At the time of posting this it has yet to roll out to the North American servers, but our European friends got it at 3:00 BST. Hopefully by this evening these will be deployed to the North American servers as well. Overall there are not a huge number of changes happening, a few tweaks here and there. The most important tweak however, and I think many other players will agree is that the Dye Vendor is reported to be returning from his recent vacation.
Pretty Pretty Princess
Funny how finally playing a game with armor dyes has made us all addicted to them. The talk in the general channels is nonstop questions and or jokes about the dye vendor. I myself have had a pair of boots desperately in need of a dye job for several days. One of our guild tanks has resorted to using a hideous color scheme compiled with the easily obtainable apothecary dyes. I wonder if the color palette of seafoam green and magenta offends the mobs so much that it increases his aggro.
Two-Tailed Cats Be Gone
A controversial change coming down in the patch is the removal of Valmera mounts from Defiant players who were crafty enough to stealth run into the vendor inside of Sanctum. Since this was not necessarily an exploit, it simply involved stealthing into enemy territory, I can see the frustration for the players this is effecting. But in reality it is somewhat unfair to give defiant players an additional mount, regardless of the effort they went to gain it. On the positive side, as the notes say the cost of the mounts are being refunded.
Trophies of Death
So one of the side effects of not having a true “rifthead” yet is you never really know if you just fail miserably at figuring out a quest, or if it is honest to god bugged. There have been several of us stuck on the “The Saga of the Endless: Trophies of Death” quest step for weeks, never really figuring out what we needed to do to progress through it. I am so relieved to find out that apparently it was in fact bugged and has been fixed. Maybe I can continue climbing the ladder.
One of the players on my server has the title Timelord, which comes late in the series. Being a massive Doctor Who junkie, I must have this title regardless of the mental costs. I just really really hope that it does not involve staring into the Untempered Schism. I have bad enough headaches as is to risk ending up with that infernal drumming sound in my head at all times.
Hotfix Notes
GENERAL
* The intensity of Alsbeth’s assault on Telara is increasing! The number of rifts, invasions, and zone events is rising in all zones!
* Fixed a bug that was allowing some creative people to equip one more weapon than they had hands for. This was not an intentional advantage of being an Ascended.
* Removed Valmera mounts from the resourceful Defiant players who managed to purchase them. Don’t worry, we refunded the cost, and hope you enjoyed them while they lasted!
* The Dye Vendors will be returning from their vacation with this update.
* Guild and PvP Quests: Killing the same character more than once will again give credit toward these quests.
* Quest: Harbinger of Sorrows: Modified quest text for better clarity.
* The Saga of the Endless: Trophies of Death: Quest now updates by closing Death Rifts.
COMBAT
* Warriors: Tempered Will, Paladin’s Devotion, and Ruthless Pursuit can now only be used when the Warrior is under one of the effects these abilities remove.
* Tracking abilities no longer dismount you on use.
BEASTMASTER
* Protective Companion’s Pounce taunt now properly causes the taunt target to switch to the pet.
ELEMENTALIST
* Icy Carapace: Rank 7 now lists the correct damage for this ability.
SABOTEUR
* Charge Booster: Reworded description for more clarity. Using Detonate with 5 Combo Points will fire off a Booster Charge, dealing 50% weapon damage. The total damage dealt is increased by 15% for every point spent in Saboteur above 21.
VINDICATOR [PvP]
* Tactical Strike: Fixed an issue causing this to trigger several times more often than it should. Now triggers 5% per point spent. Damage increase to target has been reduced from 10% to 5% per stack. Description updated to note that this stacks up to 5 times.
VOID KNIGHT
* Residual Absorption will no longer show as a buff that can be clicked on to remove.
WARLOCK
* Empowered Darkness: Ability will no longer get overwritten by weaker buffs.
DUNGEONS AND RAIDS
* A number of Greenscale belts were incorrectly equippable by all characters. They are now limited by class for equipping.
* King’s Breach: Expert: Konstantin’s Mathosian Fury can no longer be removed by player abilities. It also has a tooltip description!
CRAFTING
* Salvaging Rings and Necklaces that use gems in their recipes now returns salvaged gemstone items as well as regular gems.
* Crafted bow: The ability on Hawk’s Talon was not triggering, and has been fixed.
* Crafted bow: Verdant Archbow’s tooltip has been corrected so it properly lists the damage done.
* Relic-quality items should now be Salvageable and Runebreakable, although why you would want to break such lovely items remains a mystery. But you can, if you want to!
Yes, my dye provokes violence towards me.
(I like to think the dreads add to the effect.)
So far we have only had one on our server. Not sure if it is a case of few people made it past the Scarlet Gorge step before it bugged out or not. I must be Timelord Belghast!
IIRC, the Timelord title comes from the step after the step that requires you to finish the Death Raid Rift.