Grab a cuppa and take a minute out for this week's Grab Bag!

As always, thanks for all your questions! If you have any game related questions for our DAoC Devs, please send them in through our Grab Bag submission form. Please note this is for game questions, feedback should be sent in through our feedback form.

Click 'more' to continue on to the questions! :)

What was the reasoning on changing the Mercenary RR5 away from a weaponskill buff to a straight damage buff?

There were several reasons for this change:

A straight damage buff better accomplishes the goal of the original RR5 change to increase their damage burst. The original weaponskill buff did increase their damage too, but it also increased their defensive abilities too much. Secondly, the weaponskill’s damage increase wasn’t as much as we wanted by itself and then was too much when stacked with banespike or the Sorcerer’s Suggested Rage buffs.  Finally, at the time of the introduction of the weaponskill boost, Light Tank stances (since removed) were giving a damage boost that prevented our use of one for the RR5.

The new RR5’s straight boost to damage solves these issues by being strong enough on its own that we can warrant preventing the stacking of the other damage boosts and by better penalizing their defensive abilities when it is active.

How does the Cleric loyalty cloak /use2 (10% Heal efficiency increase) interact with the Cursed Life gloves 25% heal bonus charge? Do they stack or coexist?

These two effects stack because they provide a bonus to heal effectiveness in different ways:

• The Cloak of the Loyal Cleric grants a buff that increases the effectiveness of any heals cast *on* each member of the group.
  • This bonus would not apply to heals cast by a group member onto a non-group member target.
• The Cursed Life Gauntlets grant a self-buff that increases the effectiveness of all heals cast *by* the user.
  • This bonus would apply to any target that the user heals, regardless of whether or not the target is in their group.

The Silver "surprise" boxes we received for Midwinter gave me a surfeit of Pictslayer weapons. I can salvage these on Hib, but not Mid.
What gives?

After double-checking each item, Pictslayer weapons are not set as salvageable on any realm, including Hibernia. As these weapons are still desired by many players, especially in the battlegrounds, we have no plans to make them salvageable at this time.

Our best guess here is that you may have salvaged some Pictish weapons on Hibernia that were already in your pack.

We also double-checked the silver-bound chests and verified that they were giving Pictslayer weapons to each realm.

In the newsletter you mentioned more frequent RvR events…my question is actual new events or just rotating between Ghost Keep/BG/DF? Any teaser if they are new?

It will be a combination of existing and new events.

We aren’t ready to start talking about the details of the new events quite yet, but the big picture idea is a system that utilizes in-game leaderboards. These events would likely run for 1-2 weeks on a rotating schedule and would incentivize various aspects of the game (mostly relating to RvR).

In a previous grab bag you talked about the realm section button for switching realms but what about making a server select button. So that way we don't have to log out completely to select a different server Like Ywain1 or Ywain2?

Re-working our login and server-select flow has been on our list for quite a while! The reason it hasn’t happened yet is a simple one: it’s quite involved. Luckily, we’ve been making head-way on this and hope to have a new flow around the release of the Endless Conquest this fall!

[Insert question about Assassin and pet-class adjustments here]

Based on the feedback coming in, it seems like we’ve hit the mark on the latest round of changes to pets and assassins. While we understand that some who play those classes think some of the adjustments went too far, we’re still seeing those classes perform well in RvR and PvE. Of course, we’ll continue to monitor things and make further tweaks if necessary. Thank you all for your feedback!

And keep sending that feedback in!

Enjoy the weekend, all :)