Feldon At one time, Mounts in EQ2 increased your run speed, oh and they looked nice. Over the years, faster mounts were introduced, then we began to see mounts with some very minor stat boosts to harvesting or weapon skills. Nowadays, it is just expected that ground, leaper, glider, and flying mounts all have some sort of buff which is beneficial in combat situations. Essentially, mounts have become a 25th item slot.
With Game Update 67: Darkness Dawns, we will see the ability for players to store up to three Alternate Advancement profiles on their character and swap between them immediately. The concern raised by certain players was, switching AA Profiles causes all buffs to drop, including mounts. While the buffs from mounts persist after zoning, most zones do not permit re-casting your mount once you’re inside the zone.
Players who wanted to switch their AA spec and retain the benefits of the mount would then need to zone out, re-cast their mount, and then zone back in, which is really not any more convenient than zoning to their home, using an AA mirror, and then recasting their mount. Over time, we’ve seen more flexibility on how mounts are cast, specifically hiding mounts (even flying ones) when grounded. My suggestion was to simply allow casting any mount anywhere, and just hide its appearance if you are inside a zone that does not permit mounts.
To address this concern, Lyndro has posted this update:
In an upcoming beta update (Next couple days), mounts will be castable in any zone. You just won’t get the mount/speed portion.
Which expansion saw mount buffs? I believe it was TSO that originally gave us mounts with nice stat buffs.
So they are just turning on zone_data.flags.allow_mounts=1 everywhere?
No. When you cast a mount in a zone that disallows mounts, you’ll get the buff, but not the speed or the visual appearance of a mount.
I still want my actual 24th slot, the “Mount Adornment”, and the 25th, the “Mount Armor”