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.
NPC Cast Bar – See the cast progress of enemies to interrupt or avoid attacks.
This will be an interesting raiding tool. In the past, we’ve been dependent upon watching the various spell animations of raid bosses to figure out what spells they are casting. For instance a waving of the arms, brandishing of a weapon, a color change, or an emote. This NPC Cast Bar may strip away all the mystery of just what our enemies are plotting next. Time will tell.
Greater Faydark Revamp
This hasn’t really been covered in any articles on EverQuest2.com (the former EQ2Players.com), but the entire quest series of Greater Faydark has been revamped to address complaints that Kelethin offers a poor choice for level 7-20 characters once leaving the Nursery. Some of the mobs (enemies) and quests have been uptiered, quest hubs have been moved, all with the consequence that In Honor and Service, a popular heritage quest, now has a minimum level of 17. The folks over at EQ2 ZAM have been working hard to update their comprehensive Greater Faydark Quest Series to reflect Game Update 58’s changes.
Improve Display of Mitigation Score – View differences in armor mechanics to gauge their worth and effectiveness.
Already players are noticing some differences in their Mitigation scores with this change.
Cure Curse
The Cure Curse spell has been fixed so that if the target does not have an active curse, the spell will not cast. This would have been very helpful in the Shadow Odyssey when healers had to coordinate curing 3-4 curses at a time.
Tinkered feign death items now share their own unique reuse timer and should no longer interfere with the adorning tradeskill arts.
A day I have dreaded for 2 years has finally arrived. Domino (or another EQ2 dev) has realized that the Tinkered Feign Death items — Loosely Wired Heart Stopper (50%), Heart Stopper (75%), Gigglegibber’s Secret of Death (99%), and Defibrillating Heart Stopper (99% + heal) — each have separate cast and cooldown timers. It has been quite nice to have not one but 4 chances to feign death within a 10 minute window. These items never competed with the enviable floppiness of Monks and Bruisers, but I will truly miss having 4 chances to flop before having to wait.
Neutral Class Lore
And you thought they just made 18 out of the 24 classes neutral (good/evil) for absolutely no reason. Turns out there are some citizens in Qeynos and Freeport who have quite a lot to say on the recent appearance of Rangers in Freeport and Inquisitors in Qeynos, for example. If you’d like to read more about what went into these changes, look no further than the EQ2 Forums.
New Token / Seal Gear - A new Trader of Arad has appeared named Krin’Jilna and she sells powerful armor for those strong enough to defeat the denizens of the depths. Bad’Ushra’s inventory has been expanded to include more armor slots at the cost of Marks of Manaar.
New Battlegrounds weapons and accessories.
Yes, new sets of gear have been added for Battlegrounds, Heroic, and Raid content. Also a vendor has been added to sell T4 raid gear, but he requires components only available within specific raid zones. Don’t worry, they’re not giving away the store just yet.
Some of the key points in this article appear at EverQuest2.com:
Now Available – Arcanum Revealed 2 EverQuest2.com
The Future
I think most will argue that Game Update 58 is what Game Update 57 would have been if it weren’t for the launch of EQ2 Extended. At this point, what’s done is done. SmokeJumper summed up the EQ2 team’s priorities best here:
BTW…we’re focusing 95% of our team’s efforts on Velious for the remainder of the year now, but after Velious releases, we intend to dive back in and do a ton more stuff like this (some of which we *know* you’re going to love). There’s a lot more we’d like to improve, revamp, and fix.
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