The Spirit Realm

Here's a sneak peek at Wednesday's Game Update Notes. As always, please remember that these notes are not final until the update has been completed and the servers are re-opened on the day of the update... or unless its raining on a Tuesday, if the dog barks or the eagle flies at midnight, one if by land; two if by sea, or simply if the stars are aligned. They simply are not final yet! Got it? Good!

Most of these changes have been available for view on the test server for a while now.


*** Highlights ***

- A series of quests have been created within and around the Secrets of Faydwer expansion. See Fenden Helter in the Ladies of the Light tower for more information. These tasks include various Secrets of Faydwer faction rewards as well as a new currency that can be used to purchase items from Fenden.

- The spell information window has been changed. For buffs that are on you or your pet, you will be able to see the name of the caster, the full duration of the spell, the level required to cast the spell, the skill required to cast the spell, the mana cost of the spell, and the spell description. Non existing buff based spells will display the total duration of the spell in a new format, hours, minutes, and seconds.

- New visual indicators have been added to the buff window icons, and short duration buff window icons. Additionally, the spell counter information has been moved to facilitate the visual display of the buff timer on the respective buff icon. There have been four pieces of visual information added to the buff icons. This includes a visual indicator to show each of four possible pieces of information. The new pieces of information are Buff Timer, Buff Counters, Song Timer, and Song Counters.

- With the description changes added, all relevant counter information for BARD songs, all short duration effects, and regular buffs in either the spell window buff icon or short duration buff icon respectively will also be displayed.

- The buff icon will now display the time remaining in the form of hours (h), minutes (m), or seconds (s) whichever is greater. This significantly reduces the amount physical space used on the icon to print out the remaining time, in effect showing more of the buff or short duration buff icon to the print out the remaining time, in effect showing more of the buff or short duration buff icon to the player.

- Several NPCS in the Barren Coast, The Buried Sea, Attiki, Katta Castrum, and Goru'kar Mesa have been lowered in difficulty to help facilitate easier soloing for many players. These NPCs will have a special consider message to indicate they are easier than your average NPC.


*** Returning Players ***

- If you're returning to the game following a break, be sure to visit the Scholars in the northeast portion of the Plane of Knowledge. They can help guide you through the many changes to the land of Norrath over the years.


*** Items ***

- Fixed some typographical errors in a few instruction manuals.
- Ornament Mutation Tools are now available for purchase from Magus Alaria in the Guild Lobby. They can be used to permanently change Ornament items into single use Ornamentation containers.
- Secrets of Faydwer monk armor will now have the special monk appearance. Armor that monks share with other classes was unchanged.
- Added Battlerager's Strength to SoF Raid Tier 3 and 4 Berserker Class Gloves.
- Changed the colors on the Bridles of the Commanded and Ferocious Ferans to match the image on their cards.


*** Quests & Events ***

- A series of quests have been created within and around the Secrets of Faydwer expansion. See Fenden Helter in the Ladies of the Light tower for more information. These tasks include various Secrets of Faydwer faction rewards as well as a new currency that can be used to purchase items from Fenden.
- The bears in Wulfnor the Gladiator's event in Frostcrypt will once again look like bears.
- Eron in the Dragonscale Hills has figured a slightly better method for making spools of energized brownie hair. You can now make it if the denizens of the zone are nearby. It still requires that you be by the specific energy charge within the main power room, and not any of the auxiliary power rooms. Be aware that being in the energy charge is painful and not compatible with invisibility or stealth. This new method will also not work if you are lying down. You will not need to go back to him to get the new method, as he has communicated it to everyone.


*** NPC ***

- Brinda's assistant, Findlewill, has returned from a restful vacation and can now be found in the Mansion.
- Several golems have had their body type switched to Construct.
- Fixed several minor text errors on various NPCs.
- Several NPCS in the Barren Coast, The Buried Sea, Attiki, Katta Castrum, and Goru'kar Mesa have been lowered in difficulty to help facilitate easier soloing for many players. These NPCs will have a special consider message to indicate they are easier than your average NPC.


*** Spells ***

- Made a change to all spells and abilities that use Fade-like functionality to no longer kill your pets, auras and familiars when the Fade-like ability is used.
- Fixed an issue causing negative focus effects to not function correctly (sorry!)
- With the changes made for displaying the spell decriptions, there may be some NPC spells that display incorrect data. We will be adjusting these descriptions at a later time. The description shoud not affect gameplay.
- Paladin spell line Ward of Tunare and druid spell line Skin of the Reptitle have been adjusted.
- Upon death, Divine Arbitration should no longer split the influence to the group members.
- Shaman spell Ancestral Intervention and the druid spell Survival of the Fittest should be able to produce a crit again.


*** Tradeskills ***

- NPC pricing of powersources have been altered.


*** Tasks ***

- Fixed one of the chests in the Uncovered Treasure task that was spawning under the world.
- Fixed various issues in the new Secrets of Faydwer tasks that start with Fenden Helter in Dragonscale Hills.


*** AA ***

- Changes have been made to the Harm Touch ability for Shadow Knights. The Ranks of Harm Touch that are purchased via AA points (and not automatically granted) will now have an immediate amount of damage as well as a Damage Over Time component. The Damage Over Time component is in addition to the damage that Harm Touch previously did. The Damage Over Time will scale along with the maximum value of the instant damage for each rank.
- Increased the duration of Pact of the Wurine AA.
- A number of AA lines that had a previously meaningless recast delay have been changed to have no recast delay. This is to address larger-than-intended returns on Heal Amount mods being applied due to how the calculations for those spells work. The AA lines changed include: Act of Valor, Hand of Piety, Lay on Hands, Mend Companion, Rejuvenate Companion, Replenish Companion, and Touch of the Divine.


*** Zones ***

- We've adjusted the fog settings in all zones to allow for better visibility.
- Adjusted pathing around the Goblin huts in the Buried Sea.


*** Miscellaneous ***

- More fixes for corpse looting problems when using /hidecorpse looted.
- Added the Background FPS slider to the Options->Display window. Allows setting the frame rate for the EQ window when it is not the foreground window. Sliding all the way to the left (the default) will use "Min. CPU" mode. Increasing this above "Min. CPU" can improve auto-follow behavior when the client is not in the foreground.
- 'alpha' and 'ralpha' added to /tracksort command.
- Added new SoF stats to the bazaar search options.
- Fixed a problem causing a client disconnect when consuming or using the last item in a stack.
- Made an optimization that will slightly improve lag in loping plains. This is not a full fix.
- Changed the way CPU affinity assignment works so that when you have multiple clients running and exit one and restart it, you still get correct distribution of CPU assignment. Previously, this could cause both clients to be assigned to the same CPU.


*** User interface ***

- Moved the Max FPS and Max background FPS sliders to the advanced display options window.
- The spell information window has been changed. For buffs that are on you or your pet, you will be able to see the name of the caster, the full duration of the spell, the level required to cast the spell, the skill required to cast the spell, the mana cost of the spell, and the spell description. Non existing buff based spells will display the total duration of the spell in a new format, hours, minutes, and seconds.
- New visual indicators have been added to the buff window icons, and short duration buff window icons. Additionally, the spell counter information has been moved to facilitate the visual display of the buff timer on the respective buff icon. There have been four pieces of visual information added to the buff icons. This includes a visual indicator to show each of four possible pieces of information. The new pieces of information are Buff Timer, Buff Counters, Song Timer, and Song Counters.
- With the description changes added, all relevant counter information for BARD songs, all short duration effects, and regular buffs in either the spell window buff icon or short duration buff icon respectively will also be displayed.
- The buff icon will now display the time remaining in the form of hours (h), minutes (m), or seconds (s) whichever is greater. This significantly reduces the amount physical space used on the icon to print out the remaining time, in effect showing more of the buff or short duration buff icon to the print out the remaining time, in effect showing more of the buff or short duration buff icon to the player.

- Changed -

EQUI_AdvancedDisplayOptionsWnd.xml
EQUI_OptionsWindow.xml




- The EverQuest Team

Woah, huge patch with lots of good things!

Hell yeah. I'm also very much looking forward to the counter information being on the spell icon, although I suspect I will have to do away with my beloved half-size buff and effect icons.

Shaman spell Ancestral Intervention and the druid spell Survival of the Fittest should be able to produce a crit again.


I like that

Doh

Getting AI crits back will certainly be a good thing.

The two items I found most interesting, though, were the quests making SoF faction less burdensome, and the melee-soloable mobs. I am thinking these will add to playability for many people of many classes.

I'm still looking forward to the task system. Although, I'm going to stay away till like 2AM or something when *maybe* it wont be as crowded.

Great patch, but I'm kind of ambivalent about the new faction tasks. After doing them a few times, even though I know they're the best way to make progress, and they're pretty simple for even solo play... I'm so bloody sick of factioning, it's hard to get motivated to log in.

Actually most of the faction in this expansion can be gained "naturally" as you play. The only real exception to that was Rebel Brownies faction, which they have since fixed. If you are working on the face aug, the purity aug, the blesed celestine faycite aug, and the cursed celestine faycite aug then odds are you'll have most or all of your faction done without ever having to "grind".

On the other hand, if you aren't working on these augs then yeah its a total grind-fest -- in which case, these new quests should help.

WoW is a grind with a pretty coat of paint on it.

And honestly, except for Ancestral Intervention and it's druid counterpart, I can't think of a single vendor spell I would view as having content balanced around it. In fact, the only reason I make an exception for AI and SotF is because the rank1s drop in such a stupid place. Which doesn't really have anything to do with the faction grind to get rank 2, it's just a screwup in the placement of the rank1.

AI is exactly what I'm talking about, so thanks for making my point.

However, you failed to mention Langour, which is a major part of the shaman spell list, and unless you did the previous faction grind to obtain lassitude, is still a requirement to be up to par in SoF. Spell-drop-placement-screwups aside, you still need to faction grind to obtain the spell.

As for grinding, we obviously have different definitions of the word (or you simply hate WoW and can't see past that to the point I was making), so I'm content to drop that one.

Does anyone know if the currency earned while doing these new tasks are tradeable?

It's not tradeable, but some of hte items you can buy are.

Glad to hear that, thx.

Bard auras no longer fading when you hit FM = teh win. Might actually be able to unmem my aura now and again.