Feldon 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.
The Adventure XP Progress Bar Shows XP points Needed to Level
The exact number of points needed for each level in EQ2 is now known! Combined with more detailed log file reporting (instead of just ‘You gain experience’ the number of points is given. And when rolling over the Adventure XP bar, the number of points remaining to the next level is shown. Now, due to the complexity of XP->AA calculations, we did not see an AA XP odometer in Beta, but we might see this in the future.
In-Game Calendar
We already touched on this one, but an In-Game Calendar has been added as a separate window in EQ2. In addition to World Events like Moonlight Enchantments, Bristlebane Day, and Tinkerfest, this calendar can be used by your guild to add upcoming events. We might also see Guides and Community team members posting Upcoming Server Events on this calendar.
Tradeskill Recipe Searching Gets Performance Tweaks, Facelift, (Quest Journal too!)
Some changes have been made to the Tradeskill Recipe window when searching for recipes to speed it up on the client end and also cause less of a hit on the Server. The Quest Journal also received some performance tweaks. This should be most noticeable on less beefy computers.
You can now tag NPCs and even PCs with the new Target Tagging System.
If your guild spends a lot of time setting up Macros to target tanks, healers, main assists, etc. or in the case of more elaborate fights, has you switch targets between mobs during a fight, the ne Target Tagging system will allow the assignment of clickable icons and/or numbers which can be triggered with a hotbar button, or by typing /tagtarget.
Group Quest Updates Make Some Noise
In the past, it has sometimes been hard to tell if a groupmate is getting the Quest Updates they need. I know I’ve personally spent a lot of time staring at the Quest Journal waiting for a groupmate to get his or her update to appear in the “Group Updates” tab. With the update, you’ll hear dings when anyone in your group (who is in range) gets a Quest Update.
Inventory Gets Googleable!
Ok not really Google, but you can now search your entire inventory for items by name, even if they are in your Bank and House Vault! A new button has been added to the Character window, or you can type /finditem.
Adornments as Quest Rewards
We’ll be doing a separate article later today about Adornments and why they’re not just something optional for folks rolling in plat or raiding anymore. But in furtherance of trying to get players more interested in Adornments both player made (White), from grouping (Yellow), from raiding (Red), or from battlegrounds (Blue), in Destiny of Velious, a few quests will now reward a common (Handcrafted) adornment. We see this as a good thing, as some players may not even be aware of adornments and in Destiny of Velious, the effectiveness of your items is now defined by their adornments.
I’m actually really excited about a few of those.
Ok this well makes up for the loss of pristine bonus lol
All good stuff, part of me questions if knowing the numbers behind the XP is really a step forward since hiding the numbers and just having percentages always felt a bit smoother to me.
But one thing you have missed (unless it snuck out on Live and I didn’t see it) was that achievements are now hotlinked. So when you see a guildie get an achievement I can actually see what it was for, rather then “Congrats, what’s that?” 🙂
>>Tradeskill Recipe Searching Gets Performance Tweaks, Facelift, (Quest Journal too!)
Does this mean that there’ll be a Search facility in the Quest Journal?
Last I saw, they took out the ability to change targets using a macro or hotbar button using the new tagging system. Said it would allow too much automation even though you can do pretty much the same thing today with the existing macro system. Did they add it back in and I missed it?