Feldon
It turns out that those Database Upgrades announced for today for Butcherblock, Nagafen, and Lucan D’Lere were in fact complete replacements of the server hardware with 64-bit servers. This is very exciting news, as this has the potential to solve a lot of lag and performance problems. However all has not gone according to plan. Rothgar posted yesterday: All three (Butcherblock, Nagafen, Lucan D’Lere) are getting new hardware, latest DB version and upgrade from 32 to 64 bit. Rothgar reported early today that Nagafen was back in operation: The server is back up and you have new database hardware. ...
From EQ2 Forums: Starting at 5am PDT, tomorrow Thursday October 15th, Nagafen, Butcherblock, and Lucan D’Lere will be brought offline for upgrades to the database. We estimate the downtime to be about 5 hours and servers should come back online about 10am PDT. Thank you for your patience and we apologize for the inconvenience.
If you have been following the increasingly train-wrecky Legends of Norrath Affects Gameplay topic on EQ2 Forums, you know that the Legends of Norrath card game is on the cusp of making powerful items available within the EverQuest 2 universe. Already, by purchasing booster packs of cards (at $2.99/ea) and/or playing the LoN card game, one can acquire cloaks, mounts, appearance items, potions, and other items within the EQ2 world. So far these items have drawn the line at being comparable to dungeon/raid drops. Many have argued that EQ2’s $15/month subscription + $50/year expansion cost should be more than...
Most of my gametime these days is either raiding with my Ranger, or leveling my Dirge alt. I do live events (looking forward to Nights of the Dead), but otherwise, I’m fairly bored with the runaround quest lines. Groups in the 20’s-60’s are few and far between, but that is an issue for another blog post… Our guild is currently running Ward of Elements (I have all but shoulders and the cloak from Aiden) and we do as much x4 raiding as we can with 2 1/2 groups. That’s the first 3 named of Tomb of the Mad Crusader...
This week’s hotfix will be hitting today, October 13th (not the date on the Update Notes announcement). EMPEROR ATREBE’S LABORATORY The zone boss, Ka’El Ka’Vrish, should now reset properly in Kor’Sha. ITEMS Fists of Judgment will no longer indicate that they have a duration. MIRAGUL’S PLANAR SHARD Tuskers will now stagger his memwipe effects. Enraged Haladan no longer gets an AE auto attack buff when he goes berserk, but will instead proc Haladan’s Fury (frontal only, slash damage AE spell). PVP You may now speak to the Priest of Discord on all PVP servers. PVP weapons have been adjusted...
Kiara and Amnerys from SOE’s Community Relations team will be hosting a rat race through Norrath! Just roll a level 1 Ratonga toon starting in Neriak and meet at Hate’s Envy. You’ll be given a list of items to gather along the way, and the fastest finishers will be rewarded. But if you don’t win, don’t fret! Everyone who attends will get a prize just for coming. The dates and times by server can be found in the writeup at EQ2Players. The event happens on one server a day, running from October 13th through November 6th.
From EQ2Players: The leaves are turning and the air has become crisp in the land of Norrath. Ghoulish activity has started to increase. It can mean only one thing; the return of the Nights of the Dead. Norrath’s annual Halloween celebration will be returning from 12:01am PDT on October 16th and will run through 11:59pm PST on November 9th. New this year: New Haunted Hedgemaze in Nektulos Forest! New holiday collection. New Headless Horseman in Nektulos Forest. New rewards for some of the old Nights of the Dead Events! New illusions from the goblins. New costume illusions available from...
And that concludes the EQ2 ZAM Chat. Guests were: Alan <Brenlo> – EQ2 Producer Brett <timetravelling> – Dungeons/Content Nathan <Kaitheel> – Live Events/Quests <Gninja> – Quests, Zone Design, Live Events Greg <Rothgar> – Lead Programmer Paul C. <Frizznik> – Mechanics Paul M. <Cronyn> – Lore, Content, Quests Emily <Domino> – Tradeskills Rough Chat Logs of this event are now available at EQ2 ZAM. Some of the topics that stuck out to me: Brenlo: At the moment we have no plans to (have) LON cards (drop from mobs). That is why we went to giving each active player 5 packs...
Calthine has posted on the EQ2 Forums that it’s time for us to start thinking of and suggesting questions for the next EQ2 ZAM Developer’s Chat today: Y’all are cordially invited to the next exciting EQII ZAM Developers Chat! Members of the EverQuest II Developer and Community Teams will be there, so bring your questions! If you’d like to submit questions in advance, send e-mail to calthine (at) allakhazam.com (subject Dev Chat). Thursday, October 8, 3:00pm PDT <– NOTE this is one hour earlier than usual In the #EQ2 channel on ZAM IRC General chat during the actual event...
Domino brings us some tradeskill news from Game Update 54, expected in November: I wanted to take a minute to let you know that with the next game update (54) which we should see before Christmas, there will be an additional set of daily missions in each of the 3 Kunark factions that tradeskillers can assist (Bathezid’s Watch, Riliss, and Danak). They aren’t anything fancy, they’re very similar to the daily missions in Grobb, Tupta, and Firmroot moot – same type of tasks, and about the same amount of time. There are 4 per faction and they’ll rotate on...
The EQ2 development team is looking to repeat the successful Bug-squashing campaign of 2008. Rothgar has started a new thread to help get this project started. If there is a specific bug, interface inconsistency, or complaint you have about the game interface, please check out the new What Bugs You the Most? thread. Note that the thread is not for complaints about zones, itemization, or class balance.
Here are your EQ2 Update Notes for October 7: GENERAL Legends of Norrath (LoN) cards and booster packs that drop in game are once again tradeable. ACHIEVEMENTS The Maj’Dul Monitor Achievement now accepts quests completed in the Courts. MIRAGUL’S PLANAR SHARD The dire and alpha snowbeasts associated with Enraged Haladan now have somewhat less health. Hard Mode: Brilliant Adepts have less health. Boreas and Argos should no longer cast Trio of Teeth on players while they are leashed. Curse of Confusion now lasts 18 seconds rather than 30 seconds. PALACE OF THE ANCIENT ONE Anashti Sul will no longer...
Imago-Quem has posted more screen snapshots of Shaders 3.0, the graphical upgrade coming to EQ2 in Game Update 54. I believe these are all images of North Freeport. “Day” Before | After “Rainy” Before | After “Night to Morning” Before | After “Indoors” Before | After Previous screenshots shown of Nektulos Forest: “Nek Castle” Before | After “Nmarr’s Ascent” Before | After “Nek Forest 1” Before | After “Nek Forest 2” Before | After “Underwater” Before | After
Memory Issues Despite the updated EQ2 Client, some players are still reporting issues with running out of memory in EQ2. One workaround users are reporting, is to periodically minimize and then maximize the EQ2 application. This seems to reclaim some memory. The EQ2 dev team continue to search for the cause of these issues and intend to release another updated EQ2 client in the next few days. Chronomage Missions Thanks to Atan for testing out and reporting back on the Chronomage Missions. If you read EQ2Wire, you know that 3 new NPCs have been added in East Freeport (on...
Well, now we know the real reason that Avatar Loot was nerfed. It wasn’t because it was “overpowered” or because it would “break the next expansion”. It was so similar items could be put on the endboss of an instance. As posted by Jasuo on the EQ2 Forums, two of the charms dropped by Miragul in Miragul’s Planar Shard (x4 raid zone) are very similar to Avatar Charms: and yes, we will be back later today to talk about the new EQ2 zone which requires a LoN item to access.
Much has been made of the difficulty, and more importantly the limited desirability of the loot that drops in the new raid zone — Miragul’s Planar Shard — which arrived in Game Update 53. Players capable of killing these mobs already have access to far superior gear, and indeed some of these items were not as good as Ward of Elements or even group instance drops. Significant changes are expected to both the difficulty of the zone and the quality of the loot in tomorrow’s Hotfix. Gninja advises us that further changes to the difficulty of the zone should...
Windslasher, who headed up the Rebuilding the Spires event has shared their insight into why we did not see a “Grand Finale” to the Spires Event: Congratulations on finishing the spire! While it would have given me great pleasure to have an epic-x4 dragon with 20 million hitpoints spawn and attack you, that simply would not have fit the theme or lore of this event. The idea here was to let everyone on the server contribute in a 100% cooperative effort that permanently affects the game world. So the bosses that attack the spires during construction have a lore...
Resolving hopefully the last of the Game Update 53 issues, we’re expecting the next Hotfix on Thursday, October 1. Here are the Update Notes: GENERAL The destroy confirmation is now more clear in confirming that you are actually destroying an item. The Guardian of Eternity has returned to Charasis: Vault of Eternal Sleep Research Assistants are a little more helpful when asked about their jobs. ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENTS Monk Enhance: Mend will once again work properly. ITEMS Najena’s Ring of Readiness is no longer heirloom. Additionally, the Ring of Readiness effect will only function as long as the ring is...
Folks have been reporting in with mechanics problems (some related to multipliers) in EQ2 after Game Update 53: Anashti Sul’s “Presence of the Void” is hitting twice as hard and causing twice the power drains. [Link 1] [Link 2] [Link 3] This is not the only mob with mangled multipliers. Another example is Trakanon. [Link] Brigands cannot cast Double Up after casting Barroom Negotiation. [Link] Certain spells/CAs which have a Damage Over Time aspect to them such as the Monk CA “Rising Dragon” are randomly only doing 1 point of damage. [Link 1] [Link 2] Charasis: Vault of Eternal...
It’s too bad EQ2 developers don’t really talk to the players about Live Events and instead make assumptions. Over 2 years ago, the first Spires were being rebuilt. Tradeskillers did all the work, and then when the spire reached 100% completion, an Epic x4 dragon appeared, killing them all. Raid guilds swooped in and battled it out for the contested win. Some even swarmed the various zones by logging in dozens of alt characters to intentionally lag out other players to prevent them from successfully taking down the mob. In the end, the raid guilds got Titles and all...
Raid Packing List Raid mobs have always had a variety of devastating poisons, noxious effects, arcane curses, stuns, stifles, and knockbacks at their disposal to make it a challenge (or darn near impossible) for the raid force to defeat them. Discovering the strategies required to kill these raid targets is a key part of raiding. Raid mobs tend to have elaborate scripts, puzzles, or strategies required to defeat them. Solutions that work for one guild may not be appropriate for another due to the players and classes present in the raid. One raid force may have a lot of...
Getting Mileage out of Macros How do you create a Macro? If you already have an ability on one of your hotbars and want to turn it into a macro, just right-click it and choose Create Macro…. If you want to create a macro from scratch, then press O, click the Macros tab, and find a blank space labeled and click it. To add a command like a /group /raid or /tell, make sure Macro Step: is set to Command and click Add Step. To add a combat art or spell or use a potion/scroll/item, then next to Macro...
Dayakara — Fire Elemental If you are familiar with the Tairiza fight, this will seem vaguely familiar. Strategy Off-tank will pull Dayakara to the alcove to the immediate left when entering the room so that Dayakara is facing away from the raid. High DPS scouts (as chosen by raid leader) will focus on Dayakara during the entire fight). Off-tank (OT) healers will focus on keeping OT alive and group cured. Adds spawn every 14(?) seconds. MT will be picking up adds right in the center of the room. MT healers will focus on keeping MT alive and group cured....
Digg – Corrupted Earth Elemental Positioning/Pull To start, everyone should be standing on the floating bridge close to Digg’s island. On pull, the Main Tank will rush Digg and then everyone runs past the tank to get behind Digg. Digg should be kept facing roughly the same direction as he was before he was engaged but perhaps pulled 1 or 2 steps forward. The raid force must get right on Digg’s ass, extremely close to him. Do not stand a few feet back, or off to one side, as you will get hit by the 180 degree frontal AoE....
Imperator Ignus – General at Arms The Main Tank will rush in and spin him on the star you will see on the floor in the middle of the room, facing away from the main raid force. The Main Assist will target each add and everyone helps the Main Assist kill the adds. Once they’re dead, the Main Assist targets Ignus and burns him down. Straight tank and spank, nothing special. Gelidus Ventus the Tempest Positioning When you enter Gelidus’s room you will notice very large fans that take up entire sections of walls, and then solid walls between...