Feldon
While we’ve heard indirectly from Silius that work on existing items from level 20-80 was being done, SmokeJumper has an official quote for us: We have a full itemization plan in place now and we’ll be unveiling much of it at Fan Faire. I’ll tell you this much though. We’re going to itemize *all* of the level 20-80 items by GU 61. When asked if this includes raid Fabled items from levels 40-80: “All” includes Raid items. We’ve already been informed that crafted gear especially Mastercrafted gear from level 22-77 are being tweaked to have the right stats for...
Itemization
Today brings a substantial update with lots of fixes, tweaks, as well as the much-lauded introduction of Leaper and Glider mounts to EQ2 at levels 30 and 60. In a perplexing move, Ground, Leaper, and Glider mounts will all travel on the ground at speeds of up to 150%, making them as fast as any of the current Flying mounts, only lacking the differentiating ability of flight. All servers will come down for an update at 7am PDT (3pm BST / 4pm CET) on Friday, June 24, 2011. U.S. servers are expected to be down for one hour. International...
It seems the only differentiation we have in gear now is Adornments, so those Adornments ought to work smoothly. Well, they didn’t. Many proc effects were getting resisted or weren’t able to be stacked. Fortunately, we have good news from Xelgad after the jump…
Players who have explored the depths of Velious already know that crafters have a bigger role to play this expansion than in many years. In addition to saving players time and money, in Destiny of Velious, tradeskillers are integral to transforming raw materials looted in cellars, caves, and other dark places into the shiny new armament that players actually want. Although most of this information has been posted on other websites, it hasn’t all been available in a single organized article, so that’s what I’ve set out to do here. We cover the biggest purveyors of armor and weapons...
From Silius on the EQ2 Forums: Hey everyone, I just wanted to let all of you know that in the next few weeks I will be pushing tradeskilled items to test with updated stats. This push should make all the current crafted items relevant. Their new growth is derived from the growth established in Velious. This means they will all be modified to give appropriate stats based on the new mechanics of attributes and other stats. I will need some help from all of you when we push this to test so I can make sure that I have...
Today’s update addresses numerous complaints about the difficulty of the Drunder heroic and raid zones as well as the Citadel of V’uul x2. In particular the Drunder group zones seemed to require Raid gear to attempt, yet lacked any progression of itemization from that gear. We also see some ease-of-use changes to Kael Drakkel contested. The full notes after the jump…
Destiny of Velious provides many options for solo and duo players wishing to gear up without stepping into a heroic dungeon. For starters, the Othmir and Snowfang quest lines reward gear that was unheard of except for raiders in Sentinel’s Fate. Public Quests offer sets of gear, weapons, and more, with or without joining a group or raid provided enough players are present and successful. A largely unknown solo/duo dungeon Crystalline Breaks provides additional gear up options. And finally today sees the introduction of a Velious Solo Shard Quest to fill out player options for gearing up without a...
Drunder and Critical Mitigation The Shadow Odyssey introduced Critical Mitigation, a stat needed by players to survive the heavy hits of raid bosses and enemies. Sentinel’s Fate upped the numbers, but it was Destiny of Velious which rolled out Critical Mitigation to all group zones and even overland solo content. The three new Drunder dungeons, new Citadel of V’uul x2 raid, and three new Drunder x4 raid zones are no exception and set alarming new standards for the amount of Critical Mitigation needed even to do heroic content. Adding to the concern is that while mobs can be examined...
Multi-attack Not Working on Offhand Weapons In a two different forum threads, players reported that Offhand Weapons are not multiattacking unless their timing is staggered (use a combat art to interrupt one, or use weapons with two different delays). Zoltaroth‘s response: We found what is causing this and are working on a fix. Most likely the fix will be in the next hotfix after tomorrows (ie: not tomorrow). Battlegrounds Tokens for 2 Gold For testing purposes, Battlegrounds Tokens were placed on the PvP Vendor for 2 gold a piece on Test Copy. Unfortunately, these cheap tokens made their way...
After the jump, your full Game Update 60 Notes for today, May 31st, 2011…
Today, arguably the largest Game Update we’ve seen in years hits the live servers. Game Update 60 adds 4 new dungeons, 4 new raid zones, more crafting, more quests from a solo shard quest to a Heritage Quest, major changes to PvP from gear to itemization to mechanics, not only a new Battlegrounds lobby, but a 4th Battleground 18 vs. 18. We are still waiting for the full list of Game Update Notes, but in the meantime, here’s just a quick bullet point list of what we can expect: New Level 90 Dungeons and Raid Zones The Crystal Caverns...
While SOE and by extension EQ2 were offline during the 12 day downtime, what were the devs doing? Scrapbooking? Needlepoint? Actually, they continued work on Game Update 60 (now slated for a May 31st debut according to SmokeJumper) as well as looking ahead to Game Update 61 and beyond. While players were not able to test Game Update 60, the developers have continued to polish it up and add new things while the servers were down, as well as addressing the feedback from players during the short testing period.
We’ve been hearing about a new Adornments System in Game Update 60. System is perhaps too strong a word for what we’ve seen on Test. But the changes indeed help to visually distinguish adornments from other items which makes finding them in bags a lot easier. Item Examine windows have seen a change, as adornment text has been replaced by subtle Adornment “badges” for each color the item supports. Adornments themselves have been given bold new icons which are unique, color-coded, and stand out from other items in both recipe books and inventory bags. Your Feedback Does this go...
Game Update 60 has finally reached Test and there is a lot of content here, including 3 new heroic dungeons, 3 new x4 raid zones, and a new x2 raid zone, a new Battleground, as well as major changes to PvP. Also look out for several changes and tweaks to classes, as well as a hard-to-miss huge nerf to Dirges, with Chimes/Cacophony of Blades no longer interrupting. “The Children of War” The Fortress of Drunder has emptied of Rallos Zek and his armies as they pass into the Plane of War to prepare for their eventual march on the...
Here are your update notes for today, April 28, 2011. They include the introduction of Multi-housing. Thanks to Cyliena over at EQ2 ZAM for the formatting: HOUSING UPDATES Each character can now own up to 10 houses of any combination (as long as he or she meets the house prerequisites). House purchases are now based on alignment rather than citizenship. The marketplace house item limit increasers now only apply to a single house. Additionally, the marketplace house item limit increaser will no longer stick with your house as you move from house to house, but it still stacks with...
Dethdlr
Dethdlr’s Adornment Calculator now has the non-class specific, non-raid dropped red adornments up as beta. Let me know if I got any of the numbers wrong and I’ll see about getting them fixed. I believe I’m going to wait until after GU60 to do the rest since there may be changes headed our way from SOE. Hope you like it. 🙂
Let’s see… ReItemization It seems we’ve finally made our voices heard on the problems introduced by the extreme stat consolidation with the introduction of Velious, namely that not only all dungeon-dropped (Legendary, Fabled) gear from level 1-89 has completely ineffective stats, but that even the Mastercrafted gear from 22, 32, 42, 52, 62, 72, 77, and 82 are almost nonsensical in their setups given the changes. Multihousing Multihousing has been on Test and Test Copy for a couple of days now and feedback has been flooding in from players who are testing it out. Zoltaroth has been slaying the...
I recently spent several hours researching what adornments I wanted to put on my new gear. This required going to multiple pages on multiple sites and manually calculating all the information I needed to know about adornments. This led me to think, there has to be a better way. What resulted from that thought was Dethdlr’s Adornment Calculator. Details after the break.
When buying Heroic/Legendary shard armor with Primal Velium Shards, you now have three choices. If you’ve got the various gems that drop in different instances, and you have faction, then head to the Ry’Gorr camp in Eastern Wastes. Each piece of armor will cost you 52 shards. If you don’t have the necessary gem but want your armor anyway, and have faction, then head to Thurgadin in Great Divide. Each piece of armor has a cost ranging from 33-90 shards. And if you know a crafter who has acquired the two Far Seas recipe books to make this armor...
Destiny of Velious introduced an unparalleled strict progression to both its group and raid zones. Players wanting to group up in Velious instances have discovered that there are 3 sets of group zones which each require completing the one before it in progression before being granted access. For instance, you must clear Tower of Frozen Shadow: Shadowed Corridors to gain access to ToFS: Umbral Halls, which must be cleared to gain access to ToFS: Haunt of Syl’Tor. And aspiring raiders must clear all 3 of these group zones in order to gain access to the Tower of Frozen Shadow...
Fastidious crafters took advantage of yesterday’s update and trundled back to the daily Tradeskill Group instances for a chance to loot one of the two volumes of the new Far Seas Strategic Pricing 3rd Edition. As with past editions, these recipe books allow crafters to create shard armor and jewelry for players with a reduced number of tokens/shards. Interestingly, neither players nor crafters must have faction with the Ry’Gorr to make or receive this armor or jewelry. They do however require the designated dungeon-dropped crystals. With yesterday’s Test Update Notes, we found out that the current Velious shard armor...
A couple of interesting items appeared in today’s Test Update Notes: The amount of Velium Shards required for Shard Armor has been reduced. Several Yellow, Red, and War Rune adornment procs will now trigger on both spell and melee hits. These changes do not appear in today’s Live Update Notes, so if you have had your eye on certain Adornments or Shard Armor, you might want to wait to see when this change goes live. Also, in case you missed it in today’s live update notes, players who participate in Tradeskill Group Instances (granted these days, most people choose...
Today’s update includes tweaks across the board of grouping, raiding, and itemization. Chronoportal vendors are back until April 10th. They have several paintings, furniture, and replicas of the enemies fought in the 12th anniversary EverQuest event. After the jump, your Update Notes for April 5, 2011.
At last year’s Fan Faire, I found out that work was being done on a program/script/tool to help the developers create items for EQ2. As with any game development, any number of little tools and scripts are created and passed around the office to help take some of the tedium out of certain repetitive tasks. At the time, it was explained to me as a tool that could be used to whip out a bunch of Treasured and low level Legendary gear. Why? So that more time and attention could be spent creating unique higher level Legendary and Fabled...
From Silius on the EQ2 Forums: Greetings All, I want to take the time to explain the reasoning behind some of the recent multi attack adjustments. Multi attack like any other stat is meant to grow base on item tier. In the creation of these items some of them were given a generous amount of multi attack unintentionally making the progression look odd. In the process of increasing loot power we rebalanced some of these items so they would fall within the guidelines we desired. That said there still exists some items we are ok with having a bit...