Time for another edition of our Grab Bag! Our August newsletter went out yesterday, you can check it out in your browser here and don't forget to sign up to get the newsletter direct to your inbox. :)

If you're in the path of any of the crazy weather around the globe coming this weekend/week, please take care and stay safe!

As always, thanks everyone for your questions, please do keep sending them in! You can submit any game related questions you have for our DAoC Devs through our Grab Bag submission form. Please note this is for game mechanic questions. Feedback/ideas/suggestions should be sent in through our feedback form.

On to the questions :)

In Midgard, I know of 14 possible locations of Doppelgangers.
Are there more spawn points for Doppelgangers AND more importantly, how many are active at one time? (i.e. There are only five (5) than will be active at one time in assorted locations, etc.)

Doppelgangers spawn as follows in each individual zone:

Pennine Mountains, Jamtland Mountains, or Breifine: 2 can spawn at once out of 8 potential locations
Hadrian’s Wall, Odin’s Gate, Emain Macha: 2 can spawn at once out of 10 potential locations
Ellan Vannin: 3 can spawn at once out of 15 potential locations

Their spawn-rates are relatively fast so that there should almost always be at least 1 Doppelganger up in each zone.

Can you explain what is the difference of ABS debuff and af debuff? Is abs debuff > af debuff > melee resist debuff?

An “ABS debuff” is short for “absorption% debuff” and targets an armor’s absorption%. Each armor type has a different absorption% with Cloth having 0%, Leather 10% , Studded/Reinforced 19%, Chain/Scale 27%, and Plate having 34%. Some classes, like list-casters, also have absorption% buffs they can use.

ABS debuffs remove either a flat amount of a character’s current absorption% or are a percentage decrease, depending on the way the delve shows on the debuff.

For instance a delve that says “Reduces the targets absorption (ABS) by 15%” means that the ABS debuff will remove a flat value of 15 from a 34% plate armor absorption, making the armor wearer have 19% (34 – 15 = 19) effective absorption for the debuff’s duration.

Conversely, a delve that states “Reduces the targets absorption (ABS) by -15%” (note the -negative symbol) will reduce a 34% plate armor absorption by 15%, making the armor wearer have ~29% effective absorption (34 * (1 – .15)) = ~29).

Generally, these differences in how ABS debuffs work is balanced by the duration of the debuff, with the weaker percentage decrease ABS debuffs lasting much longer than the flat-value ABS debuffs.

Armor Factor, or AF, debuffs, reduce a targets armor value. These are a bit more straightforward in that there is only 1 type of AF debuff that removes the flat value of the targets’ overall Armor Factor.

The general rule of thumb is that ABS debuffs are going to be more effective vs high-absorption% targets than AF debuffs since high-absorption% classes generally have a lot more AF to spare and because an ABS debuff can’t remove absorption% below 0%. A flat-value 15% ABS debuff is only going to remove 10% ABS from a Leather wearer.

Targets with lower overall AF means that an AF debuff is going to be more effective in increasing damage than ABS debuff would since the target is (more likely) to be losing a greater percentage of their AF than they would ABS.

We’re splitting hairs when it comes to cloth-wearing list-casters who have a relatively high 33% ABS buff but also have low overall AF. Both types of debuffs are going to be very effective against them.

Finally, melee (or magic if using legendary weapons) resist debuffs are generally good against all targets but to truly determine which debuff type is best for a particular case or even most cases will depend quite a bit on the actual delve of the debuffs as well as many other target-dependent factors. There is no right answer for all cases.

Hey guys!

Would it be possible to have stuff like ML10 tokens and mounts from 10p boxes, be stored in house and personal vaults? I know mansion deeds also cant be stored there, but if that is intentionally i dont know.

The ML10 tokens and house deeds are able to go into personal vaults already, just not house vaults, which is more than sufficient considering their value.

Unfortunately, the way mounts are awarded would need to be fundamentally changed to allow them into a personal or house vault. We can look into other ways to alleviate unused mounts clogging up an inventory though!

Does Valk r5 stacks or coexists with siphon we have in a temp? Ex, I have 25% siph, valk uses r5, I'm at 100 or 75% siphon?

The Valkyrie Realm Rank 5 ability, Valhalla’s Blessing, does not stack with any arcane siphon stats from items.

Why can a minstrel not pulse charm a red frost stallion, i used to be able to but now i get the error message, "this mob is too strong for your to charm" or something like that. My question is if a mini can hold a level 59 pet, which is the highest level a mob can appear red, why can i not charm red Frost Stallions. I am not using the perma charm, i am using the correct pulse charm.

Level 50 Minstrels can indeed charm up to a level 59 pet of a valid monster type. However, for a level 50 character, red con monsters actually range from levels 56-60 so it’s entirely possible that the red frost stallion is level 60 and therefore too high a level to be charmed.

FYI: To a level 50 character, grey con monsters are level 35 and lower, green 36-40, blue 41-45, yellow 46-50, orange 51-55, red 56-60, and purple are level 61+.

That's it for this week!
We're getting into an exciting time this coming month, can't wait!  

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See you there!