1.5.17

Patch 1.5.17b Notes

Item fixes and changes

• The Backpack will now feature a hover text that explains its function.
• The drop rates of Vanya's Bolting Anger, Wolverine, and Kalika's Catharsis were adjusted to match traditional drop rates.
• The drop rates of new Unique items exclusive to St. Paul's Hellgate have been increased, in line with player feedback.
• The Botmaster may now drop with an additional ammo slot.
• Edge of Fate will no longer erroneously drop where its base item type can (eg the minigame).
• XM108 Trident Launchers will now only drop up to level 30. From level 30 onward, a new Mk2 variant of this weapon type, named XM109 Leister Launcher, will start dropping instead.
  • The Unique Shiva's Trishula will now be a Unique variant of the latter.
• Explorer's Notes will now be properly untradeable.
• Ancient Australian Blueprints will now be tradeable.
• The "PDA" item collected during the Dead Pool quest that initiates the Proper Notice quest has been renamed to Sept's PDA for differentiation and clarity.
• The following quest items can no longer be discarded, to prevent accidents that block quest completion:
  • The Narrow Way Scroll
  • Message from Ser Sing
  • Message from Claire
  • Sept's PDA
    • More quest items will follow this approach as issues with them are reported.
• Watcher's Will and Convulsor will now have a far smaller variance in their possible slots, at 5-8 over 2-8 and 0-8 respectively. This aligns them with the traditional slot variance of their weapon type.
• XM17 Stingrays and XM18 Deathrays will no longer stop dropping after specific levels, thus becoming inaccessible at lv50.
  • The He Who Hunts Unique variant will now also drop from level 30 onward.
• Viper guns will now be described as Homing Pistols.
• The Necromantic Talisman awarded by Rick on arrival to Holborn Station will no longer be usable before lv50.
• Balbi's Ring will now feature a green line that outlines its hidden power degeneration.
• Items that previously dropped exclusively in the St. Paul's Hellgate area and items that exclusively dropped in St. Paul's-adjacent areas (Church Yard, Paternoster Row, Cheapside, and Little Britain) will now drop in all 5 areas.
• The level ranges of all regular Templar 2-handed guns were adjusted, to not leave level range gaps and reduce (but not eliminate) reroll recipe outcome errors. Specifically:
  • Crusader Lashers will now drop between levels 1 and 31, and Crusader Lances between levels 30 and 50.
  • Inquisitors will now drop between levels 8 and 31, and Holy Inquisitors between levels 30 and 50.
  • Threat Nullification Devices will now drop between levels 11 and 31, and Threat Elimination Devices between levels 30 and 50.
    • The last patch's measures against excessive drop rates of these items remain in place, and their drop rates have been reduced further to account for a wider level range. In total, these changes should have minimal effects on gameplay.

Skill changes

• Skills that are minions or only produce minions will now belong to the explanatory skillgroup "Minion", to better outline that they are affected by +Minion stats. This includes:
  • All Elemental summoning skills; Summon Fire Elemental, Summon Spectral Elemental, Summon Force Elemental, Summon Storm Elemental, Summon Toxic Elemental
  • All Demon summoning skills; Summon Carnagor, Summon Witch Doctor, Summon Warper, Summon Reaper
  • Dark Lord
  • All Bot summoning skills; Inhibitor Bots, Rocket Bot, Haste Bot, Bomber Bot, Nanobots, Spider Mine
  • Construct Drone
  • Summon Ember, Wall of Bone, Spectral Serpents
    • No new affixes that affect this skillgroup have been introduced at this time, as this classification primarily intends to communicate that +Minion stats affixes affect these skills.
• Firestorm's Fire Rate was increased by 100%, its base damage and power cost were reduced by 50%.
  • These changes should prevent buggy interactions with use rate boosters, without impacting the skill's performance.
• Spectral Curse's damage radius was decreased to 2m from 5m, and its base damage was reduced by 90%.
  • These changes should prevent occurrences of excessive overlapping damage, while still leaving the skill viable.
• Camouflage and Escape will now have a shared cooldown timer of 15 seconds. In turn, Camouflage will always have a cooldown of 15 seconds which will not be affected by any affixes or other cooldown reductions.
  • To avoid confusion, Camouflage will no longer display a cooldown field and instead read that its cooldown is always 15 seconds.

Level and misc fixes and changes

• The Nova damage formula has been adjusted to revert their performance to its original levels.
  • The formula will now scale to user level. In effect, this means all Nova damage sources will deal the same amount of damage in the hands of players with the same level.
  • Enemy Charged Bolts Novas will be subject to a different formula, to still prevent early-game overperformance. Morbid Fang will also retain its intended damage bonus compared to other Novas.
  • This change preserves the functionality of armor Novas.
• Level scaling issues with Dawn of the Dead and other maps have been addressed.
• The Normal Difficulty variants of all Necropolis maps will no longer feature Ghoul Lords, and their Zombie Summoner densities have been reduced.
• The achievement for killing Gatekeeper 100 times was fixed.
• A possible issue with the Butcher's Imp drop rates of John's Wit and John's Reservation was fixed.
• A possible issue where the Mythic weapon recipe would erroneously produce a Unique weapon has been fixed.
• Completing or abandoning the Big Sister's Song story quest will now remove the Cleanser item from the player's inventory, to avoid confusion with the Nightmare version of the questline.
  • This does not affect equipped items.
• All of the quests of the Modder, Coder, Tester, and Explorer in Stonehenge will now not award experience.
  • This change intends to make tier 1 farming in Australia easier.
• The last quest in the tutorial questline, The End is the Beginning is the End, will now award a Fateful Attribute Retrainer.