Today’s Update Notes fix a variety of quest and zone issues, as well as some issues with Public Quests, not to mention a fix for the quest Ominous Hints and the Twins in Thurgadin. The detailed Update Notes for March 3, 2011 after the jump…

We heard about this in Beta, but Windslasher intends to add more Public Quests in future updates, possibly even to older zones. From the EQ2 Forums:

The Eastern Wastes public quests were pulled from the expansion for use in game updates. I can’t reveal what I’ve created for Pit of the Awakened yet. Sorry!

Also, Gninja has heard our pleas and will be adding zone portals near the Public Quests allowing players to join each other in the same zone for PQs, as well as our personal preference: spreading out into different instances of the Great Divide.

I will be adding a portal in the Othmir area and the Thurgadin docks area in Great Divide and the spires area in Eastern Wastes. Keep an eye on the patch notes for this to be coming to the live servers.

There’s nothing sadder than being part of 60 people unable to complete a Public Quest at Difficulty #5 (x4 raid) because of 8 second casting lag. Folks, FAN OUT into other zones please. As long as you have 24 players smoothly and quickly killing mobs, you’ll get the good loot!

This is not the picture of success:

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 Coldain Ring War and Storm Gorge Public Quests were a lot of fun this weekend, however several issues plagued both, making it difficult or impossible, even with a full raid of 24 players, to reach difficulty #4 or #5 to get the better rewards (including Legendary armor with yellow adornment slots). The Ring War PQ kept scaling down to solo difficulty, and the Storm Gorge PQ seemed to start at maximum difficulty, steamrolling everyone present, rather than ramping up.

We also see bug fixes in various quests, including both the group and raid versions of the Tower of Frozen Shadow.

A syndrome that I think many people who write about MMOs experience is that find ourselves actually PLAYING the game less and less. I’m certainly guilty of this myself. We get interested in a game, start writing about it based on our experience, and next thing you know we aren’t catching groups or raids anymore. So with Velious I made a commitment to get back in the game.

So one of my first experiences has been getting into Public Quests, which spawned the article yesterday. The concept certainly makes for an interesting type of content, one that was popular in Warhammer and is a huge draw for the new Rift. So far, I have heard feedback from quite a few players who have checked out Public Quests and have gotten mixed results.

Public Quests provide different kinds of rewards than we’ve seen in the past. Right now there are 2 Public Quests: Storm Gorge which is Southeast of Thurgadin and the Ring War which is Northeast of Thurgadin. There are plans to add several more Public Quests as we heard about in Beta (possibly the Sleeper!).

In the Destiny of Velious Webcast #3 (video and notes), we first heard about War Runes. These are a new set of Red Adornments available to raiders in the Destiny of Velious. They’re essentially a “greatest hits” of the best, most popular, most powerful Procs/Effects from Avatars, Shadow Odyssey Fabled, and Sentinel’s Fate Fabled. War Runes open up Red Adornments to new slots, specifically Weapons (Primary, Secondary, Ranged), Charms, Belts, and Cloaks. From Silius in Webcast #3:

[War Runes are applicable to] your 3 weapon slots, 2 charm slots. Easy mode raids will have belts that have a red slot. Hard mode raids will have cloaks that have a red slot. So hard mode raiders can add effects to 7 total slots, on top of having red slots on their raid armor.

War Runes are the more specialized procs, custom-made procs, a lot of which are upgraded from Sentinel’s Fate procs that players have noted as being their favorites, the procs that make an item their favorite item.

These are raid-only dropped adornments. Whoever loots them and clicks on a War Rune gets flagged so he/she can go to a War Rune merchant and buy that adornment for raid shards. He/she gets permanent access to them.

This is PART FOUR of our guide to Destiny of Velious adornments and covers the basic Red or “Raid” adornments designated for Raiding SORTED BY FACTION.

Red Adornments are FABLED, level 90, and cost 10 Pure Primal Velium Shards plus 5 plat and 4 gold. There are four major factions offering Adornments in Destiny of Velious:

• The Othmir of Velious
• Snowfang Gnolls
• Clan Ry’Gorr
• The City of Thurgadin

There are solo, repeatable, and dungeon-based quests to earn faction with the Othmir, Snowfang Gnolls, Ry’Gorr, and Thurgadin.

Red Adornments may also be acquired as a very rare drop from Public Quests. A choice of 4 special Red Adornments are available for purchase in the City of Thurgadin to those who have completed the quest The Fallen Swords: Here, There Be Giants. Finally, special Red Adornments called War Runes are available as drops in raid zones, redeemable in Kael Drakkel.

UPDATE: This article has been updated as of March 8, 2011 with figures adjusted since Beta and Charm slot being folded into Primary/Secondary/Ranged.

This is PART THREE of our guide to Destiny of Velious adornments and covers the basic Red or “Raid” adornments designated for Raiding SORTED BY SLOT.

Red (Raid) Adornments are FABLED, level 90, and cost 10 Pure Primal Velium Shards plus 5 plat and 4 gold. Basic Red Adornments are available for 11 slots:

• Head
• Chest
• Gloves
• Boots
• Shoulders
• Forearms
• Legs
• Primary/Secondary/Ranged/Charm

There are solo, repeatable, and dungeon-based quests to earn faction with the Othmir, Snowfang Gnolls, Ry’Gorr, and Thurgadin.

Red Adornments may also be acquired as a very rare drop from Public Quests. A choice of 4 special Red Adornments are available for purchase in the City of Thurgadin to those who have completed the quest The Fallen Swords: Here, There Be Giants. Finally, special Red Adornments called War Runes are available as drops in raid zones, redeemable in Kael Drakkel.

UPDATE: This article has been updated as of March 8, 2011 with figures adjusted since Beta and Charm slot being folded into Primary/Secondary/Ranged.

Destiny of Velious introduces Public Quests. These are interactive battles between NPCs that players can join in and receive a variety of rewards. Drawing inspiration from Warhammer (and possibly Rift, although we don’t know the creative timeline here), these are the opposite of Contested content because everyone who participates receives a reward. If your gear is really limited, then you can even click on NPCs and coordinate fighting with them and use their abilities instead. All those present and participating in the battle gain access to a Loot Chest which can contain a piece of armor commeasurate with the level of the encounter when it was completed, as well as other items including:

• Velium shard — An item that can be turned in for faction
• Potions that instantly grant AA XP
• Relics that you can sacrifice to your Deity
• Trinkets that you can Transmute

At the end of each battle, players will also see green shinies which can be harvested for rewards.

There are two Public Quests going live with Destiny of Velious:

• The Battle of Storm Gorge: The Coldain dwarves need your help fending off the attacks of the Order of Rime
• The Battle of Thurgadin (Echoes of the Ring War): The kromrif army and the defenders of Thurgadin have been slain but their ghosts remain locked in battle. This is the site of the Ring War from EQ1 and also where the 10th War Ring Heritage Quest starts.

When you wander into the active area, you will be automatically offered a quest in your Quest Journal which does not count towards your quest total. The quest will show a timer of when the next Public Quest is going to begin and you can stick around (or go do other things and then come back at the appropriate time) and then jump into the battle.

In-Game Calendar

If you have longed to be able to organize Guild Events into an in-game Calendar, post a Raid Schedule, or get a reminder on which City will be visited next by the roving City Festival, you’ll be pleased to see the addition of a Calendar in Game Update 59. The calendar will be populated with Live Events, possibly Server Events posted by Community Managers, and also your Guild leadership will have the ability to add events (it’s gained a new permission under Guild Ranks).

Ready Check!

From the Update Notes:

Raid Leaders can now initiate a ready-check by right-clicking the raid window. Raid members in the current zone will be asked if they are ready and the results will be displayed in the raid window as well as in raid chat.

This will be a great addition for Raid Leaders to be able to make sure everyone is back from AFK, and probably also a good way to find out who’s watching TV (or worse) rather than paying attention. 😉

NOTE: This is a PREVIEW. Additional features and tweaks may occur to render these screenshots outdated.

Big changes to Mechanics and Itemization have coincided with the last 2 expansions and Destiny of Velious is no exception. Today we delve into changes to:

• Procs (Item Effects)
• Adornments
• Critical Chance
• Critical Avoidance
• Primary Stats (Stamina, Intelligence, Agility, Wisdom, and Strength)
• Health
• Power
• Melee Range
• Multiattack
• Ability Mod

Here is our list of dungeons and raid zones from Destiny of Velious and some difficulty indicators provided by developers updated with player feedback. Updated for Game Update 62.

Destiny of Velious Solo Zones:

Great Divide (86-90)
Eastern Wastes (89-90)
Crystalline Breaks (solo)

Here are some notes from Friday night’s live Webcast of Rich Waters, Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson and Salim “Silius” talking about the upcoming Destiny of Velious expansion, including player-submitted questions. Getting into the mechanics and itemization changes, we get very close to a full transcription as there is a lot of detail and information here. We recommend listening to the webcast to get a complete picture of what was said.

Some bullet points:

• The EQ2 team have the next year of Game Updates planned out with more group zones, raid zones, heritage quests, etc. The first Game Update will add more dungeons.

• Items will become a lot more modular and straightforward, with procs largely moved to adornments.

• Group players in Sentinel’s Fate should be able to jump right into grouping in Velious such as Tower of Frozen Shadow.

• Casual raiders in Sentinel’s Fate may want to test the waters with the contested Kael Drakkel dungeon which falls right before the easier raid content.

• High-level raiders who are already doing Underfoot Depths should be able to move into the easier raid zones in Velious without grouping, although Kael Drakkel is a good stepping stone.

• Silius went into detail on the new Adornment scheme including a new type of adornment War Runes.

• We won’t see new Battlegrounds gear or other PvP content until the Game Update after Velious.

• A new mechanic on mobs (NPCs) called Critical Avoidance which means you’ll need well over 100% Crit Chance to succeed harder dungeons and raids. This effect reduces your crit (including healing!).

• Flying mounts start at level 86.

• On March 1st, everyone will be able to fly as a live event. The gnomes are putting in experimental test pilot tracks in Lavastorm, Tenebrous Tangle, and Butcherblock. You’ll be able to grab a tinkered craft and run through the race against time.

Here are your hotfix notes for December 22, 2010:

GENERAL

Fixed some issues which could cause raid zones to crash.

If you’ve been hoping for any hint of class tweaks we’ll see in Velious, Xelgad has posted an early preview. Naturally this does not include any mention of new AA lines or other abilities we may gain.

We’re still three months from the Destiny of Velious launch, and more sweeping changes than the ones listed below were made in less time, so take this as an early teaser, subject to change. In short, there is great news for Illusonists and Summoners, and some news for other classes as well.

Remember that patch that went in yesterday?  The one that caused raid zones to crash over and over again?  Today we get the patch for the patch.  “Fixed a crash issue related to pet immunity” apparently means, “we fixed the raid zone crashing bug that we introduced yesterday“.  This bug was apparently reported on the website late last week but the info didn’t make it to the developers.  Remember, always /bug when you find a bug.  That doesn’t mean they will always see it, but at least that gets it into their system. Notes after the break…

EQ2 Test Update Notes give a glimpse of what changes we may expect in the future of EQ2. They are always subject to change, sometimes due to player input, sometimes because an item is not ready to go live yet (i.e. Multi Attack over 100%). We nevertheless keep an ear to the ground and an eye on the EQ2 Test Update Notes and occasionally present that information here.

The detailed Test Update Notes, which can be found on the EQ2 Forums, contain numerous tweaks and fixes large and small. October 28th’s notes reference the Currency window, Tradeskill Writs, Stonewill effects, Heroic Resistance effects, LoN-dropped Petamorph wands, the Heroes Festival, and Battlegrounds. Pretty routine stuff. But a line item in these Test Notes was brought to our attention which may have a substantial impact on Raid Progression:

It should no longer be possible to bug the swarm adds portion of the Roehn Theer fight.

Roehn Theer is a unique fight in that the difficulty is chosen by the raid and there are 1, 2, 3, and 4-rune versions, each adding an additional effect the raid force must survive.

EQ2Wire Mailbox: For those guilds that are taking down the 3- and 4- rune versions of Roehn Theer, will this change affect your raid force? If so, is this an unnecessary roadblock, or a well-considered exploit closure? We’d like to hear your comments!

Today’s hotfix notes include the ability to relocate your City Bind Point to any city you are aligned with, more crafted Marks of Manaar equipment, and other changes to live events and raids.

Here are your update notes for Thursday, 21 October 2010 after the break:

Amnerys has posted the complete Game Update Notes for Game Update 58: Arcanum Revealed on the EQ2 Forums.

Here they are after the break:

Here are your update notes for 5 October 2010:

EVERQUEST 2 EXTENDED

• Bronze members will now be able to view chat channels (Silver or higher is still required to participate in chat).
• You can now purchase Gold memberships directly in game.

MARKETPLACE

• You can now buy extra character slots in the marketplace!
• You can now redeem station cash cards directly in game by going to: Marketplace – Add Funds – Station Cash Card.
• You can now add a credit card to your file directly in game by going to: Marketplace – Add Funds – Credit Card – Add New Card.
• Check the marketplace for “New” and “Hot” items!
• Marketplace items that are discounted from normal price will now show “SALE” on the icon in both the welcome window and the marketplace window.

PERAH’CELSIS’ ABOMINABLE LABORATORY

Homicidal Madness (the charm spell) no longer affects fighters.

I remember several years ago preparing to raid Deathtoll.

The first thing I did was ride a cloud up on Bonemire and jump off at just the right spot so I could land on the floating island containing Arbiter Selek. But before I could talk to him, I had to speak Draconic. That’s right, first I had to do the quest Speak as a Dragon that started with a raid and then sent me all over Norrath looking for items.

Here are your update notes for 28 September 2010 (since we cover EQII Live and EQ2X, the link is to the EQ2X forums where the full update notes are posted):

EVERQUEST 2 EXTENDED

• Going to Battlegrounds on EQ2 Extended should no longer cause your items to set to 1c sell value.

UNDERFOOT DEPTHS

• There is now a new respawn location right by the entrance to the Underfoot Seal chamber where Master Yael spawns. In order to activate this new respawn location, players will need to defeat fire elemental encounter “Saalax” before it can be accessed.

Here are your update notes for 21 September 2010:

ITEMS

• Torrent and Pestilential Rain no longer gain damage from attributes.

PALACE OF ROEHN THEER

Roehn Theer will now lock you into your rune choice should you lower his health below 75%.

Here are your update notes for 14 September 2010 after the break: