Game Update 4/20/2016

2016-02-26_11-16-43April 20, 2016
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*** Highlights ***

– Hot Zones now randomly rotate between three possible zones for each level range and are currently set to rotate every 3 months.  Talk to Franklin Teek in the Plane of Knowledge to find your Hot Zone and earn bonus loot and experience!

*** Items ***

– Changed the parcel system so that when sending items with LORE augmentations they are checked on the recipient to ensure they don’t already have the augmentation. The item and its attached augmentation will be parceled back to the sender in these situations.
– Vander’s Bane can now summon imps at full power every four seconds. Any imps summoned within the next four seconds will be lower level and smaller.
– All visual ornaments will now change the icon of the item they modify into the icon of the ornament.
– It’s now possible to complete the achievement for wearing a set of the Golden Hero Hero’s Forge ornaments, regardless of how the character acquired that set.

*** Quests & Events ***

– Ancient Heroes – Lady Vox – Corrected a bug that prevented the task from updating when opening Lady Vox’s Hoard.
– Made the medallion pieces used for entry into Veeshan’s Peak ‘no destroy’. The Priest of Discord, however, will still accept these items if you want to be rid of them.
– Wither and Decay and Anashti Sul, Damsel of Decay (Raid and Group) – Bimbly Ironstein can help you to [leave] the instance and return to the static version of Sul Vius: Demiplane of Decay.
– Wither and Decay and Anashti Sul, Damsel of Decay (Raid and Group) – All chat messages for these events will now use the Event Messages color and filter.
– Anashti Sul, Damsel of Decay (Raid and Group) – Gift of Endless Life and Gift of Living Death now block Gifts of Anashti Sul. This should prevent being struck by the damage component of Gift of Living Death multiple times within the same volley.
– Anashti Sul, Damsel of Decay (Raid) – Being inside the area of effect of a Tendrils of Pestilence aura will now change the screen color to indicate the imminent danger. Make sure to enable post effects if you wish to see this visual warning.
– Anashti Sul, Damsel of Decay (Raid) – The Tendrils of Pestilence hazards will despawn after a few minutes.
– Anashti Sul, Damsel of Decay (Raid) – *Entering* the Tendrils of Pestilence aura will no longer result in damage, though standing in one still will. This should prevent being struck by the Tendrils of Pestilence multiple times within the same second.
– Anashti Sul, Lady of Life (Raid) – Curse of Health will now block the effects of most healing spells triggered by passive AA abilities. This applies to: Recourse of Life, Healing Light, Cascading Theft of Life, Tunare’s Grace, and Vehement Recompense.
– Wither and Decay (Raid) – The titular bosses, Wither and Decay, have had their health lowered by 10%.

*** Spells ***

– Added special messaging so that spells which fail due to a caster or target requirement check will now tell you why in most cases.
– Enchanter – The Mind Shatter line of DoTs has been increased in power and efficiency. Levels 80 and above now return mana via resource tap rather than a separate buff.
– Enchanter – The Strangle line of DoTs has been increased in power and efficiency. It will no longer stack with itself above level 62 when cast by the same caster.
– Enchanter – The Baffling Constriction line of DoTs has been increased in power and efficiency. It will no longer stack with itself when cast by the same caster.
– Cleric – Increased the damage dealt by the Sermon of the Righteous line significantly. Spells in this line will no longer stack on a single target when cast by the same caster.

*** AA ***

– Corrected an issue where spells that deal damage as a percentage of the target’s health as well as Mana Burn spells were not reporting the damage dealt to anyone but the caster.
– All fade abilities will now make the caster the last possible target of their attackers’ rampage attacks regardless of whether the caster successfully escapes from combat.
– Consolidated the purchased versions of the following glyph AA abilities to be the second rank of the previous tier glyph to which they logically upgrade:
– – Glyph of the Master is now rank 2 of Glyph of Dragon Scales
– – Glyph of Lost Secrets is now rank 2 of Glyph of Arcane Secrets
– – Glyph of Genari Might is now rank 2 of Glyph of Draconic Potential
– – Glyph of the Cataclysm is now rank 2 of Glyph of Destruction
– Consolidated the 5 Dragons of Norrath progression AA abilities to a single line with 5 ranks.
– Wizard – Adjusted ranks 13-16 of Mana Burn so that the damage added to incoming spells is applied as a static amount.

*** Progression Servers ***

– Corrected an issue that was causing NPC Harm Touch to deal more damage than is intended.
– Chloroblast and Nature’s Touch are available for purchase from Rushka Deklamoor in the Commonlands tunnel and Srendon Gladetender in Greater Faydark when Velious has unlocked.
– Hybrid discipline tomes are available for purchase from Bakrav Uramis in Commonlands when Velious has unlocked.
– Pathing for Veeshan’s Peak 1.0 has been restored to its original version. This should prevent the wandering NPCs from all piling up in a bad location.
– Derakor the Vindicator is no longer visiting Skyshrine on progression servers. This guy no longer thinks he owns the place.
– The classic version of Plane of Mischief has been repopulated by many inhabitants that had previously gone missing.
– Nortlav the Scalekeeper can be found in the Hole once Velious has been unlocked. He uses the Velious version of Mitigation of the Mighty.
– Buffed bosses that use spells now have an aura that applies the Presence of the Mighty effect. Presence of the Mighty increases damage from spells. The damage increase from their spells should roughly match the increase from their melee max hit.
– All buffed bosses will regenerate less health in combat.
– Velious era buffed bosses will mitigate less incoming damage.
– The object from Skyshrine that leads to Cobalt Scar will now display a message if you attempt to use it and do not have the key.

*** Collections ***

– Moved an inaccessible collection location in Fate Rewards the Bold.

*** Miscellaneous ***

– Hot Zones now randomly rotate between three possible zones for each level range and are currently set to rotate every 3 months.  Talk to Franklin Teek in the Plane of Knowledge to find your Hot Zone and earn bonus loot and experience!
– A number of adjustments have been made to the Alcohol Tolerance skill:
– – A higher Alcohol Tolerance skill will now have a bigger impact on how intoxicating a drink will be.
– – A higher Alcohol Tolerance skill will now result in a quicker recovery from the effects of intoxicating drinks or spells.
– – Alcoholic drinks now have varying degrees of potency that can be viewed when inspecting an item.
– In the spirit of the anniversary we’ve applied a bit of polish to the merchant/banker theme music.
– Group chat, raid chat, and fellowship chat messages are now queued for display while zoning similar to tell messages and guild chat.
– Reduced the rate that NPCs hit by melee combat will emit sound.
– Adjusted the animation system so that attack animations take priority over taking damage animations.
– Improved the message displayed to group and raid leaders when a member of their party requests an instance while a member of that party already belongs to an instance.
– Corrected an issue where buffs that have an endurance upkeep cost but are not a combat ability would not fade when the caster ran out of endurance.
– Many Luclin zones will spin up new instanced versions when they are populated by enough adventurers.
– Velious zones with open raids no longer have a maximum player limitation.
– Temple of Veeshan will no longer load balance.
– Removed the embedded Legends of Norrath (LoN) client from the EverQuest client.  If you wish to continue playing LoN, please download and use the standalone client available at www.legendsofnorrath.com.
– Corrected an issue that prevented the Plane of Knowledge book in Blightfire Moors from showing up on the find list.
– Made a number of adjustments to the classic Dracoliche model to improve targeting and melee combat with these NPCs.
– Addressed an issue that was causing some parts of the Hero’s Forge Tipsy Gnomework armor sets to not properly appear.

*** UI ***

– The AA window now has a sort-able timer column.
– There is a new setting in the raid options window for the raid leader that, when checked, will automatically fill people into groups.
– You can now save over existing hot button sets, spell sets, and extended target sets by selecting them in the save menu.
– – This new menu works like load and delete.
– – The new save menu has an option ‘Add New Set’, which works as before.
– Fixed a graphical UI bug which would happen when you have multiples of the same illusion in your key ring and one is removed.
– Made room for heroic stats to show numbers greater than 999.
– Added a Collected / Not Collected status on collectible items. This will show as Not Collected if any of your achievements can be incremented or completed by collecting the item.
– The Parcels tab will now properly sort chronologically instead of alphabetically when sorting by Sent date.
– Alerts associated to events will now disappear when the event has ended.
– Cleaned up some missed references to EQ Players when support was removed for it.
– Converted the options window to have its General tab layout its elements using a vertical layout box to ease adding / removing options.
– Added an option called ‘Auto Show Rewards’ that will control whether or not the rewards window will appear when you’ve been granted a reward or when logging in with pending quest rewards. Please note that if you have pending rewards over the cap, it will still show the rewards window regardless of the setting.
– Added a ‘Clear Note’ button to the Parcels window.
– Added an option to the ‘General’ tab to control whether or not to randomize the selection of the loading screen music.  The default setting is randomized.

– Changed –

EQUI.xml
EQUI_AAWindow.xml
EQUI_Inventory.xml
EQUI_ItemDisplay.xml
EQUI_MerchantWnd.xml
EQUI_OptionsWindow.xml
EQUI_RaidOptionsWindow.xml
EQUI_TCGStartupWnd.xml
EQUI_TCGWnd.xml

*** Previously Updated ***

– Corrected Shield of the Dark Waters to function as a shield.
– Corrected the descriptions for collection items found in Crypt of Sul to properly match their achievement names.
– Enchanter – The icon for Dichotomic Reinforcement has been changed to help differentiate it from other  spell effects.
– Shadowknight – Corrected a timer conflict with Mindless Hatred and Reaver’s Bargain.
– Captain Krasnok (Raid) – Corrected an issue that would prevent you from entering Krasnok’s chambers after he is defeated.
– Captain Krasnok (Raid) – Corrected an issue where Krasnok would not reset properly after defeating unworthy raiding parties.
– We have reduced the time needed to gather the keys to Veeshan’s Peak in the following ways:
– – Reduced the respawn timer on the Top Shard of the Jarsath Medallion by half.
– – An ancient Jarsath is now about three times as likely to spawn rather than a placeholder.
– – The bloodgill marauder will respawn twice as fast.
– – Verix Kylox’s Remains is now almost twice as likely to spawn rather than a placeholder.
– – The shard of the Kylong medallion that spawns in the Kaesora library will respawn twice as fast.
– – The rotting skeleton has had its chance to spawn instead of a placeholder slightly increased.
– – The pained soul has had its chance to spawn instead of a placeholder slightly increased.
– The broadcasts for the tipsy gnome run that occur before midnight PST will now occur on the correct days.
– Corrected the issue that prevented the Agent of Change from functioning properly in /pick zones.
– Blumblum Swigwater can now be found in Cobalt Scar.
– Yelinak can now be found in Skyshrine.
– Narandi will now spawn correctly at the end of the 10th Ring War in Great Divide.

– The EverQuest Team

A Good Article on Pantheon

pantheon-in-game-sm-9Just read a good article about Pantheon and wanted to share:

A Glimpse into the Pantheon Development Process at Visionary Realms

http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/a-glimpse-into-the-pantheon-development-process-at-visionary-realms/

Pantheon: The Rise of the Fallen

pantheon-in-game-sm-9As I had stated previously, I am seriously looking at alternatives to EverQuest.  Pantheon is in the development stage and I liked what I saw and became a backer.  Recently they have been showing the game off to the MMORPG world and here is a link to what MMORPG.COM thought.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/1006/feature/10675/Pantheon-Rise-of-the-Fallen-GDC-2016-Hands-On-Preview-of-Brad-McQuaids-Magnum-Opus.html

I am looking forward to this game and more news on it.

Level 105 and it’s the Same Old Same Old

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So Qindaar has been at this game for Seventeen years.  He has met a lot of people, enjoyed the guilds he has been in and enjoyed the world that Sony created.  Daybreak games owns the rights to EverQuest now and all its associated games.  I don’t play the others although I do have accounts with them.  Qindaar is 35% into level 105, the cap, all there is now is achievement points to get, but its the same old stuff day after day.  The game needs a fresh new idea.  I do not see how Daybreak can maintain the game much longer without breathing some new life into it, something more rewarding than kill or be killed for experience.  EverQuest and Qindaar may be coming to an end sooner than later.  Come on Daybreak, make this a lasting legacy and breath some new life into it.