Feldon
What makes people competitive? What makes people want to put their reputation on the line and be compared and judged by others? At the conclusion of any sports event, one team experiences the euphoria of victory while the other is left asking themselves where they went wrong with their offensive or defensive strategies and what they could do better. But while sports are the obvious example, competition can be found everywhere. In academics. In Barbecue. In growing the largest tomato. People will make fools of themselves on national TV just for the chance to win a few bucks. So it’s...
EQ2
Today’s update is all about Itemization, specifically Group and Raid zones in Chains of Eternity. Heroic Itemization Players have been clamoring for Chains of Eternity Heroic zones to drop items even as good as some of the powerful items found in Advanced Solo zones, and it looks like those sentiments have been heard. (Don’t worry Soloers, the solo zones still drop a ton of loot). Sleeper’s Tomb (Contested) has had a bigger problem as players quickly abandoned it when they found that the loot was hardly better than that from the much easier instanced heroic zones. Pre-Adorned Items After...
From the EQ2 Forums: GUILD HALL AMENITIES Depots You can now set tradeskill access separate from withdrawal and deposit access on each Depot’s UI. Transmuting components are now labeled properly and can be added into the harvest depot by selecting the appropriate choice in the deposit dropdown. Treasured – Fragments and Powders Legendary – Infusions Fabled – Manas ITEMS Augmented Blessing and Augmented Smite no longer stack proc chance. They now increase in effectiveness for each similar effect you wear. Augmented Blessing and Augmented Smite no longer proc in PVP combat. Augmented Blessing and Augmented Smite’s “On Damage Received”...
Even the most jaded player must admit that the EQ2 team have spent a lot of time in the last 18 months tweaking and balancing the classes, both in PvP and PvE situations. Every class in EQ2 now has a role to play, and the tools necessary to play that role, even if that role may not be the most engaging or fun to play. On Friday, Mike “Xelgad” Ganz, EQ2’s Mechanics Lead, posted threads in each of the Class forums seeking feedback not for further balancing, but what tweaks could be done to make each class less tedious...
Due to some family health issues, things have been slow at the Wire the past couple of weeks short of Update Notes. That’s not to say there hasn’t been a slow resurgence in news on the EQ2 forums as the devs come back from winter break…. The Shortest Distance Between Two Points Ever since the first Massively Multiplayer Online game arrived on the market, players have been seeking the shortest route to fortune, glory, and player experience (XP). In EverQuest II, Pet classes (Beastlords, Summoners, and Enchanters) have always had an advantage with the TOS-bending concept of unattended gameplay....
Here are your Update Notes for January 10, 2013 from the EQ2 Forums: ITEMS Ammo Conservation adornments have been removed from red and yellow dropped adornment tables. QUESTS Quest items Listenomitron and Voice Modulator now work as quest baubles during their associated quests in the betrayal quests.
Here are your Update Notes for Tuesday, January 8, 2013 from the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL You can now invite another player to create a raid even if they have a mercenary but you do not. You can now fill remaining spaces in your bags from your overflow via /empty_overflow or from right-clicking on the overflowing inventory icon. GUILD HALL AMENITIES The standard bearer should now offer guild markers for use in marking strategic locations within instances. Only those marked as a raid looter can remove these markers. TRADESKILLS The Refine ability icon should now refresh instantly, as the recast...
From the EQ2 Forums: QUESTS Sleeper’s Tomb [Contested] now has dropped and POI quests that can be used to earn [eq2u]Obol[/eq2u], spirits and more! Alma Marigold will now offer Kelethin: Dreadooze on more than one occasion. TRADESKILLS Maker’s Marks should now appear on all items crafted through the Quantity Crafting system. BATTLEGROUNDS You can no longer accept a battleground match while dead.
On the EQ2 Forums, players are reporting login issues with the Freeport server. Reports include players having trouble zoning, looting items, etc.
I am thrilled to announce that EQ2U now supports Spirit Stones (green adornments) which were added with the Chains of Eternity expansion, and for which we recently received the necessary data. We hope you will find that the progression of stats on this new type of adornment is a lot easier to follow with our choice of presentation/layout. Spirit Stone shown on a character’s equipment with stats appropriate to the Spirit Level.
I’d like to take a moment and express my sincere gratitude to Ferrek who took my We Need Screenshots call to arms as a personal challenge and set out to document every Insect and Arachnid that could be found in Norrath! Every screenshot and note on the Insects tab (as well as numerous contributions elsewhere in the Warder guide) was submitted by Ferrek. I’m happy to announce that our Beastlord Warder Guide now sports 39 Insect appearances. Note: 6 of the appearances are “bone spiders” and right now, charming any of them results in a grey beetle, but hopefully this...
On Wednesday, a number of players noticed that their Silver or expired EQ2 accounts had been temporarily upgraded to Gold. This turns out to be part of a Winback promotion that is granting players 15 days of Gold subscription to come back and try out EQ2 again. We’ve read through the announcement and broken this Promo down: Former EverQuest II players! Get in the game now and take advantage of FREE GOLD MEMBERSHIP time from 12/19/12 – 1/3/13*. Also, enjoy a FREE Adventurer’s Welcome Pack gift just for getting back into the game.
The US Servers will come down on Tuesday, December 18, 2012, at 3:00 pm Pacific for a hotfix. The EU servers will come down on Wednesday, December 19, 2012 at 5:00 am London time. The expected downtime is one hour. From the EQ2 Forums: PLAYER HOUSING Fixed a bug where your house could crash if you tried to take things out of your personal harvest depot.
Hot on the heels of today’s Update which introduced seven new flavors of Guild Depots, it seems a number of glitches have slipped through as well which were not discovered on Test. The first glitch affects smaller in-home Personal Harvest Depots. While players are still able to craft from the comfort of their own homes using said Depots, any attempt to manually remove stacks of harvestables leads to a zone crash, kicking the player from their homes. Meanwhile, players have reported sporadic issues with items disappearing from Guild Hall depots and inability to add or remove items. Windstalker had...
Guilds wishing to stockpile potions, poisons, adornments, lore & legend parts, and other supplies for their members have had little option but to cram all these items into the confines of their Guild Bank. When Guild Halls were added four years ago, one of the “home run” amenities was the Harvest Supply Depot, but it was limited to harvestables, and didn’t have enough slots to hold all adorning materials and other special ingredients. As an early Frostfell present, the EQ2 devs have added not one but seven more Depot types to encompass virtually everything that guildmates might want to...
From the EQ2 Forums: GUILD HALL AMENITIES Depots The maximum number of different resources that you can store in a Guild Harvest Depot has been increased from 200 to 1000. Several new Depots have been added as guild amenities! Check the “Depot” tab in your guildhall amenity list for details. The maximum number of items in a single depot stack has been increased from 20,000 to 99,999. Set Access now works with storage containers for the purpose of withdrawing items from the containers. Deposit remains open to all. Storage containers will now show the minimum level to use an...
In addition to a number of other player-requested changes, tweaks, and bug fixes, the coolest thing on the Test server right now may just be the evolution of the Guild Harvest Depot. The changes on Test dramatically increase the capacity and possible variety of materials which can be stored in the Guild Harvest Depot, as well as introducing a number of new types of storage container. With the new Depots, guilds will be able to de-clutter their Guild Bank of Poisons, Ammo, Totems (soon), Cure Potions, Food & Drink, Collectibles, Player-made Adornments, and Lore & Legend parts. These items...
It’s time for a double helping of updates as servers will go down today from 3-4pm PST for a second update. From the EQ2 Forums: ITEMS Items no longer lose their sale value to vendors when you transfer to another server. Many Brawler weapons have had delay adjust to 4 seconds. Some CoE brawler weapons have had permanent block chance added. [eq2u]Soul-Skiver of Blame[/eq2u] is now a 4 second delay. [eq2u]Claws of the Cursed Soul[/eq2u] is now a 4 second delay [eq2u]Claws of the Cursed Soul[/eq2u] now has permanent block chance added. [eq2u]Soul-Bladed Claws of the Silver Reaper[/eq2u] are...
Whew! With a little over 12 hours to spare before Frostfell 2012 goes live, I finally have the Frostfell 2012 crafting preview done! I bet you folks didn’t think I’d have it done in time – I know I didn’t think I’d finish it before tomorrow! Fortunately, I had some phenomenal help from a pair of SOE Frostfell Elves with regards to most of the images, and I think I caught all the high points. I take full responsibility for the ogress images that make you want eyeball bleach – I thought they’d help keep you from going into...
Here are your Update Notes for Thursday, December 13, 2012. This update is expected to take 2 hours. From the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL Mounts will no longer show the locked icon on them when you can use them. POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION Harrow’s End x4 Bastion’s pillars should regenerate energy nearly equally as fast as they get drained. The draining should also be slightly lessened. Drinal should no longer be casting his curse repetitively while the curse is already active on a raid member. Drinal’s Power Over Death curse should once again be at the appropriate duration. Oligar should...
So while we’re crossing our fingers that EQ2U will get access to Loot Tables someday soon, I wanted to take our new Item Popups for a spin and put together a collaborative loot article. We’ll be covering loot from Advanced Solo, Group, and Raid Zones, and even Collections as I know there are some good reward items out there. What do I do? Please post item names below and who the item is from (as well as any adornments that are bundled with the item), which zone, and whether it was the EM or HM version. I’ll be reading...
I’m thrilled to announce that the last three weeks of Javascript hell endured by Dethdlr have paid off, as EQ2U is now running totally revamped display code for Item Popups (Tooltips if you prefer). While we were at it, we also took the opportunity to switch our Spells pages to internal popups. This applies both when viewing a Character, and when browsing Spells directly. [eq2u]Chains of the Baleful Soul[/eq2u] | [eq2u]Torrent of Pestilence[/eq2u] | [eq2u]Assassin’s Drape of War[/eq2u] Once I started testing out the new code, and I saw item popups snap into nice neat positions rather than going...
From EQ2’s Twitter: The US Servers will come down on Thursday, December 6, 2012, at 4:00 pm Pacific* for a hotfix. The expected downtime is one hour. [Dexella] — EverQuest II (@everquestii) December 6, 2012 Time Zone Conversions PST: December 6 @ 4-5:00pm EST: December 6 @ 7-8:00pm GMT: December 7 @ 0:00-01:00 CET: December 7 @ 01:00-02:00 Full Update Notes after the jump…
Dethdlr
From the EQ2 Forums: GENERAL Fixed an issue with the ticket goblin not spawning correctly. POPULATION Obol Plains The Steward of Drinal merchant is now located in Cardin Ward. Harrow’s End Drinal’s soulwells have returned and should correctly render when it is time to select his challenge level. ITEMS Shift+left-clicking on a green adornment should now properly create an item link in the chat window. TRADESKILLS Upgrades to Bloodbath and Bria’s Entrancing Sonnet are now craftable. QUESTS In Vanishing Act, the visage of fear will no longer attack mercenaries and pets once it is defeated. On Circumstantial Evidence, the...
Dethdlr and I have been patiently (well, Dethdlr at least) waiting for Chains of Eternity data so we can add Experimentation, Refining, and Spirit Stones (green adornments) to EQ2U. Looks like DrumsUI author Drumstix got tired of waiting, broke out a calculator (and some Optical Character Recognition) and has calculated out the max level of every Spirit Stone currently in-game. VISIT: Spirit Stones at Max Level @ DrumsUI If you haven’t checked out DrumsUI, it is one of the best “full replacement” UI themes for EQ2. Virtually every window is nipped, tucked, or tweaked to dramatically increase functionality and...