Feldon
Gninja wanted to get the word out that the quest Tending to Toxxicology will be getting a revamp which will result in quest progress being reset by anyone still on the quest. If you are on this quest, get it completed before Game Update 56 hits (late May). Or you can just wait until the change when the quest requirements will be reset to resolve the bugs people have been facing in trying to complete it. We are aware of the issues with the quest in Sundered Frontier “Tending to Toxxicology” becoming gated if someone summons Sherra prior to...
Grouping
It turns out yesterday’s news on changes to the Training Dummies guild hall amenity was just the beginning. Xelgad has updated us with news that one of the choices on the menu when summoning a Training Dummy (in addition to Solo, as well as Heroic and Epic which are new to GU56) will be an Encounter: We’ve added a new set of dummies for GU56 that come as a linked encounter of a total of eight heroic training dummies. Enjoy! This should provide many more options for players wanting to work on what order they cast spells and/or combat...
In addition to the bigger content additions, Game Updates always include smaller, but no less desirable changes and tweaks. Research Assistants Learn to Multitask UPDATE: Oops! Despite appearing in the headline, this item somehow got left out! UPDATE #2: This feature is in the April 20, 2010 Hotfix. Bunji, member of the EQ2 QA Team, has posted this info on the EQ2 In Testing Feedback forums: With the new Test server build, each character on an account can research a spell at the same time (this should not affect existing research). Research times are also being tweaked (lowered). Floating...
Here are your hotfix notes for today, April 13th, including adjustments to group and raid zones, as well as spell resists in PvP combat. After the jump:
Over a year ago, the EQ2 Guild window gained a new column — Guild Points. This often misunderstood feature allows your guild leader and management to award points for anything they (or the guild) decides to track. Some guilds award players who earn a certain amount of status, help level the guild, assist other players, or any number of ‘gold star’ type measurements of players. Of course, some guilds don’t use Guild Points at all. DKP in-game or website? Raid Guilds have the unique challenge of divvying up the limited amount of Loot acquired each night to 24 (or...
Dethdlr
Been saving up your T8 shards for armor? Soon you’ll need less than you do today. Frizznik writes on the EQ2 Forums: Tier 1 will cost the same amount of shards as it did before (38 shards crafter-made, 44 shards vendor-bought) Tier 2 will cost the same amount of shards as it did before (112 shards crafter-made, 126 shards vendor-bought). It will also cost around 5 platinum. It will no longer require the tier 1 armor piece. Tier 3 will cost the raid dropped mold, the same void shards it did before, and around 9 platinum. You will no...
Here are your update notes for March 30, 2010, after the jump:
The previous Thursday and Tuesday hotfixes have brought some itemization changes, specifically with the increase in the number of items holding Red Adornment slots, the introduction of Yellow Adornments for heroic gear, and the addition of Resists to Legendary and Fabled gear (previously, players were expected to run around with 2-3 pieces of Mastercrafted jewelry). Now, we are starting to see the second prong of these changes, intended to fix the itemization mess that Sentinel’s Fate launched with. Frizznik brings us: Thanks for your patience with us as we look at items, spells, and combat arts. We are reading...
Thursday night saw the first post-expansion developer chat of 2010. Hosted by ZAM, this chat had previously been scheduled for March 4th, but was postponed to March 18th as developers focused on issues with Battlegrounds. You would have assumed, with the key issues of Battlegrounds and Itemization consuming a great deal of development effort in the month since Sentinel’s Fate launched, AND the 2 week postponement in the EQ2 Developer Chat, that Calthine at ZAM would have received an avalanche of hardball questions. Instead, we saw just a few of these critical issues raised, with the rest running the...
Your Hotfix notes for March 18th include tweaks to Tier 3 (raid armor). NOTE: Make sure your EQ2 client patches before trying to log into EQ2. Due to an oversight, EQ2 servers are allowing out-of-date clients to login, resulting in bugs with the Broker, Group window, etc. After the jump…
Today brings the first part of a two part story about how we got to the Itemization situation we are in now. Part history lesson, part recap. Part 2 will try to sort out the Sentinel’s Fate Itemization picture as we have it so far. I assure you that Part 2 will be MUCH shorter. 🙂 After the posting of Part 2, we will be posting a survey to get your feedback on these long-form articles.
Today’s Hotfix notes for March 16th, 2010. Yellow Adornments also made it in, but they’re not in the notes… GENERALMost of the guards in Freeport, Qeynos and Kelethin have had their levels reduced to what they had previously. Exceptions to this include palace guards and patrolling knights. ITEMS All jewelry from the Vigilant: Final Destruction (x2) has had resists added. Summoning the mount from the Ykeshan Warbear whistle will now work if you are level 80 in either adventuring or tradeskilling. The valuable, Onayan staff of the waves, should now be on the Vasty Deep collection tables. QUESTS The...
EQ2 servers will come down for a Hotfix on Thursday, March 11th, 2010. This hotfix takes place at 6am PST for U.S. servers and 5am GMT on March 12th for Runnyeye and Splitpaw. After the Hotfix notes, you’ll find some good news about the Guard levels in Qeynos, Freeport, and Kelethin.
If you’ve been thinking that the pieces of the Sentinel’s Fate itemization puzzle just have not fit well together, you are not alone. While we have not spent a lot of time covering itemization in SF, it is because things have continued to be in such a state of flux during, and after the Beta. The smooth progression of TSO gear was seemingly replaced by a scattershot approach, with some of the x2 raid items being the best in the game, the x4 Hard Mode gear being only 1-2% better than the x2 Easy Mode gear, and Battlegrounds gear...
Posted by Kiara: We’ll be having our usual Tuesday hotfix starting at 6am for the US servers and at 9pm (5am GMT Wednesday March 10) for Runnyeye and Splitpaw.The downtime will be the usual hour or so. and your March 9 Hotfix Notes after the jump…
Tad Ehrlich is a lead artist on the EQ2 Development team. He was a major part of the creation of the zone art for the beautiful Vasty Deep zones. Some excerpts: How did you get started in the industry? I began in comic books and worked as a colorist for Wildstorm, Jim Lee’s comic book company. I was very fortunate to land in an industry that I was extremely passionate about and had amazing people to learn from. My experience there led to me starting as a texture artist at Midway. The rest is history! What are some of...
According to player reports, it seems an unintended consequence of today’s patch is that Marks of Manaar have disappeared from loot tables of enemies in various Sentinel’s Fate dungeons. We’ll update you as we know more. UPDATE: It appears that all Quest Drops off of mobs may now be broken. More info as we have it.
So today marks the release of the Digital Download in North America and Canada. For those unfortunate souls who couldn’t get their hands on a retail copy, your expansion begins today. Do you really miss anything by being a week late? Well, there are those server discoveries (which EQ2Players isn’t tracking properly). And there’s the chance of making a lot of plat being first to sell shinies, tradeskilled materials, rare items, etc. We have received player reports but have not yet empirically confirmed ourselves that there may have been some monkeying around with how combat XP is converted to...
You’ll remember that one of the biggest complaints about the Rise of Kunark expansion is that combat XP was so minimal that hours spent in a dungeon barely budged the adventure level meter. The only means to level was to Solo. In an ironic twist, players are reporting that it is not possible to level from 80 to 90 entirely by soloing in Sentinel’s Fate. At level 86 or 87 with mastercrafted or T1/T2 gear, the first wing of the Hole should be no problem for 2-3 casual players. And you’ll earn enough XP to reach 90 in just...
With every expansion, a few of the guards in Qeynos and Freeport, especially the “stronghold” or most-defended area of each city, in this case North Qeynos and East Freeport, are dinged to a level that would make them perilous to invaders of the opposing alignment. So imagine our surprise when we logged in after Game Update 55 (coinciding with Sentinel’s Fate) and found that every man, woman, and child guarding the cities of Qeynos and Freeport, in every area of the city, all magically dinged level 95. These guards are packing heat!
It’s 4 hours since the launch of Sentinel’s Fate, and we are already hearing widespread reports of players who have reached level 85, 87, and even some level 90 characters. So there you have it, no longer is questing a required way to level. Unfortunately I wonder how many players will completely skip the contested version of The Hole with as easy as it is to level. I really hoped we’d see a return to form of Kingdom of Sky with people leveling via a combination of dungeon crawls, heroic quests, etc. rather than just pressing the Easy button...
Bonus XP Weekend! Kiara brings us news that this will be a Bonus XP Weekend!! All forms of experience (Achievement, Adventure, and Tradeskill) will receive a 30% bonus from Friday Feb 12th @ 3pm PST (6pm EST) until Monday Feb 15th @ 11:59pm PST (Feb 16 @ 2:59am EST) when the servers will be brought down to patch the Sentinel’s Fate expansion as well as Game Update 55. Retail Boxes Some players have reported seeing Sentinel’s Fate regular and Collector’s Edition boxes in retail stores. We’re glad to see this as it will make it easier for some players...
Once everyone logs back into EverQuest II with the launch of Sentinel’s Fate and Game Update 55, you will face many choices. Do you reset your AAs and spend them differently to take advantage of the new endline abilities of my Class and Subclass Trees? We already know that your Kingdom of Sky Class page will be reset on your first login, because points are spent differently on it. Do you start solo questing from level 80-90? Don’t forget to move your AA slider back from 100%! You cannot spend more than 200 AAs until you reach level 81....
I’m sure a lot of you are wondering. Where’s the good stuff? Where’s the shard gear? Where’s the raid gear? Where’s the Battlegrounds gear? Where’s the detailed analysis of class changes, the new AAs, racial traits, etc.? The meat and potatoes of groupers and raiders that my readers have come to expect from EQ2Wire? Frankly, I’d like to know too. 🙂 However even at this late date, all of these items are in such a state of flux on Beta, that it seems to document ANYTHING at this point would be foolhardy. Beta veterans assure me that there’s plenty...
Mythicals present a significant challenge to EQ2 developers trying to create desirable weapons for players at level 90. Some of the Mythical effects are uniquely powerful and no player would even consider replacing them without getting the same effect with another weapon. For this reason, it was announced at Fan Faire that mythicals would become either an equippable charm, or a clickable item. Already, in Beta, players have discovered that, when equipped, Mythicals would not modify level 81-90 spells (eg. Chimes of Blades III, etc.). The Truth Comes Out Frizznik has posted in the Beta forums that owners of...