EverQuest 2 Game Update Blog

The new Freeblood race has a special “Ferocity of the Freeblood”, as well as access to housing “Freeblood Lair” and “Swarm of Bats” mount/buff. The details of how these are unlocked and what issues players will face if they change race have been addressed in different posts over the last 24 hours. Here are the highlights. Also inside, a glimpse of something we have heard rumors about before — that some new feature is coming to EQ2 housing with the release of the Destiny of Velious expansion.

From SmokeJumper’s announcement on the EQ2 Forums:

The Freeblood vampires are now available in the Marketplace!

I’m posting this FAQ about them to hopefully answer as many questions as I can in advance:

They’re found within the Race Packs section of the Marketplace.

You have to purchase the “Unlock: Freeblood” to get the basic Freeblood race unlocked so that you can create Freeblood characters or change an existing character into one with a Race Change Potion.

When you make a Freeblood character, you’ll gain a whole host of new abilities, including things like “Reveal Inner Self”, the ability to reveal the inner demon within to your foes, and a racial passive ability that drains health to repair your own damage while you’re in combat. You also get a set of new unarmed combat animations to let you show your savage side during melee.

Once you create a Freeblood character, there are other options within the Freeblood Race Pack category. These include the Vampire Deed (a Mistmoore house of your own to use as a lair), the Cloud of Bats ability (changes you to a cloud of bats and gives you Slowfall along with mount-like speed…and which, once you unlock flying mounts in Velious, also gives you the ability to fly), and special effects to add to your new unarmed combat animations.

Freeblood accessories are available as an Accessory Pack, and also available a la carte.

When you start your Freeblood character, you’ll be able to personalize appearance, of course…but you can also customize your “Inner Self” illusion (demon face). Do this after initial customization by going to see any Barber NPC in the game. Turn on your Inner Self illusion, and then purchase a “Shave and a Cut” item from that Barber. As long as you’re in demon form when you do this, you’ll be able to customize your inner self’s appearance this way.

And lastly, a quick word about the Winter Promotions campaign. The February reward grants all qualified participants the “Unlock: Freeblood” ability.

I’ll check this thread sporadically during the break and answer any questions that come up. Enjoy!

and other followup posts in that and other threads:

Vampire accessory items can only be seen on the marketplace by a character that is currently a Freeblood vampire. They’re also NO-TRADE.

The Vampire Lair is only available to Freeblood Vampires.

How do you customize the Inner Self appearance of your newly purchased Freeblood vampire? SmokeJumper has an announcement on that:

Just a quick post to let folks know that you *can* customize the “Inner Self” appearance on a Freeblood Vampire.

Here’s how:

• Go to see any Barber NPC in the game.
• Turn on your Inner Self illusion.
• Then purchase a “Shave and a Cut” item from that Barber.

As long as you’re in Inner Self form when you do this, you’ll be able to customize its appearance this way.

on the subject of changing race afterwards:

Yyou would be able to keep the lair. However, the attacks are specific to the Freeblood form and thus can’t be used while you’re not Freeblood, and the Cloud of Bats ability can only be used by a vampire. So they would be unavailable until you change back to the Freeblood race (although you would *not* have to purchase them again).

and whether the Lair, Swarm of Bats, and Ferocity of the Freeblood accessories are per-account or per-character:

Aaccessory items are “per character”. So each would need to buy their own.

What about players with both EQ2 and EQ2X accounts?

Unlocking the Freeblood race on one service *does* unlock it for the same account on the other EQII service also.

and:

Freeblood are part of a marketplace-only category of Prestige Races…we just have no current plans for when/if we’ll ever roll out another Prestige Race or not. They’re not included in the Platinum (EQ2X) purchase and we’ll make that clear on the matrix in the near future.

As to why Freeblood are not available in a SOGA version:

There’s only the one set for Freeblood, like other specialty races that only have one model set.

On whether we might some day be able to try out the Freeblood race on the character customization screen prior to buying it, Rothgar had this to say:

Not a bad idea. We can look into making this change.

We’ve noticed that the Freeblood Lair is quite a bit smaller than the Mistmoore Crag Estate which was the 7 year anniversary reward.  SmokeJumper tantalized with this post in response:

You will see that the house is a really cool thing when a feature due in January rolls out. I can’t unveil that exact feature at the moment, but I think it’ll make you look at this house differently when it does.