Feldon
Much has been made of the difficulty, and more importantly the limited desirability of the loot that drops in the new raid zone — Miragul’s Planar Shard — which arrived in Game Update 53. Players capable of killing these mobs already have access to far superior gear, and indeed some of these items were not as good as Ward of Elements or even group instance drops. Significant changes are expected to both the difficulty of the zone and the quality of the loot in tomorrow’s Hotfix. Gninja advises us that further changes to the difficulty of the zone should...
Month: September 2009
Windslasher, who headed up the Rebuilding the Spires event has shared their insight into why we did not see a “Grand Finale” to the Spires Event: Congratulations on finishing the spire! While it would have given me great pleasure to have an epic-x4 dragon with 20 million hitpoints spawn and attack you, that simply would not have fit the theme or lore of this event. The idea here was to let everyone on the server contribute in a 100% cooperative effort that permanently affects the game world. So the bosses that attack the spires during construction have a lore...
Resolving hopefully the last of the Game Update 53 issues, we’re expecting the next Hotfix on Thursday, October 1. Here are the Update Notes: GENERAL The destroy confirmation is now more clear in confirming that you are actually destroying an item. The Guardian of Eternity has returned to Charasis: Vault of Eternal Sleep Research Assistants are a little more helpful when asked about their jobs. ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENTS Monk Enhance: Mend will once again work properly. ITEMS Najena’s Ring of Readiness is no longer heirloom. Additionally, the Ring of Readiness effect will only function as long as the ring is...
Folks have been reporting in with mechanics problems (some related to multipliers) in EQ2 after Game Update 53: Anashti Sul’s “Presence of the Void” is hitting twice as hard and causing twice the power drains. [Link 1] [Link 2] [Link 3] This is not the only mob with mangled multipliers. Another example is Trakanon. [Link] Brigands cannot cast Double Up after casting Barroom Negotiation. [Link] Certain spells/CAs which have a Damage Over Time aspect to them such as the Monk CA “Rising Dragon” are randomly only doing 1 point of damage. [Link 1] [Link 2] Charasis: Vault of Eternal...
It’s too bad EQ2 developers don’t really talk to the players about Live Events and instead make assumptions. Over 2 years ago, the first Spires were being rebuilt. Tradeskillers did all the work, and then when the spire reached 100% completion, an Epic x4 dragon appeared, killing them all. Raid guilds swooped in and battled it out for the contested win. Some even swarmed the various zones by logging in dozens of alt characters to intentionally lag out other players to prevent them from successfully taking down the mob. In the end, the raid guilds got Titles and all...
Raid Packing List Raid mobs have always had a variety of devastating poisons, noxious effects, arcane curses, stuns, stifles, and knockbacks at their disposal to make it a challenge (or darn near impossible) for the raid force to defeat them. Discovering the strategies required to kill these raid targets is a key part of raiding. Raid mobs tend to have elaborate scripts, puzzles, or strategies required to defeat them. Solutions that work for one guild may not be appropriate for another due to the players and classes present in the raid. One raid force may have a lot of...
Getting Mileage out of Macros How do you create a Macro? If you already have an ability on one of your hotbars and want to turn it into a macro, just right-click it and choose Create Macro…. If you want to create a macro from scratch, then press O, click the Macros tab, and find a blank space labeled and click it. To add a command like a /group /raid or /tell, make sure Macro Step: is set to Command and click Add Step. To add a combat art or spell or use a potion/scroll/item, then next to Macro...
Dayakara — Fire Elemental If you are familiar with the Tairiza fight, this will seem vaguely familiar. Strategy Off-tank will pull Dayakara to the alcove to the immediate left when entering the room so that Dayakara is facing away from the raid. High DPS scouts (as chosen by raid leader) will focus on Dayakara during the entire fight). Off-tank (OT) healers will focus on keeping OT alive and group cured. Adds spawn every 14(?) seconds. MT will be picking up adds right in the center of the room. MT healers will focus on keeping MT alive and group cured....
Digg – Corrupted Earth Elemental Positioning/Pull To start, everyone should be standing on the floating bridge close to Digg’s island. On pull, the Main Tank will rush Digg and then everyone runs past the tank to get behind Digg. Digg should be kept facing roughly the same direction as he was before he was engaged but perhaps pulled 1 or 2 steps forward. The raid force must get right on Digg’s ass, extremely close to him. Do not stand a few feet back, or off to one side, as you will get hit by the 180 degree frontal AoE....
Imperator Ignus – General at Arms The Main Tank will rush in and spin him on the star you will see on the floor in the middle of the room, facing away from the main raid force. The Main Assist will target each add and everyone helps the Main Assist kill the adds. Once they’re dead, the Main Assist targets Ignus and burns him down. Straight tank and spank, nothing special. Gelidus Ventus the Tempest Positioning When you enter Gelidus’s room you will notice very large fans that take up entire sections of walls, and then solid walls between...
Pawbuster – Executioner’s Throne Room Special Attacks Whirling Attack — Every 20 seconds, Pawbuster does a trauma AE which triggers Intimidation, causing the 18 closest players and pets to be stifled/stunned for 1 minute. This will be cured by the healers. Great Cleave — Every 20 seconds, Pawbuster lifts his shoulders and does his “big swing” with his battle axe. This is a frontal AoE Knockback and Stun which cannot be cured. The main tank will be the only tank directly in front of Pawbuster, with secondary tank to Pawbuster’s left ot right ready to take agro. Stuck –...
The Leviathan Chamber of Destiny The gatekeeper of Veeshan’s Peak. You cannot enter VP until you have personally killed Leviathan. Only one person on the raid who has killed Venril Sathir or Overking must be present to zone a raid into the Chamber of Destiny. To kill the Leviathan, you need 3 items: Greenmist Orb (purple X) Drops from Imzok’s Revenge, the boss of Protector’s Realm. At 15%, Leviathan will emote about the Greenmist Orb becoming Active. One party member holding this item will run to the North end of the cave and click the Statue when the green...
The Protector’s Realm Upon entering the zone, all the named skeleton mobs are non-aggro and unattackable. To begin the storyline, search carefully for Ludmila Kystov in the room with the unactivated Doomcoil and select the option to make a deal with her via right click. She will tell you a tale about her “raid force” and discuss the possibility of a group effort between your raid and her force. After speaking to Ludmila, have a priest (it must be a priest and no other class) resurrect Jracol Binari (again via right click and not the actual spell). Once Jracol...
Assassins, Rangers, Brigands, and Swashbucklers get as much as 40% of their damage through the use of poisons. However Bards (Troubadours and Dirges) cannot use them. These poisons not only cause additional damage but also debuff the mob which is the most important factor to allow the other classes to maximize their own DPS. Scout classes can use 3 types of poisons at one time. Poison damage can be affected by AAs. The specific numbers below are for level 72 Mastercrafted poisons. Damage (Red) — Top the parse! Caustic — Inflicts 749 poison damage on target. Vitality Breach —...
This article is due for cleanup with the release of Sentinel’s Fate. What is Auto Attack? If you engage combat and just stand there, not clicking any Combat Arts, Spells, etc. you will still swing your weapon every few seconds. So what’s the big deal? Well for some classes like scouts and fighters, up to 40% of your damage can come from Auto Attack. Just how much damage can you get from Auto Attack? Let’s find out… First, you want to find out your Weapon Delay. Press I to bring up your character sheet and point at your weapon...
Bonus XP Weekend To coincide with Game Update 53, we’ve got a 40% bonus to all forms of EQ2 experience weekend! This applies to Adventuring, Alternate Advancement (AA), and Tradeskilling. Kiara posted the announcement on the EQ2 Forums. Remember folks, if you are between level 10 and 79, you can now adjust the amount of combat and quest XP gets converted into AA XP. I’ve found this to be quite lucrative when doing quests which already award a high percentage of AA and quest XP. 🙂 It was quite nice to login and see: There will be a bonus...
This year has seen the introduction of three raid zones to EverQuest II. The Ward of Elements x2 — Once some initial bugs were corrected and a few mobs adjusted, this zone is a real success story. It’s very well-balanced for its target audience with sufficient difficulty and very good rewards. Players with T2 armor, Epic weapon, and the right group makeups are successfully clearing the first 3 named, working their way up to clearing 5 and then finally clearing the zone once they’ve geared up further. Kurn’s Tower x2 — This zone got some initial complaints, and gear...
Like any Game Update, inevitably a few bugs slip through. Game Update #53 (Shards of Destiny) had more than a few. Some received attention in Today’s Hotfix: GENERAL /hide will once again hide illusions. Discord (PvP) tokens are no longer fabled. Saving and Loading house layouts is temporarily disabled for further tuning. ACHIEVEMENTS The Octagorgon Assassin achievement is now located under Dungeons instead of Raids. ITEMS Certain items dropped by Munzok have been upgraded. Spirit Drain on the Spirit Draining Wristguard no longer heals the target of the attack. SHARD OF LOVE Regardless of which order you defeat the...
I just received a System Message that may be useful for some of you… Greetings Norrath. A new version of the client executable is available that should fix the memory crashes some of you are experiencing. If you experienced any crashes, we recommend repatching as soon as possible. For those of you on servers that have experienced performance problems, we sincerely apologize and are working diligently to fix the issue.
The most populated servers have been struggling under the strain of Game Update 53, and now we have an update on this from Kiara. Here’s an update on the performance problems we’ve been seeing. We believe that the issues the servers have been experiencing since Shards of Destiny was pushed live relate to the volume of items being converted to heirloom and the achievement information being accessed by the new system. This has stressed the database and is causing the performance issues. We expect it to abate in a couple of days after the bulk of our players get...
Looks like Game Update 53 has been very popular, as a few servers are struggling with keeping up. Rothgar reports on the EQ2 Forums: A couple of the highly populated servers are seeing some performance problems now that we are reaching primetime and many new players are logging in. This is probably due to the large number of things that happen to your character the first time you log in after GU53. Until the performance comes back down to normal levels, we will be locking some of the servers to keep the problem from getting any worse. Currently the...
So far, today my coverage of Game Update 53 has been entirely positive. I think Game Update 53 is actually an excellent update, with the live quest, HEIRLOOM LORE-EQUIP flag, etc. However in the long term, I think all the great things about this update may be overshadowed by some colossal mistakes. The bland Racial Trait revamp which I’ve already talked about. And an issue that a lot of people don’t take seriously, but I think needs to be discussed — the Avatar Loot Nerf. So far, I have refrained from covering these changes, hoping that cooler (and wiser)...
The Shard of Love A lot of folks have been asking me where the Shard of Love is and how to get there. First, it should be noted that the Shard of Love is not a group zone like any of the other group zones in The Shadow Odyssey or Rise of Kunark. The Shard of Love is a very casual group zone that can be completed with 3-4 players. It scales to level (50-80) and rewards appearance items, house items, and reusable cast items. It does not reward the typical armor, jewelry, weapons you are used to in...
What was expected to be a 4 hour upgrade got done in about 1 hour, 45 minutes. All EQ2 Servers are back up! ProfitUI There are a lot of folks who run ProfitUI add-on for EQ2. I use some of the plugins from ProfitUI, but not the whole package. As you may know, gm9 stepped down as ProfitUI developer in April. Others have stepped in to keep it going, although I have to say I wish it were more clear just what is going on with the project now. If I go to the ProfitUI project page, the last...
Kiara has given us the news we’ve been waiting for… As you know, Shards of Destiny is going live tomorrow (Sept 23). The US servers will be coming down at 6am PDT for the update. We estimate about four hours of downtime and anticipate having the servers up and running again about 10am PDT. We’ll keep you all updated should the times change for any reason. For Runnyeye and Splitpaw, the servers will come down at 9pm PDT (5am in London Sept 24th) and should be back up and running about 1am PDT (9am in London). Thank you for...