prevented a crash when editing a contact/boss/villain group's name in Mission Architect while "Show Save Path" is active.
• Architect Options button should now work properly in mission testing mode.

• Removed an invisible geo that had to be jumped/flown over to get up the stairs
• In the mission, Get inside of Darrin Wade's lair, the objective, Defeat Positron, Indigo, and Viridian, will now be removed after completing the objective.

• The spirit wards are now ghosted and glowing prior to clicking on them, turn solid after you click on them, and remain solid when you have completed the objective.

• Mission 2 - Fixed an issue where Detective Hopp would shout random chatter.
• Mission 3 - Madame Bellerose will now properly leave the map if you have a stealth power toggled on.

• Personal Story - Fixed an issue where players could speak with the NPC's out of order in the mission.
• Mission 2 - Fixed an issue where the mini-map for the mission became disjointed.

• Mission 1 - Spawns in this mission will now scale up with difficulty settings.
• Mission 2 - Fixed an issue where players could talk to Sister Solaris or Sister Airlia within the mission, "Attend the Meeting". Players should only be able to speak with Sister Solaris.
• During the mission "Attend the Meeting", flickering particles have been cleaned up when using lowest shadow setting.

• Mission 1 - Hua Tov will now react properly if you choose to forgive him.
• In the mission "Save the Vanguard Compound" a few places where players can fall underneath the map and become stuck have been covered.

• The Tsoo allies in the mission "Two Birds" have been reduced in rank, and are now vulnerable to attacks from the Talons of Vengeance.

• Extraneous minimap markers no longer appear at the end of Graham Easton's final mission.

• Attempting to start a Dark Astoria personal story mission while on a team no longer results in double-messaging in chat

• Lou Pasterelli will now have the correct text displayed when viewed through the Contact Finder.

• The Top Dog marker should once again be visible on top of the Atlas Park globe.
• Earning the Early Bird badge on one character on an account will earn the badge for all characters on that account.
• Adjusted the logic that was causing problems with two badges at the end of Bloody Bay.
  • If you defeat both Shivan Obliterators within 30 seconds of each other of you should receive: Sibling Rivalry and Brotherly Love.
  • If you defeat them outside of 30 seconds you should just get Sibling Rivalry.

• Ensured that all entities created during the Resistance-sided version of the Protest are cleaned up when the event ends.

• Grass and water surfaces should now have an appropriate sound when a player is walking on these areas.

• The Clockwork Paladin in Kings Row now has a limit to the number of sprockets he can summon, preventing him from completely overwhelming the zone's population if left untouched for extended periods of time.

• Fixed a bug that would cause doppelgangers that use Soldiers of Arachnos, Time Manipulation, Beam Rifle, Street Justice, Titan Weapons, Beast Mastery or Darkness Control powers to use powers outside of their intended level ranges.

• Banished Pantheon Frost Shaman's ice blast attack effect should now play as intended.

• The Ancestral Guardian power Mastery of Form has an updated animation which includes the staff.

Enhancement converters are only purchasable via reward merits on live.

I was hoping to see staves before beast mastery u_u, but Halle-friggin-lu Now my Dark troller can get better damage with a more cooperative Umbra beast. *brings scooby snacks for pup*

this patch be looking good, and i did notice the part about steam integration before it was removed (glad its being worked on at least lol)

Awesome work Devs... I too was looking for staves before Beast Mastery... if I have enough points I'll play with BM for the time being. I don't have an actual character concept in mind as I do for Staves, but I can make one up.

Is the change to XP boosters that cause them to auto-activate on claiming new, or did I miss a patch note somewhere in the past couple weeks?

Can someone explain this to me? How does this work?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Freitag Issue 22 Patch 1 Notes NEW VIP ONLY FEATURES Enhancement Converters (ECs) allow you to convert one Archetype Origin or Invention Origin enhancement (but not Store Bought Enhancements) randomly into another enhancement. You can convert an enhancement into another within the same set (for 3 ECs), same rarity (for 1 EC) or same category (for 2 ECs).

A very nice patch indeed. I was surprised to see Beast Mastery out before Staves but I'll be buying both so that's okay!

Thank you, thank you! Thank you! For the changes in the Pocket D clothing items. I couldn't sort out why that tank top wasn't available under jackets!

Also, thank you for fixing the Alice in Wonderland fall to 'Oh great! NOW what do I do?' mess. That tripped me up so many times, last week!

Great work, guys! Keep it up!

One very unpleasant surprise and undocumented change - the XP booster activates when you claim it. So you can't just claim it and hold it until you're ready (like I have done on every new character since Freedom launched), claiming it thinking you're under the old rules means the clock is running.

Every time I try to update now I end up having to re-install. I have sent petitions to support, but have not received any feedback on how to fix this problem. I can not even get to the CoH support page now. This is really annoying.

Normal TIP missions appear silently now. No "jingle" like with drops.

Taskmaster General and 2 Emps is nothing more than a bribery system set forth to encourage players to satisfy Positron's intrusively weird obsession with trying to get players to play all the content. Again, why should he care what we play as long as we are PAYING? I intend to ignore the TMG and just do what I want. Missing out on 2 Emps per week is hardly a death blow to character incarnate progression.

The 10 thread reward for the completing first repeatable mission each day is good but the other times run that day should have been raised to 5 threads from 1. They do some things that indicate they want players to do a greater variety of content but here is a case where they are discouraging it.

Other than those observations, the patch seems to correct a few annoying problems and is a worthwhile DL.