Feldon With today’s update, the entirely optional Beastlord Prelude #2 quest goes live. It provides an explanation for where Beastlords have been and why they’re now returning to Norrath. Don’t worry — whether you complete these brief lore quests or not, anyone who purchases the EverQuest II: Age of Discovery expansion (when it goes on sale) will be able to create new Beastlords in November.
More controversial in today’s update is the removal of any “shard” cost from Thurgadin and Ry’Gorr armor.
You can expect crafters to be exceedingly busy today as they fulfill orders for full sets of Thurgadin armor as it is now essentially free minus the cost of common materials. Ry’Gorr armor also requires one of the tradeable gems listed below from Kael Drakkel zones. Don’t forget to tip your crafter!
| Ry’Gorr Armor — Gems by Slot
|
|
| Scintillating Gem | |
| Forearms | Citrine |
| Hands | Emerald |
| Feet | Jaundice |
| Head | Black Marble |
| Legs | Lava Ruby |
| Shoulders | Diamond |
If all crafters are currently assisting other customers, or you just prefer to go the Vendor route, Thurgadin and Ry’Gorr will be happy to sell their armor to allies with +40,000 faction, and a few plat. In the case of Ry’Gorr armor, you’ll also need one or more of the above gems from Kael Drakkel.
Check out EQ2Wire’s Guide to Velious Heroic Armor & Jewelry
Apparently any possible disruption this might cause to Progression or reduction in Tower of Frozen Shadow 1-3, Pools, Ascent, and Fortress groups hasn’t dampened the spirits of players excited to get free lootz for all their alts! Don’t worry, be happy!
Here are your Update Notes for October 11, 2011:
Beastlords Prelude Part Two
The return of the Beastlords to Norrath is at hand, and the story continues in part two of the prelude event! The energy of the Truespirit continues to flow throughout Norrath, and now that the Blight has been removed once and for all, their power is stronger than ever. The Truespirit Harbingers have emerged from the spirit realms, and stand ready to test the heroes of Norrath. Those who have completed the first prelude event, and wish to challenge the trials of the Harbingers, should seek out the chosen representatives of the Truespirit.
For those adventurers who are aligned with Qeynos, Meli Valorfrost, stands waiting for you outside the Temple of Life in North Qeynos. And for those who claim allegiance with the city of Freeport, a kerran named Olgen is ready to help start you on your journey. He can be found just outside the Temple of War in North Freeport. Safe travels, heroes!
DUNGEON FINDER
- You can no longer invite people to your group with /invite while you are searching for reinforcements.
- Return to dungeon finder group is now disabled while in PvP combat.
POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
- Sentinel’s Fate and Destiny of Velious dungeons now have mission givers located within the entrance of the zones.
Sullon’s Spire x4 raid zones
- In the fight with Sullon Zek, raging beholders will no longer cast pummeling force as soon as they spawn.
Sullon’s Spire [Challenge]
- The elevator pad on the fifth floor will no longer dip below the floor when it descends.
Tower of Tactics Heroic
- Lady V’uul will no longer spawn archers once she has been defeated. Once Lady V’uul has become invulnerable, destroying her orbs will now remove her protection.
Kingdom of Sky
- Wizard Spires within Kingdom of Sky should now allow you to travel to Eastern Wastes.
Drunder zones
Drunder token armor can now drop in Drunder zones:
- Grolla will now drop class shoulders
- Warmaster Korok Hai will now drop class legs
- Dvuul Ripclaw will now drop class boots
- Hamslammer has a chance to drop class forearms or gloves
- Rageborne MacKulla has a chance to drop class forearms or gloves
The following bosses will now drop more items that can be turned into ore:
- Ragebourne Mackulla
- Hamslammer
- Groll Skullwielder
- Prime Shini-Zonn Hypatia
All Drunder bosses with rare tables have had their chance to drop a rare increased.
TRADESKILLS
- The amount of ore received from melting down Drunder equipment has been tripled.
- Thurgadin and Ry’gorr armor set recipes no longer require velium shards.
ITEMS
- Drops within the Drunder themed zones should now have a description telling you if they can be broken down into the various ores that are used in creating the Drunder set armor.
- Thurgadin armor sets no longer require velium shards to be purchased. Faction and coin are still required.
- Rygorr armor sets no longer require velium shards to be purchased. Faction, refined gems, and coin are still required.
- Disabled ‘flying mount to house item’ conversion while flying.
- Elements of War forearms that were missing procs have had them added.
- Added block chance to tank forearms in Elements of War that were missing it.
QUESTS
- The rewards for completing the heroic section of the Fallen Swords Signature line have had effects added to them.
MARKETPLACE
- Fixed a bug with “New” and “Sale” marketplace categories on non-English servers.
Just a side question. It is october, when are they going to tell us how much this xpac is going to be, is there a pre order, is it digital download only. Lots of questions about it.
For newer to DoV players or smaller guilds etc all that stuff: You need TOFS for coldain ring, for 2 or 3 heritage quests with decent rewards for non-raiders.
-After you have x2 access you can go straight to Tserrina fight in Haunt of Syltor and get 3 veliums(adorns and fabled gear still), a lesser chestpiece, cloaks with effects.
-Rime you still run for fortress spire’s BP and fallen swords update, ascent for it’s ease and good rewards from last named, pools for it’s access to ascent easy early chance for rare mob etc.
I can still think of even more reasons to still run TOFS and Rime themed zones….but maybe im too much of an optimist?
Has anyone had bad gem drop rates out of contested Kael lately? Was in there last night for about 2 hours and never had a gem drop. I have never been in there killing and not had multiple gems drop…..yea they were almost all emeralds, but last night was the first time to have none drop at all.
The drop rate is 0.1667% per gem, for a total drop rate of 1%. But yeah, you can be in there all night and not get any.
They need a vender that sells upgrade/trade in’s from zones like the SF raid vender.
They need to add another drop down window for the broker window as well and ad a number to the Item number that will sort items out by sub-category instead of just searching by names. for instance if you go to house items, have a Cat Type menu to the side that will sort types of house item then by sub Cat sub-type example (looking for a wall divider that doesn’t have divider in the name) hit House items->Dividers-tile-fountain-platform Exec.., Crafting items: Trade-skill->Tinkering-Smithing-Adorning selection opens another drop down /sub cat 2/ ore,root,ex…
yeah i noticed that to when i was solo in kd on my inquis, was there for about 75 minutes with not even a single gem (ussualy i get one about every 15-20mins in there)
I dont really care for eliminating the Shard requirements for the Ry’Gorr stuff. They could have just lowered the amount needed to 10-15 per piece.
It does however open up more options for yellow adornments 🙂 . That I do like.
Still going to have the issue of getting the gems. They need to increase the drop rate on those and give all of them the chance to drop in any KD zone, not just specific bosses. I can’t tell you how much time I spent in the KD instances and KD contested trying for a Jaundice gem drop so that I could roll on it and hope I won the loot, just to get the Inquisitor boots that made Tenacity a group wide buff and reduced the concenration slot down to one again.
Welcome to the wonderful world of EverQuest 2 where the casual player of the EQ2X server is now the most important player, and the playing subscribers no longer mean anything.
@Isest Paraphrasing from SmokeJumper was something to the lines that DoV would be the biggest expansion to date, and half of the DoV Content is the dragons, and you haven’t seen any many dragons yet.
But who knows, they had a rough year with all the security issues, downtime, and considerable loss of player base because of. They probably are being secretive about it because they might HAVE to pull the money card to maintain profitability. But the player base IMO deserve a solid, and should get this one for free for all the havoc we have been though.
That said, The only clue I found that leads me to think they are going to want money, and I would have to grind through old posts and such to know. I read something from SmokeJumper saying something like Velious consists of GU 61,62, 64, 65…(don’t remember the actual numbers in the list) and in this list of GU’s a couple numbers where missing. Those might be the expansion we have to pay for. /shrug
If someone has some time to compile the facts we probably could get pretty close to confirm this on our own.
Instances are still the best place to get gems, imho.
I’m not convinced EQ2 subs are down lately, overall. The seasoned/exceptional players seem to be in short supply, but there’s a huge number of people that are recent arrivals (most, but not all, from WoW) on Everfrost.
Maybe there’s just a master plan we can’t see now…but I expect SJ’s comment about “buying” a level 90 toon will become reality in the near future, especially with so much of their efforts going into 86+ content creation.
I’m kind of disappointed here, I did the math comparing the PQ armor verses the Thurgadin set. Factoring out the robe as there is no bp for the Thurgadin set. With the set bonuses the difference between the two is 2 primary stat, 2 stamina, 2 crit bonus, 2 potency, -35 casting speed and -2.4 reuse. This is the conjurer set and assumes no adornments of any kind.
Assuming you have 7 pieces I strongly recommend replacing the sleeves as there is a .8 crit bonus 2.6 potency and 2.8 reuse improvement moving to the Thurgadin set without costing you the set bonuses.
Keep in mind this ignores the crit mitigation stat completely for comparison sake.
@ Necro
thats bullshit, since dov eq2 is designed around HC Raider and not casuals. Casuals are not more important and those changes doenst change anything for drunder.. because rygor gear is mostly crap. We have by example one Wizzard that gives eq2 another chance for one month. He cancelled last year. Hes “SF Raidgear” was more effective then any Rygor Set. Since DoV there is no argument to play EQ2 as a Fully Casual.
my2c
Is that a fact? Lets really delve into that:
How many times has content – raid, instances, and overland zone content been nerfed since DoV launched? According to my research – 17 times, including removing the need for Critical Mitigation for virtually every zone in Destiny of Velious. Who do you think those nerfs were for? Not the hardcore raider as you implied, because the hardcore raider can blow through all that content. It was geared for the casual player.
The Thurgadin and Ry’Gorr armor no longer needing shards – who was that really for? Certainly not the hardcore raider, whom was complaining about the changes – no that change was for the casual player.
How about the reduction in the quality of the gear, and how stats and gaear has drastically changed since TSO – and has been completely dumbed down. Who was that for? The casual player.
But hold on, lets call smokejumper and ask him when we’ll be able to purcahse an easy mode geared level 90 character with Station Cash because he keeps implying that is going to happen sooner than later.
Ok, 1. Yes its nerfed so Casuals have a chance in Casual instance. Its done to late.
2. That thurga/rygor doenst needs anymore shards is pointless. It wanst really a high amount of shards needed with 20…i dont see there a sense for this change.
3. Sorry but the difference beetween raid gear and casual wanst never so big as dov. This is a pure Raid Pro point. Never for casuals.
4. There is with the nerfs.. enough casuals instances that needs raidgear and this is pointless. No Heroic instance should need raidgear at all. But since dov is a raider addon …..
5. Those instance nerfs should have been a part of dov release. Its alot to late, and in came because a big part of casual playerbase cancelled eq2 after they see with dov there is anything designed about Raider at all.
About youre SC provision, you have right and Smokejumper should be fired.
sorry for my bad english, its not my native language but i try my best.
Last night in the guildhall we had a free-for-all upgrading everybody’s alt with free Thurgadin gear (5 fuels for cloth and leather, 25 fuels for chain and plate for some reason). It was astounding to see a dusty Paladin alt go from 40 crit mit to 100… and he didn’t do anything. Nothing! Just sit there and put fuel into a commission box.
After experiencing that, I think it took some of the joy out of the game.
Now he doesn’t have to do the PQ except for first timer AA and to get the chest piece or weapon (and he can skip SG, hooray). In short, he doesn’t have any required practice in front of him before I could hurl him into an instance.
I’m responsible enough to make sure I know what I’m doing first, but now that process will be somewhat of a chore instead of part of the natural journey one makes while gearing up.
—–
Does anyone think it is a mistake that there isn’t a drop chance for the class helm or hat in the update notes?
Agree with Sole here this is designed to bring back (no wont work most of us have already canceled) the casual players to EQ 2, and you are free to dislike it but most casual players wants attainable and fun goals, something that EQ2 has not offered casual players in a long time, We have been offered inane soloquests with crappy rewards and after that a long shard/mark grind to get equipment good enough so you can actually do the fun stuff. There are probably several like me who quit because we are tired of seeing the goal line moved a bit further away every time.
Being able to purchase a 90/250 toon is probably one of the few things that would bring back the casual playerbase to Live. EQ2 is a business and it needs to attract and keep its customers, from what I am hearing it has been unable too keep its casual players for some time now, smokejumper is trying to fix it but he does not know how. But as someone said on the official forums, the gap between the casual players and the hardcore players have never been larger.
I still feel that the Velious quests are some of the best we’ve seen in years. No miles of running around and repeated required visits to the same distant corner of a zone by a quest line. And the armor and jewelry awarded by Velious quests is very powerful compared to the rewards in Sentinel’s Fate’s tedious, travel-heavy quests.
PQ armor plus the quested jewelry/cloaks/weapons are more than enough to do Pools, Ascent, and ToFS 1-3. Let’s compare that to TSO where the average group could do Deep Forge, Najena’s, Befallen CotA, Miragul’s Scion of Ice, and Obelisk of Ahkzul. Then you had the medium difficulty zones of Mistmoore, Veksar 2, Halls of the Forsaken, the Anathema and Crucible, Guk 1 and 2, and Anchor of Bazzul. Finally, the difficulty ramped up greatly in Nu’Roga and Kor’Sha, Necrotic Asylum, Ravenscale Repository, Guk: Ykesha’s Outer Stronghold, and the Palace of Ferzhul.
There’s no doubt that Velious dungeons are harder than we’ve seen dungeons in years. When every trash mob does AoE’s, and huge detrimentals, and names have raid-style scripts with curses, yeah it’s pretty nuts.
I think from day one, the Thurgadin armor should have been 38 shards, and the Ry’Gorr armor 112 shards, just like TSO’s shard system. Or make the Ry’Gorr armor 70-80 shards plus gems.
@Feldon I see, actually the first time I ever heard that, and that may be why the casuals feel so left behind, almost everything you have been reading has only be about how much crit mit you need to have, what adornments you need and so on. I have read precious little written about that you actually could DO something, an example is Crystal Caverns that came and quickly was written off as useless. The disappearance of all EQ2 fan sites except this one probably have made the information void even bigger. I dunno for a long time I looked for a reason to resub as we hated SF, but apart from Atan and a few others on the official forums the message have been how hard and how bad the DoV expansion is. I am happy that I was misinformed but the question also is, how many people like never bought DoV or canceled early?
They should up the drop rate on gems now so all of the Wall Street players would have to stop selling gems for 500-800pp a piece. Can’t escape ridiculous greed even in virtual worlds.
@ Me
Greed is irrelevant. No one can sell something for more than what the purchaser thinks the item is worth. If the drop rates are lower than intended then SOE should look into increasing the drop rate based on their desired intentions for the drop rate of these gems.