Feldon Ah… the Shadow Odyssey. The land of milk and honey… The lost dungeons of… ok I’ll stop now.
Ask players of EQ2 during the Shadow Odyssey what they thought of the expansion, and you’ll get many different responses.
Ask a developer of the Shadow Odyssey for their frank opinion, and I bet you’d get something like “Ah yes, every level 80 player fully decked out in T2 heroic gear, fabled jewelry, and all carrying bagfuls of platinum coins.”
Not to pick on any particular class (rangers!) but certain classes have had, let’s say, unique traits which have allowed them to retrieve chests stuffed with platinum and heroic armor shards in Shadow Odyssey dungeons all by themselves since almost the day the expansion launched.
Since then, we’ve seen two hotfixed changes to try to curtail the free flow of platinum:
- Key mobs were upgraded to full heroic (^^^).
- Key mobs cast a detrimental on their first target called “Mandate” (details available here) which makes it impossible for the target to fight, as they are stunned and constantly interrupted on every attack.
However almost immediately, players discovered that this Mandate effect (added in May 2009) could be cured with a potion.
In what is coming to be known as Game Update 57: The Empire Strikes Back, another undocumented “fix” has been included:
- The Mandate detrimental cannot be cured with a potion.
Why Now?
You might have noticed on your server lately that prices of *everything* on the Broker have nearly tripled in the last 12 months. I suppose in the end, platinum inflation forced this change. It’s odd to see fixes to 21 month old content, so it must have been a significant problem.
Only Brawlers & Crusaders?
Just a little update to this article. You might think only solo players are affected by this change. Not true. If you are in a group and the healer gets agro first on the key mob, you can pretty much guarantee a wipe as that healer will be unable to self-cure.
Mages can cure it too.
LOL, mages cure? That’s advanced strat stuff there. What about things like freedom of mind. Or have they just gone and borked the whole thing?
I always cure arcane with my mage. Of course I also have 5 healers and know what a pain it can be to cure all the time, so I’m trying to be nice to the healers when I’m not playing mine.
actually i believe easier transmuting changed the prices. With everyone and their swarm of alts leveling up transmuting, the costs of items is permenantly linked to the prices of the hardest to get transmute ingredients (fragments for most people due to the number consumed (6 for anything but basic) in every adorn).
High level players snap up any cheap treasured to help their characters up the transmutation path without thye express need of farming a low zone, and less people put gear onto the broker as they need it for transmutation skillups.
I have /feedback for the devs to reduce the fragment cost of transmutes for ages (and i dont even have an adorner), but tbh the only fix for gear prices is the total removal of transmutation or making it automatically skill up with your character(even if its only to keep it within the same tier as your adventure level).
doh wrong reply thread, soz folks.
Mandate gives a knock back effect every time you attempt to cast. It is large enough of a KB that you can get knocked into the lava in deep forge if you try to cast anything. You can’t even get off instant effect stuff like the pally ability to break stiffles/stuns.
Personally if this cuts down on the mudflation we’ve been seeing in game its a good thing. T4 crafting rares are going for 2-4p now. That is just stupid.
Sounds a good change, despite what Smedley said about players getting better to explain why people thought it was easier at the EQ Next forum the game has certainly gotten easier. There was no way I could AFK in the middle of a zone of mobs back in RoK, ditto for just auto attacking my way to victory.
I’m actually excited more by these sorts of changes (and the fighter heal one) then the contents of the GU57, a few months of this and the core game mechanics could be working well.