If you’ve been keeping your Burynai house pet (from the Kunark Pre-Order) on a steady diet of fertilizers and letting the shinies roll in, you’ve probably noticed that they have had no luck producing any of the collections from Odus (Sundered Frontier, Stonebrunt Mountains), Velious (Great Divide, Eastern Wastes), or associated dungeons. It turns out, a new Guild Hall amenity has been added for these Tier 9 zones. Here’s Gninja to explain the new Herbalist Hirelings which accept fertilizer items in exchange for collectable rewards:

.. Right now you should be able to feed the “Herbalist Hireling” any combination of the three items and get a collectible from it. The [older] Burynai will only accept items up to tier8. Combinations using the Tier9 [materials] will not work with the Burynai.

Rothgar, Zoltaroth, and others on the EQ2 team, as well as OPS (Operations) were up until all hours trying to wrangle Everfrost and the Freeport [EQ2X] servers into behaving reliably. But first, a quick fix for Everfrost players who are missing characters:

Everfrost players who are still missing characters are encouraged to follow the instructions on the EQ2 Forums. In short, go to your EQ2 folder and delete your LoginCache and LoginCache-US folders, as well as any <Servername>_characters.ini files.

It seems we’re the only ones calling today’s update “Game Update 59”, but either way, the Update Notes have now been posted!! The patch notes from the EQ2 Forums (after heavy reformatting and cleanup):

We are still over 2 hours away from the EQ2 servers coming up with the Destiny of Velious/Game Update 59.

Coinciding with each Expansion, there has traditionally been a Game Update. There have been numerous features which are available whether you’ve purchased the expansion or not. Today, we look closer into some of the features that will likely (but which we can certainly not guarantee) be available on Tuesday to all players. It is POSSIBLE that some of these items may end up being flagged Velious-only, so this is our best guess at this point…

Guild Hall Tapestries with Guild Heraldry

File this under things we heard about since the Fan Faire that launched EQ2Wire where Guild Halls were furst premiered, but at long last, we’re getting Guild Hall Tapestries with Guild Heraldry on them! Crafters will be able to craft a blank Tapestry item which, once you place it in your house or guild hall, it will adopt your guild heraldry. Some last-minute changes to the appearance were being made, so we don’t have a screen shot for you. If you’ve forgotten what Guild Heraldry looks like (mostly due to the amazing looks now available on cloaks), check out the EQ2 Guild Cloak Designer tool.

NO TRADE/HEIRLOOM Drops Tradeable Among Participants for 48 Hours

NO TRADE and HEIRLOOM items that drop from a chest will now remain tradable for 48 hours with any character who was present in the group when the mob/encounter was killed.  As soon as you attune or adorn the item, this provision drops. This should certainly cut down on Customer Service Petitions. This is NOT a change to being able to sell loot rights, nor does it make items any more tradeable to people who weren’t present than the current setup.

After the jump, seven more features we’re getting on Tuesday.

In-Game Calendar

If you have longed to be able to organize Guild Events into an in-game Calendar, post a Raid Schedule, or get a reminder on which City will be visited next by the roving City Festival, you’ll be pleased to see the addition of a Calendar in Game Update 59. The calendar will be populated with Live Events, possibly Server Events posted by Community Managers, and also your Guild leadership will have the ability to add events (it’s gained a new permission under Guild Ranks).

Ready Check!

From the Update Notes:

Raid Leaders can now initiate a ready-check by right-clicking the raid window. Raid members in the current zone will be asked if they are ready and the results will be displayed in the raid window as well as in raid chat.

This will be a great addition for Raid Leaders to be able to make sure everyone is back from AFK, and probably also a good way to find out who’s watching TV (or worse) rather than paying attention. 😉

NOTE: This is a PREVIEW. Additional features and tweaks may occur to render these screenshots outdated.

Big changes to Mechanics and Itemization have coincided with the last 2 expansions and Destiny of Velious is no exception. Today we delve into changes to:

• Procs (Item Effects)
• Adornments
• Critical Chance
• Critical Avoidance
• Primary Stats (Stamina, Intelligence, Agility, Wisdom, and Strength)
• Health
• Power
• Melee Range
• Multiattack
• Ability Mod

In a change that has so far received mostly positive feedback, Destiny of Velious will likely alter the methods Tradeskillers will choose to level up most efficiently. While the Destiny of Velious NDA remains in effect, Domino has been allowed to share this change with the community to provide an opportunity for feedback before Velious (and its associated game update which we are calling Game Update 59 — SOE has yet to name it).

Most tradeskillers level up by first crafting new recipes (thus receiving a 200% Crafting Pristine Bonus), and then move on to writs (Rush Orders or Work Orders), and also fill in the gaps with other Tradeskill quests which have been added in the last 2 years. Tradeskill classes especially the scholars (Sage, Jeweler, Alchemist) have always been at a huge advantage here because of the number of new recipes earned with each level.

After the jump, Domino‘s posting on the EQ2 Forums about the upcoming Tradeskill XP Changes: