U45 Preview 1: 1/14-1/16

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/511311-U45-Preview-1-1-14-1-16

Disclaimer

Hello, all! Preview 1 of Update 45 is open! It is expected to remain open until sometime in the late afternoon (Eastern) of Thursday January 16th. There will be a dev event on Wednesday January 15th from 8-10 PM Eastern where members of the DDO team will be available to collect feedback and answer questions in real time on Lamannia.

This preview contains the following features:

• New Class: Alchemist
  • Base Class and New Spells
  • Bombardier Enhancement Tree
  • Apothecary Enhancement Tree
  • Vile Chemist Enhancement Tree
• Revamped "Catacombs" and "Delera's Tomb" Adventure Packs
  • New Epic versions of both Adventure Packs
  • Named Loot Pass (Including changes to the Heroic loot, as well as entirely new Epic Loot)
• Quality of Life Additions to the Shared Bank (Detailed below in this post)
• Balance Changes
  • Two Handed Fighting Changes
  • Ranged Combat Changes
  • Knight of the Chalice Enhancement Tree Changes
  • Other Balance Changes

In addition to those primary features it also contains the following miscellaneous changes and bugfixes:

Character

• Skaldic Rage in the Warchanter tree now scales its duration based on your Bard levels
• Aasimar's with Stoneskin active will no longer have their faces displaying incorrectly.
• Primal Avatar core abilities have had typos corrected in their tooltips.
• Updated description of the Epic Mage Armor feat to mention its duration.
• Rangers may now train Favored Enemy: Vermin whenever they could select a Favored Enemy.
• The Spell Evard's Black Tentacles has had its targeting adjusted for better ease of use and accuracy when casting
• Icons
  • Fixed the border on one of the Vistani Knife Fighter tree icons
  • Fixed the Falconry Tree Icon so it didn't poke out the edges in the Univeral Tree window.
  • Tiefling and Tiefling Scoundrel racial enhancement tree icons are now unique and no longer display the Elf racial icon.
  • Harper Agent now has more accurate icons for the ability score selectors
  • Know the Angles in the Harper tree now has its proper icon

Items

• "The Rough Docent" now has an enhancement bonus of +1 instead of the erroneous +5.
• "Ratcatcher" now has a critical profile of 18-20/x3 (down from 17-20/x3)
• The Boarding Pass to Sharn now uses the same induction time that other Teleport Items use, such as the Bottle of Mist and Stormreach d12.

Quests

• Fixed several minor typos in the Haunted Halls of Eveningstar
• The Cerulean Hills wilderness area has had a polish pass makeover

UI

• Feats
  • If you are ineligible to take a Feat due to an antirequisite, the tooltip of the feat will now display this information.
  • Class Level Requirements for feats that required class levels in one of many different classes, such as the Spell Penetration feat, now display their class level requirements in a more concise and clear manner that better illustrates if you've met any of the requirements.
  • Feat Categories should no longer erroneously require character level 21
• Shared Bank
• There is now a Sorting Dropdown panel in the Shared Account Bank to allow the items in the account bank to be sorted in based on any of the following ways
  • Most Recently Added
  • Oldest First
  • Item Name (A-Z)
  • Item Name (Z-A)
  • Minimum Level (1-30)
  • Minimum Level (30-1)
• There is now a text field in the Shared Account bank in order to filter by minimum level range
• There is now a dropdown panel in the Shared Account Bank to allow filtering based on Item Slot. You can isolate any of the following item slots
  • All
  • Weapon
  • Shield
  • Runearm
  • Armor
  • Eyes
  • Head
  • Neck
  • Trinket
  • Cloak
  • Waist
  • Rings
  • Hands
  • Feet
  • Wrists
  • Quiver
  • Cosmetic Weapon
  • Cosmetic Armor
  • Cosmetic Headwear
  • Cosmetic Cloak

Miscellaneous

• "Gatekeepers Grove" new public area has been added with entrances in both the Harbor and the Cerulean Hills. There is currently only one Gatekeeper there admiring his accomplishment but perhaps soon others will move out of the city and into the grove.
• A few Harbor NPC's have had their animations adjusted
• The area of the Marketplace near the Catacombs and House Cannith has been adjusted slightly.
• Verisgante in House Jorasco is once more willing to summon his ally Dannato.
• Spells and Abilities that are meant to visibly hide your weapons now do so much more reliably (such as using Spirit Blast while your weapons are meant to be hidden due to Eldritch Blasting), and drastically reduces situations in which weapons are meant to be shown (such as using Dual Crossbows flickering out of existance after opening a door or using a lever)
• Guild Airship Officer Dubgar no longer sells guild airship buffs or transport npcs. He still supplies training dummies, crafting stations and guild chests.
• The Ranger Trainer in Sharn has been adjusted to not impale themself with their bow.
• Ogre Death Animations now play all the way through
• The Reagent Vendors in the Feather's Fall Apothecary now have different shops for each class (or combination of classes) that use particular sets of Spell Components, for easier parsing

Known Issues

• N/A