Dethdlr
Several people have reported on the EQ2Forums that the progress bushes aren’t spawning in the Jarsath Wastes and Sinking Sands druid rings. Windslasher chimed in with this update: Drat! I goofed with the spawns in Jarsath and Sinking Sands, so the progress signs aren’t appearing in those two zones. Unfortunately it’s not a server-specific thing or a setting that I can just change on the fly, so even though I have the fix in the pipeline I can’t tell you how soon it will be on the live servers, yet. It’ll be fixed as soon as possible. Update: According...
Game Updates & Maintenance
Feldon
At 11pm PDT on June 9th, 2010 (7am GMT on June 10th, 2010), several EQ2 servers were brought down for maintenance: Befallen, Permafrost, Crushbone, Mistmoore, Oasis, Runnyeye, Splitpaw, Innovation, Valor, Storms, Battlegrounds UK, Battlegrounds DE, and Battlegrounds FR The original announcement indicated that maintenance would take 7 hours. All servers were up after ~13 hours, with a total downtime of ~15 hours for Runnyeye, Innovation, and some of the Battlegrounds servers. So what was this maintenance all about? And did it include the US-UK Battlegrounds bridging we’ve been hearing about?
We arrive at a topic which has garnered nary a comment from the EQ2 development team since February. I’m talking of course about class balance. While we realize it’s foolish to think that one day all the classes will be truly “balanced”, there’s no better terminology for the valid concept of making sure that all 24 classes have the tools necessary to do their jobs, and that classes that do the same basic job are able to put out similar numbers.
Shaders 3 Hotfix on the Horizon Imago-Quem has been collecting feedback, bug reports, crash reports, and screen shots people have been posting regarding Shaders 3.0. We’re now expecting a hotfix in a couple of weeks. EQ2 Senior Producer SmokeJumper had this update: Some good news for you folks: 1) The darkness issues are fixed in-house already. We’ll be pushing those fixes out to you soon. 2) We’re looking into the crash that occurs in guild houses with tons of items in them. We hope to have a solution soon. 3) Frame rate has been improved. followed by Imago-Quem: Just...
It appears the Game Update 56 notes left out an interesting and (for players with many alts) fortuitous quest tweak. The quest To Speak as a Dragon needs almost no introduction. It’s a crucial language quest which is key to completing many other quests in EQ2, including Epic Repercussions. This quest requires crawling the depths of 26 different dungeons to find the necessary runes to learn the language of Draconic. Despite dramatic improvements in travel since EQ2’s launch, it’s still a tedious quest, especially if you have done it with 2 or more characters. So this quest received some...
Sentinel’s Fate brought us The Sundered Frontier and Stonebrunt Highlands but also brought some new quests to the Kingtom of Sky zones. Many of the islands have received new quests near the cloud stations. There was also a questline added called The Lost Drednever Team. With GU56, this questline is now listed in the Storylines tab of the quest journal. EQ2 Wiki has writeups for the whole questline and we’ve got links to get you started. In Tenebrous Tangle on the Temple Grounds there is a gnome named Bilgeron Cogsworth IV. Bilgeron is a L.O.S.T Explorer. He will explain...
Today’s Hotfix (Patch) fixes a bug in the Druid Ring Live Event, and includes tweaks to itemization, the new PvP Warfields, and numerous bugs in the Icy Keep raid zone. We also include the hotfix notes from May 27, 2010 which somehow got left out. May 27th’s hotfix notes make mention of a change to Procs which were not working on spells. However, this change resulted in certain procs, specifically Pestilential Rain and Torrent, no longer working properly for melee. You can read more about this issue on the EQ2 Forums. Xelgad has responded: Thanks for all of the...
Olihin has checked in with some fixes and improvements for PvP and especially Warfields which will become available next week. From the EQ2 Forums:
It was hinted after Fan Faire that new Spell Effects and Animations were on the way, and at one point we were listing it for Sentinel’s Fate/Game Update 55. Timetravelling has chipped in with some more info, and actually one of these new animations is available in-game.
Believe it or not, the hard work of bolting Shaders 3 onto the antiquated EQ2 engine is done. What remains is polish and cleanup. With all the combinations of armor, weapons, and with as many zones as there are in EQ2, this final bug sweep must take place with the help of the player. Players have been diligently posting screen shots and even videos demonstrating the numerous areas of the game including guild halls, armor sets, etc. where Shaders 3 stumbles — it’s too dark, it’s washed out, there are halos on objects, or the colors are just plain...
So you’ve got a tradeable Lore item that you’d like to pass from one of your characters to another on the same account. How do you do it? You could hand it to a friend, change characters, and have them hand it back to you. If you’re in a guild, you could put it in the guild bank, change characters, and hope its still there for you to pull it back out. Wouldn’t it be much easier if you could just put the item in your own shared bank? Well now you can! In response to a player query...
It seems that U.S. EQ2 servers are back up after today’s Game Update 56 patch. Once the thread is unlocked, you can post your feedback about GU56: Halas Reborn on the EQ2 Forums. How do I get to New Halas? New Characters: Create a new character in New Halas from the Character Select screen. Existing Characters: To travel to New Halas, take a Gryffon from the Butcherblock Mountains docks. How do I get the new Kitten? Log into EQ2 between May 25th and May 28th, 2010 and type /marketplace to open the Marketplace. The kitten is a free item...
The EQ2 Servers are now receiving the Game Update 56 patch. Servers are expected to come back up at 9am PDT. While the servers are down, you can chat with us online! We will be in the EQ2 ZAM chatroom. For instructions on how to connect to the chat using mIRC, Trillian, or other chat client, check out the fantastic instructions at EQ2 ZAM. If you are not able to run chat software at work, or you just want to jump into the chat through your web browser, you can chat here. See you in the chatroom!
It was only a matter of time. Ballads has reported in from EQ2Flames that the Reinforced Slippers of Balance ( \aITEM -1095264150 2115375301:Reinforced Slippers of Balance\/a ) have been nerfed with Game Update 56. Despite being level 70 items, these were the best foot items in the game for tanking certain encounters due to the possible number of stoneskins this item could generate. We had already heard from developers that this item would not be replaced and that the effect would not be copied to other items. Indeed, a nerf was anticipated by players in fall 2009. Current Description:...
Over two years after the introduction of Mythical weapons, Furies and Mystics logging after today’s Game Update 56 will notice a change in their mythical weapons which has neither been documented in any Update Notes, nor commented on publicly by any EQ2 developer. Previously, the Mystic and Fury mythical weapons have added 10% of the character’s Wisdom to the character’s Potency. With today’s stealth change, furies and mystics will instead receive Ability Mod from their mythical weapon. The result of this change, as per several players who have experienced the changes on Test and have thoroughly documented the results...
The Sentinel’s Fate expansion (and its associated Game Update 55) opened the door to each character becoming a master of Tinkering, Transmuting, and Adorning. At least on Butcherblock, this change promptly doubled the price of all transmutable materials on the open market. Treasured weapons and armor, as well as Adept spells are now trading at record prices. As a result, tradeskill societies of all major cities have received a visitor named Londiar Inygad who is interested in offering Adorning work to players. These are daily quests, appropriate to your Adorning level which allow you to make 10 adornments per...
After the jump, we’ve got the complete Game Update 56 Notes for May 25, 2010:
From Kiara: As you know, our game update Halas Reborn, goes live May 25, 2010. This will happen at the usual time of 7am PDT for the US servers and 9pm PDT (4am on 26 May GMT) on European servers. The update notes are available here and the feedback thread will be unlocked for feedback once the update has been completed on the US servers.
EverQuest 2 does not natively support Anti-aliasing, however determined players have managed to enable it by adding “r_aa_blit” to their EQ2 INI file. Unfortunately, players will have to wait a bit longer if they want to experience Shaders 3.0 and Anti-aliasing at the same time. Players attempting to use both will see zones which are entirely blacked out. From Imago-Quem: I just submitted a fix for this. Hopefully it passes QA and can get out to you in a hotfix here soon and you can run AA with Shader 3. And as for the prospect of using CPU Shadows...
Upgrading a 9 year old game engine to support a feature it was never designed for is a daunting task. No-one knows that better than Ryan “Imago-Quem” who has been busting his butt since before Fan Faire 2009 to revamp the graphical pipeline of EverQuest 2 to support Shaders 3.0.
One of the preamble events leading up to the Destiny of Velious expansion will be the reconstruction of several dilapidated and corrupted Druid Rings. Read the article on EQ2Players. As we reported in April, we are expecting the druid rings in Nektulos Forest, Loping Plains, Zek, and Feerrott to be rebuilt. Windslasher has posted extensively about how this event will work and what participants can expect…
Previous EQ2 Senior Producers Alan “Brenlo” Crosby and Bruce Ferguson rarely responded directly to player inquiries. Thus we featured their posts here on EQ2Wire in separate posts. However Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson has been tearing up the EQ2 Forums in two threads: Suggestions and requests for the new Senior Producer First Ever Mount on the Marketplace
In preparation for Game Update 56, some of the art assets (and likely music) for Game Update 56 are being pushed in an update today. This update is approximately 200MB. From EQ2 Senior Producer “SmokeJumper“: [Today’s] update includes a lot of the files needed for the upcoming Halas feature set. We’re splitting the download into two parts so that the pain is a bit less each time.
A prelude quest leading up to Game Update 56 and the introduction of the city of New Halas has been available for some time now, if you could find a Guide or in-game GM or CM. But now in the last week leading up to this update, NPCs have been added throughout Norrath for those players who want to do this quest. This quest is A Vision of Valor. Follow the link for a list of NPCs and locations.
EQ2Players has a preview up for one of the two new raid zones coming with GU #56: Icy Keep: Retribution. This one was designed by Carlos “Gninja” Mora with help from Cyndi “Xadrian” Johnson. From the Gninja: Which raid zones are of a comparable difficulty? The difficulty should be aimed at the same difficulty as Lair of the Dragon Queen or slightly tougher in the later areas. How many named mobs are there? There are ten normal encounters and one challenge mode encounter. However some encounters might have to be unlocked in order to gain access to them through...