Amnerys has posted the complete Game Update Notes for Game Update 58: Arcanum Revealed on the EQ2 Forums.

Here they are after the break:

Game Update 58 is looking to be a massive update, not so much in content, but in changes large and small to the game, and its User Interface.

Game Update 58 includes:

• A level 90 dungeon – Zraxth’s Unseen Arcanum
• New bosses in the Vasty Deep dungeons with new loot
• Spell Animation and Sound Effect tweaks
• Click-to-Cure
• Mounts and Currency tabs
• Numerous UI tweaks
• Outdoor Balconies have been added to 6+ room houses, making them feel a part of the city they belong to.
• House item limits have been increased, and Moving Crates now count independently of house item limits.
• Additional house items have been added to Moonlight Enchantments, City Festivals, and of course Nights of the Dead
• The adventure Vitality XP bonus remains effective at level 90.
• Betrayal now suspends your access to spells and spell upgrades you are no longer permitted to use, but does not totally reset them. Should you betray back to your original class, your spells will be restored including any spell upgrades you have purchased or researched. Changing your alignment or citizenship without changing class no longer resets your spells.
• Numerous Tradeskill tweaks

We have been unable to confirm if we can expect:

• New loot for Marks of Manaar

Update: We’ve been able to confirm this feature of Game Update 58:

• A fix for the Call of the Veteran to reduce some of the problems, and better messages when it doesn’t work.

Our more detailed preview of Game Update 58 after the jump…

In recognition of the relative lack of in-game paintings available in EQ2 to decorate the ever-growing variety of housing, including the new Mistmoore Crag Estate, we are happy to see more contests that encourage players to create their own artwork or otherwise contribute content which becomes part of the world of Norrath.

For Oktoberfest, contest entries took the form of in-game screen shots of players celebrating and otherwise partaking of festivities in the taverns, bars, and pubs of Norrath. The winners of this contest should make for great decorations in your own celebration chambers.

Read More @ EverQuest2.com.

Niami Denmother over at EQ2 Traders has put together some excellent previews of some upcoming crafting updates.

Check out the Game Update 58 Crafting, Housing and Event Preview and the Nights of the Dead 2010 Crafting Preview.

EQ2Players.com has a news item up announcing the new 7 year veteran reward, your very own Mistmoore Crag Estate!

It looks like it’s going to be quite impressive.  More pictures are available at EQ2Players.com.

There was quite an amusing thread with several devs posting screenshots and info over the past week about this new housing.  All of it false of course but pretty humerous.  Definately worth a read.  It includes comments like this from Haohmaru like this:

Hey all!

We’ve decided to give a sneak peek of the Mistmoore Crag Estate. After much deliberating and rock paper scissors, we decided on…

A Boat!

But, should we just do a boring old boat? Would that even be interesting? What else could we do to make it unique and unlike anything seen before? So then we got to thinking… and thinking… and then, EUREKA!

Ladies and Gents – I present to you, the Mistmoore Crag Estate. Your very own floating coffin. And yes, for those wondering, the lid does indeed close during the day locking you and your friends inside. TELL ME THAT DOESN”T ROCK!

Even includes screen shots of the coffin.   Kinda makes you wonder who spiked the coffee at SOE last week.  🙂

The fine folks over at Zam have recently published several really nice guides to make your life in Norrath a bit more pleasant:

• The Alternate Advancement Guide explains everything a new player needs to know about how Alternate Advancements work, what the trees are, what the slider does, etc.  A very good resource for new players.
• The Lore and Legend Hot Spots is a very nice hunting guide for where to go to kill mobs for L&L pieces.  42 L&Ls are listed in alphabetical order to make it easy to find the best place to hunt these creatures.
• The Recipe Books guide tells you everything you ever wanted to know about where to go and how to get recipe books.  It covers where to get the basic and advanced recipes for each tier, shard recipes, mark recipes, battleground gear recipes, even includes the recipes out of unrest and many many more.
• The Betrayal and Citizenship guide tells you what you need to know to change cities or alignments.  It has been updated as of GU56 and includes the new neutral classes as well as the city ambassadors.

Stop in and take a look when you have a chance.  They’re doing great things over there.  🙂

Everquest 2 is holding a forum challenge for Oktoberfest!  An in-game screenshot, modified in-game screenshot, or artwork of your character celebrating Oktoberfest should be submitted by Tuesday, September 28, 2010 at 10:00 am PDT.  First place submissions will be made into in-game paintings and will also receive the Commemorative Trophy.  Honorable mentions will receive the Commemorative Trophy.

Full details after the break:

Here are your update notes for Wednesday, 8 September 2010:

EVERQUEST II EXTENDED

• Fixed a bug causing Platinum subscribers to not be able to use the shared bank.

USER INTERFACE

• Fixed a bug that would cause your AA slider to reset to 50% upon zoning.
• Sort by current zone for the quest journal now properly puts the current zone quests at the top of the list.
• We have disabled the spells from replacing old ones in the hotbar until we can track down a bug regarding it.

SHADER 3.0

• Fixed an issue causing parts of some structures in Halas to show as wireframe.

ITEMS

• Torque of the War Blade and Ring of the Vice Vigoth now have resists added to their stats.
• Runic Deflection on Band of Mreeptahp’s Fury now correctly wards your target.

STONEBRUNT HIGHLANDS

• The King Speleothem multi-stage event in Stonebrunt Highlands should now be fixed. Player should now be able to progress through the stages and fight the end boss.

UNDERFOOT DEPTHS

• Zaalax, Xaalax, Saalax and Yaalax : Seismic shock should strike the correct targets named by Zaalax.

Today marks the end of not only a very lucrative Double XP weekend for both my tradeskillers and adventurers, but also the close of the Neriak City Festival in Darklight Wood.

A selection of paintings from Notable Norrathians and the Heroes Festival.

A key addition to the City Festival were the Notable Norrathians player-submitted in-game paintings. If you have not yet looked at or bought any of these paintings, take your City Tokens to Darklight Wood (druid ring or run from Nektulos Forest). These paintings can be placed in your house or guild hall, and do not have the status cost and guild level requirements of the 5th anniversary Heroes Festival paintings.

Double XP weekend concludes at 10:00am PDT (1:00pm EDT, 19:00 GMT+1).

City Festival concludes on 2010.09.07 at Midnight PDT (2010.09.08 3:00am EDT, 2010.09.08 9:00 GMT+1).

Here are your hotfix notes for September 1, 2010 after the break:

When you target another player (say your group’s tank, or the raid Main Assist) to channel your damage through, it is sometimes helpful to not only see the Target Arrow (who you have selected), but the Implied Target Arrow (the enemy which your target has chosen). This can be especially important for scouts.

So players have asked for a way to customize or more easily distinguish the color and opacity of the Implied Target Arrow.

Rothgar’s comments after the jump…

Some of the buzz before Fan Faire was “Is the Skyblade Skiff housing option going to be one-per-account, or one-per-character?”

Now personally, I cannot imagine that anyone who is really into housing won’t already have elaborate houses on all of their characters. I would think most will already have to agonize about which of their characters they want to give up a house on.

Now, you might have to choose multiple characters to pull up stakes on… 😉

From SmokeJumper:

We did set this up for one skiff per account…but we’re not sure why.

We’ll be changing this soon (probably next Tuesday) so that it’s one skiff per character.

Remember the Skyblade Skiff is a super-sized version of the airship that travels between Sinking Sands and Moors of Ykesha. It is accessible (and can be toured without losing your current house) from South Qeynos and South Freeport. You may not have more than one house at a time, so you must relinquish your current house if you wish to take advantage of this Fan Faire Platinum pass item.

Today we repost some player advice on how to switch from the new default Red UI to the optional Blue UI, without blowing away all your hotbars. This advice comes from the EQ2 Forums.

On the EQ2 Forums by Amnerys:

They should only be in game for the winners right now. I hope we can take care of that for you tomorrow.

I believe the paintings should be available to everyone at the next City Festival, which will be in Neriak starting on the 1st of September.

We do love the work you all submitted though and can’t wait for you to see it in game! So exciting!!

You might have heard that EQ2’s User Interface is getting some spit and polish. With today’s Game Update 57, the default User Interface (UI) for EQ2 is getting some subtle and some not so subtle tweaks.

Major additions include the introduction of an “EQ2 Dock” to replace the existing EQ2 “start” button and XP bars. Also, the Character, Inventory, and Options have been merged into a single Character superwindow accessible by pressing “C” (Crouch has moved to “Z”). Bags have been streamlined, the Welcome window has received a facelift, the Map window now shows some key update locations (not to replace EQ2Maps), and

Many players do use some or all of the default UI, so there has been concern that the default UI has shifted from a predominant blue hue to a red one. You’ll be happy to know that the default UI includes a Blue graphics set which can be activated in-game by typing /loadui.

As always, players have the choice of installing other UIs. Which is why Rothgar, Lead Programmer on EQ2, notified the EQ2 interface community just over one month ago. The UI Revamp does not add popular Click-to-Cure, Autoattack Status, or the Advanced Broker available either separately or in packages from UI developers. You’ll want to visit EQ2Interface.com to see what’s going on with your favorite modifications.

>> ProfitUI Fix for Game Update 57 <<

Note: There seems to be an obscure bug with the Blue EQ2 theme. Guild level is being reported significantly lower than it should be in some situations.

Today marks the introduction of Game Update 57 to the live servers. Key features of this update include:

• The EQ2 User Interface has received a facelift, with a new toolbar, a refresh of various windows, and a merged Character/Inventory/Profile window. The default theme is red, but easily switchable to blue by typing /loadui and choosing the Blue graphic set.
• More character classes are now neutral and may start in either good or evil cities.
• Spell animations and effects have been revamped.
• Intrazone travel now supports path linking. Travel within Kingdom of Sky has been improved.
• Erudin group instances (level 86-90) are now easier to reach.
• New tradeskill quests have been added in the level 10, 20, and 30 tiers. These quests reward a mount as well as access to what have previously been overpriced Advanced recipe books.
• Starting areas in Greater Faydark and Darklight Wood have received substantial revamps. Gorowyn has received further architectural rebuilding to improve navigation.
• All classes have had some group-specific spells postponed until later levels to reduce the number of spells new players get in the first 20 levels.
• Fighter heals will no longer critically heal.
• The “Notable Norrathian” contest winning paintings are now available within Norrath but only during the monthly City Festivals (next is Sept 1-7). They are guild hall placeable.
• Lucan D’Lere has returned to Freeport.

• Today’s update contains no new dungeons or raid zones.

EQ2X

Also going live today is the public beta for EverQuest II Extended, the Free-to-Play alternative to a monthly EQ2 subscription. Game Update 57 will arrive simultaneously on both servers. EQ2X, as it’s being abbreviated, may be discussed on the separate EQ2X Forums.

From Amnerys:

All U.S. EQII servers are scheduled to come down on Wednesday, August 18 at 5:00 AM PDT for Game Update 57. Servers are expected to be offline for around 4 hours, coming back online around 9:00 AM. The UK servers will be updated according to the usual schedule.

Notable Norrathians Paintings

What about those Notable Norrathians paintings? Kaisha has dropped some hints regarding how the 10 winning paintings will become available. If our interpretation is correct, it looks like they may be available from the City Festivals for 10 city tokens each.

Tribute to the Huntress and Druid Reconstruction Live Events

The Tribute to the Huntress quest has been confirmed to end with the launch of GU57, but the Druid Ring Reconstruction event has been extended to last until GU58. (from EQ2 ZAM)

Whence Update Notes?

We’ll post the Game Update notes when they become available (assuming we’re awake!).

Gary Daughtry, graphic artist/animator on the EQ2 Team, set about to revamp the spell animations, specifically the particle effects, for Game Update 57, currently expected to go live tomorrow. The intention has been to reduce the number of “pyrotechnic”, “over-the-top” effects and create something more gradual, with larger effects based on the tier and level of the spell.

However players have been expressing their displeasure with the sometimes sweeping changes.

Apologies for any typos. They jacked up the AC in here!! Remember folks, lots of EQ2 t shirts, hoodies, and polos.

More of a quick summary of this panel…

Lots of clips of Othmir. Videos of enemies and friendlies.

Showed bump maps and texture maps of Othmir.

With the rewrite of mounts, they no longer have to make 42 animations of each mount. Now a mount can be done in 3-5 weeks. First saw this on the prowler. Part of this was to prevent tails going through mounts and fix problems with capes.

For example when Tom added Othmir on a t-Rex as a demo he didn’t have to make animation of how the othmir moves on the mount. It just worked.

Hats automatically equals bald. Can’t really fix it at this point because it would add a shader.

Still taking feedback on spell animations on Test. It’s not just “here it is”. He has been making a lot of changes from player feedback.

Between the avalanche of news about Free-to-Play, the new UI, and Guardian tweaks (coming approximately one month after GU57), it’s been easy to overlook the new Spell Animations which went to Test along with GU57.

In short, all particle systems and related animations associated with casting spells and combat arts have been revamped. This means every animation such as roots or chains coming out of the ground, explosions, streaks of light, glowing colors, and pyrotechnics for all of the spells and combat arts of all 24 classes have changed.

Game Update 57 is now up on  the Test and Test Copy Servers and we’ve got the Update Notes. We’ve already taken some new screen shots of the new default interface including the new pictorial tutorials for new players.

• User Interface – One of the touted features of Game Update 57 is the revamped User Interface. The Persona and Inventory windows have been merged into a Character window. The XP bar has become a sort of “dock” at the bottom of your screen. All buttons and window corners have been rounded off. And for the most part, everything that was blue is now red! No doubt UI modders will come out with a classic re-skin to turn everything back to blue. We will be posting a preview of the GU57 Interface Changes soon. Discussed Here

• Map Points of Interest – Many points of interest have been added to the default map, including quest locations. This will provide some of the functionality of EQ2Maps.

• Additional Travel Revamp – There have been additional revamps to Travel. With path linking, you can now choose the ultimate destinations of any inter-zone travel and it will “connect the dots” to get you there. All transport pads in Kingdom of Sky connect to all others, and travel between the three Kingdom of Sky zones is much easier.

• Character Creation & More Neutrals – The Character Creation screens have been revamped, and several more classes have become neutral, including Assassin, Ranger, Templar, Inquisitor, Coercer, Illusionist, Monk and Bruiser.

• Extraneous Spells/CAs Removed from Levels 1-15 – Many spells and combat arts that new players generally did not use at level 1-20, such as Taunts, De-Agros, Agro-reduction, etc. have been postponed until level 15+ to decrease the number of new spells/CAs that players are exposed to in the increasingly brief sprint from level 1-20. First Discussed Here

• Spell Effects Visual Revamp which was rumored for GU55 is now on Test. This is an update/revamp of the animation which plays for each beneficial and hostile effect cast by characters.

• Lucan D’Lere has returned!

• Additional Tradeskill Quests have been added at level 20 and 30.

• Starting Zone Conflicts – Frostfang Sea (New Halas) and Greater Fay starting zones are now under attack by invaders, adding an additional level of interest to these zones. In addition, Gorowyn has received yet another architectural revamp to hopefully improve navigation.

• General – You can also expect the usual array of tweaks and bugfixes to raid zones, battlegrounds, AA lines, Quests, and Items. Most classes got some kind of benefit here.

As this is all on Test and Test Copy, the EQ2 team are really looking for bug reports, feedback, and comments on everything that’s been added.

Complete Game Update 57 Notes after the jump…

Although most of what we’ve been hearing from Rothgar over the last year has been closely tied to sorting out Battlegrounds, addressing Server Lag and Performance, and directing Server Upgrades, one of his big passions has been to upgrade the default EQ2 User Interface.

So far, the coolest news about Game Update 57 has been that it will include a pretty substantial polishing up of the default UI. Today, Rothgar has posted some tantalizing details of just what we can expect. And if you will be attending the SOE Block Party (if you will be at Comic-Con, there will be shuttle buses available), then you’ll be the first to see it in action.

On 6/30/10, EQ2 issued a challenge to the talented in game home decorators of Norrath. The contest ran from June 30th – July 14th. Contestants were given the theme of “Bedroom Sanctuary”. Submissions ranged from the New Halas homes all the way to some of the older house models of Qeynos and Freeport. Winners are going to be given an in game trophy, to be placed in the respected homes. Congratulations to the winners. All submissions can be viewed here.

The second opportunity for players to submit their own artwork to be turned into in-game EQ2 paintings has come and gone, and the results have been announced!

From EQ2Players:

Greetings, Norrathians! We are thrilled to make the highly-anticipated announcement of the winners of our Notable Norrathians Forum Challenege!

It was not easy to choose just ten out of the amazing entries we received. The talent and creativty displayed were truly wonderful and there’s a certiain very-jealous dark elf in the office right now!

We’d like to thank everyone who submitted an entry (the dark elf made note that she’s saving a few for her own desktop wallpaper) and we invite everyone who didn’t win this time to resubmit the next time we have a similar challenge.

….

Discuss the Notable Norrathians Winners (EQ2 Forums)

It is our understanding that the Art Dept. judged and selected the 10 winners of this contest and we’re looking forward to seeing them added as in-game paintings. We’re hopeful that there will be as few time, status, and guild restrictions on the in-game items as possible.

We’ve been following the Notable Norrathians Challenge and there were some fantastic entries posted during the contest. Hopefully in a future contest, some that didn’t win this time can be included.