KeeperOfDarkMatter has posted some snapshots of Fighter and Mage AA abilities. He intends to post snapshots of Scout and Priest AAs soon enough.

KeeperOfDarkMatter @ Flickr

There are two sets of Void Shard armor. Both are Legendary.

The lower end is an upgrade from Kunark legendary sets (instance dungeons like CoA, MC, Chel, Char, and VoES). It is much more specialized and tailors closer to the individual classes. There’s chain healer stuff, plate healer stuff, shadowknight armor, paladin armor, solo scout stuff with a bit of survivability added to it, solo fighter stuff with the same, and more specialized gear including full brawler set, full assassin/ranger set, etc.

The higher end Legendary set has stats that most will realize is essentially low Fabled. This is the gear you’ll wish you had when you started doing T2 raids in Kunark. It will take a lot of shards to get, but considering how much harder some of the instanced dungeons are in TSO, they will be a necessity for those as well as raiding.

The numbers are being fiddled with, but right now it looks like it will take about 12-14 shards to get each of your lower Legendary pieces, and then another 12-14 shards to upgrade to the upper Legendary pieces. The current theory is you have to buy the lower and trade it in to get the higher, so you aren’t really losing or wasting shards by buying one and then the other. If there was a way to buy the upper Legendary immediately, I’m sure they’ll require 24-28 shards per piece.

And did I mention there’s lots of jewelry and charms and more general purpose armor which costs a lot less shards if you are just really hurting for some good armor you can earn maybe as little as 8 shards and gear up on these items. There are a lot of choices.

There is also a lot of request on the Beta forums to allow us to earn more than one shard per run for the tougher dungeons. Some TSO dungeons are like VoES — 30 minutes with a solid group and you’re done. Others are 2 hour slogfests. It would be nice if there was a chance of getting more shards.

And keep in mind that the dungeon zones will be dropping all kinds of loot which we don’t even know about yet. Void Shards is just one option.

Suffice it to say, if you want to gear up, now is the time to pick your dance partners. Because I really intend to be grouping in 1-2 dungeons a night every night I can to gear up.

The NDA is officially lifted! Everyone is now free to run amok and talk about beta all they like! Start keeping your eyes open for articles from your favourite news and fan sites as well!

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=434314

In some fantastic news, instead of the expected 4 hour download on November 18th, we will start receiving files for the new expansion over the next few weeks.

Starting this week you may notice extra files being downloaded when you patch EverQuest II from either the Launchpad or the Station Launcher.

These files are both from our upcoming expansion and from previous expansions and adventure packs. By making these files available early we hope to make November 18th and future updates a more pleasant experience for everyone logging into EverQuest II.

After November 18th we will return to our normal patching schedule.

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=434230

The exact details of the Dire Bear mount/pet in The Shadow Odyssey have been revealed.

• Available as a summoned pet from 1-19, after that, becomes a mount.
• Becomes a mount at level 20 – 20% run speed.
• Increase in run speed at level 40 – 30% run speed and armored appearance.
• Increase in run speed at level 60 – 45% run speed and increased armor appearance.
• Increase in run speed at level 80 – 52% run speed and increased armor appearance.

Scaling Mounts: Called to the Carpet!

With this mechanic in place, it seems even more obvious to me that the carpet in the D.I.R.T.Y. quests in Sinking Sands should have followed the same regime. Right now, a level 10 character can do those quests and get a 35% carpet in 45 minutes of easy solo questing. That seems overpowered to me. This scaling system would have been PERFECT for the carpet. Make it a 20% carpet at level 20. Then scale up over time.

The Pre-Order Mess: Redux

Here we go again with the lobes of SoE’s brain not communicating. You would think that since EQ2 is hardly available in retail stores and it costs SoE a fortune to have a retail presence anyway, and since likely half of the $40 retail price ends up being gobbled up by the publisher, manufacturer, and retail costs, they’d just give up on the retail box like they did last year* and make the DirectDownload desirable. Nope!

The Dire Bear is a Retail Box Pre-Order item only. But wait it gets better…

The Void Beast-in-a-cage house item is a DirectDownload Pre-Order item only.

You guessed it! SoE wants $80 from every player for The Shadow Odyssey. Since they’re already going RMT, and they’re already putting major game-changing stuff into LoN which is basically RMT, like Unicorn mounts (the single-most desired mount for girls), new housing, special mounts, special equipment, etc. why not just let us pay $5 more for the DirectDownload AND get the Bear.

Are you sure it’s a Bear?

Of course while they’re at it, it would be great if they made the Dire Bear look like, you know, a BEAR! It looks like a Sabertoothed Wolf. It is very obvious that they took the existing Warg model and tweaked it, rather than giving us an original mount. This is one of those situations where trying to stick with existing lore is LESS appealing than going for the attractive, extremely popular ice bears from The Golden Compass.

If a pretty unicorn is the fantasty of many girls, an armored ice bear is an equally powerful fantasy for the boys. There aren’t ANY mounts in EQ2 that I am particularly excited about. Maybe that’s why I specced 66% runspeed.

*The Rise of Kunark box contained a poster of a Dark Elf (rather than Kunark) and a poster of Legends of Norrath. The packaging was very cut-rate with paper envelopes for the discs, which for all intents and purposes were EoF DVDs relabeled as Rise of Kunark. Most players saw download times in excess of 2 hours, and analysis of the DVDs revealed no Kunark files whatsoever. The boxed version was just a bad idea all the way around. And this is not to mention the mass confusion this created with pre-orders of the Burynai pet (which was only available in certain situations which were so vague that SoE ended up giving the Burynai pet to everyone anyway).

EverQuest II’s fifth expansion, The Shadow Odyssey, will be available for pre-order starting Tuesday, October 14th, 2008!  EverQuest II: The Shadow Odyssey is an all-in-one compilation pack featuring five expansion packs and three adventure packs.  New players and veterans alike can journey through a massive amount of exquisite content unlike anything ever before seen in EverQuest II.  The Shadow Odyssey stretches well beyond the fantasy realm and propels the EverQuest II world into a new era of excitement and adventure.  The latest expansion provides content for players level 50-80, including more than 20 new zones and an achievement point increase to 200.

Read More

I’ve added a Purple Shinies page to EQ2 Wikia. You can check it out here:

http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Trinkets:Excavation_Trinkets

Guild Halls are now live, as are the D.I.R.T.Y. quests.

Walkthrough of D.I.R.T.Y. quests.

The D.I.R.T.Y. Crafters