Here are your update notes for today, January 17, 2012:

ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Extra Dungeon Mark Days are here from 17 January until 30 January! Dungeon Maker dungeon players and creators will receive 25% MORE tokens during this time period. To create and see listings of available dungeons, select Dungeon Maker from your EQ2 Menu button in game. Visit the Dungeon Maker category in the Marketplace to spend your tokens on items to equip your play character, as well as items to enjoy and build more dungeons.  Prepare to get your dungeoneering on!

GENERAL

• Fixed a UI bug on the mini-map window.

• Fixed a bug where if you had a single target maintained spell on a group member and logged out that the spell would still be there when you logged back in.

• Fixed an issue that prevented respec cards from working with beastlords.

In a stream of responses to two threads discussing Mercenaries, Gninja answered several questions and provided useful information about the current and next waves of mercenaries. With a recent update, the number of mercenaries has increased to twenty (20) and mercenaries are now avilable in all 6 cities. Although they lack some of the innovative features and options of EverQuest Mercenaries, they are still one of the more popular features of the recently released Age of Discovery features expansion.

Mercenaries New & Old

Let’s take a look at the list of Mercenaries by class. This was posted by Slayacissa of Permafrost:

• Qeynos Harbor – wizard, paladin, troubador, swashbuckler, templar, monk

• Freeport – warlock, assassin, brigand, dirge, inquisitor, guardian

• Neriak (near DLW) – shadowknight, necromancer

• Gorowyn (near crafting) – Berserker, Defiler

• Kelethin (Jysolin Pub) – ranger, warden

• Halas (Coldwind Hall) – conjuror, mystic

That leaves just Beastlord, Bruiser, Fury, Coercer, and Illusionist with no mercenary.

After the jump, we talk about Mercenary Confidence, the “In Over Their Head” debuff, mercenary types, and where you can post your feedback on getting different types of mercenaries added.

Here are your update notes for January 10, 2012 from the EQ2 Forums:

GENERAL

• Fixed a bug where you would have to recast buffs on group members every time you zone.

• Fixed random lighting bugs on characters and environments.

• Players will now receive achievement credit for earning hall of fame status if they are offline when awards are processed.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Sense of Urgency: Debone Bonewing should correctly update when defeating the zone boss in under 30 minutes from zone in.

DUNGEON MAKER

• Dungeon Maker creatures will no longer temporarily reappear when defeated while under the effect of a tier-adjusting object.

• Dungeon Maker adventurers should now show up in the Marketplace preview tab.

• Fixed a UI bug with the Dungeon Maker create window.

BEASTLORDS

• Fixed an issue that allowed “a drakonine guardian” to be tameable.

Here are your Update Notes for January 5, 2012:

GENERAL

• Fixed an issue where the client could get stuck trying to load a character into Mok Rent.

PLAYER HOUSING

• The City of Freeport: The Magical Academy housing portal should no longer vanish after being placed in a house.

• Fixed a bug where loading a layout of an invalid file could cause the house zone to crash.

DUNGEON MAKER

• Mystic Guardian avatar for Dungeon Maker has had the zombie scare attack changed.

• Fixed an issue with Dungeons being put into the Housing hall of fame.

Although the much lauded Dungeon Finder was quickly abandoned by all but mid-level players thirsty for a dungeon crawl, SOE seems confident they can breathe life into this feature with the announcement of upcoming improvements. However none of the announced changes address the core problem, which we will address after the jump.

From the EQ2 Forums:

Come check out the all-new changes to Dungeon Finder!

As of last Wednesday, we announced two new features for the Dungeon Finder system. This should help game play by giving more options for available dungeons and more incentive to use it. So go out there and get adventuring!

Here are you last scheduled update notes for 2001, from the EQ2 Forums:

GENERAL

• You may now use the command “/republish_house” to update the name of your currently published dungeon or house.

• Note: The ability to update your currently published image using this command may not be functioning at the time of this update.

BEASTLORD

• The warder granted Primal “Silent Talon” is now level 30.

DUNGEON FINDER

• Adventuring in a DF group for 20 minutes will now grant you a reward once a day!

From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums:

Merry Frostfell, Norrath!

The team is about to fly off to their families, great food, and probably a hangover after the new year.

But before we go, we wanted to leave you all with a couple more updates (today and tomorrow) with some really good stuff in it.

Here’s the goodies, broken down by feature.

Dungeon Finder

• We are adding Contested Dungeons to the Dungeon Finder feature from levels 20 to 89. (Level 90 contested dungeons are *not* being added to DF because of itemization concerns.) You should see a lot more dungeons available to you now at the various levels of play.
• (The following update is occurring on Wednesday, 12/21) We’re increasing the rewards for using the Dungeon Finder system. We’re adding a daily quest you can get that pays out after you play with a Dungeon Finder group for 30 minutes or more. The mystery crates are the same type of crates offered as rewards in the Dungeon Maker marketplace category, so the rewards found there are great stuff!

Here are your Update Notes for December 20, 2011 from the EQ2 Forums:

DUNGEON / PLAYER HOUSING RATINGS

• The house and dungeon leaderboards have now been converted from the previous 5-star rating system to a new “Like” system.

• When visiting a house or completing a dungeon maker zone you now have the option to “Like” the zone in either of the two categories.

• The leaderboards are now based on the accumulation of likes.

• Awards continue to work as before and are given to the players at the top of the leaderboard.

From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums:

Starting in the next couple of days (on Test server only) you’ll be able to play any of your characters in a player-created Dungeon Maker instance.

This doesn’t invalidate playing as an Adventurer, but you can also play as your regular characters, regardless of level. (Well, okay, you still have to be at least level 20 to play a DM instance, but you can play any characters from 20-90.)

We have still code to create, but we’re excited enough about getting this to work that we’re putting it on Test over the holidays so that we can get your feedback on this cool new addition to Dungeon Maker.

Please play a bit on Test over the holidays, if you’re so inclined. We’re eager to get your feedback when we come back for 2012 so we can tear into it and make it great for you! This is going to be awesome. The creativity of this community is unparalleled, and if you can play your own characters in those dungeons, then the sky’s the limit!

Here’s a few bits of info about the feature as it is on Test:

• You still have to be level 20 to play in a Dungeon Maker dungeon, but any character that’s level 20+ can be used.

• You can *also* still play as an Adventurer if desired.

• For this test, player parties have to be composed entirely of either all Adventurers, or all regular player characters. Mixing of Adventurers and real characters is not currently allowed in this version.

• Dungeon Mark rewards are turned off while on Test. (Until we balance the feature further, we can’t reward Dungeon Marks.)

• This feature is not finalized. It’s on Test because we want your feedback on it so that we can then tune it to a finalized state after the New Year.

Enjoy! This will be coming to Live servers as soon as we can finish it up after the New Year!

and this note from Rothgar:

The dungeons scale to the group level. Currently this uses the same scaling code that we use in other scalable instances. We can tweak as necessary after some testing.

A few bits and bobs we wanted to bring attention to…

Throwing Weapons

Cyliena took the lead on some random changes with Game Update 62 affecting a variety of thrown weapons (sheaths, pouches, bandoliers, and satchels) which use throwing daggers, shuriken, and other such ammo. Some items were flagged Beastlord-only, some flagged anything-but-Beastlord, and yet others flagged Fighter, Priest, and no Scouts at all.

After some communications with Rothgar and Silius, this is going to be ironed out in the next update:

Just a heads up I that I have fixed the thrown items. Should be live with the next hotfix. Sorry for the inconvenience.

From the EQ2 Forums:

GENERAL

• Fixed a bug with the 48 hour grace period for trade for some no-trade and heirloom items.

• Magic Carpet guild hall amenity now has Fens of Nathsar as a destination.

• Fixed a bug where loading a profile from your Mirror of Reflected Achievements would reset your AAs instead of loading the profile.

From the EQ2 Forums:

Age of Discovery is the eighth expansion of the groundbreaking EverQuest II franchise.

Age of Discovery offers never-seen-before features including user-generated content and the re-imagining of the Beastlord class from the original EverQuest release.  You can make your mark in-game by creating your very own Dungeon, hire some much needed help for your heroic battles, push tradeskilling research to new heights, customize your weapons at the forge, and of course, play as a Beastlord. There’s a lot to like about this expansion!

From EverQuest2.com:

We are extremely pleased to bring you the new Dungeon Maker feature set. For the first time, you and your fellow players can create new content for the game, play through a constantly changing list of player-created dungeons, and get rewards whether you are a dungeon builder, adventurer, or both!

We recently ran groups of press folks through a “tour” of the Freeport revamp and the AoD feature set. We ended each tour with a demo of Dungeon Maker and what it could do, and we were met with a lot of excitement about the potential once players get their hands on this stuff.

There’s a lot to be excited about, and if you aren’t currently involved in the beta testing (at present about 4000 of you *are* involved), then you haven’t seen much about Dungeon Maker yet. So here’s a preview so you know why this feature will be fun, as either a builder or an adventurer.

Continue reading at EverQuest2.com…

Last night, Linda “Brasse” Carlson (Director, Global Community Relations), Greg “Rothgar” Spence (EQ2 Lead Programmer) and Akil “Lyndro” Hooper (EQ2 Lead Designer) hosted a Webcast about the upcoming Dungeon Maker feature (previously known as Design Your Own Dungeon) in the upcoming EverQuest II: Age of Discovery expansion.

Note: Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson was not able to make the webcast.

Note 2: For the first ~5 minutes of the webcast, Rothgar’s mic was not working at all. At this point, he and Brasse started sharing a microphone.

Note 3: Throughout the webcast, Rothgar refers to the Avatars you use to play through Dungeon Maker-designed dungeons as “adventurers”. For clarity, I have changed all these references to Avatars.

After the jump, EQ2Wire provides an exclusive transcript of this SOE Webcast…

UPDATE: According an EverQuestII Twitter post, tonight’s Webcast will be a Smoke-free environment:

“Smokejumper” will not be joining us for the webcast today, as was previously indicated. It’ll still be great, though [Isulith]

From EverQuest2.com:

Come check out the EverQuest II Dungeon Maker Webcast! Host Linda “Brasse” Carlson (Director, Global Community Relations) will interview Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson (EQ2 Executive Producer), Greg “Rothgar” Spence (EQ2 Lead Programmer) and Akil “Lyndro” Hooper (EQ2 Lead Designer), and learn all about one of the most anticipated features for the new EverQuest II expansion: Age of Discovery.

Join us on Thursday, November 17, 2011, at 4:30 p.m. US Pacific Time*, as we live stream this webcast on the Twitch TV! The webcast is expected to last about 20 minutes.

Come join us for the fun!

See you on Twitch TV!

Other Time Zones:

• PST: November 17 @ 4:30pm
• EST: November 17 @ 7:30pm
• GMT: 00:30
• CET: 01:30

From the EQ2 Forums:

• Fixed an issue with the 48 hour no-trade grace period.
• Fixed an animation issue with the Soga Human Female model riding on the Terrorbird mount.

With the first fix, it will, once again, be possible to simply collect all the loot during a group or raid and trade it to people at the end, or trade items within a group/raid (those who were present for the kill) in case of a looting mistake.

If you’re a Scout, a Fighter, and maybe even a Cleric, Druid, Enchanter, or Mystic in EQ2, and you push yourself to play the absolute best (even if you’re not geared the best), you’re probably already familiar with the concept of Autoattack.

Game Update 61 introduced a new type of Autoattack called Spell Autoattack for Mages and Priests. You might be tempted to jump on the DPS bandwagon, but before you run out and equip a Wand, there are some things you really ought to know!

UPDATE: This article has been updated thanks to feedback from Ferk, Anaogi, Barx!

On Saturday we reported that some players had started receiving their 8 Year Veteran Rewards. Of particular note in this collection of loot was an item called “Veteran Revival” that would allow you to revive your group once every 24 hours. However when players tried it, they immediately discovered that it only worked if you (the caster) were still alive, greatly reducing the value of the item.

SmokeJumper initially posted that the item was “being fixed”, however he later responded with this:

Sorry for the confusion, but the item is currently working as intended. It cannot be used while dead to rez your whole group because that would be far too unbalancing in raid situations.

When queried with this quote from a player:

You are aware that [Clerics] have an AA that rezes the entire group and works when dead? So it wouldn’t be “that game unbalancing”.

It’s worth pointing out that the Cleric AA is instant cast, revives the group with full health and power, and does not apply Revive Sickness. The Veteran Revival is on a 24 hour timer, revives the group with 20% health and power, and applies Revive Sickness.

With the near eternity of a 10 second cast time (especially if you have a slow casting debuff on, which many DoV bosses helpfully provide), plus interrupts, the chances that you’ll get your group resurrected with this item once the tank or healer has died is infinitesimal.

From the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION

Challenge Mode NPCs

• Several challenge mode NPC effects that were incurable are now curable as curses.  These include Paralyzing Venom, Mesmerizing Web, and Corrosive Residue in the Aaranae Arcimae fight.  Combat Madness in the General Aakita fight.  Deathtouch in the Lichlord Skulldugger fight and several others.

• Cooperative Strike is no longer always fatal each tick, it does about half your max health in focus damage with each tick now.

Temple of Rallos Zek: Foundations of Stone [Challenge]

• Greater warboars during the statue of rallos zek fight have less maximum health.

Tallon’s Stronghold [Challenge]

• During the Lieutenant Klaatuus fight the aviak trooper adds have even less health, no longer have symbiotic aura, and players have more time to move the mysterious totem away from him before he will begin healing.

ITEMS

• Fixed missing red slots on some ranged weapons.

A tip of the hat to Rixan of Antonia Bayle for bringing this to our attention. After hearing that there might or might not be an eight year vet reward at Fan Faire, it looks like we are getting a doozy of a set.

We’re talking a once-every-24-hours group resurrect (20% health and power), a 150% flying disc mount, a 110% XP potion, and an equippable illusion that adds a green glow around your eyes. You also get a “the Veteran” player title.

UPDATE: According to several sources, players will get a choice of several different 150% flying disc mounts. These are true flying mounts.

In-game item links if you want to check them out:

\aITEM 272055976 -771844514:Elemental Disc of Flame\/a – 150% speed flying mount
\aITEM 2075529796 123745388:Veteran Revival\/a – Rezzes group w/ 20% health and power – 10s casting time and 1 day reuse timer.
\aITEM 835506414 1725447049:Vision of the Thullosian\/a – Makes your eyes glow with green color
\aITEM 1036108679 297241924:Draft of the Wise\/a – 110% XP pot 1hr

Thanks to Kin for links to 2 of the other mounts:

\aITEM -89135461 804495077:Elemental Disc of Water\/a
\aITEM 1253672097 -1612317473:Elemental Disc of Earth\/a

Tuesday’s update seems to have disabled the 48 hour grace period for trading loot/items between the members of a group or raid. This change was pushed straight to Live with no testing. And now it may be that the reasoning for this “fix” was to stop a low-priority “exploit”.

From Crismorn of Nagafen:

SoE tried to fix Contested Kael quest pieces from being traded between group members and thought it was so important and such a huge issue that breaking the entire ability to trade any type of dropped loot would be an acceptable loss, or they [did] just another half job as per usual.

Considering that Contested Kael Drakkel has been open for nearly 9 months and few people visit it these days except for Primal Velium Shards to get adornments, it’s odd that action is being taken now. You can see the update note that tells only half the story:

Kael Drakkel
All dropped quest items that were previously flagged no-trade now consume the dropped quest item once the quest has been taken.

The problem with such an unannounced change is that many raid guilds have migrated to running the zone and then splitting up and deciding loot AFTER the raid. With this change, guild leaders are now stuck holding all the loot from the entire raid and are unable to trade it. Customer Service reps are going to be awfully busy with Petitions.

UPDATE on November 4th from Customer Service Top Issues:

The recent update may have broke the ability to trade with those present at the kill for 48 hours.   Customer Service is happy to move the item to the  intended recipient providing it’s petitioned within those 48 hours, is not attuned and both were present for the kill.  This will be addressed in an upcoming hotfix.

From the EQ2 Forums:

POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION

Strategist’s Stronghold

• Severed Windpipe is now curable.

Tallon’s Stronghold [Non-Challenge mode]

• During the Tallon Zek fight Decorin Deahbringer will cast Deathbringer’s Touch and Impending doom less frequently.

Tallon’s Stronghold [Challenge mode]

• During the Lieutenant Klaatuus fight the aviak trooper adds have less health, no longer memwipe, and will always spawn at the bosses feet.

Vallon’s Tower [Challenge Mode]

• During the Gindan Commander Angler fight the Diaku Deceptors will wait a while before casting their stunning strike spell.

Kael Drakkel

• All dropped quest items that were previously flagged no-trade now consume the dropped quest item once the quest has been taken.

ITEMS

• Fixed an issue that cause some bows, thrown, and wand weapon damage to be reduced.

If you’ve been following the somewhat unfortunate adventures of the Gnoob the Gnome character, you’ll recall he had a big part to play in the introduction of Mercenaries to the original EverQuest when it was faced with its own problem of no new blood to help new or returning players leveling up alts.

There have been over a dozen Gnoob videos in the past but this one touches on the upcoming Age of Discovery and its Mercenaries feature. It’s worth a watch and comes with a laugh.

From EverQuest2.com:

The upcoming Age of Discovery expansion will include the Mercenaries feature. These player-controlled (or perhaps just guided, depending) NPCs will help players in groups or raids, for a small fee. You can read a lore-based/mock interview with one of these upcoming mercenaries at EverQuest2.com:

Recently, we have caught word that mercenaries will start to offer their services in Norrath come the end of the year. We were lucky enough to grab an interview with one of these soon to be job-seeking mercenaries! Her name Vittia Direshadow and she is a Teir’dal Shadowknight. She’s quite scary-looking but assures me she will not try to kill me.

Q. What made you want to become a mercenary?

A. My extensive study with the Dread Guard was extremely worthwhile but not inexpensive, and tithes to Innoruuk are not cheap either, so when I finished my training I found myself with debt still to repay. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of a loan broker in Neriak, I can assure you. So, I started work as a mercenary to pay my debts, and have come to find it a valuable source of income as well as an excellent way to see the world and learn new things.

Continue Reading the story at EverQuest2.com…

Smokejumper responded to a thread from nine days ago on the EQ2 Forums asking for a clear answer to what exactly is Age of Discovery.  He basically said what we already knew about the content included in Age of Discovery.  Reading through it and some of his follow up posts, it looks as though the “expansion” will be coming out near the end of November but price and distribution information won’t be released until next week by the marketing folks.