From Windslasher on the EQ2 Forums

Okay, I have it on pretty good authority that a solo shard quest is on the way. Probably GU 60. It will not have anything whatsoever to do with public quests, however.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!  You’ll have some time this morning to don the green, since the servers are going to be down for a while: 

The US servers will come down on Thursday, March 17, 2011, at 7am PDT for a hotfix and session server maintenance.  The expected downtime is 1 hour.

Please note that due to the maintenance occurring during this period, you may not able to log in to the forums.

The UK servers are also getting a patch:

This is a notification that UK worlds will be updated at 4:00 AM London Time on 03/18/2011. The estimated downtime will be 2 hours.

Zatozia has posted our update notes for Thursday, March 17, 2011. They include numerous tweaks and fixes to Velious instances and Public Quests.

Today’s Update Notes include bug fixes for progression in group zones, and a fix for the Missing Mask quest in Nektropos Castle.

The zone crashes occurring in the x2 Tower of Frozen Shadow instances involving boss Tserrina have been identified by the development team, but cannot be immediately fixed, says Gninja:

We have found the crash issue with Tserrina and it should be getting cleared up within a patch or two. For now if you do not cure the curses it should not crash.

Looks like Tserrina found a way to make her curses stick!

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.

Oh hai there was an update!

From the EQ2 Forums:

ZONE PROGRESSION / POPULATION

Throne of Storms

• Bosses in Throne of Storms heroic should mem-wipe less.

Temple of Rallos Zek Heroic Challenge

• Neocorus Rikrlander the Defender’s golem adds should now properly cast their Aureate Legion abilities.

QUESTS

Public Quests

• It is no longer possible to assemble a Lovers’ Gazebo in a PQ area.
• An issue where Goredeth Maulhammer’s encounter on Storm Gorge could spawn after allowing the dwarven siege to die off has been fixed. They must be protected through the whole battle in order to trigger the hardest boss.
• Storm Gorge should not accidentally reset anymore, and getting full participation credit is now easier.
• Shinies that spawned directly underneath treasure chests have been moved.

Not getting any Public Quest loot? It may be your personal loot settings if you’ve got Auto-Loot or Auto-Decline enabled. urgthock responded to a player who was unable to access the loot in a Public Quest chest.

Make sure you don’t have auto greed or auto decline turned on. Since you keep saying “access to”, I am guessing you are probably getting the red message saying you are not entitled to any of the treasure, but just in case you are simply not getting anything instead… make sure auto greed or auto decline are not turned on.

From Windslasher:

I’ve been reading a lot of /bug reports describing exactly this issue. If you were in there the whole fight and nothing happens upon clicking the public chest (Nothing at all, no red popup or anything), then open up your options -> group options and check your Default Auto Loot Mode at the bottom of that section.

I’m going to get a UI error message put in to tell you when your auto loot setting prevents you from clicking a chest, but it might be a while before that kind of change can be pushed onto the live servers. Thanks for pointing that out here.

So not everyone is enamored with the Flying Gryphons. Shock!

There has been discussion on the EQ2 Forums about the appearance of Flying Mounts, their origin, and when we might see either our existing flying-type mounts (carpets, hovering clouds, discs, and a selection of flying horses) become flyable as appearance flying mounts, or new flying mounts added as quests. At least on that last question, it appears it is only a matter of time. I’ve personally enjoyed flying on my 2 gryphons (I’m also working on the tradeskill one — although it seems we must repeat the 5 day training of our tradeskill mounts even after getting our adventure mount), as well as the  NCC1701A flying saucer pod racer C.R.A.S.H. Pad tinkered flying appearance mount.

The Update Notes for March 10th, 2011 address a series of issues with progression, encounters, and quests with the Destiny of Velious dungeons and beyond.

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.

If you’ve been keeping your Burynai house pet (from the Kunark Pre-Order) on a steady diet of fertilizers and letting the shinies roll in, you’ve probably noticed that they have had no luck producing any of the collections from Odus (Sundered Frontier, Stonebrunt Mountains), Velious (Great Divide, Eastern Wastes), or associated dungeons. It turns out, a new Guild Hall amenity has been added for these Tier 9 zones. Here’s Gninja to explain the new Herbalist Hirelings which accept fertilizer items in exchange for collectable rewards:

.. Right now you should be able to feed the “Herbalist Hireling” any combination of the three items and get a collectible from it. The [older] Burynai will only accept items up to tier8. Combinations using the Tier9 [materials] will not work with the Burynai.

Tradeskillers who selected the Frost Gryphon, rather than the Boreal Gryphon, as their level 85+ tradeskill flying mount are experiencing an issue after today’s Game Update. Namely, the Frost Gryphon seems to have been flagged Guide-only. It’s not immediately obvious in the following screen shot, but we have confirmed this. Domino is aware of the issue and hopefully we’ll get a fix ASAP.

This is being discussed on the EQ2 Forums.

Looks like the contested Kael Drakkel group dungeon just got some more reasons for people to go back! From Kander on the EQ2 Forums:

Due to the hotfix schedule, we should have everything listed in by Tuesday March 15th. The stuff in bold is in now and the rest will be in next Tuesday.

• PoI Quests have been made repeatable once a day (6 quests) and grant faction and shards
• Trash drops, including rare fabled drops are being added to the zone tables.
• Bosses now have a chance to drop shards.
• Trash now has a chance to drop shards.
• The experience has been raised significantly.
• Most if not everything loot oriented is tradeable.

Also all named in Kael Drakkel are now flagged to give AA experience every time you kill them. That went in this morning I believe.

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…

Some players have noticed everquest2.exe instances keep running in the background after they have logged out. Aerendar from Quality Assurance would like to get to the bottom of it, and asks:

Could we get a little more info from you regarding your system specs (DXDiag and MSinfo would be extremely helpful in looking at this further and to see if we can determine a commonality between users)?

He adds:

We’re also interested in how you’re getting into game (which launcher/portal).

If you have experienced this problem, please post in the relevant thread. If this is an old issue resurfaced, we can postulate, but your help would be greatly appreciated.

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:

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…

Kael Drakkel is making Contested Dungeons in EQ2 sexy again. With 15 names, and the largest zone ever added to EQ2 (it’s larger than Solusek’s Eye), there is a lot to live up to here. The zone is intended to be difficult, with loot somewhere between the hardest Velious instances and beginning raids. It’s a new way of approaching contested dungeons compared to The Hole, Karnor’s Castle, Sebilis, and Chardok which all struggled to keep our attention after a few weeks.

Players have been looking for an old school dungeon crawl and Kael Drakkel seems to deliver. It shows a new commitment to creating dungeons that aren’t irrelevant or abandoned after the first week of the expansion. This is the kind of danger and contested experience we haven’t really seen since Castle Mistmoore and Sanctum of Scaleborn and feedback both during Beta and since launch has been surprisingly positive, even from the most jaded raiders.

Kander took a leading role in designing Kael Drakkel, and seems cautious about making any major changes to it. This seems wise, as subtle changes may be all that is warranted here.

Now that we’ve seen Tuesday’s Update Notes, we can talk about a few issues we’ve seen which remain unresolved. These may have been fixed today, but they don’t appear in the Update Notes. If you know of a specific bug affecting quest progression, zone progression, etc., please post a comment!

• Eastern Wastes Flight Discoveries
• Uncooperative Twins
• Forgotten Pools Zone In/Zone Out
• Stat Changes Nerf Level 20-60 Gear
• Nektropos Castle Door Missing
• Many Instances Not Spawning Mobs
• Public Quest Lag
• Call of the Veteran More Broken Than Ever
• Disruptive Students in Shadowed Corridors
• Raid Invites
• Autoconsume Items in Flight Spam
• Quest Answers/Replies Have No Background
• Graphic Artifacts with new Special Effects

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.

From EverQuest2.com:

The U.S. servers will come down on February 25, 2011, at 7am PDT for a hotfix. The expected downtime is 2 hours. UK worlds will be updated at 5:00 AM London Time on February 25, 2011, with an estimated downtime will be 2 hours. Here are the notes:

GENERAL

• Depth of Field, SSAO and Sunshafts should be working correctly now.
• Fixed a crash bug.

From covic on  the EQ2 Forums:

Update is that we started them and where trying to figure a way around skinning issues. Well our new graphic programmer says he can give me better skinning code. Right now a vert (point at the edge of polygon) can only have two bone influences, making it really hard for long skirt type cloth. Well Alex (GermInUSA) our graphic programmer says he can get me 4 influences. It’s on his task list for about April. Then we will probably block more time for the creating of kilt art assets.

You will laugh at this, but EQ1 has four influences per vert, why we didnt get that, I am not sure.

Dave

All US servers are still down 2 1/2 hours into a 1 hour Update.

EQ2 Network Status Page

Yesterday we read in the EQ2 Dev Tracker that several tweaks and fixes as well as additional debug code were being added for Freeport and Everfrost servers to try to get to the bottom of the problems.

UPDATE: The Network Status Page has been updated to indicate this is now a 3 hour downtime. So much for Double Guild XP.

If there is any doubt that EQ2 devs are working as hard as they can to resolve the persistent Receiving Zone Info issues affecting Freeport and (to some extent) other servers, know that Zoltaroth and Rothgar put in 16 hours on Tuesday, and I know that Zoltaroth worked again until midnight this morning. Sleep is overrated!