Patch Message 07/10/03

Drolgin Steingrinder · Post by **Drolgin Steingrinder** » July 10, 2003, 8:36 am

July 10, 2003
------------------------------

** Information Gathering **

You will soon notice a new dialogue box appear when you log in (it appears after logging in three times to prevent spam for new players). We are asking you to let us gather a bit of information about your computer that will help us build the future of EverQuest.

The important thing here is that you can say no and we won't gather any information.

If you do accept, we'll gather CPU, RAM and video card information to help us evaluate and improve EverQuest. If you agree and then change your mind later, you can disable the feature under the Options tab (Alt-O) and then the General tab in game.

So when you see the new dialogue box appear, please read it over carefully and click whichever answer you feel most comfortable with.

Thanks.

** Zones **

- Droga and Nurga moving to Live servers - These zones were revamped and sent to Legends, and now they are moving to the Live servers. This is a great chance to revisit these zones.

- Chardok - Treachery and lies are not uncommon in the court of the Overking. But there are some unusual rumors being told by some unusual adventurers. Some say that there is strife within the council of the Overking, and that heroes may find adventure there while that strife lasts. OOC: We're introducing a new zone and a new zone type. The Halls of Betrayal is a "pocket zone", and new type of zone for EverQuest. It will exist for a short time to be part of the storyline, and then will be gone. So if you're going to see it, now is the time.

- Grieg's End revamp going to Legends - The redesign includes new encounters, items, traps, and events that make the zone a challenge for the experience group, with plenty of events for a raid group.

- Plane of Earth B - we have removed the Call of the Hero restrictions in this zone.

- Rallos Zek - the Warlord will now kick anyone out of the zone that is on his hate list and is not in a valid raid greater then 20 people in size. This should prevent single players being able to attack him and grief other players who are making a valid attempt at him. This is in addition to the previous limitations of having only one raid allowed to attack him at any given time.

- Increased Experience - We have increased the experience modifier in the Tower of Solusek Ro, Halls of Honor, The Temple of Marr, and the Lair of Terris Thule.

- Bastion of Thunder - The mini-bosses in Bastion of Thunder no longer spawn immediately after the zone comes up.

** Tradeskills **

- Tradeskill chance of failures changed - The higher your skill is over the trivial of the combine, the less likely you are to fail with a combine. This is a reduction on the chance to always fail.

- Stackable - Ice Burrower Silk, Pie Tins and Muffin Tins are now stackable.

** Spells **

- New Imbue, Enchant, and Thicken spells - New Imbue, Enchant, and Thicken spells have been added that create five magical items rather than just one. These spells require five components and take longer to cast and use more mana.

- Damage Over Time Spell Foci - Extended Affliction has been changed to Burning Affliction, which causes DoT spells to do more damage instead of having a longer duration.

- Enthrall spells - Enthrall spells will not un-stun the target when they wear off if there are other enthrall spells on that target. Also, when an enthrall spell breaks due to damage it will now remove all Enthrall spells, not just the first one it finds.

- Ferocity - We have removed the component requirement for Ferocity.

- Kindle - We have added a new Magician spell to the game called Kindle.

- Force of Akera - We have added a new Paladin spell to the game called Force of Akera.

- Burnout V - this spell should now stack with the Shielding line of spells.

- New Spell levels for Clarity line - Boon of the Clear Mind is now a level 44 spell, Clarity II is now a level 52 spell and Gift of Pure Thought is now level 56.

- Area of Effect spells - AoE spells that do not affect your group in PvP no longer affect your Raid in PvP either.

- Direct Damage spell messages - Striking the killing blow with a direct damage spell will no longer show a double cast on the spell message.

- Target Group Buff - TGB will no longer work with any illusions.

- Illusion - With Permanent Illusion, Levitation effects will no longer be stripped when zoning and gnome enchanters with a large-size illusion will no longer return to gnome size after zoning. In general, characters that are under the effect of a size-changing illusion should be seen properly by everyone.

- Song Spam - Bards should see less spam when they hit low level PCs with their high level songs.

- Treeform - This spell should now work in Luclin outdoor zones.

- Draught of Lightning - We have added a new Wizard spell to the game called Draught of Lightning.

** Items **

- Bards Using Components - Bards using right-click items with a casting time greater than 0 will now expend any required components.

- Ornate Armor Molds - These molds are more readily available.

- Spellshield - Spellshield items now reduces spell damage by a percentage rather than a fixed amount.

- Strikethrough and Stun Resist - You will now receive a message when Strikethrough and Stun Resist work.

** Quests **

- Newbie Quests - Erudites, Trolls, Ogres and Barbarians now have quests in their newbie areas similar to those implemented for all other races. This completes the updated newbie quests for all races.

- Seana and Stefan Marsinger - These two will be clearer when giving their quest requests, and will return them if you hand them to the wrong Marsinger.

- Bors Wharhammer - He will be checking level instead of flags as a requirement for his quests to bring him in-line with the flag removals for the lower tier planes.

** Alternate Advancement **

- Frenzied Burnout - this ability has been changed to better stack with the Burnout spells. The attack speed portion of the spell has been reduced in percentage (it hastes the pet much less), but changed to a "bard" haste which will stack with Burnout V. The strength bonus has also been decreased but made to stack with that of Burnout V.

** Skills **

- Sneak - Sneak will now work under water.

- Instill Doubt - Instill Doubt will now work if the Monk is using his other skills. Previously, use of other skills such as a kick would cause Instill Doubt to fail.

** Interface **

- Camera - We have added the ability to bind cameras to keys. This will allow players to hit one key to switch to a desired camera rather than having to cycle through the F9 camera chain. This can be changed in the Options window (Alt-O) under the Keyboard tab (select "camera" from the list).

- Auto-inventory - Items right-clicked off your corpse will now be place into your inventory in the correct order.

- Spell Favorites - Creating a spell favorite name that matches a name that already exists will cause the new favorite to be saved over the old (whereas before it would create a second list with the same name).

- Random name generator - Asking for a name should no longer result in a name that will be rejected due to duplication. Note: names can still be rejected by GM's.

- Bow Graphics - Bows that have been autoequipped will now display a graphic.

- Raids - The creation of a group will now work from inside a raid.

- New Filters - We've added a Melee Warnings filter. It will filter out "cannot see your target" and "cannot hit them from here" messages, along with other such melee warnings.

- Spell category lists - We moved a few of the Necromancer spells around on the category lists (from right-clicking spell gems) to make more sense.

** Miscellaneous **

- Updated character creation descriptions - Right-clicking the class, race or statistic buttons while in the character creation screen will display a detailed explanation of the item clicked.

- Clicking on corpses - Right-clicking on a PC corpse other than your own will no longer make a character visible.

- Mounts - Fixed a bug with mounts showing up with incorrect Luclin model settings. Mounts should now only show up when the Luclin models for the character race of the rider AND mounts/elementals are both on.

Also, as a heads up to players that have created their own user interfaces for EverQuest, these are the interface files that we have changed:

EQUI_Optionswnd.xml
EQUI.xml
EQUI_charactercreate.xml
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Zygar_ Cthulhukin · Post by **Zygar_ Cthulhukin** » July 10, 2003, 10:15 am

- Sneak - Sneak will now work under water.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Nneena · Post by **Nneena** » July 10, 2003, 10:43 am

Zygar_ Cthulhukin wrote:
- Sneak - Sneak will now work under water.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Best patch EVER!

Pahreyia · Post by **Pahreyia** » July 10, 2003, 11:52 am

Sneak - Sneak will now work under water.

About fawking time.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » July 10, 2003, 12:03 pm

We're introducing a new zone and a new zone type. The Halls of Betrayal is a "pocket zone", and new type of zone for EverQuest. It will exist for a short time to be part of the storyline, and then will be gone. So if you're going to see it, now is the time.

Hmm sounds interesting. Will have to investigate!

Don't know where it is though... Hmm! If it's in the Royals area that's a bit of a waste unless they get rid of the locked door.

** Information Gathering **

Ha ha.. How about no.

- Increased Experience - We have increased the experience modifier in the Tower of Solusek Ro, Halls of Honor, The Temple of Marr, and the Lair of Terris Thule.

Interesting. How about adding a zoneout in Sol Ro, eh?

- Treeform - This spell should now work in Luclin outdoor zones.

Yay?

- Ornate Armor Molds - These molds are more readily available.

I don't think I've seen any ornate other than BPs and legs. Although I'm sure it exists!

- Spellshield - Spellshield items now reduces spell damage by a percentage rather than a fixed amount.

Smells like a nerf to me.

Instill Doubt - Instill Doubt will now work if the Monk is using his other skills.

Best patch ever!

- Camera - We have added the ability to bind cameras to keys.

Finally. The ability to remove some from the cycle would be even better.

- Raids - The creation of a group will now work from inside a raid.

Thanks, Mr Bartender.

- Mounts - Fixed a bug with mounts showing up with incorrect Luclin model settings. Mounts should now only show up when the Luclin models for the character race of the rider AND mounts/elementals are both on.

Awww.. I was starting to like seeing mounts. They were good to proc avatar or gate hammer on.

Kudo · Post by **Kudo** » July 10, 2003, 12:03 pm

Ornate Armor Molds - These molds are more readily available.

Hmmm!

Ravvenn · Post by **Ravvenn** » July 10, 2003, 12:22 pm

Aslanna wrote:

- Spellshield - Spellshield items now reduces spell damage by a percentage rather than a fixed amount.

I will guess that you don't have a SS item

If you did, you would be happy.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » July 10, 2003, 12:34 pm

i am betting neither raid nor channels work at all tonight

Kithyen · Post by **Kithyen** » July 10, 2003, 1:14 pm

- New Spell levels for Clarity line - Boon of the Clear Mind is now a level 44 spell, Clarity II is now a level 52 spell and Gift of Pure Thought is now level 56.

It's about damn time. I always thought it ridiculus that group C2 was given a level before KEI. However, I just turned 56 so that could be the true reason I'm gay for this part of the patch.

Llaffer · Post by **Llaffer** » July 10, 2003, 1:37 pm

Kithyen wrote:
- New Spell levels for Clarity line - Boon of the Clear Mind is now a level 44 spell, Clarity II is now a level 52 spell and Gift of Pure Thought is now level 56.
It's about damn time. I always thought it ridiculus that group C2 was given a level before KEI. However, I just turned 56 so that could be the true reason I'm gay for this part of the patch.

I too am happy about this. I'm 57 and can now group C2 my raids instead of individually casting it. /cheer!

Dexail · Post by **Dexail** » July 10, 2003, 1:40 pm

Zygar_ Cthulhukin wrote:
- Sneak - Sneak will now work under water.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

sweet, it only took me 3 years to learn to sneak underwater!

Drolgin Steingrinder · Post by **Drolgin Steingrinder** » July 10, 2003, 2:19 pm

Patch blues, so far:

1)
It seems that in an attempt to add functionality (the use of special characters, the use of the alt gr key), SoE fucked up and EQ now no longer recognizes the keyboard.txt file, meaning that the keyboard layout in game reverts to that of windows on the puter.

This may not seem like much, but to a Euro player who has played with one keyboard setup for 4 years, it's pretty fucking frustrating to suddenly find out that keys like ', :, /, ? and ; aren't where you thought they were. And certain other keys are totally gone (they took away my ~tilde >< ).

2)
The Autorun trick where you would be pushing your move forward key, then hitting a key to open the chat bar no longer works, the only way of autorunning is using the autorun key.

More to come, I'm sure...

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » July 10, 2003, 2:37 pm

Drolgin Steingrinder wrote: 1)
It seems that in an attempt to add functionality (the use of special characters, the use of the alt gr key), SoE fucked up and EQ now no longer recognizes the keyboard.txt file, meaning that the keyboard layout in game reverts to that of windows on the puter.

This may not seem like much, but to a Euro player who has played with one keyboard setup for 4 years, it's pretty fucking frustrating to suddenly find out that keys like ', :, /, ? and ; aren't where you thought they were. And certain other keys are totally gone (they took away my ~tilde >< ).

Not that im sympathetic to euros

but since my hotkeys and spell casting keys swapped somehow i've got to whine here! Alt-number switches hotkey pads now and Shift-Number casts spells. Anyone else? May just be my UI.

Drolgin Steingrinder · Post by **Drolgin Steingrinder** » July 10, 2003, 3:25 pm

Patch day blues, #3:

The new dot focus, burning affliction seems to make spells more prone to being partially resisted. Instead of a spell hitting for full without the focus, the spell will now hit for more than normal one tick, significantly less the next tick etc etc.

Ashur · Post by **Ashur** » July 10, 2003, 4:34 pm

Instead of a spell hitting for full without the focus, the spell will now hit for more than normal one tick, significantly less the next tick etc etc.

Total bullshit if true. DOTs already have a chance to be resisted when they are cast, once they stick they should do exactly what they are supposed to (including additional damage if a Focus Item so merits). If this is true it makes DOTs into a rain where each time damage is inflicted the afflicted target gets a resist check again.

Unacceptable. Fix it or change the Focus back to Extended Affliction IV. I'll take longer DOTs rather than less damage.

Chidoro · Post by **Chidoro** » July 11, 2003, 10:23 am

Any word on the supposed Ornate drop increase? Noticable or fos?

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » July 11, 2003, 11:01 am

Kithyen wrote:
- New Spell levels for Clarity line - Boon of the Clear Mind is now a level 44 spell, Clarity II is now a level 52 spell and Gift of Pure Thought is now level 56.
It's about damn time. I always thought it ridiculus that group C2 was given a level before KEI. However, I just turned 56 so that could be the true reason I'm gay for this part of the patch.

well maybe cause group C2 came out a year before KEI existed

Akaran_D · Post by **Akaran_D** » July 11, 2003, 11:01 am

Word on the chat last night was that it was dropping too much, and this patch was to fix it.

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » July 11, 2003, 3:59 pm

They bumped Koro's hp up, and made his AE(s) nastier with the patch too.

150mana/tic, 300hp/tic, 42 curse counters + another DoT with 50% slow and damage components.

Guess they didn't want people single groupng him anymore.

Vor beat me to it, group C2 was the best you could get from RoK-SoL.

Vetiria · Post by **Vetiria** » July 11, 2003, 4:08 pm

Is Koro the dragon boss of LoY?

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » July 11, 2003, 5:13 pm

Vetiria wrote:Is Koro the dragon boss of LoY?

Korocust. Chardok B critter.

150mana/tic, 300hp/tic, 42 curse counters + another DoT with 50% slow and damage components.

SOE can take their fucking AE mana-draining bullshit and shove it. His loot was pretty damn nice for 1 group but now I think they pushed him on the other side of Risk vs Reward.

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » July 11, 2003, 8:39 pm

Considering in one killing he dropped FT2 boots with ID4 focus, a FT3/regen3 ring, and a 36% haste neck item, buffing him a bit doesn't seem too out of line. It was either that or nerf the shit out of his drops I'd think.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » July 12, 2003, 1:58 am

a) I know what he drops
b) I never said he didn't need buffing.
c) I really really hate mana drain ae.