Feldon
Game Update 56 next Tuesday will include a new scenario specifically for the PvP servers. Antonica and Commonlands will become home to Warfields, a scheduled PvP campaign with specific rewards. Here’s PvP developer Olihin‘s update notes: PvP WARFIELDS Antonica and Commonlands have once again become hotbeds of conflict! Will your lands be overrun or will your forces prevail against the siege? Warfields are Good vs. Evil faction based. Rewards will be Discord Tokens with a higher quantity to the winning team. The event will stagger between Antonica and 2 hours later in Commonlands and last for 30 minutes. The...
Game Updates & Maintenance
An interesting topic has popped up on the EQ2 Forums asking the question: Is there Raid Progression for Small Guilds? The Shadow Odyssey ended up offering many choices for Casual Raid Guilds. Sentinel’s Fate has not been quite so generous with such progression choices. Game Update 56 will add two raid zones, but both are intended for 24-person raids. We compare the expansions in today’s commentary.
Tired of getting a swift kick or a punch in the mouth from the surly and unwelcome Thexian and Dreadnaught goons occupying parts of Freeport? Did you know… Killing Thexian and Dreadnaught “guards” in Freeport does not affect your faction with Freeport? If you kill enough Thexians and Dreadnaughts (about 10 of each), they will grow afraid of you and STOP WITH THE BEATINGS ALREADY? Fun Facts from the EQ2 Forums
The Underfoot Depths from EQ2Players: Halas Reborn, scheduled to launch at the end of May, brings us two new raid zones. The first of which is the Underfoot Depths, accessed via The Hole. Brett “Timetravelling” Scheinert gave EQ2Players a brief interview about this new raid zone. Players have cleared all of Sentinel’s Fate’s normal-mode encounters and all but one of the challenge-mode encounters…just in time for us to add 20 more normal-mode encounters and eight more challenge-mode encounters (which practically doubles the raid content available at level 90). I am very excited at the chance for players to test...
Game Update 56 will contain minor tweaks to Betrayal and changing one’s Citizenship. Changing citizenship is being streamlined, as some cities require more busywork from players than others to switch between cities of the same alignment. Contacting one of the new Ambassadors in each city is your first step. No changes to the actual betrayal quests are being made (changing alignment ) are being as far as we can tell, but an Ambassador NPC is being added in every city who must be contacted prior to deliberating the Betrayal process. You can read more about these Betrayal changes which...
From EQ2Players: One of the exciting features coming with Halas Reborn is the revamp of the travel system. Salim “Silius” Grant has made traveling throughout Norrath smoother and took a few minutes to explain in detail some of the changes that adventurers will see.
Here are your hotfix notes for May 12, 2010: ITEMS Summoning Brace of the Wyrmkind now properly adds Molten Carnage IV to the caster’s pet. THE HOLE The following mobs will no longer attack you if you have faction points equal to or above -39,999 points with them. The faction point requirement should now be consistent with other standard mobs under the same faction. “an animated watcher” “a disheveled refugee” The “Caetaxian dominator” located on the fallen pillar bridge in the Old Paineel section of the zone. Killing “disheveled refugee” should now have an effect on your faction status...
Players were surprised when servers went down at midnight PST last night for a Hotfix. This hotfix is targeted at Performance issues which continue to dog EQ2. From the EQ2 Forums by Rothgar: Tonight’s hotfix introduced a few changes that have been on the test server for a few weeks. I’d like to hear your feedback to see if any of these performance issues have gotten better after tonight. First, we made a change to the zoning processes that should hopefully speed it up. In addition we’ve extended our logging in this area to help us better troubleshoot long...
This information was part of our Game Update 56 post on May 4th. However considering the importance of its content, we have reprinted it as a separate article and rewritten it for clarity. GU56 Travel Revamp Travel in Norrath has been substantially consolidated. Changes and bugfixes continue to be applied on Test, so this information may change before May 25th. Worldwide Travel Revamp Players may travel from and to nearly every zone in Norrath by using the Worldwide Globe system, which have consolidated all existing bells and gained many unexpected destinations. Flying carpets, boats, and airships are now entirely...
EQ2Players is highlighting another team member, this time Jeff Jonas, player artist for EverQuest II. My role on the EQII team is to create objects that our player characters use, wear, or ride. I am known as a “wearables” guy. A project like this needs thousands of items to make it fun and exciting. Wearables run the gamut from Barbarian helmets, to collector’s capes, and full vampire armor sets, to wieldables such as swords and staffs, to rideables like the hover discs I have created. Other wearables can be backpacks, or armbands. What’s your favourite thing that you’ve done...
The tireless Niami Denmother of EQ2Traders has turned in another great preview, this time New Halas.
Free Item Players logging into EQ2 in the days immediately following the launch of Game Update 56: Halas Reborn (specifically May 25 ~ 28) will receive a free item, a Frostpaw Kitten.
A new website has been added to EQ2Players with the skinny on Game Update 56: Halas Reborn, introducing the player city of Halas, as well as a new character starting area with level 1-20 content. Halas is essentially a neutral-good aligned city, as evil-aligned characters can visit and complete most of the same quests. Game Update 56 includes substantial features and changes: Halas Reborn — new player city with new housing options (2, 4, and 6 room houses) Frostfang Sea — new level 1~20 starting area leading to Halas The Underfoot Depths — A new x4 level 90 raid...
Raid Targets in Sentinel’s Fate continue to receive nips and tucks in their behavior and strategies. Today’s change to the 3 Sages fight is not without controversy. Check out the discussion thread on EQ2 Forums. Here are your Hotfix Notes for May 4th, 2010: THE PALACE OF ROEHN THEER 3 Sage Encounter (Challenge Mode)- If the incorrect character class (according to the Idolic Stone that sage possesses) keeps agro on that sage for more than 3 secs after that sage has lost it’s prismatic sphere, that character will be hit by a bolt of slaying. SANCTUM OF THE SCALEBORN...
The Halas Prelude event is now available on Live servers. Currently, this quest is only available from Guides (a sanctioned group of volunteer players), GMs, CMs, and other SOE staff. Stay tuned to open chat channels! It’s a brief quest, dealing with the rediscovery of Halas. The quest rewards 2 books. We’ll post a link to a writeup of the quest soon. How to Get the Quest From Domino: The Halas Prelude Event will initially be given out by Guides and SOE staff until shortly before the update launch. Although there are no guides on PvP and exchange servers,...
New Halas Livin’ We are following New Halas (both the level 1-20 starting content, and as a new player city) on Test, and player comments about both the newbie experience, and how Halas works as a full-fledged city. Living up to the expectations and nostalgia of EQ1 veterans was an impossible task, but there has been a raft-load of comments on the EQ2 forums (and presumably through /feedback) and the art team is making some much-appreciated changes. First impressions of New Halas have regarded the buildings (inside and out) as some of the most impressive and realistic in the...
Cronyn has jumped into the fray again with some further details about why the Isle of Refuge is being removed in GU56: Heya folks. I wanted to clear a couple of things up really fast, if I may. As I said, we’re not abandoning Freeport and Qeynos themselves. The existing content that is there will not be different with this change, and we are planning even more things for the cities going forward. Players with citizenship currently in either city will retain it – we’re not removing housing, guild halls, the suburbs, or the quests that exist there. They...
The notes for upcoming Game Update 56 included this notation: Many rare drops from the heroic Sentinel’s Fate Zones are now available by speaking to Kaliba Des’Sers in Moonfield Hamlet! Once Game Update 56 was patched onto the Test Server, we were provided screen shots of some of this loot: New Fabled Loot Vendor on Test What’s on the Menu? While a similar vendor was available during the Shadow Odyssey expansion, 150 void shards only gave you access to the most common Fabled drops from each zone (with the exception of the Mistmoore Battle Drums). So this time around,...
Dethdlr
On Tuesday, 27 April 2010, this tidbit made it into the update notes for test: Mounts will now be temporarily suspended while in combat. Basically, in outside zones, mounts would disapear as soon as you enter combat and re-appear a few seconds after combat ended. This had a general negative response on the official EQ2 Forums and led to speculation on how this would effect buffs. Gninja responded with some clarification on the matter: You would not lose any stats or anything you would have normally had your character will just no longer be visually mounted during combat the...
It seems we’ll be parting with two islands by May’s end. And while we’ll still be able to catch John Locke, Jack, Hurley, Sawyer, and Kate in syndication, the Qeynos and Freeport starting islands seem destined for a more permanent fate. We are providing continuing (hopefully not excessive) coverage of the impending removal of the EQ2 starting islands. Share Your Story If you’d like to share your story of your experiences either on the Outpost of the Overlord, Queen’s Colony, or on the original Isle of Refuge, shoot us an e-mail through the Contact Us page, or post a...
There seems to be some confusion in the In Testing Feedback thread regarding the removal of Qeynos and Freeport as starting choices. I stand by the original article I posted, but some clarification is worth mentioning. Qeynos and Freeport Going Away? Qeynos and Freeport are not being removed as cities. Furthermore to my knowledge, none of the level 6-20 quests in these city zones and surrounding suburbs are going away. Although further testing on the Test Server will be needed to confirm this. Players wishing to experience the Qeynos and Freeport level 6-20 content would need to create a...
In February, former EQ2 Senior Producer Alan “Brenlo” Crosby created a thread “What is the Golden Path?” It included this provocative passage: The golden path is the first step in a larger revamp of our new player experience. We took a look at the starting areas, other than Qeynos and Freeport as we plan to move away from those, and reworked content so that it had a better flow. We wanted the quests in Darklight, Timorous and Greater Fay, to give you a better progression path. When asked in the EQ2 ZAM Dev Chat to clarify this position, Brenlo...
Today’s hotfix: ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENTS Fiery Blast and Rhythmic Overture should no longer apply extra damage if cast by multiple people at the same time. ITEMS Many items that had nude appearances have been corrected. PERAH’CELSIS’ ABOMINABLE LABORATORY Arkatanthis’ benthic warlord adds will try and pick a more balanced group of 3 players when they spawn during the challenge mode encounter. The nude appearance items were caused by a bug that slipped in last week which caused female characters to appear to wear nothing but pasties in the chest area. (May want to exercise discretion when viewing that thread since...
Leading up to the launch of Game Update 56, there will be a prelude quest “A Vision of Valor” with a storyline leading to the rediscovery of New Halas. When this quest goes live mid-May, before the launch of Game Update 56, you’ll be able to pick it up in one of the home cities. From Domino on the EQ2 Forums: You will find NPCs in North Qeynos (at the temple), West Freeport (near the inn), Neriak (by the entrance), Kelethin (near Bayden Cauldthorn), and Gorowyn (at the dock) have a prelude quest to offer. As this content is...
Lessing (known on EQ2Flames as mafoe) has taken screen snapshots of the FABLED loot offered by the new Vendor being added in Game Update 56. Here are links to these screen snapshots: http://lh3.ggpht.com/_XvWh6xG4qE0/S9LAenf-rcI/AAAAAAAAAKQ/2KuKWlshkgY/EQ2_000868.jpg http://lh6.ggpht.com/_XvWh6xG4qE0/S9LAe1IsMHI/AAAAAAAAAKU/Ttdtjvu6500/EQ2_000869.jpg http://lh3.ggpht.com/_XvWh6xG4qE0/S9LAfTEriRI/AAAAAAAAAKY/MaEJl-oV8RM/EQ2_000870.jpg http://lh3.ggpht.com/_XvWh6xG4qE0/S9LAfsymb7I/AAAAAAAAAKc/HmsbcyoJvm0/EQ2_000871.jpg http://lh4.ggpht.com/_XvWh6xG4qE0/S9LAgXpQbpI/AAAAAAAAAKg/0g0DOHH5GSk/EQ2_000872.jpg