For your reading pleasure, here is the weekly edition of the Grab Bag from the Herald:

Q. What is the Transmutative Precipitants section of Spellcrafting used for?

A. I went to the Lady of the Jewels for this one: Currently, there isn’t a use for the frosted gem of condensation rather than to sell it for coin while leveling the tradeskill. We might use them in the future, however, if we ever need to create new recipes so we saw no reason to take them out.

Q. My friends and I were talking because Beliathan the worm spawned in DF, what's the mechanism for his spawn? None of us know, is it just a random chance or is it something like the Queen where you have to kill certain mobs in order for it to pop? Or is there some silly CSR sitting somewhere thinking to himself...WORM TIME! Please slate my curiosity and let us all know.

A. With a soft chuckle the Lady of the Jewels /yelled: Worm time! I love it! After some research it’s been discovered that Beliathan is just a very rare and random spawn. He is not affected by the death of other monsters in the area.

Q. Some friends and I went to get the trophy off the mob Andrachos Xuthos and he dropped an arcanium Spear of Evisceration (Midgard). This spear is bugged.  It's stats are 3 Staff, 25 Strength, and 24 Dexterity.  Should that not read 3 Spear, instead of Staff?

A. Determining all sorts of stats the Equalizer agrees with you: Thank you for bringing this to our attention! This has been fixed on our internal servers and will be fixed in patch 1.97.

Q. I was hunting werewolves at Level 31 and had a couple bubbles to go when the message popped up that I was "now entitled to a free level" Great. So I finished off that one and ported back to a trainer in Jordheim, only to get the message that the /level command was disabled. If I have a free level coming to me, then give it to me or else don’t tell me I have one! There's no in-between on this.

A. Quick to explain what happened the Equalizer says: When you are notified that you have been given a free level, all your character needs to do is interact with your trainer by right-clicking on them to be given your free level. The /level command allows for people who have a level 50 character on their account to level new characters up to level 20, and is not a part of the free level system.

Q. My question is that I have 2 accounts and have all expansions enabled. DR and LOTM were both purchased as digital downloads. I'm currently using only 1 computer, but soon I'll be adding a second. When I Load DAOC on the second comp will I have to purchase DR and LOTM in order to put them on second computer?

A. The one we call smakles was happy to answer: No, you will not have to re-purchase the expansions if you have already purchased them for both accounts. You can visit the account management site below to download them to your new PC:

https://accounts.eamythic.com/

Login with your account information > Under your desired DAoC account click on the "expansions tab" > Click on "download" next to your desired DAoC expansion to have it downloaded to your computer.

Note that some expansions require you to have the previous expansion already downloaded on your computer, so you couldn't just download LoTM if you didn't have DAoC on your computer yet.

Q. My friend and I had a debate over the Mastery of Focus realm ability. Now I understand that casters have the bonus to all spells lines on their staves, however with Heretics there is no focus bonus. So, my question is, will the MoF ability affect the Heretic and if so will it stack with a Focal Mythirian?

A. The Equalizer took a bit of time to explain before giving you the answer to the question: Mastery of Focus and the focus bonus on staves are two completely separate bonuses, despite the fact that they share the same name. The Mastery of Focus Realm Ability will artificially "boost" the level of casted spells by a certain amount of levels when calculating the resist chances of these spells - a level 11 spell with Mastery of Focus 5, which boosts spell levels by 39, would be treated as a level 50 spell when calculating if it is resisted or not. Note that Mastery of Focus will not boost a spell's effective level above level 50, but will allow players to use lower-level spells in a line as effectively as they would be able to if they were using higher-level spells. The Focal Mythirians work in the same way as this realm ability. Focus bonuses on staves merely lower the power consumption of spells cast by list casters - this bonus will not affect the chances of spells to be resist.

To answer your question: Yes, Heretics can use both the Mastery of Focus Realm Ability and a Focal Mythirian.

Q. Does Static Tempest break Mez?  Does it affect other crowd control?  Does it still work if the enemy player has a stun immunity timer up ?

A. Triple questions lead to the Equalizer’s answer: Static Tempest will remove Mesmerize effects from the target, but does not provide them with Mesmerize immunity. It will also stack with Root / Snare and will not remove these effects or their immunity. It will also work if the player has stun immunity, and will remove the immunity when it hits the player.

Q. I have been doing the Midwinter quests. I have finished the Midgard tree quests. I wanted to do the Hibernia and Albion tree quests as well. The NPC has the symbol above him and offers the quest but it doesn't accept it and transfer it into the journal log. All the sites say it’s a Level 35 requirement, which I am. Is the quest bugged or is the Level requirement higher since its a different realm’s tree?  I would appreciate a reply, thanks.

A. Having climbed a tree or two, the Lady of the Jewels says: The quests to get other realm's trees are not acquirable until level 48.

From the Midwinter Event post:

- The Midwinter Tree quests start at level 35, however rumor has it that there may be a more advanced challenge to follow for those of level 48 and up.

Q. Hello. I've recently been considering reactivating my DAoC account to see what has changed in the world since I last played (about 4 years ago!). Could you tell me if my characters are still available to be played?

Also, I'm using the same computer I did back when DAoC first came out (albeit with a graphics card and ram upgrade). Will I be able to handle the client? What are the system requirements these days?

A. The Lady of the Jewels quick as can be had this to say: We do not delete characters from inactive accounts, so unless someone has deleted the characters they will always remain for them to return to.

As far as system requirements, if you are looking at running just Catacombs, which is now a free client, the system requirements can be found here http://support.darkageofcamelot.com/kb/article.php?id=764. For Darkness Rising and Labyrinth of the Minotaur the requirements can be found by searching the same knowledge base.

Q. I was wondering if there were any plans to make any of the extremely slow leveling artifacts pick up exp a bit faster? Having to level a few myself going through temps for Molvik and what not, and usually my temps don’t vary too greatly, but this Aten's Shield is murdering me getting like 1% exp every 5-10 kills. I'm sure there are more artifacts out there that are slow and other people might be wondering the same thing. Thanks for the help!

A. With an invisible shield emote The Lady of the Jewels says no: There are no current plans to change the rate at which artifacts level.

Q. I know you brought back the Medal of Honor for the holidays, but with a different quest than last year. Is there a replacement for "Honoring the Hardworking" where you receive the Cloak of Magic/Might? If not, are there any plans to reactivate the quest anytime soon?

A. With a grin the Lady of the Jewels explains: A version of the cloaks of Might and Magic was recently available during the Harvest Festival Farmers' Market. These rewards will likely return again with a future seasonal event.

Q. Is there some obscure reason that artifact shields still cannot be dyed? Almost everything else in the game is dyable at this point, artifact shields are a little behind the curve, can you please fix this so my firbolg hero can once more be completely red and look properly like his fire-truck self?

A. The Lady of the Jewels doesn’t want to ruin your sense of style: We will make it so that artifact shields can be dyable in 1.97.

Q. So when's 1.97 going to be put up on Pendragon?

A. As quick as an answer can be The Lady of the Jewels responds: 1.97a is currently scheduled to go to Pendragon next week, as always please stay tuned to the Herald for details.

Q. I have a Legendary Spellcrafter. Recently, someone asked me to enchan their armor. After a long search, I did find a reference to dusts in the Alchemist' NPC materials list. I am having difficulty finding any documentation on a Spellcrafter enchanting armor/weapons. Please help.

A. The Equalizer decided to take some time to explain how it works: Enchanting an item will increase the Bonus % of the item, up to a maximum of 35%. In order to do this, you need to purchase Spellcrafting dust from a supply merchant - in Camelot, this is Alchemist Lendand, in Jordheim, this is Holsvi Hallgrim, and in Tir na Nog, this is Saffa.

There are many different levels of Spellcrafting dust, and each type of dust will provide a higher amount of bonus % to the item that is being enchanted - however, this doesn't mean that the highest level dust is required to enchant an item to 35% bonus. Often, you can make do with a much lower-level dust than you would assume, so experiment a little with different dust levels in order to figure out which ones will get you to 35% without breaking your bank.

To enchant an item, simply combine the dust with the item as you would if you were spellcrafting bonuses onto it.

Good luck with your enchanting!

Q. The drop rate on Broken Dragonsworn crafting components seems to be really skewed; when I farm them, I'll routinely come home with 30+ broken dragonsworn weapons and 6 broken dragonsworn armor pieces. Checking player merchants shows the same trend - 5 pages of weapons, 3 armor offerings.

Do they share the same drop rate?

A. The Lady of the Jewels investigating this for you: The Broken Dragonsworn Armor and Broken Dragonsworn Armor have the same chance to drop.

Q. Are there any plans on making the relic capture credit BG instead of a group?

A. The Lady of the Jewels says that’s a possibility: Currently, the Relic Soldier title is meant for those who are in the group which captures the relic. We will discuss adding a secondary title for those in the Battlegroup in a future patch cycle.

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ANNOUNCEMENTS

If you haven't had a chance to head to Darkness Falls to slay the feared Queen Lilith and the doppelgangers, your time is running out. Word has it that they will be fading away into the shadows very soon.

Just a head's up that the Midwinter Quests are still available and considering how cold it is for a good number of you, it won't be hard to get into the season of things. Remember that this is a seasonal event and it the schedule says it will be going away at the end of January.

I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who offered their kind words and thoughts for me during this past week. It has been a difficult time but having your support and well wishes through all of this means the world to me. Thank you so much. /hug

Have a great weekend everyone, try to stay warm if you can!