Qindaar level to 105 this morning. This is the first time in the 17 years of playing that Qindaar has managed to hit the cap. He still needs to complete level 105, but just being there is a thrill for the time being. Some shots are included of the final moments of the big 105…
This is my first attempt to add a video to my blog, hopefully it will work.
In the meantime Qindaar has been making good progress to level 105. He is currently 37% through level 104 thanks to Daybreak games added XP for the 17th Anniversary. Qindaar may make 105 by the end of the weekend.
Pantheon is coming soon, check out their news feed
https://pantheonmmo.com/news/latest_news/
Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen takes place on the high-fantasy world of Terminus, a wildly diverse land formed from fragments of many different realms and times, bringing with them their unique civilizations and deities. Explore long lost realms, as their people and cultures vie for power and form alliances, struggling to gain a foothold in an unfamiliar world. Uncover civilizations and awe-inspiring locales that offer incredible adventures for you and your friends to experience. Enter a world where the environment itself tells the story and where content is always king!
The 17th Anniversary for EQ is upon us with many different things to accomplish over the next couple of weeks. Today Qindaar was fortunate enough to Ding Level 104. With all the events and the extra XP being offered by Daybreak Games there is hope that Qindaar will get to 105 and the cap for the first time in his 17 years. This is the closest he has ever gotten to the cap level.
On a different note, Daybreak released a letter discontinuing the introduction of EverQuest Next. I know a lot of us were looking forward to a new game with better graphics and all the bells and whistles that go with it. Sadly they dropped the ball. I don’t know how much longer the original EverQuest will be around but there is a new and upcoming game that look promising and it has my attention.
It is called Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen https://pantheonmmo.com/ it looks promising and still in development but worth the watch. You may see a see blog on this game here in the near future.
March 16, 2016
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*** Highlights ***
– The Mechanical Fortune Teller in the Plane of Knowledge has information for you regarding the 17th Anniversary events!
– New rewards are available on a jubilant merchant for Commemorative Coins! Look for her in the Special Celebratory Goods section of your find window in the Plane of Knowledge!
*** Items ***
– Corrected an error that allowed some items to ignore recast timers when they were placed in a key ring.
– Fixed an issue with the Dragonscale Skystrider Scales familiar that allowed more than one of these to be summoned at a time.
– Corrected the spells attached to the Fabled Ball of Golem Clay so that it stacks better and obeys the recast timer.
– Transmogrification Scroll is now named Race Change Scroll. Hero’s Forge Armor Crate is now named Hero’s Forge Suit Consolidator.
– A lore conflict has been resolved with augs inside of key ring items and the parcel system.
– The Bottles of Adventure that are offered when claiming your monthly membership bonus are now Heirloom items.
*** Quests & Events ***
– The Mechanical Fortune Teller in the Plane of Knowledge has information for you regarding the 17th Anniversary events!
– Keep an eye out for the 17th Anniversary tipsy newbie gnome race across Faydwer!
– New rewards are available on a jubilant merchant for Commemorative Coins! Look for her in the Special Celebratory Goods section of your find window in the Plane of Knowledge!
– Anashti Sul, Lady of Life (Raid) – Corrected some typos in the names of the achievements.
– Anashti Sul, Enslaver of Souls (Group & Raid) – The Dance Dance Retribution achievement can now be failed if a member of the raid is struck with Mortal Decay.
– Wither and Decay – The All Retch and No Vomit achievement will no longer be failed if a pet enters a vomit aura.
– Wither and Decay – The Third Time’s a Charm achievement can now be acquired.
*** Spells ***
– Fixed a bug with the Shadow line of no effect spells being overridden by spells with AC in the first slot.
– Beastlord – Changed Scorpion Venom, Turepta Blood, Chimera Blood, Diregriffon’s Bite, Malaria, Festering Malady, and Fever Spike to instant cast like the rest of their spell lines.
– Beastlord – Converted poison DoT lines (Scorpion Venom), disease DoT lines (Malaria), and cold DoT lines (Edoth’s Chill) to a new system. All spells will now do more damage per tick, but a single caster can no longer stack other spells in the same line on the target. This change will increase DoT damage overall while using fewer debuff slots.
– Druid – Changed the particle effects on the Frostfell Aura and Wildfire Aura lines so that they no longer make a sound when applied.
– Enchanter – Changed the particle effect on the Mana Reiteration line so that it no longer makes a sound when it is applied.
– Monk – Increased the skill damage percentage and minimum damage amount added by Eye of the Storm.
– Monk – Increased the damage amount added to attacks by Dichotomic Form.
*** NPCs ***
– The Keeper of Lost Things in Shadowrest has retired, permanently.
– Fungusmen across Norrath, celebrate by squishing your hands together! In original and Kunark zones, Fungusmen have reverted to their classic appearance.
*** Progression Servers ***
– After some historical review, we have changed the expansion at which the Temple of Cazic-Thule becomes the Accursed Temple of Cazic-Thule from Velious to Luclin.
– Removed the requirement to wake the Sleeper in order to start the countdown to open the Shadows of Luclin.
– The version of Mitigation of the Mighty on Kunark bosses will have a less severe Spell Threshold damage reduction. The version of Mitigation of the Mighty on Velious bosses will have no Spell Threshold damage reduction.
– Bosses on progression servers will now regenerate more health, especially while idle.
*** Tradeskills ***
– Tharkis’ Select Reserve Catnip will no longer consume two items from the stack when used.
*** Miscellaneous ***
– PvP is now disabled in most instances on the Zek server.
– In raids, you can now set all items to automatically be marked as free grab when using the advanced looting system.
– – This is done by setting the loot type in the raid options window to ‘Entire Raid’.
– – The other settings in this window are currently ignored when using advanced looting.
– Added the ‘Increase Windowed Gamma’ option to the advanced display options window. This setting is off by default.
– – This setting will apply dramatically increased brightness when the client is in windowed mode with ‘Windowed Gamma’ disabled.
– – This is intended to correct the brightness of the game for desktops with relatively dark default settings.
– The music that plays between launching the game and entering the world from character select is now randomly selected and will change each time you return to character select.
– The following sound settings will now be saved on a per character basis. If a character does not yet have their settings saved they will default to the values already set by the last character that was logged in:
– – Sound Volume
– – Music Volume
– – Sound Realism
– – Combat Music Enabled
– – Environmental Sounds Enabled
– Cleaned up how all INI files are handled in the client to use a more efficient method.
– Corrected a zone crash that could occur when players were under the effects of Fear.
– Unusual precipitation isn’t just for the Plane of Fear any more. You may notice strange rain in other zones as well.
– Found and corrected many zones that had never had their experience modifiers reset from when they were Hot Zones. The following zones have had their Zone Experience Modifier lowered to match other zones in their era: Acrylia Caverns, The Burning Woods, Crypt of Dalnir, Dragon Necropolis, Dreadspire Keep, The Great Divide, Iceclad Ocean, Mons Letalis, Nagafen’s Lair, The Overthere, Ssraeshza Temple, Stonebrunt Mountains, Valdeholm, Wall of Slaughter
– The following zones have had their Zone Experience Modifier increased to match other zones in their era: The Temple of Cazic Thule (both versions), Chardok, Dranik’s Scar, Frontier Mountains, Grieg’s End, Kurn’s Tower, Najena, Riwwi, Coliseum of Games, The Ruins of Sebilis, Solusek’s Eye, The Estate of Unrest, Velketor’s Labyrinth
*** UI ***
– You can now opt out of the automatic master looter calculation for grouping and raiding in /advloot’s loot settings window.
– – This will not prevent you from being designated the master looter by the group or raid leader.
– – If everyone in your group or raid deselects the master looter candidate check box, the master looter will be chosen as if everyone has the candidate checked.
– When a zone repops due to a scripted event, items in the advanced loot window will now properly clear out instead of remaining until they expire.
– The color and filters tabs of the options window have been replaced with a single Chat Settings tab which can now be sorted and filtered.
– Removed support and UI for the old EQ Players service.
– The Max Results Per Trader field in the bazaar window will no longer reset itself between opening and closing the window.
– Fixed an issue causing Drakkin player characters of any heritage other than Atathus the Red to show as that heritage to other player clients.
– Changed –
EQUI_AdvancedDisplayOptionsWnd.xml
EQUI_KeyRingWnd.xml
EQUI_LootSettingsWnd.xml
EQUI_OptionsWindow.xml
*** Previously Updated ***
– Anashti Sul, Enslaver of Souls (Group & Raid) – Added messaging to the Aura of Pain mechanic. The characters struck by the auras will see a custom message and a raid-wide message will also indicate which two characters were targeted.
– Anashti Sul, Enslaver of Souls (Raid) – The event will now reset properly.
– Anashti Sul, Enslaver of Souls (Raid) – Corrected a bug that would cause Anashti Sul’s corpse to vanish on success, again, for real.
– Corrected an issue that caused some early-game raid bosses to spawn without their loot.
– Bosses in Phinigel instances have regained their Mitigation of the Mighty buff.
– The EverQuest Team
Happy Anniversary EverQuest. I cannot believe I have been playing for so long.
-Qindaar
See https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/march-2016-patch-preview.231275/
or read it below.
Our March patch is scheduled for Wednesday, March 16, 2016 (the day of EverQuest’s 17th Anniversary!). Here are some highlights on what players can expect from this patch:
DoTs Improvements
Over the past few months, we’ve been reviewing the way DoTs work and how we would like to improve them going forward. As most of you know, there’s a limited number of debuff slots available on any given NPC, which conflicts with DoT classes wanting to layer as many spells as possible on any given NPC in order to maximize damage. This layering has contributed to a lot of problems over the years; most notably, it takes a lot of spell slots away from players who want to maximize DoT damage, and it uses up many of the limited debuff slots available on raid targets.
In order to improve the way this works, we’re starting this process with Beastlords, but we’re planning to continue with it through all classes that use DoTs regularly. Here’s what we did for Beastlords:
- We went back to the first DoT in any given line, and doubled it (or more). This step may not happen for every class, but Beastlords in particular haven’t been able to use DoTs for as much reliable damage as we’d like, so they needed the boost.
- We looked at updates to those lines and increased their damage in a much more aggressive scale than we used to. This should mean that a new DoT will perform better than itself plus two previous levels of the same spell under the old scale.
- We increased damage/mana efficiency over the entire line in a progressive manner. At each level you should be getting more damage per mana than before.
- We categorized the new DoTs into lines which will prevent the same player from stacking multiple levels of the same DoT line on the same target. Other players can use DoTs in the same line on the same target, and the same player can use DoTs in the same line on different targets. The increase in damage should mean that a single player is dealing more damage with one DoT than they formerly did with three spells.
So, let’s look at some numbers. The current level 101 Beastlord poison DoT, Glistenwing Blood, currently deals a raw total (with no focus effects or any other enhancement) of 14395 damage over its duration at a cost of 1285 mana. Stacking the previous two levels of that spell will deal a total of 43349 raw damage for a total of 3460 mana. As a superDoT, the current level alone will deal 121154 raw damage for a total of 8532 mana, and will only need one debuff slot to do it. While, yes, that is a very high mana cost, it’s also far more damage. It’s worth noting that the level 91 spell, Binaesa Blood, will now deal 45210 damage on its own for a cost of 3799 mana.
We’re planning to make this same transition for all classes that use DoTs over the next few months. Other classes probably won’t see the same boost in base damage that Beastlords have, since they have fewer innate boosts to DoT damage than other classes, but we expect everyone to be doing more damage, ramping that damage up faster, using more mana (though more efficiently), and using fewer debuff slots on their targets.
Hate’s Fury Sails Again
For our 17th Anniversary, we’ve added a hybrid event to Norrath called “Hate’s Fury: Seventeen Pieces of Silver.” Krasnok’s ship, Hate’s Fury: The Scorned Maiden, has set sail once again, and this time he’s got friends. Sixteen of them, in fact. Each of them will give a reward of Commemorative Coins, and if you defeat all of the crew members, you can unlock the door to Krasnok’s cabin and face the Captain (#17!) himself for raid-quality rewards.
We’ve added a new gnome race that starts in Ak`anon that runs several times a day on EVERY server during the anniversary and a few new items to the jubilant merchant in the Plane of Knowledge as well. Head over to these spots to have a look!
Zone Experience Modifier Changes
This part gets a little bit “inside baseball,” but bear with me. Way back when we started our first Hot Zone project, we increased experience within the zones by increasing the raw data, and then setting it back down to what it used to be once we rotated to a different set. We did this for the first several years before we realized it was a very error-prone process and developed a better one. A few days ago, some players expressed a concern that Burning Woods had a very high experience modifier, making it outstrip the experience available in any other zone available in that era. We looked into this report and discovered that Burning Woods had its ZEM raised when it was one of the original hot zones, but it wasn’t ever reset. A few years later, when it was made a hot zone again, the ZEM was raised again… and again never lowered back to what it was. Under our current hot zone system, on non-progression servers, it was getting yet another boost to the ZEM, in effect making it a triple hot zone there, and a double hot zone on progression servers.
So, yeah…we had to change that. As we investigated, we realized this had happened to varying degrees to a lot of zones. Though Burning Woods was the only zone to have been boosted twice with no reset, many other zones had either been set to an incorrect value after being used as a hot zone at some point in history. We ended up with about 20 zones that were set too high, and another group of about twenty that were set too low. With the upcoming patch, we’re setting those back to where they were supposed to be. Dungeons in the same era now have similarly higher-than-average ZEMs, and outdoor zones in the same era will have similarly lower-than-average ZEMs. While we know it’s not very fun to have to leave a zone you were comfortable in, we’re excited that zones like Sebilis, the Crypt of Dalnir, the Temple of Cazic Thule, and Velketor’s Labyrinth will be returning to give better experience rewards to the players who are brave enough to enter them.
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As always, we value your feedback on these upcoming changes, but we hope you’ll check them out for yourself first (on test or on live servers) before passing judgement. We’re grateful for your support!
It is hard to believe that Qindaar is 17 years old. He has been around the block for sure, but has yet to experience all the EQ has to offer. So much beautiful content even if critiques are not happy with the graphics rendering. It would be impossible to retro the entire game.
Here is what is in store for the 17th Anniversary party:
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/17th-anniversary-producer%E2%80%99s-letter.231245/
or read it here:
Discussion in ‘News and Announcements‘ started by Windstalker, 43 minutes ago.
Qindaar is working towards level 104. Been working in Tainted West Karana for some time now, progress is slow. The scenery is beautiful with many different sections. Some of the MoB’s hit hard some do not. I have also noticed that the range of hit-points on a target differs greatly even if the con dark blue. While some of the dark blues can be taken down with just a few spells others take Qindaar down with just a few hits. Conning a MoB does not necessarily indicate that you can fight and win without assistance.
Tonight we are going to attempt to take out the scarecrows to complete quest. Again, some of these scarecrows are easy while others are impossible. Will update you all in the next blog.
