Test Update April / 23 / 2010

FEATURES


NEW HALAS


The city of New Halas, namesake of the original city of the Northmen destroyed by cataclysm and war, sits in the heart of the isle of Erollis, a treacherous land of biting temperatures and aggressive fauna within the freezing waters of the Frostfang Sea. Originally a village of war hardened dwarves, it has since grown due to being blessed by Mithaniel Marr and reconnected with the Shattered Lands of Norrath. Pilgrims to New Halas can find their way there via a griffin at the docks in the Butcherblock Mountains. New characters created for New Halas will start at Pilgrim’s Landing, an encampment near the isle of Erollis, in the zone Frostfang Sea.


Note: Residents of Qeynos, Kelethin, or New Halas wishing to change their citizenship should now find an Ambassador with the purpose tag <Change of Citizenship> within their respective city who can give clearer guidance on exactly how to do this and where to go.

THE ICY KEEP: RETRIBUTION


A new level 90+ x4 raid dungeon with associated quests is aimed to give players an easy to moderate challenge! The pesky Frostfoots have found a new way into the Icy Keep and this time the Ice Maidens are ready for them! Join Snarf, Gerbi and many more in their quest to rid themselves of the newly hatched Ice Dragon, Vrewwx! Consider yourselves warned, however… Before entering you might want to bring 23 of your friends to help you get past his guardians.



STORYLINES


A new “Storyline” tab has been added to the bottom of the Quest journal. The Storyline window will help you keep track of the many adventures you encounter as you explore the world of Norrath. Additionally, the Storyline window will help lead you to new adventures as they become available for you to enjoy!


TRAVEL REVAMP

We have made several changes to the game in an effort to streamline travel.


· Traveling to different locations uses a new interface.

· Now when selecting a travel location via teleportation, bell, or sokokar/horse/griffon etc. you will do so through a travel map.

· Simply double click your choice, or select it and then press OK to be whisked away.

· Mousing over a location when using world teleportation displays a level range and some background information on the area.

· Bell/carpet zone travel has been consolidated. Bells on the different continents have all been linked together. This means the bells that were in Nektulos are no longer limited to 6 locations. These bells have been reduced to one bell that is linked to other bells across Norrath. Bells used to travel within Qeynos and Freeport have not been changed except that they now use the travel map allowing for more direct connections to where you wish to go.

Druid portals no longer require the player to have harvested a Blessed Shrubbery.

Blessed Shrubberies have been imbued by Tunare with the power to transport players to any of the other druid rings!

Translocate no longer requires a planar symbol.

Translocate portals were transporting players to incorrect spots in the Bonemire and The Barren Sky. This has been corrected.

Planar symbols have been removed from vendor lists.

Sokokar posts no longer require the Sokokar item. They now check that you have completed either the tradeskill or adventuring version of the quest. This affects the following zones:

· Chardok

· Jarsath Wastes

· Kylong Plains

· Kunzar Jungle

· Fens of Nathsar

You are no longer required to visit a Sokokar post before being able to travel there. This affects the following zones:

· Jarsath Wastes

· Kylong Plains

· Kunzar Jungle

· Fens of Nathsar

The following zones no longer require you to do a quest or go to a location before accessing the inner zone travel option. The quests that were there previously have been reworked so that players can still do them optionally.

· Nektulos Forest

· Thundering Steppes

· Sinking Sands

· Pillar of Flame


The flight paths leading to and leaving from Butcherblock, and connecting to Timorous or Darklight, have been modified some to be more geographically appropriate.


The following quests have been modified and had money rewards attached to them:


· Griffon Egg for the Nektulos Tower Stations


· Griffon Egg for the Steppes Tower Stations



The following zones now have inner zone travel options or have had new locations added to them:


· Steamfont


· Zek


· Feerrott

· Enchanted Lands

· Everfrost

· Greater Faydark

· Nektulos

All spires that can be reached through wizard teleportation should now have a static teleporter and they should all now link to the entire network. This affects the following zones:



· Greater Faydark



· Moors of Ykesha



· Kylong Plains



· Tenebrous Tangle



· Bonemire



· Barren Sky



All call spells have had their cast times reduced to 10 seconds. This affects the following spells:



· Call of The Overlord



· Call of Kelethin



· Call of Qeynos



· Call of Gorowyn



· Call of Neriak



· Call of Haven



· Call to Guild Hall



· Call of Ro



Guild hall bell amenities have been changed:



· Since all bells are the same now we have given each one a different look.



· The sinking sands carpet now acts like a bell but will retain the carpet look for those who like it.


PvP WARFIELDS


Antonica and Commonlands have once again become hotbeds of conflict! Will your lands be overrun or will your forces prevail against the siege?


· Warfields are Good vs. Evil faction based.


· Rewards will be Discord Tokens with a higher quantity to the winning team.



· The event will stagger between Antonica and 2 hours later in Commonlands and last for 30 minutes.



· The Antonica and Commonlands zones have been CHANGED to 10 level ranges from 4 to allow a wider range of skirmishes.



Event (Offense)



· Four towers located near the three griffin towers and one near the city gate will spawn 10 minutes before the skirmish.



· At the start of the event, the towers will have 5 guardian statues that will need to be destroyed by the invaders.



· The Tower Guardians are protected by powerful magic but are vulnerable to players of certain levels.



o The Purple Tower Guardian will damage anyone level 31 or higher.



o The Blue Tower Guardian will damage anyone level 51 or higher.



o The Green Tower Guardian will damage anyone level 71 or higher.



o The Red Tower Guardian is attackable by all level ranges.



o The White Tower Guardian will be immune until all other guardians at that tower are defeated.



o Destroying the White Tower Guardian destroys that tower.



· If all four Towers are destroyed, the invaders are victorious!



Event (Defense)



· The battles favors the defending team Evil (Commonlands) or Good (Antonica).



· The defenders have 10 minutes to prepare for the siege and must then defend all four towers for 30 minutes.


SHADER 3.0



EverQuest II now supports Shader 3.0 with new vibrant colors and depth processed by your GPU! To enable this feature, on supported cards, check the ‘Shader 3.0’ box in the Performance section of the Display options.


STONEBRUNT HIGHLANDS


Many new quests have been added to the Stonebrunt Highlands! Seek out Sous Chef Jailaya in Moonfield Hamlet, Damodar in the Mausoleum of Scholars and Felidael in the Kejek encampment.


GENERAL



Fixed an issue where a character would stand on their mount for a brief second if they summoned a mount while wielding a weapon.



Fixed an issue where using a server controlled mount, that was similar to your active mount, would cause your active mount to disappear visually.



Fixed an issue where the client would sometimes crash if minimized during a flythrough sequence.



Fixed an issue where using a group illusion while on a mount could render a character topless.



Fixed an issue causing guild halls to not be available in other copies of the exterior zone if purchased when more than one copy exists.



Increasing your defense, parry, and/or deflection skills to very high levels will no longer cause your chance to avoid attacks to go down.



Looking around while moving backwards with strafe should no longer make you reverse directions.


USER INTERFACE



When inspecting spells and abilities on PvE servers the PvP checkbox will default to unchecked.



The PvP checkbox will only appear on an item if the PvP description differs from the PvE description.



The tooltip on avoidance now shows both the normal block and uncontested block value for your character



The tooltip for stamina has been updated to better explain how it affects spell resistance.



Players can no longer change their UI while dead (this would cause the revive window to vanish).



The mouseover tooltip for tradeskill recipes will now properly display the byproduct amounts.

AMENITIES



The Training Dummy Supply Chest guildhall amenity now provides dummies of varying difficulty.



· Raid an epic dummy! (Loot not included)



The Training Dummy Supply Chest now offers a set of grouped training dummies.


ITEMS



Passive pet buffs from items will properly be applied to pets from Possess Essence.



Equipping an item adorned with Focus: Bruiser Stances will now drop your stances so the bonuses will be applied properly when renewing your stance.



Torrent and Pestilential Rain now only have one chance to trigger per round of AE Auto-Attacks.



PvP: Torrent and Pestilential Rain no longer have an unlimited range.



PvP: Stonewill can only trigger once every 20 seconds when in PVP Combat.



Tier 3 Raid Hats now all have additional effects.



The Crocodile Legends of Norrath pet is no longer attackable and cannot be killed by Area of Effect attacks.



Rockiron Nerves now correctly applies only one damage reduction effect.



Many mounts, including level 90 guild mounts have had their speed and buffs increased.



Many rare drops from the heroic Sentinel’s Fate Zones are now available by speaking to Kaliba Des'Sers in Moonfield Hamlet!

All bosses of Sentinel’s Fate heroic dungeons now have new rare drops!



There are new items available for raiders on the El’Arad merchant.



Tracker Coalbear’s Cuffs of the Ursine Threat can now be worn by mages.



Added yellow slot adornments to all tier 9 mastercrafted armor.



Changed the color of the text for the blue adornment slot from dark blue to light blue so it will be easier to read.



Added resistances to all types of mastercrafted armor.



Gravity Flux from Gravity, Staff of El’Arad will no longer teleport the target.



Nizara, City of the Nayad - “Necropolis of Lxanvon, Vol. I” pages 1-5 & “Necropolis of Lxanvon, Vol. II” pages 1-5 are no longer no-trade.



Summoning the mount from the Ykeshan Warbear whistle will now work if you are level 80 in either adventuring or tradeskilling.


TRAITS



Character Traits can now be earned all the way to level 90!



SPELLS



Certain cosmetic pets will no longer overwrite Deity pets.



Deity pets can now be cast while moving.



Cleric



· Reactive Heal and Damage spells no longer fail to trigger if the spell has already been cast and the cleric is feared, stifled or stunned.



Conjuror



· Certain versions of Earthen Avatar have had their appearances changed.



Defiler



· Tribal Spirit will now correctly apply the damage reduction.



Enchanter



· Paranoia and Medusa’s Gaze now apply damage instantly rather than on termination.



Illusionist



· Personae Reflections: Fixed an issue where the reflections would have a random hair style and hair color if a player race illusion was active.



Warden



· You can no longer summon a healing grove into a wall.


ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT



Fiery Blast and Rhythmic Overture should no longer apply extra damage if cast by multiple people at the same time.



Assassin



· Shadow Step has had its damage reduced in PVP Combat.



Berserker



· Battle Frenzy now has 10 triggers when used in PVP Combat.



Cleric



· Divine Guidance now only has 10 triggers per person in PVP Combat.



Druid



· Tortoise Shell no longer requires a buckler.



Guardian



· Improved Moderation will now apply properly in PVE combat on PVE servers. It displays both effects at all times.



Shaman



· Shaman now gain Shrink Servant when purchasing Summon Spirit Companion.



· Spirit Companion: Active AAs will no longer drop when the character dies and resurrects.



· Dazing Bash no longer requires a buckler.



Troubadour



· Sonic Interference should no longer reduce the duration of damage spells.



· Sonic Interference now deals a small amount of damage over time and has a chance to interrupt the target encounter every 6 seconds.



Wizard



· Hail Storm now displays on the target.











QUESTS



A Cleansing This Temple Needs: Mobs will now correctly react to the player’s possessed level instead of their actual level.



A Cleansing This Temple Needs: The counter on the quest helper should now update correctly.



Fury Epic: Restored to Glory: This quest should no longer require you to harvest mantrap roots. You should be able to acquire them by any means and the quest will update. Please note: this will only take affect if you are not currently on that stage of the quest.



Troubador Epic: Feeding the Flame of Yore: This quest should no longer require you to harvest Xegonite clusters. You should be able to acquire them by any means and the quest will update. Please note: this will only take affect if you are not currently on that stage of the quest.



Wizard Epic: Of Fire and Ice: A Codex in Crisis: Players who delete the pages of the codex prior to completing the third stage of the quest (shame on you) can obtain the pages again.



Warlock Epic: The Will of Kyrtoxxulous: Warlocks can now purchase, trade or harvest the harvest items required during the seven stage of their quest. Please note this will only affect those who are not yet on this quest stage.



Stonebrunt Highlands: The Erudin Chef: Tasting the stew Chef Bahiyya is creating during and after this quest series should provide players with a temporary benefit!



Butcherblock Mountains: Trozusk’s Challenge: Player should receive the Horn of Challenge upon accepting the quest.



Jumjum for the Soul: This quest has been slightly simplified, and Shakey scarecrow should now be more accessible.



Steamfont: Unearthing the Moon: The Grikbar Crater is less dangerous for those attempting to complete this quest.



Everfrost: Girding of Gunuk: This quest has had its number of kills required drastically reduced.



The Footsteps of Dartain: Observation: The projected erudite will no longer disappear during conversation.



In Search of Lucan: Fyr’remd Lorak should no longer disappear during conversation.



Foomby’s Stolen Goods: The directions in “Bellendis Tempestcall’s” dialog for this quest have been changed for accuracy.



Miragul’s Pylactery: Anathema:



· The following quests have had their quest category corrected:



o Reminders of Miragul



o Making Sense of Miragul, Part 2



o Necromantic Neverwhere



o Watching the Nasins Further



o A Sorcerous Tune


TRADESKILLS



Londiar is seeking assistance from adorners in the tradeskill societies of all major cities.



Iced Pomegranate Ambrosia and Halasian Ice Brew now have stats useful to all archetypes.



The Harvesting Supply Depot and Tinkered Personal Harvest Depot now store live event tradeskill components.



Spirit-blessed arrows now have a slightly different icon.



Ward of Elements gear no longer requires previous tiers of armor to obtain it. Coin costs were added to Tier 2 and Tier 3 armor. Patterns are no longer needed, you can purchase Tier 3 armor with just the mold and Void Shards. If you happen to have a pattern, you can trade it to Assilus to get the corresponding mold back.



Void-warped Wood now stacks in piles of up to 200.



Tinkering recipes of all levels now have events to counter.



Difficulty levels of greater and superior adorning recipes have been raised slightly, to give a slightly greater chance of a skill up.



Crafters wearing their Earring of the Solstice may find some more shiny red collectibles around the world.

RESEARCH ASSISTANTS



Research Assistants will now mention which spell tiers can be upgraded.



Research times have been lowered. You should be able to research something before out-leveling it now!

PvP



Increased spell-damage in PvP Combat by ~15% for all classes



New Stat: PvP Critical Mitigation.



· This is critical mitigation that works only on attacks made on a player from a player.



· Toughness provides a bonus to PvP Critical Mitigation.



Starting at level 30 players can go to 100% AAXP on a PvP server and have no limits on how many AA points they can spend (it used to be 1.5 * level).



Improved Moderation buff now works in PvP on groupmates.



Disabling combat experience on a PvP server also disables experience gain from killing players.



The tooltips on mitigations (physical, elemental, arcane and noxious) now includes the amount mitigated from PvP damage as well. Note: players get a slight bonus to mitigations against PvP damage and this percent includes that bonus.



Improved Moderation’s PvP effect will now work and cause players you attack to target you from time to time and players attacking your groupmates to lose target from time to time.



Flat amount damage reduction from abilities like “Battle Hardening” will only reduce a PvP attacks damage by no more than 50% and will no longer be able to reduce PvP attack damage to zero. However, this still stacks with abilities such as “Last Man Standing” so it is still possible to “fail to inflict damage” but it should not happen nearly as often.



Massive Concussive Shock no longer has an unlimited range in PvP.



You can no longer /yell to prevent would be attackers from getting pvp credit for your death.



Writs



· Writs have been updated to be equally rewarding across all tiers.



· All writs now require 6 kills and grant 5 tokens.



Merchants



· Scions of War carrying new wares are now available in all starting cities.



· All previous faction merchants have been removed and all their wares have been moved to the Scion of War marked, Discord Vintage Wares.



· Prices have been modified to allow a reachable progression in gear acquisition through each tier.



· Other then some potions, all items are Heirloom.



Tokens



· A single currency will be used from now on, the Discord Token.



· All other currency can be exchanged using the Priest of Discord.



· Currency exchange rate is 1:1 and can be exchange 5 or 100 at a time.



· The new token is heirloom and replaces the old Shattered Lands Discord token. As such, there are no exchange bags for this tokens.



Potions



· Tear of Discord now provides 3 Accuracy.



· Essence of Discord now provides 3 Critical Bonus.



Mounts



· Disk of Chaotic Energy is now 70 speed.



· Discord's Prescient Disk is now 70 speed.



· Discord’s Enduring Disk is now 70 speed.



HOUSE LAYOUTS



Fix for some items with identical names becoming jumbled when using /load_layout (like guild hall teleporters).



NOTE: This fix upped the version number of house layout files from 4 to 5. So old layout files will not be able to be loaded.


BATTLEGROUNDS



Player locations will now be randomized at the beginning of a match (to help prevent players from stacking up on each other).



Joust will cause the flag and murderball to be dropped (like other teleport related abilities).



Players who attempt to pick up the relic while inside a respawn area will cause the relic to reset.



Players on the flying disk in Smuggler’s Den will be returned to the starting spot at the end of the match.



Your group or raid can no longer queue for a battleground if any member is not permitted to queue for battlegrounds.



There will no longer be a message “Player has dropped the flag” when Player captures the flag in the Battlefield of Ganak battleground.



If two teams achieve or exceed the target score for a battleground the match will result in a tie with a tied score.



Battleground icons (flags, relics etc…) will only show on the current zone and will not show when browsing maps other than the current zone.



Setting anon or roleplay on your home server to on will no longer get set to off when returning from a battleground.



Wards now add properly into battleground stats.



Healing credit for wards will only be awarded for damage prevented by wards not for regenerating of wards.



When accepting a battleground match while in combat the accept window should re-appear correctly.



You should now be able to move more freely during pregame of a battleground.



The battleground score window will show when you enter a battleground even if you have moved the window.



Pets will now have the team colors of their owners in a battleground.



You can no longer open the battleground leaderboard window unless there is data to show in that window.



You will now get credit for cliff jumpers in battleground pvp, assuming you are close enough when they die for credit.



The following items have been disabled in BGs:



· Bot Made Ice Cream Cart



· Mechanized Platinum Repository of Reconstruction



· Vhalen’s Tribute Band



· Gigglegibber Giggle Giver



· Heat Guided Message in a Bottle



Gears of Klakanon, Smuggler’s Den, and Battlefield of Ganak are now available in 10-level increments to all players level 30 or higher!



· All participating players will be auto-mentored down to 30 or 40 or whichever ‘base’ level is appropriate for their tier.



· New battleground armor sets and accessories are also available for purchase every 10 levels to all players level 30 through 80



· Additionally, level 30, 40, 50, 60, and 70 mastercrafted armor has had limited amounts of toughness added, and should serve as excellent ‘starter’ sets for the battlegrounds. The sets remain otherwise unchanged



· Battlegrounds that end in a tie will now reward both teams as though they won



Gears of Klakanon – the relic now resets as soon as it is dropped



1st Campaign armor sets are now available from the Scion of Belamorte! This glimmering golden armor is some of the most powerful yet, and comes with the ability to be adorned with brand new pvp-only Blue adornments!



There are 20+ brand new blue adornments available for purchase with battlegrounds tokens and usable on the new 1st Campaign armor set!



Level 30 -> 80 fabled accessories are now available for purchase from the Scion of Belamorte!



· These items for sale include many of the level 80 accessories that previously had their procs disabled in BGs. The procs have had a proc limiter added, and been re-enabled for use!



There are a number of brand new level 90 fabled accessories for sale from the Scion of Belamorte!

SHARD OF LOVE



Mithaniel Marr should now drop the Bow of Valor.


SHARD OF HATE and MUNZOK’S MATERIAL BASTION



Lockout times for these zones have been lowered to match other raid zones in their tier.



ROYAL PALACE OF ROEHN THEER



A good amount of polish has been applied to the Roehn Theer fight:



· The Rune of Paixao event has been changed slightly –



o Theer only debuffs 4 players now instead of 6 so that there are an even # of matches



o Instead of players needing to find a target of the opposite charge, they must search for group members with the identical charge



§ Doing so successfully now grants a temporary dps buff



§ Balanced Judgment, the failure to do so, is no longer resistable



· Awe’s damage is now slightly more resistable, it was not intended to nearly insta-gib players



· Theer should no longer occasionally drop loot on a platform that immediately drops down below the killplane



· The killplane in his room should no longer occasionally NOT kill players



· The Runes of Order and Chaos (white/red) should no longer occasionally switch to the other’s previous location



· The Runes of Order and Chaos should also no longer occasionally switch then immediately drop down below the platform



· Approaching Equilibrium now returns to its rune of Origin (where it spawned) if it happens to fall below Roehn Theer’s platform

That's the biggest patch I've seen, they've glossed over Hala. But just after putting some feedback on my thoughts on SF they've solved one of the problems I had straight away adding in more quests.

I also love this idea (I was asking for it on the forums, although it probably just happened anyway).



That gets rid of the problem where no one wants to enter a BG until they're within 1-2 levels of the max level, we'll have to see how they go, but I wonder now if they might be able to merge some of those brackets up, e.g. 30-50, although I guess the mentoring starts to put the original problem back in.

The other suggestion I had put into the forums too seems to have been implemented (although my suggestion was sort of vague and again no idea if it made any difference, a lot of people though did note the problem with travel being just confounding for newbies). That's to have some sort of travel info put on the top level map.

I'm really keen to see how this works but it sounds like it should if done right glue together the continents a bit better in the minds of players, as well as giving players an idea how you can get from A to B.

On the travel modes though I'm not so sure, I don't think its really ever been a problem that EQ2 has lacked ways to get around, and if anything with the addition of spires we had multiple redundant ways. I'm not that fussed in a way that you can now click once to go straight from Antonica to enchanted lands since the inbetween clicking was just another loading screen, but I do feel like it needs some sort of animation to glue it together perhaps with the map super imposed over you at sea on a ship (with the odd random event to way lay you if solo?). Really going to have to see how this one works out, but the top level map sounds an excellent addition.

I see Feerrott has had a travel option added to it, not really sure how this will work as while its a pain to get to the end I hope it hasn't lost some of the feel it had before of having to race through the jungle with all kinds of danger around the corner.

Lastly, warfields, I assume these are for Nagafen only since they talk of level ranges?

Can't agree with you more on this. Was doing speak like a Dragon a few weeks ago and had to run to the back to the temple, man that is a huge zone.



I believe so, but if these are instances that are able to be chosen then i am not sure why they can't be opened up to everyone on PvE servs?

I don't have a 90 tunes on test to be able to see :(

I was hoping they would add BG writs in this update.

---

Kinkle
90 Warden on Antonia Bayle

This particular change was very disappointing, and I'm not sure I'll ever fully recover:

"Fixed an issue where using a group illusion while on a mount could render a character topless."

ROFL

Has anyone seen if there were token cost changes for the t9 BG gear yet?

---

Kinkle
90 Warden on Antonia Bayle

Will current BG gear be adjusted to come in line with new gear? Will the new gear replace or exist alongside current gear?

Which :)) - replace or coexist?

Looks like we got a go live date of may 25th.