Here are the patch notes for March 15, 2006: ================================================= EverQuest Live Update - 03/15/06 -------------------------------------------- *** Headlines *** -------------------------------------------- - EverQuest turns 7! Starting on March 16th, join us for a month long anniversary celebration! - We believe we have fixed all issues related to the increased network lag when re-forming groups in a raid. Please let us know if you have any further issues related to this. *** Anniversary Events *** -------------------------------------------- - Double experience! To kick off the celebration, from 12:00 PM Pacific Time on March 16th until 12:00 PM Pacific Time on March 20th all normal experience rewards will be doubled! - Fabled NPCs have returned! Many of your favorite NPCs from the original EverQuest zones and Kunark have been upgraded to Fabled versions that are tougher and tote better loot. And for the first time, they are joined by over a hundred NPCs from Velious! - New scavenger hunt! NPCs in Thurgadin, Kael, and Skyshrine are looking for help finishing up some of their collections. *** Missions, Quests -------------------------------------------- - Fixed a bug in the Gilded Scroll mission that was not updating the scrolls when they are looted. - Five new unusual creatures have been spotted in the Demi-Plane of Blood. - The mini bosses in Anguish will now drop augments again. - Made some aesthetic changes to the Snowtail and Ghost encounters in Razorthorne. - Tailfang in Shar Vahl will now drop his tail on the Firiona Vie server. - The mission The Key to the Past should now hand out an appropriate reward. - Reduced the difficulty of the Oroshar encounter in Arcstone. Oroshar should now be in line with the other four spirits. - Modified the Sundersky encounter in Arcstone. Sundersky is now more powerful, but becomes less so after his four summoned winds are destroyed. - Collapsed all of the missions on Spirit Hunter Elijo into one mission: Mark of the Spirits. Any previously collected spirit marks can still be turned into Spirit Hunter Elijo for task credit. - Ao the Fourth Born now gives out a spell scroll reward for completing his mission arc. If you've previously completed all 3 Skylance Missions, then simply hail Ao for your reward. - For the quest, Through the Portal, a fix has been made so that crazed scyrkins will drop the needed shards. *** AAs , Spells, and Disciplines *** -------------------------------------------- - Temporarily removed the AA Abundant Healing. This ability was causing a conflict with the ability Gift of Mana. As Gift of Mana is generally considered the more useful of the two, Abundant Healing has been removed until we can resolve the conflict. Any points spent in Abundant Healing will be refunded - Dispel spells can no longer be blocked using buff blocking. - Harmonic Dissonance now has a 15 minute reuse time associated with it. - Pets will no longer instantly die when told to attack a trap they are not allowed to attack. The owner will receive notification about why the pet did not attack. - You can now remove pet buffs even if they are stacked beyond 4. - The buffs in the pet information window will no longer show 0 time left in their tooltip. *** Traps and Auras *** -------------------------------------------- - We’ve made a change to how aura particles are displayed. You will now only see aura particles for auras that are owned by someone in your group or raid. - Most player cast auras will no longer cast their effects every spell tick. Instead, they will work like other spheres of influence and the effect will remain on an affected player as long as they are within the area of the sphere and be removed from the player only when they leave the sphere. Note that if you remove the effect from yourself by clicking it off, you will need to leave the area of the aura and return before it is reapplied. -The cleric spells Aura of the Pious and Aura of the Zealot have been changed slightly. They will no longer fade after a certain amount of damage has been taken, but will absorb slightly less damage per hit. - Traps will now apply the correct amount of damage whether in a pvp setting or not. - Corrected a problem that would cause older traps to go off every time someone entered their area instead of going off, then being inactive for a time before going off again. - You can now try to sense a trap even when you have a PC or NPC targeted. It you are targeting an object that could be trapped (such as a chest), you will still attempt to find the trap on the object rather than searching the area for traps. - Using pick, disarm, or inspect while invis will no longer automatically make you visible. - Rain spells will no longer count interactive objects, traps, and auras towards the max number of NPCs they can hit. - Beneficial auras will now properly affect your group and raid members in a pvp setting. - The Aura window will not longer close when hitting the escape key. *** Items *** -------------------------------------------- - Fixed the evolving item reward for the Spirit Hunter Missions in Arcstone. If you have a cloak that is stuck in the second stage of the evolving item (Cloak of the Spirit Stalker) speak to Spirit Hunter Elijo to receive the final version. - Modified the Black Orb of the Scrykin quest. The orbs of the seven dead Scrykin are now called "Gray" orbs and are tradeable. The orbs of the six living scrykin will also drop off the appropriate scrykin (in addition to being the task rewards for completing Or`Sarro's tasks) - The Enraged Flesh Armor pieces are now no trade. - The Prophecy of Ro tier1/2 cleric breastplate now has the activated effect of Pious Elixir - The Prophecy of Ro tier1/2 shaman breastplate now has the activated effect of Ghost of Renewal - The Prophecy of Ro tier1/2 enchanter breastplate now has the activated effect of Ethereal Rune - The Saga of Skin Translations are now no-trade - The Coldain Historical Seal augmentations are now lore to each other - Hammer of Shadows now has 300 endurance - A number of items from the events in Theater of Blood now have their proper stats - Burning Tree Leaf now only returns at max 337 hp and mana and has reduced stats. - Pendant of Insurgency, Aelly’s Earring, Prickly Earring, and Mary-Anne’s Ring of Insanity now have monk, beastlord, and berserker as usable classes. *** NPCs *** -------------------------------------------- - Farwein Windrun has returned to his camp in South Ro. Feel free to stop by and welcome him back. - Queen Tak`Yaliz in the Desert of North Ro will no longer be missing while you’re looking for her. - Ping Fuzzlecutter is now carrying some tasty water! - Tak`Valnakor will now properly offer all of his tasks. - Boomba the Big has returned to his old stomping grounds near the west gate of Freeport. - Vulak`Aerr, High Priest of Veeshan, has returned to the Temple of Veeshan. - Gnarlibramble has loot again. *** Tradeskills *** -------------------------------------------- - Changed the Stunning Bola and Explosive Bola to use the new potions. (Basic Suspension of Pestilence IV and Basic Suspension of Flame IV respectively) - Increased the yield on the Treant Laminating Adhesive by adding one more Acid Wash to the recipe. - The trivials for the Staurolite and Prestigitase recipes have been appropriately altered to be more in line with the result. The trivials were on Saurolite are now on Prestigitase, and vise versa. - Fixed the names of the Prestidigitase items. - Fixed the Reinforced medicine bags (normal and foldable) to take large sized items like the medicine bag. - The pottery task now makes the combine check on the more difficult of the pottery wheel combine or the kiln combine. You will still need to complete the item (fire it) to hand into the judge. This is to enforce it being a test of the potter’s skill, not the potter’s friend’s skill. - Made the new throwing potions stack to 100 as the old ones did. - Fixed many of the old alchemy potions that were not casting at the proper level. - The trophy certificates will now give the trophy exp to get it to a percentage appropriate to your skill within the "Tier" in addition to setting the trophy to the appropriate level. This will not exceed 99% though, so do not hold onto the certificate, but use it before you gain more skill. - Worked Suspension of Slime potions now have the proper range of 90. - Drop rates on the Alchemy dropped components for the new items have been increased in most cases. - Modified the Distillate of Skinspikes potions to be more in line with the old Kilva's series of damage shield potions. - Modified the Distillate of Antidote to cure multiple layers of poison counters, as well as more counters overall (44 instead of 36). - Modified the Distillate of Immunization to cure multiple layers of disease counters, as well as more counters overall (44 instead of 36). - Added some NPC’s to various zones to help consolidate some of the alchemy herb inventory. - Updated many of the trophy tasks to remove items that were too rare and items that were only in zones that required keys. Ngreth is open to further debate on additional items and items he may have missed. Please feel free to post about it on the forums. - The composite treant bows have been altered. Those that had the "calmed" versions will get a version similar to the bows they had, but it will have gained a slot 7 augments slot, in addition to the slot 4 it already had. The calmed compound version has had a slight adjustment DOWN in the stats, but slight increase in the damage and range. The rest of the calmed versions got an increase to their overall stats, though there may be some shuffle. Those that had the version of the bow with the proc will get a significant upgrade to their bow, but these bows no longer have an innate proc. Instead they have a slot 4 and a slot 7, and the players will be able to choose to add a proc via slot 4, or not. These bows have also changed to attunable. The recipes to make the bows have changed, and the in game book includes the changes. - Altered the recipe for the Grandmaster's Medicine bag. Please see Jolum for the new requirement. *** Zones *** -------------------------------------------- - Veeshan's Peak should now be in the appropriate state. - Guild lobby fog issues should be resolved now. - You should be able to bind in North and South Ro again. *** General *** -------------------------------------------- - Windows Sticky Keys functionality on Windows 98 and ME is fixed. - The Auto-Bank feature now works for everyone. - Procs and clickable items will no longer cause spell gems to refresh randomly. - You can now open up to 34 bags at once. - Autofire will properly turn off when a destructible object is destroyed. - The Defense of Thurgadin. Dwarves at Base Camp will now be more focused on recovery than combat and will be less effective in battle. They will refocus on Combat when they move away from basecamp - The Defense of Thurgadin. The Giant Captains will now strengthen their soldiers that are nearby in combat. - The Defense of Thurgadin. Added additional failsafes to prevent the Kromzek General from failing to leave a corpse *** Special Notes *** -------------------------------------------- - We have made really good progress on the reported issues of increased zoning times. We would like to thank all those that have helped with this by providing detailed information. We know what the issues are and we are in the process of implementing our solution. We hope to have a fix that can be tested on our Test Server within the next week or so. - Just in the last couple of days we were able to find the line of sight issue that some of you have been reporting. Given how close we were to our next live update, we felt that there was not a sufficient amount of time to properly test this change. For this reason the line of sight fix will not be in this update, but will go to our Test Server this week so that we can have the proper amount of testing time to ensure that our fix actually fixes the problem and does not create any others. Thank you for your understanding.