Dragon Army - *General* 3.1 Patch Notes

Posted: 5705 days ago

Edited: 5705 days ago

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World of Warcraft Client Patch 3.1.0 - (2009-04-14)

Secrets of Ulduar

Since discovering Ulduar in the Storm Peaks, adventurers have journeyed to the titan city to learn more about its mysterious past. Further exploration has revealed that the magnificent complex is above all a prison, intended to permanently confine the Old God of death, Yogg-Saron. This ancient horror has corrupted its guards, and now it is breaking through the last of its restraints. Faced with the peril of Yogg-Saron's imminent freedom, a band of mortals has made preparations for a sweeping assault on the city. Overcoming the legions of iron minions and towering defenses at the city's entrance will take tremendous strength, but even that great victory may not be enough to overcome the madness that dwells below.

The Argent Tournament Begins!

As the might of the Scourge wanes under the pressure of Azeroth's heroes, the Argent Crusade have taken a foothold in Arthas's back yard. Off the northeastern coast of Icecrown, the Argent Crusade have sounded the call for the most bold and brave adventurers of the Horde and Alliance to take part in the Argent Tournament. Representatives of all ten faction capitals, from Undercity to Exodar, have traveled to the tournament grounds to find champions among their heroes who will prepare for the inevitable battle against the enemy of all living beings, the Lich King.

In Memoriam: Dave Arneson

Blizzard Entertainment would like to dedicate Secrets of Ulduar in memory of Dave Arneson. We were greatly saddened by the news of Dave’s passing. His work, passion, and creativity helped give life to an entirely new genre of gaming, and our fondest memories of playing Dungeons & Dragons continue to inspire us. Farewell, Dave, and thank you. You will be missed.

General

Due to significant talent tree revisions, all players will have their talent points reimbursed. Several new spells and abilities have been added for select classes. Players will need to visit their class trainer to learn new spells.
All Ground Mounts may now swim without dismounting the rider. Flying Mounts still may NOT, and will dismount the rider upon entering water.
The Argent Tournament, a permanent in-game event, has come to Icecrown. Players interested in taking part in this event should visit the Argent Pavilion located on the west side of the tournament grounds. Features include:

New ways of gaining reputation with capital cities.

All new daily quests, achievements and titles.

New rare and epic items, tabards, pets, banners, faction shirts and mounts.

Mounted combat, and much more to come!
Players level 40 and higher will now be able to visit their trainer to pay a one-time fee and access the dual talent specialization feature.
The achievement Brew of the Year has been removed from the Brewmaster meta-achievement. The achievement Brew of the Month has been added in its place.
Noblegarden has been redesigned into a week-long holiday with new items, quests, and more. Various achievements have been added, including the meta-achievement Noble Gardener, which is now required for the meta-achievement What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been.
Applying a glyph no longer requires a Lexicon of Power. The same rules for switching between dual talent specializations now apply to switching glyphs and cannot be performed while in combat, Battlegrounds (except when Preparation is up), or Arenas (no exceptions).
New music can be heard at the Argent Tournament grounds and in Ulduar.

*Dual Spec*

The new dual talent specialization system offers a convenient way for players to switch between two separate sets of talents.

*UI Improvements*

Dual talent specialization isn’t the only user-interface enhancement coming in the new content patch. Check out this preview of the other new UI features, including quest- and achievement-tracking improvements, new Looking For Group options and more.

*Dungeon Maps*

Beginning with Secrets of Ulduar, players will be able to view maps of Wrath of the Lich King's dungeons, complete with layouts of each floor and indicators showing the locations of bosses and players in your party.

PvP

Arenas
Enemy Unit Frames: This feature is only available while in Arenas, with several options in the Interface Options.
Battlegrounds

Battleground quests “Concerted Efforts” (Alliance) and “For Great Honor” (Horde) now require an Alterac Valley Mark of Honor in addition to the current requirements. These quests now award more honor upon completion.

Players will now be able to queue for battlegrounds from any location. Leaving a battleground will return you to the location from which you entered.
Alterac Valley
Drek’Thar, Vanndar Stormpike, the tower Heralds and Warmasters have received a hit point and damage upgrade in the level 80 version of Alterac Valley.
Strand of the Ancients
Capturing the Southern Graveyard will now automatically capture both the East and West Graveyards.
Seaforium Barrels can now be looted while mounted, seen from anywhere in the zone, and found at the Central Graveyard.
Teleporters can now be used while mounted and can now be seen from anywhere in the zone.
Lake Wintergrasp

Daily quests “Slay Them All!” (Horde) and “No Mercy for the Merciless” (Alliance) have had their PvP kill requirements reduced to 10 from 20. NPCs defending the fortress and south towers now count toward these dailies as well.

The number of NPCs defending fortress has been increased.
Siege Engines now have Steam Pressure as a resource type (replaces energy).

The southern Siege Factories can be captured.

The time between battles will be saved should a realm shut down. If Wintergrasp is active when a realm shuts down, the battle will restart from the beginning when the realm is once again live.

Towers in Southern Wintergrasp now have more defensive cannons.

Races: General

Gift of the Naaru (Draenei Racial): The heal has been changed to an instant-cast heal-over-time.
Stoneform (Dwarf Racial): No longer makes you immune to poison, disease and bleed effects for 8 seconds. Instead, using Stoneform will clear those effects when cast. Cooldown reduced to 2 minutes from 3 minutes.
Command (Orc Racial): Applies to shaman pets, and now correctly applies to death knight pets.

Classes: General

Armor Penetration Rating: All classes now receive 25% more benefit from Armor Penetration Rating.
The damage threshold for Fear, Psychic Scream, Hex, Intimidating Shout, and Turn Evil to break early has been significantly reduced.
Haste Rating: shamans, paladins, druids, and death knights now receive 30% more melee haste from Haste Rating.
Hysteria, Tricks of the Trade, Enrage, Wrecking Crew, Death Wish, Arcane Power, Owlkin Frenzy, Beast Within, and Avenging Wrath damage bonuses no longer stack together.
Mana Regeneration: The amount of mana regeneration derived from intellect and spirit has been reduced by 40%; however, talents that allow for mana regeneration while in combat have been increased. As a result, in-combat regeneration for classes with those talents will stay the same, while out-of-combat regeneration will be lower.
The shaman’s Fire Elemental and Spirit Wolves, mage’s Water Elemental and Mirror Images, and druid’s Treants have all gained avoidance from area-of-effect damage similar to what warlock and hunter pets already have.
Taunts: All player or pet-generated taunts now have a shared diminish category. In addition, Taunt-type effects from pets and from classes other than death knight, druid, paladin, and warrior have been set such that bosses can be made immune to them while still affected by death knight, druid, paladin, and warrior taunts.

Professions

Alchemy

All flasks now last 1 hour. To compensate, all flask recipes will provide 2 flasks for the same material cost.
Blackmouth Oil and Fire Oil no longer require a vial.
Elixir of Greater Firepower now grants spell power to all schools of magic.
Flask of Endless Rage: Now requires Goldclover instead of Fire Leaf.
Flask of Stoneblood: Health granted has been doubled.
Flasks now stack to 20, and their vendor sell prices have been reduced to lower the Auction House deposits.Flasks now stack to 20, and their vendor sell prices have been reduced to lower the Auction House deposits.
Northrend flasks will be converted to mixtures. This includes the Flask of Stoneblood, Flask of Pure Mojo, Flask of Endless Rage, and Flask of the Frost Wyrm. Mixtures can create 2 flasks of the corresponding type. This allows players who stockpiled Northrend flasks to convert them to the new system without any loss.
The Crazy Alchemist Potion is now correctly increased by Alchemist Stones.
The Mercurial Stone is no longer required as a tool for alchemists. It is instead an uncommon quality bind-on-equip trinket.
You can now sometimes find Alchemist's Caches from bosses in Ulduar. Only players with an Alchemy skill of 425 or higher can loot these secret caches.

Added a new recipe for the Titansteel Spellblade, an epic one-handed caster dagger, available from trainers.
Added new recipes for epic gear, found rarely on Ulduar bosses. These recipes are unbound and can be traded.
Most of the recipes in the 1-300 skill range of blacksmithing have received major stat updates to make them more useful.
The Titanium Plating shield enchantment now reduces the duration of disarm effects by 50% as well as increasing your block value.

A new recipe has been added to cooking trainers for making Black Jelly, using several Borean Man 'O War as ingredients. While it looks disgusting, it restores more health and mana than the highest level food.
Flint and Tinder is no longer necessary for creating a campfire. You're just that resourceful!
Grub now sells the Dig Rat Stew recipe to players who completed the quest.
Ingredients such as Spices, Apples, and the like have been removed from most cooking recipes.
Players no longer need to complete the Clamlette Surprise quest to gain Artisan cooking. The quest now offers the unique recipe, Clamlette Magnifique. If you already completed the quest, you can visit Dirge Quickcleave in Gadgetzan to learn this recipe (for free).
Prospector Khazgorm, found in Bael Modan in southern Barrens, now sells the recipe for Dig Rat Stew to the Alliance.
Several Northrend recipes were given greater skill up ranges to make it easier to reach 450 cooking skill.
You no longer need to learn cooking from books. The trainers have finally done their reading and are able to teach you the same thing.

Added two new recipes for enchanting staves with spell power, available from Vanessa Sellers in Dalaran City.
Greatly increased the drop rate of recipes found in pre-Lich King dungeons and raids.
Several recipes in the 250-300 skill range have been rebalanced, and the reagent requirements have been reduced.
Some enchants now have level restrictions. Note: the enchant is never removed from the item to which it's applied, however, players no longer receives its benefit until they reach the required level. Any enchants modified in this way have had their tooltips updated.
The enchanting interface now correctly sorts grey recipes by skill difficulty.

Added a new Reticulated Armor Webbing engineering enchant that increases the armor on cloth, leather, mail, or plate gloves.
Added a new Springy Arachnoweave engineering enchant that grants passive spell power in addition to turning your cloak into a parachute.
Engineers can now obtain the schematics for Lil' Smoky and the Pet Bombling from certain creatures found in Gnomeregan.
Specialized Gnomish or Goblin engineers can obtain both schematics equally. The repeatable quest that used to randomly grant these schematics has been disabled.
Flexweave Underlay now grants passive agility in addition to its normal effect.
Gnomish Lightning Generator: Now has passive critical strike rating. The damage from the activated effect has been reduced. No longer has a cast time. Now invokes a 10-second DPS burst item category cooldown.
Gnomish X-Ray Specs have a new model.
Hand-Mounted Pyro Rocket: No longer on the global cooldown. Damage increased, cooldown reduced. Now invokes a 10-second DPS burst item category cooldown.
Hyperspeed Accelerators: Now invokes a 10-second DPS burst item category cooldown.
Nitro Boosts now grant passive critical strike rating in addition to their speed boost.
Nitro Boosts now make you drop PVP flags when used, as well as preventing you from picking them up while the effect is active.

You no longer need to complete the “Triage” quest to attain Artisan First Aid. Instead you can learn the Artisan skill from the trainers in the capital cities.
You no longer need to learn First Aid from books. The trainers have finally done their reading and are able to teach you the same thing.

A new (and very rare) special mount can now be caught from Northrend fishing pools.
New fishing dailies are now offered from Marcia Chase in Dalaran City!
Players are no longer required to do the Nat Pagle, Angler Extreme quest to gain Artisan fishing. The quest now offers a special superior-quality fishing pole instead. If you already completed the quest, you can visit Nat Pagle in Dustwallow Marsh to receive this new fishing pole.
The time needed to catch fish has been reduced.
You can now fish anywhere, regardless of skill. Every catch has the potential for fishing skill gains, but you are likely to catch worthless junk in areas that are too difficult for your skill.
You can now fish in Wintergrasp, and the fishin' is good!
You no longer need to learn fishing from books. The trainers have finally done their reading and are able to teach you the same thing.

Toughness, Master of Anatomy, and Lifeblood now have level requirements equal to the level required for the corresponding skill rank: Apprentice (1), Journeyman (1), Expert (10), Artisan (25), Master (40), Grand Master (55).
You can no longer fail when Mining, Herbing, and Skinning.
Herbalism
Find Herbs no longer tracks Glowcaps.
Northrend herbs now yield more herbs on average.
The herbalism requirement for gathering Tiger Lily has been reduced to 375.
The time it takes to gather herbs has been reduced.

Added a recipe to trainers for creating a level 70 superior-quality off-hand item.
Added a recipe for creating a different level 70 superior-quality off-hand item. Scribes will find the recipe is dropped from residents of Silverbrook.
Added around 50 new glyph recipes. These new recipes can be obtained from Books of Glyph Mastery found as world drops on Northrend monsters. Reading a Book of Glyph Mastery randomly discovers one of the newly-added recipes.
Glyph icons have been updated so it is easy to distinguish between classes.
Players will now learn 3 recipes the very first time they perform Northrend Inscription Research. This does not apply to players who have already discovered recipes from Northrend Inscription Research (sorry).

Added a new recipe to cut black diamonds.
Added a recipe for Shifting Twilight Opal to the daily jewelcrafting vendor.
Added recipes for superior-quality PVP rings and necklaces to Northrend jewelcrafting trainers.

Added a recipe for combining Borean Leather Scraps into Borean Leather. You can still use Borean Scraps from your inventory to combine them.
Added new recipes for epic gear, found rarely on Ulduar bosses. These recipes are unbound and can be traded.
Several lower-level items crafted by leatherworkers have received major changes to make them more appealing.
Shadowskin Gloves and Dusky Boots no longer require Shadowcat Hide to create, but instead require an equal quantity of Shadow Silk. Shadowcat Hides can no longer be obtained from skinning.
Mining
Northrend deposits now despawn 1 minute after mining them. This change was made to speed up respawning when nodes were partially looted.

Added new recipes for epic gear, found rarely on Ulduar bosses. These recipes are unbound and can be traded.
Added recipes for superior-quality PVP cloaks to Northrend tailoring trainers.
The Lightweave tailoring enchant now sometimes grants a temporary spell power bonus instead of dealing direct damage to your target.
Several lower-level items crafted by tailors have received major changes to make them more appealing.

Quests

The fight event for the "Grim(oire) Business" quest at Vim'gol's Circle in the Blade's Edge Mountains now only requires one character to stand within a fire circle in order to summon Vim'gol the Vile. However, it still takes five characters, one in each of the fire circles, in order to interrupt Vim'gol the Vile's Unholy Growth cast.

Horde characters may now obtain the quest "CLUCK!" from Chickens. While Farmer Saldean won't be selling Special Chicken Feed to the Horde, perhaps "Westfall" William Saldean in Brill might...

Dungeons and Raids

New dungeon maps have been added for all Wrath of the Lich King dungeons.

Eye of Eternity
Malygos will now properly delay before breathing after a Vortex on Heroic difficulty.

Naxxramas
The Chains of Kel'Thuzad will no longer reset the raid's threat.
The Portal of Shadows created by Shade of Naxxramas will only persist for a maximum of one minute.
Players with pets who attempt to use the Obedience Crystals in Naxxramas will have their pets dismissed automatically so they may possess an Understudy.

Vault of Archavon
Archavon, Emalon, and their allies will now banish themselves 10 minutes prior to the beginning of a Lake Wintergrasp battle. A warning will be given 15 minutes prior to the start of Wintergrasp. They will not banish themselves if in combat.

User Interface

New Advanced features for quest tracking are now available. Players will need to activate this option within the Interface panel.

Holding the alt key while hovering over any equipped item will bring up a pop-out menu allowing quick access to any items in your bags that will fit in a given slot. Players will also see an option to place the equipped item in their bags.

A new Color Blind option is available under the Interface panel.
Spell Effect Level setting has been split into Particle Density and Projected Textures. Previously, Spell Effect Level controlled both of these features.

Added new Video Mode Ultra (should only be used on the highest-end systems).

Shadow Quality has a new higher level of detail. The slider for adjusting Shadow Quality remains the same, though there is an additional step at the high end of the spectrum.

A new feature has been added allowing players to allocate talent points before confirming they’d like to spend them. This feature must be turned on in the Interface Options.

New high-resolution player textures for Northrend armor sets have been added. Players can enable this feature by setting Player Textures to High in the Effects Panel of the Video Options.

Players can now return items purchased with an alternate currency back to the original vendor within 2 hours of the purchase time for the original cost of the item. Stackable items (such as Frozen Orbs and gems) and charged items that can be purchased with an alternate currency are not eligible.

Confirmation boxes have been added to purchases over 150 gold.

The calendar now supports a guild-wide sign-up sheet, allowing the event organizer to invite his or her entire guild.

Class roles (i.e. damage, tanking, healing) have been added to the Looking For Group feature. Class roles will be displayed when sorting through the Looking For More section.

Quest and Achievement tracking are now combined in a new Objectives Tracking window. Advanced features can be activated from the Objectives Options panel.

On-Use items will display in the Objectives Tracking when tracking a quest that uses them. No more searching through your bags for that on-use quest item!

Health and Fuel/Ammo bars have been added to the vehicle interface whenever operating a vehicle.

The mini-map has been optimized for better performance. Displays for vehicles, class colors, and off-map pings have been added as well.

Players first entering any dungeon that will result in a Raid ID lock-out timer will be warned if they are going to be saved to the instance. This warning will include an option to port to the nearest graveyard before being saved.

New elite mob frames have been added for V-Key frames.

For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum.

Items

Arena Grand Master Trinket: Dodge rating has been replaced with stamina.

Badges and Emblems looted off of any dungeon bosses by a member of the party or raid will automatically be given to all eligible party or raid members. Party or raid members must still be inside the instance to receive Badges or Emblems.

Clams
A new clam, the Giant Darkwater Clam, can be obtained by fishing in Wintergrasp. This mighty clam has a greatly increased chance to drop pearls, and yields up to five times the regular amount of clam meat.

Loot from clams now stacks correctly!

Changed the icon for Succulent Clam Meat so it doesn't look quite as disgusting. Now 100% more succulent!

Darkmoon Cards of the North will now take three seconds per card to create.

Death Knight Tier 7 DPS Sets: Death Strike has been added to both the 2-piece and 4-piece bonuses.

Divine Hymn will now trigger Illustration of the Dragon Soul.
Enhancement Shaman PvP Set Bonus: The cooldown reduction of Stormstrike has been increased to 2 seconds, up from 1 second.

Existing crafted resilience armor sets now offer additional stamina and resilience ratings through set bonuses.

Frozen Scepter of Necromancy now sounds like other maces.
Gift of Arthas: Now considered a curse instead of a disease.

The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

--
"If we ever get a dog and cat, they should be named "Come-on" and "Goddammit", so that when you yell "Come on, Goddammit!" you'll be surrounded by their love." -Locklear (paraphrased)

"You navigate like a blind chick." -Locklear
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