Continuing Coverage of Game Update #55 and Sentinel’s Fate

EQ2Wire is providing continuing coverage of Game Update #55 (now on Test) and the Sentinel’s Fate expansion.

News is coming hot and fast now, so we’ve improved how news items are labeled and have added a News Ticker at the top of the site.

Don’t forget the UStream Sentinel’s Fate Beta Tour which will be led by Alan “Brenlo” Crosby. This is tomorrow Friday at 4PM PDT.

We are currently working on articles about the new Adornments, Guild Amenities, Leveling Tweaks, and a Zone List for the expansion.

Zone/Level Tweaks

There have been some interesting tweaks across the entire leveling range.

Butcherblock Moutains has seen some rearrangement of NPCs. For instance the Griffon (which now takes you to Darklight Wood or Gorowyn) is located at the docks.

New quest lines have been added in Butcherblock Mtns, Tenebrous Tangle, Barren Sky, Bonemire, etc. Further, the first 4 rooms of the sprawling Sanctum of Scaleborn have been made appropriate for 2-3 players (don’t worry, the rest is still designed for a full group). My favorite change, however, was downtiering the woefully underused Kaladim into a mid-30’s level dungeon.

The fast respawns and lack of loot in Kaladim made it a less than friendly zone. But the nail in the coffin for this zone was that there were much better zones in the same level range (Mistmoore Catacombs, Den of the Devourer, Sanctum of Scaleborn, and Temple of Scale). With these changes, level 30’s characters get another choice for dungeon crawling.

The first part of this zone polishing was unintentionally pushed Live. I’m speaking specifically about those changes to Sinking Sands. With Game Update #55, the rest of the tweaks and polish to this zone are now live. Level ranges on mobs and quests were changed and new quest lines added to make this another good choice for players wanting to level in the mid-50’s.

I think this shows that the EQ2 Developers continue to address issues with older zones rather than just expecting every player to be level 80-90. With all these gaps being filled in mid-30’s, and level 50-70 content, it should be a much smoother experience for players leveling characters through this range.

Adornment Revamp

The entire range of adornments from level 16 to 86 have been completely redone. However, some outstanding bugs in the Adornments, such as incorrect labeling on which slots they can be used in, and some unintentional duplication between items, mean that our coverage won’t be quite as extensive until the expansion launches or these issues are resolved.

Guild Hall Amenities

Guild Halls gain 2 new amenities. A Wizard Portal NPC who offers all the wizard spire destinations except Kingdom of Sky (you’ll need to keep that Spire to the Overrealm around). And an intriguing new NPC — the Guild Standard Bearer. This NPC carries special flags which can be placed inside group/raid instances to put certain buffs on the entire group/raid. These are very expensive (12-48 plat) but provide substantial boosts in Resists, Critical Mitigation, Damage amounts, etc.

Mentored/Grey Shards

We’ve also been able to confirm on Test that it is now impossible to grey out a Shadow Odyssey zone to trivialize it and earn grey/mentored shards. I know a lot of people used this to earn AAs, and others have used it to earn gear for alts. However with Chronomages, the AA Slider, and revamps to older zones, plus the need to itemize the game for different playstyles, I can understand this change.

Battlegrounds

We are still waiting for Battlegrounds to make an appearance so that players can test it before it goes live. When we have more news, we’ll let you know!