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Game Update 62: Age of Discovery

Game Update 61: The War of Zek

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POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION

Estate of Unrest

  • It is no longer required to look the bones from the shards of Garanel to activate the suit of armor in the final boss room. It is still required to kill them.


EVENTS

Dragon Ring and Wizard spire Events

  • A few new house item rewards have been added to the events merchants!

PvP MENTORING

  • Any enemy player who is mentoring, or grouped with a mentor will show the dragons on his name above his head like a raid monster would. Let it serve as a warning because fighting a mentoring player is a difficult fight.

BATTLEGROUNDS / PvP MERCHANTS

  • Battleground merchants have been summoned away from their previous locations but can be found within the Champion’s Respite.  The portals to enter the Champion’s Respite are located in Freeport North, Qeynos Harbor, Halas, Gorowyn, Kelethin and Neriak.  The Scions of Discord remain in the world to grant your daily challenges.   Open PvP Merchants have moved as well to be near the portals within the starting cities. 
 

One of the side benefits of the Welcome Back program, which has seen all City Festivals (Qeynos, Freeport, Neriak, Kelethin, and Gorowyn) live simultaneously, is that we now have access to items on the merchants which weren’t going to make an appearance for several months. From Domino:

The new stuff was originally intended to slowly be revealed over the next half year as the festivals cycled around … but with them all turned on at once you have a bit of a deluge of new goodies! Glad they are enjoyed anyway.

There may be some new things coming in the mushroom rings after GU60, too … but live servers will have to wait for next month to see those!

 

There are going to be a lot of questions about how the new Multi-Housing works in EQ2, so I suggest reading the extensive FAQ posted on EverQuest2.com about it.


South Qeynos Prestige Home Access

Reposted from EverQuest2.com:

Multiple Home Ownership went live in EQII today! If you have questions before you dive into the role of real estate mogul, then check out these FAQs that should help you get on your way!

Multiple Housing FAQ

How many houses can I own?

There is currently a limit of 10 houses per person. This may change in the future as we evaluate the feature and the effect on the server.

What kinds of houses can I own?

You can own any combination of up to 10 houses that you want, assuming you have the necessary prerequisites to purchase those houses.

“Standard houses” are the original city houses located in the six player cities of Qeynos, Freeport, Kelethin, Neriak, Gorowyn, and New Halas; plus the Maj’dul housing earned through the Courts of Maj’dul.  The houses in the six player cities have until now required citizenship in that city to purchase them; this is being changed so that only alignment is required. Example: if you are a citizen of a “good” aligned city (e.g. Qeynos), you will now be able to purchase houses in other “good” aligned cities (e.g. Kelethin or New Halas).

“Prestige Homes” are new, unique styled houses that may be acquired from multiple sources including LoN rewards, veteran player rewards, Station Marketplace purchases, collector’s edition bonuses, and more. These are not tied to any specific city or alignment. Currently most of these are accessed via portals in South Qeynos (near Bayle Court) and South Freeport (near Justice Road). In the longer term we plan to change this to a custom interface that can be available in all player cities.


South Freeport Prestige Home Access


Map Marker for the Prestige Homes Area

Note: Not all prestige home are necessarily at this location (there are some LoN homes for example that are elsewhere) but the bulk of them are here.

How do I get a prestige home?

Some prestige homes already exist and you may already own them: the Mistmoore Crags veteran’s reward home, the Freeblood Lair, the Legends of Norrath magical rent-free manors, the Everfrost Summer Home, and the Skyblade Skiff are examples of prestige homes that have already been given out.  In addition to these houses, with the launch of the multiple houses feature there will be some new prestige homes sold in the Station Marketplace.  Starting with the coming game update and continuing into the future we will add more prestige homes available in a variety of ways, both in and outside the Station Marketplace.

In most cases the homes will be granted via a Deed of Ownership which you need to examine in your inventory.  This will consume the deed and flag your character to note that it owns that house.


Deed of Ownership

How does prestige house linking work?

Prestige homes can be accessed via a portal object (a house item) that you can place in any home or guildhall where you have trustee access. To get this portal object, click on the “Get Portal Object” button in the housing window, by clicking on the door/portal for the prestige home from either the outside or the inside.  You can also right-click on the in-zone door/portal object and select “Get Portal Object” as a menu option.

This gives you a portal object that you can place in another house. Once you place the portal object, you can click on it to enter your prestige home just as if you had clicked the door/portal in the city zone. You can obtain and place as many house portal objects in as many different houses and guildhalls as you wish.  Portal objects are only available for prestige homes at this point.


“Get Portal Object” Button, Clicking on the Portal in the
Zone, While You Are Outside the House


“Get Portal Object” Button, When You Click on the
Door From Inside the House

When a portal house item is placed in a home, it creates a two-way link between the two houses. For example, if you own a standard house in South Qeynos and also own the Private Opera House (prestige home), get a portal object for the Opera House by clicking on the door to it, either from inside the Opera House or while in South Qeynos.  Now enter your Qeynos house, and place the portal object from the Opera House anywhere inside it. Click on the portal object you just placed to zone directly into your Opera House.

To exit the Opera House, click on the exit door as normal, and select “leave house”. This will bring up a list that contains all the houses that currently link either TO or FROM this house via portal object, as well as an option to exit to outside (back to the city zone).  In this example, you would see a list that includes your standard home in South Qeynos, and at the bottom left of the screen would also be a button allowing you to exit directly to South Qeynos.

If you had also placed a portal to your Opera House in your friend’s home in Baubbleshire, then you would also see on the list your friend’s Qeynos Village Inn in Baubbleshire as an option.

“Leave House” List From a Standard Home Which Contains
Portals to Your Opera House and Personal Library

Where will the guildhall amenity “portal to member housing” take me?

If you own multiple homes, when you click the guildhall amenity “portal to member housing”, you will see a list of all houses to which you have been individually granted friend or higher access (ie, your name has been specifically added to the access list, you will not see houses that have set the default access level to “friend”).


Large list of friends’ houses that Zoltaroth has access to,
as well as his own.  The list can be sorted. Zoltaroth would see
this list when clicking on his guild’s ‘exit to member housing’ portal.

How do broker and house vault slots work?

Now you can own multiple houses, the number of broker and house vault slots are no longer based on which house you own.  Everybody has six broker slots and six house vault slots, regardless of how many or how few homes they own.  In-home vendor containers can be placed in any home you have trustee access to, as before.  There is currently no limit to how many vendor containers can be physically placed in a home (other than normal house item limits), if you wish all your alts to sell out of the same home.

How do I pay upkeep?

If your rent has expired, upkeep on your house can be paid by any trustee to your house from anywhere that you can enter your house, including in-home portal objects and the guildhall “portal to member housing” amenity.

How do I move house?

Click on the external door to your home (ie, while you are in a city zone outside it, not while inside the home), or a portal item for that home (if it is a prestige home), to bring up the housing window. Beside the “Enter House” button is a another that will say “Move Items”, if you have furniture in your house.  Selecting this will give you the option to pack the items into a moving crate and send it to any one of the other houses you own.  Once your house is empty, this button will instead display “relinquish house” which allows you to remove this house entirely from the list of houses you own.


While standing in South Qeynos clicking on front door,
shows ‘move items’ button.


Clicking the ‘move items’ button will show a list of all the
houses you own that you can move your stuff to.

Standing in South Qeynos clicking on front door, house
is now empty of furniture so shows ‘relinquish house’ button.

Where can I place portals to my house?

In any house or guildhall in which you have trustee access allowing you to place the items.

Portals Placed Within in a Home

What happens if I betray?

The betrayal process works the same way as before. However, when you arrive in your new city and buy a new house, it will no longer automatically move the items out of your old house, since you can now own more than one house.  Instead, if you wish to retrieve furniture you left in your old house, you may need to sneak back into your old city to pack it up.

 

One concern about the Neriak Opera House prestige house on Test was that the stage did not have any stairs to reach it, requiring feather fall or other floating to reach it. Also, the seats of the theater were oddly shaped, possibly trapping players. Haohmaru has checked in a fix (and provided a screenshot):

We have added stairs to each end of the stage. Hopefully we can update your homes before GU60, if possible.

We also fixed an odd issue with the lips on each seating rung. You could get stuck under the small overhang for no apparent reason.

Apr 282011
 

Well, It’s Here!  With today’s update, you can now have (up to) 10 houses in Norrath!  Here’s how it works.. (Combined FAQ from posts by Smokejumper)

How many houses can I own?

There is currently a limit of 10 houses per character. We set this limit conservatively for the launch of the feature. If 10 houses per person launches smoothly and everything looks great, then we’ll relax this limit in the near future. Each home you buy has to be unique. So, if there was no limit, you could potentially own one of each house in your Good/Evil-aligned cities, plus one each of each Prestige Home, if you so desired.

What kinds of houses can I own?

You can own any combination of up to 10 houses that you want, assuming you have the necessary prerequisites to purchase those houses. “Standard houses” are the original city houses located in the six player cities of Qeynos, Freeport, Kelethin, Neriak, Gorowyn, and New Halas; plus the Maj’dul housing earned through the Courts of Maj’dul.  The houses in the six player cities have until now required citizenship in that city to purchase them; this is being changed so that only alignment is required. Example: if you are a citizen of a “good” aligned city (e.g. Qeynos), you will now be able to purchase houses in other “good” aligned cities (e.g. Kelethin or New Halas). “Prestige Homes” are new, unique styled houses that may be acquired from multiple sources including LoN rewards, veteran player rewards, Station marketplace purchases, collector’s edition bonuses, and more. These are not tied to any specific city or alignment. Currently most of these are accessed via portals in South Qeynos (near Bayle Court) and South Freeport (near Justice Road). In the longer term we plan to change this to a custom interface that can be available in all player cities.

How does prestige house linking work?

Prestige homes can be accessed via a portal house item that you can place in any home or guildhall where you have at least trustee access. To get this portal house item, right-click on the outside door or portal through which you would normally enter your house from the city zone. There will be a right-click option “Get Portal Object”. This gives you a portal house item that you can place in another house. Once you place the portal house item, you can click on it to enter your prestige home just as if you had clicked the door/portal in the city zone. You can obtain and place as many house portal When a portal house item is placed in a home, it creates a two-way link between the two houses. For example, if you own a Freeport Manor in South Freeport (standard house) and also own the Skyblade Skiff (prestige home), right-click on the door to the Skyblade Skiff in South Freeport and select “Get Portal Object”.  Now enter your Freeport Manor, and place the portal item anywhere inside it. Click on the portal you just placed to zone directly into your Skyblade Skiff home.To exit the Skyblade Skiff, click on the exit door as normal, and select “leave house”. This will bring up a list that contains all the houses that currently link either TO or FROM this house via portal object, as well as an option to exit to outside (back to the city zone).  In this example, the options you see would be “Outside to South Freeport”, and “Visit (your name) at Freeport Manor in South Freeport.  If you also placed a portal to your Skyblade Skiff in your friend’s home in Baubbleshire, then you would also see on the list “Visit (your friend) at Qeynos Village Inn in Baubbleshire”.

Where will the guildhall amenity “portal to member housing” take me?

If you own multiple homes, when you click the guildhall amenity “portal to member housing”, you will see a list of all houses to which you have been individually granted friend or higher access (ie, your name has been specifically added to the access list, you will not see houses that have set the default access level to “friend”).

How do broker and house vault slots work?

Now that you can own multiple houses, the number of broker and house vault slots are no longer based on which house you own.  Everybody has six broker slots and six house vault slots, regardless of how many or how few homes they own.  In-home vendor containers can be placed in any home you have trustee access to, as currently implemented.

How do I pay upkeep?

If your rent has expired, upkeep on your house can be paid by any trustee to your house from anywhere that you can enter your house, including in-home portal objects and the guildhall “portal to member housing” amenity.

How do I pack up and move to a new house?

Click on the external door to your home, or a portal item (for prestige homes), to bring up the housing window. Beside the “enter your home” and “pay upkeep” buttons is a third button. If you have furniture in your house, the button will say “move items”; selecting this will give you the option to pack the items into a moving crate and send it to any one of the other houses you own.  Once your house is empty, this button will display “relinquish house” which allows you to remove this house entirely from the list of houses you own.

What happens if I betray?

The betrayal process works the same way as before. However, when you arrive in your new city and buy a new house, it will no longer automatically move the items out of your old house, since you can now own more than one house.  Instead, if you wish to retrieve furniture you left in your old house, you may need to sneak back into your old city to pack it up.

Yes…this does mean that you can have a house, for example, in Neriak, and then betray to Kelethin, buy a house there and use a prestige home to link between the two.

 

Breaking news, coming from all over the globe as EverQuest 2 experienced outages across all Servers, Forums and even EverQuest2.com.

News from (mostly) reliable sources tell us that Riots have broken out in San Diego, Boston, Dallas and Intercourse Pennsylvania. Sending hundreds of thousands of Nerds into the Streets, who would have been (normally) occupied by hunting Gnolls, Orcs and Dragons, or messing around with hot wenches in role play taverns in Qeynos, Freeport and Neriak.. mostly Neriak.  yeah.. mostly Neriak.

Hundreds of innocent bystanders have reported being “Pelted by Ping-pong balls” which were marked with names of various spells, resists and charms.

Two young Nerds were arrested after being found in the Womens Showers of the YWCA in Toad-Suck Arkansas (yes, that’s a real town).  The pair were huddled under a blanket with the words “Superior Camouflage (Master)” crudely stenciled in white paint on both sides.

Tiffany “Amnerys” Spence, Community Manager for EverQuest 2, reported at 2pm:

EQII is up and running, however the SOE forums and websites are still experiencing some downtime due to emergency maintenance. We’ll have them back up as soon as we can

Aimee “Ashlanne” Rekoske, Project Manager for Sony Online Entertainment responded to our inquiry stating:

Today’s downtime was for a matter of Emergency Maintenance.

Ashlanne also commented on rumors that the issue was caused by “Hamsters chewing on cables”, “Gnolls running amok at SOE Headquarters” and “Sudden increases of Frogluk populations” with an emphatic “NO”.  When pressed further, she denied any cover ups and recreational jumjum use in the office.

As we were being hauled away and viciously beaten by SOE Security – who we can only equate to Trolls on PCP – we were reminded that “Things Happen” and that patience is a great virtue when dealing with technical difficulties, which usually don’t come with advanced warnings.

Editor’s Note:  The Riot in Intercourse PA was for a completely unrelated situation.

 

Let’s see…

ReItemization

It seems we’ve finally made our voices heard on the problems introduced by the extreme stat consolidation with the introduction of Velious, namely that not only all dungeon-dropped (Legendary, Fabled) gear from level 1-89 has completely ineffective stats, but that even the Mastercrafted gear from 22, 32, 42, 52, 62, 72, 77, and 82 are almost nonsensical in their setups given the changes.

Multihousing

Multihousing has been on Test and Test Copy for a couple of days now and feedback has been flooding in from players who are testing it out. Zoltaroth has been slaying the housing code demons and responding quickly to the bug reports.

Prestige Houses

Those prestige houses we’ve been hearing about have been unveiled, leaving no surprises. The Qeynos Dojo from Elddar Grove makes an appearance. It’s cozy, which is real-estate lingo for TINY. Hopefully in a later update, some kind of outdoor area can be added. The Neriak Opera House is much bigger, although again there’s no outdoor area, as these prestige houses were actually produced in 2007 before houses were opened up to ‘outside’ areas. Rounding out the new Prestige houses are the Maj’dul Library which will be awfully familiar for those who have completed their Tradeskill Epic (no sign of weighty tomes or menacing djinn librarians though). We haven’t seen the Maj’dul Bottle house just yet, although we’re guessing that it’s not unlike the bottle found on the shores of the Sinking Sands.

The Everfrost Summer Home, already available to purchasers of the Destiny of Velious Collector’s Edition is a somewhat gloomy 4 room house not unlike Miragul’s infamous Menagerie. Incidentally, after initially being told otherwise, we’ve received confirmation that the 7 year veteran house Mistmoore Crag Estate is in fact a Prestige house. As to why this is an important distinction, prestige houses will have additional linking options including the placement of portals to the houses of friends and guildmates.

Low Level Itemization

Early posts on the EQ2 forums from devs indicated that previous tiers would not be reitemized, given the difficulty and time involved. We made no secret of our feelings on the EQ2 forums that “maybe this should have been considered before changing how all of the game’s stats work”.

However more recently, it has been indicated by SmokeJumper that at least some degree of fixes may be done to the old itemization. Whether this will be restricted to, say, Mastercrafted gear and a select few items, or whether a script will be applied to all old items as was done a couple of years ago is unclear.

 

So we’ve been thinking about last night’s Producer’s Letter which lays out a little bit of the future of EQ2. Our thoughts:

Think about every quest, NPC, and clicky item in Freeport’s 10 subzones (North Freeport, South Freeport, East Freeport, West Freeport, Beggar’s Court, Stonestair Byway, Temple Street, Longshadow Alley, Big Bend, Scale Yard). Now imagine having to relocate them to a new zone/map/artwork, test them all, and make sure they all still work.

Now revamp any flavor or quest text which is long since obsolete such as NPCs wondering when Kunark, Velious, Odus, etc. are going to be discovered. Now revamp the instances linking off Freeport to be new style level 1-30 content with quest hubs, etc.

That sounds like almost as much work as an expansion.

A careful reading of the Producer’s Letter would suggest that we will receive most or all of the rest of Velious through Game Updates, rather than buying another expansion in November, or next February. Morghus asked if we will see the continuation/completion of Velious:

Sounds interesting, does that imply that we will be getting the “rest” of Velious, in regards to new raids/cities/overland quest areas and dungeons dealing with the dragon half of the continent in the future?

SmokeJumper replied with an affirmative “Yes“.

When asked just how different the new Freeport will be, or if it will be a radical departure:

So far, it’s a “realistic” upgrade of Freeport, building on the bones of the old. That’s all I can say for now.

A post by Cocytus downplayed the ‘evilness’ of Freeport:

I really don’t think Freeport needs to Symbolize evil. We already have Neriak. Freeport is fine with its current tone. Streamlining and/or making it up-to-date in the game world is fine, but I don’t really see any reason to change the tone to supervillain evil or something. I like that it’s like a mediocre thief town type thing.

To which SmokeJumper said:

Lucan has bigger dreams than that.

Crabshack of Nagafen asked:

I’m just going to throw this out there. After doing raids tonight and listening to other peoples reactions to this cryptic post.

If you didn’t mean to infer that the avatars were returning, you need to tell us now.

The level of excitement that the gods were returning was pretty huge. Because that meant avatars were coming back. This was by far the biggest thing talked about tonight. Removing avatars took a lot of the competition out of raiding, especially on the contested side of things. Yes they should have the best gear, and they should be hard to kill. But seriously, if they aren’t returning and you only meant that diety spells were getting revamped you need to clarify now otherwise you’re going to have a lot of very angry and extremely disapointed raiders on your hands.

which received this clarification from SmokeJumper:

Avatars have never been mentioned in respect to the slate for 2011.

That’s as clear as we’re going to get right now. We said we’d elaborate on stuff later, and it’ll come. We’ll release more near-future stuff later this week. Other details will be released…later.

Consider this like the first press leak for a new summer movie. It’s something we’re excited about and think will be great, but we need to save our biggest surprises for later, just showing you enough now to get you interested.

Please absolutely speculate. Heck, the ideas you guys generate might suddenly end up on the slate. Just realize that there’s no way we can do everything, but that our focus is on making a better, more entertaining whole game and we’ll try to make the right decisions to that effect.

The slate that’s coming is great, and when we’re done with the Velious saga, you will have played through something special. Plus the game’s feature richness will increase, all while we’re still listening to your comments and making adjustments on the way.

We’re actually pretty fired up for this year. We think we have the right stuff for you.

And finally Gaige, who was predictably unimpressed:

He didn’t say anything other than we’re going to be getting GUs which we normally get and eventually Freeport will be revamped.

Yay?

elicited this response from SmokeJumper:

I don’t think there’s anything I can write here that will soothe the skeptic in you.

I guess we’ll just have to show you.

The GU 60 notes we post later this week should set the pace a bit.

 

We haven’t posted about City Festivals in a while so thought we’d repost this one.

If you have completed city tasks such as tradeskill writs and adventure writs, you’ll notice you have received City Tokens. These tokens can be used to buy items from the travelling merchants of the City Festival. Each month, a few unique items are available only to each city (including themed tiles, dividers, and columns), as well as a selection of items which are always available. This month, the festival is parked at the gates of the City of Kelethin in Greater Faydark.

From EverQuest2.com:

Each month, a different city is chosen to host this week-long event; Gorowyn, Neriak, Freeport, Qeynos, Halas and Kelethin each get a chance to put on their own version of the occasion. The great city of Kelethin was the first to find the traveling caravan outside their city, upon the Green Knoll, and is proud to be the host once again.

Some of the rewards available during City Festivals include food and drinks, house items, and clothing. For more information about City Festivals and their rewards, be sure to visit these fabulous guides from our fansites:

The City Festival will begin on February 1st at 12:01am PDT and run until February 7th at 11:59pm PDT. The festival only comes to Kelethin twice a year, so don’t miss out!

 



It’s the most wonderful time of the year, once again.. and the Frostfell Wonderland calls.. to YOU!!  Seek out the Wardrobes which leads you to the Frostfell Wonderland in your home town!  For a complete run down on everything and anything Frostfell, Check out Zam’s Guide to the Holiday Season!  And don’t forget to visit Santa Glug once a day during the festivities for a gift!

And don’t forget to check out Jethal’s Frostfell Songs!!

  1. Qeynos (copy /loc)
  2. West Freeport (copy /loc)
  3. Kelethin (copy /loc)
  4. Neriak (copy /loc)
  5. Gorowyn (copy /loc)
  6. New Halas (copy /loc)
  7. Haven (copy /loc)

New this year, are Two new Quests..

Along with 37 new crafted items!

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