A few days ago, I finally got around to doing some updates to Dethdlr's Adornment Calculator.  Thanks to everyone who sent in bug reports over the last several months.  I think I've gotten all of them taken care of now but there may still be a few in there somewhere.

Also, I've added a second white adornment dropdown for each slot since a lot of the Skyshrine items have two white adornment slots.  Some two handers even have three white slots but I didn't add a third dropdown.  Just use the secondary dropdown for those cases and make sure not to choose reuse speed since that doesn't work in the primary slot.

If you don't see the second white slot dropdown when you load the calculator, you're seeing a cached version.  Try holding down Shift and Ctrl keys and press F5, or click the Refresh button/icon in your browser or whatever button/clicking combination you have to do to convince it to really reload the page and you should see the new version.

I still haven't added in the public quest adornments or the class specific adornments for beastlords, those are still on the list of things to do.

As usual, let me know if you find anything out of whack.

Dethdlr

With GU61 right around the corner (Tuesday, 23 Aug 2011), SmokeJumper has posted a note on the official forums warning players of some of the changes that will have an immediate impact on players. Read on to see what Smokejumper had to say and our commentary on ways to prepare.

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Having used my adornment calculator for a while now, there have been a few times where having the short descriptions in the drop down lists instead of the name of the adornment has been frustrating.  Usually, this is when I'm trying to put in what I currently have adorned, rather than starting from scratch.  The descriptions work well when you've never adorned a particular slot, but there are times when you don't need them and would rather see the adornment names.  For example, if I wanted to send a link to someone that shows my current adornments, I would first need to enter all the ones I'm currently wearing.  Sometimes that's easier by using the short descriptions but a lot of times it's easier to go by the name of the adornment.  Now, you have a choice.

You can now choose which way you want the adornment calculator to show the drop down lists.  And you can change it back and forth at any point without losing what you've already chosen.   Just click the radio button for "Adornment Descriptions" or "Adornment Names" just above the list of adornments.

Enjoy!

Class-specific red adornments have been added to the EQ2Wire Adornment Calculator by Dethdlr.

That's 221 adornments added to the existing 175 for a total of 396 T9 adornments.  And I still haven't added the ones that drop from the public quests.

Choose your class in the class dropdown to have that class' adornments added to the proper dropdowns.

Rather than converting the class specific red adornments from their names to what they do, I've just included the names in the dropdowns. For one thing, this should help with those that don't stack. For another, it means you don't have to wait for me to find time to convert 221 adornment descriptions into text that will fit in the dropdowns. Once you click calculate, you can hover your cursor over the item names to see the tooltip popup of each adornment or click them to see them on Zam.

I haven't decided yet if I'm going to try and convert them or just leave them as is. I'm leaning towards leaving them as is.

Also, the in-game item links will be added as time allows for the new adornments. There are 221 of them and I can only cut and paste for so long before falling asleep.   If you click through to Zam though, they should have the in game links already.

Let me know if you find any errors/bugs. I still need to indicate the items that only work on shields, but that will most likely be another day.

Let me know if you find any errors (other than the shield/secondary slot issues, I already know about that).

Update: 96 additional adornments have been added that can be purchased in Thurgadin after completing The Fallen Swords questline.  This brings the total up to 492 T9 adornments.  Thanks to Maikeruu for emailing me the info.

Rothgar took a moment to respond to almost universal derision of the new Adornments display scheme introduced in Game Update 60:

Thanks for your feedback on the adornment changes.

However, from some of the feedback it certainly sounds like you're not seeing everything based on an out-of-date UI. I do understand that some of you are using Default and still have issues with the changes, but before we can have a rational discussion about it, we need to make sure people are seeing the changes how they were intended and not looking at broken UI windows.

Not seeing the adornment name in the tooltip is a valid concern that we will talk about. The main reason for going to an icon-based system was to make the examine description more visual and to reduce the overall amount of space required for adornment information now that items can receive multiple adornments of the same slots. You'll start to see items with more adornments, especially two-handers, and the examine description was getting awfully long. You'll see we've done other things to try to reduce the compexity of the examine window like converting "+10 crushing, +10 piercing, +10 slashing" to just "+10 weapon skills".

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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?

Dethdlr's Adornment Calculator now has the non-class specific, non-raid dropped red adornments up as beta. Let me know if I got any of the numbers wrong and I'll see about getting them fixed. I believe I'm going to wait until after GU60 to do the rest since there may be changes headed our way from SOE.

Hope you like it.

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 Calculator.  Details after the break.

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Players logged in yesterday morning to find that their Ranged items, including bows and thrown weapons, had rejected their adornments. Those adornments ended up back in the Overflow slot.

Rothgar responded:

This appears to be a bug related to some item changes.  Our QA department is working on it now and we will have the items fixes asap.

After the jump, your Update Notes for today, Tuesday, March 22nd 2011 include the addition (for real this time) of loot to trash mobs in Kael Drakkel, and the removal of Yellow Adornments from some items.

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When Velious was announced, lots of folks asked for Faction to matter. Wish granted!

Faction must be acquired with the Othmir, Snowfang Gnolls, Thurgadin, and Ry'Gorr to buy their adornments (unique to each faction) and gear, and it can be rather slow-going!

The Othmir, Snowfang Gnolls, and Ry'Gorr all have daily (18 hour repeatable) quests to kill overland mobs and gain faction. Crabs for the Othmir quests occasionally drop an item which provides an additional faction boost. Alas, Thurgadin faction must be gained by running dungeons.

A variety of rewards become available once faction milestones of 10,000, 20,000, and 40,000 are reached. After completing all of the solo quests in Velious, most folks will end up with at or above 7,000 faction with each so the first items should be available in just a few days, with the better rewards taking a couple of weeks to earn.

Public Quests drop Cloudy Velium Jewels which can be sold to any of the 4 factions for +500 faction. Also, mobs inside the contested Kael Drakkel can be killed for a small amount of faction gain as well. If you've only done the Othmir quests at the arrival point in Velious (Great Divide), you've only gotten half the story (and are missing a good chunk of faction). Head to the Eastern Wastes once you're done.

Thurgadin also has their own crafting faction, the Forgemasters of Thurgadin and you'll want to befriend them if you are interested in acquiring the Coldain Prayer Shawl. And there are plenty of opportunities to work on Far Seas Supply Division faction, as well as Order of Rime faction if you are one of those people.

UPDATE: This article has received a substantial rewrite since its original publication and is now part of a series of articles about Faction in Velious.

After the jump, we talk more about what else you can get for your hard-earned faction in Velious...

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In the Destiny of Velious Webcast #3 (video and notes), we first heard about War Runes. These are a new set of Red Adornments available to raiders in the Destiny of Velious. They're essentially a "greatest hits" of the best, most popular, most powerful Procs/Effects from Avatars, Shadow Odyssey Fabled, and Sentinel's Fate Fabled. War Runes open up Red Adornments to new slots, specifically Weapons (Primary, Secondary, Ranged), Charms, Belts, and Cloaks. From Silius in Webcast #3:

[War Runes are applicable to] your 3 weapon slots, 2 charm slots. Easy mode raids will have belts that have a red slot. Hard mode raids will have cloaks that have a red slot. So hard mode raiders can add effects to 7 total slots, on top of having red slots on their raid armor.

War Runes are the more specialized procs, custom-made procs, a lot of which are upgraded from Sentinel’s Fate procs that players have noted as being their favorites, the procs that make an item their favorite item.

These are raid-only dropped adornments. Whoever loots them and clicks on a War Rune gets flagged so he/she can go to a War Rune merchant and buy that adornment for raid shards. He/she gets permanent access to them.

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This is PART FOUR of our guide to Destiny of Velious adornments and covers the basic Red or "Raid" adornments designated for Raiding SORTED BY FACTION.

Red Adornments are FABLED, level 90, and cost 10 Pure Primal Velium Shards plus 5 plat and 4 gold. There are four major factions offering Adornments in Destiny of Velious:

• The Othmir of Velious
• Snowfang Gnolls
• Clan Ry'Gorr
• The City of Thurgadin

There are solo, repeatable, and dungeon-based quests to earn faction with the Othmir, Snowfang Gnolls, Ry'Gorr, and Thurgadin.

Red Adornments may also be acquired as a very rare drop from Public Quests. A choice of 4 special Red Adornments are available for purchase in the City of Thurgadin to those who have completed the quest The Fallen Swords: Here, There Be Giants. Finally, special Red Adornments called War Runes are available as drops in raid zones, redeemable in Kael Drakkel.

UPDATE: This article has been updated as of March 8, 2011 with figures adjusted since Beta and Charm slot being folded into Primary/Secondary/Ranged.

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This is PART THREE of our guide to Destiny of Velious adornments and covers the basic Red or "Raid" adornments designated for Raiding SORTED BY SLOT.

Red (Raid) Adornments are FABLED, level 90, and cost 10 Pure Primal Velium Shards plus 5 plat and 4 gold. Basic Red Adornments are available for 11 slots:

• Head
• Chest
• Gloves
• Boots
• Shoulders
• Forearms
• Legs
• Primary/Secondary/Ranged/Charm

There are solo, repeatable, and dungeon-based quests to earn faction with the Othmir, Snowfang Gnolls, Ry'Gorr, and Thurgadin.

Red Adornments may also be acquired as a very rare drop from Public Quests. A choice of 4 special Red Adornments are available for purchase in the City of Thurgadin to those who have completed the quest The Fallen Swords: Here, There Be Giants. Finally, special Red Adornments called War Runes are available as drops in raid zones, redeemable in Kael Drakkel.

UPDATE: This article has been updated as of March 8, 2011 with figures adjusted since Beta and Charm slot being folded into Primary/Secondary/Ranged.

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This is PART TWO of our guide to Destiny of Velious adornments and covers Yellow or "Heroic" adornments designated for Grouping SORTED BY SLOT.

Yellow (Group) Adornments are LEGENDARY, either level 80 or 90, and cost 5 Primal Velium Shards and 5 plat and 4 gold. Yellow Adornments are available for 11 slots:

• Head
• Chest
• Gloves
• Boots
• Shoulders
• Forearms
• Legs
• Primary/Secondary/Ranged
• Charm

There are solo, repeatable, and dungeon-based quests to earn faction with the Othmir, Snowfang Gnolls, Ry'Gorr, and Thurgadin.

UPDATE: This information was updated on March 8, 2011. Changes from Beta to live are reflected, as well as adding the Legs slot.

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This is PART ONE of our guide to Destiny of Velious adornments and covers Yellow or "Heroic" adornments designated for Grouping SORTED BY FACTION.

There are four major factions offering Adornments, Armor, Jewelry, Weapons, and House Items in Destiny of Velious:

• The Othmir of Velious
• Snowfang Gnolls
• Clan Ry'Gorr
• The City of Thurgadin

There are solo, repeatable, and dungeon-based quests to earn faction with the Othmir, Snowfang Gnolls, Ry'Gorr, and Thurgadin. Yellow Adornments are LEGENDARY, level 80 or 90, and cost 5 Primal Velium Shards and 5 plat and 4 gold.

UPDATE: This information was updated on March 8, 2011. Changes from Beta to live are reflected.

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Here are your exceptionally brief Update Notes for today, January 6, 2011:

ITEMS

The following adornments should now properly display what slots they can adorn:

• Focus: Lesser Intimidation
• Focus: Lesser Power
• Focus: Lesser Vengeance
• Focus: Lesser Effectiveness
• Focus: Lesser Resilience

Ah... I remember the days... When low-level Adept spells and Treasured gear could be had for a mere 4-5 gold from the nearest broker. Those were the Salad Days (mmmm...Grilled Chicken Caesar). Then the Transmuters came.

Like the Others on the far side of the island, a new wave of Adorners and Transmuters, desparate for raw materials, have unwittingly jacked things up for the rest of us.  When everyone can be an Adorner, and only Adorners can make the cool toys, the market has, not surprisingly, shifted. And inflation, it turns out, is not just for bicycle tires and love toys.

With the cost of these materials now running 15-20g each, I've personally thrown in the towel on trying to level more than one Adorner/Transmuter. And this has surely had a ripple effect on those players in the level 20-40 range simply wishing to upgrade gear.

Adorning Work Orders?

It seems the situation has not gone unnoticed by the EQ2 Team. Here's Domino's post from the EQ2 Forums:

Something that we're considering adding when time permits is a daily adorning quest that would allow you to do X number of adorning combines with materials provided once per day. Obviously, there would have to be quite a few checks to ensure it's not exploitable, but it's something that we think could be added as an option to help get adorning past some of the more annoying-to-get-components-in level ranges.

I'm thinking around 10 combines per day (white con or harder as much as possible) might be reasonable. It certainly shouldn't be an "easy button" or a fast track, but just a helpful assistance.

Again, this is still speculative, not a promise it will happen, but wanted to mention it's something we're discussing as a possibility.

Level Lock and Nuke

Of course you can always level transmuting/adorning by rolling a newbie character on either of the islands -- Queen's Colony or Outpost of the Overlord -- disable XP at level 3, and just kill mobs over and over. At least until those islands are unnecessarily ripped from the game. Transmuting/Adorning Leveling for Dummies

I've been advised that this is potentially just a market correction, and once players either level up, or get bored of transmuting, they'll move on and prices will settle back down. Now is not the time to buy transmuting materials, but it may not always be so.

We were thrilled to notice that Kanga's awesome EQ2 Adornments site is being updated for Sentinel's Fate. Check it out!

The Adornments system in EQ2 has always been pretty confusing. And so far, there just have not been a lot of options for certain classes in certain slots for adornments.

Each of the 9 tradeskill classes and the 2 secondary tradeskill classes have each made a handful of adornments. necessitating adornment websites to keep it all straight. We are thrilled to see that the Kanga will be updating her fantastic EQ2 Adornments site for Game Update 55.

With Game Update 55, adornments have been rebuilt from the ground up. In fact some prized adornments (Parry) can no longer be crafted as the recipes have been removed.

Starting with Game Update 55, all adornments are crafted by those players who choose the secondary tradeskill of Adorning. If you were a 400 Transmuter, then you will be a 400 Transmuter and 400 Adorner on February 16th.

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EQ2Wire is providing continuing coverage of Game Update #55 (now on Test) and the Sentinel's Fate expansion.

News is coming hot and fast now, so we've improved how news items are labeled and have added a News Ticker at the top of the site.

Don't forget the UStream Sentinel's Fate Beta Tour which will be led by Alan "Brenlo" Crosby. This is tomorrow Friday at 4PM PDT.

We are currently working on articles about the new Adornments, Guild Amenities, Leveling Tweaks, and a Zone List for the expansion.

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