Patch Message

Drolgin Steingrinder · October 16, 2002, 7:54 am

October 16, 2002 4:30 am
------------------------------

(Please note: This patch message has been edited since its 3:00 am release. Changed lines are marked with a '#'.)

** Odd New Objects in the Land **

Folks across Norrath and on Luclin have reported seeing odd new objects in various locations. They appear to be some sort of magical portal, though local spell casters have yet to discover how they arrived or exactly what their purpose is. They have determined, however, that these objects are slowly building in power. Attempting to use these portals at this time can have unexpected results. Experts recommend that adventurers avoid these objects until they know more. For more information on these odd devices, visit http://www.planesofpower.com

** Important Notice Regarding Alternate Advancement Reimbursement **

Due to the changes made to Manaburn, Rods of Mystical Transvergence and a previous change to Innate Regeneration, we are reimbursing several Alternate Advancement (AA) abilities.

Once you log in today, if you have any of these abilities, please check your AA window immediately! If you have more than 30 unspent points, IT IS VERY IMPORTANT that you make certain that your character has 30 or fewer AA points before The Planes of Power launches on October 21st! The return of these AA points may put your total number of unspent points over the 30 point maximum. Your pool will be reduced to 30 the first time you log in after the launch of Planes of Power on October 21st.

We will be refunding all Alternate Advancement points in the following abilities:

Innate Regeneration
Manaburn
Mental Clarity
Quick Summoning

Refunded Alternate Advancement points may be spent in any way you choose. None of these abilities is being removed, and of them only Manaburn is changing.

NOTE: Cannibalization, Gather Mana, and Mind and Body Rejuvenation will not function if you do not have the necessary prerequisite, Mental Clarity 3.

** Alternate Advancement **

# Mana Burn will only land any given target only once every minute. If a cast of Mana Burn is unable to land, the timer will not be used.
# Spell Casting Mastery once again works in the same manner that it did before the previous patch
- Spell Casting Fury and Soul Abrasion will now stack
- Illusion Tree and Minor Illusion will no longer be affected by Permanent Illusion
- Fixed Purify Soul. It should now cure poison, disease, damage over time spells as initially intended
- Reduced the reuse timer on Divine Resurrection from 72 hours to 36 hours
- Reduced the reuse timer on Mend Companion from 144 minutes to 36 minutes
- Reduced the reuse timer of Warcry from 72 minutes to 36 minutes. Increased its duration from 5 seconds per rank of the ability to 10 seconds per rank of the ability

** Defensive Changes **

- Decreased Monks' ability to mitigate damage (please see the Developer's Update on http://www.everquestlive.com for more details)
- Improved the ability of Paladins, Shadowknights, Warriors and Bards to mitigate damage in some situations
- Upgraded Warrior dodge cap to 190
- Upgraded Paladin, Shadowknight and Bard dodge cap to 170
- Upgraded Ranger and Beastlord dodge to 170 and defense to 240

** Spells **

- Complete Healing will now heal a maximum of 7,500 hit points
- The Rod of Mystical Transvergence spell has been altered. The spell has been renamed to "Mass Mystical Transvergence". When cast, this spell summons a Rod of Mystical Transvergence for everyone within 300 feet. This rod is no drop and contains 3 charges of Mystical Transvergence. Each charge restores 360 mana at the cost of 450 health. A player may only use a charge from the rod once every 5 minutes.
- Additionally, there is a new "Rod of Mystical Transvergence" spell for sale in the Bazaar. This is a single target spell that summons a rod with 3 charges of Mystical Transvergence. This rod has the same abilities and restrictions listed above. This spell is a targeted summon that costs 400 points of mana to cast.
- Changed the way Focus stacks with other strength and dexterity buffs
- Circle of Seasons will overwrite Resist Cold
- Dance of the Blade should now stack with McVaxius's Rousing Rondo
- Harness of Spirit and Rage should now stack properly

- Fufil's Curtailing Chant should now stack with Occlusion of Sound
- Protection of the Glades should now overwrite Blessed Armor of the Risen
- Blessed Armor of the Risen should now stack with Lunar Whispers
- Fixed a bug that was causing some applications of spells and ranged attacks from great distance to go unnoticed by NPCs
- Contact Innates (such as Boon of the Garou) should now be working for bards
- Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause helmets and sometimes hair to disappear after an illusion was cast
- Bard songs should now blink on recipients other than the bard

## Encounters ##

Due to the number of Luclin encounters requiring original Rods of Transvergence to be defeated by a reasonably sized force, a number of those encounters have been be re-tuned to shorten their duration.

** Interface **

- New Alarm feature added. When you first log in you will see a pop up asking if you wish to set an alarm and if so for how long. There is also an option to choose to never see that pop up again. If you choose this option you will need to set ShowAlarmWindow=TRUE in your eqclient.ini file in order to see the pop up again. The alarm will trigger after the time you set has elapsed, no matter what character you are playing on whatever server, up until the moment you log out.
- /played now displays how long you have been playing this session and, if an alarm has been set, how long until that alarm sounds.
- /pet sit down should now work on charmed NPCs
- Added 3 new context menu options for chat windows: Reply To, Tell a friend, Tell a Raidmember (for future use). Each of which has a submenu containing the list of Reply targets, Friends, or Raidmembers, as appropriate. Clicking on the player's name will place "/tell " on the chat entry line, and move the focus there, closing the menu.
- Changed /loadskin. It now brings up a window that will allow you to select a skin from a list, determine whether to use the INI or not, then load the skin.

** Beastlords **

In order to allow us to better tune warders, we have made changes to the way that these pets work. Previously a Beastlord would summon a pet using an ability button and then use level-appropriate buff spells to increase the pet's level. Because of the way this mechanic works, it was very difficult to tune these pets. Hopefully this will have the side benefit of making things a little easier on Beastlords by reducing the number of steps required to cast the pet.

Beastlords will now summon their pets using spells rather than an ability. The series of spells that was previously used to buff the pets will now simply summon the appropriate pet.

Unfortunately, these pets will no longer zone with the Beastlord, and will need to be resummoned (instead of rebuffed) after zoning.

We have made some adjustments to these pets already.

- Added the casting time reduction that is already in place for Paladins, Rangers and Shadowknights to Beastlords

** Items **

- Merchants now highly value the Staff of Forbidden Rites and will only sell them at an extremely high price.
- Dance of the Blade should once again stack with Nature's Melody and Song of the Deep Seas

** Trade Skills **

- Made it slightly easier to get skill increases while doing Tailoring, Tinkering, Smithing, Baking, Brewing and Alchemy. Made it slightly more difficult to get skill increases with Pottery and Fletching

** Miscellaneous **

# Fixed an issue that was causing zones to crash in some circumstances
# Fixed an issue that was causing merchants to behave erratically while handling certain quantities of items
- Player Character corpses with no items will decay in 3 real life hours, not 7 days
- Fixed a bug that was causing Lay Hands to not heal enough damage
- Zoning while on a horse on a boat will no longer cause you to appear on the other side in the water
- /face (face picker) will no longer work while under the effects of an illusion
- Taunt should be more effective and more dependent on the level of the Taunt skill for PC's and NPC's below level 60.
- Levitation can no longer be cast on Traders in the Bazaar

** List of UI files updated or added with this patch **

UPDATED

EQUI.xml
EQUI_Animations.xml
EQUI_FriendsWnd.xml
EQUI_PetInfoWindow.xml
EQUI_OptionsWindow.xml

NEW FILES

EQUI_LoadskinWnd.xml
EQUI_AlarmWnd

** Fan Faire **

Greetings Norrathians! The portal to the San Francisco Fan Faire has been updated to include a full schedule, forums, hotel information and more. Registration is still open but the reservations are going fast. If wish to join the fun, teleport over to: http://everquest.station.sony.com/fanfaire/ to reserve your spot and see what's new! Those of you who have already registered, we'll see you on the weekend of November 8th in San Francisco!

Chidoro · Post by **Chidoro** » October 16, 2002, 8:16 am

Hmm, improved taunt ehh, could be interesting. Plate class damage mit improved as well. Pretty curious as to what "some situations" refers to.

Sargeras · Post by **Sargeras** » October 16, 2002, 8:33 am

I'll find out tonight when I'm tanking I guess

Drolgin Steingrinder · October 16, 2002, 9:42 am

Sarge so slow!

I already edited my post to include those changes, so neener

Sargeras · Post by **Sargeras** » October 16, 2002, 9:43 am

# Fixed an issue that was causing zones to crash in some circumstances

No more respawning Ssra! You know who you are!

Edit: Drolgin, I have no idea what your talking about

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » October 16, 2002, 9:50 am

Drolgin, I have no idea what your talking about

So close to a towely quote, yet so far away...

Drolgin Steingrinder · October 16, 2002, 9:55 am

i h8 gudluvin muchly

Sargeras · Post by **Sargeras** » October 16, 2002, 10:01 am

Hehe, wasn't meant to be a towelie quote.

Drolgin, don't h8. H8 leads to anger, anger leads to fear. Look at Minfetter for example. But all the ladies love the Gudluvin(tm)!

Canelek · Post by **Canelek** » October 16, 2002, 10:17 am

Taunt was increased eh? Was wondering why they ruined all those pesky taunt spells....

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » October 16, 2002, 10:36 am

Dunno, I thought they'd done a stealth change to taunt last patch. Certainly seems like my warrior has been picking up agro a lot easier since then anyway. Same with my uber chanter pet

Do I still need the copy the new/changed UI files into my custom folder? Thought I'd seen mention that wasn't needed anymore.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » October 16, 2002, 10:51 am

what did they change with innate regen?

anyways, 3 more points for everybody i guess

Made it slightly more difficult to get skill increases with Pottery and Fletching

yeah cause it is so fuckin easy to max out fletching!?!? i just stopped at 218ish cause i had dumped 10k for like 10 points.

oh and Ranger dodge cap was 170 before this patch

Drolgin Steingrinder · October 16, 2002, 10:53 am

There was a good deal of whining when Innate Regen was changed a while back - Trolls and Iksar originally got 2 pts of extra regen per point invested in IR, and they changed that to 1 for 1. So since they were refunding points for other skills that were changed, I am guessing they found they might as well refund IR too.

I wonder what will happen if you use those points on something other than a General skill and only have 3 points spent there ...

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » October 16, 2002, 11:00 am

Hmm. Beastlord pets are spell only now.

This is vary guud since before I had to summon a lot level pet(10 secs abouts) and then level buff him(16 seconds) and then any additional buffs...

My lev 60 pet now takes 11 secs to summon and they have given our pets double attack back and have retained the damage increases of the last patch.

Much luvin there.

Durew · Post by **Durew** » October 16, 2002, 11:03 am

Happy to see the changes with tradeskills, although I'm not sure why they made it easier to skill up in most of them. Pottery I'm happy they made it harder cause I'm a grandmaster and the less ppl the more money for me:) lol
I got a beastlord alt so nice to see changes there, my warder might actually put out some damage now

Wulfran · Post by **Wulfran** » October 16, 2002, 11:08 am

Idunno Drol. A listed pre-requisite for Arch skills is to spend 6 in General. You may get around that for spending on Class skills, but if you want any more Arch's I'm betting you have to respend in General...

Post by **Xouqoa** » October 16, 2002, 11:31 am

I'll let you know tonight, Drol!

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » October 16, 2002, 11:38 am

i know i'm gonna try to spend them in arch first

Ajran · Post by **Ajran** » October 16, 2002, 11:41 am

AA POINT REFUNDS EXPLAINED, OCTOBER 15, 2002
Source: EQ Live.

Refunded Alternate Advancement points may be spent in any way you choose. Does that mean the "must spend 6 points in General Abilities" limit does not apply anymore to people who already have points in Archetype and Class and are now getting their points for Innate Regeneration refunded? Can those points be spent on Arch or Class abilities? Or do we still have to put 3 more points into General Abilities?

The refund will not remove any prerequisites. So, if after the refund you do not have enough General Ability points to purchase Archetype abilities, you will not be able to purchase those abilities. You'll need to spend enough on General Ability points first.

The same applies to abilities like Cannibalization, Gather Mana, and Mind and Body Rejuvenation. If you have these abilities you will need to repurchase Mental Clarity 3 in order to use them. Mental Clarity is only being refunded because it is a requirement for Mana Burn, and those with other abilities that have this as a prerequisite probably should just repurchase Mental Clarity 3.

I just noticed that the AA points spent on Innate Regeneration will be refunded because of changes made to the AA skill. What were these changes that were made? I haven't been able to find any info anywhere.

Innate Regeneration is being refunded due to a change we made to that ability a while ago. Innate Regeneration, when it was first introduced, granted two points of regeneration per level in the ability to Trolls and Iksar. We reduced that to one point per level in the ability. We decided to allow those that purchased this ability when it was more powerful for those two races to choose to spend those points elsewhere, if they wish.

To be clear, we are refunding Mana Burn because we are changing the ability as described in the recent Development Update. We are refunding Mental Clarity 3 only because it is required to gain Mana Burn. We are refunding Innate Regeneration because of the earlier change made to the way it affects Iksar and Trolls. And we are refunding Quick Summoning because of the changes to the Rods of Mystical Transvergence, also noted in the Development Update. Many mages purchased Quick Summoning exclusively to expedite the use of these Rods, and so we are restoring those points to them to place where they wish.

Again, let me remind you that after the patch on October 16th some people will have more than 30 AA points unspent. It is important that you have no more than 30 unspent points on your characters before the patch on the 21st.

- Alan

Drolgin Steingrinder · October 16, 2002, 2:31 pm

^
|
|
|

That's what I said!

Ajran · Post by **Ajran** » October 16, 2002, 2:57 pm

you did?

-Ajran

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » October 16, 2002, 11:08 pm

Ok, I got Innate Regen points back. But why not Arch skill Natural Healing? It's regen! Oh well, /feedback'd that. Maybe I can get those points back too.

Kguku · Post by **Kguku** » October 16, 2002, 11:29 pm

My big question is why they didn't refund to monks the combat stability points. Since they're nerfing their damage mitigation, and correct me if I'm wrong, but is this skill not based on mitigation?

Seems like it would make sense to me, but who knows, I haven't gotten any more than 3 AA points on my monk for run 3, heh.

Kilmoll the Sexy · Post by **Kilmoll the Sexy** » October 16, 2002, 11:38 pm

The answer is yes. you can take the 3 refunded poits and drop them into Class skills. You cannot put them into Arch though. Verified personally

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » October 17, 2002, 9:56 am

Todays Patch:

October 17, 2002 3:00 am
------------------------------

- Some NPCs were unable to cast Area Effect spells and other innate abilities. This would have caused many of the recently retuned NPCs to be considerably easier than intended.

- Updated the range on the Magician spell Rod of Mystical Transvergence.

- Rods of Transvergence and Modulation Rods can no longer be used by those who do not have enough maximum hit points to survive the mana conversion. Please note: That is MAXIMUM hit points! It is still possible for
appropriate level characters to rod themselves to death.

- Barbarian Beastlords will once again return to summoning their own dogs. Not someone else's. If you were summoning a dog that didn't appear familiar, please do not worry. Your own dog has returned. He missed you. Please feed him.

- Altered the stacking for the Shaman spell Voice of the Berserker to match the other spells in its line.

- Aura of White Petals has been updated to have its strength as it was prior to its stacking changes.

- In the original patch yesterday morning, /SHIELD was added as an innate ability that all Warriors now gain at level 35. Warriors may now choose to take a portion of melee damage that is intended for another. Warriors, please type /SHIELD for a full description of this ability. You may find that it assists you greatly in your groups.

Correspondingly, NPCs and Pets over level 30 who are Warriors were granted this ability as well. Certain NPCs and Pets may choose to protect beings that they have an affinity for, if they believe that it will benefit the shielded being. For now, however, there is not yet a way to manually cause or prevent this behavior in pets.

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » October 17, 2002, 10:12 am

Rods of Transvergence and Modulation Rods can no longer be used by those who do not have enough maximum hit points to survive the mana conversion.

Hehe, I was wondering why those mages were hanging out in the nexus and such and casting this repeatedly

N00b_013 has been killed by N00b_013!

Sargeras · Post by **Sargeras** » October 17, 2002, 10:13 am

Correspondingly, NPCs and Pets over level 30 who are Warriors were granted this ability as well. Certain NPCs and Pets may choose to protect beings that they have an affinity for, if they believe that it will benefit the shielded being. For now, however, there is not yet a way to manually cause or prevent this behavior in pets.

I'm gonna fall off my chair laughing my ass off if Tunare's pet does this.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » October 17, 2002, 12:45 pm

would at least make the encounter more interesting =).

though i did like a couple of patches ago when agro was fucked, and she just went sort of crazy on people as far as agro is concerned. that was fun =).

Zygar_ Cthulhukin · Post by **Zygar_ Cthulhukin** » October 17, 2002, 1:50 pm

Anyone else's graphics fubared since patch? Wolves and certain other animals lookin funktified to me.

Sionistic · Post by **Sionistic** » October 17, 2002, 2:01 pm

Does anyone know where these new objects are? In hometowns?

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » October 17, 2002, 2:35 pm

Zygar_ Cthulhukin wrote:Anyone else's graphics fubared since patch? Wolves and certain other animals lookin funktified to me.

yep textures in the wrong places for me.

Sargeras · Post by **Sargeras** » October 17, 2002, 3:07 pm

Sionistic wrote:Does anyone know where these new objects are? In hometowns?

In the Nexus (I forgot which side), where the rock cavein was and the dorf would tell you he's too busy because he's trying to get his brother out.... well, the elf and dorf are gone and there is now a bookstand with an open book in their place. Click it and nothing happens.

Ajran · Post by **Ajran** » October 17, 2002, 3:10 pm

delete your .TXC files if your using the texture caching..

-Ajran

Brotha · Post by **Brotha** » October 18, 2002, 1:27 pm

Yeah, mobs like emperor and cursed really got messed up in this patch, enabling gimps that shouldn't be killing them to do so.

Anyways, what I really came here to do was tell CT grats on first cursed kill! Grats!

VeeshanVault

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