September 4, 2002 3:00 am
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Please note: there are a lot of changes going into the game with today's patch. Some of these changes (such as the changes to resistances and spell stacking) will change aspects of the game that may make gameplay different. Keep this in mind when you log in. With system-wide changes like these it is entirely possible that there are still bugs. Please report these bugs using /bug, and know that we will work to fix them as fast as we can. But also note that some intended changes might appear as bugs (perhaps a spell no longer stacks with another spell). Feel free to report these as bugs if you are unsure. But please keep in mind the changes listed here as well.
** Petitions **
- /viewpetition displays the petition you have in the queue, if any.
- /deletepetition deletes the petition you have in the queue, if any (unless that petition is currently being viewed by CS staff).
** Keyrings **
We will be resetting all keyrings with this patch. This will mean that all existing keys in the keyrings will be removed. You will need to place keys back onto the keyrings. Keys are added to the keyring by using the key. The keyring is a part of the character, not a space in inventory. To find out what keys you have just type /key and the game will give you a list. If you have recently deleted a key, please contact your GM for a replacement.
** Experience Changes **
- We have smoothed out level progression from 50-60. This should mitigate the "penalty effect" that occurs in levels 51, 54 and 59. Note that it will cost the same experience to level from 50 to 60 as it did before. Also, death experience loss will appear different in some levels. This is an unfortunate side effect that must remain to prevent some experience exploits.
- We have rebalanced the rewards for killing NPCs for characters over level 50. NPCs that are considerably weaker than you will give you less experience. NPCs give more experience the higher level they are, and for the best results you should fight the most challenging monsters you can reasonably manage.
** Spells **
- Fixed the "You have been healed for X damage" message. It once again reports the actual amount of damage healed.
- Added a message telling the caster when NPC can't be charmed.
- Fixed a bug with duration boosting Alternate Advancement abilities and foci that was only allowing the first 12 buff slots to be modified as opposed to all 15.
- Fixed a bug that was allowing focused and Alternate Advancement ability enhanced damage spells to do more damage than they should (meaning that both the Alternate Advancement and the Focus improve the base damage. The focus damage was never supposed to compound with the added AA damage.)
- Enchanter spells that have a hit point component and a stun component can now be partially resisted.
-The Enchanter "visage" series has had their recast time reduced to make them more useful.
-Shadowknight and Necromancer Drain type spells can now be clicked off by the recipient of the beneficial portion of the spell. For example; Shadowknights and their group members can now click off the effects of spells such as Torrent of Hate. While the target of spells such as Shadowbond can click it off if they so choose.
-Torrent of Hate should no longer overwrite Call of the Predator
- Repaired some problems with Beastlord stat buffs - specifically that the higher level ones weren't always better than the lower level ones.
- Furious Strength made available to Beastlords at Level 54
- Dexterity made available to Beastlords at Level 57
- Stamina made available to Beastlords at Level 57
- Divine aura is now available to Paladins at level 51, instead of level 55.
- Harmshield made available to Shadowknights at level 51
- Augment Death made available to Shadow Knights at Level 60
- Death Peace made available to Necromancers at level 60
- Flaming Sword of Xuzl has casting time reduced from 6 to 2.5 seconds, recast increased from 2.5 to 60 seconds and mana cost lowered from 600 to 250.
- Unswerving Hammer of Faith has casting time reduced from 6 to 2.5 seconds, recast increased from 2.5 to 60 seconds and mana cost lowered from 600 to 250.
-Added a new line of spells for Shadowknights, Voice of Darkness. Merchants in Echo Caverns have been able to appropriate many of these new spells, but Voice of Terris has so far eluded them.
-Added two new Mesmerize type spells for Bards, one at level 40, and one at level 58. Rumor has it that Serilia Whistlewind has recovered the melody written by Sionachie, but has been unable to locate the transcript for the Dreams of Ayonae.
-Whispers in the taverns of Katta Castellum speak of recently discovered Ancient melodies. Brave adventurers search far and wide for the song of the ancient combine empire, and the Lullaby of Shadows.
- Higher level PCs will be more resistant to lower level NPCs' spells.
- Increased the number of spells that can be in effect on a given NPC to 30.
** Spell Stacking Changes **
We've made two changes to the way spells stack.
Damage Over Time (DoT) spells are spells that linger on the target doing damage. Until today two different characters could not have the same DoT spell on the same target. As long as one copy of the spell was active any new version of the spell would not take hold. After today the same DoT spell cast by different casters can affect the same target at the same time. Also, if you cast a DoT spell on a target and you already have that spell active on it, the spell will refresh. (Note: It will not be possible to stack Lifeburn).
This does not allow for inferior spells to stack along with superior spells. (Example: Two Necromancers can both land Boil Blood on the same target. However, Heat Blood, being an inferior spell, will still not stack.)
Several DoT spells that have debuff components such as Tuyen's Chant of Frost and Breath of Ro will not stack due to the balance issues of having several hundred points of Resistance debuffs on a single NPC.
We've also rewritten the way that spells stack with other spells with the same benefits (for example, to spells that give bonus hit points). Generally speaking spells may now 'bounce' off each other (neither overwriting the other) and stacking issues should now be easier to resolve. In specific:
- Warder's Protection should have considerably fewer stacking and overwrite issues. Thanks to the folks at the Ranger's Glade for all of their help in 'tracking' this down.
- Druid Damage Shields should now all stack in the correct order.
- Druid HP buffs are no longer overwriting stronger cleric HP buffs.
- Harness of Spirit and Visions of Grandeur should interact a bit more sanely.
- Existing effects should no longer be stripped off when the incoming spell isn't going to take hold.
- Boon of Garou and other illusions now interact the right way.
- Spells that have both group and single target versions (and no special coding to tell them otherwise) now mutually overwrite each other.
** Resistance Changes **
We've made some fairly drastic changes to the way the spell resistance system works. Previously, there was only the smallest benefit to having resists over a certain value. We've reworked resistance in its entirety, completely replacing the old system with one that is more logical.
The idea behind the changes is pretty simple: Resists should matter in a way that makes sense.
Important things to note about the new resistance system:
- Resists matter more for PCs. There are now tangible differences between having 50, 150, and 250 in a given resistance, for example. Resistance buffs, bard songs, and resist gear have actual value, all the way up the line.
- Conversely, resistances also matter more for NPCs. Some NPCs became more vulnerable to things they have always been vulnerable to, other NPCs became more resistant to things that they were inclined to be somewhat resistant to.
- Resistance debuffs should also have more value, all the way up the line. For the first time, resistance debuffs now have the ability to bring NPCs that were lure-style only down into the range of being hit by normal spells.
- The hard level limit involving players casting on NPCs has been removed. This used to be referred to in EQ folklore as the "Six Level Limit" (It was actually 1.25 times the caster's level, but more people likely thought about it the other way.) This means that in the vast majority of cases, there is at least a small chance that a person will be able to connect a spell with an NPC, even if they are out of that NPC's traditional level range.
- Overall, against NPCs that have medium-to-high resistances of a given type, expect to see more full hits, fewer partials, but more full resists in the new system. Taken over time, the damage done by PC casters to semi-high resistance NPCs should be approximately the same, but will definitely improve when the proper debuffs are applied (we wanted to make sure that this did not turn into a universal nerf of casters).
We look forward to seeing how these changes play out in front of a larger audience.
** Line of Sight Changes **
- For spells that require Line of Sight (LoS), the LoS check is now at the beginning of the spellcast, not the end.
- Spells that require but do not have of LoS will now fail immediately.
- Harmful spells require LoS.
- Most Beneficial spells still do not require LoS.
- Bind Sight type spells do not require LoS.
- Any beneficial spell containing a Cancel Magic component requires LoS.
** Priest Changes **
- Clerics gain the Bash skill beginning at level 25. They will have a maximum skill of 125 at level 50, 165 at level 60.
- Clerics gain Hammer of Judgement - a level 56 summoned hammer with a powerful and frequent proc effect
- Clerics gain Yaulp V - a level 56 self-only melee and mana regen buff that adds haste, dexterity, mana regeneration and stamina regeneration.
- Clerics gain Ethereal Elixir - a level 60 group version of Celestial Elixir, the heal-over-time spell.
- Clerics gain Ethereal Light - a level 58 upgrade of Divine Light, the single target heal spell.
- Clerics gain Ethereal Remedy - a level 59 upgrade of Remedy, the single target heal spell.
** Sound and Music **
- We've started work on the sound and music engine. If you used to have sound/music bugs, the first upgrade today might help a bit. This is the first step down a long road. If your particular sound/music issue isn't fixed, please be patient. There's no need to re-report existing sound/music bugs.
** Items **
- Items now display level-restricted statistics besides armor class and damage as a red number with the unrestricted value in parentheses.
- Duration focus items now give focus message when a group spell lands on caster.
- Blessed Coldain Prayer Shawl has been given a minor upgrade.
- Small Cloth Sandals are no longer wearable by large races.
- Fixed the Plane of Mischief boxes.
** Pets **
- Changed Specter pets so they're able to equip items and armor.
- Pet-only buffs now automatically attempt to target your pet if you cast them with the wrong target or no target at all.
- Fixed a bug that would prevent the creation of Familiars and Warders if the caster had created more than 99 in the same zone during the current game session.
- The limit on the amount of haste that can be applied to a pet has been changed (aka. The Pet Haste Cap). The amount of haste that can be placed on a pet now scales with the level of its owner. The scaling occurs in a way that is consistent with how much haste a given caster can place on his own pet (using a Level 56 Magician as an example: The idea is that both Burnout IV and Muzzle of Mardu should be useful).
** User Interface **
- Deleting Spells from Spellbook: Storebought spells can be deleted from your spellbook. To delete a spell just right-click it to highlight it and tap the DELETE key. Please note: This does not convert the spell back into a scroll. You will have to buy a new scroll if you wish to re-scribe the spell. No reimbursements will be made for deleted spells.
- Item Links: When you inspect an item with Alt-Left-Click, the item inspect window stays up. To paste a "link" to the item you're looking at into your chat bar, click on the item's graphic. That will "speak" a link that others can click on to see the stats of the item, as if they were inspecting it themselves.
- Updated the /note window. The old /note <text> command still works as it always has. But you can now use /note without additional text to produce a text window for entering note text. The /note command window should not break existing skins.
- Fixed a bug with the tracking window that was showing the sorting set for something other than normal for non-rangers (this was just a visual bug).
- Fixed a bug that sometimes caused a crash when zoning with the corpse window open.
- Added UI Label type #74 = Player Title
- "Reply to" will properly prepend a ;tell in front of names that are from other servers.
- Extended the "reply to" queue to 50 names.
- Fixed some aesthetics with labels. Percentages will never show above 100 now (even during a heal). Corpse HP will always show 0.
- There will now be sound when banking coins.
** Bazaar **
- Added Focus Effect search parameter to the Bazaar.
- Items that are no-drop on other servers but tradable on Firiona Vie should now show up in Bazaar searches on that server.
** Alternate Advancement **
- Frenzied Burnout no longer makes the pet suicide after the buff's duration ends.
- Fixed a bug that would cause the Dire Charm ability not to reset if an enchanter used it when he already had a pet.
- Fixed a bug that was causing Dire Charm to not give the "this mob cannot be Dire Charmed" message or reset the timer in Cazic-Thule.
- Added the Quest Completion sound to AA point dings.
** Quests **
- There is a fellow named Moltak in Sol Temple. Killing him gives a negative faction adjustment with the True Spirit faction. BUT, if you have a very, very bad faction with True Spirit, killing him will also reset your faction to a more tolerable level. So don't mess with this fellow unless folks on the True Spirit faction are willing to kill you on sight.
- Made some modifications to the faction effects of the Wizard Epic quest.
- A powerful warder has been seen in the Skyfire Mountains. Those who seek retribution against Ragefire would be wise to speak to her, she may be able to provide information about his whereabouts.
** Miscellaneous **
- Merchants now display up to 80 items in their inventory. There should also be less delay when opening up merchant windows.
- The Help window will now be displayed on startup. This will happen only if it has never been seen before (since this change).
- Sirens should have female voices.
- Bloodgill Goblins should now sound like goblins.
- Several spell caster guild masters are now teaching magic skills. In Shadowhaven: Palomidiar Allakhaji, Loewnsaz_Waldalon and Lamukas Kaesoanls. In Echo Caverns: Kelador, Celerik, Wirgus and Yurian.
- Erudites of Prexus now start at the proper location.
- Bards singing songs should no longer prevent group members from /split'ting coins. Only teleportation spells being cast in group will prevent /split'ting. This change was required to keep coin from disappearing if a /split occurred while a person was in the process of leaving a zone.
- Leather Padding can now be made from Rockhopper Hides.
- The EverQuest Team
Patch Message: 9/4/02
Moderator: TheMachine
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Sargeras
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Patch Message: 9/4/02
Sargeras Gudluvin - R.I.P. old friend - January 9, 2005
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Sargeras
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Re: Patch Message: 9/4/02
Here's to hoping.Sargeras wrote:- A powerful warder has been seen in the Skyfire Mountains. Those who seek retribution against Ragefire would be wise to speak to her, she may be able to provide information about his whereabouts.
Sargeras Gudluvin - R.I.P. old friend - January 9, 2005
Deleting Spells from Spellbook: Storebought spells can be deleted from your spellbook. To delete a spell just right-click it to highlight it and tap the DELETE key. Please note: This does not convert the spell back into a scroll. You will have to buy a new scroll if you wish to re-scribe the spell. No reimbursements will be made for deleted spells.
There IS a God.
Item Links: When you inspect an item with Alt-Left-Click, the item inspect window stays up. To paste a "link" to the item you're looking at into your chat bar, click on the item's graphic. That will "speak" a link that others can click on to see the stats of the item, as if they were inspecting it themselves.
This sounds interesting. No more having everyone asking what the stats on something are, or having to type them all out.
I noticed that the shaman and druid CH spells wern't in the patch message. Has that been scrapped?
I'd guess they're wanting to see if the cleric changes will keep them (clerics) happy. And we all know that clerics have been dying for more ways to gain aggro..
Wonder if thet'll clear out Velks a bit
One could hope.
There IS a God.
Item Links: When you inspect an item with Alt-Left-Click, the item inspect window stays up. To paste a "link" to the item you're looking at into your chat bar, click on the item's graphic. That will "speak" a link that others can click on to see the stats of the item, as if they were inspecting it themselves.
This sounds interesting. No more having everyone asking what the stats on something are, or having to type them all out.
I noticed that the shaman and druid CH spells wern't in the patch message. Has that been scrapped?
I'd guess they're wanting to see if the cleric changes will keep them (clerics) happy. And we all know that clerics have been dying for more ways to gain aggro..
Wonder if thet'll clear out Velks a bit
One could hope.
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Fairweather Pure
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Absor posted this the other day on the Shaman's Crucible.New healing spells will not be going in with the next patch
I just wanted to let you know about this sooner rather than later. We're not completely finished with testing and evaluating the semi-complete healing spells, so we won't be pushing them to the live servers tomorrow. We haven't given up on them, we're just not done looking them over.
Alan
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Funkmasterr
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Funkmasterr
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Aabidano
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I'd bet this is quite an effective nerf on exp rates in FG/VL and upper Seb, Chardok, etc...Voronwë wrote:i hope the xp boost to high level mobs doesnt also translate into FG-xp-nerf_05.
That decreased exp part suxors, we'll find out just how badly tonight
"Life is what happens while you're making plans for later."
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*~*stragi*~*
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i think it would be a good idea to make Ragefire triggered on like a 8 hour timer or something.
the counterargument would be that makes the cleric epic "free".
to counteract that, you could change the drop rate of another component to make it rarer. for instance, you could make the note from Bethazid not always drop.
All epics have a bottleneck somewhere to restrict their flow into the game. For rangers it is the Shattered Emerald of Corruption from PoH. The problem with the cleric epic is that the bottleneck is the final step, so it is when the stakes are the highest.
they should make the white dragonscale part of the quest!!!!
the counterargument would be that makes the cleric epic "free".
to counteract that, you could change the drop rate of another component to make it rarer. for instance, you could make the note from Bethazid not always drop.
All epics have a bottleneck somewhere to restrict their flow into the game. For rangers it is the Shattered Emerald of Corruption from PoH. The problem with the cleric epic is that the bottleneck is the final step, so it is when the stakes are the highest.
they should make the white dragonscale part of the quest!!!!
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Fairweather Pure
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Geez, you make it sound like we're bullying other guilds out of the spawn or being jerks. That is not the case at all. It's just taken OMGIAMRETARDEDCAUSEALOTISTWOWORDS of work and coordination from my guild. Rage has never even been contested during those kills. The one we did not get was because the other guild was camping in force before we could get there after a patch. No problem, we just did other things. We have also gotten lucky with all the recent patches and several times Rage has spawned in the first 8-12 hours of his cycle as opposed to the last hour (our first rage, blah). It's hardley "hogging" when there hasn't even been contention and several of the spawns were in the wee hours of the morning when we were the only people present in the whole zone.8 out of the 9 ragefires? Yet you hope to get more? Sounds pretty fucking hogish to me.
Anyway, we'll see how this new Rage works. I am anxious for more details. I can only imagine the "warder" despawning after you hand him the completed container and respawning on a random 1-5 day timer.
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Drolgin Steingrinder
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I am quite optimistic about the XP changes. Since forever it's been so there was little difference between safe XP and dangerous XP - now, solo XP will be less rewarding unless you challenge yourself by fighting harder mobs, and groups that xp in barely dark blue areas will be rewarded a lot less than the people who test their skills in the harder areas.
I'm all for it...if it works as intended and they didnt fuck up like usual.
I'm all for it...if it works as intended and they didnt fuck up like usual.
IT'S HARD TO PUT YOUR FINGER ON IT; SOMETHING IS WRONG
I'M LIKE THE UNCLE WHO HUGGED YOU A LITTLE TOO LONG
I'M LIKE THE UNCLE WHO HUGGED YOU A LITTLE TOO LONG
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Fallanthas
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Aabidano
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If you went and killed a steady stream of level 58-60 mobs before, the exp was awesome. Unfortunately, I only know of 1 or 2 zones you can conveniently do this in with 1 group. And you need a decent group, cleric, tank, slower etc... It's a lot easier most nights to find a druid or shaman for heals, and go slaughter dark blue <whatever> for a couple hours.Drolgin Steingrinder wrote:I am quite optimistic about the XP changes. Since forever it's been so there was little difference between safe XP and dangerous XP - now, solo XP will be less rewarding unless you challenge yourself by fighting harder mobs, and groups that xp in barely dark blue areas will be rewarded a lot less than the people who test their skills in the harder areas.
I'm all for it...if it works as intended and they didnt fuck up like usual.
The bump in exp is nice, and by itself would have motivated me to actually build groups. The exp reduction looks like it will suck, only serving to chase AA farmers out of FG/VL/Akheva.
"Life is what happens while you're making plans for later."
Being that my, now primary, 52 warrior isn't CT ready, I haven't looked inside in awhile. What numbers were they pushing nightly? I can only guess what it's going to look like going forward. Maybe ANOTHER Paw revamp is in order to spread out the xp masses, friggen place is still useless.
This does hurt the small pickup group, no doubt about it.
Anyone check out the net effect of this yet?
This does hurt the small pickup group, no doubt about it.
Anyone check out the net effect of this yet?
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Fallanthas
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Canelek
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If I am short on time, I just 2-box 60 SK + 52 ROG and kill shrooms till I have to log. Low risk and all, but at least it was something I could do. Hell, most of the time I didn't even need to move them from the campspot. Yeah, FG is fucking boring as hell, but at least it served a purpose for a short gaming stint.
en kærlighed småkager
thats exactly what i do, except it is 60 ranger / 52 bard.Canelek-KOE wrote:If I am short on time, I just 2-box 60 SK + 52 ROG and kill shrooms till I have to log. Low risk and all, but at least it was something I could do. Hell, most of the time I didn't even need to move them from the campspot. Yeah, FG is fucking boring as hell, but at least it served a purpose for a short gaming stint.
gonna try the duo in HS once the bard dings 53 though. hopefully the xp nerf won't be too harsh there.
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Canelek
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Now on the other hand, when I do have time for a challenge, I head to DN/Kael, etc for some duo fun with a Shammy or just fearkite in DN. Now if those exp modifiers are raised, then I can feel a bit better.
I know they are trying to "fix" risk vs reward, but how they are going to pull it off shall remain to be seen.
I know they are trying to "fix" risk vs reward, but how they are going to pull it off shall remain to be seen.
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Aabidano
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Same here, 9 times out of 10 I'm grouped with 1 or 2 people, and maybe my warrior dual boxed. Killing buttloads of dark blue critters gets boring, but it was decent exp when I only have an hour to spend.Legenae wrote:This exp thing is going to suck. I rarely do a full group for exp... I'm usually only grouped with 1 or 2 other people... or I just solo.
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Fallanthas
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Noone has raised the real problem yet.
Count how many zones contain level 55+ mobs. Take a stab at how many groups each will support.
Now take a quick estimate at the number of level 60s on your server xping.
Number of good xp camps
.
.
.
.
.
Number of level 60s
I think maybe it's time to take a break. I will be back when VI realizes just how badly they broke their fucking game.
Count how many zones contain level 55+ mobs. Take a stab at how many groups each will support.
Now take a quick estimate at the number of level 60s on your server xping.
Number of good xp camps
.
.
.
.
.
Number of level 60s
I think maybe it's time to take a break. I will be back when VI realizes just how badly they broke their fucking game.
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Aabidano
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There are 10-12 (?) zones with decent quantities of high leveled mobs. I can only think of 2 offhand where they are easily accessible and doable with one group though. That's the first problem. Having time to get a good group started is the second.Fallanthas wrote:Count how many zones contain level 55+ mobs. Take a stab at how many groups each will support.
We'll see what happens, are the servers even up yet?
"Life is what happens while you're making plans for later."
