Feldon
Today’s Update Notes for March 31, 2011 bring those Itemization changes we’ve been hearing about, a redesign of the Storm Gorge Public Quest, and the Aether Races flying event has now been folded into City Festivals, starting with Antonica. From SmokeJumper: There will be a new track for each city until we start looping around again. Each city’s track will only be available during the City Festival and you can earn festival coins and titles when you race. We might trot them all out at once at Tinkerfest or something, but they’ll usually be linked individually to the City...
Itemization
So, you’ve heard all the hullabaloo about Itemization changes. Well ‘big deal’ you think to yourself. There will always be adjustments and shuffling around of things missed in Beta. The last 2 years have seen big changes to itemization after the expansion comes out. Why is this news? Well never mind the confusion and inconvenience for players, but there’s the feeling that players have wasted their time defeating a much more difficult mob only to receive an item that is only a minor upgrade or in many cases with Velious, a downgrade in quality. Quite a few players have...
If you thought the Itemization threads on the EQ2 Forums have been harsh, they really took a turn for the worse after players took Silius‘ advice and checked out the changes on Test and Test Copy, only to find that several items had lost upwards of 75% of their MultiAttack, 4.0 weapons received additional boosts (leaving out 6.0 weapons), and most of the ‘boosts’ were upwards of 0.6% increases on just a handful of stats. SmokeJumper came to Silius‘ defense: Silius has made huge strides into setting things up so that the completely haphazard systems of yore, where half...
Players have expressed concerns that the changes in the difficulty of dungeons this week will make Kael Drakkel far too easy. However SmokeJumper seems to be backing up the designers on wanting to keep the contested Kael Drakkel sufficiently difficult: (Making the zone super easy is) not our intent at all. And I’m glad that your group is able to play through those areas. But it must have been verrry lonely in Kael, because we know how many people were playing it…and it’s not many.
Players logged in yesterday morning to find that their Ranged items, including bows and thrown weapons, had rejected their adornments. Those adornments ended up back in the Overflow slot. Rothgar responded: This appears to be a bug related to some item changes. Our QA department is working on it now and we will have the items fixes asap.
If you just can’t wait for Thursday to see what (if any) changes you’ll see to your gear, you may be interested in these additional Test Update Notes (beyond the notes already posted on Tuesday): ITEMS Dungeon dropped loot has had its power increased. Dungeon shard armor has had its power increased. Raid items have had their power increased. The gap in power between easy and challenge mode raid items has been increased. The power of a few War Runes has been increased. Silius brought this to our attention: Just a heads up that test server should have the...
After posting a promising thread on Friday entitled “Upcoming Itemization Changes (No Nerfs)“, it seems SmokeJumper has gotten egg on his face today. Players logged in after today’s Tuesday Game Update to find sweeping nerfs and huge reductions in the effectiveness of Velious gear across the line, especially Fighter items. In a cantankerous discussion on the EQ2 forums, players linked numerous items which underwent substantial losses in stats and desirability. SmokeJumper initially tried to defend the changes with: Please go back and take a look at my original post. I did say that we were being “intentionally conservative” with...
From SmokeJumper the EQ2 Forums: These itemization changes did *not* happen today, on Tuesday. Instead, they will happen on Thursday morning’s hotfix. Sorry for the delay. Soon!
All U.S. servers will come down for an update at 7am PDT on Tuesday, March 29, 2011. The expected downtime is one hour. The U.K. worlds will have their update at 5am London Time on Wednesday, March 30, 2011. Estimated downtime is 2 hours. The full reformatted patch notes are available after the jump….
If you have run a few Destiny of Velious dungeons (and raids), compared the loot/gear to Public Quests, and said aloud “no me comprende”, this should be a good week. From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums: We are bumping up the power of Velious dungeon and raid items. We’re doing this to make those items more competitive when compared with Public Quest items, because instances are tougher than the PQs and deserve better rewards. This does include shard armors. We are also going to bump up the power of hard-mode raid loot so hard modes are even more rewarding,...
Let’s Be Honest… Public Quests completed even at the highest “x4 raid” level demand neither the coordination nor the discipline of any of the raid content in the last 3 expansions. Storm Gorge requires a little more focus than Ring War, but generally speaking, 24-40 players standing in the right place, killing the right mobs, in the right order, stand to inherit a wagonload of Legendary gear with Yellow adornment slots, all without such challenges as timing AOEs, switching to an Off-Tank, agro-juggling, or any complex strategy. The biggest enemy encountered is usually Server Lag. Public Quests offer a...
Your updates notes for today, March 24, 2011, include several crash fixes, problems linking items in chat, Auction channel spam, and also some substantial nerfs to Critical Mitigation on Destiny of Velious gear.
As we first discovered in our Critical Oversight in Public Quests Gear? article, the progression from solo quest gear, to Public Quest gear, to Group Instance gear, and on to Raid gear, has not made a whole lot of sense. In particular, Critical Mitigation has been all over the map. Silius has announced some upcoming changes in the Critical Mitigation numbers of various gear throughout the Velious itemization range.
After the jump, your Update Notes for today, Tuesday, March 22nd 2011 include the addition (for real this time) of loot to trash mobs in Kael Drakkel, and the removal of Yellow Adornments from some items.
Dethdlr
You may have noticed this little tidbit in today’s patch notes: Kael Drakkel Base Population in the contested dungeon now has legendary and fabled drops. With this information you may be thinking of heading in there and trying your hand at killing some of the level 92 mobs to see what kind of trash drops you can get. Not so fast! Raviel on Guk apparently had the same idea and didn’t have the best of luck Raviel@Guk wrote: so ive been in here for about 2 hours now. wheres the trash gear we were promised? Kander responded with this:...
From Windslasher on the EQ2 Forums Okay, I have it on pretty good authority that a solo shard quest is on the way. Probably GU 60. It will not have anything whatsoever to do with public quests, however.
Public Quests have been keeping Windslasher rather busy and he had posted some detailed answers about just how Public Quests difficulty are set. The Ring War seems fairly straightforward, but the Storm Gorge PQ (which will possibly see some changes in the next few days) has sufficient complexity to worth a more in-depth analysis. From Windslasher on the EQ2 Forums: Loot is not totally and completely random. It is only partially random. I posted a complete breakdown of the baseline loot at this link: http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=30&topic_id=495127#5512456 Whether you get a humming, pulsating etc. cache is not random, but whether you...
Kwill
The player base has started a very interesting discussion thread on how long the Public Quests will remain popular. Currently, everyone is scrambling to get gear — raiders, non-raiders, casual players. The PQs are packed, players are complaining no one wants to group or do anything else, and for most people who are participating, they are getting most of their gear slots filled with the best upgrades. Being nearby a successful raid seems all that is necessary. But how long will the gearfest last? Once everyone gets what they need, why would they continue to join the PQs? The...
Here are your Update Notes for today, March 9th. Of note, Frost Gryphons acquired by crafters are now usable without being a Guide, and a mysterious note that Critical Mitigation values are being reduced on some items.
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....
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…
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...
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...