Camelot Grab Bag Q&A

In this week’s Grab Bag Q&A for Dark Age of Camelot, EA Mythic’s Richard Duffek answers questions about Dragonsworn armor, hand to hand styles, hit point calculations, and more.

Q: I just recently came back to the game, so I’m not savvy on all the new items. But, it was my understanding, that unless an item actually said “Level 48 required” or something to that affect, then the item’s bonuses could be received by a character lower than that. I say this, because on the Egregarious Ring of Nightmares, there is no level requirement in the delve, but my level 39 Molvik twink can not get the effects from it. I find it odd b/c there are other level 50 pieces of jewelry he can use, but not this one. Is the Ring of Nightmares bugged?

A: This is a common source of confusion among many players. The level of a jewelry item is not actually the determining factor in whether it will affect you or not. The level value you see is a number we manually assign, just to let you know the level player it is intended for as well as to determine how fast the item degrades relative to your own level.

What determines whether the item affects you or not is a hidden value automatically assigned based on the stats on the item called the Bonus Level. If the Bonus Level is higher than your level, the item won’t affect you.

In the case of Peridas’ Vigor, the Bonus Level is 28, so you have 4 more levels to go before it will affect you. The level 40 items you own have Bonus Levels of 24 or less.

This is intended as part of the way we balance items. The only time you should be concerned is if an item fails to affect you, even when your level matches the level of the item. In that case, either the stats were accidentally made too powerful, causing the Bonus Level to be too high, or the level value was accidentally set misleadingly low. If you should find such an item, please submit a bug report noting its name, its level, and your level.

When you see something along the lines of (Level 48 Required) on an item, that’s the level required to use the ability on it, not to benefit from its bonuses.