Patch message for July 10
New zones, zone revamps, and plenty of other stuff in today's patch
July 10, 2003
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** 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
