Welcome to this week's Grab Bag!

Our February newsletter went out earlier this week, including a poll for a future weekend event! Check it our in your browser here, and make sure to vote! Now's also the time to make sure you're signed up to get our DAoC newsletter in your inbox soon as it's sent :)

Thanks, as always, to everyone for your questions! You can submit any questions relating to current development plans, to request clarification on basic game mechanic questions, or questions on community issues through the Grab Bag Submission form. For any other feedback or suggestions please use our feedback form :)

Read on for this week's questions :)

I am using Renvek's crafting helm for spellcrafting and It says I have a 100% chance to gain skill but I have made several gems without gaining skill and it is using charges still is that normal ?

Yes, this is normal behavior. The 100% skill gain bonus has a random chance to apply or not. When it applies (only possible on non-grey recipes and when not at max skill), it will cause the item to use an additional charge and you should see your spellcraft skill increase. The crafting haste bonus will apply to every spellcraft recipe crafted and so always uses a charge. This means when the skill gain applies, 2 charges will be used on the item and this why you will sometimes not receive a skill gain but still see the item use one charge.

I have a question about my vulcans charm on albion. It has charges now that I don’t remember it having and I can’t recharge it. Is this intended?

The Vulcan’s Charm (and the Vulcan’s Eye and Vulcan’s Favor) have always had 30 charge limits. They are intended to be a consumable/one-time-use item for their respective craft bonuses, though they can still obviously be worn for their other stat bonuses when the charges run out. All crafting bonus items are meant to work this way, with the exception of the Renvek crafting helms that are received from the quest in Cotswold, Mularn, or Mag Mell.

Does anything affect the damage caused by storms, siege weapons, traps etc.  The damage varies but I'm unclear what affects the damage aside from chance.

Siege damage can be modified by siege damage and siege damage protection buffs such as from the Skald, Minstrel, and Champion siege chants. Additionally, some siege ammunitions have a magic or physical damage type such as thrust, matter, crush etc. Any resist buffs or debuffs on the siege weapon’s target would affect its damage; however resist piercing on the user of the siege weapon would not. 

Conversely, while storms and traps use the essence damage type, they are not affected by essence resist buffs/debuffs on their targets because they are technically cast from an object (so the casting character’s stats cannot modify the damage) and are set to use a straight percentage damage amount on their targets (so the target’s resistance values are ignored). The variance you see on these abilities is just the general base damage variance on all un-specialized direct damage spells.

                                                                                                                                  
Can you tell us how melee crit chance is calculated? And what’s the cap?

Melee and spell critical hit chances are calculated similarly so we’ll answer with both in mind!

From an old but still accurate 2005 Grab Bag:
The base chance to critical hit is 10% for melee damage and for magical direct damage spells. Damage over time spells have a base 0% chance to critical (meaning they will never do critical hits) but that chance can go up if the player purchases the Wild Power realm ability.

A 10% chance to critical hit means simply that each melee swing or each direct damage spell cast has a 10% chance to critical hit. If a melee character were to train the Mastery of Pain realm ability to level 9 and get the +39% critical hit, their total critical chance would then be 10% base + 39% bonus = 49%. The same additive process works for Wild Power on spell casts too or with Wild Minion with pet classes.

Your specialization, stats, or +skills have nothing to do with critical hit chances.

The cap for both melee and spell critical hit chance is 50%. This 50% cap applies to all realm abilities and buffs that increase critical chance such as Mastery of Pain, Wild Power, Wild Minion, class abilities like the Warlock’s Chamber of Destruction (+10% spell critical chance), Minotaur relics found in the world, or any other critical hit chance buffs.

The only exception to this is the Berserk ability on Berserkers that causes their critical hit chance to be 100% for its duration (it also raises the critical hit damage cap from 50% to 100% of damage dealt). Additionally, the Triple Wield ability of Blademasters prevents melee critical hits entirely for its duration regardless of their targets’ chance to land a critical hit.

Astral Wither proc does not have any animation. This makes it near impossible to catch in the chat log when you are fighting, especially when you're running with a group. Would this be something you guys would be willing to change?

The Astral Mordant weapons that proc armor withers do have a small spell effect that appears on the armor piece that gets withered (Helm, Chest, or Legs), just like normal class-based armor wither abilities. We can certainly look into adding a secondary, general and more visible effect that notifies targets they’ve been withered though and perhaps one that makes it easier to see which piece was withered.

Is it working as designed when grappling (power lock) with necro a Charged enemy that he can run around and reposition himself, whilst the necro can't?

Yes. Charged targets are immune to crowd control and so are still able to move around when grappled.

That's it for this week!

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend full of keep battles, rps, and good friends! :)