Feldon 
With Game Update 66 and the introduction of Siren’s Grotto, it’s now time to bump up the quality of heroic gear a bit. To do that, Drinal’s Steward as started offering Tier 2 heroic armor. From Amnerys on the EQ2 Forums:
Good news! The Steward of Drinal now has Tier 2 Heroic gear available. Platinum prices on the Tier 1 Steward gear have been lowered. Greater Spirits and essences have also had their drop rates increased.
This is indeed good news, as there is certainly room for growth and a need to provide an obvious upgrade over the Advanced Solo rare drops.
However there are a few hiccups too. On the EQ2 Forums, players have renewed their objections to needing to run the 15 hour Chains of Eternity Solo Signature Quest line on each of their alts in order to shop Drinal’s Steward’s wares. While we’ve been able to buy a Steward’s Key to share the Obol and Spirit love with our alts, this key has never unlocked the ability to buy from the Merchant. Thus far, the workaround for buying armor has been to swap characters around and trade it through the Shared Bank. However this won’t work with Tier 2 gear upgrades.
From Gninja:
The steward has never allowed players to unlock buying his items using the key from an alt. There were issues with the questline that became broken if that part was skipped.
Instead the gear and items on the merchant were made heirloom so you can pass them to alts. I know this isn’t a perfect solution but it is what we had to do. The key does however unlock access to Harrow’s End and the ability to loot obols/spirits etc.
Players have long since shuffled around Drinal’s Steward Tier 1 jewelry and armor on their alts. But once equipped, that gear becomes ATTUNED and thus non-tradeable. As a result, there is no way to shuffle this well-worn Tier 1 armor around and get it upgraded to Tier 2 through a Main. So for many, the addition of upgrades will be bittersweet. The EQ2 team have been reacting to player feedback and getting things fixed more regularly these days, so hopefully a solution can be found here.
what about adornments on “old” gear?
do we need to dislodge them before upgrading, and he accepts the appearance only version ?
He does accept the appearance-only dislodged gear as currency, just tested to find out – was able to buy the T2 scout shoulders using dislodged appearance-only T1 scout shoulders.
does he take away the old gear even?
I mean can you just buy it , keep the old one and dislodge later, or will you loose it + the adorns?
btw. i only saw new armor and weapons, no jewelry…
players have renewed their objections to needing to run the 15 hour Chains of Eternity Solo Signature Quest line on each of their alts in order to shop Drinal’s Steward’s wares
Well that’s too damn bad.I’m on it for the 5th damn time,cry me a river.With the new obol/spirit gear having the same stats as raid gear..are we raiding for red adorn slots now???
Or I could do that pointlessly long questline to get merchant access on all 7 of my level 95 alts, which all I’m going say about that is: nope.
Taivr, Today at 5:30 PM
And all i’ll say is,then don’t.
Even money you leveled them in SS,not by questing,which is fine,to each their own. But,at some point there has to be a roadblock, IE do this to be able to get this. Or else where is the point of the game?
cry me a river, raiders!
I raid 2-3 times a week, but I don’t mind if you can get gear solo.
In fact i got most of my SK gear in Battlegrounds, and some pieces for my Warlock too.
The CoE Faction gear is WORSE, cause it doesn’t have red slots.
And the Jewelry is missing effects. So it’s more like gear that you can get to even start joining a raid, or for your soloing pleasure.
Personally I raid because of the group effort to kill x4 mobs, getting gear is nice but secondary.
1) make tradeable the key and allow to see drinal as merchant with it.
2) put 2 yellow slot everywhere it have red slot usually (mostly armor) the lack of one full slot is too much. Exemple i badly need ability reuse speed, i cant get enough with only one yellow slot. I got it red was for reserved for raid but it s all wrong since raid also got yellow so it’s normal than yellow got red. Stuff must have same numbers of slot dont matter what kind, only realy few piece should have one more from top stuff (or less from lesser stuff as handcraft).
3) allow to upgrade drinal shield with one more white slot
4) some piece dont accept old one an charge 3 greater spirit like the scout or tank 6 sec delay weapons.
5) Lot of price lowered, but adornment are unchanged making them almost more expenssive than gear. 7 and 14 plat. Perhaps lower it to 5 and 10.
6) Charm tank dont have anything for tank, we got a 2.6 flurry while we could have 3 flurry with the scout one. As tank i want mitigation increase (block/hp/parry/hate) so i stick with collection who give 2.5 mit inc.
7) veterant reward idea : like the bauble that refile our vitality allow once a week (unlimited charge) to unnatune one of our item making it heirloom (even if it’s tradeable the goal is to pass it to an alt i dont ask for a full unnatunner)
8) Mysterybox plat part need to be lowered a lot or removed. Reward are not that great to pay for it.
the CoE faction gear is pretty obsolete.
they should add 2nd yellow slot or a 3rd white slot at least.
the weapons are good, and the jewelry is ok, some of it.
Healer earrings are pretty damn bad statwise, looks like they forgot some stats…
mystery box sucks. i bought 5 , got 5 times crap 160 gear and some filler stuff like useless food and crappy 15min adornments.
they should make the mystery box price 100 plat + some spirits, BUT give a
10% chance for ethereal, 30% Fabled, 50% Legendary, and 10% complete unatuner.
that way people would buy it in flocks.
or un-adorner i meant actually. who doesnt destroy item.
@madcat – It’s been argued much in that past that flurry is worth more then mitigation increase for a tank, at least at the levels they provide.
Not sure anyone noticed here, but SOE seems to be intentionally screwing over Scouts that use a 4 second weapon. The upgraded versions of most of the weapons changed only the stats that were on the old weapons (ie more pot, cb, attack speed, ma, etc). However, the upgraded 4 second scout weapon lost it’s AE completely (5.6%), got less DPS (67 on old one, 47.1 on “upgraded” one) and instead added attack speed (47.1) which most scouts end up reforging out of anyway. They did add a completely new 4 second scout weapon which is crushing instead of piercing, but as my swash gets a bonus for using piercing weapons, it’s actually a downgrade for me from the old dagger. Either make the stats even for all weapons or just come out and say screw you to the people they’re ignoring.
@Snowdarc
Because heaven forbid people actually have fun playing this game they pay for. Nope! Have to repeat literally days worth of solo content for alts because someone couldn’t be bothered to put the new stuff on a separate merchant.
And grats on doing the signature line for the 5th time, you have the tolerance to do faceroll easy content for hours on end. Surely an achievement worthy of song.
@Dedith
I totaly disagrea on flurry for tank. I think it’s true on some situation but not on most and overall it’s false, like you can say a tank can tank in recklessness stance.
yes it can IF he have a good healer with him or good synergy from group.
I often pug and with poor healer (or merc) def mitigation is better than flurry for casual hardcore.
And most failed pug are due to tank wanting flurry instead of mitigation…
The good part is when you are a true tank (not a dps one) you cant fail any group dont matter who join.
id like to be remburssed for the 2kish worth of plat iv spent b4 the price nerf thx
@Madcat: I’m sorry, but I disagree. The mitigation increases from armor end up equating to fractions of a percent in damage reduction. If you’re being one shot by an 100k hit, you’re still doing to be one shot with or without the increased mitigation. However, with the flurry you gain a decent boost to threat to help hold agro and you add to the group/raid dps to end whatever scripts/events faster.
http://www.eq2flames.com/items-equipment/90986-mitigation-vs-flurry-loot.html
This being said, a missing red slot on ~7+ pieces of gear are a lot of missing procs, which add up fast for dps. But, these pieces of gear are easily obtained with 6 players, not 24. They should be less then EM CoE raid gear.
They also screwed mages on this, while they added the spirit infused upgraded weapons, and bows, there are no spirit infused wands… sony just loves taking a big steamy on mages’ chests
@ Taivr
Like I said,to each,their own. Personally,I feel it’s called Ever”quest” for a reason,not Evergrindto90getinssandzoomto95. I do agree,i cringed doing Withered,and hated that 5th run thru EJ and OP. I just feel like there should be some sort of roadblock to getting gear,aside from a grind that takes all of 2 hours. Just my 2cp,and I’m probably wrong