Here are the Release Notes for Update 37 Patch 4, released on Wednesday, February 21st, 2018.

Of Special Note:

Happy 12th Anniversary, Dungeons & Dragons Online!

In celebration of 12 years of DDO, we're giving away a cosmetic item to every character that logs in during the Anniversary! When characters log in from February 23rd through April 1st they will receive a slice of birthday cake in their inventory when they first log in after the event is activated. Double-clicking on the cake will open a UI that allows the player to select one of five Bound to Character cosmetics (click on the links to see what the cosmetic looks like):

Cosmetic Robe
Cosmetic Medium Armor
Cosmetic Heavy Armor
Cosmetic Light Docent
Cosmetic Heavy Docent

The cosmetics are similar in appearance, but look appropriate for the weight of the armor or docent.

News and Notes:
Classes

    Favored Soul: The Hitpoints provided from "Stout of Heart" and the Spell Points provided by "Purity of Spirit" are no longer removed on death.
    Fighter Vanguard "Shield Rush" second and third ranks DC now properly scale off your highest attribute modifier.

Combat

    Death fatalities have returned! Monsters now have a 25% chance when killed by a magical attack to do a special death fatality, such as freezing solid and then shattering, or dissolving from acid.
    All effects that dispel or ward against Rage have been updated to include an updated and more consistent set of Rage effects.
    The animation for Shield Charge has been improved.
    Monster Champion damage-over-time on-hit effects now have an internal cooldown, and will no longer apply multiple stacks from one multi-projectile spell.
    Action Boosts and other activated statistical boosts will no longer pause melee attacking.
    Various Aura abilities no longer erroneously apply their effects to targets they are not meant to (Objects, creatures in entrance states, etc.)
    Monsters will now only investigate breakable sounds at medium range. Previously they could hear those sounds from great distances which could cause unintended chain pulls as they would path to investigate.

Items

    Disease Immunity now works properly on Purity Filigree.
    When using items with the newer, scaled Vampirism, Construct characters are now healed with Repair energy and Undead characters are healed with Negative energy instead of the normal Positive.
    During potion drinking held items will fade off and reappear at the end of the animation.
    The Icons for Vistani Totem's have been altered.
    The Great Crossbow "Volley, Arbalest of the Damned" is now more visually impressive.
    Some Legendary Greensteel Set Bonus buff bar tooltips have been altered for clarity.
    "Soul of the Elements",  on the rings "Perfect Pinnacle" and "Legendary Perfect Pinnacle", now correctly persists through death.
    "Purifying Quiver" and "Legendary Purifying Quiver" can no longer erroneously drop with a "Reaper" bonus on them.
    The tooltip description of "Bleeding" damaging effects now accurately states the full damage being added by the effect.
    Both the Heroic and the Legendary variants of the "Silent Avenger" set bonus no longer erroneously grant far more Fortification Bypass than intended.

Quests and Adventure Areas

    The Anniversary Event has been updated! New rewards, NPCs, and more will be discovered when the event opens later this week.
    Mists of Ravenloft
        Undead should now be properly damaged by healing on Legendary Elite and Reaper difficulties.
        Transport NPCs have been moved inside of the Taverns in Barovia.
        Old Baba's Hut now properly displays in the Adventure Compendium.
        Raid weapons now have their correct icons.
        The Blessings of a Feather feat is no longer lost upon death.
        It is now possible to see where you have recently been on the landscape map.
        Fixed an issue with the Ravenloft Exit signs where you could "Return to Eveningstar" even if your character had not been to Eveningstar.
        Ravenloft Exit signs now have additional teleport locations available including "Return to your Guild Airship" and the other Ravenloft Public Spaces.
        Trap Control Panel's in Death House have been adjusted to face the correct directions.
        Signposts in Barovia now correctly point to Wizard of Wines and Yester Hill.
        It is harder to cause dungeon alert during the final fight in Wrath of Earth.
        The "Anarchist" card is no longer erroneously called the "Anarchrist" card in the objectives of "An Invitation to Dinner".
    Tempest Spine and Legendary Tempest Spine
        A Dimensional Door now appears at the start of the raid after Sorjek dies.
        Sorjek will no longer leash in the middle of combat.
    Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords
        Some tweaks have been made to monster placement which make it somewhat less likely to trigger Red Dungeon Alert while playing.
        Freda is no longer looks confused after the Umber Hulks are killed.
        Fixed an issue in "Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords" where some players were unable to see the Mudmen.
        Some Dungeon Alert changes have been made in Part One of Temple of Elemental Evil.
    The Earth Elemental Optional in the Lair of Summoning now has its correct text.
    The two missing Rare encounters in King's Forest can now be found and completed.
    The overall number of monsters has been reduced in some denser encounters in Friends in Low Places.
    Critters, such as sewer rats, squirrels etc, will no longer roll for champion status. A bug has been fixed where they also counted towards Dungeon Alert. They also no longer cry for help, for lonely is the world of the critter...
    Transporting to Reaver's Reach from the Guild Airship now properly closes the dialogue box.

Races

    Dragonborn potion drinking animations have been updated and now hold the bottle correctly.

Sentient Weapons

    Sentient Weapon audio will now say the same thing twice in a row less often.

UI

    There is a new slider in Audio Options to adjust the volume of Sentient Weapon voices. The earlier check box to mute or unmute Sentient Weapon voices has therefore been removed.
    Saga completion dialog now correctly references the saga in question, rather than thanking people for saving Eveningstar.

Miscellaneous

    House Jorasco has had a slight layout alteration in preparation for Update 38.

Happy 12th. Thanks for playing. Here is your shitty looking, btc cosmetic, that recycles toee and ravenloft templates. YW

I'm curious what is new with the anniversary event.

SweetKitten wrote on Feb 21^st, 2018 at 12:14pm:


What does this even mean?

5 Foot Step wrote on Feb 21^st, 2018 at 3:36pm:


Different sources of rage bypassed effects that were immune to rage, cancelling/stacking with the effect.

Metal-Beast wrote on Feb 21^st, 2018 at 4:13pm:


I really done need another BTC cosmetic clogging up my inventory after ravenloft. Rankly I'd have been happier if they literally just re-ran last year's anniversary.

Man...I read that and I got all excited because I thought they were doing something cool like letting us pick out a cosmetic of choice from the store.  But no, we just get matching party hats.

"Thanks for keeping us in business well longer than we ever expected.  Here's some generic crap we picked up at a dollar store.  Enjoy."

Whatever.

The cakes used to give pretty good items in the past. The time it gave out abbot quivers/bows/ and other named items that most people will never get because nobody raids anymore.. that was cool.. i remember getting mana pots before.. other named items..

where the cards at? Those were dope.. they promised that they would never get rid of them... but.. they made the crunchers not work anymore.. and removed the code for them.

Now we are at the point where they only give some garbage cosmetic that takes up inv space? Fuck ya..

Cant wait til next year where they give me that hook up of 10 curse pots or some shit... ill be looking foward to that all year..

wtf is wrong with them? They act like these are not virtual items.. like they have to have a fucking factory making this shit that cost them hrs of labor and materials.. so they gotta be super cheap and give you very little.. its one thing if they never gave shit before and its always been like this.. but going from having good items to having trash a few years later is kinda dissapointing

Skrilla wrote on Feb 21^st, 2018 at 6:02pm:


One thing to note is, mana pots and exp pots compete with the store. They can't really give more raid items because they offered a really comprehensive list already.

When you do this sort of promotion, you want 2 things. One is to give someone a taste of a consumable to hook them. Two is to build goodwill.

SpaceGoat wrote on Feb 21^st, 2018 at 6:26pm:


Sure they can! Again: its all digital. And there are plenty of people out there who would rather see an old raid item they'll never get than a garbage cosmetic.

SpaceGoat wrote on Feb 21^st, 2018 at 6:26pm:


I don't think they are accomplishing that, here.

Rubbinns wrote on Feb 21^st, 2018 at 6:32pm:


What? Ship cannons have been doing damage to me for many patches on Airship.

Unless they have drastically improved the anniversary event, it's just another year that they phoned something in.

noamineo wrote on Feb 21^st, 2018 at 4:17pm:

I would agree with this.

I think that almost everyone would be completely satisfied if all they did was recycle the 10th Anniversary raid loot list and call it a day.

I love cosmetics, but clearly other people do not. Especially when those cosmetics are BtC.

Ideally, they'd give away both so everyone could have what they want. These anniversary events might be the only chance some new players ever get to see some of that old raid loot, since the raids themselves are long since abandoned.

Hell, it might be the only chance some OLD players get to see that old loot. I've been on since 2010, and I've run Titan 3 times, Abbott maybe 6, and HoX-VoD-ToD maybe 6 times combined.

As an alternative to that old raid loot (which would be useless in the current game, with a few exceptions) they could offer something like:

Pale Green Ioun Stone
30 (x) Phlogistons
200 Shadow/Fire Dragon scales
200 Rusty Gilled Mushrooms (Heroic or epic)
50 Elemental Mushrooms (Heroic or epic)
1 Statuette of the Gods (Heroic or epic)
1 Slave Lords Bust (Heroic or epic)
Named Deathwyrm Items
Named FotP items
Enough Raid Tokens to buy one piece of gear from Legendary Shroud/HoX/Tempest/RtSO.

Again, none of these things are game breaking, but they're rare, outdated, or annoying to farm.

Like it was said above, it's all digital, so even figuring in Labour costs for time to produce, dividing that by an infinite number of free duplications rapidly reduces the RL cost to near zero...

Which is very cheap customer retention.