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Game Update 62: Age of Discovery

Game Update 61: The War of Zek

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After getting called to the carpet for a revised Game Update schedule that won’t see new level 90 content coming to EQ2 until April, nearly 9 months since last year’s Game Update 61, SOE has laid out a gameplan for February events.

From EverQuest2.com:

February Publish Plans – More to Play, Your Way!

February is here already, and the team is hard at work on Game Update 63! We’ll have some “behind the scenes” videos for you in the coming weeks to give you a sneak peek at the art of some of the exciting new zones coming up, and more information will follow between now and then.

In the mean time however, there’s plenty of new stuff to do in the world of Norrath, and we’re not waiting for the Game Update to bring you some of the improvements and changes we have in store. Here are some of the things we intend to bring you in the month of February!

Love is in the Air

Erollisi Day quests and events will be available from February 7th through 20th.

Dungeon Maker Adventurers to Gain Powerups

Dungeon Maker is becoming even more more fun, as we improve Adventurer gameplay to provide a more active game style using power management! While playing as an Adventurer, you’ll use certain abilities to build up your power, which you can then spend to use other abilities. This should give Adventurers a much more engaging playstyle that we hope everyone will enjoy! This change will be heading to Test server shortly so you can try it out yourself and give us your feedback before we finalize the changes. We hope you enjoy them as much as we are!

In-Game Polls to Arrive as Mail

We now have the ability to send you polls through the in-game mail system, and as promised, we’ll be seeking your feedback on a number of topics of interest. Poll questions will arrive in your mailbox like normal letters, and you can simply delete them if you don’t want to answer; however, we hope you’ll take the time to let us know what you think and how we can continue to improve your experience! We’re looking forward to testing out this new feature and hope that it will be a great source of information.

Read more at EverQuest2.com.

 

At last year’s Fan Faire, Leko, champion of PvP balance, stood up after Mercenaries were announced and asked “Will Mercenaries work in PvP?” and then a series of questions about how they would be balanced, tested, etc. Well…better late than never. :)

From Gninja:

While I can’t really address everything being said in this post right now I can say we have been taking a look and we have a plan on how to make mercs not quite as overpowered in PVP combat as they are currently. Once we get the fix in place and we can accurately test it I can lay out the plan for you guys.

If you die to a merc you should not take damage to your gear. This will be addressed asap and we should be getting some power tweaks for them out to you as we can.

 

In what may go down as the best decision in EQ2 history, or a total overreaction to a problem that could have been solved with a 15-20% reduction across the board, Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson has announced that in the very near future, the Critical Mitigation stat will be COMPLETELY GOING AWAY.

First introduced in The Shadow Odyssey, greatly expanded in Sentinel’s Fate, and then becoming the most important stat within Destiny of Velious as an alternative form of progression to raising the level cap (which is technologically challenging), here’s the announcement of this revelation from the EQ2 Forums:

We’ve listened to all of your conversations since Critical Mitigation was originally introduced. The dev team has extensively debated about it internally. (Very extensively.) But ultimately, we decided that the right move for EQII is to remove Critical Mitigation entirely from the game.

Critical Mitigation initially seemed to do what it was designed for, but it has always suffered from a complete lack of intuitiveness for players, and it’s not a forward-extensible system. Ultimately, it doesn’t add any fun factor to the game.
So we’ve decided that a complete removal of it is by far the best solution for all concerned.

Here are the details:

  • Critical Mitigation (the stat) has been removed from the game.
  • Critical Mitigation no longer displays on the Character pane (for obvious reasons, since it’s no longer in the game).
  • NPCs no longer use Critical Bonus to add to critical damage.
  • Buffs and debuffs that have Critical Mitigation elements to them will have those elements replaced with other elements instead, so that those buffs/debuffs do not lose effectiveness.
  • Critical Mitigation values on adornments will be replaced with hit point values instead.

This change will be coming to Test soon and then to the regular servers soon thereafter.

NOTE: This change has no effect on PvP game play. The “PvP Critical Mitigation” stat is still useful for game balance in PvP play and is not being changed.

Trust me when I say that I checked the calendar more than once when reading this announcement. The only proximate holiday is represented above. ;)

What Do You Think?

  • So do you think this is a good move?
  • A total overreaction?
  • How is SOE going to provide progression without raising the level cap?
  • Is there any reason to run Heroic content anymore (outside of Drunder) now that armor is essentially free and shards are no longer needed for Critical Mitigation adornments?
 

First I’d like to wish a Happy New Year to all of you. No doubt many took advantage of the Double XP weekend and squeezed in the last bit of Frostfell magic.

In the coming weeks, we should be hearing more from EQ2 developers and their work on the upcoming Game Update 63 coming in February. This update is expected to include new Destiny of Velious content, including dungeons, raids, and more.

Here are some issues we’re tracking this week, some of which got a nod from a developer or community:

  • Character Lighting
  • EQ2Players
  • Invisible Mercenary Healers
  • Timorous Deep (Kunark) client crashes
  • Tradeskill Apprentice Recipes for Provisioners
  • Characters Stuck in Frostfell
  • Character Transfer Server Tokens
  • What House Items do you want?

Character Lighting

With the launch of Age of Discovery /Game Update 62, some players are reporting a random darkening of different armor pieces, weapons, or body parts on both Character Select and in-game. This is not a Shaders 3 issue as Shaders 3.0 has been disabled indefinitely. Fortunately, Alex “GermInUSA is on the case and has this update:

Thanks for all your patience and replies.

I was able to track down what change caused this problem and we are working to implement a valid fix right now. Unfortunately the random nature of this bug made it hard to track down and will make it hard to verify as being fixed so please bear with us a little bit longer. We should be able to nail it this week though.

We would expect an update possibly as early as next Tuesday.

EQ2Players

We are now 1 month since the launch of Age of Discovery, and the promised relaunch of the EQ2Players service remains in limbo. Meanwhile, EQ2Wire and other fan sites have been testing the fantastic new Data Feeds API which provides most of the data that used to come from EQ2Players, but in a digestible format.

Invisible Mercenary Healers

Stamper and Bdorn, the popular Inquisitor and Templar mercenaries, have been playing hide and seek. Specifically, only the people who hire them can see where they are standing,  making it difficult to know if they have line-of-sight, or are off trying to kill mobs across the room when they should be healing. Fortunately, this fix is on the Test server and should go live as early as next Tuesday:

Stamper (Inquisitor Merc) should no longer show as invisible to players who have not hired him.

Bdorn (Templar Merc) should no longer show as invisible to players who have not hired him.

Timorous Deep (Kunark) client crashes

With increasing frequency, players have been reporting crashes when zoning into the Kunark starting zone Timorous Deep. The issue manifests itself as the EQ2 client crashes while “Loading Environment Map” appears in the status area. Fixes have included deleting any *.vpk files with ‘timorous’ in the name as well as the cache and assetcache folders.

Here’s a further update from TSR-JoshuaM who typically handles Customer Service tickets:

The TD specific issues are a high priority but is currently a dev issue that, outside of the recommendations already posted by me, we won’t be able to troubleshoot with you further.

Deleting the Cache folder and/or the TD specific VPK files from the PAKS folder is a temporarily workaround for the time being. We also highly recommend not camping out in or around Mok Rent until we have confirmed that the issue has been resolved. We do apologize for the inconvenience this will cause for you and we will do our best to get it resolved as quickly as possible.

Tradeskill Apprentice Recipes for Provisioners

If you haven’t used a Tradeskill Apprentice, the quickest way to describe them is Recipe Research Assistants. They’re NPCs you can hire, place in your house, and hail once every 24 hours (as well as running some errands) which will eventually grant you one recipe appropriate for your tradeskill class. You can’t be in any hurry, as each level 90 recipe take ~15 days to discover.

The primary ingredient for these TS Apprentice recipes is a Reactant, which drops from mobs throughout Norrath. While the lower level reactants have become common, the level 90 ones (Colossal Reactant) remain quite rare, as they only drop from Velious dungeons with mobs tiered above level 90 (Zek, EoW, and Drunder), or occasionally from those aforementioned Tradeskill Apprentice errand quests. Servers are reporting prices for Colossal Reactants in excess of 700 platinum up to 2,000p.

That may sound expensive, but the items, specifically jewelry, weapons, and cloaks produced from these Reactants are equal to raid drops which routinely sell (SLR) for similar prices.

But you can imagine the shock of Provisioners when their recipes, which produce 20 food or drink items, also required a Reactant. Sorry, but no stack of food or drink is worth 700 plat. Fortunately a fix is incoming.

Discuss this further on the EQ2 Forums

Characters Stuck in Frostfell

If Jack Frost caught you in Frostfell after Tuesday’s cutoff, you probably got stuck there. The prudent approach to resolve this issue is to Open a Support Ticket at SOE.com.

If you are unable to get the website to work, but are able to login to the game with a different account, according to TSR-JoshuaM, you can open a /petition in-game to address problems with the other account:

You can contact our support staff directly or open an in-game petition to receive assistance with recovering those characters.

UPDATE from Kaitheel:

A script was run yesterday around 11 am PST that automatically moved anyone logged out in the Frostfell Wonderland Village to Thundering Steppes.  Your characters should no longer be unavailable!

Character Transfer Server Tokens

EQ2 subscribers who use prepaid game cards, who have bought game time with StationCash, who otherwise do not have a credit card on file, or have an All Access (formerly Station Access) account have had problems using the in-game Server Transfer feature. Namely, they have been unable to find Character Transfer Server Tokens on the StationCash Marketplace.

Players have had to play CSR Roulette, contacting SOE repeatedly until they find a sympathetic (or knowledgeable) representative who can sort the problem out.

According to TSR-JoshuaM, CSRs are now up to speed on the issue:

We are prepared to offer workarounds to get everyone transferred up even if you cannot see the token.

This information, or policy if you will, has been propagated with the Tech/Billing department so you don’t have to cherry pick your representative. Just keep in mind that we are a separate department from the GM’s where petitions are sent. You’ll need to contact our support staff directly or open a Support ticket to begin the process.

The requirements that must be met and cannot be excepted are as follows:

  • You must be the account owner and able to verify ownership with our staff.
  • For account to account transfers you will need to be the account owner of both accounts in question and both accounts will need to be fully verified.
  • You must have the supporting Station Cash balance of 2500, we may instruct you to make purchases that we will remove for you in place of the CTS Token.
  • You must be a Gold member on either of your accounts.

If you meet the above, you are ready to contact our staff directly to discuss a possible workaround.

What House Items do you want?

Omougi wants to know!

We’ve seen a lot of good ideas for housing items on these boards.  In an effort to get those ideas in one place, please let us know *in this thread* what housing items you want.  Thanks!

We hope you have a great weekend. In the meantime, if you haven’t checked our Beastlord Warder guide in a few weeks, I just updated it yesterday, bringing the total number of unique appearances for your Beastlord pets to 110.

 

Test Update Notes from the EQ2 Forums:

DUNGEON MAKER

  • Mystic Guardian avatar for Dungeon Maker has had the zombie scare attack changed.
  • Fixed an issue with avatar power consumption rates. (also on Live as of Dec 22nd)

MERCENARIES

  • Ten new mercenaries can be found within the major cities of Norrath. This includes Freeport, Qeynos, Neriak, Gorowyn, New Halas, and Kelethin!
  • Gaeri Tallspire [Warlock] and Firus Scorchtouch [Wizard] have returned to their normal hangout and can once again be hired! They have been rebalanced a bit to do less spike damage but in some cases might do more DPS on sustained battles! Gaeri is now more encounter based where as Firus is more single target based damage.

TRADESKILL APPRENTICES

  • Tradeskill Apprentice food and drink no longer require reactants.
  • Provisoners can now have their Tradeskill Apprentice research belt recipes.
  • The recipes required for the daily Tradeskill Apprentice tasks no longer delete themselves from your recipe book.

QUESTS

Beastlord Epic

  • The Savage Deepening of Spirit is now flagged as epic.
  • Ralissk should now properly speak to beastlords on all steps of the quest “One Door Closes, Another Door Opens”. (also on Live as of Dec 22nd)
 

One tantalising bit of information from tonight’s AoD/F2P Webcast was that the Age of Discovery Beta may start allowing Fan Faire attendees in tonight. It’s unknown how quickly others will be brought into the beta.

Also, we were told that while Beastlords, the Freeport Revamp (a GU62 feature), Mercenaries, Tradeskill Apprentices, and Reforging would be in the Beta now (or soon), Design Your Own Dungeon won’t hit Beta until next week, to focus testing attention on the previously mentioned features.

UPDATE: We have it on good authority that Fan Faire attendees are now receiving invites to the Age of Discovery Beta. Hey! No peeking at my Inbox!

 

Enemies in EQ2 have always tended to exhibit some odd behavior such as running long distances or zig-zagging around a room in an attempt to reach the player. Destiny of Velious greatly exacerbated this problem, causing enemies to “orbit” the player, or worse, warp or teleport around. Because raid mobs are often able to ignore certain movement speed limitations, this has been a major problem in certain raid zones that require the tank to slowly keep the mob moving in a circle around a room. The mobs will teleport on top of the tank, or start to orbit clockwise around the tank. This has ranged from amusing to maddening for tanks.

Last month, some changes were pushed to the Test and Test Copy servers in an attempt to improve enemy “pathing”. Alas, these changes increased the occurrence of “orbiting” mobs and pets and other undesirable behavior.

It looks like we’re ready for another attempt as this note was posted by Bunji on the test forums:

The updated pathing has been turned back on for the Test servers.

These pathing updates should make ground mobs take more accurate routes to their targets.

With the old pathing, mobs would sometimes zig-zag toward their target (instead of moving in a more direct route) or sometimes run up walls (that PCs couldn’t) to get to their target, but this pathing should force mobs to take more direct routes to their targets while respecting the same geometry rules PCs do.

Ground mobs can still drop down from heights to get to their targets.

Also, the fix for mobs “circling” around the PC sometimes while in combat should be fixed on the current Test server build.

Please check it out and let us know what you think.

Here are some zones to check out:

  • all Velious zones (both overland and dungeons/raids)
  • Antonica
  • Commonlands
  • Darklight Woods
  • Everfrost
  • Feerrott
  • Lavastorm
  • Runnyeye
  • Wailing Caves
  • Neriak
  • Nektulos forest
  • Shard of love
  • Shard of hate
  • Moors of Ykesha
  • All guildhalls
  • Haven
 

No sooner than we’ve posted a long-simmering article about Velious’ steep heroic progression than changes have hit Test which could turn EQ2’s heroic progression on its ear. Brace yourself. Everything you know about Velious shard armor is about to change.

TRADESKILLS

  • The amount of ore received from melting down Drunder equipment has been tripled.
  • Thurgadin and Ry’gorr armor set recipes no longer require velium shards.

ITEMS

  • Thurgadin armor sets no longer require velium shards to be purchased. Faction and coin are still required.
  • Rygorr armor sets no longer require velium shards to be purchased. Faction, refined gems, and coin are still required.

Drunder token armor can now drop in Drunder zones:

  • Grolla will now drop class shoulders
  • Warmaster Korok Hai will now drop class legs
  • Dvuul Ripclaw will now drop class boots
  • Hamslammer has a chance to drop class forearms or gloves
  • Rageborne MacKulla has a chance to drop class forearms or gloves

Ok, have you taken a breath?

We can’t help but be baffled by these planned changes.

The Shadow Odyssey made it a little too easy to get your first set of heroic armor, and then perhaps a bit tedious to get your Tier 2 “pre-raid” set of armor. But if it weren’t for grey shard runs, the numbers would have been pretty much the “gold standard” for how many dungeon runs should earn a full set of armor.

Sentinel’s Fate threw these numbers completely out-of-whack. Hundreds of shards were needed for just a few pieces of heroic armor, weapons, or jewelry, so most players just skipped them and went for dungeon-dropped items which were better anyway.

When Destiny of Velious launched, heroic shard armor was hard to get for several reasons, most having nothing to do with the high shard cost of Thurgadin and Ry’Gorr armor:

  • Buggy dungeons that couldn’t be completed
  • Roadblocky (is that a word?) dungeons that kept all but the hardcore out
  • No solo shard mission
  • Faction required to buy armor
  • Crafters not able to make armor at a reduced cost

With ALL of these problems having been remedied in Game Update 60 and Game Update 61, including a lowering of the shard cost for armor, it has been “doable” — if not expedient — to farm the 120 shards needed for a full set of Ry’Gorr armor. Each Velious dungeon drops 3-4 shards, plus 2 more if it’s the Daily Double. Lest we forget the weekly Dominance quests, which reward 14 more shards for completing a group of 3 dungeons. Getting 25 shards in a day has not been unheard of.

Armor for Everyone!

With these changes, anyone with plat and Thurgadin faction can buy a full set of the Thurgadin armor (or better yet, hit up a crafter). While it isn’t as good as Ry’Gorr armor, it is an upgrade over Public Quest gear for most classes. Further, all that’ll be needed to get Ry’Gorr armor is faction and gems from Kael Drakkel.

I predict a few things if these changes go live:

  • Public Quests will be busy again, as people grind to complete a faction I’d long ago given up on (Thurgadin), and shore up their numbers on Ry’Gorr.
  • More Kael Drakkel instance groups (Iceshard Keep, etc.)
  • More 3-6 person groups in Kael Drakkel contested. Even with the meager 1% gem drop rate, people’s desperation for gems will drive them there.
  • The price of gems will are skyrocketing on the broker.

If the EQ2 Team wanted to get everyone into Ry’Gorr armor faster, they could have increased the drop rate on gems (which are terribly unbalanced — Black Marbles and Emeralds are copper on the broker while Jaundice and Rubies routinely go for 70-120 plat, at least on Butcherblock), and reduced the shard cost again.

SOE seems genuinely concerned about the slow pace of player gearing in Velious. However this approach will likely kill off any interest in the Tower of Frozen Shadow and Pools type zones, concentrating everyone in Kael Drakkel and Drunder, or at least trying. Remember kids, these zones are still challenging and require ideal groups.

It’s also worth noting that these changes ignore the elephant in the room of Casting Speed which Thurgadin and Ry’Gorr armor lack. I guess if there’s one silver lining, it’s that we’ll have all the worthless Primal Velium Shards we can stand, allowing to buy (and rebuy ad nauseum) yellow adornments.

What do you think?

Were these changes necessary?

Could a more subtle fix been applied?

Do you think putting everyone in Ry’Gorr armor well get them into Drunder and Elements of War faster?

 

After a growing silence about key parts of Game Update 61, specifically unexpected mechanics and itemization changes in high level gear, SalimSiliusGrant, EQ2 Mechanics Lead, has stepped up and provided a detailed response to the issues as laid out so well by a determined player, Nevao in a thread entitled May we have a “State of the GU” post?

Responses from Silius are in red:

  • Itemization Changes
    Tier 3 to T8 revamp? Last time I checked there were still reports of items with insanely out of whack stats given the tier (mid-tier items with 40+ weapon skills for example) and items that were previously open to multiple classes now restricted to just a few (either directly or through stats). Where are we on this and are the devs happy with where it’s going?
  • Stat values are being tweaked and fixed when we find the bugs.
  • The goal of reitemize was to make items relevent to our current mechanics. This means that items will become polarized to the more archetypical setup we use now.

  • What is going on with Tier 9 items? It was our understanding that SF gear was not being touched this pass and nothing was discussed about DoV. But now we’re seeing all kinds of changes to off hands (stat changes, red/yellow adornment slots being removed) that are not making sense to the community. Can we get someone to weigh in on what’s gong on?
  • Offhand items that were indirectly modified should be fixed. If you are still finding issues with them please PM me.
  • Mastercrafted Armor: Though technically not part of this release there are reports that there still serious kinks in the progression of Master Crafted Armor (working to get examples). Is this going to be addressed as part of this release?
  • Like the rest of the items that have been updated there are still bugs. I am working through the last few bugs atm.
  • Melee Priests: With all these changes, what is being done for the melee priest option? Roughly half of the priests subclasses have Melee Tuned AA (look at Wardens for example) but there is no gear to support this play style. With Spell auto attack being added this marginalizes this playstyle even more.
  • This reitemize keeps melee priests in mind by offering them melee stats along with the spell attack counterparts.
  • Spell Auto Attack:
    • Can we get a better feel for the items going in? Right now it’s hard tell what the actual effect is going to be since we can only get a few legendary wands.
    • Is there going to be any adjustments on existing gear for Spell Auto Attack or will this all be found on new gear
  • Since Velious items are not being updated the new auto attack stats will not appear on them. POW items will have the stats as well as any old world updated items.
  • Overcap changes
    Focus: Is the “Snare” effect really working as intended? Is this being adjusted due to the feedback on how it’s changing play styles due to now having to use new methods for spell cancels on jousts?
  • Moving while casting has been removed.
  • Weapon Skills: I was told when asked these should effect CA min damage but they do not appear to be (unles this was an undocumented change last night). Was this a misunderstanding, or is it simply not working yet?
  • Will look into this.

Responses in red, sorry for the wait. Thanks for the great post.

 

Moments ago, we spoke with Gninja on Test, who has been working hard on spot-checking and fixing any gaps in the Reitemization of level 20-80 items. He’s also been talking to players, examining linked items, and checking bug reports. He also linked some of the loot from Dynamic Dungeons and some higher level items which have gotten new effects.

From the EQ2 Forums:

If you have specific examples [of itemization issues] please PM them to us. We can take alook at them on a case by case basis. I should also be available on the test server looking for feedback/issues in the next day or two. Thanks for the work you guys have put into it thus far!

I also ask that you make sure they are still a valid issue before sending the info as we have caught a bunch of the issues and already pushed them to test server with the fixes applied.

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