Qindaar Back From Vacation

EQ 16th AnnivGood afternoon all,

Happy to announce that Qindaar has returned from a month long vacation to Israel where he truly enjoyed the time spent there.

A lot has happened in the world of EQ with two new updates:

July 01, 2015
_____________________

*** Highlights ***
– Big bags are returning to Norrath for a limited time! Special larger bags will be available on the Marketplace starting at noon (PDT) on July 2nd. Act quickly, as they will disappear after July 6th!

*** Items ***
– Girdle of the Weaponmaster – The focus effect Boon of the Seeress has been adjusted to include the number of spells that it previously focused, prior to a number of data changes to AA spells.

*** Quests & Events ***
– Aranaea the Cleaver – Fixed an issue with the use of the Arcanist’s Ignitor in the Plane of War. Burn it all down!

– Seductive Subterfuge – The task step to “Banish the skeletons, spirits, and banshees” in this Caverns of Endless Song heroic adventure now requires 9 kills instead of 10.

*** Spells ***
– Enchanter – Corrected an issue with the way that damage shield damage from items is calculated in order to fix a problem with the Ward line of spells. Damage shield damage from items will now only be added to your total damage shield amount if your effective Damage Shield total is greater than 0.

– Corrected an issue with player cast spells that trigger an additional spell when the first spell fades. The second spell will now properly use the original caster’s focus effects and send damage messages to the correct person.

– AoE resurrection abilities will now properly land on corpses in hover mode.

*** NPC ***
– Original EQ bosses are now immune to memory blur effects.

– Most clockworks throughout Norrath now have a chance to carry saltpeter.

*** AA ***
Magician – Updated Theft of Essence to include the three ranks of the level 103 summoned bane damage spell “Eradicate the Unnatural” as a possible trigger for the “Theft of Essence” pet buff.

Magician – Corrected a bug that caused rank 6 of Extended Fire Core to extend the duration of all spells by 36 seconds rather than extending the duration of just the “Fire Core” AA spells.

*** Progression Servers ***
– The Hole, Kedge Keep, Permafrost Keep, and Nagafen’s Lair will spin up new load balanced versions when they are populated by enough adventurers. There is no hard limit to the number of adventurers that can be in any particular version of these zones. Raid NPCs will only spawn in the base instance of these zones.

– The Commonlands can now support many more simultaneous adventurers before it is full.

– Raid bosses will provide more of a challenge on progression servers. They will also spawn more frequently but with more randomization between spawn times.

– The residents of the Plane of Hate and Plane of Fear will spawn more frequently.

*** Miscellaneous ***
– /outputfile will now tell you it’s complete in chat. Also if you use /outputfile with an invalid option, it will output the usage message.

– Shadowrest – Corrected an issue that could potentially result in a player becoming stuck in Shadowrest. If the location from which you entered has been cleared, you will now be sent to your original starting location rather than your bind point.

*** UI ***
– Merc AAs – Made the cost column display nothing when the max rank has been purchased.

– Added the current count of players in your current /pickzone instance to the window.

– When a player is in a load balanced zone (/pickzone) they will now display their instance number in /who.

– Changed –

*** Previously Updated ***

– Corrected an issue that would cause a zone to crash if a player died from a limited use doom effect.

– The EverQuest Team

June 17, 2015
____________________

*** Highlights ***
– Fixed an issue where a player could crash after logging back into a load-balanced zone (/pickzone) or gating to a point in a load-balanced zone when that particular instance had closed.

– Corrected an issue causing players entering mission instances of some zones to be teleported to the non-instanced versions.

– Fixed an issue regarding binding in a load-balanced zone; you should now properly be sent to an available zone when gating or returning to your bind point.

– Fixed an issue with the leave on corpse option in the manage loot window that could cause crashes.

– All Noble Exchange merchants can now be used to send or receive parcels. These merchants are available in every starting city, the Plane of Knowledge, the Bazaar, and other zones throughout Norrath.

*** Items ***
– Bard – Reduced the casting time of the Arpeggio spells on certain breastplates from 0.3s to instant.

*** Quests & Events ***
– Arx Mentis raids – Glowing Essences of the Citadel now have a small chance to drop in Tier 2 Arx Mentis raids and drop more commonly from Calix Quirinus.

– All Arx Mentis progression raids – Now drop exactly six Essences of the Citadel rather than between four and eight.

– Anniversary – The 5th-13th Anniversary events have been extended to run until July 15th.

– Heritage – The Crushbone and Permafrost Hardcore Heritage events have been extended by a week and will now end on 7/1.

*** Spells ***
– Buffs with limited charges that are consumed when their focus effect is applied now continue to apply their remaining effects until the spell that was focused by that buff is finished resolving. This corrects a problem where the critical chance portion of spells (like Chromatic Haze and Frenzied Devastation) was never applied during the buff’s final charge, because the buff was removed after the focus effect was applied but before the critical chance modifier was checked.

*** NPC ***
– All Noble Exchange merchants can now be used to send or receive parcels. These merchants are available in every starting city, the Plane of Knowledge, the Bazaar, and other zones throughout Norrath.

– Added factions to many NPCs in newbie zones that did not have them before, causing guards to hate them once again.

*** AA ***
– Bard – Restored the doppelganger effect and removed the shadowstep component on the AA line “Lyrical Prankster”.

– Beastlord – Corrected a bug with ranks 4-6 of the AA line ‘Nature’s Salve’ that caused them to cast the spell associated to rank 3 of the ability. Ranks 4-6 should now increase in power and trigger the effect on your warder as originally intended.

– Rogue – Corrected an issue that caused rank 6 of AA Extended Envenomed Blades to not function.

– Rogue – Corrected an issue that prevented all ranks of the AA Enduring Vision from working.

– Wizard – Arcane Fusion no longer deals damage to non-NPC targets. This should ensure that wizards who fail their Bucolic Gambit are slightly less likely to annihilate themselves.

– Corrected a typo in the description of the buff cast by the AA “Glyph of the Cataclysm”.

– Corrected several inconsistencies with the casting level of AA abilities.

*** Progression Servers ***
– Restored the spell merchant Gadallion to the Southern Desert of Ro in all eras.

– The Wizard spell Rend is now available on Progression Servers in all eras.

– The Potion of Companion’s Amnesia is now available for purchase in the marketplace on all Progression Servers.

– “an old froglok” in Upper Guk no longer spawns on Progression Servers until the Planes of Power expansion is unlocked.

– Luminescent Weapon Grade Ore is no longer be available for purchase on Progression Servers until Rain of Fear has unlocked.

– Some cookie molds that were not available at launch are no longer available on Progression Servers.

– Recipes that call for Thalium Ore are no longer visible on Progression Servers until Dragons of Norrath.

*** Miscellaneous ***
– Steamfont Mountains will now correctly use load balancing as intended.

– Corrected an oversight that prevented players that were created on the Vox server from being able to select the suffix “of Vox”.

*** UI ***
– There is now a chat message of how much time you have before you can run /pickzone again, if you have a timer remaining.

– You now get a message in chat with what instance you are in when you run /pickzone in a load-balanced zone. This will only appear when it is possible for the window to open, meaning any circumstance where /pickzone won’t function (such as combat) will prevent this message from appearing.

– Changed –
*** Previously Updated ***
– Fixed the Deepwater Harpoon quest. Returned the missing sentries to West Freeport, and Sentry Xyrin will again attack the nearby spectres on the island when inspired to do so.

– The EverQuest Team