Patch Notes for November 13, 2007

Here's a sneak peek at the update notes for Tuesday.  Please note that this may or may not be modified before the servers officially open back up on Launch Day.

*** Secrets of Faydwer ***

Welcome to EverQuest Secrets of Faydwer, the 14th expansion for EverQuest!

The clockwork armies of the evil gnomish necromancer Meldrath the Malignant gather in the Steamfont Mountains, awaiting his order to invade the kingdom of Ak'Anon. The launch of his great air fortress Mechanotus has torn open the earth, exposing new paths into unexplored regions of the ancient continent of Faydwer.

Rediscover Faydwer as you adventure in the nearby Loping Plains, home to the soul eating wereorcs of Bloodmoon Keep. Strive to end the torment of humans and elves cursed for centuries in the Hills of Shade. All the while, an ancient menace stirs east of the Dragonscale Hills, where the prismatic dragon Kerafyrm the Awakened plans his revenge.

- Level Cap Increase: Players can now achieve level 80. New high level item sets, new Alternate Advancement ability lines, and new spells will come with this increase, including a new AA that grants a new spell slot.

- Heroic Items: One aspect of player power is based on the seven physical and mental attributes of their characters: Agility, Charisma, Dexterity, Intelligence, Stamina, Strength, and Wisdom.  For player characters that have reached the maximums for these attributes, equipping normal items with increased attributes offers no benefit.  Heroic Items feature particular stats that allow players to go beyond those maximums.  For each point in a heroic stat, the player gains one point in the statistic and the maximum on that statistic is increased by one point.  In addition, heroic stats offer benefits beyond the normal statistics.
- Heroic Intelligence: Increases mana pool, mana regen, and the maximum amount of mana regen a character can have.
- Heroic Strength: Increases endurance pool, endurance regen, and the maximum amount of endurance regen a character can have.  Also increases damage done by melee attacks and improves the bonus granted to armor class while using a shield.
- Heroic Stamina: Increases hit point pool, hit point regen, and the maximum amount of hit point regen a character can have.  Also increases endurance pool, endurance regen, and the maximum amount of endurance regen a character can have.
- Heroic Agility: Increases endurance pool, endurance regen, and the maximum amount of  endurance regen a character can have.  Also increases the chance to dodge an attack, grants a bonus to defense skill, and reduces falling damage.
- Heroic Dexterity: Increases endurance pool, endurance regen, and the maximum amount of endurance regen a character can have.  Also increases damage done by ranged attacks, improves chance to successfully assassinate or headshot, and improves the chance to riposte, block, and parry incoming attacks.
- Heroic Charisma: Improves reaction rolls with some NPCs and increases the amount of faction you gain or lose when faction is adjusted.

- New Content: There are 15 new realms for adventurers to explore including Meldrath's maniacal Fortress Mechanotus, the Dragonscale Hills, the Loping Plains, and Kerafyrm's Lair: Crystallos. Travel through Faydwer solo or with groups to complete new quests, tasks, events, and raids and to acquire new items, spells, tradeskill recipes, abilities, and more.


*** Live Highlights ***

- Book of Legends: The Book of Legends, a tome that holds the record of those who have come together to celebrate EverQuest at the SOE Fan Faires, now lives in the library within Plane of Knowledge.

- New Loot All Options: "Loot All" functionality has been added to corpses. This includes a "Loot All" button on the loot window and the ability to shift-right-click loot a corpse.

- AC Mitigation Improvements: We modified the AC Caps and over-cap returns for mitigation for all classes to bring them more in line with their intended ability to mitigate damage. Warriors, Paladins, Shadowknights, Clerics, and Monks received a minor increase in their mitigation ability. Rangers, Bards, Rogues, Shaman, Beastlords, and Berserkers received a moderate increase in their mitigation ability. Druids, Necromancers, Wizards, Enchanters, and Magicians received a considerable increase in their mitigation ability.

- Fog Rendering System Enhancements: An entirely new fog rendering system has been implemented in the EverQuest graphics engine. This new system is used in all zones that currently have fog.

- Multi-core CPU Support: If you have a Multi-core CPU you no longer have to manually set their processor affinity! EverQuest will automatically assign itself to an available core. If you run multiple copies of the client, each new copy running will assign itself to the next available core. Those interested in customizing which core or cores EverQuest clients run on, check the forums.


*** Recently Reported Issues ***

While some of the other issues that were resolved in this update were reported via bug reports, here are a few we'd like to highlight.

Issue: West Display Bug
Summary: When you face west the video geometry disappears except the UI and the Sky. When you face another direction the issue goes away. Normally this is only fixed by doing a reboot of your PC or reloading EQ.
Status:  We have made a change that should reduce the chances of the "west bug" occurring; unfortunately the change requires us to turn off some optimizations. If you want to disable this workaround, please add the following line to your eqclient.ini: DisableWestBugFix=1 (The EQ team would like to thank Community Member Strommmm for his feedback on helping us with this issue.)

Issue: Solteris Instability
Summary: Some people have reported that the Solteris raid zone continuously crashes during raids.
Status: Optimizations have been put in place to improve stability. We will continue to monitor the status of this zone and other instanced zones.


*** Items ***

- Prestidigitase, Staurolite, Harmonagate and Taaffeite have been modified to work in the new jewelcraft system. They will also continue to work in their original fashion if you prefer the jewelry made that way.


*** Spells ***

- Lesser Summon Corpse, Summon Corpse, Conjure Corpse, and Exhumer's Call have had their scribe-levels lowered for shadowknights.
- The Bewilderment line now has an improved resistance modifier.
- Player animations when using various AE spells and combat abilities now display properly.
- The protection granted from Shielding Thunder now stacks with Weapon Shield Discipline.
- The Consecrate Ground line now has a chance to root undead NPCs that enter the aura's area of effect.
- Recast timers on many mage summon item spells such as the Phantom Armor line, Aenda's Trinkets line, and Armaments line were removed.
- Necromancer pet haste now bestows strength and a damage mod.  Upgrades to the line should be improvements under all situations.
- NPC casters will no longer auto-learn Dispel-type player spells. 
- The Decrepit Skin, Ward of Tunare, and Skin of the Reptile lines are now limited by the number of heals / runes bestowed to the buffed player instead of number of hits scored against the buffed player.  The number of "procs" should be relatively the same, but no longer random.  These spells will scale down in effectiveness against lower level NPCs.
- AE spells that use conical or beam areas of effect now have a hit limit of 8 targets.
- The cleric group complete healing spell "Word of Redemption" now mimics Complete Heal in that it heals for 7500 and cannot be focused.
- Single-target fire, ice, and magic instant cast spells from TSS and SoF now share the same recast timer.  The recast delay on Cloudburst has been decreased so it can be chained.  The Cloudburst line is now more damaging but less efficient than the - Flashfires and Cold Snap lines.  Recourses from these instant cast spells now bestow a short-duration buff that applies a damage increase to the next spell with a 3 second cast time or more.  Most other wizard direct damage spells have had their cast times nearly halved and had this time applied to the reuse delay, allowing the use of 2-3 direct damage spells in the time that would previously be required to cast one.


*** Tradeskills ***

- There is a new level 80 cultural armor set for all races and level 75 and 80 cultural symbol sets. New quests can be found for level 75 and level 80 quests.  Additionally there are new cultural raid augments to go with the cultural armor for the Serpent's Spine, the Buried Sea, and Secrets of Faydwer.
- Jewelry Making has evolved to a new method. Now jewelry makers will make base pieces of jewelry and gems that can be put in this jewelry for different effects.  This will allow people to get jewelry customized for their needs.
- Practitioners of spell research will no longer need to use runes, words and pages.  Instead, they can use the systematic spell research system to make all spells previously made with these materials.
- Within one of the newly discovered areas of Faydwer you will be able to find a gnome who wants a measure of revenge.
- A discovery has been made and now Gem Studded Chains are less difficult to make.


*** AA ***

- Harm Touch and Lay on Hands have been reworked. Changes to how these abilities work will enable us to more easily adjust and tune these abilities. The primary change you will notice is that both of these abilities have been changed from innate skills to the AA system. For the first 10 ranks of these new AAs you will automatically gain the next rank as you level up - you won't need to purchase the AAs. Starting at level 51 you can continue to increase the power of your ability by purchasing new ranks of AAs. These roughly correspond to some of the previous AAs that existed for either ability.

All previous functionality for these abilities has been turned off. All AAs based on focusing these abilities have either been refunded and replaced with new AAs or have been modified to work with the new abilities.

- Refunded the Harm Touch AAs as part of the changes to how Harm Touch operates.
- Refunded the AA "Improved Lay on Hands" as part of the changes to how Lay on Hands functions.
- Corrected an issue with the Flurry line of AA's that was causing them to trigger up to 94 percent of the time on a successful triple-attack, instead of up to the intended 30 percent.


*** Zones ***

- Fixed an issue with Halls of Honor where NPCs were dropping the incorrect item for the Hot Zone quests.


*** UI ***

- Corrected a few typos and errors with a few of the UI windows.
- Added "Claims" option to the EQ menu button which toggles the Claim Window.
- Made a few minor adjustments to the claims window.
- Added a slider/ctrl to loot slots with stacks. Shift-/Ctrl- semantics work with this functionality.

- Changed -

EQUI.xml
EQUI_LayoutCopyWnd.xml
EQUI_ClaimWnd.xml
EQUI_OptionsWindow.xml
EQUI_MailWindow.xml
EQUI_LootWnd.xml
EQUI_LeadershipWnd.xml
EQUI_GuildManagementWnd.xml
EQUI_TributeBenefitWnd.xml
EQUI_Animations.xml
EQUI_VideoModesWnd.xml


*** Miscellaneous ***

- Zoning to Toxxulia no longer puts player in Antonica chat channel.



- The EverQuest Team

Comments

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Plate armor graphic bug (?)
# Nov 14 2007 at 9:56 AM Rating: Decent
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263 posts
Not sure if anyone else is having the same problem -

Everytime my iksar WAR on Stromm zones, she loses the armor graphic for her shoulderpads, her boots, and her bracers. Sometimes, the graphics get the chain look.

Is there some display setting I need to tweak or something?
Ward of Tunare - nerf - why?
# Nov 14 2007 at 8:08 AM Rating: Decent
"- The Decrepit Skin, Ward of Tunare, and Skin of the Reptile lines are now limited by the number of heals / runes bestowed to the buffed player instead of number of hits scored against the buffed player. The number of "procs" should be relatively the same, but no longer random. These spells will scale down in effectiveness against lower level NPCs."

74 pally here - sony really killed us here I think, sure if you are 75+ raid geared with 17000 or more Hps you prob dont care. I love to solo and this was great. Now it has become almost worthless and the upgrade is worse.

Paladins let me know if I am missing something here because I dint think we were over powered using this spell can anyone explain the change to me??
Heroic Stats
# Nov 13 2007 at 6:53 PM Rating: Decent
It would have been neat if Heroic Agility/Dexterity affected Haste.
It would have been neat if Heroic Dexterity affected Criticals and Combat Effects
spell research
# Nov 13 2007 at 3:25 PM Rating: Decent
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58 posts
I'm sad to see the old research system going. Frankly, it was hard enough to do spell research before because of the rarity of some of the runes, pages, etc. With the new research system, it's going to be more difficult. I can appreciate how things change over time. But, sometimes, good enough should be left alone.
Lol. Thanks
# Nov 13 2007 at 3:00 PM Rating: Decent
You tend to forget they modified that certain classes mitigation...if you couldn't take hits before say a mage or wizzy for instance you will be able to live abit longer...if you could take hits say monk or warrior then you will be able to live even longer...it's all to scale I can guarantee you chanters will not be tanking better than any warrior ever lmao.
Forgotten class
# Nov 13 2007 at 2:08 PM Rating: Decent
Sorry about the warriors but cuz I have a chanter as a first toon for years, I havent seen a lot of improvements. Dire charm works on low lvl mobs. I am not asking for them to be solo crazy class, but when my cleric can take down a mob instead of a tank.. hmmm makes you wonder. Cuz my armor is not up to where it should be.
yay! hahahahahah
# Nov 13 2007 at 1:40 PM Rating: Decent
dont complain because it gonna be minutly harder for you to push a caster around in duels=) hahha

erhem get more AC
Zone Levels
# Nov 13 2007 at 11:42 AM Rating: Decent
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74 posts
I truly hope that not all of the zones in SoF are 75+.
Zone Levels
# Nov 13 2007 at 4:20 PM Rating: Decent
Thats the very reason I did not pre-order the new expansion..I have no idea if my toons, that range from 51 thru 70, can make any use of it. In all the promotions, there was not one mention of that, so, for me, the implication was that it was for 75+.

BV
Good Job Warriors....
# Nov 13 2007 at 9:48 AM Rating: Decent
Apparently there is no need to increase the hate produced by warriors. I have hoped in vain :/
Good Job Warriors....
# Nov 14 2007 at 10:07 AM Rating: Decent
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263 posts
There's a new aa for WARs that gives them a random chance to get an extra burst of hate on their attacks. It's passive and does not need to be triggered. Forgot what it's called though, but it is for a level 76+. I think it's on the "Class" tab in the aa window and costs like 9 aas or something.
tradeskills
# Nov 13 2007 at 9:40 AM Rating: Decent
was wondering for futer patches to put in a tradeskill option to where if u have enought items for 100 combines that u can set it to do all 100 combines instead of 1 by 1 dont know how meny hours is spent clicking comine, auto inventory, combine, ect. if this could be appliyed would make it better for thouse that Tradeskill to be able to join in on group activities as well instead of waiting for thier combines to be finished and that with the limited amounts of place to do combines when ur not in group or have a guild makes it a royal pain as well
tradeskills
# Nov 13 2007 at 3:27 PM Rating: Good
25 posts
I was led to believe that the click/autoinventory/click process was left in place just in case someone found a tradeskill exploit that would make them a tonne of cash. (ie you buy two things, combine them and they sell for more then what you bought them for) This way someone couldn't just buy bags full of the tradeskill items and then fire off autocombine to make them rich.

Believe me though, I'm behind you if you ever want to push for an autocombine. I'm tired of spending hours clicking the mouse when I want to make Misty Thicket Picnics or other things that have multiple sub-combines.

Kz
tradeskills
# Nov 13 2007 at 2:30 PM Rating: Decent
I know they implemented that in WoW. You could try their TS system. I like what we have here, it's sometimes tedious, but I've always preferred it. Makes you feel more like your doing something. If you REALLY want something different, find a macro program. But don't forget to include for lost itmes and failed combines. Something I don't recall WoW doing.
rogues! they always forget rogues!
# Nov 13 2007 at 9:01 AM Rating: Decent
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97 posts
for godsake! how about some new poisons or something eh!
Also does anyone know if ther is a plan to implement a Bazaar system like on eq2 so you dont have to be online all the time to be a trader? thanks!
Lol. Thanks
# Nov 13 2007 at 8:38 AM Rating: Decent
Warriors: We did nothing for you. But we DID make it easier for everyone else to do your job!
Lol. Thanks
# Nov 13 2007 at 9:32 AM Rating: Decent
No kidding. For a class that is supposed to be able to take the lumps, I think that Warriors have been forgotten beyond 70.
Lol. Thanks
# Nov 13 2007 at 2:04 PM Rating: Decent
our new AAs are great. Seeing is believing.
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