Remember a few days ago when we posted all about Dragonmarks going into development for Dungeons & Dragons Online? Here's an update on that, straight from community manager Samera. A look at the release notes for Update 4.1 was posted over the forums, by god, it's quite a pile of bug fixes and new features incorporated into the game.

One of the biggest news available in this update is the availability of a couple new quests on Solo mode: Freshen the Air, The Swiped Signet, Purge the Heretics, and Caged Trolls. Aside from this, general changes include:

• NEW – Fixed an issue where players are seeing a message that says "Cleaning up old connections" indefinitely. The same message may still happen, but the player will be able to log in again normally within 10 minutes.
• Resurrection Shrines now function in all ways like the Raise Dead spell. They will no longer drain the mana of a spellcaster that uses them, and restores people to life at 10% hit points rather than at 1 hit point. This is meant to address an imbalance between the effects of death for casters versus non-casters.
• The Coin Lords have used a portion of their increased income from the Auction House to upgrade the elementals powering the teleporters in Stormreach. Each of the teleporters in the various House wards of the city now allow anyone using them to select their destination from any of the other teleporter locations in Stormreach.
• NEW – Damage caused by a reduction in a character's Constitution score will now reduce the character's hitpoints directly. This damage is not applied to Temporary Hitpoints gained from such spells as False Life and Aid. Care should be taken when removing +Constitution items while at low hitpoint totals.
• Once upon a time there was a mighty warrior who had a love pure and true. But then his beloved disappeared and the mighty warrior flew into a rage. Where had the object of his passion gone? The warrior embarked upon a heroic quest to find his lost love. For an entire year the warrior searched without any sign of his beloved. And then one day…..could it be? Yet this was a different sort of love – the mighty warrior's beloved had changed, but it was his love still, and a great happiness filled the dazed warrior.
• You can now /point at things that are farther away than 30 meters.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. To see the entire release notes, click the Read link below.

And so the tale unravels... "Three thousand years ago the first Dragonmarks appeared in the elven kingdom of Aerenal. Strange patterns on the skin, more an elaborate birthmark than a tattoo..." Lore is such a rich place to get some new abilities and features in a game. Especially if it's based on a well-established fandom, the likes of Dungeons & Dragons Online.

Dragonmarks are currently in development, and over at the forums, Samera's just given everyone a preview of what we're looking at here. The Dragonmarks endow the player with magical abilities - each race having different sets of unlockable abilities. These skills can be accessed by going through the three tiers (Least, Lesser, and Greater) of feats in the structure of dragonmarks.

The question is: how exactly do you unlock your Dragonmark in the first place? The clue lies in The Hall of the Mark, where Lockania awaits. From there, your quest for a dragonmark shall trigger.

To learn more of the history behind the Dragonmarks and the specific abilities and skill sets per race, per tier, click the Read link below.

Turbine Community Relations Manager Samera has just announced a few changes regarding the release dates for Module 4 and Update 3.3 of Dungeons and Dragons Online.

The latter, Update 3.3, has been pushed back to March 12. The decision was made after evaluating feedback from the player base regarding the new Enhancement system. The delayed release for Update 3.3 has in turn partly caused Module 4's release date to be pushed back as well. Samera says that the main reason, though, is that the devs "got such useful feedback from Risia for Update 3.3 that [they] want to give Module 4 the same chance."

Module 4 should be going up on Risia next week, and the official release will be around the second week of April.

Over at the Dungeons and Dragons Online forums, Samera has posted yet another helpful 101 of sorts about the Wilderness Quests in the game. Samera says that they admittedly focused on building great dungeons so the wilderness areas of Xen'drik were less developed.

So with that in mind, they go on to discuss the wilderness areas and the quests you can take on in the said perimeters. Here's a summary of info on wilderness quests:

• auto-bestowed when you enter the area
• don’t involve any NPCs
• reward XP automatically when you complete the objective.
• good for short play times
• good for small groups
• summarized on your objective panel
• details available in your quest journal
• non-repeatable: you can only do them once (slayer quests go up to really high numbers, so there is lots of XP available.)
• persistent: your progress is always saved when you reenter the area.
• level limits: there are some broad level limits your party must be within to advance on a wilderness quest.

More info can be found right there on the game's forums, so if you wanna know more about what lies in Tangleroot Gorge, Three Barrel cove, and the Menechtarun Desert, simply hit the "Read" link below and you're all set.

Samera's back once again to fill us in on the latest goings on in Dungeons & Dragons Online, and if last time, we shared with you his post about the new spells on Module 4: Reaver's Bane for levels 1-12, this time we're gonna talk about the new spells cooking up for levels 13-14.

Much as we'd like to run them all down here, we wouldn't want to miss out on details that some of you might deem important. So what we'll do is just give you some of the spells in store for you in Module 4:

• Control Undead
• Delayed Blast Fireball
• Destruction
• Finger of Death
• Greater Teleport
• Resurrection
• Mind Fog
• Shadow Walk
• Deathward
• Neutralize Poison
  

And again, those are just some of the new spells in development. Heck, that's not even 1/4 of the total spells! Samera also posted the new spells they're developing for Bards, Paladins, and Rangers. So if you wanna see 'em all, along with the full details of each spell, just click on the link below and read up on those countless spells.

Over at the game's forums, Turbine's Community Manager Samera has just posted the most recent update to the ongoing development for Dungeons & Dragons Online.

And this time, he shares with us the list of new spells that are currently cooking in their labs for players levels 1 through 12 for Module 4: Reaver's Bane. So if you're planning to kick major ass in Module 4, you might wanna take note of these 15+ new spells that Turbine is working on:

• Aid, Mass
• Contagion
• Enervation
• Fire Trap
• Freedom of Movement
• Ghoul Touch
• Hold Animal
• Magic Circle Against Evil
• Shadow Walk

Again, those are just some of the new spells that Turbine is cooking up for all you DDO users. For detailed information on these spells and more, simply head on to the DDO forums by clicking on the link below to check out Samera's post.

Enhancements are getting an overhaul in Turbine's popular MMORPG Dungeons and Dragons Online. To help keep the player base up-to-date on the changes, Samera has graciously posted a general overview of the changes on the DDO forums. To make things even easier for you guys, we've got the info right here. Read on.

Each action point is important. As you level up, you gain action points. As you spend your action points to buy enhancements, your old enhancements don't go away. You never have to "unslot" an enhancement in order to fit a new one in. Instead, enhancements build on each other. While before you got new, more powerful versions of old enhancements automatically as you leveled up, with the old ones disappearing, now your old versions stick around. You can then choose to spend more action points and buy the better version or buy an entirely new enhancement instead.

Go for depth, or go for breadth. The removal of slots means that you are no longer limited to only 4 different types of enhancements. You can choose to spread your points out and dabble a little bit in everything, or you can choose instead to specialize in fewer enhancement lines. Multi-class characters will find that while they cannot specialize in an enhancement line as far as a pure-class character can, they have many more enhancement lines available for purchase, giving them greater versatility at the cost of specialization.

Available enhancements will be familiar. The majority of existing enhancements will remain in some form; some will be split into multiple enhancements; most will have a rebalancing of the numbers. Players who feel like they've built themselves around specific enhancements shouldn't feel like they have to reroll, while the difference between the enhancement "haves" and "have-nots" will be reduced as the power of enhancements goes down.

Automatic conversion. Upon logging in, all players will automatically have their current enhancements wiped, and an appropriate amount of total action points applied to their character. From that point, all you have to do is go to the same trainer you always do and buy whatever new enhancements you want.

New enhancements to buy. In addition to the familiar enhancements, players will find many entirely new enhancement lines available for purchase – enhancements that improve a cleric's turning ability, give extra uses per day of action boosts, or allow spellcasters to use wands to greater effect for example.

Samera plans to give everyone a more specific look at the enhancement changes soon, so keep checking back here at QJ for updates.

Whenever we report something about Dungeons and Dragons Online, the name Victor "Sporkfire" Wachter is almost always the first person that comes to mind (apart from the gamers of course). Being the online community manager of the Turbine-developed MMO, Sporkfire has always been available for fans to give clarifications and comments.

However, in a move seen as very surprising and quite intriguing, Sporkfire left Turbine and jumped ship to Cryptic Studios to serve as the lead community manager for the latter's MMOs. Accordingly, Cryptic has a number of on-going projects which include City of Heroes, City of Villains and the much anticipated title Marvel Universe Online (MMO, X360).

Furthermore, Sporkfire didn't mention specifically what the considerations were made before making the shift. "I am a huge fan of superhero. And so working with the company that put the genre on the MMORPG map is one of the most exciting things to have ever happened to me," explained Sporkfire. Wachter's post back in DDO will be put under the supervision of Turbine's Community Relations Specialist Ariel "Samera" Jaffee-Mark.

Heads up all you Dungeons & Dragons Online freaks, Samera has just posted the massive release notes for Module 3: The Demon Sands, and we have only one word to describe it folks: sweeeeeet.

The release notes are massive, and we mean 20-page massive. Nope, no kidding, it's THAT long! Which only means tons of changes and loads of updated stuff for us. Some of the commenters on the DDO forum are even saying that the release notes for Module 3 are sooo long and loaded with upgrades that Module 3 is starting to look like a sequel of DDO itself.

And in creating this much changes, Samera already warns the DDO users that it's gonna be a long downtime just for them to get all the updates and changes loaded into the servers. And, the downtime will affect not just the servers and the game's site, but also the forums. See, Module 3 is gonna be that HUGE that the dev team is gonna need to bring down practically the entire game network just to get Module 3 up and running in time.

We won't even attempt to create a summary for you guys (much as we'd want to) because as this writer has repeatedly been saying, the release notes alone are 20-pages long; heavily loaded with upgrades on combat, spells, Skills, Feats, & Abilities, enhancements, monsters, UI improvements, and tons more. So, if you guys are as excited as we are about Module 3 (and we know you are), head on to the DDO forums and take a look at the release notes by clicking on the read link below.

Undeniably, the city of Stormreach has gained fame among MMO gamers. And who wouldn't resist its charms? Its doors are always open to fledgling visitors, and to make them feel more welcome, the Coin Lords have granted them more freedom to explore the city's secrets.

How? Here are tips from Samera (of the the Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach forums) for players who are new to the scene:

• Look for Trader Skipp: When you reach Smuggler's Rest, you'll be greeted by Euphonia, who has a challenge for you. You have the option NOT to take it, if you agree to accept Trader's Skipp's delivery favor for his assistant, Trader Trevia.
• Euphonia: Yep, you bypassed her earlier, but according to Samera, her quests can be helpful if you want to gain the skills you need for battle.
• Sigmund: Newcomers are required to assist him recover his cask. After that, you're already free to roam in Stormreach! Once you've set foot in the Harbor, you're good to go. The door between Port Stormreach and Aspirant's Square has been removed, and we're sure you'll find it more convenient.

Also, you can gain access to the Marketplace by offering a gratuity to Guard Kilmarten. To gain permanent access for free, you have to defeat the icky Bolds that lurk in the Waterworks, and you'll get the Harbormaster's Seal as a reward.

And that's it! Hope you guys will enjoy your stay in Stormreach!

Buy: [DDO: StormReach]