From the EQ2 Forums:

Important: We will perform maintenance beginning at 7:00 AM Pacific* on June 18, 2013. This will impact the following services:

• Account management will be unavailable for 30 minutes.
• Commerce transactions, including purchases on our websites and in-game marketplaces, will fail until 7:30 AM Pacific Time*
• Pay Pal and SMS Transactions will fail until 9 AM Pacific Time*
• Login for all SOE forums may be affected. You may lose permissions and experience occasional disconnects from 7 AM Pacific until 9 AM Pacific*
• Login for all SOE games may be affected from 7 AM Pacific until 9 AM Pacific*
• Players who are already logged into game may be disconnected and unable to log back in until 9 AM PDT*

From the EQ2 Forums:

From the EQ2 Forums:

We are pleased to announce our next Game Update titled “Darkness Dawns” coming on July 30! For our 67th game update we have great stuff in store for you!

We are really excited about a new story quest line that will pick up from our last game update in April (GU66: Scars of the Awakened). We can tell you that there is an EPIC event brewing in Cobalt Scar that could turn the world on its head and YOU are the catalyst.

SPOILER: At the end of GU66, players uncovered an artifact of power — a Tear of Veeshan — that will lead into the story quest line in Darkness Dawns. The events you will experience are jaw-dropping and the team has been pouring its energy and passion into making this very special — from art to dialogue. You, our hero, will be central to the story that will change the world!

Here are some of the features we have lined up for Darkness Dawns!

If you haven’t read last night’s EverQuest “What’s Next” Show transcript, then you missed out on a number of announcements for EQ2′s as-yet-unannounced Game Update 67.

Two items of note:

Character Advancement Templates — For players who don’t want to spend 320 AA points one-at-a-time, there will be certain templates which are recommended AA setups for each class. You can click a button and have it spend the points for you, and if you don’t have enough points to get everything suggested by the template, it will remember and keep those AA bubbles highlighted.

Alternate Advancement Profiles — You will now be able to store up to 3 Alternate Advancement setups or “profiles” on your character and access them anywhere. No more kludgy AA mirrors. You will also be able to load/save your AA setup to an XML file.

EQ2U intends to support AA Profiles on day one, as well as offer the ability to export a character’s AA setup from EQ2U as an XML file which you can then import into your own character!

From the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Siren’s Grotto: Dissension [Raid]

• Gen’ra Challenge Mode: The Phantasmal Conduit adds near the end of fight do less damage, and have less health.

The Lost Village of Kugup

• Players should now be able to use the portal stone at the zone start to exit out the village at any time.

QUESTS

• Lost in the Woods – Field Marshal Vishra will now complete the quest, even if you have already accepted or completed “The Voice in theForest.”

From the EQ2 Forums:

The Potent Potable quest in Cobalt Scar, which required keeping 5 Othmir alive by using healing items on them (which had to be repeatedly picked up from an NPC) has stymied a number of players.

For them, this one quest has completely bottlenecked/stopped their progress in the Cobalt Scar quest lines. I personally was able to do the quest, but only solo (if I was grouped, then I got credit for any Othmir that died on my groupmates’ watch too ). Not everyone grew up playing Castlevania and Mario, so I can see how it would be tricky for some.

From Dexella on the EQ2 Forums:

Hey everyone,

Thanks for your feedback about this quest. I do have some information about changes coming to “A Potent Potable” to pass along to you from the Dev team. I think you’ll be happy about this update! 

The quest A Potent Potable has been a hot topic as it presents a challenge that must be overcome with personal skill and cannot be made easier by leveling, acquiring better gear, or bringing more group members. While many players enjoyed the challenge, it was a frustration to others, as it was a required step in the main story line. We did not intend this one quest to be a roadblock for the series, but also did not wish to make it so easy as to remove the fun of completing it.

As a compromise, we’ve made this an optional quest. Skipping it is as simple as speaking to Nika again once you’ve acquired it, and letting her know that you’d prefer to move on to the next quest. While this will prevent you from ever completing A Potent Potable, anyone who has completed Nika’s next quest, A Salty Farewell, may then return to Salt Breeze Camp to find an othmir medic offering a repeatable quest with an identical minigame. Successfully completing either the original quest or the new optional quest will reward you with both an achievement and a title.

From EverQuest2.com:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Cobalt Scar

• Aerial collections in Cobalt Scar should no longer spawn in unreachable locations.
• Salton the Undying in Cave of Anguish will no longer wake and attack if player is on the tradeskill quest, “Hope Reborn” where the item, “Othmir Scouting Potion” is applied to the player’s character.

The Court of Al’Afaz

• Evac will now take you to the start of the instance instead of zoning you to Pillars of Flame.

Lesser Faydark

• Grand Master, Lu Sun will no longer meditate beneath the rock once you have returned to complete the quest given by him.

Freeport

• Cipius Abito the Provisioner will no longer check to see if you are on one of the good factions for some of the items that he sells you.

ITEMS

• The [eq2u]Brace of Corporeal Darklight[/eq2u] will no longer proc in pvp combat.
• The Freeblood mount spell Cloud of Bats is now a proper mount, accessed from the Mounts window. Additionally, the prerequisite quest is no longer required to access the flying mount. Flying is still limited to characters level 85 and higher.
• The [eq2u]Dagger of the Blind[/eq2u] will now show its proper appearance.
• [eq2u]Ethereal Robes of the Silver Reaper[/eq2u] now procs the 10% flurry on the wearer properly.

QUESTS

• Distraction and Destruction – Regaining the quest after blowing up barrels will no longer require players to wait before being able to blow up the barrels again.
• Potent Potables is now optional in the Cobalt Scar quest line. Should you choose to skip it, you will not be able to complete it again, however a repeatable version of the quest will become available from an othmir medic found near Salt Breeze Camp.

From the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION

Cobalt Scar

• End line collection rewards have been slightly improved and now have an additional effect.

CLASSES

Mage

• Absorb Magic will no longer be outright resisted.

Brigand

• Cuss will no longer be outright resisted.

Swashbuckler

• Tease will no longer be outright resisted.

Druid

• Serene Symbol will no longer be outright resisted.

Shaman

• Scourge will no longer be outright resisted.

Templar

• Unswerving Hammer’s damage now properly applies to epic targets.

Coercer

• Mind’s Eye is now a toggle ability and will grey out when active.

For several days now, Verizon FIOS users have been experiencing connection issues with EverQuest 2. These problems seemed to have been resolved but have returned today.

More as we have it…

From the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION

Cobalt Scar

• Kelorek’Dar no longer stuns or interrupts players as a damage shield. He will instead damage player’s power pools slightly at the same frequency.
• Collections – Collectibles in Cobalt Scar should be more readily available

Chelsith

• Kuom’Ziki will no longer continue to speak when he is dead.

Jarsath Wastes

• Fixed a spawn point for collectible shinny that was below the surface at location -1619 183 1116.

Blackburrow

• The “Sabertooth Champion” should start spawning again. The respawn for him is around 20 minutes.

Sleepers Tomb

• Sleepers tomb raid – challenge mode ancient sentinel no longer heals itself with Touch of Velium II spell.

Nektulos:

• The Travelling Augur is adjusted to prevent the possibility of him falling beneath the dock.

Siren’s Grotto: Dissension

• The second respawn location should not be available until the doors to the second half of the zone are unlocked.

With Game Update 66 and the introduction of Siren’s Grotto, it’s now time to bump up the quality of heroic gear a bit. To do that, Drinal’s Steward as started offering Tier 2 heroic armor. From Amnerys on the EQ2 Forums:

Good news! The Steward of Drinal now has Tier 2 Heroic gear available. Platinum prices on the Tier 1 Steward gear have been lowered. Greater Spirits and essences have also had their drop rates increased.

This is indeed good news, as there is certainly room for growth and a need to provide an obvious upgrade over the Advanced Solo rare drops.

However there are a few hiccups too. On the EQ2 Forums, players have renewed their objections to needing to run the 15 hour Chains of Eternity Solo Signature Quest line on each of their alts in order to shop Drinal’s Steward’s wares. While we’ve been able to buy a Steward’s Key to share the Obol and Spirit love with our alts, this key has never unlocked the ability to buy from the Merchant. Thus far, the workaround for buying armor has been to swap characters around and trade it through the Shared Bank. However this won’t work with Tier 2 gear upgrades.

Despite protestations from Raid and Group Leaders, it seems the current itemization strategy of crazy-gluing desirable Yellow and Red Adornments to equally desirable items and leaving it to players to divide the child is here to stay.

An eternal optimist might say that leaving it up to players to decide whether to destroy the item to salvage the adornment is part of a longer term strategy to bring choice and hard decisions back to EQ2 itemization after years of streamlining.

While a growing number of Adornment Dislodgers have become available since the Chains of Eternity expansion launched, their cost has kept them out of reach for many players. Especially the obscenely expensive Superb Prismatic Adornment Dislodger which is one of the few types which preserves the item AND a choice of one adornment.

With today’s update, the aforementioned Superb Prismatic Adornment Dislodger will drop from 1,000 plat to 250 plat. Further, EQ2 designers have posted that some cheaper adornment removers are on the way.

Hopefully today’s update will finally and completely put the EQ2 Platocalypse to bed:

From EverQuest2.com:

GENERAL

• Click-to-cure should now use the robust remedies that are in your bags.
• Pet back off will now remove auto-assist.

MERCENARIES

• Quest mercenaries should no longer overwrite your hired mercenary if they die.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• The Triumph “Destiny of Velious Over Achiever” should once again be awarding to players who have already killed the required bosses.

GUILD HALL AMENITIES

• Bells should no longer require a 6 person group to zone to Cobalt Scar.

From the EQ2 Forums:

With Game Update 66: Scars of the Awakened, it’s clear that the EQ2 team are trying to do some new things with quests. I’ve done I guess about 1/2 of the Othmir questline in Cobalt Scar and have had to do some interesting tasks under certain conditions which go way beyond the usual “kill 10 rats” quests. Of course the problem with more complex quests is, there are so many more places where they can break, and I haven’t encountered this many breaks in a single quest in a long time.

I’m talking about the quest Gifts from Prexus. If you don’t want the quest spoiled, then skip this article.

Login servers for all SOE games appear to be down.

Posted at 10:36am:

We are investigating and working to resolve an issue with logins. [Dexella]

— EverQuest II (@everquestii) May 3, 2013

Update at 11:39am:

You should be able to log in to game now. Happy adventuring! [Dexella]

— EverQuest II (@everquestii) May 3, 2013

From the EQ2 Forums:

PLAYER HOUSING

• Fixed an issue where the moving crate sometimes wouldn’t show up when moving houses.

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION

General

• Coin rewards for Advanced Solo zones have been increased.
• Minimum coin rewards for Heroic zones have been increased.

ABILITIES / ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT

Warrior

• Reversal should no longer periodically reapply its visual.

QUESTS

• The recipe “Circle of Flames” should now correctly appear in the recipe book for those who have scribed it.
• Meru should no longer mysteriously die during the quest Gifts From Prexus.

From the EQ2 Forums:

GENERAL

• Fixed a bug where not all of your points spent would load from an AA mirror.
• Granted a free respec on all trees to all players.

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Sirens Grotto Raid

• Caella the Pearl encounter – Siren Controllers are slower to react after spawning and have less health. Entrancer Lisha now waits a while after casting Numb Senses to cast her Consume Vitae AOE.
• Entrancer Lisha will no longer charm pets with Siren’s Melody.

Siren’s Grotto: Alluring Embrace [Heroic]

• Health has been reduced on a number of NPCs.

Drinal’s Castle Raid

• Fitzpitzle should now properly advance to his rooms when defeated.

For the latter part of last year and into this year, I’ve been raiding Saturday mornings in mostly x4 EM content. Outside of that, I’ve done mostly Advanced Solo content and just a smattering of group zones. From that gameplay, via selling shinies, masters, drops, crafting spells for other players, etc. I’ve been able to accumulate more than enough Plat for my character needs.

I am currently the co-owner of a Tier 1 level 62 guild hall with max amenities. I also have five level 95 characters (although my Ranger will always be my main). Between Reforging and Adornments, there are certainly some expenses to be considered, but I’ve always managed to make do without grinding Protector’s Realm, Shard of Hate, etc.

For the most part, issues being reported on the EQ2 Forums about Game Update 66: Scars of the Awakened have not included show-stopping bugs, but rather a few issues that can be worked around.

Sometimes, quests bug out due to mercenary <-> NPC actor interaction, and that can be resolved by temporarily suspending mercs or setting them not to defend you or themselves.

Known Issues

• Illusionist AA Resetting
• Druid Rebirth Power Cost
• Siren’s Grotto Abyss
• Conjuror & Warrior Casting Animations
• Fitzpitzle Raid Bugged

Illusionist AA Resetting

In the course of changing the AA “Enhance: Cure Arcane” to “Enhance: Cure Magic”, it looks like the way the points are calculated for this ability was changed. This is causing at least a partial reset in AAs for all Illusionists who spent points in that line.

From Maevianiu:

Did you have the AA Enhance: Cure Arcane? It looks like that was changed in max tier and points per tier which could invalidate your arrangement.

and:

Fix will go out with a hofix early Thursday morning. Along with a free respec for everyone.

With Game Update 66, we saw a lot of changes, including “Quality of Life” changes to a number of classes. Summoners now see their dumbfire pets share their stats and now spawn behind the enemy, greatly increasing their chance of survival. Scouts especially Rangers have seen a lot of distance and positioning restrictions loosened or removed altogether. Crusaders can now cast on the run. This is not to mention the new overland zone as well as the Adv Solo, Group, and Raid zones.

However the most controversial issue in this update was the change in how Platinum (coin) is awarded in group and raid zones, particularly in outdated content. Kyle “Kander” Vallee went on the record on the EQ2Talk podcast to say that the changes were meant not to try to “balance” the economy or reduce the amount of coin coming into the game, but simply to fix the silliness of so many players farming 5 year old content just to fund their current activities.

So now that the update has gone live, what’s the verdict?

How much are you seeing from doing old and current level content?

Is it enough to finance your gameplay?

From EverQuest II’s Youtube:

SERVER STATUS UPDATES

1:01pm PDT: Crushbone seems to be up.

1:00pm PDT: Crushbone is now offline. 2 hours 20 minutes.

12:10pm PDT: Despite being told that Crushbone is up, the server is still locked.

11:40am PDT: Crushbone server is now up still DOWN, 40 minutes behind the others.

11:27am PDT: Ahma and Holly have tweeted that all servers are up, but Crushbone is still down.

11:25am PDT: Crushbone server just crashed.

11:22am PDT: Guk, Everfrost, Butcherblock, and Unrest are up.

11:00am PDT: Looks like some servers are up, but Guk, Everfrost, Butcherblock, and Unrest are still locked.

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Looks like today’s Game Update 66: Scars of the Awakened update is taking a bit longer to go live. So to pass the time, Wirewhisker posted a cat video.

We know you have content in there. Give it up.