Game Update #48 was not without a few significant issues!

First and foremost, the introduction of Smart Loot (an item is not awarded if someone in the group already possesses it) to the Veeshan’s Peak Fabled Armor Patterns system introduced a glitch. Namely, linking to these patterns caused the EQ2 client (and possibly your computer) to crash! Due to the severity of this bug, a hotfix to the Client was released this afternoon. In the 36 hours that this problem was live numerous malicious users posted corrupted links in the public chats (often with the name of the item changed to something innocuous or tempting) leading to many users crashing to the desktop or having to reboot their PCs.

Other problems include the excessive triggering of the Wingbeat effect on mobs in VP as well as glitches in the newly added portals.

There are some other problems as well which unfortunately probably won’t get a fix until Monday at the earliest as the servers must come down for content updates.

Game Update #48 sees the introduction of a preview version of a new level 80 dungeon — Veksar — located off Fens of Nathsar at the bottom of the Lake of Ill Omen.

World Events
Two new world events have been added:

• A harvesting quest — Guild Hall Construction — to assist the construction of the guild halls. Rewards include personal and guild status as well as a certificate, statue, and character title after completing the quests 10, 20, and 30 times.
• A murder mystery — Brittle Chips Ahoy — is playing out which requires players to collect bone shards to solve the mystery! Once a certain number of shards have been collected server-wide, the next part of the quest will be unlocked!

Veksar Loot! — Even during testing, some screen snapshots of example loot that drops in Veksar were posted about halfway down this page (once you scroll past all the whining):
Veksar Feedback Thread

The Void Storms quests have come to a close, or are at least on hiatus until they make themselves known in the release of The Shadow Odyssey with a whole Void zone to call their own. Appreciation Notes can now be turned in for nearly ALL of the rewards that were available during the last two quests.

A Guild Member Points system has been added which guilds may choose to use or ignore. It’s another attempt by SoE just like the integration of voice chat to make EQ2 a one-stop shop, freeing raid guilds from the need to depend upon separate DKP (Dragon Kill Points) tracking websites. Some guilds will continue to use their DKP websites, others will migrate to the built-in system. Either way, every EQ2 player who logs in and sees that row of bright yellow zeroes on the Member List is going to ask lots of nagging questions that their guild leaders may not yet be ready to answer!

Everfrost has seen a substantial revamp. Another tunnel has been added to ease travel, 50 new quests have been added, and heroic content has been rearranged to have a more logical progression. Hubs have been added with banking and other amenities as well.

Travel received a significant upgrade. At long last, travelers to Nek Forest and Thundering Steppes can return to the docks near their home cities via bells. More importantly, betrayal of Kelethin citizens to Qeynos due Greater Faydark’s extreme isolation and lack of travel options should be reduced due to the introduction of a Sinking Sands carpet on the ramp leading out of Kelethin (near the Butcherblock entrance). The introduction of a bell from Kylong Plains to Gorowyn will provide an alternate means of transport to and from Kunark zones than waiting for the boat (although zoning 3 or 4 times may not be significantly faster!).

Tradeskill Writs now reward more faction points. 300 for rush orders, 200 for standard work orders. The appearance of crafted cloth and leather items from various levels have received a revamp, as have the stats and properties of the entire range of crafted armor from level 1-59. Many missing items in lower tiers have been added and are now imbuable.

Game Update #48 Release Notes for the complete details.

Fan Faire was 3 weeks ago, but as the information keeps flowing in about the expansion and this blog seems popular, we’re going to go with a slight name change and keep it up!

From Jindrack:

The harvesting hirelings only gather common materials, not rares or imbue material. Rares are left for the players to gather in the wilds of Norrath.

We have been deciding on how many pulls the hirelings can do in two hours so I’d like to get all your feedback on it. So how many pulls do you think is fair for a hireling to do in 2 hours?

Some notes on it.
Hirelings don’t get a “Nothing Found” result on a pull.
They have the player’s standard chance to harvest a 1, 3, or 5 yield per pull.
They have a balanced chance of which of their targeted nodes they will harvest from per pull roll. So the miner has a 50-50 chance that each pull comes from either the Ore node or the Gem node, he can’t be told to only get Gem harvests. On average he should return an equal amount of gem commons and ore commons.
They don’t actually go out into the world and consume nodes, they simulate their pulls by sending their “crew” out into the lands.

I cannot imagine ANYONE paying 12 plat and 24g a week for something that will NEVER make that much money back. Not even if you parked the thing in Tier 6 and set it on the roots and had someone in the guild with the self-discipline to reset this item every 2 hours. You’d have to harvest thousands of succulent roots to make this item worthwhile.

It’s official. Farming eyes in Silent City for 5-10 hours to get access to kill Godking is a thing of the past.
And there was much rejoicing…

The barrier holding the doors of the Godking’s temple have weakened with the onset of the void storms, allowing entry even without the sacred eyes!

Originally posted by Jindrack:
The stable hand doesn’t sell mounts, he gives a +5% mount speed bonus when interacted with.

Clip boards can be placed in the halls, and the two tradeskill writ agents give out free clipboards to place.

About refunding Amenities:

Originally posted by Rothgar:
This is to keep people from selling back amenities, paying upkeep with zero amenities and then buying them back again. I’ll discuss a partial refund with Jindrack. It really comes down to whether or not people can exploit the system.

Originally posted by Jindrack:
We can go with a 50% buy back on the purchase price of an amenity if you click “Remove” to get rid of it. That should be fine.

If you move, the full 100% of the purchase price of your amenities are refunded to escrow so that you can buy them again in the new hall without any loss.

Random comments:

Originally posted by Rothgar:
We’re not trying to kill anything. We’re trying to give guilds something to work for and feel proud of. What does it say about a guild member that is going to abandon his guild for another guild with a hall. Either he isn’t very loyal in the first place, or wants a guild hall without putting in the effort to get it. Probably not someone I’d want to be guilded with anyway. You could use the same argument about people leaving guilds for another guild that can help them get their mythical. There will always be people out there that are in it for themselves, and if a guild is made up of mostly these people, they may have problems. Guild halls are meant to be a group reward and require people to work together to achieve. We can’t force people to do that, but then again guild halls are a priviledge and we don’t expect every guild to have one. If you want it, you have to work for it.

At Fan Faire, it was announced that if you upgrade your guild hall from T1 to T2 or T2 to T3, your amenities get fully refunded and you can take all the items and move them to the bigger hall. BUT you did not get any of your purchase price back. An update this morning from Rothgar:

The T3 guild halls do not require faction to purchase. T1 and T2 guild halls only require someone with the appropriate faction to purchase them, just like a regular house. But once its purchased anyone can come and go regardless of faction.

Keep in mind that you do not lose the cost of your amenities when you upgrade guild halls. This allows you to start out in a smaller hall, start buying amenities and then upgrade later when you have the means. I will also try to make it so you don’t lose the entire purchase price of the hall either. I think we discussed giving back 75% of the purchase price of your old hall.

Zoltaroth is adding a feature to most furniture items so that they can be scaled up and down to look good in guild halls and player housing.

Basically it gives you the ability to scale the size of house items in both player houses and in guild halls. So you can now use those really tiny fireplaces and scale them up to something epic in a guildhall, or scale down those ponds for use in smaller homes.

It’s currently setup to (resize using) Shift + Wheel. Raising / Lowering items should be Control + Wheel. I will look into making this available for Num +/- as well though.

• PvP now allows all character classes on Qeynos and Freeport.
• Bell from Nektulos back to Commonlands.
• Bell from Thundering Steppes back to Antonica.
• Carpet to Sinking Sands from Faydwer
• Carpet to Sinking Sands from Neriak
• Cloth and Leather styles revamped with much better colors and looks
• Many “missing” pieces of armor from 1-69 added.

Someone clearly got better pictures and details than I did and got the full list of amenities including purchase and upkeep costs. Check out the Amenities Calculator here:

http://files.clockworkgamingcollective.com/guildhall_cost_calculator.php

Originally posted by Jindrack:
Level 30 guilds start with 5 amenity slots.
At levels 35, 45, and 55 you gain 2 amenity slots.
At levels 40, 50, and 60 you gain 3 amenity slots.

Starting at level 62 you get 1 amenity slot every other level. (Every even level) A level 80 guild would have 30 amenity slots.

All amenities are available right away. It is up to your guild to decide which ones you want to buy.

Tier 1 and 2 have a maximum amount of amenities it can hold, regardless of guild level.
Tier 1: 15
Tier 2: 25

Amenities Count is quite complicated…

30 – 5 amenities
35 – 7 amenities (+2)
40 – 10 amenities (+3)
45 – 12 amenities (+2)
50 – 15 amenities (+3)
55 – 17 amenities (+2)
60 – 20 amenities (+3)
62 – 21 amenities (+1)
64 – 22 amenities (+1)
66 – 23 amenities (+1)
68 – 24 amenities (+1)
70 – 25 amenities (+1)
72 – 26 amenities (+1)
74 – 27 amenities (+1)
76 – 28 amenities (+1)
78 – 29 amenities (+1)
80 – 30 amenities (+1)

An unauthorized article posted at Massively strongly suggests that there are in fact only 7 dungeons in The Shadow Odyssey which are recycled and reused for different purposes.

Illucide, an EQ2 developer, has this response:

That article is actually quite a bit off. There are twenty unique group dungeons, not seven. Perhaps they were thinking ‘themes’, but there were quite a few misprints there. I think I saw a much more accurate representation on ‘Zam’s site.

For absolute certain, the dungeons are very different. The way that they mention missions really makes them sound much more like LDoN than they actually are. The content between the 20 different dungeons much more varied than LDoN. The best example I can give is that while VoES & Maiden’s share the same theme, you would never confuse one dungeon for the other when running through them.

The Befallen, Miragul’s & Najena dungeons (eight total) will all scale from 50 to 80+, the three Mistmoore will scale from 70-80+, and the others are all set to be 80+.

Well it’s official. The almost entirely negative feedback about the price of the T1 and T2 guild halls and other issues have driven SoE to respond and make some improvements.

>> Guild Hall Pricing Update <<

Level 30 Guild Hall (Tier 1)
Cities: Qeynos, Freeport, Neriak, Faydwer, Gorowyn
Purchase: 50p 100p
Upkeep: 50g, 50k status 1p, 100k
Description: A 5 room guild hall (not based on the 5 bedroom house on Bayle Ct in Qeynos)

Level 50 Guild Hall (Tier 2)
Cities: Qeynos, Freeport
Purchase: 250p 500p
Upkeep: 2.5p, 100k status 5p, 150k
Description: A 10 room guild hall which will have an atrium and other improvements not seen in the Fan Faire demo.

Level 70 Guild Hall (Tier 3)
Purchase: 1,000p
Upkeep: 10p, 200k status
Cities: Antonica, Commonlands
Description: A 25 room guild castle as seen at Fan Faire

Travel Concerns

First, you’ll be able to purchase a house item from the city status merchant that will allow you to port from your personal house straight to your guild hall. Secondly, we’ve reduced the cost of the “Call to Guild Hall” amenity greatly. It will now only cost 1p, 250k status to purchase instead of 10p, 2 million status. In addition we’ve lowered the recast timer on Call to Guild Hall so you can use it every 15 minutes instead of once per hour.

Tradeskill Tables

Another concern was having to purchase amenities for each tradeskill table when you already have them available in your personal home. We’ve decided to allow you to place your existing tradeskill tables in the guild hall and have removed them from the amenity list. Keep in mind that this removes 7 amenities so the original count of 40+ amenities at launch is now around 35.

We hope that these changes will have a positive impact and resolve some of the concerns expressed so far. Smaller guilds should have a much easier time getting into a Tier 1 guild hall and now have an easier upgrade path moving into the Tier 2. The amount of upkeep required to maintain a guild hall still greatly depends on the choice of amenities you decide to purchase.

And the rest of my photos from Vegas and Fan Faire can be found as a photo slideshow.

Due to the dim lighting, it was impossible to get any good still images of the guild hall. The video walkthroughs are better anyway.

Level 50 Guild Hall (T2) video on Youtube
Level 70 Guild Hall (T3) video on Youtube

NOTE The T2 Guild Hall video above does not depict the Atrium and larger rooms being added in response to feedback about the guild halls received post-Fanfaire.

Ok folks, the beauty of the Internet. Anything wrong gets called out. 😉

So there are 5 new Heritage Quests in The Shadow Odyssey. And 1 lengthy Signature Quest. No epics though. People were asking in the Q&A if the epic weapons were going to be upgraded!!

The new overland zone is Moors of Ykesha (the former Innothule) by the way. Just reading about it from a Dev who took the time to post here on my blog. Here’s the website: http://exlibrisblog.com/

NOTE: This pricing info is now OUT OF DATE. Please see the updated pricing here.

UPDATE; Due to strong demand on the EQ2 forums, all members may now buy a new faction item in their home city to translocate from their house to their guild hall.
UPDATE: On 8/20 I looked at the photos again very carefully and revealed 10 more.
UPDATE: Clockwork Gaming Collective has posted a Guild Hall Amenities Calculator which lists all the amenities and costs, including several I missed.

Travel

Guild Translocation Beacon
“Call of Guild Hall”
Purchase: 1p, 250k status 10p 2 mil status
Upkeep: 2g 10,000 status

Druid Portal Hireling
Purchase: 25p 5,000,000 status
Upkeep: 50g 25,000 status

Teleportation Spire
Purchase: 10p 2,000,000 status
Upkeep: 20g 10,000 status

Magic Carpet to Sinking Sands
Purchase: 10p 2,000,000 status
Upkeep: 20g 10,000 status

Portal to Member Housing
Purchase: 10p 2,000,000 status
Upkeep: 20g 10,000 status

Mariner’s Bell (Faydwer)
Purchase: 10p 2,000,000 status
Upkeep: 20g 10,000 status

Mariner’s Bell (Kunark)
Purchase: 10p 2,000,000 status
Upkeep: 20g 10,000 status

Mariner’s Bell (Shattered Lands)
Purchase: 10p 2,000,000 status
Upkeep: 20g 10,000 status

Localized Guild Hall Teleporter
Purchase: 25p 5,000,000 status
Upkeep: 50g 25,000 status

Tradeskill & Finance

Guild Hall World Market Broker
Standard broker with 20% fee.
Purchase: 25pp 5,000,000 status
Upkeep: 50g 25,000 status

Guild Market Broker
Intraguild Broker — sell items within the guild
Purchase: 12pp 2,500,000 status
Upkeep: 25g 12,500 status

Guild Hall Banker
Purchase: 25pp 5,000,000 status
Upkeep: 50g 25,000 status

Guild Hall Crafting Table
Update: You may place crafting tables purchased from status merchants in guild halls.

Harvesting Supply Depot
Purchase: 25p 5,000,000 status
Upkeep: 50g 25,000 status

Fuel Merchant Hireling
Purchase: 10p 2,000,000 status
Upkeep: 20g 10,000 status

Gatherer Hireling
Purchase: 12p 2,500,000 status
Upkeep: 24g 12,500 status

Hunter Hireling (dupe of Gatherer?)
Purchase: 12p 2,500,000 status
Upkeep: 24g 12,500 status

Commodities Exporter Hireling
Purchase: 12p 2,500,000 status
Upkeep: 24g 12,500 status

Status Executor Hireling
Redeem status items (documents, amulets, etc.).
Purchase: 25p 5,000,000 status
Upkeep: 50g 25,000 status

Guild Hall Stylist
Purchase: 5p 1,000,000 status
Upkeep: 10g 5,000 status

Stable Hand
Purchase: 12p 2,500,000 status
Upkeep: 24g 12,500 status

Guild Hall Bartender
Purchase: 15pp 500,000 status
Upkeep: can’t read

Guild Cloak Designer
Purchase: 10p 2,000,000 status
Upkeep: 20g 10,000 status

Far Seas Express (mailbox)
Purchase: 10g 250,000 status
Upkeep: 2g 1,250 status

Writs

Kunark Adventure Writ Agent
Purchase: 10p 2,000,000 status
Upkeep: 20g 10,000 status

PvP Writ Agent
Purchase: 10pp 2,000,000 status
Upkeep: 20g 20,000 status

Tradeskill Rush Order Agent
Purchase: 10p 2,000,000 status
Upkeep: 20g 20,000 status

Tradeskill Writ Agent
Purchase: 10p 2,000,000 status
Upkeep: 20g 10,000 status

Decoration & Fun

Courtyard Landmark
Central courtyard statue for Tier 3 guild halls.
Purchase: 300pp 30,000,000 status
Upkeep: none

Maj’dullian Planetary Orrey
Purchase: 100pp 10,000,000 status
Upkeep: none

Slayer Poster
Purchase: 1pp 250,000 status
Upkeep: 200,000 status

Uniform Mannequin (5)
Purchase: 15p 3,000,000 status
Upkeep: 30g 15,000 status

Gigglegibber Goblin Gamblin’ Game
Purchase: unknown

PvP Defense (or decoration on PvE)

Courtyard Statue Sentry (North)
Purchase: 50pp 5,000,000 status
Upkeep: none

Courtyard Statue Sentry (South)
Purchase: 50pp 5,000,000 status
Upkeep: none

Courtyard Statue Sentry (East)
Purchase: 50pp 5,000,000 status
Upkeep: none

Courtyard Statue Sentry (West)
Purchase: 50pp 5,000,000 status
Upkeep: none

Hall Guard (20)
20 placeable NPC guards
Purchase: 1p 500,000 status
Upkeep: 2g 2,500 status

Training

Creature Conjurer
Purchase: 5p 1,000,000 status
Upkeep: 10g 5,000 status

Guild Strategist
Raid flag — 2 hour timer
Purchase: 100pp 20,000,000 status
Upkeep: 2pp 100,000 status

Training Dummy Supply Chest
Allow members to spawn training dummies for combat practice.
Purchase: 5p 1,000,000 status
Upkeep: 10g 50,000 status

There was some question and answer time including 1 hr of gameplay and 1 hr anything goes. Of course a few questions which had already been answered in guild halls were asked.

I tried to ask Aerilik a ranger question but a monk cornered and monopolized him for 10 min to see if monks could do something like aggression mitigation (basically a complicated way to hold agro). I get the impression that the new AA lines will offer an additional taunt (help for crusaders too) but not sure.

Lots of great questions about PvP and exile. Alas it was almost a throwaway factoid rather than a discussion. I’m sure there will be more info.

Thanks for reading my blog! It was a lot of fun. Might keep it going if there is interest. Btw I post at eq2flames.com as feldon23. I’m Feldon on Butcherblock (80 ranger/jeweler).

The Lost from Butcherblock won the EQ2 tournament in the new zone Veksar:The Invasion.

Tradeskill Group Quests (Missions)
9 recipes which must be completed. Each requires their own tradeskill arts (no more Geocrafting/Geomancy). So with 6 tradeskilers they must craft the other 3 recipes using someone elses arts with some difficulty (sorta like Frostfell).

Rewards include Tradeskill Mounts. Existing animal, new look, range of run speeds.

One of the new AA lines will be Tradeskill Harvesting. Will increase items harvested per node.

Tradeskill Rush orders give +300 faction
Tradeskill Work orders give +200 faction

Domino and others have had a lot of discussions about loams vs cluster cost. Changing recipes or increasing drop rate is not a perfect answer. Considering other solutions.

Domino wants to revamp jewelry and adornments (esp. resists). But focusing on major shortcomings on ts classes first.

May be some way to use non-Mastercfrafted potions on raids. MC potions may get more special effects to make them better than handcrafted.

Upgrade to the appearance of cloth and leather armor items. More tints, some more underclothes items like different solid color pants. Nice robes, etc. Bringing back some appearances that were lost due to loss of non-pristine crafting.

GU48
Crafted armor 1-69
No more incomplete armor sets
Imbue all armor 10+

Shadow odyssey
Tradeskill mounts
Tradeskill missions 6 man group
3 at launch
Rewards
Tradeskill zones may scale 50-80

Veksar is hard! Fabled recommended.
Will be really surprised if any groups kill the first 3 named in 30 min limit.

Will be first to play the first 3 mobs of Veksar here in about 1 hour. 30 min time limit to beat. Either /testcopy your char or play a prebuffed char. Group tournament for $250 visa card each member for winning group.

Yesterday tournament was eq1 pvp for $500