From the EQ2 Forums comes a recap of what we can expect in April. With the exception of a Double XP weekend over Easter, there’s little  new to of note except some vague comments about bug fixes. And no word on DOV Dungeon Timers being Reduced to 90 Minutes, which was promised for March.

Here are the April Update Plans for EverQuest II!

The Skyshrine update (GU 63) is taking the lion’s share of the team’s focus right now (launching in mid-April), but other things are still happening as we continue to smash bugs, improve systems, and look to the future of EQII!

The team is busy reviewing GU 63 feedback and making tweaks, fixing bugs, and still adding new goodies to the content – and there is a LOT of it – one of the biggest ever done on EQII! I want to say a big “Thank You” to the community too. We’re very grateful for the support and constructive feedback we’ve been getting on the Test Copy server and forums and ask that you not stop now! During this month we’ll be doing interviews and giving detail on what is being added to this monstrous update because there is plenty to say. The more we see the final touches the team is doing, the more excited we all get!

Holly “Windstalker” Longdale

A recurring controversy in EverQuest II is the ability to sell or gift looting rights to a player who was not present at the time the mob died. This could be an alternate raider who was sitting out, a player who went linkdead at the crucial moment during the fight, or it could be a player who “buys” the item in auction.

Last night two forum topics were created on the EQ2 forums suggesting that SLR had become impossible on Test, and that only players who had been present at the time of the kill could loot items from chests. I was immediately suspicious due to the lack of details. No raid zone or mob was mentioned. The actual error message was not provided. And it was an infrequent poster with a vague “I just found out in test”. So I held off on an article until some kind of confirmation one way or the other could be had. Looks like we’ve all been masterfully trolled.

Lyndro posted:

We’re taking a look now to see if this is an issue. If this happened it wasn’t an intentional change. If we were to make a change like this, we wouldn’t do it in secret.

and then:

Looks like the looting rules are the same on test as they are on live.

and from Zoltaroth:

Since not everyone goes to the test forums, let me state it here as well:

If this is indeed happening on Test, it is a bug and will be fixed.

From the EQ2 Forums:

GENERAL

• Fixed a bug where some NPCs were still critting on players.

• Charmed players will no longer crit at all.

From Gninja on the EQ2 Forums:

We understand that some creatures are still critically hitting. Seems we missed a file or two for the integration to live. We are working to get it resolved asap!

We are indeed going to be emergency hotfixing this today. Shouldn’t be too long of a downtime.

However we did find one small issue that we are working on fixing but is not as high of a priority we felt it should hold up the hotfix. Just as a heads up if you are in battle with an NPC and it puts of dot on you and it dies the spell still has the potential to use the default bonuses that are present on live right now. Which means once the NPC dies if the spell is not removed on death the spell then has a change of hitting you as a critical.

We will get this fixed asap but you will see it in some rare cases after the patch. We felt this wasn’t something that should hold up getting the bigger issue of NPCs critting during combat out to the live servers for you guys who are playing today.

Update: US servers are going down at 5:25 PDT for a quick patch to fix this issue.

Update 2: All US servers are back online.  Hopefully that’ll take care of the issues.

From the EQ2 Forums:

CRITICAL MITIGATION REMOVAL

• Critical Mitigation (the stat) has been removed from the game.

• NPCs no longer use Critical Bonus to add to critical damage.

• Buffs and debuffs that had Critical Mitigation elements to them have had those elements replaced with other elements instead, so that those buffs/debuffs do not lose effectiveness.

• Critical Mitigation values on adornments have been replaced with maximum health bonuses.

• NOTE: This change has no effect on PvP game play. The “PvP Critical Mitigation” stat is still useful for game balance in PvP play and is not being changed.

From Holly “Windstalker“ on the EQ2 Forums:

Hey folks,

I noticed there had been questions on exactly when Critical Mitigation will be removed from PvE items and Crit Bonus removed from NPCs. We have decided to push the change live with the Hotfix tomorrow.

If anything changes on this front, I’ll stop in, but tomorrow’s the day!

P.S. PvP Crit Mitigation will still exist on items.

SOE has laid their cards on the table for Game Update 63. First up, a level cap raise to level 92. No, that’s not a typo. As of April 17th, players will be able to gain 2 more levels, as well as a new form of player advancement called ‘prestige points’. GU63 brings the promised Destiny of Velious content of new group and raid instances, a variety of solo content includind a new overland zone and more! Also Age of Discovery owners will be able to tame new Beastlord warder types.

Game Update 63 hits Test on Thursday, March 15, 2012!

From the EQ2 Forums:

The Destiny of Velious saga continues! Adventurers breach the barriers of the Withered Lands, seeking entrance to Skyshrine, the glorious, ancient dragon city!

The great citadel of Skyshrine has long housed the Claws of Veeshan behind its massive walls and arcane protections.  Now, the unthinkable has happened — Skyshrine is under siege! Battle and befriend dragons and their wurmkin in the forbidden city of Dracur. Explore the past to unravel the mysterious events that transformed the formidable draconic city into a battlefield full of daunting challenges, terrifying foes and unimaginable treasures!

Here is your Update Note for Thursday, March 8, 2012:

Public Quests

• Cloudy Velium Jewels should now be heirloom.

Remember, you can get up to two Cloudy Velium Jewels per day, per Public Quest, per character. So 2 from Ring War, 2 from Storm Gorge (if you are a glutton for punishment) each day per character. Once you have 40,000 faction with Thurgadin or Ry’Gorr, you can buy an Heirloom faction token to give 50,000 faction to all your alts. There is no equivalent token for the Othmir, Snowfang, or Thurgadin Crafters.

With the upcoming reduction in lockout timers from 18 hours to 90 minutes for Destiny of Velious group zones, players will be searching for the best “bang for the buck” dungeons where they might seek item upgrades.

Assuming you have already farmed the Public Quests, specifically Ring War and Storm Gorge, you’ve probably moved on to the Velious Dungeons. Game Update 61 introduced Rare Names which have a 25% chance of spawning after certain conditions are met (usually killing at least one named). Furthermore, the rare loot is shared between the rare names making up a dungeon “group”.

After allusions by EQ2 Senior Producer Holly “Windstalker” to a “very detailed list” of issues and bugs and indications that today’s March update would “answer several of the substantive questions“, EQ2 Community Manager Piestro has revealed EQ2’s March Update Plans which contain many things we’ve heard before, but one interesting surprise:

There are lots of activities and events to participate in this month! And while you?re busy playing, the Dev team is preparing for the Game Update 63: Skyshrine launch. We are already playtesting internally and excited about this release. As we write this, development is wrapping up and we’ll be going to Test server in mid-March, so come and check it out then.

From EverQuest2.com:

What’s better than the amazing Dungeon Maker system introduced with Age of Discovery? Cheaper Dungeon Maker items, of course!
Whether it’s getting the boss pack of spawners – reduced from 1800 DM (Dungeon Marks) to 150 DM — or one of the many cool Glass Weapons available from 100 to 750 DM, we want to make items purchased with Dungeon Marks more accessible to you! It doesn’t matter if you are looking for a specific consumable or a decorative piece of armor, there is something for everyone available via Dungeon Marks.

So starting today, February 27, 2012 jump in game and check out the new reduced prices!

From the EQ2 Forums:

GENERAL

• This update includes a speculative fix for the issues causing some assets, like NPC quest icons, not to appear correctly.

Update: Alas, this has not resolved the problem.

MERCENARIES

• Mercenaries using the spell “Solar Flame” should no longer cause players to not be able to cast “Solar Flare”

ZONE PROGRESSION / POPULATION

• Fixed a bug where an NPC could “double cast” a spell.

Vallon’s Tower [Challenge]

• During the final Vallon Zek fight, only 2 Vallonite Aces will spawn per wave of adds.  Fighters will no longer be hit with Tactical Dilema during the fight.  Combat Doubt will no longer daze players.

Icy Keep: Retribution

• Epic X3 and lower encounters found throughout the zone should no longer grey out when fought with a full raid force. This applies to the Statue of Ice Maiden, Statue of Tundra Beast, Frozen Corrival, and Ice Maiden D’Ina encounters.

ITEMS

• When turning in relic patterns and gems from Kingdom of Sky raid zones beastlords should no longer be told the incorrect components.

QUESTS

The City of Freeport

• “Jezranaz’s Hideous Locket” can again be completed.

• Tarakh will now show quest icons over his head for the quest “Natasha’s Note.”

• “The Unfortunate Earth” can again be completed.

If nobody in your guild wants to run the Tower of Frozen Shadow progression quests, especially killing Tserinna in the Haunt of Syl’Tor for your access to the Tower of Frozen Shadow x2 raid zone, you’re not alone.

The Quests

If you aren’t REALLY paying attention and doing things in a certain order, it is almost a guarantee that you will get gated on pretty much EVERY quest in the 3 Tower of Frozen Shadow zones.

I spent one night doing all the quest updates in sequence, and we had to repeatedly tell people “Wait don’t click that item or kill that mob or we’ll be unable to finish one of the quests.” Even so, we got gated on Alvik the Cold. The 3 ToFS zones seem almost designed to ensure that you need multiple visits to get all the quests done.

x2 Access

Some might say this is 12 month old content and all the raid guilds have already done it, but there are always folks who are bringing up new level 90’s or returning to the game who would like to have access. Just as a matter of convenience, it’s nice to have this access as the Call of the Veteran ability has always been flummoxed if you didn’t personally have it.

For those wanting ToFS x2 access, The Tserinna / Advisor fight has been nerfed a few times, but priests still get teleported and punted across the room, making this a dicey fight for groups with a single healer.

From the EQ2 Forums:

ZONE PROGRESSION / POPULATION

Vallon’s Tower [Challenge]

• Players should get the correct message when entering the blue shielded dome in the Vallon Zek fight.

• During the final Vallon Zek fight, only 2 Vallonite Aces will spawn per wave of adds.  Fighters will no longer be hit with Tactical Dilema during the fight.

DUNGEON MAKER

• Fixed an issue with vitality not applying correctly in dungeon maker instances.

ITEMS

• Gnomish Anti-Camo Goggles can now be equipped by any class.

LIVE EVENTS

Erollisi

• Hearts a’Flutter: Antonica – The Essences of Erollisi should no longer spawn within unreachable tree roots or branches in the Central Farmlands.

QUESTS

Betrayal

• Betrayal popup warnings should more accurately describe what happens to your spells and combat arts when you betray.

Not included in the notes, so this is in my own words:

CENSUS / DATA FEEDS

A checkbox has been added to the Persona window under EQ2 Share allowing players to Opt-in some or all of their characters to be discoverable when viewing their character’s Alts.

From the EQ2 Forums:

GENERAL

• Travelling from Great Divide to Eastern Wastes via the Griffon mount should no longer drop players randomly into the water.

• Travelling to Kylong Plains using the Global Travel Bell should no longer drop players randomly into the water.

• Fixed a bug where the client could get stuck in a “sending mail” mode making it impossible to send additional mails until restarting the client.

ZONE PROGRESSION / POPULATION

Vallon’s Tower [Challenge]

• Adds that spawn during the final Vallon zek fight spawn less frequently and have less health.  Warlord’s Fury and Siphon cast during the final Vallon Zek Fight no longer clear players current target.

While the EQ2 team continues to test allowing players to use their regular characters in Dungeon Maker dungeons, additional changes are planned to make Avatars (nee Adventurers) more interesting and dynamic.

Recently, a new mechanic for Avatars went to Test, namely a “power” bar which can be built up to unlock more powerful abilities. At first, we compared it to the Beastlord Savagery bar, but Testers universally knocked this analogy, with less favorable comparisons.

In light of this reaction, Lyndro has indicated that existing Avatars won’t be changed to the new system — instead, a new line of Avatars will be added with said mechanic:

Hi folks!

Thanks for your feedback, this is exactly why we put stuff like this on test before putting it out live. Based on your feedback, instead of changing the gameplay of existing adventurers, we’re going to introduce a few new avatars based around this style of mana management. This way if you want to experiment with something different the option is there, but you can continue playing with DM in the manner that you’re used to.

Thanks again for the feedback!

Our Take

Given our druthers, we would have gone with 6-8 fully fleshed out “Characters” with a full hotbar of spells and buffs that players might learn to love, rather than gnolls and mermaids with 4 spells apiece. People can warm to playing prebuilt characters, if they’re interesting and dynamic. Squaresoft made billions on Final Fantasy before they offered installments allowing you to create your own character. People will get absorbed in a character, if it’s interesting.

As we reported last night, Dungeon Maker Avatars (the limited NPCs we’re supposed to ‘drive’ through player-made dungeons) will be getting a new mechanic where combat builds power, which unlocks more powerful abilities, akin to the Savagery and Primal abilities introduced with Beastlords.

From Bunji on the EQ2 Forums:

Hello Testers!

Changes to the Dungeon Maker Avatars are headed to test and we definitely want your feedback!

Please feel free to post bug reports and feedback in this thread, though remember that you can also /feedback and /bug.

As for the changes, our goal has been to improve the pace of play, remove reliance on auto-attack, add some strategic decision making, and, overall, make the avatar play experience a lot more fun. To that end, we’ve introduced a power-management mechanic to the avatars. In short, power will rapidly drain while out of combat. While in combat, each avatar has a quick-use, low-damage attack that also builds power. This will allow the use of various high-power, high-affect abilities once power has been built up. It’s a pretty significant change and will almost certainly require some tweaks before going live so please be as detailed as possible in your feedback.

We’ll try to keep this thread up to date with a list of known issues as they come to our attention.

Thanks for your help!

So far there hasn’t been any further word on playing your own characters in Dungeon Maker dungeons, which has been possible on Test for over a week now.

After getting called to the carpet for a revised Game Update schedule that won’t see new level 90 content coming to EQ2 until April, nearly 9 months since last year’s Game Update 61, SOE has laid out a gameplan for February events.

From EverQuest2.com:

February Publish Plans – More to Play, Your Way!

February is here already, and the team is hard at work on Game Update 63! We’ll have some “behind the scenes” videos for you in the coming weeks to give you a sneak peek at the art of some of the exciting new zones coming up, and more information will follow between now and then.

In the mean time however, there’s plenty of new stuff to do in the world of Norrath, and we’re not waiting for the Game Update to bring you some of the improvements and changes we have in store. Here are some of the things we intend to bring you in the month of February!

Love is in the Air

Erollisi Day quests and events will be available from February 7th through 20th.

Dungeon Maker Adventurers to Gain Powerups

Dungeon Maker is becoming even more more fun, as we improve Adventurer gameplay to provide a more active game style using power management! While playing as an Adventurer, you’ll use certain abilities to build up your power, which you can then spend to use other abilities. This should give Adventurers a much more engaging playstyle that we hope everyone will enjoy! This change will be heading to Test server shortly so you can try it out yourself and give us your feedback before we finalize the changes. We hope you enjoy them as much as we are!

In-Game Polls to Arrive as Mail

We now have the ability to send you polls through the in-game mail system, and as promised, we’ll be seeking your feedback on a number of topics of interest. Poll questions will arrive in your mailbox like normal letters, and you can simply delete them if you don’t want to answer; however, we hope you’ll take the time to let us know what you think and how we can continue to improve your experience! We’re looking forward to testing out this new feature and hope that it will be a great source of information.

Read more at EverQuest2.com.

From EverQuest2.com:

GENERAL

• You can now access your mail without a mailbox!  You can either click the mail buff in your buff window, select mail from the EQ2 menu, or use the /start_mail command! (NOTE: You will only be able to send and receive items and coin by actually clicking on a mailbox in the world.)

ZONE PROGRESSION / POPULATION

Tallon’s Stronghold [Challenge]

• Players have more time to defeat Decorin Deathbringer in the Tallon Zek fight before Tallon empowers him.

Vallon’s Tower [Challenge]

• Players have more time to defeat Kulaxis in the Vallon Zek fight before Vallon empowers him.

The announced removal of Critical Mitigation will coincide with the conversion of Yellow and Red Crit Mit adornments into Health adornments. So why will the replacement adornments have less Health (less than 250 points each) than White health adornments? According to Omougi, it’s because the EQ2 team thinks we should have other viable choices, like DPS. Adornments should be about choice!

From Omougi on the EQ2 Forums:

Our goal with these adornment and spell conversions is to give you guys something in the place of nothing essentially. Before, you were playing a zero-sum game if you had enough crit mit. If you didn’t have enough crit mit, you couldn’t do the encounters — period. All these adornments and spells did is bring you up to a threshold. If you were past that threshold, it does nothing for you.

Now, [while] these adornments and spells actually do increase your survivability at all times – equating the amount of crit mit lost to an equivalent form of HP doesn’t really work out, because any amount of HP is infinitely better than a threshold stat with no use. If you were slotting your adornments for survivability before, you are still slotting them for survivability with HP – the only change is the adornments have been made more powerful in their actual effectiveness with crit mit out of the picture.

This change equates to a free survivability gain across the board, and we need to be very careful with numbers at first to ensure things do not get drastically easier. Changing the difficulty of content is not the goal here – changing the accessibility of content is.

From Silius on the EQ2 Forums:

Just to clarify some confusion.

• Crit mit as a mechanic is being removed.
• NPC crit bonus was countered by crit mit and we are reducing crit bonus to 0 across the board.
• Critical avoidance is staying around. Critical avoidance is an NPCs way of contesting your chance to critically hit them.
• Replacing the adornments with HP is not to compensate for anything. Since the critical mitgiation stat is no longer useful we are converting to a stat that benefits all players.
• The goal is for this change to not change the difficulty of the encounters. This is why we ask that you all take some time to log on to test once we push it there. We plan on having this on test by the weekend.

Note: NPC crit bonus may be used in the future on a case by case bases and will be considered in the balance of the encounter so that crit mit is not required.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to PM me.

In what may go down as the best decision in EQ2 history, or a total overreaction to a problem that could have been solved with a 15-20% reduction across the board, Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson has announced that in the very near future, the Critical Mitigation stat will be COMPLETELY GOING AWAY.

First introduced in The Shadow Odyssey, greatly expanded in Sentinel’s Fate, and then becoming the most important stat within Destiny of Velious as an alternative form of progression to raising the level cap (which is technologically challenging), here’s the announcement of this revelation from the EQ2 Forums:

We’ve listened to all of your conversations since Critical Mitigation was originally introduced. The dev team has extensively debated about it internally. (Very extensively.) But ultimately, we decided that the right move for EQII is to remove Critical Mitigation entirely from the game.

Critical Mitigation initially seemed to do what it was designed for, but it has always suffered from a complete lack of intuitiveness for players, and it’s not a forward-extensible system. Ultimately, it doesn’t add any fun factor to the game.
So we’ve decided that a complete removal of it is by far the best solution for all concerned.

Here are your Update Notes for January 31, 2012:

GENERAL

• Fixed a bug where some characters wouldn’t show on character select.

ZONE PROGRESSION / POPULATION

Tower of Frozen Shadow (Raid)

• Tserrina’s spell “Wing Buffet” should no longer cause priests to become knocked back.

• Adds spawned from shadow doors should no longer spawn quite as quickly.

• The number of adds that spawn from shadow doors has been slightly reduced.

Tower of Frozen Shadow: Umbral Halls

• Demanti Sheda should no longer have issues resetting his encounter.

• Demanti Sheda’s spell “Paralyzing Fear” should now stun instead of fearing and has been reduced in duration.

From EverQuest2.com:

Come take another look at Dungeon Maker, one of the awesome new features in EverQuest II’s Age of Discovery Expansion. Host Linda “Brasse” Carlson (Director of Global Community Relations), a huge fan of Dungeon Maker, will interview Akil “Lyndro” Hooper (Lead Designer). They will chat about Extra Dungeon Mark Days, tips on how to spend your rewards, and information on our Test Server initiative that allows you to play your characters in Dungeon Maker. We may even give you a sneak peek at a new dungeon that is in the works.

Join us on Thursday, January 19^th, 2012, at 4:00 p.m. US Pacific Time* on Twitch TV! The webcast is expected to last about 20 minutes.

Time Zone Conversions

• PST: January 19 @ 4:00pm
• EST: January 19 @ 7:00pm
• GMT: January 20 @ 0:00
• CET: January 20 @ 1:00

Raiders continue to wait for a fix to the double-casting of AoEs first reported shortly after the release of Game Update 61 in August 2011. This issue has been discussed here here and recently here. We got a We’ll look into it from Kander on October 27, 2011 but have received no further communication on the issue.

Meanwhile, there are a few tweaks coming to the difficulty of Drunder Raid Zones. These changes are currently on Test will likely go live next Tuesday.

ZONE PROGRESSION / POPULATION

Vallon’s Tower x4 (Tower of Tactics) [Challenge]

• Ambassador Grindstone will no longer reapply his Unbridled Fury of the Elements buff as soon as he has dispelled player debuffs, he waits a few seconds.

• Ambassador Grindstone no longer casts Crystalline Torrent Spell.

• Vallonite Sentinels no longer memwipe when they cast Sentinel’s Touch.

• Vallonite Sentinels no longer taunt lock players during the fight.

Tallon’s Stronghold [Challenge]

• During the Tallon Zek fight Deathbringer’s Touch is now cureable as a curse.

• Tallon Zek will warn players as he teleports and will not fire his arrow volley until 10 seconds after he changes his location.

• Fighters will not take as harsh a punishment if they turn their back on Tallon Zek as he is firing arrows.