Hiding in every Game Update, there are changes that go through that are either undocumented, or otherwise slip under the radar. Some of them appear as a single line item in the Update Notes, but have significant ramifications. Some don’t appear at all. Today, we shed some light on these changes.

Update: This has been pushed to Wednesday.  Unknown if the update notes will stay the same.

The current estimated down time is 3:15 PDT with an uptime of 4:00 PDT 12 October 2010.  Here are your hotfix notes for the downtime:

GENERAL

• Fixed a bug causing the client to crash when using a third-party UI that hasn’t implemented the mount or currency windows.
• Fixed a server side crash bug.

Wondering why the XP bar for your guild went down with GU58?  Don’t worry, you’re actually closer to level 90 than you were before.  Rothgar explains on the official forums:

Your XP value behind the scenes, which is some number like 183627, did not change unless your level would have gone down.  For example, that number may have put you at 54 prior to the change but would now put you at 52.  In this case, we added XP to the number to increase you to level 54 but it would look like you lost progress in 54 when in fact you would have been 52 on the new curve.  The total amount of XP needed to get to 90 was lessened, so you are now further along than you would have been before.

In some cases, depending on where you were in the curve, you just passed a hell level and will now be further along than you were before.

Regardless of what the progress bar shows, when you reach level 90, everyone will have put in the same amount of work.  It just depends on whether or not you’ve already been through the “hell levels”.

I’m really sorry this is confusing and looks like you’ve lost XP, but everyone should have benefited from this change in the long run.

If its not already as clear as mud, to summarize:

If your guild looks like you lost XP on the progress bar, you were one of the guilds who had XP added to get you up to your old level when you would have been behind.

If your guild gained levels after this, you unfortunately didn’t receive any “free xp”, but since you just went through a hell level that required more XP than the other levels, you now are higher than you were before.

Prior to GU58, totems didn’t stack.  If you wanted to sell large quantities of these, you could get a Jewelry Box and stuff a bunch of them in there to sell.

With GU58, new totems now stack up to 100 (old ones remain the same).  Because of this, they no longer fit into Jewelry Boxes, they go in Potion Cabinets.  DominoDev explained this on the official forums:

Due to the new format of the totems (essentially acting like potions, and stacking) they are now considered potions by the sales crates and would now fit into a potion cabinet instead of a jewelry box.  Apologies for the confusion, it hadn’t occurred to me that this would be a side effect of the change or I would have called it out in advance.

Update: Apparently, this change currently only applies to the following totems:  Fearstalker, Void, Otter, Jaguar, Butterfly, Owl, Turlte, Chameleon, and Escape.  I’m sure this will change one way or another eventually.

Amnerys has posted the complete Game Update Notes for Game Update 58: Arcanum Revealed on the EQ2 Forums.

Here they are after the break:

Dethdlr brought us the news from Rothgar that Game Update 58 will indeed contain some changes to the Call of Veteran reward which many of us have a love-hate relationship with.

When it works, it’s great, as it can summon your friends to another zone, even into an already established instance, speeding up gameplay as a reward for being an EQ2 veteran for many years. However, the reasons this item may fail are almost too numerous to mention. I have personally seen messages indicating that I had not yet harvested the druid ring bush in a zone so could not travel there, or I did not meet some nebulous zone ‘requirements’ to enter that zone.

Here’s Rothgar‘s welcome comments:

Several fixes for CoV are coming out with GU58. I can’t guarantee that all bugs with it are gone, but it should be a big improvement. We’ve streamlined the process and added more error messages when things don’t work correctly.

We still have a few more changes to make that we might introduce in a later hotfix, but I think you’ll see an improvement in GU58.

Game Update 58 is looking to be a massive update, not so much in content, but in changes large and small to the game, and its User Interface.

Game Update 58 includes:

• A level 90 dungeon – Zraxth’s Unseen Arcanum
• New bosses in the Vasty Deep dungeons with new loot
• Spell Animation and Sound Effect tweaks
• Click-to-Cure
• Mounts and Currency tabs
• Numerous UI tweaks
• Outdoor Balconies have been added to 6+ room houses, making them feel a part of the city they belong to.
• House item limits have been increased, and Moving Crates now count independently of house item limits.
• Additional house items have been added to Moonlight Enchantments, City Festivals, and of course Nights of the Dead
• The adventure Vitality XP bonus remains effective at level 90.
• Betrayal now suspends your access to spells and spell upgrades you are no longer permitted to use, but does not totally reset them. Should you betray back to your original class, your spells will be restored including any spell upgrades you have purchased or researched. Changing your alignment or citizenship without changing class no longer resets your spells.
• Numerous Tradeskill tweaks

We have been unable to confirm if we can expect:

• New loot for Marks of Manaar

Update: We’ve been able to confirm this feature of Game Update 58:

• A fix for the Call of the Veteran to reduce some of the problems, and better messages when it doesn’t work.

Our more detailed preview of Game Update 58 after the jump…

EverQuest2.com has been updated with the first of several previews of Tuesday’s Game Update 58, named “Arcanum Revealed”. A news item has been posted which says that each time a new instance is created, there is a chance of an additional named spawning in each of the Vasty Deep zones. Check out the original news item for pictures of each new named.

Domino posted this heads up for the test update notes on the official forums.  This is scheduled to go live with GU58:

The fuel that I’ve made since joining the team has had more standard names that I hoped would give some direction as to the level range, but the old fuel names were not easy to guess the appropriate level from the name.  Although I realize it’s going to require some work updating notes, web sites, and habit, I think it’s worth while in the end to rename the fuel to a standard so that it all uses the same adjective.

Consequently, if all goes well this afternoon, by this evening on Test server you should see all the tradeskilled fuel convert to using the name of the imbued material for that level range (and the level 1-9 fuel is called “basic” so it will be listed right at the top of the list).  Example names:  glowing candle, glowing coal, glowing kindling, lambent candle, lambent incense, luminous candle, luminous coal. The examine descriptions on the fuel have also been standardize to say the level range they are used in. Nothing else has changed about the fuel, prices etc. are all the same, and if you have any fuel in your inventory it will simply be automatically renamed when the update hits.  I hope that overall this will solve more confusion than it causes, but if you come across any NPC dialog or quest text that specifically references the name of a fuel that no longer exists, please do /bug it or post here so I can get that changed.

If you haven’t read the Game Update 57 Feedback thread, it’s a real eye-opener, let me tell you.

I have always seen players who manage find a silver lining in every cloud, and always find something good in each Game Update, even the relatively content-light Game Update 54 “bug stomp” from last fall. However I have never seen such universal negativity as that directed towards Game Update 57. Players have overwhelmingly expressed their distaste for many policy initiatives included, and content excluded in GU57.