Zone Strategy: Pawbuster

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Guide

Pawbuster – Executioner’s Throne Room

Special Attacks

  • Whirling Attack — Every 20 seconds, Pawbuster does a trauma AE which triggers Intimidation, causing the 18 closest players and pets to be stifled/stunned for 1 minute. This will be cured by the healers.
  • Great Cleave — Every 20 seconds, Pawbuster lifts his shoulders and does his “big swing” with his battle axe. This is a frontal AoE Knockback and Stun which cannot be cured. The main tank will be the only tank directly in front of Pawbuster, with secondary tank to Pawbuster’s left ot right ready to take agro.
  • Stuck – After Pawbuster raises his battle axe and swings it, it will strike the ground and get “stuck”. During this time, Pawbuster is rooted. If Pawbuster is positioned over the grate and facing East, then this attack will strike the lock holding the grate closed. Once Pawbuster breaks open the grate, he will suicide by falling down into the spinning fan blades.
  • Battlerage – When Pawbuster kills a person he gains 2% health and gains a buff Battlelust. Battlelust makes him hit harder and take a % less damage per hit.

Introduction

After watching Youtube videos, reading EQ2Flames, and talking to 2 other guilds that have killed him, I believe that it is very possible for most of our raid force to remain unstifled during the entire fight.

Positioning

The main tank stands directly in front of Pawbuster on the stairs, so that Pawbuster is facing away from the raid. The secondary tank stands to Pawbuster’s left or right so that he will avoid the frontal AoE.

Healers and the top 2-3 DPS people should be at max range of the Tanks.

Everyone else is clustered in between the healers and Pawbuster. The distance between Pawbuster and the tank should always be closer than the distance between Pawbuster and the next person.

Raid Stifle

Every 20 seconds, Pawbuster stifles the 18 closest people with his Whirling Attack. This includes swarm pets, dumbfire pets, etc. We will use this to our advantage by having all casters and healers send in swarm pets right before Pawbuster’s Whirling Attack.

Wardens, Defilers, and Templars will then Group Cure Trauma to keep the raid unstifled as much as possible.

Clerics should have Macros for each of the other healers to target them and single-target Cure them.

Tank Stifle

Every 20 seconds, Pawbuster does a Great Cleave axe swing which is an incurable frontal AoE stun and knockback. When this happens, the secondary tank takes over and moves into position in front of Pawbuster, making sure that Pawbuster is facing the stairs and away from the raid.

It may be possible for the tank to dodge this attack by “stepping into” Pawbuster or stepping to the side when his axe is in mid-air but before it strikes the ground (move too early and he auto-faces).

At this point, Pawbuster’s axe is stuck in the ground and he is rooted. In EQ2 game mechanics, rooted mobs randomly switch targets trying to find a mob within range that they can hit. Pawbuster is not switching Agro so do not waste Rescue, deagro spells, etc. Pawbuster does NOT memwipe. Once Pawbuster becomes unrooted, he will run towards his current target.

When Pawbuster starts randomly switching targets, a Coercer should cast Thought Snap to force Pawbuster to target a tank within their group. Thought Snap is an AA ability which will prevent Pawbuster from switching targets from a fighter for 7 seconds.

Doggie Suicide

Once Pawbuster reaches 25% health, he is now strong enough to break the lock on the grate. At this point, the active tank will reposition him over the grate in the center of the room. The raid will need to quickly move to their new positions. We may have 1 healer run to one corner of the room for this part of the fight.

Once Pawbuster breaks the lock on the grate, someone needs to pull the lever on his starting platform to open the grate. The handle will become clickable when this happens. When Pawbuster reaches 25% health, we will have 1 person (wizard, ranger, etc.) move to the lever and be ready to click it.

Extra Background

When an EQ2 mob cannot move, either because it is rooted, or it is casting a spell (EQ2 roots mobs while casting to prevent self-interrupts), the following occurs:

  • The mob starts changing targets (from its hate list) trying to find someone it can hit.
  • If that target is in range, it starts hitting it.
  • If there is nobody in melee range, then the mob will continue to change targets (from its hate list), getting further and further away.
  • Once the mob becomes free, it doesn’t change target immediately, but instead will run at the target it has, until there is some event that causes it to examine its hate list again. That target may be far away and that causes problems.
   

Zone Strategy: The Leviathan

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Guide

The Leviathan
Chamber of Destiny

The gatekeeper of Veeshan’s Peak. You cannot enter VP until you have personally killed Leviathan. Only one person on the raid who has killed Venril Sathir or Overking must be present to zone a raid into the Chamber of Destiny.

To kill the Leviathan, you need 3 items:

  • Greenmist Orb (purple X)
    • Drops from Imzok’s Revenge, the boss of Protector’s Realm.
    • At 15%, Leviathan will emote about the Greenmist Orb becoming Active. One party member holding this item will run to the North end of the cave and click the Statue when the green message appears at the top of the screen.

    NOTE: This item can be cast while running towards the Statue and it will continue to cast even after you die.
    NOTE: If this Statue is not finished casting by the time Leviathan reaches 1% health, Leviathan will AoE and wipe the entire raid. So watch (but do not stop) your raidwide DPS.

  • Fishmen Scales
    • This is a fish costume that, when worn, will encourage Leviathan to eat you. There are 8 stacks of 5 suits (40 total) to be obtained in this zone by killing the fish men (Yha-lei). These suits are LORE NO-TRADE, so the raid leader or designated looter should give the suits out to the players with the highest Crit and casting speed.

    NOTE: These suits have double duty, as you will first use them to go inside Leviathan and kill the mobs which drop Volatile Fluids, then you will use the suits to go inside and drop Volatile Fluids to do massive damage to the Leviathan.
    NOTE: During the fight, loot options should be set to Free For All so players can quickly pick up any Volatile Fluids from mobs they kill.
    NOTE: It takes over a minute for Leviathan to eat the first person.
    NOTE: If nobody has on a suit when he is ready to eat someone, he will AoE the raid.
    NOTE: The bodies of the dead Yha-lei can be left up during the Leviathan fight, and players can grab suits as they run out.
    NOTE: As players run out of suits, you can also trade Volatile Fluids to other players who still have suits. Both of you need to disable Autoattack to allow the trade window to appear.
    NOTE: Once you’ve used up all 40 (8 x 5 charges) suits, it’s time to call it quits and come back 48 hours later when those trash mobs respawn.

  • Volatile Fluid
    • 99% of your raid’s damage to Leviathan will come from players dropping Volatile Fluids inside of Leviathan. This means it will be a very boring fight for everyone else who will not be going inside. You will be curing your own Noxious effects with potions, and keeping up Melee or Ranged Autoattack the entire fight (including healers and mages).
    • If you have been selected as one of those who will be going inside Leviathan, your job to kill the trash mobs (they look like sperms) and collect as many Volatile Fluid as you can before you are ejected.
    • The average raid force will beed 50-60 fluids to kill Leviathan. Your raid force may choose to gather all the fluids, and then kill Leviathan on a subsequent visit, or attempt to alternate collecting and using fluids. Each Volatile Fluid that is dropped damages Leviathan by 3-4%, especially if used by a player with high crit and casting speed.
    • NOTE: Any kind of Time Compression, Jester’s Cap, and other haste including Warlock Focused Casting should be put on these players. Ideally, Brigands should Dispatch just before volatile fluids are used. You will only be inside Leviathan for approximately 10 seconds.
      NOTE: The volatile fluids from Halls of Fate will not work here.

Keys to the Fight:

  • Everyone will be curing their own Noxious.
  • Druids and others may attempt to remove Leviathan’s spell reflect “Reflective Aura” but this is almost futile. While the spell reflect is up, if you cast any hostile spells or debuffs they will reflect on the caster’s group.
  • Setup a rotation of Scouts and Mages putting on suits and going inside Leviathan. Adjust the rotation depending on the number of suits, and distribute volatile fluids to party members as needed. Most folks will only be able to drop 3-4 fluids while inside of Leviathan.
  • Prevent Leviathan from Healing. Everyone should run to the center of the swimming pool (you will physically be inside Leviathan) and keep up Melee or Ranged Autoattack at all times. If you fail to autoattack, you will allow Leviathan to heal himself. Shamans should turn off their water breathing buff (which causes you to sink to the bottom). The pool that contains Leviathan is sludge and not water, so you will drown if you sink to the bottom.
  • Don’t die! You will heal Leviathan 2-3%.
  • At 20% or so, you will see an emote about the Greenmist Orb being activated. One of your players who has the Greenmist Orb will run over to the Statue at the North end of the cave and click the statue AS SOON AS YOU CAN REACH IT. You can click it while running. If you successfully click it before you die, it will complete casting and allow Leviathan to be killed.
  • Kill Leviathan within 15 minutes, otherwise he AoE’s the zone, killing everyone inside.

Further Notes:
Generally speaking, your mages will not be able to do any DPS on the Leviathan fight due to how often the Reflective Aura spell reflect is up. However if you want to try, you can establish a rotation of Crusaders (Paladin/Shadowknight), Brigands (taunt), INT-specced Shamans (Defiler/Mystic), and STA-specced Druids (Warden/Fury) to try to keep this effect off of Leviathan.

Each time someone successfully removes Reflective Aura, call out in voice chat “DEBUFFED” and then everyone can go crazy with debuffs for 3-4 seconds.

If Wizards feel confident in their Heat and Cold resists, they may use single-target spells on Leviathan even with the Reflect up and they will (hopefully) mitigate the reflected damage.

If mages are dying to the trash mobs inside Leviathan’s belly, then a fighter/scout can be sent in first to kill them and drop fluids to “clear a space” for the next mage.

Congratulations, you now have access to Veeshan’s Peak.

Sources:
EQ2 Flames thread about Leviathan (pages 18-23)
EQ2 Wikia about Leviathan

Strategy – Protector’s Realm

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Guide

The Protector’s Realm

Upon entering the zone, all the named skeleton mobs are non-aggro and unattackable. To begin the storyline, search carefully for Ludmila Kystov in the room with the unactivated Doomcoil and select the option to make a deal with her via right click. She will tell you a tale about her “raid force” and discuss the possibility of a group effort between your raid and her force. After speaking to Ludmila, have a priest (it must be a priest and no other class) resurrect Jracol Binari (again via right click and not the actual spell).

Once Jracol Binari is resurrected, have a member of the raid take the shards from Meldrath Kloktik via right-click. These shards (which are a single item) are used to activate the Vyx skeletons (Adkar Vyx, Iztapa Vyx, Wymbulu Vyx and Zykluk Vyx). Proceed around the rooms of the zone to kill these four skeletons. The order of their deaths doesn’t matter for the storyline, but each is slightly different from the others and a successful kill therefore requires a specific resist setup and strategy (see the appropriate named information page for more details).

Each time one of these skeletons is killed, a random member of the raid will receive a skull in their inventory. These four (tradeable) skulls are needed to spawn the next named (Doomcoil). Once all four skeletons are killed and the skulls obtained, trade them all to the raid leader.

Adkar Vyx

The encounter will turn aggro as soon as the character with the shard approaches it, meaning it is probably safest to have a brawler or other character with feign death activate the skeleton.

Haze of Thule — Massive poison/stifle AoE every 45s (varies slightly) does more damage the closer you are. The stifle cannot be avoided except by AoE block, and can be cured with potions.

Main Tank pulls to far left corner (with back to corner to avoid knockback), the rest of the raid stays out until Haze of Thule goes off. Then come into the room and start DPSing. The timer on Haze of Thule is 45 seconds, so players will need to leave the room (joust) every 45 seconds. A main assist will target the two adds first (an Alsakan) and all raid DPS will go through the main assist, then target Adkar Vyx directly and kill it.

If the raid wipes but in the process takes down one or both adds, the adds will take a couple of minutes to respawn, making it possible to try again for a slightly easier fight.

Iztapa Vyx

Touch of the Faceless — Mob will cast this death touch on Main Tank every 40s, which will do between 10K and 18K damage. If needed, have Off Tanks cast Intercede to absorb Touch of the Faceless.

There is no AoE to joust, so just maximum DPS on the adds (through main assist) and then DPS Iztapa down until dead.

Wymbulu Vyx

Position Main Tank in one corner nearest the door to his room. The rest of the raid stands in the other corner near door. Healers should stand at max range.

Spinning Fury — This is a melee AoE which should be jousted every 40 seconds with everyone leaving the room.

Zykluk Vyx

Judgement of the Faceless — This is a disease-based AoE Fear & DoT every 45 seconds that does more damage the closer you are. Main Tank pulls to far left corner with Sanctuary. Everyone else stays outside of the room until the AoE hits, then rush in. Joust all the way out of the room every 45s.

Doomcoil

Move your raid force into Doomcoil’s room and have the person with the 4 skulls from defeating Adkar Vyx, Iztapa Vyx, Wymbulu Vyx and Zykluk Vyx right-click and give the shards to the Meldrath. The adventurers will slowly leave and then after a short pause to talk, will activate Doomcoil (10 seconds after they say “Toodles!”) and put up a barrier locking you in the room. You get one shot at beating Doomcoil.

NOTE: Make sure all party members have maximized their poison and divine resists by equipping the necessary gear.

The whole raid force (apart from the Fighters) stands in the corner near the door. Fighters stand on the other side of Doomcoil in the far corner so that Doomcoil is between the Tanks and the rest of the raid.

Once Doomcoil is activated, the Fighters need to keep Doomcoil as far away from the raid as possible to avoid having either of the AoEs go off and kill the raid. Melee DPS should joust the AoEs. After casting Sonic Burst, Doomcoil will teleport himself to the door side of the room. He will be rooted for a couple of seconds, during which he will likely target someone other than the tanks. At that point, stop DPS until one of the tanks can grab agro and drag Doomcoil back to the far corner. Then resume DPS.

The worst case scenario is for Doomcoil to be on top of the raid force (due to someone overagroing) and fire off one of the AoEs. Two or three fighters should be switching agro using snaps and taunts and keeping Doomcoil away from the raid force. Everyone targets the mob directly and watches their implied target to see if they have agro. If they do, they need to run towards the tanks. If players keep getting agro, or keep dying to the AoE, then they will be asked to stay dead until the end of the fight.

NOTE: Every time a member of the raid dies, Doomcoil heals himself for 2% health, so don’t die. Also, if you do die, do not revive, as you will be locked out of the room.

  • Choking Mist AoE hits every 60s
  • Sonic Burst AoE hits every 55s

Enemy Raid Force

After killing Doomcoil, you will be confronted by the evil raid force. If you killed Doomcoil, recommended order of this fight is: Frogloks, Jracol, Blorgok, Meldrath, Ludmila. If you failed to kill Doomcoil, then be aware that during the fight, Meldrath will summon Doomcoil. In this case, your fight order should be: Frogloks, Meldrath, Jracol, Blorgok, Ludmila.

2 Froglok Mercenaries – Fighters

  • ~200K HP each
  • Will taunt and force you to switch targets, but you are able to change back to your previous target

Jracol Binari – Healer

  • ~1.3 million HP
  • Will periodically group heal for ~200K

Ludmila Kystov – Scout

  • ~4.9 million HP
  • Tends to memwipe and run around causing havoc by attacking whoever she likes.

Meldrath Kloktik – Mage

  • ~2.7 million HP
  • Periodic stifle, occasional charms/mezzes players

Blorgok the Brutal – Fighter

  • ~1 million HP
  • Will periodically force you to target him, at which point you are unable to change targets.

Strategy

While an Off-Tank is keeping Meldrath away from the group (due to the stifle/charm), take down in the order listed above. After Ludmila and Jracol are dead, have the Off-tank bring Meldrath back over to the raid force and kill him. Blorgok the Brutal has very few hitpoints so will likely die from AoEs while you are killing the rest of their force.

The enemy raid force will drop an item called the Staff of Sounding. This item is tradeable and is relatively cheap on the Broker these days.

Imzok’s Revenge

Every 40-70 seconds, Imzok will do a Trauma AoE called Revenge’s Sebilisian Torrent. It does 9,000 damage and 2,000 DoT if you are within 5 meters, The damage is reduced based on distance but cannot be completely avoided. This should be jousted.

Unfortunately, due to the apostrophe (‘) in the mob’s name, Advanced Combat Tracker (ACT) does not correctly calculate the timer on this effect. Brigands have an ability Traumatic Swipe which can delay a mob’s AoE, but this will not be included in the calculations. Have your Brigand announce “Swipe” in raid chat and the person watching timers must mentally add the Swipe which is 10-15 seconds delay.

At 35% health, Imzok will stoneskin/reflect shield. It is CRITICALLY IMPORTANT that ALL DPS stop Damage Over Time (DoT) spells at 45%, and then all pet DPS at 40%. If necessary, press ESC and sit down, or run around the corner so you stop DPSing. There will be a message at the top of the screen indicating that Imzok is now invulnerable. All damage from raid members when Imzok is stokeskinned (35%) will hit the Main Tank.

At this point (or shortly before it), each person with a Staff of Sounding should run into the room where Imzok was and start using the Staff on the 2 pillars. Only one of the pillars will be targetable at a time. Each person using a staff has a slim chance of breaking the the pillar, so it helps to have more than one person with a Staff. It may take up to 30 times clicking each pillar to break it so have patience.

During this time, everyone should be buffing up, healing up, boosting power, and getting ready for the spike damage that Imzok will be putting out once he’s “unlocked”.

Imzok will continue to AoE every 40-70 seconds and if the AoE coincides with Imzok becoming attackable (after 35%) the raid will wipe.

Imzok’s Revenge has a trauma-based AoE which players should be self-curing with potions (pots). This Trauma AoE hits the tanks harder after Imzok is enraged (once you get him below 35%.

Burn down the last 35% and loot your chest!

Scouts and their Poisons

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Guide

Assassins, Rangers, Brigands, and Swashbucklers get as much as 40% of their damage through the use of poisons. However Bards (Troubadours and Dirges) cannot use them.

These poisons not only cause additional damage but also debuff the mob which is the most important factor to allow the other classes to maximize their own DPS.

Scout classes can use 3 types of poisons at one time. Poison damage can be affected by AAs. The specific numbers below are for level 72 Mastercrafted poisons.

Damage (Red) — Top the parse!

  • Caustic — Inflicts 749 poison damage on target.
  • Vitality Breach — Inflicts 524 poison damage on target and heals caster for 399. (Lifetap)
  • Mental Breach — Drains target of 749 power and increases power of caster by 332. (Powertap)
  • Hemotoxin — Inflicts 317 poison damage on target ever 4 seconds for 24 seconds (2,219 total).

Notes: Hemotoxin does more damage over time than the other 3 Red poisons do, but note that multiple Hemotoxin effects will not stack on the mob, so multiple scouts using Hemotoxin may cancel each other’s DPS. Raids should coordinate which poisons will be used by which players.

Special (Blue)

  • Ignorant Bliss – Decreases threat to target (De-agro) by 1501.
  • Essence of Turgur – Decreases targets attack speed by 25%.
  • Fettering Poison – Slows target by 44%.
  • Stupefying Poison – Stuns target.

Debuff (Purple)

  • Enfeebling – Decreases Strength of target by 82. Decreases Crushing, Piercing, Ranged and Slashing ability of target by 31.
  • Warding Ebb – Decreases Wisdom of target by 82. Decreases Mitigation vs all magical damage by 1051.
  • Cerebral Ebb – Decreases Intelligence of target by 82. Decreases Ordination, Disruption, Subjugation and Ministration of target by 31.
  • Gracelessness – Decreases Agility of target by 82. Decreases Parry, Defense and Deflection of target by 31.

Just as multiple Hemotoxin (Red) poisons will not stack on the same mob, the Special (Blue) and Debuff (Purple) poisons will not stack on the mob either. Scouts need to coordinate before the raid to make sure they are using non-conflicting poisons.

Maximizing Fighter/Scout DPS

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Guide

This article is due for cleanup with the release of Sentinel’s Fate.

What is Auto Attack?

If you engage combat and just stand there, not clicking any Combat Arts, Spells, etc. you will still swing your weapon every few seconds. So what’s the big deal? Well for some classes like scouts and fighters, up to 40% of your damage can come from Auto Attack.

Just how much damage can you get from Auto Attack? Let’s find out…

First, you want to find out your Weapon Delay. Press I to bring up your character sheet and point at your weapon or weapons. You will see a Delay. This is typically 3-4 seconds and then 7-9 seconds for a bow if you have one. This means that your weapon will Auto Attack every 4 seconds or whatever time it says. It can be helpful to have 2 weapons with the same delay.

Now type /weapon. You will see your weapon or weapons listed with Actual Delay. You probably noticed that it’s shorter than the Delay.

This is because you are wearing some items (or have spent AA points) to increase your Haste or Attack Speed. You can wear 1 item with Haste (typically increases your Attack Speed by 10-40%) and then you can wear additional items with Attack Speed (typically 2-4 points each item). If you wear 2 Haste items, then only the highest one functions (they do not stack). When you are in a group, especially with an Enchanter (Illusionist/Coercer) or a Bard (Dirge/Troubadour) your attack speed may get boosted dramatically.

Depending on the group you are in, your Weapon Delay may shrink down to as little as ONE second.

Note: For most classes, it is a mistake to choose weapons based solely upon the shortest Delay. Once you start to take advantage of Auto Attacks, you’ll find that medium weapon delays are better.

What’s my Auto Attack?

So how much damage is your Auto Attack doing? Fire up EQ2 and type /log to start generating a Log file. Now Install Advanced Combat Tracker (ACT) and go through the setup wizard, telling it where your EQ2 is installed and where your log file is.

Now go to your Guild Hall and pickup and place a Training Dummy. Alternately you can travel to Kunzar Jungle and visit the Training Wall. Engage combat and just stand there, not casting any spells or CAs. Make sure you are in melee range so you can hit the dummy. Now switch over to ACT and watch the numbers.

Let’s say you are watching the ACT window and notice that the DPS numbers are idling between 750-850. That means your Auto Attack is doing 750-850 dps. You don’t want to lose that!

So what’s the big deal?

Before I learned about Auto Attack damage, I used to just click the Combat Arts and Spells as fast as I could, not leaving any gap or delay. I thought I was doing the best damage I could.

But if you are doing this, you are preventing or delaying your Auto Attack from going off. If you are doing 1,400 dps and you can start leaving gaps between your Combat Arts, you can increase your DPS to 2,000 dps or more.

You’ll soon become aware of roughly how many seconds there are between your Auto Attacks and make sure you are leaving a gap between casting Combat Arts so that your AA will go off as often as possible. This is called “timing” your Auto Attacks.

This is where your Actual Weapon Delay becomes important. Depending on your group or raid setup, this might shrink to as little as 1 second. This would mean leaving a 1/2 second gap between nearly every Combat Art you cast.

At the website for Advanced Combat Tracker, there are instructions to add a timer/trigger so that ACT will play a Bell sound every time your Auto Attack is ready to be fired. That way you can start learning when to leave a small gap between your attacks.

You may want to install an Auto Attack plugin for your EQ2 client. This will display a bar that fills up. When it reaches the end, that’s when your autoattack goes off. So you can learn to make sure you are not “pausing” your autoattacks by casting combat arts at the wrong time.

What about those other Statistics?

The Shadow Odyssey actually changed one of the most important statitistics for melee/ fighter dps — melee and ranged crit. These used to give a 30% bonus to all Combat Arts. But this was changed!

Melee Crit and Ranged Crit are the percent chance that on any combat art or Autoattack, you will do the Maximum Damage. For instance let’s say you have a Combat Art that will do 800-1,250 damage. If you have a Melee Crit of 50%, then 50% of the time you use that Combat Art, you will hit for 1,251 damage.

Whereas Melee Crit is a very important stat for Fighters and Scouts, Rangers should focus on having their Ranged Crit as high as possible as this applies to ranged attacks.

Double Attack and Ranged Double Attack are distinct from Melee and Ranged Crit. They are your percent chance that you will Auto Attack twice. Just like Melee Crit and Ranged Crit, you want these numbers to be as high as possible (the cap is 100%).

Combat Art Damage is the amount of extra damage you do with each successful Combat Art. In your Persona window, this shows up under Melee Stats as Damage Amount. +CA Damage improves the damage of your Combat Arts.

So why can’t you just get all the +Combat Art Damage items possible to increase the damage each one of your Combat Arts does? The answer is that Combat Art Damage bonus cannot give you more than 50% bonus over each of your combat arts. Let’s say you have a combat art that does 300~500 damage. 50% of 500 is 250. So your maximum base damage for that combat art is 550~750 (300+250 ~ 500+250).

Another stat is DPS Mod, which increases your Damage Per Second by a percentage amount. Any item, adornment, self-buff, or group buff which adds DPS modifies this stat. The most powerful ring for fighters and scouts until you get a similar item is the mastercrafted strength ring with a proc on it that periodically increases your DPS by 40. Keep this until you get another item with a similar effect.

EQ2 has a diminishing returns system which means that once you get to a DPS Mod of 80, the benefit starts tapering off. Each point over 80 gives you less and less improvement until you get to 200 points which gives you an actual benefit of 125% increase in DPS.

AGI vs. STR

The number one stat for Scouts is Agility (AGI), right? Absolutely not.

If you want to increase your damage, the number one stat is Strength (STR). This is followed closely by Intelligence (INT). If you mouse over each stat in the Persona window, you’ll see what each stat does. It is a common misconception that Scouts need a lot of AGI. My AGI is under 500 and it doesn’t bother me a bit. AGI does affect your Power Pool and Avoidance which are probably a big deal solo, but not in a group or raid setting.

As I mentioned above, EQ2 has a diminishing returns system which means you’re graded on a curve. Player attributes STR, INT, STA, AGI, WIS have a “Soft Cap” of 800 and “Hard Cap” is 1220. This means that once you are over 800 points, you are starting to get less benefit from each point you get.

Considering that when you are in a group or raid, you will have buffs on you which can easily gain another 100-150 STR, it’s not hard to reach 1,100 or more STR at level 80. Once you do, start looking at other stats. Predators (Assassins, Rangers) can benefit from increased Intelligence (INT) in their use of poisons to increase their damage. Bards (Troubador, Dirge) benefit from increased Intelligence (INT) in the effectiveness of their spells.

A Word About Rangers

Rangers are a special case because we can be either Auto Attacking with Melee, or we can be Auto Attacking with Ranged. Our Ranged Auto Attack does FAR more damage than melee, so we should make sure that whenever there is a gap, the Ranged attack button is toggled, rather than the Melee attack button.

I rotate my attacks between Melee and Ranged, always making sure that I do Ranged last so the next autoattack is Ranged as well. I will typically do do a Melee CA, a Ranged CA, and then pause for Ranged Autoattack, a Melee CA, a Ranged CA, and then pause for Ranged Autoattack, repeat. Sometimes I am able to do 2 ranged DAs or 2 melee CAs back-to-back and still get a Ranged Autoattack off.

It’s tricky and getting the most DPS out of a Ranger is challenging. There are a ton of rangers out there with their epic who cannot breach 1,500 dps. With the right gear, spec, and play style, you should be doing 3,000 dps.

The single biggest way to increase the damage of a Ranger is to increase Ranged Double Attack. This used to be a very difficult statistic to find on equipment; it was mostly on raid gear, but there is an AA line you can go down which gives 8%, and the TSO Void Shard Armor set gives at least 13 points if you have a full set.

For more information on all of these stats, please check out this highly detailed article by Victor. Note that there are some important corrections to the article with regards to TSO Critical Mitigation contained within the Comments.

Last Updated Sept 26, 2009.

Bonus XP Weekend – September 25~28

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Art, Appearance, Housing, Game Updates & Maintenance, Grouping, Tradeskill

Bonus XP Weekend

To coincide with Game Update 53, we’ve got a 40% bonus to all forms of EQ2 experience weekend! This applies to Adventuring, Alternate Advancement (AA), and Tradeskilling. Kiara posted the announcement on the EQ2 Forums. Remember folks, if you are between level 10 and 79, you can now adjust the amount of combat and quest XP gets converted into AA XP. I’ve found this to be quite lucrative when doing quests which already award a high percentage of AA and quest XP. 🙂

It was quite nice to login and see:

bonusxp-40percent

There will be a bonus applied to all forms of experience this weekend, starting at 1:00 p.m. PDT on Friday, September 25th and ending at 10:00 a.m. PDT on Monday, September 28th.

Spire Rebuilding — Do we get Hazard Pay? 🙂

Apparently all this rebuilding and re-linking of the Ulteran Spires throughout Norrath is getting the attention of the creatures who do not want these links re-established! They’ve started to make their presence known around spires which are already at a certain percentage completion. Keep an eye out for Heroic and possibly Epic mobs which seek to stop your progress!

spires_rebuilding

Miragul’s Planar Shard

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance, Raiding

This year has seen the introduction of three raid zones to EverQuest II.

  • The Ward of Elements x2 — Once some initial bugs were corrected and a few mobs adjusted, this zone is a real success story. It’s very well-balanced for its target audience with sufficient difficulty and very good rewards.  Players with T2 armor, Epic weapon, and the right group makeups are successfully clearing the first 3 named, working their way up to clearing 5 and then finally clearing the zone once they’ve geared up further.
  • Kurn’s Tower x2 — This zone got some initial complaints, and gear was adjusted to compensate. Specifically the better patterns from Ward of Elements made an appearance here, and items were moved around to better match progression. All told it’s a reasonably popular zone.

And now we have Miragul’s Planar Shard. Despite the most organized beta testing process I’ve seen yet, the itemization came very late (just a few days before the update went live) and so these items have not gotten the scrutiny they should have.

I’ve already reported about zone issues with the 2nd and 3rd named crashing the zone and resetting all trash mobs on the 1st floor. This is not to mention that the chest from the 3rd named seems to prefer spawning under the floor.

But the bigger issue is the itemization and challenge for this zone.

The gear seems to be designed for casual raiders on the theory that these players will not have any T4 armor or Mythical weapons. However zone difficulty has been consistently reported as requiring players who have successfully killed Kultak and Switchmaster. By progression, this would mean players who have 3 pieces of T4 armor and Mythical weapons.

Patherpanchali has provided the details about how this zone can be scaled up and down in difficulty:

With regard to Miragul’s Planar Shard, the only MOBS in the zone that have a more difficult mode are Haladan and Miragul himself. During the Haladan fight there is a point at which he asks you to make a decision, which allows you to complete the encounter in standard mode or continue on to fight enraged versions of Haladan and Tuskers (hard mode). Hard mode encounters have their own loot table, and do not share items with their standard mode counterparts. When you get to the final floor, near the spiral staircase, you have a conversation with Miragul himself during which you can either insult him and he will fight you himself (hard mode), or let him make his speech without insulting him to get standard mode (his menagerie).

In addition there are items available from some of the Everfrost group instances that can affect aspects of the first floor encounters, giving players an additional advantage on the first floor. These are not needed to complete the zone, and have no effect on the treasure dropped by encounters they affect.

So what loot is actually dropping?

It is unclear at what difficulty this zone is being attempted, but the links I have seen so far for items that drop here are surprisingly average. While I’ve seen a decent Ranger off-hand and ring, some of the items defy belief. Some of the weapons cannot be used if you already have a Mythical weapon equipped. This is true of Fighters who already have their Mythical and a Shield, and Mages who cannot dual wield. So far, armor drops have not had any Critical Mitigation, making them a poor upgrade over even T1 armor.

Here’s a quote from Hecula which I think sums it up:

I think it’s time to seriously re-examine the way loot is heading and change it. Miragul’s took some time to design – the encounter scripts are inventive and unique. Yet the zone and all that work is ruined because people won’t want to play it. The rewards are too bad. It’s the same reason why almost noone is killing Munzok.

I would like to point out two of the most popular zones in EQ2 history. Runnyeye: The Gathering and Shard of Hate. These zones have probably been run more times than any other zones in the game. They were both zones that were considered very difficult when released (SoH slightly less so except for Maestro and Byzola) and both zones featured extremely good gear. The cloaks and set pieces dropped by the x2 in RE gave people a good reason to keep running the zone. Same thing for SoH – much of that gear is still highly desired by players and it is still a regularly-run zone. I would like to see more zones patterned after these zones.

If this game is to keep going until February, players need challenge and reward. Fluff and beauty aren’t enough. Just as a small segment of the population is kept alive by contested camping, only a small segment thrives solely on appearance and house decorations.

Bug Fixes and Bonus XP Weekend

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance, Grouping, Raiding

Like any Game Update, inevitably a few bugs slip through. Game Update #53 (Shards of Destiny) had more than a few. Some received attention in Today’s Hotfix:

GENERAL

  • /hide will once again hide illusions.
  • Discord (PvP) tokens are no longer fabled.
  • Saving and Loading house layouts is temporarily disabled for further tuning.

ACHIEVEMENTS

  • The Octagorgon Assassin achievement is now located under Dungeons instead of Raids.

ITEMS

  • Certain items dropped by Munzok have been upgraded.
  • Spirit Drain on the Spirit Draining Wristguard no longer heals the target of the attack.

SHARD OF LOVE

  • Regardless of which order you defeat the four bosses in Shard of Love, the doors to the chapel should always open.

RACIAL TRAITS

  • Arasai and Fae Glide are now toggled spells found in your Ability book.

SPIRE EVENT

  • Sorcerers may now translocate to any Ulteran spire even if they’re already in that zone.

USER INTERFACE

  • Vertical hotbars will no longer have the large amount of empty space on the right side.

Other bugs introduced in Game Update 53 persist or are still being discovered. Here are the bugs and issues we’re tracking related to GU53:

  1. Anashti Sul‘s Presence of the Void causes double damage and drains twice as much power as it used to. The issue has been identified and a hotfix is forthcoming.
  2. When the third named in the new Miragul’s Planar Shard zone (Glaciatus) dies, the chest spawns in the floor and is unreachable.
  3. Many players are reporting zonewide crashes on the 2nd and 3rd names in Miragul’s Planar Shard, which reset all of the trash mobs on the first floor.
  4. Completing Quests seems to make the Quest Helper window randomly disappear.
  5. The gloves in the Ro Achievement, Overrealm Achievement, and Faydwer Achievenment armor crates make Sarnak hands invisible.
  6. Certain users are reporting that GPU Shadows cause either flickering, or random dark spots on their screens.
  7. The Brigand spell “Double Up” is not working properly.
  8. Once you complete one of the 37 missions from the Chronomages, the mission cannot be reset, preventing you from picking up another one.
  9. Self and Group Buffs Persist on death. Not only are they there when you are revived, but they are functional while you are dead.
  10. The Threat/Agro Meter (Ctrl-T) disappears when out of combat and sometimes when in-combat.

Players are continuing to express their frustration at the changes to the Racial Traits. Specifically, that a large quantity of players will need to pay an extra fee just to get racial traits back that they have been using for the last 3 years. Presumably this token (which is not yet in the game) will made available for $10-15 on StationCash.

This is the best quote I’ve seen yet covering Game Update 53. Thanks Fendaria:

Recently the statements were made there was going to be more communication from the developers with the player base.  I believe this was given as one of the reasons for the GU updates to occur less often, to allow for more feedback.  This goal appears to have been largely unachieved for GU 53.  There was minimal, if any response to the feedback provided for the racial revamp.  There was minimal, if any notification or response to the feedback provided about the black shard merchant.

Besides the Achievements system and Spires event, I can’t point to another area of GU 53 which did have good developer communication.  (And please note, the Achievement system is largely considered a positive change by most players, in part due to better developer communication).

Updated EQ2 Client

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance

I just received a System Message that may be useful for some of you…

Greetings Norrath. A new version of the client executable is available that should fix the memory crashes some of you are experiencing. If you experienced any crashes, we recommend repatching as soon as possible.

For those of you on servers that have experienced performance problems, we sincerely apologize and are working diligently to fix the issue.

Game Update 53 for Euro Servers, Database Update

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance, International

The most populated servers have been struggling under the strain of Game Update 53, and now we have an update on this from Kiara.

Here’s an update on the performance problems we’ve been seeing.

We believe that the issues the servers have been experiencing since Shards of Destiny was pushed live relate to the volume of items being converted to heirloom and the achievement information being accessed by the new system. This has stressed the database and is causing the performance issues. We expect it to abate in a couple of days after the bulk of our players get logged in and updated.

Once again, we really appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvenience caused.

And regarding when European servers will get Game Update 53, Kiara again

We’ve figured out what the issue is with the database and we will be pushing the update to the international servers today.

To Runnyeye and Splitpaw the update will push at 9pm PDT (5am Sept 25th for our friends in London).

Again, we apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate all your patience while we sorted things out.

Game Update 53 Too Popular?

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance

Looks like Game Update 53 has been very popular, as a few servers are struggling with keeping up. Rothgar reports on the EQ2 Forums:

A couple of the highly populated servers are seeing some performance problems now that we are reaching primetime and many new players are logging in.

This is probably due to the large number of things that happen to your character the first time you log in after GU53.  Until the performance comes back down to normal levels, we will be locking some of the servers to keep the problem from getting any worse.

Currently the issues seem to be happening on Antonia Bayle, Nagafen and Crushbone.

The locking will only be done to spread the load over time and not something we expect to do for very long.

I remember being stripped naked when I first logged in after Game Update 53, so I’m not surprised the servers are in a state of shock. 🙂

All servers are currently unlocked but some are experiencing database bottlenecks.  We are working on determining the cause.  GU53 has been live since early this morning and these isses only just began within the last 2 hours.  So our first assumption is that its just related to the increased load of prime time.

As a further precaution, some other news, which will probably come as no surprise to European players, is that Game Update 53 has been delayed for European servers. Kiara has been tasked with bringing us this news:

Due to the database issues that are occuring on several servers and interrupting performance, we will be delaying the push to the EU servers, this evening.

We want to make sure that the problems are sorted out before we update the EU servers, should it be a problem with the code so that we don’t push a problem to these servers.

I will update this post with the new times as soon as I have the information.

I deeply apologize for the delay and the inconvenience.

In the meantime, please leave your comments in this thread:

Server Issues & Locks – 9/23/09

Thank you for your patience while we fix the problems and again, my apologies for the inconvenience.

Avatar Loot Nerfs

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Commentary, Game Updates & Maintenance, Itemization, Raiding

So far, today my coverage of Game Update 53 has been entirely positive. I think Game Update 53 is actually an excellent update, with the live quest, HEIRLOOM LORE-EQUIP flag, etc. However in the long term, I think all the great things about this update may be overshadowed by some colossal mistakes.

The bland Racial Trait revamp which I’ve already talked about. And an issue that a lot of people don’t take seriously, but I think needs to be discussed — the Avatar Loot Nerf. So far, I have refrained from covering these changes, hoping that cooler (and wiser) heads would prevail. However it seems that didn’t happen, so now I have to write this article…

Game Update 53 implements a massive reduction in the desirability and effectiveness to a large percentage of gear that drops from the Avatars of Norrath. The overwhelming majority of these items are now less effective than items that drop in instance raid zones and in some cases single group zones. In short, there was absolutely no point in anyone killing any of these mobs for the last 9 months.

Contested vs. Instanced

When EverQuest II came out, almost all of the content was contested. In dungeons, in outdoor zones, almost every enemy was free-roaming, able to be killed by anyone. As a result, players would camp these mobs, and contact each other when one appeared so they could quickly group up and kill it before anyone else could take it. It was contested content. However there has been a gradual shift to instanced zones in the last 4 years and this trend is no more obvious than with The Shadow Odyssey which contained not a single new contested zone or encounter.

Every time I zone into Deep Forge, or Ward of Elements, or Palace of the Ancient One, I am guaranteed the opportunity to kill every single named. I know they will be up, and I won’t have to compete with any other players to get to them. I can visit Ward of Elements twice a week and kill 7 named each time. The only competition here is against the Random Number Generator % chance that the item I want will drop.

The Shadow Odyssey started out with 3 instance raid zones. Certain mobs have certain patterns they drop. If you kill these mobs, you are guaranteed to get certain patterns to T4 armor set pieces.

What is an Avatar?

An Avatar is a Planar Manifestation. It is a Norrath-bound representation of a deity or God. And furthermore, Avatars are the only substantial Contested content left in EQ2 right now.

Three avatars spawn every 3~5 days. Every 3~5 days, if your guild has enough members logged in and with the right gear, and if you are quick enough, you can try to kill these 3 avatars. Avatars typically have 15 million hitpoints and you must kill them in 7 minutes or they put a debuff on your entire raid called Battle Weary which makes it almost impossible to kill them. This is not to mention the competition from other guilds, and the inevitable zone lag caused by ~50 spectators watching your guild try to defeat an avatar.

A few of the Avatars are slightly easier to kill than the hardest mobs in the hardest instance raid zones in the game, however they are not Contested. I think this point gets lost in the shuffle in many discussions.

On some servers, 1 guild has these Avatars on lockdown. On other servers, there is competition between 2 or 3 guilds to kill them. There are entire guilds that had their entire membership pay $20 to move their characters over to another server just to have a shot at killing avatars. In other words, they are contested. Each avatar that is killed drops 2 items from one of three shared loot tables (good, neutral, and evil) and a master spell. (details from Lithin.com)

The Problem

The big problem is, Contested Avatar gear was designed around crunch time in the development of The Shadow Odyssey. Some of it had effects on it which were not fully understood until after the expansion was released. Simultaneously, the Tier 4 armor, which is the set piece armor obtained by completing Instance Raid zones, is very powerful, to the point where there are concerns that this armor will be effective even when the Sentinel’s Fate expansion increases the level cap to 90 next February.

So there was discussion by the EQ2 Developers as early as February that some of this Avatar Gear would be nerfed. When the changes appeared on test, which rendered most of the items useless in comparison with Instance gear, there was unanimous negative reaction. The changes were shelved. For the next 6 months, players went about their business, playing the game as it was apparently designed — with contested mobs dropping the most powerful items in the game.

Players invested thousands of man-hours into playing the game as it has been presented since the Echoes of Faydwer expansion, namely that Avatars drop the best items in the game, and if you want this gear, you will need to invest the time and effort to get it.

Then in August, the changes appeared again on the Test server, with even more dramatic changes than the ones mentioned in February. For the next month, a 75 page thread developed trying to get some answers from the developers as to why such drastic changes were necessary. It was subsequently closed and a new thread created asking if we would be getting any developer explanation for these heavy-handed changes. That thread was also closed.

I have never been prouder of the EQ2 community for the detailed analysis of each item, screen shots, comparisons between Avatar Gear and other in-game items which are similar or better, in-game statistics, etc. they did in these two threads. Most importantly were many impassioned pleas from the players of these guilds that tackle these encounters week-after-week that they would no longer have any desire or need to participate in this content once the changes went live.

I was very frustrated to see these threads closed, and the result of that was I think some undeserved attacks have been made towards Kiara, who I think has done an excellent job turning the EQ2 forums from the Gestapo, uncomfortable place they were 2 years go, into the receptive place they are now that accepts feedback, even if it’s a viewpoint the devs might not like.

The blame for this Avatar Loot situation does not fall on Kiara’s shoulders. It belongs on the shoulders of the developers who let this go for so long.

On September 23rd, we saw the launch of the Shards of Destiny (Game Update 53). With few exceptions, every Avatar Gear item in the game has been reduced in effectiveness (nerfed) exactly how they appeared on Test in mid-August. Customer Feedback was completely ignored, and the suggestion that these changes wait until the expansion received no attention.

Regardless of whether some of these items may have been slightly overpowered, the point now is that I have never seen the players of EQ2 do such a good job explaining in intricate detail, with examples, screen shots, comparisons, Excel spreadsheets, ACT reports, exactly why the changes were flawed, and how they would break the game.

Why You Should Care

So far, all of the Raid content that has been added to EQ2 in Kunark and The Shadow Odyssey has gone live broken, with substantial bugs that make it impossible to kill mobs. Avatar-killing Guilds have been instrumental in providing detailed bug reports to get this content fixed.

I predict that a lot of raid content will be going live in the next expansion with a serious lack of testing and bugs as a result. I am really not looking forward to seeing some of the most experienced players, who have given me a lot of advice about how to be a better player, outright quit the game.

People try to classify members of raid guilds as players with “no life” who get woken up at 3am to kill these mobs. It is a fact that raid guilds successfully take down avatars without waking up at odd hours or playing “24/7”. Some do so playing as little as 20 hours a week.

Quotes

There is so much worth reading in the Avatar Nerf #1 and Avatar Nerf #2 threads, but I wanted to include some of it here without making this post too long. Yes, there is a lot of whining and nonsense in those threads, but there are also very detailed, constructive arguments.

I think you already have your feedback. Within hours you have seen that this massive nerf to an entire playstyle is completely unacceptable to most.

This goes beyond what is actually being done to avatar gear right now. This is showing a sense of disdain towards the high end content and the players that give the most back to the game in terms of feedback about mechanics and encounters. To me it shows that not only is a contested playstyle being destroyed right now, but that soe has no intention of having a contested level of loot/play/gear in the next expansion. Progression is a very important thing. Making encounters more difficult to progress through, and also having those encounters drop loot that also progresses.

This nerf will do massive damage to raiding guilds on every server, and will take away one of the aspirations of every raider. ~~ Korrupt @ Najena ~~

Many of the changes to avatar loot appears to be done arbitrarily without consideration for how the end result compares to existing items.

Further, some items that were -already- worse than instanced items have received additional nerfs. Since items that were regarded as ‘trash’ already were reduced, this does tend to reinforce the idea that these changes were largely arbitrary and done without a great deal of thought. Examples include the Pantaloons of the Visionary, which were already an inferior choice to set pants for people trying to get their set bonuses and use their free slot for something better. Other examples include the avatar belts, which were already inferior to mobs from instanced zones – which no one complained about. ~~ Chath of Bloodthorn on Antonia Bayle ~~

The problem is with the DESIGNERS not with the MECHANICS.  The designers continue to make items that are irreplaceable. They continue to make items that everyone knows are too good, and they continue to show they have no idea how their game actually works.

Take the base damage and the Bloodthirsty Choker for example.  They didn’t even realize why it was so good.  They had no idea that base damage affected poisons and procs.  They even went so far as to start adding base damage to LEGENDARY gear.

After two expansions of everyone wearing the choker and numerous posts about it, what do they do?  They add MORE base damage items to the game.  Even though Fyreflyte says himself “previously the highest you could hope to attain is 10% ~ 15%”.  He acts like the items made themselves.  HE MADE THEM.  The TEAM made them.

Stuff like this isn’t the player’s fault.  Its the team’s fault.  Continual design ignorance and a lack of the future of the game results in the mechanics changing every expansion and months of player’s time wasted. ~~ Gage ~~

Conclusions

EQ2 needs to be itemized from the top down. Really, if you look at it, almost all of the gear in The Shadow Odyssey is overpowered. Even the Tier 1 and Tier 2 armor. Even some of the quest gear. Going forward, if gear issues are identified early on, they need to be applied early in the expansion. Waiting until September is just really bad form. And needlessly reducing the effectiveness of gear to below the effectiveness of other items in the game, especially ones that drop in Heroic dungeons, is just plain wrong.

There is no doubt that due to the choice to apply these changes now, rather than February as they were strongly advised to do, will result in many people quitting the game, perhaps indefinitely. If SoE is serious about EQ2 having Contested content in the future, they need to understand the time investment that is made to playtest and participate in this content. There are only so many times players will come back from this kind of sea change.

Leaving the Game

Normally, when someone posts on the EQ2 forums or EQ2Flames that they intend to quit the game, they are met with ridicule, disbelief, and disingenuous requests “can I have your stuff?” However, you will find none of that here.

If you are considering leaving EQ2, please post a comment with your character name(s), guild, and server, and I will post them here.

Dracos Argent – Butcherblock
Grump, Emericant, Karmalina, Kindalar, Lucii, Merovius, Leisure

Validus – Splitpaw
Lithin, Cexi, Lineshta

Shard of Love

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Art, Appearance, Housing, Game Updates & Maintenance, Grouping, Live Events, Tradeskill

The Shard of Love

A lot of folks have been asking me where the Shard of Love is and how to get there.

First, it should be noted that the Shard of Love is not a group zone like any of the other group zones in The Shadow Odyssey or Rise of Kunark.

The Shard of Love is a very casual group zone that can be completed with 3-4 players. It scales to level (50-80) and rewards appearance items, house items, and reusable cast items. It does not reward the typical armor, jewelry, weapons you are used to in other zones. Some of the mobs, you actually heal them instead of killing them. Think of it more like the Haunted Mansion from last year’s Nights of the Dead event, which was just a fun zone for 3 players.

EQ2 Wiki has drawn a blank, but fortunately EQ2 Zam is on the ball here and has a writeup on Shard of Love and a list of names and quests.

The Shard of Love Access Quest

As for how to access the zone, thanks to Kreanne (Butcherblock) for posting this information:

  1. This quest is picked up at the North Qeynos or Commonlands gates.
  2. Speak with Priestess Annalisa Swornlove in Antonica’s Coastal Grove {-2233, 24, -699} near the druid ring. Harvest a virtuous component.
  3. Travel to the Commonlands where the Avatar of Valor spawns (near the Mourned location).
  4. Return to the Priestess and give here the valorian bloom. Speak to her again and she will tell you that the arrow has been blessed.
  5. Travel to Greater Faydark and find a place that had meaning for Lady Shea. This is around the base of Tunare’s Sapling {-92,0,0}. Find an ethereal arrow the size of a spear and click on it. A Disciple of Hate will spawn and attack you.
  6. Find the weakest point between the Shard of Love and Norrath. As Everfrost is the world of the E’ci, this is where you should go. 🙂 Head to the north end of the dock {-57,-9,56} and click on a scatter of rubble.
  7. Return to the Priestess and give here the valorious bloom.
  8. Return to Everfrost and meet the Priestess there. Once she completes the ritual and opens the portal, you will be able to return here any time to visit the Shard of Love.
  9. Don’t forget to speak to the three Disciples of Love.

Rebuilding the Spires

Also some have been asking where the Rebuilding the Spires events are. You can pick up a quest in the Moors of Ykesha, but this is optional. Just head to the ruined spires in Everfrost, Lavastorm, Zek, or Loping Plains and get started.

You’ll be happy to know that the vendors here have a large selection of items, including those Bracers/Epaulets/Leggings/etc of Imperceptible Beauty, which allows you to hide armor and go “au naturel”.

There are adventure and tradeskill quests alike for aspiring Spire Rebuilders.

Exact Locations of the Spires (EQ2 Zam delivers again)

Chronomagic

If you are wanting to relive the glory days and run lower-level group zones for AA or special appearance armor, you’ll want to check out the Chronomages. There is one that mentors you down to level 10, 15, 20, 25…70, 75 for a small gold and status cost. Another one offers one of 37 quests which reward clearing these underplayed old zones. And a third offers some rather… interesting looking plate armor you might be interested in.

The Qeynos Harbor clan are not hard to find, they’re just across from the docks.

However, the East Freeport group has bumfuzzled a few. They’re living it up on the patio of the bar/inn. If you are a recovering alcoholic, you’ll just have to gather your strength and run through the building, or I suppose you could swim…

Exact Locations for the Chronomages (thanks EQ2 Zam)

Streaming Client (the Tiniest Little Dragon)
Some folks have noticed a new Dragon window on their screen. This is part of the Streaming Client we’ll be getting in Game Update 54. You can read more about it on EQ2 Forums.

Servers Back Up! ProfitUI Updated

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance

What was expected to be a 4 hour upgrade got done in about 1 hour, 45 minutes. All EQ2 Servers are back up!

ProfitUI

There are a lot of folks who run ProfitUI add-on for EQ2. I use some of the plugins from ProfitUI, but not the whole package.

As you may know, gm9 stepped down as ProfitUI developer in April. Others have stepped in to keep it going, although I have to say I wish it were more clear just what is going on with the project now. If I go to the ProfitUI project page, the last download is from April. And if I go to the ProfitUI forums, it’s very chaotic without structured announcements of the future, what to download, when updates are available, etc.

I posted a suggestion on EQ2Interface asking them to clean up the site and make all references point to ProfitUI Catalyst which is the new name for ProfitUI Reborn.

Anyway, use the ProfitUI Auto-Updater and you’ll be able to use the updated Quest/Achievements window as well as the AA/Racial Traits window.

Shards of Destiny (Game Update 53) Gets a Time

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Game Updates & Maintenance

Kiara has given us the news we’ve been waiting for…

As you know, Shards of Destiny is going live tomorrow (Sept 23).

The US servers will be coming down at 6am PDT for the update.  We estimate about four hours of downtime and anticipate having the servers up and running again about 10am PDT.  We’ll keep you all updated should the times change for any reason.

For Runnyeye and Splitpaw, the servers will come down at 9pm PDT (5am in London Sept 24th) and should be back up and running about 1am PDT (9am in London).

Thank you for your patience and happy gaming!

   

Shards of Destiny (Game Update 53) Summary

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Art, Appearance, Housing, Game Updates & Maintenance, Grouping, Live Events, Raiding

Shards of Destiny (Game Update 53) goes live tomorrow, Wednesday September 23rd.

Most notably absent from the Game Update 53 notes are whether the Avatar Gear changes are going live, and whether the Racial Traits received any changes based on the significant feedback posted on the forums.

If you want to read the full Gu53 Update Notes you can read them by clicking right there. I did some significant cleanup for readability and a few clarifications. It’s worth a read, even if you’ve read the official notes.

HOWEVER… we do understand that the full Update Notes are a lot to read and some folks might want just the key points. I can’t guarantee it’s much shorter, but maybe it’s more pleasant to read. So we present them here…

Shards of Destiny (Game Update 53) Notes

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Art, Appearance, Housing, Game Updates & Maintenance, Grouping, Itemization, Raiding

UPDATE: Servers will go down September 23rd from 6am to 10am PDT.

And you can read the complete update notes from EQ2Players. However you might want to read my revised notes…

NOTE: I have gone through these notes and slightly improved them for readability specific to issues I’m familiar with. If that bothers you, go and click on the EQ2Players link above.

Double StationCash

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Art, Appearance, Housing, Daybreak Cash

If you meet these criteria:

  • Live in the U.S.
  • Have access to a big-box store or games store.
  • Desire some item or items on StationCash.

then you may be interested in the retail-only “Double StationCash” deal cooked up by the EQ2 Marketing Department.

Head to Wally World, Buy More, etc. and look not for the 30 day EQ2 cards, but the FreeRealms-branded 500, 1000, or more SC cards. If you redeem them this weekend, you will get double credit. You can then spend those points at any time.

More Details at EQ2 Forums (and for a snapshot of what these FreeRealms SC cards look like — thanks Calthine)

There are always new appearance and furniture items being added to StationCash. This week if you are feeling particularly down in the dumps, you may feel that having a black cloud follow you around matches your mood:

sc_blackcloud

Details at EQ2Players

Talk Like a Pirate Day – Sept 19th – with Extra Monkeys

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Uncategorized

Note: No EQ2 Content

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So what have I been doing instead of updating EQ2Wire? Why getting ready for Talk Like a Pirate Day. 🙂

How? By going back and playing the Monkey Island games of course!

Set in the Carribean, these hilarious point-and-click adventure/puzzle games started in 1990 and have continued since. The latest are Tales of Monkey Island, and the first adventure is available FREE as a gift on Talk Like a Pirate Day.

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The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition came out just this summer and was completely rebuilt from the original 1990 game with 1920 x 1080 HD graphics, awesome music, and full voiceover. If you played the original, it’s a revelation to see it in HD. If you didn’t, well, it’s just a fun point-and-click (no typing!) adventure and the humor is laugh-out-loud funny. Insult Swordfighting, ghost-slaying Root Beer, what’s not to love? They even added a Hint system so if you can’t figure out a puzzle, you can get a nudge in the right direction by pressing H, rather than running to GameFAQs. (Steam download for 10 bucks!)

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge — Although it is now the only Monkey Island game not available with voiceover and updated graphics (it’s a VGA 320 x 240 256-color game), this game is quite deep and complex and the surreal ending cannot be missed. At the end, I promise you will be saying “What the hell just happened?” and wanting more.

Curse of Monkey Island — After Ron Gilbert (creator of the Monkey Island games) left LucasArts, the remaining team had the impossible job of picking up the Monkey Island storyline and trying to explain the bizarre ending of MI2. They stepped up to the plate and delivered a hilarious, epic game spanning two CDs that explained (almost) everything and even earned a nod from Ron Gilbert that CMI was “pretty good”. This is the first cinematic Monkey Island game, all hand-painted stylized 2D graphics and animated cutscenes. Just remember… We’re a band of vicious pirates, a sailin’ out to sea; and when you hear our gentle singing, you’ll be sure to turn and flee!

Escape from Monkey Island — This is the one I’m diving into today. It is the first Monkey Island game to feature any significant 3D, namely the characters. The backgrounds are still stylized 2D. I’ll update this as I get into EFMI. This was also released on the Playstation 2.

Tales of Monkey Island — After a 10 year gap in the Monkey Island saga, and after LucasArts dissolved their adventure game division, most of the staff moved on to form a new outfit — Telltale Games. They’d been wanting to produce a new Monkey Island game, and they recently got their chance. And Ron Gilbert is even involved, if tangentially. Rather than one large game, Tales of Monkey Island is a series of episodes, released monthly. The first two episodes have been released and three more are expected.

The first chapter in Tales of Monkey Island is free in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Note that Monkey Island 2, Curse of Monkey Island, and Escape from Monkey Island are all long since out of print and can only be found for aftermarket purchase on eBay. Until they go back in print, or get remastered in high definition (one can live in hope), a Google search for “complete Monkey Island Saga” may serve you well.

Gaming History

Before I started playing EverQuest II, I played a lot of adventure/quest type games. King’s Quest, Monkey Island, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Eternal Darkness. These solo adventures that require solving puzzles and unlocking new areas is what got me into gaming (along with side-scrollers like Castlevania, and semi-RPGs like Legend of Zelda). MMOs are a very recent addiction for me.

Back next week with updates on Game Update 53 and other things EQ2.

Nagafen Server Goes 64-bit; Venekor merge delayed

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Commentary, Game Updates & Maintenance

Some very good news for Nagafen players who have been experiencing significant performance issues with the server for several months now. However this news is bittersweet for Venekor players who have been anticipating this server merge for several months now. Brenlo has posted this news on the EQ2 Forums:

I know many of you are looking forward to the upcoming server merge.  Sadly, you will have to wait just a bit longer.  We are postponing the merge until October 20th.  So an additional month.  As many of you know, Nagafen has had continued issues with the Database and while those have subsided some in recent days, we are not satisfied with the performance levels.  We feel that moving more players onto the server in its current state would exacerbate the existing issues.

So we are going to take that month to upgrade the backend DB hardware and software on Nagafen.  When we are done it will have the best array in the stack, significantly better as a matter of fact.  We hope that this news softens the blow of having to wait a bit longer.  During the month we will have a couple of extra downtimes as we migrate, first the hardware, and then the software.  As we have dates for you, we will have Kiara post them.

Again I apologize for making you wait.

Alan “Brenlo” Crosby
Senior Producer – EQII –

This is not a decision that was taken lightly. Nagafen will be the first EQ2 server that is upgraded in hardware and software to 64-bit and the additional database memory that allows. This should substantially help with zone lag. Rothgar has shed some light in the same thread:

Just an FYI, we’ve been evaluating the DB upgrade for almost a year.  This is not something to take lightly.  We’ve had the new database version running in our QA environment for quite awhile.  Deciding to push this new version to a live server in under one month’s time has risks of its own, but we feel this choice is by far better than going forward with the merge on existing hardware and risking performance problems that make the game unplayable.

This is not only a move to new hardware and a new database version, but also a move from 32bit to 64bit.  This will allow us to allocate a significantly larger amount of memory towards the database cache which translates to much better performance for you.

We know you want the merge to happen asap and postponing it was not something we did lightly.  We looked at every other option for insuring a smooth transition and felt that the other options could pose bigger issues.  It’s difficult to gauge what impact the merge will have on the database hardware but we know that Nagafen is already under a bit of strain.

When the merge is behind us and we’ve had a chance to see the new DB hardware in action, we’ll make a plan for migrating the rest of the servers.

Note that Game Update 53 (Shards of Destiny) which has some very nice tweaks and upgrades or PvP gameplay is still on schedule for the end of the month, regardless of server upgrades/merges. Kiara posted this on the same thread:

Shards of Destiny is a separate thing and won’t be affected by the postponement of the merge. We feel that the hardware upgrade is important… so you guys can actually PLAY when we get you merged…

I can certainly understand the frustration here from Venekor players who are on a server with a dwindling population, and perhaps something can be worked out to make this a little less painful. But the result should be a rock solid server that can handle any traffic that players want to throw at it.

Stat & Skill Caps

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Guide

This article is due for cleanup with the release of Sentinel’s Fate.

Some skills in EQ2 can be increased by practice. These include Slashing, Ranged, Piercing, etc. All others can only increased by Equipment, Alternate Advancements (AAs), buffs from themselves and other players and in some cases, racial traits. You can view all of these traits in the Persona window (press P).

Ranged/Piercing/Slashing/Parry/etc. Skills: Multiply your level by 6.5. This works out to 520 at level 80.

Double Attack/Ranged Double Attack: 100%.

Double Attack and Ranged Double Attack only affect Auto-attacks.

Casting Haste: 100%.

At 100%, the casting time of spells is half.

Main stats (STR, STA, INT, WIS, AGI): Multiply your level by 15 and add 20 (Level*15 + 20). This works out to 1,220 at level 80.

+Spell Damage Mod, +CA Damage Amt, +Heal Amt: 50% of the base max value of each spell, combat art, or heal.

A spell, combat art, or heal that does 700~1200 can never have a bonus of more than +600, making the new amount 1300~1800.

EQ2 uses a Diminishing Returns system, which means that you are graded on a curve. When you are increasing certain skills, there is a soft cap, beyond which you get less and less benefit from additional skillups. Eventually, you will reach a hard cap, beyond which, there is no further benefit.

Haste/Attack Speed: 200 (which equates to a 125% increase).

Only one Haste item is active, and then multiple Attack Speed items stack on top of that.

DPS: 200 (which equates to a 125% increase).

Spell/Melee/Ranged Crit Chance: 100% (125%)

This effect is scaled down if fighting an enemy of a higher level than you by 5% for each level above you the mob is. If you are level 80 with 50% ranged crit fighting a level 85 mob, you have an effective ranged crit of 35%. Having your primary crit at 125% is recommended to have the highest possible chance of critting. Melee and Ranged Crit affect Combat Arts and Auto-attacks.

Heal Crit Chance: 100%.

Due to rounding errors, it is advisable to have 105%.

Mitigation: Multiply level by 150. This calculates to 12,000 or 75% at level 80.

Source:
EQ2 Forums
More detailed Stats and Caps

Spell/Melee/Ranged Crit Bonus Explained

work in progress part (starting from a post by SageGaspar):

>> Gungo wrote:

>> crit bonus isnt garaunteed like base its a spread of max+1 to Max +(.3+ crit bonus)

That’s only true until your min*crit multiplier is bigger than max+1, and then it’s just a straight up percent increase. For a lock most spells, depending on your spell damage, have something like a 1.75 point to break even and all but one I believe by 2.0.

Just as an example to illustrate if a spell does 1000-1500 and you have the base 1.3 crit its damage range is 1501-1950 weighted more heavily towards the 1501 end.

If you have 1.5 crit mod its damage range is now 1501-2250. This is the breaking point where crit mod has now reached its maximum effectiveness. Everything after this is straight damage multiplier.

If you have a 2.0 crit mod the damage range becomes 2000-3000. You will not see a 1501 hit ever.

The difference between stacking this and base damage? Base damage is hard capped, and base damage raises the amount of spell damage you can add if you’re capped already, otherwise you’d just stack whichever one was lower.


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