Exploring Eberron: Update 5 and Delera's Tomb

This week's Dungeons and Dragons Online Nights of Eberron outing was an ambitious one: We took on Delera's Tomb, wading through hordes of skeletons, wraiths, and ghasts to help Delera rest peacefully. Delera's has some great loot at the end, but is also one of the lengthier adventure packs for its level, so most of us played a bit later than usual. It was well worth it, however -- everyone had a great time and many of us have a shiny new Voice of the Master for our troubles.

Next week OneDAwesome will be venturing back into free-to-play land thanks to House Kundarak. The Ever-Full Flagon in House K has a series of F2P quests in the level 5-6 range that are just too good to miss. We'll be running through four medium-length quests: The Chamber of Insanity, The Forgotten Caverns, Ruined Halls, and The Lair of Summoning. We'll wrap up the evening with Taming the Flames, a longer, much hotter quest. If you've got resist fire potions weighing your bags down, make sure you don't leave them in your bank vault for this quest!

We'll meet in the Ever-Full Flagon on the east side of House Kundarak -- look for the little green mug icon -- at 9:00 PM Eastern time. As always, if you're interested in joining OneDAwesome on the Cannith server, just send a /tell to Rubialina in game and I'll send you the invite.

With that taken care of, let's take a look at what else is new with DDO. Follow along after the jump for all the latest!

Turbine has finally wrapped up the week-long mess involving mistakenly downgraded accounts. Wednesday morning brought an announcement from the staff that a huge number of players were relieved to see: "We have resolved the root issue that caused some premium accounts to be incorrectly downgraded to free account status. Note that you may need to log out of the game/forums and log back in for the change to update to your account. If you still show an incorrect account state, please report to this thread and use the steps below to contact the account support team. Thanks for your patience, and we'll see you in game!"

Presumably very happy to have the issue taken care of, they quickly moved ahead to release the update 5 notes. Update 5 -- titled Rise of the Guilds -- brings a long list of changes and additions, as always. Predictably, the update brings new guild items and goals, so we'll take a look at those first.

We've heard about guild renown and guild levels, but what do they mean? Essentially they are ways to encourage guild members to work together. Your guild will start with 0/400 renown and be at level one, as reflected in the shiny new guild panel. "Build up your Guild Renown to earn Guild Levels and grow in power! The more active your guild members are, the more levels, power, and treasure your guild will achieve together. Your Guild can even buy an Airship as your HQ and take to the clouds! " There isn't any sort of specific list about goal or point totals available at the moment, but the Massively guild will be checking it out firsthand over the next few week, thanks to the wonders of Character Copy. There is a copy of OneDAwesome currently on the Lamannia server, so feel free to /tell Rubialina for an invite as we explore together.

While guilds are certainly a big part of this update, it doesn't end there. The combat updates have already been heavily discussed in the forums, with the two-weapon-fighting nerf easily one of the hottest topics. Now that we've got all the details thanks to the patch notes, players are able to look through in detail and check it out on Lamannia to see how they feel about it.

Feats are another mechanic that got a hefty overhaul. Sick of getting ambushed by traps? Get a little of your own back with the trapmaking feat. Level four Rogues will automatically gain this feat, but others can learn it and begin scavenging parts from traps and control panels to craft their own traps. Other feats have been added, such as Augment Summoning -- a feat which makes your summoned creatures much more powerful.

New enhancement, new spells, and changes to existing spells are going to make the game a lot more interesting for a while as players get a feel for their new skill bars. If you want some extra backup while you're finding your feet, it's a good time to hang out with hirelings -- they've received buffs to both brains and brawn. Better gear, better stats, better saves, better AC -- they've got it all. To top it off, the DDO store will be a little clearer about the difference between hirelings, so you won't be left looking at two level six hireling clerics, wondering what on earth the difference is. Not that I ever did that.

This update will also bring the standard changes and tweaks to items, including a truly huge list of Epic items. Quests and adventures received a series of tweaks that made certain ladders easier to use, buffed end chest loot, and removed a handful of bugs. Since Taming the Flames wasn't quite painful and horrifying enough, it got a CR bump from 6 to 7.

Finally, several general changes and fixes were made throughout the game, as always. House Phiarlan is getting a makeover, and Stormreach continues its cleanup as well. Most importantly, exit doors in taverns are now clearly marked, preventing players from going through the wrong door when trying to leave and accidentally falling into a giant hole full of PvP. Not that I ever did that either.

The full patch notes, subject to change as they are, can be seen on the Lamannia forums, and I'll see all of you next Wednesday!