Level 20-80 Being Completely Reitemized Including Raid Gear

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire), Game Updates & Maintenance, Itemization

While we’ve heard indirectly from Silius that work on existing items from level 20-80 was being done, SmokeJumper has an official quote for us:

We have a full itemization plan in place now and we’ll be unveiling much of it at Fan Faire.

I’ll tell you this much though. We’re going to itemize *all* of the level 20-80 items by GU 61.

When asked if this includes raid Fabled items from levels 40-80:

“All” includes Raid items.

We’ve already been informed that crafted gear especially Mastercrafted gear from level 22-77 are being tweaked to have the right stats for the appropriate Archetypes. There’s also a chance that we may see a reversion of the unpopular revamp of all itemization for level 1-20 characters. Handing out coon skin caps and furs to Sarnak or Fae didn’t make a lick of sense.

We are hesitant to make any prediction about how this will all go. There are thousands of items in EQ2 with similar stats that exist mostly for appearance. We would be very disappointed to see those items washed away in favor of a single progression of items shared by all dungeon bosses and trash. We don’t know what form this revamp will take, but it seems an insurmountable amount of work to do it “right”.

No word on if we’ll see any improvement to Destiny of Velious itemization which has replaced cool items that people strive to acquire, with a stat odometer propelled by incrementally more powerful yet completely unmemorable items.

   

Update Notes for June 24, 2011 — Leapers and Gliders

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Art, Appearance, Housing, Game Updates & Maintenance, Grouping, Itemization, PvP/BG/Proving Grounds, Raiding

Today brings a substantial update with lots of fixes, tweaks, as well as the much-lauded introduction of Leaper and Glider mounts to EQ2 at levels 30 and 60. In a perplexing move, Ground, Leaper, and Glider mounts will all travel on the ground at speeds of up to 150%, making them as fast as any of the current Flying mounts, only lacking the differentiating ability of flight.

All servers will come down for an update at 7am PDT (3pm BST / 4pm CET) on Friday, June 24, 2011. U.S. servers are expected to be down for one hour. International servers should expect a two hour downtime.

EQ2Wire Guide to Heroic Velious Armor & Jewelry

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Grouping, Itemization, Tradeskill

Players who have explored the depths of Velious already know that crafters have a bigger role to play this expansion than in many years. In addition to saving players time and money, in Destiny of Velious, tradeskillers are integral to transforming raw materials looted in cellars, caves, and other dark places into the shiny new armament that players actually want.

Although most of this information has been posted on other websites, it hasn’t all been available in a single organized article, so that’s what I’ve set out to do here. We cover the biggest purveyors of armor and weapons in Velious — Thurgadin, Ry’Gorr, and Drunder — who via faction and crafter recipes offer a full selection of armor, jewelry, cloaks, charms, and weapons. The one thing excluded from Thurgadin, Ry’Gorr, and Drunder armor sets is Chest items. Fortunately, we have a Guide to Destiny of Velious Chest armor that covers those choices and where they drop.

Crafters: Before going any further, if you haven’t already explored Niami Denmother‘s EQ2Traders website, specifically her Special Armor guide, I highly suggest it. This article also owes its history to an article posted by Whilhelmina shortly after Velious launched.

On October 11, 2011, Primal Velium Shards were removed as a primary component from Thurgadin and Ry’Gorr armor. Also Drunder armor pieces now drop within Drunder zones. As a result, crafting Drunder armor is now optional and reserved for those with particularly bad luck. Fortunately for them, the materials used to make Drunder armor have been made much more prevalent. This guide has been updated to reflect these changes.

This is a multi-page article so please use the navigation below to select a section.

Jump To: Intro | Thurgadin Armor | Ry’Gorr Armor | Drunder Armor | Pattern Jewelry/Cloaks | Velious Chest Pieces

Traduction française à EQ2Artisans

Mastercrafted Gear to get Adjusted for Stat Changes

Written by Feldon on . Posted in DGC Wants Feedback, Game Updates & Maintenance, Itemization

From Silius on the EQ2 Forums:

Hey everyone, I just wanted to let all of you know that in the next few weeks I will be pushing tradeskilled items to test with updated stats. This push should make all the current crafted items relevant. Their new growth is derived from the growth established in Velious.

This means they will all be modified to give appropriate stats based on the new mechanics of attributes and other stats. I will need some help from all of you when we push this to test so I can make sure that I have not missed anything. Please keep an eye out for this and thanks in advance.

When faced with a smarmy response from a player that no adjustments to quest or dropped gear will be made to match the stat changes, Silius confirmed what SmokeJumper said in a previous post:

Who says this is not being done?

June 7th 2011 Update Notes

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance, Grouping, Itemization, Raiding

Today’s update addresses numerous complaints about the difficulty of the Drunder heroic and raid zones as well as the Citadel of V’uul x2. In particular the Drunder group zones seemed to require Raid gear to attempt, yet lacked any progression of itemization from that gear. We also see some ease-of-use changes to Kael Drakkel contested.

The full notes after the jump…

Velious Solo Gear Options Grow With GU60

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance, Grouping, Itemization

Destiny of Velious provides many options for solo and duo players wishing to gear up without stepping into a heroic dungeon.

  • For starters, the Othmir and Snowfang quest lines reward gear that was unheard of except for raiders in Sentinel’s Fate.
  • Public Quests offer sets of gear, weapons, and more, with or without joining a group or raid provided enough players are present and successful.
  • A largely unknown solo/duo dungeon Crystalline Breaks provides additional gear up options.
  • And finally today sees the introduction of a Velious Solo Shard Quest to fill out player options for gearing up without a full group.

GU60: Surviving Drunder, Critical Mitigation is Serious Business

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance, Grouping, Itemization

Drunder and Critical Mitigation

The Shadow Odyssey introduced Critical Mitigation, a stat needed by players to survive the heavy hits of raid bosses and enemies. Sentinel’s Fate upped the numbers, but it was Destiny of Velious which rolled out Critical Mitigation to all group zones and even overland solo content.

The three new Drunder dungeons, new Citadel of V’uul x2 raid, and three new Drunder x4 raid zones are no exception and set alarming new standards for the amount of Critical Mitigation needed even to do heroic content.

Adding to the concern is that while mobs can be examined to see their Crit Bonus buff, this number has been traditionally 30-50% lower than the amount of Critical Mitigation actually needed to survive their attacks.

The high Critical Mitigation needs of Drunder are hardly a surprise as there was a lengthy thread on the Testing forums. Now that the Drunder zones are live, the discussion is playing out in two threads on the EQ2 forums.

After the jump, Kander and Gninja respond to player concerns and indicate that the number displayed when inspecting mobs will be adjusted to show the real Crit Bonus amount that players will need to gear up for.

GU60: Offhand Multiattack and More on BG Tokens

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance, Itemization, PvP/BG/Proving Grounds

Multi-attack Not Working on Offhand Weapons

In a two different forum threads, players reported that Offhand Weapons are not multiattacking unless their timing is staggered (use a combat art to interrupt one, or use weapons with two different delays). Zoltaroth‘s response:

We found what is causing this and are working on a fix. Most likely the fix will be in the next hotfix after tomorrows (ie: not tomorrow).

Battlegrounds Tokens for 2 Gold

For testing purposes, Battlegrounds Tokens were placed on the PvP Vendor for 2 gold a piece on Test Copy. Unfortunately, these cheap tokens made their way through to live and as a result, some players on Nagafen have stockpiled thousands of tokens. Some players have even transferred from other servers to Nagafen just to buy them. Olihin says this will be addressed:

This was not intended as stated and we are taking steps to resolve the issue. We appreciate the report and patience while this is resolved.

We thank those that had the restraint to NOT buy the tokens, since it was a bug that the token was there to begin with.

Game Update 60 Goes Live Today

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Art, Appearance, Housing, Game Updates & Maintenance, Grouping, Itemization, PvP/BG/Proving Grounds, Raiding, Tradeskill

Today, arguably the largest Game Update we’ve seen in years hits the live servers. Game Update 60 adds 4 new dungeons, 4 new raid zones, more crafting, more quests from a solo shard quest to a Heritage Quest, major changes to PvP from gear to itemization to mechanics, not only a new Battlegrounds lobby, but a 4th Battleground 18 vs. 18.

We are still waiting for the full list of Game Update Notes, but in the meantime, here’s just a quick bullet point list of what we can expect:

New Level 90 Dungeons and Raid Zones

The Crystal Caverns will naturally be familiar to those who adventured through Velious in EQ1.

The Fortress of Drunder consists of 3 new group dungeons, 3 new x4 raid zones with both regular and challenge modes, a new x2 raid zone, as well as a crafting zone. Drunder zones are only accessible via flying mount.

  • Drunder: Spire of Rage (group)
  • Drunder: Strategist’s Stronghold (group)
  • Drunder: Tower of Tactics (group)
  • Drunder: Citadel of V’uul (x2 raid)
  • Drunder: Sullon’s Spire (x4 raid)
  • Drunder: Tallon’s Stronghold (x4 raid)
  • Drunder: Vallon’s Tower (x4 raid)

During the Downtime: GU60, GU61, and Lower Levels

Written by Feldon on . Posted in DGC Wants Feedback, Game Updates & Maintenance, Itemization

While SOE and by extension EQ2 were offline during the 12 day downtime, what were the devs doing? Scrapbooking? Needlepoint? Actually, they continued work on Game Update 60 (now slated for a May 31st debut according to SmokeJumper) as well as looking ahead to Game Update 61 and beyond.

While players were not able to test Game Update 60, the developers have continued to polish it up and add new things while the servers were down, as well as addressing the feedback from players during the short testing period.

GU60: Adornments Get More Colorful

Written by Feldon on . Posted in DGC Wants Feedback, Game Updates & Maintenance, Itemization

We’ve been hearing about a new Adornments System in Game Update 60. System is perhaps too strong a word for what we’ve seen on Test. But the changes indeed help to visually distinguish adornments from other items which makes finding them in bags a lot easier.

Item Examine windows have seen a change, as adornment text has been replaced by subtle Adornment “badges” for each color the item supports. Adornments themselves have been given bold new icons which are unique, color-coded, and stand out from other items in both recipe books and inventory bags.

Your Feedback

Does this go far enough to make adornments easier to find and stand out among other items? Would you still like to see an Adornment Helper in-game that shows all the adornments and where they are available from?

In Testing: Game Update 60 Update Notes

Written by Feldon on . Posted in DGC Wants Feedback, Game Updates & Maintenance, Grouping, Itemization, Raiding

Game Update 60 has finally reached Test and there is a lot of content here, including 3 new heroic dungeons, 3 new x4 raid zones, and a new x2 raid zone, a new Battleground, as well as major changes to PvP. Also look out for several changes and tweaks to classes, as well as a hard-to-miss huge nerf to Dirges, with Chimes/Cacophony of Blades no longer interrupting.

“The Children of War”

The Fortress of Drunder has emptied of Rallos Zek and his armies as they pass into the Plane of War to prepare for their eventual march on the Western Wastes. The Demi-Gods, Tallon and Vallon Zek, are subjugated within its towers, ignorant of Rallos’ grand scheme. Only Sullon Zek, the Maiden of Rage, is aware of what is to transpire. Trapped within her own tower, she has taken great risks to seek out worthy and daring heroes and guide them into the walls of Drunder.

Now it is up to you to grapple the Minions of Zek and battle your way through events that will gain you amazing allies and set into motion a war that will end all wars!

After the jump the full Game Update 60 Notes as they appear on Test (subject to change between now and May 17th):

Update Notes for April 28, 2011

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Art, Appearance, Housing, Game Updates & Maintenance, Grouping, Itemization, Raiding

Here are your update notes for today, April 28, 2011. They include the introduction of Multi-housing. Thanks to Cyliena over at EQ2 ZAM for the formatting:

HOUSING UPDATES

  • Each character can now own up to 10 houses of any combination (as long as he or she meets the house prerequisites).
  • House purchases are now based on alignment rather than citizenship.
  • The marketplace house item limit increasers now only apply to a single house. Additionally, the marketplace house item limit increaser will no longer stick with your house as you move from house to house, but it still stacks with the tradeskilled house item limit increaser.

More information and FAQ can be found here on the Official Forums.

   

End-of-the-Weekenditus

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Art, Appearance, Housing, Game Updates & Maintenance, Itemization

Let’s see…

ReItemization

It seems we’ve finally made our voices heard on the problems introduced by the extreme stat consolidation with the introduction of Velious, namely that not only all dungeon-dropped (Legendary, Fabled) gear from level 1-89 has completely ineffective stats, but that even the Mastercrafted gear from 22, 32, 42, 52, 62, 72, 77, and 82 are almost nonsensical in their setups given the changes.

Multihousing

Multihousing has been on Test and Test Copy for a couple of days now and feedback has been flooding in from players who are testing it out. Zoltaroth has been slaying the housing code demons and responding quickly to the bug reports.

Prestige Houses

Those prestige houses we’ve been hearing about have been unveiled, leaving no surprises. The Qeynos Dojo from Elddar Grove makes an appearance. It’s cozy, which is real-estate lingo for TINY. Hopefully in a later update, some kind of outdoor area can be added. The Neriak Opera House is much bigger, although again there’s no outdoor area, as these prestige houses were actually produced in 2007 before houses were opened up to ‘outside’ areas. Rounding out the new Prestige houses are the Maj’dul Library which will be awfully familiar for those who have completed their Tradeskill Epic (no sign of weighty tomes or menacing djinn librarians though). We haven’t seen the Maj’dul Bottle house just yet, although we’re guessing that it’s not unlike the bottle found on the shores of the Sinking Sands.

Dethdlr’s Adornment Calculator

Written by Dethdlr on . Posted in Dethdlr's Dungeon, Itemization

I recently spent several hours researching what adornments I wanted to put on my new gear.  This required going to multiple pages on multiple sites and manually calculating all the information I needed to know about adornments.  This led me to think, there has to be a better way.

What resulted from that thought was Dethdlr’s Adornment CalculatorDetails after the break.

Doing the Math on Primal Velium Shard Gear

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Grouping, Itemization

When buying Heroic/Legendary shard armor with Primal Velium Shards, you now have three choices.

  1. If you’ve got the various gems that drop in different instances, and you have faction, then head to the Ry’Gorr camp in Eastern Wastes. Each piece of armor will cost you 52 shards.
  1. If you don’t have the necessary gem but want your armor anyway, and have faction, then head to Thurgadin in Great Divide. Each piece of armor has a cost ranging from 33-90 shards.
  1. And if you know a crafter who has acquired the two Far Seas recipe books to make this armor , then you don’t need faction and can spend 25% less shards.

Thurgadin Armor

  • Shoulders and Legs – 90 Shards from the Merchant / 69 Crafted
  • Cap – 71 from the Merchant / 54 Crafted
  • Shoes and Gloves – 52 from the Merchant / 40 Crafted
  • Bracers – 33 from the Merchant / 25 Crafted

Ry’Gorr Armor

  • All Slots – 52 Shards from the Merchant / 40 Crafted plus Gem

Thanks to Nindaene for putting these numbers together.

Devil in the Details: Velious Progression

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Commentary, Grouping, Itemization, Raiding

Destiny of Velious introduced an unparalleled strict progression to both its group and raid zones. Players wanting to group up in Velious instances have discovered that there are 3 sets of group zones which each require completing the one before it in progression before being granted access.

For instance, you must clear Tower of Frozen Shadow: Shadowed Corridors to gain access to ToFS: Umbral Halls, which must be cleared to gain access to ToFS: Haunt of Syl’Tor. And aspiring raiders must clear all 3 of these group zones in order to gain access to the Tower of Frozen Shadow x2 raid zone. And as we also saw in The Shadow Odyseey expansion, raiders who wish to take on the most difficult x4 Raid content in Velious must first acquire a clickable debuff item by clearing the Tower of Frozen Shadow x2.

With such a daunting interdependency on all Velious zones from group instances through x2 raid and onto the x4 raid zones, you would think that Progression Quests would have been fully tested through QA and ready for players on day 1 of the expansion. Alternately, you would expect that if bugs were discovered, some of these quests would have been passable through other means. Any MMO is going to have adjustments, tweaks, nerfs, etc. after the launch of an expansion. But it’s quite another to release content that MUST all work smoothly end-to-end, yet doesn’t.

Necretia the Widowmaker

Tuesday’s Update restored Necretia the Widowmaker, a boss of Tower of Frozen Shadow x2 nearly a week after she was removed from the game due to two problems. First, it was noticed several weeks ago that she could be killed and respawned. However it was when an extraordinary item on her loot table, the Necretia Bow of Webs was discovered that she was despanwed. This bow had inflated stats and effects such that it was equivalent to a “level 300 item”. However the issue here is one of progression. Tower of Frozen Shadow x2 cannot be completed without her.

It took several days to get this resolved, and guilds who had already started the zone must wait for their zone to reset and start over to get a chance at fighting her. Until then, certain guilds remain unable to raid Velious x4 content through no limitation of their own.

DoV Shard Armor Now Craftable by Players

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance, Grouping, Itemization, Tradeskill

Fastidious crafters took advantage of yesterday’s update and trundled back to the daily Tradeskill Group instances for a chance to loot one of the two volumes of the new Far Seas Strategic Pricing 3rd Edition. As with past editions, these recipe books allow crafters to create shard armor and jewelry for players with a reduced number of tokens/shards. Interestingly, neither players nor crafters must have faction with the Ry’Gorr to make or receive this armor or jewelry. They do however require the designated dungeon-dropped crystals.

With yesterday’s Test Update Notes, we found out that the current Velious shard armor will be dropping from 70 to 52 Primal Velium Shards per piece.

However it seems the recipe book to craft shard armor has been partially updated to reflect the new shard prices. Assassins, Berserkers, Brigands, Bruisers, Coercers, and Conjurors (all classes starting with A, B, or C) are asked to pony up 63 shards per piece, while all other classes pay 40 shards per piece. Nindaene, the player who brought up this issue, also noticed that crafted armor has more mitigation than Ry’Gorr purchased armor.

Domino posted on the issue:

As you may have noticed from the Test server update notes today, we are in the process of lowering the shard costs of the armor. However, it looks like some of the recipes were pushed live with a lower cost than they should have been set to yet. So yes, these prices are an error and will likely change again as we are still in the process of adjusting the prices based on feedback. We’ll get that corrected as soon as possible (hopefully Thursday) but in the mean time it might be safest to hold off on crafting the items, since the final shard cost is not yet finalized. Apologies for the error, and thanks for pointing it out!

On Test: Velium Shards Go Further, Adornments More Flexible

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance, Itemization

A couple of interesting items appeared in today’s Test Update Notes:

  • The amount of Velium Shards required for Shard Armor has been reduced.
  • Several Yellow, Red, and War Rune adornment procs will now trigger on both spell and melee hits.

These changes do not appear in today’s Live Update Notes, so if you have had your eye on certain Adornments or Shard Armor, you might want to wait to see when this change goes live.

Also, in case you missed it in today’s live update notes, players who participate in Tradeskill Group Instances (granted these days, most people choose to solo them for 3 grueling hours ) now have a chance to receive 2 recipe books to make Velious armor/jewelry.

Computer Generated Itemization?

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance, Itemization

At last year’s Fan Faire, I found out that work was being done on a program/script/tool to help the developers create items for EQ2. As with any game development, any number of little tools and scripts are created and passed around the office to help take some of the tedium out of certain repetitive tasks.

At the time, it was explained to me as a tool that could be used to whip out a bunch of Treasured and low level Legendary gear. Why? So that more time and attention could be spent creating unique higher level Legendary and Fabled gear with unique effects. It was hoped that we could see items with interesting procs and effects like those popular items from Shard of Hate, as well as the better raid drops from Shadow Odyssey, and even drawing some inspiration from Avatar Gear (although maybe not THAT powerful).

However with the cookie cutter, cut-and-paste itemization of Velious which seems to pigeonhole players into the 4 main archetypes with few exceptions, players are looking for answers and latched onto a post by SmokeJumper confirming the existence of said “itemization tool”.

Silius: Multi Attack Clarifications

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Itemization

From Silius on the EQ2 Forums:

Greetings All,

I want to take the time to explain the reasoning behind some of the recent multi attack adjustments. Multi attack like any other stat is meant to grow base on item tier. In the creation of these items some of them were given a generous amount of multi attack unintentionally making the progression look odd. In the process of increasing loot power we rebalanced some of these items so they would fall within the guidelines we desired.

That said there still exists some items we are ok with having a bit more multi attack. In most cases these items are sacrificing something to have a larger value of multi attack in other cases they are special items like the Coldain rings.

Thank you all who have given concise feedback in PMs and on these forums it is greatly appreciated.

Silius

Battlepriests (Melee Warden, Inquisitor, Templar) still wonder if Multiattack will come back on gear for them, or if it’s gone for good. And fighters wonder why they are having to farm instances to get more multiattack than anything on easy or hardmode raid loot. We’re still looking at yesterday’s itemization changes to see how this will play out, but there are still too few options for all but the main classical archetypes of fighter, scout, priest, and mage.


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