Feldon
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...
Raiding
Kwill
The Storm Gorge Public Quests are currently denying eligible participants the ability to loot a chest, apparently as a result of the recent changes to weed out PQ slackers. Gninja has acknowledged today there is a problem: We are aware of the problem and are working to fix it. In the meantime, players are reporting lag and the possibility you will not get to loot a chest even if you are participating fully.
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.
After today’s update, players have been checking out the re-structured Storm Gorge to see how the fights have changed, and how server lag has been reduced. Players generally reported improvements in lag, and also shared their strategies on dealing with the changes in the fight, which in some cases make it more challenging and interesting. Windslasher‘s response: It’s great to hear that the latest lag fixes worked! With that game-breaking issue mostly solved, I can now turn more my attention to other important issues. For example: Goredeth Maulhammer has always had the ability to heal himself while enraged. His...
Raid Zone Lag can add randomness to an already challenging fight. There are many causes such as how an encounter is designed, unintended interactions in the zone code itself, etc. This issue is of particular importance in Velious because the Tower of Frozen Shadow x2 raid zone drops a Clicky item which is required to take on most of the Velious x4 raid content. Players receive an item which must be clicked by certain classes at certain times in certain named fights in Velious hard mode raid zones in order to make them defeatable. Although some guilds have been...
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.
Yesterday marked the one month anniversary of the launch of Destiny of Velious. Over the last month, we have seen an avalanche of bugs impacting progression with dungeons and raid zones alike throughout Velious. While these have been steadily fixed during the nearly daily updates, at least one issue remains unresolved: The series of doors in Kraytoc’s Fortress of Rime x4 raid zone. It seems that these doors can get locked due to wipes, zone resets, etc. Discuss this on the EQ2 Forums
In response to a concise Berserker Class Issues post-Velious thread created by Bremer, Xelgad said that we should see some of these fixes hopefully before but at the latest by Game Update 60: Hey guys, thanks for the thread! We’ve got a bunch of quick fixes for these issues on the way. They’ll be live by GU60 at the latest. Most of the changes are pretty straightforward and some are exactly as suggested here. and later in the thread, Xelgad posted that he was able to make Death’s Door a more prominent effect to allow healers to more easily...
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.
Zatozia has posted our update notes for Thursday, March 17, 2011. They include numerous tweaks and fixes to Velious instances and Public Quests.
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...
In response to players asking why Storm Gorge PQ lag fixes can’t be implemented ASAP, Windslasher had these responses on the EQ2 Forums: There are multiple lag sources, some of which are obvious and unavoidable (Large numbers of players in combat at the same time = lag), some of which are interesting and somewhat fixable (30 players vs. 30 encounters is worse than 60 players vs. 1 encounter) and some which are too subtle & complicated to describe in one sentence without using jargon (There are scripts & abilities that load up the server at O(n^2)). I’m going through...
EQ2 Designer Windslasher is working on the lag issues in the Storm Gorge public quests, but apparently it’s not an easy problem to solve: I am working on changes to reduce lag. I’m very aware of how bad it is, and I consider that the #1 problem to fix. It also happens to be the hardest, which is why the going is slow. That is all.
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.
The March 8th Game Update Notes contain an interesting item: The anti-slacker threshold has been raised on all PQ’s [Public Quests]. The Developers are serious about this! Windslasher said: Freeloading was not part of the public quest design and will not be allowed. I’m approaching the problem slowly and carefully, to avoid denying loot to players who deserve it, but measures are being taken to tighten up the participation requirements. The next hotfix [March 8] will make a slight change to address the problem, and depending on the response, I may take progressively stronger measures. We reported earlier this...
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…
Players have been surprised by a change in Thursday’s Game Update affecting the Critical Mitigation of Fighter armor received from Public Quests. As we know, both Public Quests award armor upgrades for hands (gloves) and legs. Storm Gorge PQ’s also award armor for head and feet (boots), while Ring War PQs award armor for shoulders and wrists. There are also rare drops from these events, including Fabled chest pieces and Weapons. During Beta, Othmir solo quest givers offered a full set of armor which was essentially Sentinel’s Fate Tier 1 raid armor minus adornment slots. After Beta concluded, this...
Although there are many things we can do on our end to reduce poor performance when playing EQ2, Public Quests have really pushed things to the limit both on the client and AND the server end. Especially in Storm Gorge which has some 60 combatants in the highest difficulty setting. In the past, there have been some tit-for-tat arguments about people’s slow computers vs. issues on the EQ2 servers themselves. While there is a lot players can do to reduce graphics performance aka “client lag”, it is up to the EQ2 devs to tackle any issues on the SOE...
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...
As you may know, in Destiny of Velious, certain dungeons reduce your Critical Chance by a fixed amount. You thus need to go over 100% just to reach 100% critical chance. Thanks to Buffrat for collecting this information and posting it on EQ2Flames. You need the following crit chance in velious to crit 100%: Estimated Crit Numbers: Heroic Tower of Frozen Shadow (ToFS) Zones – 150% Crit Heroic Kraytoc Zones – 150% Crit Heroic Kael Drakkel (KD) Zones – 200% Crit
Great news if you have been running Public Quests and been rather puzzled at Legendary (or Fabled) gear with Yellow adornment slots, yet receiving Red adornments (which only go on Raid gear). Now, you will get a select window/choice for Yellow or Red, and it’s based on archetype. After the jump, your update notes for March 4, 2011: