From the EQ2 Forums:

WEEKLY FEATURE
Loyalty Merchant

• Noble Tark Validus has a new item to assist gold members who wish to change their city alignment or betray their adventure profession.
• Noble Toowik Mclure has new adventuring equipment available for sale.

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
The Fabled Halls of Fate

• Knockbacks should occur much less frequently.

Temple of Veeshan: Guardian’s Ediface [Raid]

• Corrected a bug in the Pyrelord and Controller fight in which the same target was selected every time for the red and blue ground AEs. Targets are now selected randomly, as intended.

TRADESKILLS

• All Player crafted Round Shields should once again be scout usable and grant agility.

ITEMS

• Uplifting Procs no longer clear off the entire raid when a user dies or removes the item.

PVP

• Legacy PvP adornments can now be used in PvP combat again.

From the EQ2 Forums:

GENERAL
New Achievements available for dedicated collection hunters!
Health Percentage will now show with the Detailed (Arrows) version of the target window if you have the option turned on.
Players’ preferred auto attack mode will now be restored after their possession of a target has concluded.

Last month, we introduced a Known Recipes and Recipe Books feature, however it was lacking the some optimization and was affecting the overall performance of the site, so we temporarily took the feature offline.

I’m thrilled to announce that not only have we completed the optimization and restored these features, but we have also added full support for Recipes throughout EQ2U, including Recipe Search and Recipe Details!

Search for Recipes at EQ2U!

If you have not read it, please read our past article:
Crack the Books with Recipes on EQ2U

after the jump, our EQ2U Recipes FAQ…

From the EQ2 Forums:

We are proud to announce that EQ2U has been updated with a new “Recipes” tab which allows you view Known Recipes and Known Recipe Books for EQ2 Characters!

When viewing Recipes, the Item, Book, and Level columns can sorted or reverse sorted by clicking the column headers or spinner ().  To keep web browsers from exploding when trying to display 6,500 recipes, we’ve broken this data out into Tiers (0, 1-9, 10-19, 20-29, up to 90-95). Recipes can also be quickly filtered from the Category menu.

From Erin Oakley on the EQ2 Forums:

The weather may be wintery, but the denizens of Norrath are full of holiday cheer! The annual celebration of Frostfell features gift giving, fabulous feasts, holiday crafts, and of course, Santa Glug and his helpers.

Interested in joining the fun? Travel to the Frostfell Wonderland Village by finding a magical wardrobe in Qeynos Province District, Freeport, Haven, Kelethin, Neriak, Gorowyn, or New Halas.

Frostfell will begin December 12, 2013, and run through January 9, 2014, so bundle up and join the fun!

What if someone could take a screenshot of every item that could be placed in a House, Guild Hall, or Dungeon, and then provide information about where that item is acquired, either from a Merchant, Recipe, or Quest.

Well you don’t need to wish any longer because such a site exists. Lera’s EQ2Furniture.com is a comprehensive catalogue of every house item in EQ2, with screenshots from multiple angles, as well as data on how to acquire each item. The vast majority of this information was hand-entered, so this has surely been a monumental undertaking.

Frostfell this year has new quests, new crafts, and more things to do and acquire from the daily Gifts, Quests, and Crafting. Niami Denmother of EQ2Traders has once again covered them all in exquisite detail. First up is a revamped Frostfell Winterland Village (it’s no longer merely a clone of North Everfrost). Read her detailed article here:

<< Frostfell 2013: Snowy Facelift @ EQ2Traders >>

There is also a new Frostfell-themed Prestige House. Follow Niami as she goes on a detailed tour of this new arctic wonderland:

<< Frostfell Dwelling Tour @ EQ2Traders >>

Finally, a much-requested feature of diehard crafters and lovers of all things Frostfell, permanent Frostfell Crafting Stations. If you want to discover these on your own, then don’t read the article below!!

<< Shiny Boxes All Do Hide @ EQ2Traders >>

From EQ2 ZAM:

The season of giving and cheer has arrived! Frostfell will begin following the downtime on Thursday, December 12, and this year brings about a festive season of change.

This year Frostfell introduces one new quest, A Deepice Mystery, which explores the altered Frostfell Wonderland Village and must be completed before several older quests may be obtained. Many new craftables are available to tradeskillers this year, resulting in items such as Gingerbread Plushies and a Glacier building block set. Several returning quests have new reward choices or tokens added to them.

Players with extra “gifties” from the Gigglegibber Gifty Storehouse can exchange them for Frozen Tokens of E’ci on the Enchanted Lands dock. Santa Glug can be found with his bag of goodies inside the Frostfell Wonderland Village for players to receive their daily presents. Crafters can finally rejoice as they obtain the first ever Permanent Frostfell Crafting Stations!

ZAM is pleased to offer alt-a-holics an updated Frostfell Quest Tracker. Print it out and chart up to 15 of your characters’ progress. We also have an image gallery of the new zone which you can see by clicking on the image below. Happy Frostfell!

<< Jump to ZAM’s complete Frostfell Guides >>

view the Frostfell 2013 Gallery @ EQ2 ZAM

From the EQ2 Forums:

Frostfell is active on Test!

There’s plenty of Frostfell cheer throughout Norrath this season! Gigglegibbers and Frostfell elves are busy celebrating the holiday within the player cities, and encouraging everyone to visit the Frostfell Wonderland Village, accessed through the Magic Closets in Qeynos Province District, Freeport, Haven, Kelethin, Neriak, Gorowyn and New Halas. There you can assist Candice Cheriweth, Gardy Ex-Giftgiver, Mr. McScroogle, Queen Bunny, and Snarf Frostfoot with some holiday tasks, but only after you release them from their deep freeze! For those that have a talent for crafting, you can help Sogs Frostfoot, or gather presents to craft wondrous new Frostfell goodies for yourself. Don’t forget to log in each day and claim your extra-special Frostfell present from everyone’s favorite Frostfell Gigglegibber, Santa Glug!

Frostfell will hit live servers December 12th and end January 9, 2014 as per Kaitheel:

This event content is currently set to run 12/12/13 at 8am PST* through 01/09/14 at 7am PST* on the live servers.

Kaitheel also posted some interesting stats on Twitter:

#Frostfell 2013 content has been submitted. So far, it’s 740 design files touched, 389 of which are new! 101 hours of design time. #EQ2

— Nathan McCall (@kaitheel) December 4, 2013

From the EQ2 Forums:

If you haven’t checked out the EQ2Wire Tears of Veeshan Frequently Asked Questions guide since the launch of the expansion two weeks ago, we’ve added some new questions and details!

• Armor slots — Which armor slots drop from which Adv Solo and Heroic zones.

• Bonus “column” heroic named — These appear at the end of heroic zones for players who have completed the Tears of Veeshan signature quest and drop tradeskill materials.

• More ways to acquire Draconic Etyma — including the “Ancestral Champion” quest, as well as weekly and daily Tradeskill missions.

• Cryptic (Adv Solo) and Arcane (T1 Heroic) armor upgrades — Cryptic and Arcane armor with 4 gems can be converted into a gem of the next tier PLUS all adornments (including white) are popped off with a conversion item that costs 10 Etyma. This takes a lot of the pain out of upgrading items!

• Anchor Tags added to Tears of Veeshan FAQ allow you to link () a part of the FAQ to a friend.

Tears of Veeshan offers new Tradeskill quests, tradeskill collections, recipes, new tradeskill apprentice recipes, purple war runes you can craft, and Gemstones which can upgrade Advanced Solo and Heroic gear as well as many other new features. There’s also a great change to building blocks and a new pack pegasus.

From Niami Denmother of EQ2Traders:

There is quite a bit going on regarding crafting in the Tears of Veeshan expansion, and since one of the SOE Dev team, Caith, went to the trouble of putting together a master list for us for beta, I am taking that list and running with it.

Continue reading at EQ2Traders!

Here are the Update Notes for the Tears of Veeshan expansion (ie Game Update 68) from the EQ2 Forums:

After rediscovering Yelinak, now the steward of Vesspyr Isles alongside other fallen and familiar dragons, players learn of the time/space powers behind the Tear of Veeshan stolen by prismatic dragon Kerafyrm the Awakened. With Kerafyrm’s fearsome power looming over Norrath, players are called upon to shine light into the darkness brought on by the Awakened’s draconic army, and set the stage for a new Age to begin!

Features:

• New class – Channeler!
• New Dragon-themed AAs
• AA limit increased to 340
• New overland area, Vesspyr Isles – Adventure, amenities, quests, collections, and more!
• Nine new dungeons
• Two new raid zones
• More Tradeskill and Tradeskill Apprentice Items
• New PvP item tier

From the EQ2 Forums:

Open Beta for EverQuest II: Tears of Veeshan will open tomorrow, on Tuesday, October 15, 2013. This is a great chance for players to check out the new Channeler class and new dragon-themed Alternative Advancement (AA) systems for each archetype. We’d love your feedback on these features, as well as other parts of the expansion! Beta will last until the launch of Tears of Veeshan onTuesday, November 12, 2013!

How to copy your Live and/or Test character over to the Beta server:

• You can click the ‘Beta Copy’ button on the character create screen to copy the currently selected character.
• You can log in your character and then use the /beta command.

From the EQ2 Forums:

TRADESKILLS

• When commission crafting helms of Psionic Shielding the crafter should no longer be able to use their components in place of the commissioner’s materials.

QUESTS

• Corrected an issue where the visual and audio notifications for quest updates would not trigger.

You’ve likely heard whispers of just how powerful Refined and Experimented items can be, but until you’ve seen the final “as delivered” stats on the best examples of said items, either in a screenshot, or by examining another player in-game, it’s hard to know just how awesome these processes are.

A Refining/Experimentation Primer

If you grasped everything in Niami‘s EQ2Traders primer on the subject back when the Chains of Eternity expansion was new, then you already know the how-to and formulas at work here, but if not…

• A Refined item is a Mastercrafted weapon, armor, or piece of jewelry which has been created using a Purified rare. Instead of just crafting an item with an [eq2u]osmium cluster[/eq2u], if you first refine that rare into a [eq2u]purified osmium cluster[/eq2u]. When you then craft the item with this improved rare, nearly all of the item’s stats will be increased by 10%. A few stats are only improved by 5%, and others aren’t impacted at all. View a complete list of Refined stats.

• Meanwhile, Experimentation allows a skilled crafter to “boost” or increase a chosen stat on a crafted item. Experimented items gain a name “prefix” which changes with each experiment, with 5 successful experiments granting a prefix of “Visionary”. Boosting a single stat once increases it by 10%, but if you boost the same stat multiple times, you receive diminishing returns. Boosting the same stat sees an increase of 10%, 15%, 17.5%, 18.5%, and, at the max, 19% (10+5+2.5+1+0.5). Suffice it to say, most people spread their boosts around rather than stacking them all into a single stat.

To know just how powerful Refining, Reforging, and Experimentation can be, one need look no further than top tier raid guilds who, until they acquire their Plane of War mythical cloaks, often wear these Experimented/Refined/Reforged crafted cloaks to the exclusion of most other dropped cloaks.

Join members of the EverQuest II team including Akil “Lyndro” Hooper, Carlos “Gninja” Mora, Nathan “Kaitheel” McCall, Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Nandy “Zoltaroth” Szots, Kyle “Kander” Vallée, and Holly “Windstalker” Longdale as they talk about EverQuest II’s upcoming 10th expansion — Tears of Veeshan.

Watch the EverQuest II: Tears of Veeshan expansion panel recorded on Friday, August 2nd at SOE Live 2013!

Join members of the EverQuest II team including Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Brian “Omougi” Ferguson, Nandy “Zoltaroth” Szots, and Kyle “Kander” Vallée as they talk about upcoming mechanics and systems changes in EQ2.

Watch the EverQuest II: Systems (Mechanics) panel recorded on Friday, August 2nd at SOE Live 2013!

If you didn’t see the EverQuest II keynote live on Twitch or on the replays, you can watch it on Youtube. I’ve set the video to start at 27:30 which is right after Holly “Windstalker” Longdale gives ladies man Mark Tuttle a well-earned hard time and launches into the keynote. 😉

Welcome to the EverQuest II: Itemization Evolves panel from SOE Live 2013. Panelists are Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Brian “Omougi” Ferguson, and Kyle “Kander” Vallée.

Disclaimer: All things discussed about the expansions are subject to change!

More slides after the jump…

Welcome to the EverQuest II: Itemization Evolves panel from SOE Live 2013. Panelists are Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Brian “Omougi” Ferguson, and Kyle “Kander” Vallée.

This is a LIVE BLOG hosted by Blyve:
http://blyve.com/event/5138f951143e787b3a000000

Welcome to the EverQuest II: Tears of Veeshan Expansion panel from SOE Live 2013.

This is a LIVE BLOG hosted by Blyve:
http://blyve.com/event/dc37f951bddea0042f000000

Welcome to the EverQuest II: Systems panel from SOE Live 2013. Panelists are Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Brian “Omougi” Ferguson, and Kyle “Kander” Vallée.

This is a LIVE BLOG hosted by Blyve:
http://blyve.com/event/f936f951ce62705701000000

From the EQ2 Forums: