D.I.R.T.Y. quests end when the servers come down for The Shadow Odyssey. You’ve got until 11:59pm PST Monday, November 17th to get your carpets, clothing of Imperceptible Beauty, etc.

Allakhazam has done a preview (including a cool video) of the Dire Bears, or so they thought.

Actually they reviewed heretofore unknown uber Void Shard Bears:

• 65% Run Speed (if level 80 or higher)
• EITHER: Increase Melee Weapon Range of caster by 1
• OR: Increase Reuse Speed of Caster by 3
• Increase Max Health of caster by 250

Not to be confused with The Shadow Odyssey Dire Bear (retail box):

• 1-19: Summoned pet (not a mount)
• 20-39: 20% run speed
• 40-59: 30% run speed and armored appearance
• 60-79: 45% run speed and increased armor appearance
• 80: 52% run speed and increased armor appearance

Here’s the thread that clears up the confusion.

This whole situation with the Dire Bears accentuates the fact that someone is EQ2 is being hamstrung by its marketing department.

A 65% runspeed Bear with better stats can be purchased with Void Shards.

That information right there means I will not bother with the Retail box and I am completely removing that frustration from my brain. Why this information could not have been made available when the firestorm started a month ago is beyond me. Sony gets these opportunities to solve problems and they just let them fly past. Why?

Here is a fantastic article written by Victer (guild: Perdition, Server: Oasis) . I’ve shamelessly borrowed it from here.

Diminishing Returns means that when you reach certain level of any skill, (mitigation, slashing, defense, etc…) you will start to get minimal benefits from raising its value.

Soft Cap: referred to as the Break Even Point, is not an actual cap, but the value at which you start seeing less return from adding more points to a given stat.

Hard Cap: The definite value at which you will no longer see a benefit from adding more points to a stat.

Stats (str/agi/sta/int/wis)
Hard Cap : [ 15 * level + 20 ] = 1220 at level 80.
Soft Cap: approx 800

Mitigation (same as resists)
Hard Cap: [ Level * 150 ] = 12000 at level 80 or 75%.
Soft Cap: approx 4400

Skills (slash/peirce/def/parry/focus/ministration and so on)
Hard Cap : [ 6.5 * Level ] = 520
Soft Cap: unknown

Hate
Hard Cap: -50% to +50% each (no soft cap)

+Spell Damage / +Combat Art Damage / +Heals
Hard Cap: 50% of damage/heal of the skill

Critical Mitigation
This has a base % dependent on your AGI.
Hard Cap: 100%.
Critical Mitigation applies to only TSO mobs.
100% Crit Mit will absorb all additional damage done from the mob criting an attack.

Armor/Shields
The level of your armor and shield compared to you makes a difference in how much mitigation% and block% you recieve from your items.

For example when you are level 80 and you wear a level 80 item with 100 mitigation, it will give you more absorbing% then a level 10 item with 100 mitigation. Same goes with the protection on shield, a level 80 shield with 1000 protection will give more block% then a lvl 20 shield with 1000.

Weapons
Double Attack and Crits Hard Cap = 100% (no soft cap)

Weapon Crit Calculation: [ Crit% * 1.09 [ max – min ] + max + min ] / delay
Use /weaponstats to get the real numbers depending on your gear/current buffs.

Haste/DPS mod Hard Cap: 200 points. The 200 points equates to 125%.
Haste/DPS mod Soft Cap: approx 80 points.

Generally speaking, 40% of the hard cap is roughly the break even point on most the diminishing returns graphs for resists, stats, and skills.

Contested vs Uncontested (for skills/stats… not mobs)

Contested means that your level is compared to the mobs level to calculate the outcome of the action.

Uncontested means that it doesn’t matter what your level is compared to the mobs level. The action will take place the same % of times regardless of level.

There are only a few things that are Uncontested. These are a few that I know of.

• Block% (+% Shield Effectivness works as a addition to Block% depending on the base protection of your shield)
• Riposte% on items or Parry% on items (NOT +parry)
• Generally if your item or AA has plus to a percentage of something then it is considered uncontested.

For example: A chestpeice with +1% parry is MUCH better then a chestpeice with +10 parry.

Pretty much everything else is contested against the mobs level. Thats why an orange mob is more dangerous then a yellow mob.

From Ilucide (SoE Dev):

Some other things you may or may not know…

There’s basically a super mission that will be available once a day for a random instance that will be worth 2 shards. In addition, all dungeons will have a chest with a void shard for every member of the group… if you can find the guy carrying the key.

So each day, 1 dungeon is potentially worth 4 shards:

• 1 shards from the regular mission
• 2 shards from the Daily Double
• 1 shard from the chest

KeeperOfDarkMatter has posted some snapshots of Fighter and Mage AA abilities. He intends to post snapshots of Scout and Priest AAs soon enough.

KeeperOfDarkMatter @ Flickr

There are two sets of Void Shard armor. Both are Legendary.

The lower end is an upgrade from Kunark legendary sets (instance dungeons like CoA, MC, Chel, Char, and VoES). It is much more specialized and tailors closer to the individual classes. There’s chain healer stuff, plate healer stuff, shadowknight armor, paladin armor, solo scout stuff with a bit of survivability added to it, solo fighter stuff with the same, and more specialized gear including full brawler set, full assassin/ranger set, etc.

The higher end Legendary set has stats that most will realize is essentially low Fabled. This is the gear you’ll wish you had when you started doing T2 raids in Kunark. It will take a lot of shards to get, but considering how much harder some of the instanced dungeons are in TSO, they will be a necessity for those as well as raiding.

The numbers are being fiddled with, but right now it looks like it will take about 12-14 shards to get each of your lower Legendary pieces, and then another 12-14 shards to upgrade to the upper Legendary pieces. The current theory is you have to buy the lower and trade it in to get the higher, so you aren’t really losing or wasting shards by buying one and then the other. If there was a way to buy the upper Legendary immediately, I’m sure they’ll require 24-28 shards per piece.

And did I mention there’s lots of jewelry and charms and more general purpose armor which costs a lot less shards if you are just really hurting for some good armor you can earn maybe as little as 8 shards and gear up on these items. There are a lot of choices.

There is also a lot of request on the Beta forums to allow us to earn more than one shard per run for the tougher dungeons. Some TSO dungeons are like VoES — 30 minutes with a solid group and you’re done. Others are 2 hour slogfests. It would be nice if there was a chance of getting more shards.

And keep in mind that the dungeon zones will be dropping all kinds of loot which we don’t even know about yet. Void Shards is just one option.

Suffice it to say, if you want to gear up, now is the time to pick your dance partners. Because I really intend to be grouping in 1-2 dungeons a night every night I can to gear up.

The NDA is officially lifted! Everyone is now free to run amok and talk about beta all they like! Start keeping your eyes open for articles from your favourite news and fan sites as well!

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=434314

In some fantastic news, instead of the expected 4 hour download on November 18th, we will start receiving files for the new expansion over the next few weeks.

Starting this week you may notice extra files being downloaded when you patch EverQuest II from either the Launchpad or the Station Launcher.

These files are both from our upcoming expansion and from previous expansions and adventure packs. By making these files available early we hope to make November 18th and future updates a more pleasant experience for everyone logging into EverQuest II.

After November 18th we will return to our normal patching schedule.

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=434230

The exact details of the Dire Bear mount/pet in The Shadow Odyssey have been revealed.

• Available as a summoned pet from 1-19, after that, becomes a mount.
• Becomes a mount at level 20 – 20% run speed.
• Increase in run speed at level 40 – 30% run speed and armored appearance.
• Increase in run speed at level 60 – 45% run speed and increased armor appearance.
• Increase in run speed at level 80 – 52% run speed and increased armor appearance.

Scaling Mounts: Called to the Carpet!

With this mechanic in place, it seems even more obvious to me that the carpet in the D.I.R.T.Y. quests in Sinking Sands should have followed the same regime. Right now, a level 10 character can do those quests and get a 35% carpet in 45 minutes of easy solo questing. That seems overpowered to me. This scaling system would have been PERFECT for the carpet. Make it a 20% carpet at level 20. Then scale up over time.

The Pre-Order Mess: Redux

Here we go again with the lobes of SoE’s brain not communicating. You would think that since EQ2 is hardly available in retail stores and it costs SoE a fortune to have a retail presence anyway, and since likely half of the $40 retail price ends up being gobbled up by the publisher, manufacturer, and retail costs, they’d just give up on the retail box like they did last year* and make the DirectDownload desirable. Nope!

The Dire Bear is a Retail Box Pre-Order item only. But wait it gets better…

The Void Beast-in-a-cage house item is a DirectDownload Pre-Order item only.

You guessed it! SoE wants $80 from every player for The Shadow Odyssey. Since they’re already going RMT, and they’re already putting major game-changing stuff into LoN which is basically RMT, like Unicorn mounts (the single-most desired mount for girls), new housing, special mounts, special equipment, etc. why not just let us pay $5 more for the DirectDownload AND get the Bear.

Are you sure it’s a Bear?

Of course while they’re at it, it would be great if they made the Dire Bear look like, you know, a BEAR! It looks like a Sabertoothed Wolf. It is very obvious that they took the existing Warg model and tweaked it, rather than giving us an original mount. This is one of those situations where trying to stick with existing lore is LESS appealing than going for the attractive, extremely popular ice bears from The Golden Compass.

If a pretty unicorn is the fantasty of many girls, an armored ice bear is an equally powerful fantasy for the boys. There aren’t ANY mounts in EQ2 that I am particularly excited about. Maybe that’s why I specced 66% runspeed.

*The Rise of Kunark box contained a poster of a Dark Elf (rather than Kunark) and a poster of Legends of Norrath. The packaging was very cut-rate with paper envelopes for the discs, which for all intents and purposes were EoF DVDs relabeled as Rise of Kunark. Most players saw download times in excess of 2 hours, and analysis of the DVDs revealed no Kunark files whatsoever. The boxed version was just a bad idea all the way around. And this is not to mention the mass confusion this created with pre-orders of the Burynai pet (which was only available in certain situations which were so vague that SoE ended up giving the Burynai pet to everyone anyway).

EverQuest II’s fifth expansion, The Shadow Odyssey, will be available for pre-order starting Tuesday, October 14th, 2008!  EverQuest II: The Shadow Odyssey is an all-in-one compilation pack featuring five expansion packs and three adventure packs.  New players and veterans alike can journey through a massive amount of exquisite content unlike anything ever before seen in EverQuest II.  The Shadow Odyssey stretches well beyond the fantasy realm and propels the EverQuest II world into a new era of excitement and adventure.  The latest expansion provides content for players level 50-80, including more than 20 new zones and an achievement point increase to 200.

Read More

I’ve added a Purple Shinies page to EQ2 Wikia. You can check it out here:

http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Trinkets:Excavation_Trinkets

Guild Halls are now live, as are the D.I.R.T.Y. quests.

Walkthrough of D.I.R.T.Y. quests.

The D.I.R.T.Y. Crafters

Some further notes:

The Harvesting Supply Depot has gotten some improvements since FanFaire and currently allows 2,000,000 resources with 100 stacks of 20,000 items each.

The Magic Door to Guild Hall item which can be purchased from City Merchants works instantly. Players do not need to have visited the Guild Hall first.

The mailboxes amenity has been updated to allow up to 5 to be placed in your guild hall. This still counts as 1 amenity.

The Courtyard Landmark statues (300p) require Guild Level 80. All other statues require level Guild Level 75.

The Mariner’s Bell: Kunark ports the player to Kylong Plains docks (Dreg’s Landing).

The Maj’dul (Planetary) Orrey does not count towards the Maximum Amenities.

In line with the merging of the Status Executor Hireling and Commodities Exchange Hireling being into one NPC who BUYS status items, etc. from players, we are now getting a Relic and Signet Peddler who is like a City Merchant that sells Signets, Charms, Relics and Symbols. They do not sell any of the other status items like crafting tables or formal wear.  More importantly, they do NOT sell the Magic Door to the Guild Hall.

In other news, the Harvest Supply Depot now feeds into the Tradeskill Tables (if the player is of sufficient permissions in the guild hall to use the Supply Depot and gives a message “Quantities include crafting container.” when viewing a recipe that will draw resources from the Depot.

Because the guild halls currently run on the housing permissions system which only has 4 ranks: None, Visitor, Friend, and Trustee, there is no way to allow certain users to use amenities and not others without giving the folks who CAN use amenities the ability to MOVE them. There just aren’t enough levels of permission.

Guild Ranks?

So I’ve made some posts asking for a Guild Rank Portal or Guild Rank Door which will allow us to block off certain rooms or even entire wings of the guild hall based on guild rank. Then we can put amenities we want to restrict in these areas. I don’t expect it to be bulletproof. If something bugs out, then someone might get past the barrier, and conjurers would be able to summon people beyond such barriers, but it is the broad stroke of making amenities something that are earned rather than automatic which would be very useful for many guilds.

My post can be found halfway down this page, as well as Rothgar‘s response. There are subsequent responses on following pages as well.

The Future

According to Jindrack, who has poured hundreds of hours of development time into the Guild Halls gave us a peek into some planned Amenities that we may see in the future:

A hireling to get people into the city raids was one of the ideas I was working on for the initial launch of the halls, but it looks like it will be something that will have to be held for another phase. It works getting you from the guild hall instance to the raid instance, but the problem is getting the players back to the guild hall instance. This is the same kind of thing that has held back an Arena door amenity idea. When that issue gets addressed it is very likely you’ll see those amenities appear, but it will be at a later time.

Ok folks, SoE has taken our gripes to heart and adjusted the upfront and weekly maintenance costs on the various Guild Hall amenities, especially the ones that most guilds will use.

Screen Snapshots from the Test Server show the reduced costs which work out to about 33% less plat and 66% less status up front. Also the upkeep works out to about 40% less gold and 70% less status per week. Check those screen snapshots out here.

Travel

Guild Translocation Beacon
“Call of Guild Hall”
Purchase: 1p, 250k status (-9p -1.75 mil status)
Upkeep: 2g 1,250 status (-8,750 status)

Druid Portal Hireling
Port to CL/Ant/KP/KJ/MY
Purchase: 20p 2,000,000 status (-5p -3mil status)
Upkeep: 40g 10,000 status (-10g -15k status)

Teleportation Spire to the Overrealm
Port to Tenebrous Tangle, Bonemire, or Barren Sky
Purchase: 10p 1,000,000 status (-1mil status)
Upkeep: 20g 5,000 status (-5k status)

Magic Carpet to Sinking Sands
Purchase: 10p 1,000,000 status (-1mil status)
Upkeep: 20g 5,000 status (-5k status)

Portal to Member Housing
Purchase: 5p 500,000 status (-5p 1.5mil status)
Upkeep: 10g 2,500 status (-10g -7,500 status)

Mariner’s Bell (Faydwer)
Port to Butcherblock Mountains or Kelethin
Purchase: 10p 1,000,000 status (-1mil status)
Upkeep: 20g 5,000 status (-5k status)

Mariner’s Bell (Kunark)
Port to Kylong Plains (Dreg’s Landing)
Purchase: 10p 1,000,000 status (-1mil status)
Upkeep: 20g 5,000 status (-5k status)

Mariner’s Bell (Shattered Lands)
Port to Ant/Ever/Lava/Nek/CL/EL/Feer/TS/Zek
Purchase: 10p 1,000,000 status (-1mil status)
Upkeep: 20g 5,000 status (-5k status)

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

Tradeskill & Finance

Guild Hall World Market Broker
Purchase: 10p 1,000,000 status (-15p -4mil status)
Upkeep: 20g 5,000 status (-30g -20k status)

Guild Market Broker
Intraguild Broker: sell items within the guild. Not until after TSO is released.
Purchase: 12pp 2,500,000 status (waiting on updated pricing)
Upkeep: 25g 12,500 status (waiting on updated pricing)

Guild Hall Banker
Purchase: 10p 1,000,000 status (-15p -4mil status)
Upkeep: 20g 5,000 status (-30g -20k status)

Mender Hireling
Purchase: 10p 1,000,000 status
Upkeep: 20g 5,000 status

Guild Hall Crafting Tables
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 1,000,000 status (-1mil status)
Upkeep: 20g 5,000 status (-5k status)

Gatherer Hireling
Purchase: 20p 2,000,000 status (+8p -500k status)
Upkeep: 40g 10,000 status (+16g -2,500 status)

Hunter Hireling
Purchase: 20p 2,000,000 status (+8p -500k status)
Upkeep: 40g 10,000 status (+16g -2,500 status)

Miner Hireling
Purchase: 20p 2,000,000 status (+8p -500k status)
Upkeep: 40g 10,000 status (+16g -2,500 status)

Commodities Exporter & Status Executor Hireling
Redeem vendor trash as well as status items (documents, amulets, etc.).
Purchase: 10p 1,000,000 status (-2p 1.5mil status)
Upkeep: 20g, 5,000 status (-4g -7,500 status)

Guild Hall Stylist
Purchase: 1p 100,000 status (-4p -900k status)
Upkeep: 2g 500 status (-8g 4,500 status)

Stable Hand
Purchase: 10p 1,000,000 status (-2p -1.5mill status
Upkeep: 20g 5,000 status (-4g 7,500 status)

Guild Hall Bartender
Purchase: 1p 100,000 status (-14pp -400k status)
Upkeep: 2g 500 status

Guild Cloak Designer
Purchase: 1p 500,000 status (-9p -1.5mil status)
Upkeep: 2g 2,500 status (-18g 7,500 status)

Far Seas Express (mailbox)
Purchase: 1p 100,000 status (+90g +750k status)
Upkeep: 0 (-2g -1,250 status)

Writs

Kunark Adventure Writ Agent
Purchase: 10p 1,000,000 status (-1mil status)
Upkeep: 20g 5,000 status (-5k status)

PvP Writ Agent
Purchase: 10pp 1,000,000 status (-1mil status)
Upkeep: 20g 5,000 status (-15k status)

Tradeskill Recipe Salesman
Purchase: 1p 100,000 status
Upkeep: 2g 5,000 status

Tradeskill Rush Order Agent
Purchase: 10p 1,000,000 status (-1mil status)
Upkeep: 20g 5,000 status (-15k status)

Tradeskill Writ Agent
Purchase: 10p 1,000,000 status (-1mil status)
Upkeep: 20g 5,000 status (-15k status)

Decoration & Fun

Courtyard Landmark
Central courtyard statue for Tier 3 guild halls. Requires Guild Level 80.
Purchase: 300pp 30,000,000 status
Upkeep: none

Maj’dullian Orrey
Doesn’t count towards amenities.
Purchase: 100pp 10,000,000 status
Upkeep: none

Slayer Poster
Purchase: 1pp 50,000 status (-200k status)
Upkeep: none

Uniform Mannequin (up to 5)
Purchase: 5p 500,000 status (-10p -2.5mil status) EACH
Upkeep: 10g 2,500 status (-20g -12,500 status) EACH

Gigglegibber Goblin Gamblin’ Game
Currently disabled for bugfixing.
Purchase: 1p 100,000 status
Upkeep: none

PvP Defense (or decoration on PvE)

Courtyard Statue Sentry (North)
Requires Guild Level 75.
Purchase: 50pp 5,000,000 status
Upkeep: none

Courtyard Statue Sentry (South)
Requires Guild Level 75.
Purchase: 50pp 5,000,000 status
Upkeep: none

Courtyard Statue Sentry (East)
Requires Guild Level 75.
Purchase: 50pp 5,000,000 status
Upkeep: none

Courtyard Statue Sentry (West)
Requires Guild Level 75.
Purchase: 50pp 5,000,000 status
Upkeep: none

Hall Guard
Up to 50 placeable NPC guards (was 20)
Purchase: 1p 100,000 status (-400k status) EACH
Upkeep: 2g 500 status (-2k status) EACH

Training

Creature Conjurer
Purchase: 5p 500,000 status (-500k status)
Upkeep: 10g 2,500 status (-2,500 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 500,000 status (-500k status)
Upkeep: 10g 2,500 status (-47,500 status)

Now that Guild Halls are on the Test Server, we’ve got some more details about amenities.

The Bell to Shattered Lands takes you to:
– Antonica
– Everfrost
– Lavastorm
– Nektulos Forest
– The Commonlands
– The Enchanted Lands
– The Feerrott
– The Thundering Steppes
– Zek, the Orcish Wastes

The Spire to Overrealm takes you to
– Bonemire
– Tenebrous Tangle
– Barren Sky

The Stable Hand gives a 5% speed bonus for 2 hours.

Some unconfirmed info comes to us from Vulkoor of Antonia Bayle.

Since I have seen the model first hand, I can verify that the pic[ture of the bear] is in fact the new Dire Bear model, well one of them. Like the Warg, there are armored and un armored version of the mount.

Also as Valk stated, the crafters mounts aren’t new models per se, but old horse models with saddlebags added to them.

Pre-order Notes are revealing some more information about The Shadow Odyssey!

From GameStop some juicy new details and even a screen snapshot of a new mount — Dire Bears!

Gamestop Pre-Order for TSO

Synopsis:

In an age long passed, a band of extraordinary heroes embarked on an epic journey to free Norrath from the clutches of a shrouded threat. Their everlasting quest would take them to the far reaches of the globe, delving deep into the most dangerous dungeons and undertaking many daunting trials. This was the Shadow Odyssey, and the heroes were known as the Ethernauts. In their time, this epic quest came to an end, and Norrath was saved. But now … history is repeating. It is time for a new generation of Ethernauts to retrace the steps of their honored predecessors through the ruined, rancorous and twisting regions of Norrath to rid the world of the invading scourge and destroy the renewed evil of the Shadowmen.

Details:

A quest seems to have snuck in under the radar, namely a skeleton you can place in your house and which has 50 rent status reduction. Check out the elf outside of Blackburrow.

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.