Feldon
EQ2Wire got an invitation to go on a tour of the Sentinel’s Fate Beta with the lovely Christine “Kiara” Renzetti, EQII Community Manager, last month and we’re now able to post some screens and details of that tour. We were able to check out the hub city of Paineel, the sprawling open dungeon the Hole, the Vasty Deep Conservatory, and the Erudin Library. I believe the most stunning aspect and lasting appeal of Sentinel’s Fate will be the artwork. The Shadow Odyssey artwork was not my favorite. I found the “void” look of purples, greys, and sharp edges just...
Game Updates & Maintenance
While we don’t have all the details on what perks will be available to Guilds reaching the new level 90 cap, we know that Game Update #55 will add 2 new Guild Hall Amenities. The first is pretty straightforward. It’s a Wizard Portal NPC with all the destinations available from the Ulteran Spires. It does not include the Kingdom of Sky zones of Tenebrous Tangle, Barren Sky, or Bonemire: Realm of Dawn. You’ll still need that amenity if your guildies are making regular use of these zones. The second new Guild Hall Amenity is the Guild Standard Bearer. If...
EQ2Wire is providing continuing coverage of Game Update #55 (now on Test) and the Sentinel’s Fate expansion. News is coming hot and fast now, so we’ve improved how news items are labeled and have added a News Ticker at the top of the site. Don’t forget the UStream Sentinel’s Fate Beta Tour which will be led by Alan “Brenlo” Crosby. This is tomorrow Friday at 4PM PDT. We are currently working on articles about the new Adornments, Guild Amenities, Leveling Tweaks, and a Zone List for the expansion.
And just to bring out tour of the UI improvements in Game Update #55 full circle, the lowly Zone Timers (Lockouts) window has been the bane of many a raid leader, as they remind players over and over to reset their group/raid persistent zone timers. While I didn’t see a /resetallzones command (there might be one, I’m just not aware of it), the new Filter function at the bottom of the Zone Timers window should help considerably at raid time.
Many of us have been faced with the prospect of trying to find a spell or combat art out of our Knowledge book, only to be frustrated by a wall of all our spells from levels 1-80. This will only get more difficult when another tier of spells is added with the expansion. Fortunately, the Knowledge book has gotten a great new Filter feature that lets you choose to only show the highest level version of each spell you have. This doesn’t just mean all the spells from 71-80. Some classes have abilities which do not get updated beyond...
You’ve probably already seen screenshots of the Updated Quest Window. We saw it way back in November when Brenlo posted it as a twitter picture. It’s great to finally see it coming to the live game. If you’ve ever been frustrated with having to constantly open the Quest Journal and flip through your quests to see what steps you need on all the quests you are working on in a certain area, you will be relieved to see the multi-quest tracking feature of the new Journal. Now, you determine what quests appear in your Quest Helper floating window by...
Consolidating Stats Sentinel’s Fate consolidates many separate stats in an effort to simplify itemization. Developers have been hounded on the EQ2 forums for “ignoring” healers, hybrid classes which need both spell and melee abilities, etc. in designing gear. Stat Consolidation is a huge step in making a smaller set of gear usable by a larger player population. Here is the list of changes: Crit = Damage Spell Crit, Melee Crit, Range Crit, Heal Crit Crit Bonus = Spell Crit Bonus, Melee Crit Bonus, Range Crit Bonus Double Attack = Double Attack, Ranged Double Attack Potency = Base Spell Damage,...
I’ve gotten a lot of questions about what changes we’ll be seeing to Transmuting come February 16th. So I thought it was worth a rehash as Transmuting is changing quite a bit. The Way It Was Transmuting started out as a secondary tradeskill. It granted the ability to not only break down unwanted Treasured, Legendary, Mastercrafted, and Fabled gear, but also make certain adornments. But the drawbacks have been many. Transmuting could only be skilled up to 100 by breaking down items. Reaching 400 skill could only be achieved by crafting (at great expense) hundreds of worthless low level...
Everything you know about the main Character Stats is about to change. For the past 5 years, in addition to the primary stats that each class uses: Predators have focused on STR to do melee and ranged damage and INT to increase poison damage. Druids have focused on STR to do more melee damage. Crusaders have focused on INT for spell damage and WIS for healing. These are just the most obvious examples, but all 24 classes had some unique benefits from the different Stats. Starting with Sentinel’s Fate, each class now benefits significantly from just ONE statistic, even...
From the EQ2 Forums: Crushbone, Befallen, and Permafrost will be brought down Friday morning for some upgrades to address the lag issues. The estimated downtime is four hours. We’ll be bringing down the servers at 6am PST and will update this thread with details as needed. Rothgar has been communicating what steps the server team have been taking with regards to this issue. You may be interested in some of those details he’s posted, after the jump.
The EQ2 Test Server has just been updated with most of Game Update 55. GU55 will be the free content available to all EQ2 players on February 16th, to coincide with the release of the expansion. The biggest part of GU55 (with the loss of New Halas, Shaders 3, and the TS Revamp) are Battlegrounds. Players are being asked to run dungeons, etc. to see what effect combat changes may have had. Rothgar @ EQ2 Forums
Last week, we reported our suspicions about New Halas being delayed, but we now have official confirmation. New Halas will be released as a free content update in Game Update 56. This would likely be in May based on the current GU release cycle. Here is Brenlo‘s official announcement: Halas is indeed delayed until GU 56. We (read I) were a bit ambitious in our grand plans for the year and despite my constant whipping, we could not squeeze in everything we had on the agenda. Thus we are taking our time to get it right and get it...
Last month, the first ever City Festival camped outside the Kelethin gates and provided a selection of both local and traveling rewards, house items, and temporary costumes (I want that Gi as a permanent item!!). When it pulled up stakes, we had no idea where it would end up next. Early this morning we caught wind of the news that the traveling City Festival had arrived in Gorowyn. The theme for Gorowyn seems to be all things in a deep crimson. Here’s a sneak of what you can purchase with City Tokens for the next week, before the event...
While we’re speculating, Sigrdrifa has put together a writeup of what we know about New Halas so far. It’s a nice preview while we wait for more official news about this level 1-20 starting zone which we are now expecting in Game Update 56 along with Shaders 3.0. It should be an interesting May. New Halas Demystification on EQ2Forums
For those of you lucky (or unlucky 😉 ) enough to be raiding MMB, the zone is currently difficult or impossible to complete due to the January 28th hotfix. More information about this issue can be found in this EQ2 Forums thread.
We’re now less than 3 weeks from the release of Sentinel’s Fate. There has been no sign of Halas on Test. We’ve already been told that Halas is important to SOE, that they want it to be a starting zone to win new players. And I just don’t see them adding a starting zone with 20 levels of content with less than 2 weeks of testing. So at this point, EQ2Wire is now ready to call Halas for for Game Update 56 a few months after the Sentinel’s Fate expansion. This is purely speculation on our part until there’s...
Tomorrow’s Hotfix will include some changes targeted at server performance/lag. These changes will affect the number of spells and combat arts which can be linked together in 1 macro. We are trying to determine the maximum number of spells or combat arts which it will be possible to put on a single macro. Thursday, January 28th Hotfix GENERAL Ability commands such as “useability” are now being throttled in an effort to cut down on server lag. This means that “mega-macros” that attempt to cast many spells will no longer work as expected. Housing zones and persistent instances will now...
As we now know, EQ2 will be getting Battlegrounds in Game Update 55 in February to coincide with the release of the Sentinel’s Fate expansion. If you are wanting a closer look at the Maps of the 3 Battlegrounds zones, look no further than this EQ2Players writeup. Battlegrounds are NOT intended as “end-game” or high-level only content. Although at launch they will be limited to level 80-90, there will be continuing effort to make Battlegrounds available to lower levels, complete with unique armor awards for these level ranges. Kiara posted about it here.
When Commission crafting was altered in March 2009 to prevent crafters from using their own Void Shards and other NO TRADE/HEIRLOOM materials for other players, it closed the book for several crafters on this highly profitable market. However it was quickly discovered that a crafter could still use their own shards if the customer had at least the requisite number of shards in their own inventory to make the item. This was accomplished by swapping out ingredients in the Commission Materials window. Today’s Hotfix marks the closure of this exploit: Patch Notes January / 26 / 2010 GENERAL You...
Alan “Brenlo” Crosby has announced some tweaks to the Experience Curve in EQ2 that went live today (January 20th, 2010): Hey folks, I wanted to pass along some news that you will see on the live servers tomorrow. We have adjusted the experience curve in EQII. We have done so for a number of reasons; 1. It really wasn’t a curve before, more peaks and valleys. 2. Some levels had some very crazy and erratic peaks while others were far too fast. 3. We needed to adjust the curve overall for the addition of 80 to 90. What will...
Today’s hotfix notes bring news that your player appearances (including illusions) can now be set in-game using a Magic Mirror type tool. Update Notes from EQ2 Forums: ITEMS Appearance customization items have been changed! This affects these items: – Shave and a Cut, Makeover (combined into the same item) – Nalana’s All-Natural Cosmetic Balsam When used, these items now open a window that allows you to customize your appearance in-game instead of returning to the character select screen. In addition, Shave and a Cut and Nalana’s All-Natural Cosmetic Balsam now affect your current illusion if it is that of...
Hotfix Notes for December 15: ACHIEVEMENTS The Butcherblock Bloodhound achievement will now acknowledge players that had previously completed the Butcherblock quests: “Silent Beckon”, “A Dim Light”, “For the Dogs”, “A Mind Of My Own”, “Sarnak Sympathizer: Part 2”, “Dark Tides”, “Picking up the Pieces”, “Ain’t No Monkey Business”, “Simple Grunt Work”, “When You Mess With An Angry Dwarf” and “Solid Foundation”. QUESTS The intended pages of “Hrath’s Journal” are now readable while on the quest “Hadden’s Earring”. Learning the Path quest should now update correctly when completing a PVP writ. Sinking Sands quests should now scale to the difficulty...
The servers are coming back up after scheduled maintenance, patching in Frostfell, and more importantly, fixing some bugs introduced by Game Update 54: GENERAL You can no longer summon players to the tutorial islands with Call of the Veteran. Captain Varlos in the Queen’s Colony and Outpost of the Overlord will no longer offer safe passage to the opposing city to you if you should not be there! The Six Year Veteran rewards are now no-value. Most Wanted Posters are no longer affected by spell reuse buffs. Just FYI, the main 2 reasons people want to travel to the...
The servers are coming down in a few minutes for what will be a 9 hour downtime for some server maintenance, a hotfix to hopefully fix the multitude of bugs introduced with Game Update 54, and of course to patch in Frostfell!! EQ2Players Downtime Announcement Servers will be back up at 10am PST or 1pm EST.
It’s going to be a busy week for Norrathians. Will of a Tyrant (Game Update 54) Weduesday, December 9 PRELUDE EVENT Freeport has been rocked by the sudden destruction of Dethknell Citadel. What was once an ever-present reminder of The Overlord’s power and will floating above the city has collapsed, and the tenuous peace held within the city by the watchful and ruthless Overlord has been obliterated. Something has obviously befallen Lucan D’Lere, the Overlord of Freeport! Start your investigation into these mysterious events in West Freeport by speaking with Sir Tallen Yevix. The destruction and chaos in Freeport...