January 16, 2014 Update Notes
From the EQ2 Forums:
MERCENARIES
- In response to player feedback, we have revised the Mercenary user interface in the Character panel to add summon/suspend functionality and clarify the features overall.
- As a reminder, mercenaries (normal and rare) may be resummoned after 60 seconds from when they were last suspended.
POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Vesspyr Isles
- Fixed an issue that was preventing Draazak from being spawned when the correct items were turned in.
- The red shinies on Aeterna Gardens have been moved a bit further away from Wuoshi.
Underfoot Depths
- Regulus and Regulas should no longer reset a few seconds after they are triggered.
Temple of Veeshan: Guardian’s Edifice
- The spell “Bone Rot” in the Andreis the Culler encounter should hit for slightly less and should tick less often.
- The spell “Commanding Leadership” in the Gerid, Harin, and Merig encounter should hit for slightly less.
- Sacrifice of Bone adds in the Andreis the Culler encounter should no longer occasionally spawn more than they should.
- There should be more time between waves after the first group spawns in the second wing ring event.
Temple of Veeshan: Laboratory of Mutation (Heroic and Advanced Solo)
- Corrected an issue that prevented the option to revive at the zone entrance.
Stratum of the Protector
- Shazzak should now reliably return after the Fragment of Shazzak phase.
Channeler Epic
- Sphere order in the final boss fight should now be predictable.
ABILITIES / ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT
Channeler
- Truespirit Rift is now click-through.
ITEMS
- Insane Hammer of the Custodian is now a hammer.
- Maximum stack size for Draconic Incense has been increased.
QUESTS
- Quenching the Parched – Map quest marker has been adjusted to include all 12 of the flower spawn points.
- Spiritbreaker and Spiritbreaker, Eianosheoll’s Folly are now available from the Shady Erudite, if you have completed their respective quests.
- Reduced the rotation on the daily Cobalt Scar missions from a full day to 18 hours.
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Comments (9)
abs
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We do need more information about the red fractured gemstone! Tought they will come out soon!!!
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Miragain
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Doesn’t sound like they did anything to correct how stupid the mercs typically are intellegence wise.
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Kruzzen
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Yea, I would like my merc to heal itself before 5% health. 🙁
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Evale
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Just as an aside, when I summon a merc, they arrive with their health in yellow. It also happens when I fly then land, zone into an instance, or even just move away from the merc then return. They go from full health to something like 70% health.
I raised a support ticket and they confirmed it is a known problem, then they closed the ticket after 72 hours without doing anything, I guess it must be on the list to fix. I am interested to know if anyone else has this issue.
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Jrral
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Everyone does. It’s related to the stamina stat and how it translates to health. The easy way to think of it (maybe not correct, but it works) is that there’s a hidden buff that gives mercs ToV-level health at the right times. When flying or when suspended the buff isn’t active. When you land or summon the merc they arrive without the buff, so they get their health set appropriately, and then the buff kicks in increasing their max health but not changing their current health so you see their health bar drop.
You see something similar if you start with no equipment and start throwing ToV gear on: your max health will skyrocket while your current health hasn’t, so your health bar plummets into the orange or red and you have to wait for your health regen to bring you up to full.
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Jrral
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The changes to the Merc pane aren’t anything to write home about, IMO. It’s messy from a UI XML perspective, but that only hits the UI maintainers. What there is from a user perspective:
* Explicit suspend and resume buttons were added below the currently-active merc slot.
* The hire/unlock/resume button at the bottom has lost it’s resume functionality, it now only does hire and unlock. I suspect if you select the current merc in the all-mercs list and it’s already unlocked you won’t get a button.
* The appearance of button icons has changed since they’ve made them actual buttons instead of icons that act like buttons.
Overall I don’t see why they needed to make the XML changes they did. Remove the lock icon in the current-merc slot and grey out the hire/unlock/resume button when you select the current merc in the all-mercs list and it’s already unlocked and boom, done.
Thankfully the largest bulk of the UI XML changes are just adding the button styles needed to support the new buttons and icon images, so UI mod maintainers shouldn’t have too many problems with it. It feels, though, like something done by someone who isn’t familiar with the UI system. The button styles, for instance, canonically go in eq2ui_ButtonStyles.xml and not the window XML file specifically so that they’re centralized and can be changed without touching the actual window files.
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Mermut
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I can see what you mean. The style of the icons is very different then it used to be… and very different from everything in eq2. Plus the bottom button that was resummon is now unlock and you have to click on the top to rehire.
I foresee many people hitting ‘unlock’ when they mean to hit rehire in the near future. And the iconon the ‘resummon’ button is great with a plus… in current eq2 stuff, that implies healing, not resummoning. Oh well, we’ll get used to it,
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Jrral
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Yes. If I can figure out a way to overlay the resummon button on top of the hire/unlock buttons and have it cover them only when the current mercenary can be summoned, I’d love to do that. I don’t have any way of checking for whether the current merc’s suspended or active though, and the hardcoded toggling of visibility of 2 other buttons would interfere. Basic function now, and I’ll experiment over the weekend with replacing the view-merc icon with the resummon icon when the view-merc button’s not visible.
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striinger
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Re: dumb mercs
That was done intentionally to abate the loud cries of many (unpopular?) players who said an adequate or competent merc would prevent them from being able to get a group. Gimped mercs was the compromise.
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