If you haven’t checked out the EQ2Wire Tears of Veeshan Frequently Asked Questions guide since the launch of the expansion two weeks ago, we’ve added some new questions and details!

• Armor slots — Which armor slots drop from which Adv Solo and Heroic zones.

• Bonus “column” heroic named — These appear at the end of heroic zones for players who have completed the Tears of Veeshan signature quest and drop tradeskill materials.

• More ways to acquire Draconic Etyma — including the “Ancestral Champion” quest, as well as weekly and daily Tradeskill missions.

• Cryptic (Adv Solo) and Arcane (T1 Heroic) armor upgrades — Cryptic and Arcane armor with 4 gems can be converted into a gem of the next tier PLUS all adornments (including white) are popped off with a conversion item that costs 10 Etyma. This takes a lot of the pain out of upgrading items!

• Anchor Tags added to Tears of Veeshan FAQ allow you to link () a part of the FAQ to a friend.

Players are reporting a couple of issues with items not being looted to player’s inventory but disappearing instead:

• Ornate Crate of Goods in Advanced Solo Tears of Veeshan zones
• Waxy urchin roe which drops in Siren’s Grotto and is needed to defeat a named

It turns out that both of these are caused by Loot Options.

Endymion has posted a description of the problem and a workaround until the issue can be fixed next week:

This is similar to the issue with people not receiving their Ornate Crate of Goods from the end of the Tears of Veeshan advanced solo dungeons. What’s happening is in the group options menu (accessed by typing /groupoptions), the Item Rarity level is set higher than the tier of the item, causing it to go poof. While I have a fix for this, it hasn’t made it to live yet; until then, I would recommend lowering your Item Rarity to All Items.

From the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Accursed Sanctum

• Corrected an issue where Yurit in the Matri Marn encounter would dispel himself when he shouldn’t.

QUESTS

• The Chamber Warden in Ssrez’Ras: Chamber of Stasis [Heroic] now updates the Weekly heroic mission, Running the Temple.

Tears of Veeshan introduced a new healer class, the Channeler, but one thing this class has been missing is an Epic Weapon quest. Apparently, this will soon be remedied! Which of the concepts below is your favorite?

From the @everquestii twitter:

Here is a concept of the Channeler epic? Are you waiting for the challenge? [RadarX]

— EverQuest II (@everquestii) November 22, 2013

From the EQ2 Forums:

MEMBERSHIP

• Now until Feb. 25th, Gold members earn DOUBLE on all alternate currencies!

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Vesspyr Isles

• Delvakin in Falinpol now sells an item that can be used to turn fully upgraded Cryptic, Arcane, or Potent armor into an upgrade gemstone. Cryptic armor converts into a Brilliant Blue gemstone, both Arcane and Potent armor convert into a Deep Green gemstone.

Over the last year, Free-to-Play has become less and less inhibited by restrictions and additional costs. This has unbalanced the equation such that even diehard EQ2 players have pondered whether a Gold Subscription is worth keeping when so much is simply given away.Recently, the EQ2 team seems to have realized the inequity of the current situation and the need for more carrots for Subscribers.

Tomorrow, we’ll get a rather big reason to keep an EQ2 Gold Subscription up. From Holly “Windstalker” Longdale‘s twitter:

With our patch tomorrow, until Feb. 25, 2014, Gold Members will receive DOUBLE for all alternate currencies earned! #eq2

— Holly Longdale (@WindstalkerEQ2) November 20, 2013

With this change, all in-game alternate currencies (ie not plat) will drop at twice the rate. This should also help immensely with the earning of [eq2u]Draconic Etyma[/eq2u].

From SOE.com:

On November 9th EverQuest II celebrated its 9th birthday; to honor that special occasion, the November Employee Spotlight is a member of the EverQuest II Development Team.  Meet Nathan “Kaitheel” McCall, in-game holiday events designer and new dog owner.

What do you do here at SOE? How long have you been working here?

I work on the Everquest II game team. My official title is Senior Game Designer (because wearer-of-many-design-related-hats didn’t fit well on a business card).  I’ve been working at SOE since 2003, and started on the EQII team as an apprentice in 2005.

From the EQ2 Forums:

All gamers know it’s not a holiday until you see your favorite MMO decked out for the season! This year, Sony Online Entertainment invites you to get in the spirit by creating holiday-themed items for your favorite games.

Since the unveiling of the Player Studio program, your fellow players have shown off their creativity and talent by creating in-game items for EverQuest, EverQuest II, PlanetSide 2, and Free Realms. In addition to epic bragging rights, creators get a split of the profits for sales of their item, which is pretty much the definition of “win/win.”

For more information on the program and game-specific submission guidelines, check out the Player Studio homepage. If you’re interested in making some holiday magic (and money!), send in your themed items by November 30, 2013.

Some good updates tomorrow. White Critical Chance adornments will now work in nearly every equipment slot, allowing players to boost their crit chance until they can get ToV gear replacements. Also, lots of little fixes to zones which players have been reporting.

From the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
General

• Challenge Duo zones will now drop purple adornments instead of red adornments.
• City Sages are now willing to put a price to A Thexian Log Book, Clockwork Chirurgeon User Manual, and Day Log of R.F. for those that completed the accompanying quest.

Cobalt Scar

• Cobalt Scar tradeskill harvestables no longer spawn under the world.

Fabled Djinn Master’s Prism

• Instruments should no longer lose their “move” or “inspect” verbs when the encounter resets.
• Instruments will no longer reset once a valid song has been played but they will still reset once the Djinn Master’s threshold has been passed.

Ssrez’Ras: Chamber of Stasis

• Deviator Yothsra will no longer get stuck immune to damage.
• Casting Verdict on Ziskaya will no longer prevent her from fleeing combat.

From the EQ2 Forums:

It has been many years since the moon Luclin mysteriously exploded, sending debris crashing to Norrath. The catastrophic damage split the surface of the planet into the divided islands now known as the “Shattered Lands.” Despite the near-destruction of their homelands, the survivors of the Shattering and their descendants went on to accomplish great deeds, and all Norrathians celebrate their triumph at the annual Heroes’ Festival.

New for 2013: Earn Tokens of Heroism as you participate in the festivities and trade them for brand new rewards. Complete all the quests to get the “Badge of Heroics” achievement!

The servers came down this morning at 10:00AM PST with no automated warning message, but c’est la vie. Here’s the update notes from the EQ2 Forums which were posted last night:

MERCENARIES

• When opening the mercenary window, the active mercenary will now be auto-selected so the button defaults to ‘Return’ for suspended mercenaries.
• Daeron Ashenwing [ed note: the ToV pre-order merc] has been made more formidable.

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Vesspyr Isles

• You can now accept both Heroic and Advanced Solo weekly missions from Veehzz the Bloodwing in Vesspyr Isles.

ABILITIES / ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT
General

• AE Auto-Attack Chance buffs should no longer flicker in the passives window.

Here are some of the most Frequently Asked Questions we are seeing about the new EverQuest II expansion Tears of Veeshan. This article will be updated as more details are found!

How do I get started in Tears of Veeshan?

The Tears of Veeshan expansion begins with the Tears of Veeshan: The Eternal Broodlands Signature quest, which you will receive an in-game mail about, and which you can pick up in either Qeynos or Freeport. Once on the quest, you will begin a path that takes you to the Vesspyr Isles.

How to travel directly to the new zones without doing the quest lines?

• If you are in a guild hall, you may travel by Druid Ring to Vesspyr Isles. Player-summoned druid rings may or may not show Vesspyr Isles as a travel option. This has been reported as a bug. Tinkerers may also craft a [eq2u]Wormhole Generator: Obol Plains[/eq2u] and then fly to the druid ring there to travel to Vesspyr Isles.

From a notice on the EQ2 Forums:

Status: 11/13/2013 11:39 PST – EverQuest II servers will be coming down at 11:55 am PST for an Emergency Patch.

Time Zone Conversions

• PST: 11:55am
• EST: 2:55pm
• GMT: 19:55
• CET: 20:55

Last night, the EQ2 team were able to temporarily fix the requirement of knowing the Draconic language to speak to Slymar, however this is now a permanent change. Anyone who purchased the Tears of Veeshan expansion gains access to this monk mercenary.

From the EQ2 Forums:

MERCENARIES

• You no longer have to speak draconic to hire the ToV Aerakyn Merc.
• Mercs no longer steal experience for kills.

NOTE: There was a lot of confusion about this last night, but you DO NOT have to pay StationCash to bring back your current mercenary! Either click on the Active Merc in your Mercenaries tab and then click “Return“, or if this button is missing, type /merc resume! You only need to pay the 100SC unlock for Mercs if you want to bring back another merc you have hired in the past.

The Embargo on EQ2’s Tears of Veeshan expansion news dropped today at noon, so here’s your opportunity to read writeups (with some interview questions from Holly, Akil, and Carlos) about the expansion by the lovely MJ Guthrie who works hard to keep EQ2 on the front page of Massively and for that we have much respect!

• Dragons Take Flight in EQII’s Tears of Veeshan today

and here’s a writeup by Curse who also got to ask some developer questions…

• EQ II’s Tears of Veeshan Expansion Takes Wing

We’ll be back tomorrow with our EQ2Wire Tears of Veeshan: Frequently Asked Questions article tomorrow — promise!

Dethdlr and I updated EQ2U this afternoon as new information rolled in from the Census data feeds. Here’s what’s been updated:

• Alternate Advancement data – Completely updated with new spell data.
• AA: Dragon tab – new Dragon AAs for all 4 archetypes.
• Channeler class Spells
• Support for Purple adornments on Character pages.
• Tears of Veeshan armor now shows gems.

Things we are still working on:

• Tears of Veeshan armor with upgradeable gem slots is not exporting in a way that we can display the number of gems installed.
• Heroic Endlines
  • Buying a 2nd Heroic endline costs 20 AA points.
  • A 3rd Heroic endline costs 30 AA points.
  • We need to display this correctly, assuming data is available.
• Channeler Pet page — if there is enough desire for this, we could add a page for this data. Although then the Summoners and Enchanters will be quite jealous. 😉

EQ2 ZAM has released their full coverage of Tears of Veeshan including an overview of the entire expansion, and extensive details about everything new to explore, as well as detailed writeups of all the new quests!

• Read Tears of Veeshan Coverage @ EQ2 ZAM

From the EQ2 Forums:

Sony Online Entertainment, LLC (SOE) today announced the launch of EverQuest®II: Tears of Veeshan™, the 10th expansion for the hit massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). The Tears of Veeshan expansion features engaging new content, including a compelling storyline to experience, a new overland realm to explore, massive dungeons, dragon-themed Alternative Advancements (AAs), the new Channeler class, and a host of challenging quests and items.

The US EverQuest II servers are back up as of about 10 minutes ago and it looks like Tears of Veeshan is live! No word on when EU servers will be up.

Tears of Veeshan offers new Tradeskill quests, tradeskill collections, recipes, new tradeskill apprentice recipes, purple war runes you can craft, and Gemstones which can upgrade Advanced Solo and Heroic gear as well as many other new features. There’s also a great change to building blocks and a new pack pegasus.

From Niami Denmother of EQ2Traders:

There is quite a bit going on regarding crafting in the Tears of Veeshan expansion, and since one of the SOE Dev team, Caith, went to the trouble of putting together a master list for us for beta, I am taking that list and running with it.

Continue reading at EQ2Traders!

Here are the Update Notes for the Tears of Veeshan expansion (ie Game Update 68) from the EQ2 Forums:

After rediscovering Yelinak, now the steward of Vesspyr Isles alongside other fallen and familiar dragons, players learn of the time/space powers behind the Tear of Veeshan stolen by prismatic dragon Kerafyrm the Awakened. With Kerafyrm’s fearsome power looming over Norrath, players are called upon to shine light into the darkness brought on by the Awakened’s draconic army, and set the stage for a new Age to begin!

Features:

• New class – Channeler!
• New Dragon-themed AAs
• AA limit increased to 340
• New overland area, Vesspyr Isles – Adventure, amenities, quests, collections, and more!
• Nine new dungeons
• Two new raid zones
• More Tradeskill and Tradeskill Apprentice Items
• New PvP item tier

From the EQ2 Forums:

All servers will come down November 12th, 2013 at 7:00 AM PT for an update to introduce the Tears of Veeshan expansion. Downtime is anticipated to be less than 5 hours and you can find update notes when posted in the Game Updateforum.

Time Zone Conversions

• PST: November 12 @ 7:00am~Noon
• EST: November 12 @ 10:00am~3:00pm
• GMT: November 12 @ 15:00~20:00
• CET: November 12 @ 16:00-21:00

A New Design

It is 21 months to the day since we launched our EQ2U Character, Item, and Guild armory site. In that time, a staggering 840,000 characters in 30,000 guilds have been looked up. We have over 8,500 registered users, and we’ve generated over 8.5 million forum signatures. In that time, Dethdlr and I have never forgotten how we got here, and why so many players call EQ2U their home for keeping track of their characters, researching upgrades, and learning lessons from others.

Believe it or not, when we launched EQ2U, the original style of the site was only ever intended as a placeholder, to be replaced within just a few months. Yet whenever time has come available to work on the site, Dethdlr and I have focused on adding new features and functionality rather than tweaking the look-and-feel. But in the past few months, the time finally came for us to get serious about a restyle.

From Cyliena on EQ2 ZAM:

Qeynos and Freeport are under assault by the forces of the Awakened. Kerafyrm has possession of the Tear of Veeshan. The commander of the New Combine army lay in his grave, with his daughter, Antonia Bayle, grief-stricken and alone.

The darkest days are coming to EverQuest II. Ages End is just around the corner.

Over the past month your EQII ZAM team has toiled away on the Beta server, working to bring you the coverage you’ve come to expect.

Continue reading at EQ2 ZAM…

EverQuest II: Tears of Veeshan launches tomorrow, and one of the benefits of an Open Beta is, we don’t have to wait for any pesky embargoes to take a look at what zones players will be journeying to in less than 24 hours. NOTE: All screenshots in the article were taken by me.

Tears of Veeshan includes nine new Instances which are available in both Advanced Solo and Heroic versions. The new solo/heroic zones are all accessible from the Vesspyr Isles (which are another realm of the Ethernere, sharing vestiges of the Tenebrous Tangle).

•  The Fractured Hive
•  The Nexus Core
•  High Keep
•  High Keep: The Pickclaw Depths
•  Stratum of the Protectors
•  Ssrez’Ras: Chamber of Stasis
•  Temple of Veeshan: Laboratory of Mutation
•  Temple of Veeshan: Halls of the Betrayer
•  Temple of Veeshan: Vulak’Aerr’s Dominion

NOTE: The difficulty markers above are my estimates, not from a developer.