Feldon
Looks like the contested Kael Drakkel group dungeon just got some more reasons for people to go back! From Kander on the EQ2 Forums: Due to the hotfix schedule, we should have everything listed in by Tuesday March 15th. The stuff in bold is in now and the rest will be in next Tuesday. PoI Quests have been made repeatable once a day (6 quests) and grant faction and shards Trash drops, including rare fabled drops are being added to the zone tables. Bosses now have a chance to drop shards. Trash now has a chance to drop shards....
Grouping
When Velious was announced, lots of folks asked for Faction to matter. Wish granted! 🙂 Faction must be acquired with the Othmir, Snowfang Gnolls, Thurgadin, and Ry’Gorr to buy their adornments (unique to each faction) and gear, and it can be rather slow-going! The Othmir, Snowfang Gnolls, and Ry’Gorr all have daily (18 hour repeatable) quests to kill overland mobs and gain faction. Crabs for the Othmir quests occasionally drop an item which provides an additional faction boost. Alas, Thurgadin faction must be gained by running dungeons. A variety of rewards become available once faction milestones of 10,000, 20,000,...
Two weeks after the release of Destiny of Velious we see a rather hefty patch that tackles many of the issues we’ve seen on the EQ2 Forums with dungeon and quest progression. After the jump, your March 8, 2011 Update Notes…
Players have been surprised by a change in Thursday’s Game Update affecting the Critical Mitigation of Fighter armor received from Public Quests. As we know, both Public Quests award armor upgrades for hands (gloves) and legs. Storm Gorge PQ’s also award armor for head and feet (boots), while Ring War PQs award armor for shoulders and wrists. There are also rare drops from these events, including Fabled chest pieces and Weapons. During Beta, Othmir solo quest givers offered a full set of armor which was essentially Sentinel’s Fate Tier 1 raid armor minus adornment slots. After Beta concluded, this...
Although there are many things we can do on our end to reduce poor performance when playing EQ2, Public Quests have really pushed things to the limit both on the client and AND the server end. Especially in Storm Gorge which has some 60 combatants in the highest difficulty setting. In the past, there have been some tit-for-tat arguments about people’s slow computers vs. issues on the EQ2 servers themselves. While there is a lot players can do to reduce graphics performance aka “client lag”, it is up to the EQ2 devs to tackle any issues on the SOE...
Kwill
The rewards from public quests have been a hot topic on the community forums lately, with a few players wondering if just healing or playing a support role results in a lesser chest than all out DPS.  As the rumor that only good dps’ers would get the best loot swept the community, some support classes have resorted to dealing out pure dps and not healing, which doesn’t make for a very successful raid. We may yet hear from the Devs on this issue, but until then, the only information available is from the core design of public quests. Our understanding of...
As you may know, in Destiny of Velious, certain dungeons reduce your Critical Chance by a fixed amount. You thus need to go over 100% just to reach 100% critical chance. Thanks to Buffrat for collecting this information and posting it on EQ2Flames. You need the following crit chance in velious to crit 100%: Estimated Crit Numbers: Heroic Tower of Frozen Shadow (ToFS) Zones – 150% Crit Heroic Kraytoc Zones – 150% Crit Heroic Kael Drakkel (KD) Zones – 200% Crit
Great news if you have been running Public Quests and been rather puzzled at Legendary (or Fabled) gear with Yellow adornment slots, yet receiving Red adornments (which only go on Raid gear). Now, you will get a select window/choice for Yellow or Red, and it’s based on archetype. After the jump, your update notes for March 4, 2011:
Dethdlr
Intro With the release of Destiny of Velious, the starting instances seem to be a bit tougher and the encounters require a bit of strategy to take them down. This can make it a bit rough on the casual players/guilds. I previously wrote an article on how to figure out an encounter that includes lots of tips on figuring out a strategy for a given MOB. However, the best strategy in the world isn’t going to work if your group setup is awful. There are 24 classes in EQ2 but only 6 slots in a group. How do you...
Today’s Update Notes fix a variety of quest and zone issues, as well as some issues with Public Quests, not to mention a fix for the quest Ominous Hints and the Twins in Thurgadin. The detailed Update Notes for March 3, 2011 after the jump…
We heard about this in Beta, but Windslasher intends to add more Public Quests in future updates, possibly even to older zones. From the EQ2 Forums: The Eastern Wastes public quests were pulled from the expansion for use in game updates. I can’t reveal what I’ve created for Pit of the Awakened yet. Sorry! Also, Gninja has heard our pleas and will be adding zone portals near the Public Quests allowing players to join each other in the same zone for PQs, as well as our personal preference: spreading out into different instances of the Great Divide. I will...
Kael Drakkel is making Contested Dungeons in EQ2 sexy again. With 15 names, and the largest zone ever added to EQ2 (it’s larger than Solusek’s Eye), there is a lot to live up to here. The zone is intended to be difficult, with loot somewhere between the hardest Velious instances and beginning raids. It’s a new way of approaching contested dungeons compared to The Hole, Karnor’s Castle, Sebilis, and Chardok which all struggled to keep our attention after a few weeks. Players have been looking for an old school dungeon crawl and Kael Drakkel seems to deliver. It shows...
It’s one week since the launch of Destiny of Velious and there are always bugs and issues that make it through from the Beta. Today’s update tackles many of them. With today’s update, many of these issues are fixed. Tradeskillers can now equip their Boreal or Frost Gryphon as a flying mount at level 85 tradeskill. Freebloods who have completed their Cloud of Bats quests can now use it. And the Collector’s Edition (still available as a $25 upgrade today until 10am PST [18:00 GMT] ) Stormfeather Brood Guardian is now usable by 85 tradeskill and 85 adventurer. The...
Tomorrow marks a week that Destiny of Velious has been live. I’ve had time to run through the Icy Fingers quest series on three characters, get my flying mount, check out Thurgadin, and even run through the first quest area in the Eastern Wastes. I’ve also poked my head into the Tower of Frozen Shadows: Shadowed Corridors. I’ve learned a few things during this time that I’d like to pass on. This is mainly meant for the non-raiding portion of our audience since the raiders most likely know all of this information already or have the level of gear...
A syndrome that I think many people who write about MMOs experience is that find ourselves actually PLAYING the game less and less. I’m certainly guilty of this myself. We get interested in a game, start writing about it based on our experience, and next thing you know we aren’t catching groups or raids anymore. So with Velious I made a commitment to get back in the game. So one of my first experiences has been getting into Public Quests, which spawned the article yesterday. The concept certainly makes for an interesting type of content, one that was popular...
Public Quests provide different kinds of rewards than we’ve seen in the past. Right now there are 2 Public Quests: Storm Gorge which is Southeast of Thurgadin and the Ring War which is Northeast of Thurgadin. There are plans to add several more Public Quests as we heard about in Beta (possibly the Sleeper!).
The Tower of Frozen Shadow presents a unique, but familiar approach to dungeon progression. Although the seven (or is it eight?!?) floors of the Tower of Frozen Shadow are split up into 3 group instanced dungeons (Shadowed Corridors, Umbral Halls, and Haunt of Syl’Tor), there are quests that span all three. Completion of those quests is necessary to unlock different floors in the Tower. UPDATE: Added quotes from Gninja.
From Windslasher: I just got done checking this out and reproduced the bug. It’s not server lag or bad pathing, and doesn’t have anything to do with flying. A small number of spawns that were set up in a certain way have simply stopped working. The worst case of this is the entry room for Obelisk of Ahkzul, but there are other affected creatures as well. Thanks for reporting this! It will be fixed ASAP.
If you have been abusing milking enjoying the Refer-a-Friend 300% XP bonus for its high speed leveling (and thus AA earning) goodness, especially by parking a level 1 trial account character at the zone-in, well, I’m afraid that has finally come to an end. From Rich Waters 0n the EQ2 forums: The Recruit-a-friend program is a great way for you to bring your friends into EverQuest II and help them level up a bit faster by playing together. When you group with a character you’ve recruited, you both gain a hefty 200% experience bonus. Unfortunately, many people were recruiting...
Coinciding with each Expansion, there has traditionally been a Game Update. There have been numerous features which are available whether you’ve purchased the expansion or not. Today, we look closer into some of the features that will likely (but which we can certainly not guarantee) be available on Tuesday to all players. It is POSSIBLE that some of these items may end up being flagged Velious-only, so this is our best guess at this point… Guild Hall Tapestries with Guild Heraldry File this under things we heard about since the Fan Faire that launched EQ2Wire where Guild Halls were...
This is PART TWO of our guide to Destiny of Velious adornments and covers Yellow or “Heroic” adornments designated for Grouping SORTED BY SLOT. Yellow (Group) Adornments are LEGENDARY, either level 80 or 90, and cost 5 Primal Velium Shards and 5 plat and 4 gold. Yellow Adornments are available for 11 slots: Head Chest Gloves Boots Shoulders Forearms Legs Primary/Secondary/Ranged Charm There are solo, repeatable, and dungeon-based quests to earn faction with the Othmir, Snowfang Gnolls, Ry’Gorr, and Thurgadin. UPDATE: This information was updated on March 8, 2011. Changes from Beta to live are reflected, as well as...
This is PART ONE of our guide to Destiny of Velious adornments and covers Yellow or “Heroic” adornments designated for Grouping SORTED BY FACTION. There are four major factions offering Adornments, Armor, Jewelry, Weapons, and House Items in Destiny of Velious: The Othmir of Velious Snowfang Gnolls Clan Ry’Gorr The City of Thurgadin There are solo, repeatable, and dungeon-based quests to earn faction with the Othmir, Snowfang Gnolls, Ry’Gorr, and Thurgadin. Yellow Adornments are LEGENDARY, level 80 or 90, and cost 5 Primal Velium Shards and 5 plat and 4 gold. UPDATE: This information was updated on March 8,...
Destiny of Velious introduces Public Quests. These are interactive battles between NPCs that players can join in and receive a variety of rewards. Drawing inspiration from Warhammer (and possibly Rift, although we don’t know the creative timeline here), these are the opposite of Contested content because everyone who participates receives a reward. If your gear is really limited, then you can even click on NPCs and coordinate fighting with them and use their abilities instead. All those present and participating in the battle gain access to a Loot Chest which can contain a piece of armor commeasurate with the...
In-Game Calendar If you have longed to be able to organize Guild Events into an in-game Calendar, post a Raid Schedule, or get a reminder on which City will be visited next by the roving City Festival, you’ll be pleased to see the addition of a Calendar in Game Update 59. The calendar will be populated with Live Events, possibly Server Events posted by Community Managers, and also your Guild leadership will have the ability to add events (it’s gained a new permission under Guild Ranks). Ready Check! From the Update Notes: Raid Leaders can now initiate a ready-check...
Big changes to Mechanics and Itemization have coincided with the last 2 expansions and Destiny of Velious is no exception. Today we delve into changes to: Procs (Item Effects) Adornments Critical Chance Critical Avoidance Primary Stats (Stamina, Intelligence, Agility, Wisdom, and Strength) Health Power Melee Range Multiattack Ability Mod