EverQuest 2 Game Update Blog

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.