Character Spell Lists Now Support Grandmasters

We’re happy to announce that EQ2U has been updated to fully support Grandmaster spells and combat arts. First up, Character Spell lists now support Grandmaster level for every spell, while still distinguishing between character choices and those spells which must be researched or crafted.

NOTE: There are approximately one dozen spells game-wide which will not be offered in Grandmaster quality. Please post here in the comments or e-mail us so we can add them to our Grandmaster exclusion list.

EQ2U Recipe Database Updated

We have also loaded nearly 5,000 new Recipes into our Recipe database, including all 3,200 new Grandmaster spell recipes. We have added the necessary stuff to alert us if any characters know a recipe which is missing from our database.

UPDATE from Afista on the EQ2 Forums:

These are the correct scheduled server down times for each server. I am looking into why there was a delay and will update you all whenever I have the information.

ALL servers are supposed to be patching at the same time. Here’s the announcement from the EQ2 Forums:

All US EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, October 7, 2014 at 7:00 AM PDT. Estimated downtime is 1 hour.

All EU EverQuest II Live Servers will be brought offline on Tuesday, October, 2014 at 7:00 AM PDT. (3:00 PM London Time). Estimated downtime is 2 hours.

From buildmaster Bunji on the EQ2 Forums:

Have you been missing x4 Etyma currency (x2 for F2P) ever since this summer’s “Level Up, Gear Up” promotion ended? You’re not the only one…

From Holly “Windstalker” Longdale‘s twitter:

Tomorrow at 12pm PDT we start our Get Ready for 100 bonuses! For members, includes 25% XP (AA/Adv/TS) & 4x Etyma. F2P get 2x Etyma. #EQ2

— Holly Longdale (@WindstalkerEQ2) October 6, 2014

Also:

Also starting tomorrow until the new expansion, all 2014 Summer Ethereals (Weapons & Jewelry) have a chance to drop in ToV Missions. #eq2

— Holly Longdale (@WindstalkerEQ2) October 6, 2014

And here we were making sure that EQ2U was ready for Grandmasters tomorrow… From Holly “Windstalker” Longdale‘s twitter:

Update delayed to Tuesday. 8( We're working hard to make it clean and shiny. We found gnarly bugs today that we don't want to give you. #eq2

— Holly Longdale (@WindstalkerEQ2) October 1, 2014

The first five level-agnostic dungeons, open to level 20-89 players, as well as the availability of Grandmaster spells at all levels and tiers, is expected this Thursday. Racheal “Afista“ has posted an in-depth preview of what we can expect on the EQ2 Forums:

We’re excited about Level Agnostic Dungeons and Grandmaster Spells coming to EverQuest 2 on Thursday, October 2, 2014! So what exactly are these dungeons and why should you check them out?

Level Agnostic Dungeons

Level Agnostic Dungeons are instances in which characters between levels 20-89 have a chance to group together, regardless of the difference in their adventure level. These dungeons are accessible by joining the queue on your Dungeon Finder Tab (Alt + Z) from the EQ2 Options Menu. Within each dungeon, adventurers will be able to battle heroic monsters and receive individual rewards based on their own level. This is a chance to earn great XP and enjoy a new spin on some classic dungeons!

From the EQ2 Forums:

From the EQ2 Forums:

GENERAL [WEEKLY FEATURE – Ed.]

• All Access Members can now access the Broker almost anywhere. In the EQII menu, select the “Broker” option, or use the /start_broker_anywhere command.

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
High Keep: The Bloodless Incursion [Contested]

• Grulk’s Toxic Submission no longer drains noxious resistance, but instead causes Poisoned Marrow to inflict greater damage.

ABILITIES / ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT
Summoner

• Minions Translocation can no longer be cast while under the effects of Carnage Shield.

ITEMS

• Totem of the Succulent may now only trigger once a second and has increased damage and healing.

BATTLEGROUNDS
Balance of Theer

• The order logo will now only grant points to your team after you have been on it for three seconds, and every three seconds thereafter.
• Balance of Theer will now grant medals for victorious matches.

As long last we’ve resumed posting videos recorded from SOE Live 2014. After this, we’ve still got the EQ2 Art & Animation panel, as well as three player panels and the Player Studio panel. Oy vey!

This was the last panel at SOE Live 2014 for EverQuest II — Questions & Answers #2. Due to room acoustics, this recording took an inordinate amount of time to edit and normalize. Fortunately, Audio quality improves around the 3 minute mark when questions begin.

From Holly “Windstalker” Longdale on the EQ2 Forums:

Greetings Norrathians,

We’re all charged up and busy after a great time at SOE Live! The team is hunkered down and focused on the expansion, fixes, and updates on the schedule. Here are some details!

When is the EverQuest II: Altar of Malice Beta?

On Oct. 7 we will launch Limited Beta for All Access members. Most of the content will be focused on the Overlands and level increase content. We need your support!

Oct. 14 will be Open Beta for everyone. We’d love you to come check out the content and help us make sure it’s good, clean fun.

When is Altar of Malice Launch?

The expansion launch for All Access members will be on Nov. 11, just a few days after we celebrate our 10th anniversary!

On Nov. 25, the expansion will be available to everyone.

I think these days, most players don’t consider their characters complete, competitive, or at least capable until they have upgraded a significant number of their combat arts or spells to Master level. It was not always so…

Are We Entitled to Masters?

It may be hard to remember, but there was a time before the Research tab and before Research Assistants when the only way to get Master spells was to defeat enemies. At launch, Masters were unbelievably rare and only dropped from Epic names. Over the years, they have trickled down to Epic trash, then to Heroic bosses. At some point, a global loot table was added to any slain non-trivial enemy with something like a 1 in 10,000 chance to drop a level-appropriate Master. Every year, Masters seem to become more widely available.

Time for our Tuesday Wednesday update notes from the EQ2 Forums. If you were following EQ2Wire, you already filled every slot of your bank with 2 copper shinies to sell for status. For everyone else — this is why you can’t find cheap shinies on the broker…

WEEKLY FEATURE

• Collection items and adornments now sell for status to specific status merchants!

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Temple of Veeshan: Guardian’s Edifice

• Members of the Aerakyn Commanders ring event have had their health lowered.

From the EQ2 Forums:

ITEMS

• [eq2u]Cozen Ethereal Hood[/eq2u] and [eq2u]Cozen Ethereal Shroud[/eq2u] are now lore.
• Corrected an issue that was preventing some players from consuming their [eq2u]Cozen Hood[/eq2u] patterns.
• Subversive Acts will now persist through death.
• Weapons obtained within The Fabled Deathtoll henceforth will be more amazing than weapons obtained previously within The Fabled Deathtoll.

and an important update about the Cozen hoods from Gninja:

This effect is intended to not stack with the steward’s cloak. It is a replacement for the cloak so you do not have to equip it any longer. We have no plans to make them stack.

Because sleep is overrated, EQ2 fan Afista spent the weekend meticulously transcribing the two EverQuest II Q&A panels and has posted them on EQ2 ZAM. Also don’t miss the notes from the all-important Mechanics panel posted by Cyliena as linked below. I got a kick out of hanging out with both of them at SOE Live and seeing what they’re doing for the EQ2 community. I’m starting to feel like a bit of a slacker now… 😉

At SOE Live 2014, the community had questions and the devs had answers! ZAM was there to keep track of what everyone wanted to know. Afista has written a full recap of what happened during the Q&A following the EQ2 keynote, as well as the AMAA Sessions Part 1 & Part 2.

Read the entire Q&A recap over on ZAM!

(also check out our Systems & Mechanics panel recap from last week!)

From the EQ2 Forums:

WEEKLY FEATURE

• Vesspyr Isles: Pinch Aggregate, the Rare Item Procurer, now offers wares in a secluded location.

QUESTS

• Fixed a bug where the Shinies Beneath the Moonlight automatically awarded even if someone didn’t complete the proper collections.
• Blaisy Bookmaker and Unlucky in High Keep Contested, and Dawper in the Fabled Sanctum of the Scaleborn will no longer temporarily disappear after you’ve completed Dawper’s mission, “Blasted Droags!”

ITEMS

• One player cannot trigger both Practiced Tactics and Practiced Tactics II. The effects will stack when applied from multiple casters. [Fixed on 5/16/2014]
• Players may now obtain over 10,000 Draconic Etyma now. Currency caps on all other currencies are unchanged.
• The “Customize” option will now correctly appear for House Actors inside a player dungeon.

ABILITIES / ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT

• Priests now will be granted Gather Remains at level 80. This spell can be used to pull the corpses of raid members to the priest’s location while out of combat.
• The maximum health impairments caused by Rejection, Change of Engagement and Debilitating Strikes no longer stack from multiple casters.

In the EverQuest II: Systems panel, the EverQuest II team talks about the upcoming expansion, specifically class balance, mechanics, some new features, and takes player questions. On the panel: Akil “Lyndro” Hooper, Kyle “Kander” Vallee, Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Robert “Caith” Fouts, Dave “Maevianiu” Kish, Douglas “Endymion” VanDerveer, and Justin “Jamiss” Michael. We recorded this at SOE Live 2014 in Las Vegas and are happy to be able to share it.

On YouTube:

We recorded the EverQuest II: Altar of Malice keynote, which included about seven minutes of Q&A at the end. We also recorded the EverQuest II Q&A #1 panel and we’ve assembled it into a single video.

NOTE: Audio quality improves at 8:45 as we started using an external mic at this point.

There were some technical difficulties during the first 10 minutes of the EverQuest II: Altar of Malice keynote which was livestreamed from SOE Live last week.  Instead of clearly hearing the producer and designers of our game hyping their hard work, audiences at home mostly heard frustrated AV techs trying to get things working. Fortunately, we recorded the keynote in person and are now able to provide the complete event for those who missed it!

From the EQ2 Forums:

WEEKLY FEATURE

• The Moonlight Enchantment merchants have new items available! All sorts of trees and shrubbery based on Ethernere foliage can now be purchased. Moonlight Enchantments begin on 8/20!

• With Kerafyrm’s defeat, Freeport and Qeynos have finally broken the Awakened siege, and Luclin – now whole – shines brightly in the skies.

GENERAL

• YouTube integration has been removed due to incompatibilities with Google’s API updates. Options are being explored to return video functionality.

Here are the slides presented by the EverQuest II team specifically the mechanics/systems guys. Akil “Lyndro” Hooper, Kyle “Kander” Vallee, Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Robert “Caith” Fouts, Dave “Maevianiu” Kish, and Douglas “Endymion” VanDerveer were presenting.

Now it’s time for the EverQuest II Systems panel. Akil “Lyndro” Hooper, Kyle “Kander” Vallee, Michael “Xelgad” Ganz, Robert “Caith” Fouts, Dave “Maevianiu” Kish, and Douglas “Endymion” VanDerveer are presenting. We’re liveblogging this panel as well as recording a video of this panel in 720p HD.

Liveblog begins at 1:00pm PDT and ends at 2:00pm PDT on Saturday August 16th.

Fix for Stealth and AE Abilities

New Spell Qualities

• All spells go to Grandmaster
• Certain spells go to Ancient

Battleground 6v6 Balance of Theer

• Deathmatch
• Penalty for dying
• Tiles to stand on and get buffs/debuffs

Now it’s time for the EverQuest II: Altar of Malice expansion panel with nearly the entire EQ2 team. We’re liveblogging as well as recording a video of this panel in 720p HD. This panel is also being livecast on Twitch.

Liveblog began at 12:00pm PDT and ended at 1:00pm PDT on Friday August 15th.

Holly “Windstalker” Longdale to the stage. Tim Heydalaar and Dave Brown to the stage.

Showing PlayerStudio items.

Looks like Press gets a healthy headstart on posting expansion news for EverQuest and EverQuest II this year. After their private meetings with Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson and EQ2 Producer Holly “Windstalker” Longdale on Tuesday, they’ve had time to draft their articles and now, they’re available for all to read. My issue is, people at home have more information than those at SOE Live who may not yet have read these articles. Some Press sites (notably excluding Massively and ZAM) get a full boat ride from SOE, paying for hotel and sometimes even airfare, dinners, etc.). EQ2Wire covers EverQuest II all 365 days a year, and we do it without VIP treatment.

Anyway, enough politics. On to the news! These are the sites we’ve found so far:

• Massively
• ShackNews
• Destructoid
• GameZone
• EQ2 ZAM
• MMORPG
• MMO Attack

The totally kickass key art is at the top of the article. And now the bullet points:

• Level 100 increase for Adventure, Tradeskill, and Guild levels.
• 14 Dungeons
• 6 Raids
• 6 Advanced Solo Zones
• 2 Contested Dungeons
• 2 Massive Overland zones created with the new unbelievable Layout Editor. I’ve heard that the new zones are so stunning that players will hardly believe they are running in the EQ2 engine.
  • Tranquil Sea: composed of the devastated Isle of Refuge, Deathweave Isle, and the Pygmie-and-dinosaur-inhabited Island of Dichen
  • Phantom Sea: composed of the haunted forest of Kithicor, the trading company’s home base Highhold, and Grimshales, an island made from a shard of Luclin
• 4 new Avatars

More after the jump…

We did not promote this news at the time, but there are a number of cool fixes on the Test server which should hopefully go live after SOE Live. Chief among these are significant optimization of the EQ2 client so players should get smoother framerates. Also, players had assembled a list of quest starters that, through revamps and NPC shuffling were no longer attainable. These plus many more bug fixes and a few nice convenience features are now sitting on Test. It’s almost like one of the big bug stomps we used to see.

Here are just some of the notes from the Test Update Notes posted in late June:

GENERAL

• Made some optimizations to the client to improve performance.
• Changing your settings under the “performance” tab in the options menu to High, Very High or Extreme should have performance improvements on higher end machines and should have improved shadow quality on “Extreme” setting. NOTE: you will have to re-select the option if you had it already selected to see these changes.
• Added the ability to filter stoneskin chat messages to Combat > Stoneskins.

MACROS

• Macro ‘Use Item’ option now allows you to use food and drink items. The macro will always attempt to use equipped food / drink items first, if you have the same item both equipped and in your inventory.

REFORGING

• Added Show Equipped Only filter to reforge / restore.

ITEMS

• Using an adornment will now display a selection window listing applicable items in your inventory. You may still choose to manually apply the adornment from this window if you wish.

QUESTS

• Earn even more achievements for completing Heritage quests!
• Many quests removed from Vermin’s Snye are once again available.

There are over 100 more items in the complete Test Update Notes post.

From the EQ2 Forums:

WEEKLY FEATURE
The Nexus Core [Challenge Duo]

• Having faced near-destruction at the hands of careless adventurers, The Nexus Core has assembled the ultimate automaton to defend its delicate systems. Great rewards await those strong and cunning enough to defeat him. Certain death awaits all others. Can you outwit the mechanical mind of Mechanoct?

This encounter is balanced for two extremely well-geared players containing at least one tank or one healer.

QUESTS
Age’s End Questline

• Doomscale crystalweavers will no longer spin when attacked while healing their designated crystal.
• The crystals will no longer reset to full health if no one is attacking them within their rooms.
• Returning to Jorlak after destroying the 3 crystals should properly update the entire raid.
• Corrected another issue that could cause some members to not get updates for the quests at certain stages due to lag.

This Tuesday’s update included a wonderful, if vague, note about how certain adornment dislodgers had been change to PRESERVE rather than destroy the item. There was some question of which of these were changed, so Bunji has clarified:

I checked with the designer, and the change is referring to these crafted items:
[eq2u]Basic Prismatic Adornment Dislodger[/eq2u] [eq2u]Advanced Prismatic Adornment Dislodger[/eq2u]

Keep in mind that every time you add a Yellow, Blue, Green, Red, Purple, or other gemstone to an item, or if you add a Cyan adornment slot to an item, the item gets unattuned and then you get all the adornments back. This is one of my favorite unintentional side effects of this expansion’s itemization and I hope it sticks around in the next expansion.