An invitation is never required to find reason to complain about the occurrence of loot drops in EQ2, but Public Quests have earned a special place for frustration in this regard. Several players have multiple weapons or chestpieces which they cannot trade to alts, while others have never seen them.

The math on how loot in a Public Quest is actually rather simple, but vexingly random. The best result you can get from a Public Quest by pure effort (excluding luck) is a Humming Cache. There is a 50% chance this will get bumped to an Exquisite Humming Cache. And there is yet another roll/chance (less than 1%) to get a Weapon or Chestpiece appropriate for your class.

After the jump, some commentary from Windslasher, Public Quest guru and creator of the Dragon Ring and Wizard Spire rebuilding events which will be taking place in Eastern Wastes at a future date. Those have been described by testers we’ve asked as a whole lot more fun (and more rewarding) even than the Public Quests .

From Kaitheel on the EQ2 Forums:

Tinkerfest has been activated on both Test and Test Copy.

Like clockwork, Tinkerfest has returned! Take up your favorite wrench and celebrate all things gnomish, be they metal, combustive, mathematical, experimental, or a combination thereof! Adventures, rewards, buyables and crafted items await you, both new and familiar. You won’t want to miss all of the fun at Gnomeland Security, your headquarters for all things Tinkerfest, in Steamfont Mountains.

All City Festivals and all Aether Flying Races were enabled during Double XP week, but if you missed it, or worked on leveling characters instead, then we’re now back into our regular schedule of City Festivals for the first week of every month.

June is on the horizon and as the new month begins the New Halas City Festival will come to Norrath! The festival is planned to start on June 1st at 12:01am PDT and will run until June 7th at 11:59pm PDT. The Far Seas Caravan can be found near the Cairn of the Huntress.

Read More @ EQ2 ZAM

One of the side benefits of the Welcome Back program, which has seen all City Festivals (Qeynos, Freeport, Neriak, Kelethin, and Gorowyn) live simultaneously, is that we now have access to items on the merchants which weren’t going to make an appearance for several months. From Domino:

The new stuff was originally intended to slowly be revealed over the next half year as the festivals cycled around … but with them all turned on at once you have a bit of a deluge of new goodies! Glad they are enjoyed anyway.

There may be some new things coming in the mushroom rings after GU60, too … but live servers will have to wait for next month to see those!

If you’ve toured Destiny of Velious, you know of the unused Wizard Spire in the Eastern Wastes and abandoned Dragon Ring in the Great Divide. An upcoming live event, recently pushed to Test and Test Copy by Gninja, seeks to rebuild them. These events will be more like Public Quests than past events.

Both events share one currency [tokens] and currency can be obtained in two ways. There are blue collectibles that spawn around the event area. The number of collectibles vary based on the progress of the event. The second way is by defending the respective areas from the attacks that happen when the events kick off. When you enter the area you should receive a quest.

When the events kick off the area should be attacked by waves of attackers. Defeating these attackers and minimizing NPC casualties will reward progression. Allowing them to die will slow progression. As the events gets further in progression the difficulty of the waves will increase.

There is no planned tradeskill component to these events, without engaging in combat, there are options to acquire tokens. Gninja again:

The tokens also spawn around each of the areas as ground spawns like in Tinkerfest.

This event may go live with, or after Game Update 60, it’s not clear.

From Amnerys on the EQ2 Forums:

To thank players for their patience during the recent service interruption, we will be hosting special events this weekend across our game portfolio, including a Double Station Cash day on Saturday, April 30th. We are also working on a “make good” plan for players of the PS3 versions of DC Universe Online and Free Realms.  Details will be available soon on the individual game websites and forums.

EverQuest II and EQ2X will also be holding a Double XP day on Saturday, from 12:01am PST to 11:59pm PST. This will affect tradeskill, adventure and AA XP.

To redeem game cards for Station Cash, visit the Game Cards webpage. The types of cards below are eligible for SC redemption (denominations may vary). Purchases can also be made through your account, which is always accessible at SOE.com.

We apologize for any inconvenience players may have experienced as a result of the recent service interruption. As a global leader in online gaming, SOE is committed to delivering stable and entertaining games for players of all ages.

This year’s EQ2 Winback program for players who may be taking a break from EQ2 or are trying other MMOs has a great premise. 1 week of free play, and EVERYONE playing EQ2 gets access to Flying Mounts, with an active or inactive sub at levels 1-90!

From EverQuest2.com:

From April 14th at 9:00 am PDT until April 21st at 7:00 am PDT, all inactive accounts in good standing who logged in between 6-17-10 and 2-28-11 will be able to rejoin the adventure in Norrath!

Check out what’s changed since you left, and take to the skies! Here are three great reasons to log in now and play:

Take to the Skies!

It’s your turn to experience the rich realms of Norrath like never before by taking flight on your very own Gryphon mount. Simply log in, visit the in-game Marketplace, click on the Take Flight Promotion, and grab the free “Enchanted Gryphon Call” to summon your flying mount; yours to fly until April 21st.

New Content to Explore!

We’ve also updated the content on all eligible accounts to include all the expansion packs, up to and including Sentinel’s Fate! Power level through this new content with complimentary XP potions to catch you up faster.

Get Up to 3000 in Station Cash Bonuses!

As a participant in this event, you can earn Station Cash bonuses in the following ways:

• Earn 500 SC when you re-subscribe for 1 month. You’ll get 1000SC when you choose a multi-month subscription (3, 6, and 12 month plans available).
• Earn 1000 SC when you buy the Destiny of Velious Expanion pack.
• Or Earn 2000 SC when you buy Destiny of Velious: Digital Collector’s Edition.

Today’s Update for Tuesday, April 12, 2011 brings PvP Character Transfers to and from PvP servers, fixes for the Storm Gorge PQ, fixes bugs in instances and raid zones including Tower of Frozen Shadow which has been broken since a week ago Thursday preventing raid progression, and eliminates harassment of other server’s chat channels (players were able to join the 1-9 and other numbered chat channels of other servers).

After many years of requests, it is now possible to transfer characters from PvP to PvE and vice-versa on both regular and exchange-enabled servers (exchange-to-regular is still not allowed).

One of the problems that the developers have been working on lately is to make sure that  non-participants or “slackers” don’t get rewarded in Public Quests.  In the original version of the Public Quests, which started out with an arbitrary threshold of acceptable spell casting or DPS, too many AFK players were getting chest drops, at least in the eyes of other players, who expressed their concerns to developers.

For Dev Gninja, this was an unacceptable situation that needed to be rectified.  He was mad about it.  So back to the drawing board he went, increasing the threshold yet again in the metric that records participation.  The result?  Storm Gorge PQs are not rewarding the people who are giving their fair share — probably not the outcome he expected.

A lot of development time was focused on being punitive to — most likely– a small minority of people who wanted something for nothing.

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.

For those who didn’t get to spend all their Platinum Coins from the Chronoportals event at the vendor located in Antonica, the vendor will be returning on Tuesday and sticking around for 5 days. From Amnerys:

Got a note from the team that they will be bringing the merchants back after the next hotfix and they will be available until Sunday, 4/10.

Next hotfix should be on Tuesday!

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 fight is certainly not “impossible to win” but I’ll take a good hard look and see if it needs to be tweaked.

I’m also going to try and optimize performance on the Ring War a little more, and take care of some uncommon but serious glitches that many of you have reported. Thanks!

Today’s Update Notes for March 31, 2011 bring those Itemization changes we’ve been hearing about, a redesign of the Storm Gorge Public Quest, and the Aether Races flying event has now been folded into City Festivals, starting with Antonica. From SmokeJumper:

There will be a new track for each city until we start looping around again. Each city’s track will only be available during the City Festival and you can earn festival coins and titles when you race.

We might trot them all out at once at Tinkerfest or something, but they’ll usually be linked individually to the City Festivals now.

The full update notes after the jump…

SOE is looking for your feedback on two recent changes that went in on Tuesday. From Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums:

Today’s hotfix introduced a couple of fixes and I’d be interested to hear how it has affected you.

First, we’ve made some changes to improve the performance for public quests. We still expect them to contribute towards a higher level of lag than other types of content due to the sheer number of people that participate, and we are working to make them even better. However, you should hopefully notice an improvement after today’s hotfix.

If you have been remiss in venturing in the past in the EverQuest 12th anniversary Chronoportals event to get all the items your characters may need now and in the future, today is your last day!

If you haven’t checked these out and the loot available from them, check out the Portal Event Treasure thread (scroll down a bit for the list of loot). If you need help with the locations and strategies for these events, check out the Chronoportals Event Guide.

Also, there are several books, paintings, and of course house replicas of the nameds monsters from each Chronoportal instance. As they are replicas they cannot be resized or placed in a guild hall, but they will fit in any guild hall. They are also LORE NO-TRADE. Having dozens of giant Allizewsaurs rampaging around a guild hall would have been hilarious. 🙂 It is unclear if the Chronoportal merchant, currently located in Antonica, will be staying on after the event, so spend those tokens (I’ve still got dozens) now!

By the way, ttobey, who animated the Allizewsaur T-Rex model for EQ2, has posted a video showing its different animations and states.

Also, as Domino posted, if you looked at the paintings a few days ago and were puzzled that one of them showed a dwarf, that was actually an EQ2 launch painting that snuck through. It’s since been changed to match the actual artwork that was planned for this event.

The Chronoportals event ends at 10AM PDT, 1PM EDT, 18:00 GMT, 19:00 Central Europe time.

From EverQuest2.com:

Jesters, thieves, bards and fans of mischief are invited to enjoy the adventuring and new crafting festivities that surround Bristlebane Day! You never know what riddles, laughs and pranks are to be found during this enjoyable time of year.

Celebrators are present in every home city, and the oddest of objects have been spotted in Antonica, The Commonlands, Darklight Wood, Timorous Deep, Greater Faydark and Frostfang Sea! Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for special events, especially in Enchanted Lands, occurring only on the Highest of Silly Days, April 1st, 2011!

If you are a level 80+ Master Crafter who has completed the Tradeskill Epic, this post by Domino may interest you:

Epic crafters, you might want to visit the tradeskill society in your home town while Bristlebane Day is with us. The grand jester has been having some fun with red collectibles for the season…

Players immediately noticed that every red shiny was dropping just one item. It seems there’s something else you have to do to get the others.

All U.S. servers will come down for an update at 7am PDT on Tuesday, March 29, 2011. The expected downtime is one hour. The U.K. worlds will have their update at 5am London Time on Wednesday, March 30, 2011. Estimated downtime is 2 hours.

The full reformatted patch notes are available after the jump….

Many of EverQuest 2’s most dedicated players owe their gameplay roots to the original EverQuest and still carry strong memories of the patience and community the original game required. Soloing was almost unheard of. Camping mobs for hours (or days), the difficulties and perils of travel, and contested spawns of much-needed named mobs were all experiences players would not soon forget. It sure was a different game before WoW forced all MMOs to become approachable and remove any aspect that might be considered as a “waste” of the player’s time.

When we heard about Chronoportals, a live event running on EQ2 servers that celebrates EverQuest’s 12 year anniversary by bringing players back to an earlier time to experience memorable encounters from before the Shattering, we hoped that the event might go that extra mile and include a real impression of how the world looked in EverQuest, and revisit some of the original zones.

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.

As revealed last night, the 12th anniversary celebration of EverQuest brings an event to EverQuest II which allows players to step into the past and remember encounters from before the Shattering.
Q: What are Chronoportals?

A: They are instances ranging from level 20-90. Each one is a nostalgic area or enemy from EQ1. Some can be be done solo, others require a small group, and still others require a full 6 person group. You and your group will be automatically mentored down when zoning in.

Q: What are the rewards?

A: Outside of the Antonica portal is a vendor selling various books, house items, and replicas of the bosses of each instance for 1 Platinum Coin each. Inside of each zone, the bosses also drop rather exceptional items (for their level). Some of these items are similar in nature to Heritage Quest items.

Q: Where are these portals?

A: Cyliena over at EQ2 ZAM buckled down and has posted the information about the portals in Antonica, the Enchanted Lands, the Feerrott, Lavastorm, Guk (in the Moors of Ykesha), Sinking Sands, Steamfont, and Thundering Steppes, including hints on how to do them.

From EverQuest2.com:

From Wednesday, March 23rd @ 10:00am PDT [17:00 GMT] through Wednesday, March 30th @ 10:00am PDT [18:00 GMT]*, log in to EQII and take part in a week-long look back at Norrathian days of yore.

The EQII Team has created this fun event as an homage to EverQuest in honor of the momentous occasion, and although the lore doesn’t exactly fit the current story of EQII, they decided to make it extra enjoyable for those who were around for the first iteration of Norrath. Adventurers who take part in this journey through time will find some silly nods to EQ and moments of nostalgia as we reminisce about our heritage.

Today’s Update Notes for March 23, 2011, launch the Chronoportals event as well as tweaking how mounts with a number of charges work. I have corrected the notes to indicate 10 AM PDT and 17:00 GMT for US servers as the US is already on Daylight Savings but Europe is not (until Sunday the 27th of March).

LIVE EVENTS

• Chronoportals have opened in multiple locations across Norrath!  They are said to lead to an ancient time.  These phenomena are being researched by Chronomancers who will reward adventurers brave enough to venture inside.
  • Event Start Times:
    • US Servers: 10 AM PDT [17:00 GMT]
    • International Servers: 9PM PDT [March 24 @ 05:00GMT]
  • Known issues (to be fixed on 3/24):
    • Allizewsaur does not have his sounds fully implemented.
    • Quillmane has a stutter in its wings when it is descending.

ITEMS

• Mount whistles with a limited number of charges will no longer remove the mount buff when the last charge is consumed.

Look for the enchanted mushroom rings tomorrow and Monday! Use these portals to be transported to five different enchanted grottos, where the inhabitants are ready to give you quests and reward you with house items, mounts, or illusions, and one purple shiny (that means it takes a while to complete the collections).

Find the Dryad Grotto in Archer’s Woods in Antonica, The Fay Grotto in The Nursery in Greater Faydark, the Brownie Grotto in Darklight Wood, the Enchanted Naiad Grotto near the spires in The Enchanted Lands, and the Zygomyd Grotto near the spires in Nektulos Forest.

Read more about the monthly event at EQ2 Zam.