Gninja wanted to get the word out that the quest Tending to Toxxicology will be getting a revamp which will result in quest progress being reset by anyone still on the quest. If you are on this quest, get it completed before Game Update 56 hits (late May). Or you can just wait until the change when the quest requirements will be reset to resolve the bugs people have been facing in trying to complete it.

We are aware of the issues with the quest in Sundered Frontier “Tending to Toxxicology” becoming gated if someone summons Sherra prior to someone else zoning in. And good news! We have a fix… Now the bad news… In order to fix this issue we are going to have to remove the stage of the quest that requires you to zone into Toxxulia’s Mound. When we do this it will reset everyone back to the first stage of this quest.

I just wanted to give you guys ample warning that this will go in with GU56 (Currently scheduled for late May) so if you have progressed the quest you might want to try to finish it before GU56 or lose your progress and possibly have to get the updates for the Wyrmlord and Wyvernlord again.

Today’s Hotfix grants Research Assistants the ability to research for all of your characters at once, instead of just one per account. Also included are tweaks to the UsabilityOnPlayer macro command, some adjustments to the Labs SF raid zone, and a change to the Focus: Death March adornment so that its effects are different between PvP and PvE.

We’ve been advised that some Database maintenance will be performed at the same time, so the Hotfix and associated downtime may exceed 1 hour.

It turns out yesterday’s news on changes to the Training Dummies guild hall amenity was just the beginning.

Xelgad has updated us with news that one of the choices on the menu when summoning a Training Dummy (in addition to Solo, as well as Heroic and Epic which are new to GU56) will be an Encounter:

We’ve added a new set of dummies for GU56 that come as a linked encounter of a total of eight heroic training dummies. Enjoy!

This should provide many more options for players wanting to work on what order they cast spells and/or combat arts in for maximum DPS output.

In addition to the bigger content additions, Game Updates always include smaller, but no less desirable changes and tweaks.

Research Assistants Learn to Multitask

UPDATE: Oops! Despite appearing in the headline, this item somehow got left out!

UPDATE #2: This feature is in the April 20, 2010 Hotfix.

Bunji, member of the EQ2 QA Team, has posted this info on the EQ2 In Testing Feedback forums:

With the new Test server build, each character on an account can research a spell at the same time (this should not affect existing research).

Research times are also being tweaked (lowered).

Floating Disc Mounts

In response to a query about the floating disc mounts introduced in Sentinel’s Fate being slower, and with less stats than the Order of Rime mounts, Kander had this response:

I have upped the speed on several of the disc mounts, they now have a few stats as previous. Level 90 guild mounts are now 68%. Will be in with GU 56 or sooner.

As for the question of Appearance mounts, while we can’t expect them in GU56, Kander advised us to keep an eye out:

This is something we really want to do in the future, yes. It’s being discussed for future GU or exp07.

Kunark Blue Shinies Still Lore?

Echoes of Faydwer, the Rise of Kunark, and the Shadow Odyssey all added 20 or so collections. Each collection has historically had a rare item which could be used either to complete that collection, or to help complete separate collections. These are the Faydwer Expert Collection, Kunark Expert Collection, and Shadow Odyssey Expert Collection. The reward for completing each of these collections is a pair of goggles, or glasses, or a ring which then allows the wearer to see blue shinies (which spawn in specific locations, instead of at random) for the appropriate expansion.

The difficulty of collecting these blue shinies is that many of them have been flagged LORE, allowing only one to be picked up at a time, until it’s sold or traded.

In response to a complaint that Kunark shinies are still LORE, even in Sebilis, which at level 90 still has many green mobs, Kander had this news:

I will take a look at making these (Kunark Blues) no longer lore. I think that would be fine!

Training Dummies Go Epic

The Training Dummy Guild Hall Amenity has been very useful, however we’ve only been able to spawn a solo dummy, which has far too few hitpoints for more than 1 player to really test.

Rothgar has heard the call and will be adding Heroic and Epic versions of the Training Dummy:

I’ve already made a change to the dummy chest, it just hasn’t been released yet. You’ll get it with GU56.

You have the option to spawn a solo, heroic and epic dummy. Each will scale slightly larger in size and their hitpoints will be on par with mobs of that tier and level.

So now you can raid a training dummy if you like. These changes should be on the Test server if you want to check them out.

Training dummies don’t fight back, but they provide a useful punching bag for testing spell and combat art casting rotations. No word if we’ll be able to pick the level of the dummy. At level 80, you really want a level 87 dummy to test debuffs, etc. For now Rothgar is leaving them as they are:

The new dummies are exactly like the old ones, so they shouldn’t have any high resists or buff packages on them, just plain-ol-dummies.

Did you start a guild years ago and and give it a silly name as a goof?  Did the guild manage to survive and now has lots of members but still has a silly name?  Ever wish you could change the name?  Help is on the way!  shotens recently posted a request on the EQ2 Forums:

So what I ask is for the Dev team to put out a product that we can spend our hard earned money on that allows us to change a guild name.

and got this startling response from Rothgar:

It’s done and should be available soon.

Commentary

On the one hand, I’m glad that those with silly names will be able to change them if they choose (nothing wrong with silly names btw). On the other hand, guilds that have gotten a bad name on a server will now be able to change their name and confuse the population.  On the third hand (three hands???)  it will allow guilds who have gotten a bad name to change their name if the leader who caused them to get the bad name in the first place decides to leave the guild.  Since it usually doesn’t take very long for the average person to figure out when a guild falls apart and gets re-formed under a different name, I don’t really see this as a problem.  Unless, of course, my guild decides to start taking votes on what to call our guild and “Pink Fairies of Norrath” starts leading in the polls. 🙂

EQ2Players has a new video showcasing Halas Reborn. Check it out below. And in case you missed it, here are Screenshots of Halas Reborn Housing.

Game Update 56 is coming soon to the Test and Test Copy servers, and in addition to the expected New Halas starting zone and city, which will have 2, 4, and 6 room housing as well as Tier 1 Guild Halls (unknown if it will be the same or different artwork), and in addition to a new raid zone, some substantial changes are happening to Battlegrounds and PvP combat in general. Battlegrounds in particular are being expanded from level 80-90 to level 30-90.

timetravelling gave this Battlegrounds preview:

• Brand new 1st Campaign armor sets and accessories
• Many of the accessories are based upon the currently BG-disabled RoK PvP accessories. Those adornments have had their effects adjusted and will be re-enabled for battlegrounds!
• Each armor piece will have a pvp-only Blue adornment slot!
• As such, we’ll all be introducing 20+ new Blue adornments!
• Battlegrounds at levels 30, 40, 50, 60, and 70 are being activated!
• Battleground armor sets and accessories will be on sale at each of those tiers
• Brand new open-pvp server battles for control of Antonica and Commonlands!

• Additionally, we’ve internally removed the ~15% damage reduction applied to all spells in pvp combat. I’d like to once again ask for y’all to copy over to test-copy and give us feedback on the change.

Although the line item about battle for control of Antonica and Commonlands was posted in the Battlegrounds forum, it is believed that this is a PvP-server only feature.

Olihin followed up with this preview specific to the PvP (Nagafen) server:

• Level locking enabled starting at level 30.
• Removal of level restrictions for Alternate Advancement distribution.*
• 100% achievement bar settings prior to max level.
• Single Currency for Open PVP, the Discord Token.
• Warfields! Antonica and Commonlands…
• Much more!

When asked whether the change to Alternate Advancement level restrictions meant that PvP players could spend all 250 points at any level, Olihin responded with:

It’ll allow your AA expenditures on a PvP server to match those of a PvE server instead of the current restrictions.

PvP servers currently restrict the number of AA points which can be spent based on your level, beyond those restrictions of the PvE servers.

Linda “Brasse” Carlson, Senior Community Manager for SOE has posted this update on the EQ2 Forums:

After many years of service, Alan “Brenlo” Crosby has decided to leave SOE to pursue other opportunities.  And while it is sad to see him leave, we wish him the best of luck in his new endeavors.

At this time, we’d like to take a moment to introduce EverQuest II’s new producer, Dave Georgeson.  Dave is excited to join the EQII Team and will be posting an introduction in the near future.

According to EQ2 Zam, Dave’s resume includes SOE’s Planetside and Free Realms, and his LinkedIn page says he’s been back at SOE since February.

Dave Georgeson is apparently coming back to SOE after working at MobyGames.

Dave is currently the Producer, Director and Lead Designer for the casually-oriented MMO at Gaia Online that has had over 500,000 players in the first month of Open Beta.

Dave has previously designed and produced : zOMG!, Planetside, Tribes 2, Heavy Gear II, Absolute Zero, and Crusaders of Might & Magic.

From EQ2 Zam:

Astute fans of Sony Online Entertainment noticed Alan “Brenlo” Crosby changed his job status on Facebook this afternoon.  His Recent Activity says “Alan removed his job as Senior Producer – EverQuest II at Sony.”  A query to Christine “Kiara” Renzetti, EQII Community Manager, resulted in a polite “no comment.”We will report details as they become available.  Wherever Alan is going, ZAM and the EQII Community wish him the best.

He said this to Massively:

Yeah after working together for 10 years, it was my time to move on. Was a great ride and I am going to miss my SOE family.

Guild halls have an amenity available that allow a person to click on a chest and recieve a training dummy in their inventory.  Right clicking and choosing “use” places the dummy in the guild hall as an attackable object.  This is useful for trying out different casting orders, AA specs, gear, etc. to see what parses better.  The problem is that the training dummies don’t have enough hit points.  If the training dummy dies in 15 seconds, it doesn’t give you much time to determine anything.  Some people have used the training wall in Kunzar Jungle instead since it has more hit points than the training dummies, but there is only one of them per server and you have to travel to KJ to use it.  It would be nice if the training dummies came in more than one flavor.  Apparently Rothgar agrees:

I’ve already made a change to the dummy chest, it just hasn’t been released yet.  You’ll get it with GU56.

You have the option to spawn a solo, heroic and epic dummy.  Each will scale slightly larger in size and their hitpoints will be on par with mobs of that tier and level.

So now you can raid a training dummy if you like.  These changes should be on the Test server if you want to check them out.

Having personally spent many hours beating on training dummies with my assassin, this is really good news.  Depending on what procs when, the parses vary by a large margin.  Having the ability to have fights that last longer should even that out and make those parse runs much more useful.

When Sentinel’s Fate was released, it introduced a change in the way the /target_previous command functions.  This change broke some cure macros.  Lets take a cure macro that did this:

/target_group_member 3

Cure spell

/target_previous

If you had group member 1 targeted and clicked the macro for group member 3, all would be fine.  The macro would target group member 3, cast the cure, then go to the previous target which would be group member 1.  All is well.

If you had group member 3 targeted and clicked the macro for group member 3, problems occured.  The macro would target group member 3 (which wouldn’t really do anything since you were already targeting group member 3).  Then it would cast the cure.  Then it would go to the previous target.  Problem is, group member 3 isn’t the previous target anymore since you never changed targets.  It would find out whoever you had targeted before and target them.  Could be anybody in the group depending on the order that you recently targeted people.

This hasn’t been a problem for the click to cure feature in custom UIs because they use a completely different method.  Back in February of 2007 a new command was added to the game: /useabilityonplayer [player] [ability].  For example:

/useabilityonplayer Feldon Cure Arcane

This works fine for custom UIs because they have access to the name of the player and can simply substitute in that name when the button is clicked.  Doesn’t work as well for those creating macros since it doesn’t allow you to specify a player Number instead of a player Name.  In the above example, you would have to edit your macros each time someone new joined your group and hard code the player’s name into the macro.  Kind of a pain.

So how do we get around this problem?  One option would be to change the /target_previous back to the way it worked before.  But the way it worked before was really a bug.  It’s now working as it should have all along.  Another option would be to code /useabilityonplayer to allow group member numbers and raid member numbers as well as player names.  This is what Rothgar is proposing as the fix:

I’m willing to change “useabilityonplayer” to take a number which should allow you to create the cure macros without changing your target at all.  This simplifies the macro and would actually be another slight optimization.

Do you guys feel this is a fair compromise?

We might have to do something like g1-g5 for group selection and r1-r24 for raid selection.

This would solve the problem and as Rothgar said, even simplify the macros.  The above macro would change to this:

/useabilityonplayer g3 Cure spell

It wouldn’t change your target at all but would cast the Cure spell on whoever is in position 3 in the group.  This could potentially even slightly speed up custom UIs that have click cure buttons.  Today, those buttons have to substitute the name of the character into the text of the command they are executing.  With this change, they could be modified to simply use the group and raid position numbers instead.  Probably a barely noticable performance boost but when your machine is struggling to keep up in a raid, every little bit counts.

This is, of course, still in the planning stages and subject to change, but it looks like it would be a nice change for everyone.

EQ2Players has a preview up about the housing in New Halas.   Andres Rodriguez is the artist responsible for designing the new houses and he took the time to answer some questions and share some pictures.  The houses will be available in two, four and six room layouts and there will also be access to T1 guildhalls.  They will include some built in bookshelves and even a fireplace.  And all the houses in New Halas will include windows with a view to the sea.

New Halas Housing @ EQ2Players

Here are your hotfix notes for today, April 13th, including adjustments to group and raid zones, as well as spell resists in PvP combat. After the jump:

In a break from the stock answer that has been given in regard to server merges for the last few years, Rothgar says server merges are something they are considering a little down the road.  The EQ2 world isn’t exactly in the best shape it’s ever been in at the moment with zoning issues, instance lag, contested named fight lag, and broker lag so the dev team has a few issues to take care of before they can move forward with this idea.  But this tells us that the idea is at least back on the table.

Rothgar writes:

We are considering server mergers but they would be a little down the road.  Before we consider any more mergers, databases need to be upgraded and general server performance needs to be addressed.  These are things we are working on and when we feel that we’ve achieved some of these goals we will seriously look at what is best for the EQII population.

And in response to someone claiming that Server merges = Dieing population, Rothgar responded with:

This is most definitely not the case.  Our subscription numbers are on the rise.

The addition of easier character transfers through the Station Marketplace has made population numbers more liquid than in the past.  We are seeing players migrate towards higher population servers like Antonia Bayle and Crushbone.  In fact I’d be willing to bet that AB currently has a higher population than it has ever had in the history of EQII.

In order to stabilize the population, we’d like to increase the numbers across all servers and the easiest way to do that would be to merge some of the lower population servers making more “super servers” like Antonia Bayle.

This would also make better use of our server resources and allow us to re-purpose some of that hardware to better serve the larger worlds.  When you think about the minimum requirements for each world, we need all static zones up and running at all times.  This includes all of the city zones and most of the overland zones.  On some worlds maybe those zones have < 20 people in them when they can easily support much more.  By combining worlds we lower the total number of zones that need to be running by putting more people in them.  So, the hardware that is freed up can be put to use servicing instanced zones which is where players are currently seeing the most server lag.

It’s a win-win for us and for players.  We just can’t do it until we can be sure that your experience will be improved by the process.

As always, EQ2Wire will stay on top of this story and let you know as new developments occur.

Since Sentinel’s Fate went live, many people have been reporting issues with Guild Events not showing properly.  Some report guild levels not showing up in the guild log and AA points from 201+ not being announced and/or logged.  Those days may be behind us.

On 4/12/2010, Bunju from Quality Assurance posted on the EQ2 Forums:

A fix for this issue went in with the last Hotfix.  Are you all seeing the 80-90 ts/adv level and 200-250 AA event notifications now?  Thanks.

Hopefully this is now fixed.

We wrap up another week in Norrath with some posts from the EQ2 forums from developers and players alike which you may have missed. Also, although no date has yet been announced, work on Game Update 56 has likely reached a feverish pace and we’ll start hearing more about it soon.

Waiting for Zone Info

The EQ2 and SOE teams have been putting in long hours trying to resolve the database and server lag/performance issues since the expansion. Zoltaroth has weighed in with this update:

We are also internally testing some additional updates that should furthur improve zoning (specifically long wait times at “waiting for zone info”).  These changes aren’t through with internal testing yet, and they are pretty big so I can’t give an exact date but they are in the pipeline.

As we posted earlier, Rothgar is keeping us informed on the progress:

We have many more improvements on the way, this is just the first of many.

Efforts to stop Speed Hacking tagging Innocents?

For some time now, certain players have been making use of hacks and external third-party programs for EQ2 which increase the run speed of their characters beyond the maximum limits, or walk, harvest, etc. ‘under the world’, or outright teleport from one part of a zone to another.

EQ2 developers have rarely commented publicly about exploits and their ongoing efforts to curtail them, but a thread was started and followed up on by players who have experienced character or account suspensions through innocuous acts such as harvesting and using zone teleporters.

Rothgar indicated that

“We know when someone is warping or using a speed hack program and you can bet that those players will be contacted soon enough.  Something appears to be triggering false positives and it could be something as simple as the teleporters in South Odus for example.  We are looking into this and will make a fix for it.”

and wanted players to know that account bannings are taken seriously

“We’ve set a threshold high enough that normal gameplay should not trip [the detection code].  So in this instance, if you’re getting kicked, we’ve logged enough significant activity to make that decision.  Obviously the false positives are unintended and will be solved.”

and later, Rothgar indicated that this problem had been discovered and fixed:

Status Update:

I’ve found the issue triggering the false positive and some teleporter devices like those in South Odus would have triggered it.  We’ve disabled the checking for this behavior until we can hotfix the issue.

Some Old, Some New Zone Lockouts

timetravelling has changed some zone lockouts:

Munzoks Material Bastion and Shard of Hate should now both be 2day20hour lockouts once Game Update 56 hits =)

Item Appearances

covic and Kander are continuing to work on getting those Sentinel’s Fate armor/weapon/shield appearances hooked up to items. Apparently work on all those new unique appearances that Sentinel’s Fate was supposed to include continued right up to, and possibly after the release of the expansion.

It looks like a lot of the Sentinel’s Fate armor, weapons, and shields went live with placeholder graphics with the intention of replacing them. This is now happening.

Kander said:

Many of these items got missed on the appearance pass. I am unsure why or how.  We will start changing them for newer appearances ASAP. Please PM me if you have any other specific instances of gear that looks like noobie gear dropping from Sentinel’s Fate raids or even group zones, we will see what can be done.

covic followed up with:

I am seconding Kander on this. I know we made a lot of gear this expansion.  All the screens in this post look like old stuff.  I will talk to him at work on Monday to see what everyone has been sending for screens.

and after the April 7th patch, covic said:

I just talked to Kander today and he said he has been working really hard on getting new item appearance hooked up.  I hope the changes are starting to be seen.

End of the Weekenditis

That’s enough for the end-of-the-week. Hope you are having a great weekend and we’ll be back with more news.

EQ2Players checked in with Amanda McNair this week with another Artist Highlight.  Amanda worked on the artwork for the Shard of Love and the Battlefield of Ganak, the capture the flag Battlefields zone.  Here are some excerpts from the article:

What do you draw from for inspiration for your art in EQII?

I tend to draw my inspiration from everyday life and what is going on around me. When I visit museums, watch movies, or even flip through catalogues, I’m always checking out architectural elements and trying to decide how it was built, or taking pictures so I can use it for reference for my environments. For instance, the new movie Alice in Wonderland has some awesome visuals and is currently inspiring me with what I am working on for the next expansion.

What’s your favourite thing that you’ve done for EQII?

I recently completed the art for one of the Battleground maps—Iksar Ruins (capture the flag). It was really fun to work on because while I was in game testing everything out, I imagined that I was running around with a flag on my back, trying to avoid being killed by the other players. I also created the zone, Shard of Love. I was given a lot of creative freedom on this zone as far as creating the look and feel and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

Do you have any special (or just super fun) projects you’re working on now for EQII?

I am working on a new dungeon – top secret as of now 😉 – that will be really unique and interesting. It’s really pushing me creatively to think outside the box.

We continue to follow progress on the Shaders 3.0 update. Imago-Quem (Ryan) has continued to work tirelessly on this project and we have an update of sorts.

Originally intended as a graphical bump to improve the appearance of the game in existing and new zones, Shaders 3.0 was expanded and re-prioritized into a sweeping optimization of the EQ2 graphical pipeline engine first, and a graphical improvement second. Part of this process was Imago-Quem providing tools to the EQ2 zone and character art developers so that all new content they create for this and future expansions is fully compatible with and takes advantage of Shaders 3.0. These tools are now in the hands of developers.

Shaders 3.0 is currently enabled on the Test server, and in response to player feedback and testing results, Ryan has been been submitting numerous fixes, optimizations, and updated textures. We had hoped these changes would all make it onto Test today, as then we’d be able to better assess how the finished Shaders 3.0 are going to work out when they are pushed live (possibly as soon as May’s Game Update 56).

However we have learned that Shaders 3.0 will not be updated on Test until the 4th week of April, possibly April 23rd. We intend, once this next wave of fixes are implemented on Test, to do some before-and-after comparison videos.

As always, we will keep you informed on these and other developments.

Rothgar has been working closely with the Database folks trying to solve the Server Performance Issues, specifically Server-side Lag, and extremely long Zoning times which have become a major problem facing EQ2 since Game Update 55, the Sentinel’s Fate expansion, and the introduction of Battlegrounds. These Database and Server Lag issues have been so disruptive, that they have largely drowned out discussion on other issues facing EQ2.

Fortunately, Rothgar brings us an update on the situation regarding some long-needed caching being added to how character data is transmitted and stored:

Right now we are addressing the database-related issues and then we will be moving on to the game server performance issues that you’re speaking of.

We have several very positive changes in the works to improving database performance. Today’s hotfix contained a small change that should help and we have several other changes going onto the Test Server. One of the changes I’m most excited about is something that Zoltaroth just finished working on. Character data will no longer need to be loaded from the database when you move between zones. This should cut out a lot of traffic from the database and even make zoning a little faster. If we ever experience a problem with the database like we’ve had in the past, this new caching scheme should keep the database issues from affecting your zoning times.

If this round of changes makes the impact we are hoping for, we will move on to other types of performance issues.

An unintended consequence of today’s Hotfix seems to be that certain players have been unable to equip their Mythical weapons. Players affected include those who have not progressed in the Epic Repercussions quest. Xelgad has posted this comment:

We’re aware of the issue and looking into a fix. In the meantime, please use the /petition command to contact Customer Service if your weapon cannot be equipped. They’ll be able to fix your weapon for you.

UPDATE: This issue is related to the Balanced Ayr Stone adornment which used to provide +3% Parry and was applicable to weapon slots. On March 1st, it was changed to a less powerful adornment. In Today’s Update, this adornment was internally changed to a Neck Only adornment, but someone forgot to make the adornment auto-remove itself from main hand weapons.

Today’s Hotfix include some anticipated tweaks to Itemization and Battlegrounds, such as resists and fixes to adornments. It also includes a cutback in the amount of damage put out by the 3-headed dog in The Vigilant: Final Destruction x2 raid zone. Even during the Beta, this particular mob was completely out of progression for the difficulty of the zone, gear players are expected to have at this point in the expansion, and intended audience of the zone.

The complete April 7, 2010 Patch Notes after the jump:

We missed this EQ2Players post from Friday but considering the excitement leading up to New Halas, we thought we’d post it.

Nathan “Kaitheel” McCall has posted some of the Lore about what we can expect from New Halas and the twists and turns of the storyline. Meanwhile, Stacey Norman, Zone Artist, posted about her experiences in designing the city of New Halas.

New Halas Lore @ EQ2Players

By the way, this EQ2Players writeup has a thumbnail image of some of the concept art for New Halas. We wrangled up a link to a large version of this image.

Over a year ago, the EQ2 Guild window gained a new column — Guild Points. This often misunderstood feature allows your guild leader and management to award points for anything they (or the guild) decides to track. Some guilds award players who earn a certain amount of status, help level the guild, assist other players, or any number of ‘gold star’ type measurements of players. Of course, some guilds don’t use Guild Points at all.

DKP in-game or website?

Raid Guilds have the unique challenge of divvying up the limited amount of Loot acquired each night to 24 (or more) players. Some Raid Guilds use a Loot Council or some variation on guild leadership choosing which players will get which items, it’s arguable that most raid guilds instead use a DKP (Dragon Kill Points) system. DKP is a score or measure of raid attendance, specifically the number of hours each player has participated in raids. Loot that drops during a raid is auctioned off to players who bid with DKP and are in good standing with their guild.

Every guild that makes use of a DKP or DKP-like system has the choice of using this relatively new Guild Points system, or if that guild has an established website, the infrequently updated eqdkp website script.

For those guilds that use the in-game Guild Points system, they may not be aware that there is a command to automate adding and removing points for the entire guild, the raid, a specific group, etc. Rothgar posted the info for this command today:

The /guild command does support a set of commands for manipulating the points system.

If you type “/guild points” and hit enter, you should get the following usage line.

Usage: /guild points [add|subtract] [point_value] [name|all|online|group|raid] [comment]

You should be able to add or remove points from a specific person, all guild members, only members that are online or only members that are in your current group or raid.

Ah… I remember the days… When low-level Adept spells and Treasured gear could be had for a mere 4-5 gold from the nearest broker. Those were the Salad Days (mmmm…Grilled Chicken Caesar). Then the Transmuters came.

Like the Others on the far side of the island, a new wave of Adorners and Transmuters, desparate for raw materials, have unwittingly jacked things up for the rest of us.  When everyone can be an Adorner, and only Adorners can make the cool toys, the market has, not surprisingly, shifted. And inflation, it turns out, is not just for bicycle tires and love toys.

With the cost of these materials now running 15-20g each, I’ve personally thrown in the towel on trying to level more than one Adorner/Transmuter. And this has surely had a ripple effect on those players in the level 20-40 range simply wishing to upgrade gear.

Adorning Work Orders?

It seems the situation has not gone unnoticed by the EQ2 Team. Here’s Domino‘s post from the EQ2 Forums:

Something that we’re considering adding when time permits is a daily adorning quest that would allow you to do X number of adorning combines with materials provided once per day. Obviously, there would have to be quite a few checks to ensure it’s not exploitable, but it’s something that we think could be added as an option to help get adorning past some of the more annoying-to-get-components-in level ranges.

I’m thinking around 10 combines per day (white con or harder as much as possible) might be reasonable. It certainly shouldn’t be an “easy button” or a fast track, but just a helpful assistance.

Again, this is still speculative, not a promise it will happen, but wanted to mention it’s something we’re discussing as a possibility.

Level Lock and Nuke

Of course you can always level transmuting/adorning by rolling a newbie character on either of the islands — Queen’s Colony or Outpost of the Overlord — disable XP at level 3, and just kill mobs over and over. At least until those islands are unnecessarily ripped from the game. Transmuting/Adorning Leveling for Dummies

I’ve been advised that this is potentially just a market correction, and once players either level up, or get bored of transmuting, they’ll move on and prices will settle back down. Now is not the time to buy transmuting materials, but it may not always be so.