MAY 14, 2003

Hate Plane:

The new Plane of Hate is now available on all servers!

The Plane of Hate is an old favorite of many players, and we were careful to retain as much of its old charm as possible (and all of its old quests). At the same time we created all new geometry for the zone using our newer tools and newer design ideas. Old and new players should find this zone to be a lot of fun and a fair challenge. Remember, the price for the Fuligan Soulstone of Innoruuk has been cut in half.

Veksar:

Veksar opens on Stormhammer!

Yes, the long-lost ancient city of the Iksar has been discovered. If you are brave enough, foolish enough, and if you can hold your breath, you may be the right hero to explore Veksar. Good luck!

Changes for New Players:

• Maps for Newbie Zones for all Players - One of the biggest hurdles that a new player has to overcome is learning their way around. For those of you that may have started your first character in Neriak, you will know what that was like. In order to help out the new player, we have enabled the Map window to make it available to all players if they are in a "newbie" zone.
• Context Tips - In order to provide helpful information at the time a player needs it, we have added several context tips. These tips will pop up when a player uses a certain feature or a specific event occurs. We hope this will help our new players to more easily understand the gameplay and controls for EverQuest. These tips may even be useful to long time players. However, if you wish, you can choose to turn off any specific tip, or turn off all of the tips using the check boxes in the Context Tips window.
• Improved Help Information - The in-game help files have been improved. They now contain much more information. Hopefully most questions you have about the game can be answered using help.
• All New Characters now start with a weapon skill - In order to help the new player that might forget to train with their weapon before heading out to defeat their first enemy (and even for those of us that have been playing a while and still forget to do this), all new characters now start off with a skill of 5 in their primary weapon.
• Taunt no longer requires training - Similarly, Taunt now works without being trained. Characters still start out with a skill of 0, but the skill can increase with use.
• Packet Loss Meter is now Off by default - Due to the fact that the packet loss meter is often confusing to new players, it will be off by default. You can toggle the packet loss meter using the F11 key.
• New Message to prompt new players about the Help button - We have added a chat message that appears when a level 1 through 10 character logs in that tells them to click the "?" button on the Window Selection toolbar if they need help.

Spells:

• Divine Intervention Fix - Players have been reporting that Divine Intervention was not updating the hit points for the character every time when cast, causing characters to die even though the spell seemed to have saved them. We have been unable to reproduce the issue specifically, but we have made some changes that should fix the problem. Please use /bug with details of the incident if you continue to see this problem.
• Bard Epic Animations - Bards will no longer play instrument animations when they have their epic equipped. No more stabbing yourselves in the head with your sword instead of playing a flute.
• Healing Messages now include the name of the healer - In order to make it clearer who has healed you, we have changed the message that you receive when healed. It will now include the name of the character casting the healing spell: "Bob has healed you for 300 points of damage.
• Call of the Hero works in PoW - We have removed the restrictions to Call of the Hero in the Plane of Water. In this particular zone we don't believe that the use of this spell needs to be restricted.
• Fear Spell bug fix - Players have reported that when a player character was affected by a Fear spell cast by an NPC, they would see the character running away but the person affected would not actually flee.
• Snare Line bug fix - Fixed an issue that was causing the Snare line of spells to fail on an NPC that is under the effects of a Fear spell.
• Trickster's Augmentation group only - We changed Trickster's Augmentation to be group only to prevent folks from using it to "grief" other players.
• LD Enchanters no longer cast Mem Blur - Enchanters that go linkdead were sometimes casting Memory Blur and similar spells on their enemies. This could cause rather unpleasant results for his group or raid when the NPC suddenly had a fresh hate list. Linkdead enchanters will no longer cast Memory Blur spells.
• Blizzard animation fix - Blizzard was causing a casting animation to go off with every wave, even if the caster was sitting. Now Blizzard works like most rain spells, and only triggers a casting animation when first cast.
• Locked Spell Gem fix - We fixed a bug that was causing the use of a right-click item to refresh the spell gem in the first slot instantly, but if that spell had a long recast it would render it useless until the spell was forgotten and memorized again.
• Mark of Kings upgrade - In order to make this spell more appealing then its lower level counterpart, Mark of Karn, we have: increased the duration from 3.5 to 4 minutes, reduced the casting time from 3 to 2 seconds, reduced the mana cost from 170 to 75 and made the spell slightly less resistible.
• Gravel Rain can now be cured - With its very long duration (30 minutes) it was a bit difficult that this spell could not be removed before the duration was over. This is now a curse and can be cured.
• Summoning a horse in bear form no longer causes you to lose the ability to cast spells for a while.
• Rathe's Son - The innate ability of the focused version of this pet is now less resistible.
• Child of Bertoxxulous - This 65th level Necromancer pet has been given a boost. Its offense has been increased to be in-line with that of the Legacy of Zek, and it now has the ability to use a power that is essentially the same as the spell Banshee Aura.
• Spirit Call - These pets were running away from enemies when at low health. Pets should be far more loyal and willing to risk themselves for their Shaman friends, so we have fixed it so that Shaman pets will no longer run away.
• Vampiric Embrace - We have corrected a bug with this spell that would prevent the character from casting for a couple of seconds after the proc went off.
• Stun Spells - The message on many stun-type spells have been changed to more accurately portray their effect on stun immune creatures.
• Mana from Buffs - we have increased the maximum amount of mana that can be gained through the use of buff spells.

Items:

• Zoning and losing your buffs - There has been a long-standing problem that could cause all of the buffs to be stripped from a character if they zoned with fewer hit points than they had bonus hit points granted by items. For example, if your character had only 10 hit points left when zoning, and had an item that granted +15 hit points, all of your character's buffs may have been stripped when you completed zoning. We have fixed this bug. You should now retain your buffs in this situation.
• GM Baking Spoon - On Firiona Vie, the Grandmaster's Baking Spoon was not no-drop. This allowed players to give out an unlimited number of 100% weight reduction bags. This obviously was not the intention for that item, so we have made the Grandmaster's Baking Spoon no drop on Firiona Vie.
• Wooden Medicine Totem - This item can now be equipped. It couldn't before.
• Adjutant Saber - We removed the secondary notation on the item, since it was only usable by Shadowknights and Paladins, who couldn't use it in their secondary slot anyhow.
• Cloak of the Dar Khura Hero - The effect on this item was listed in the database as the wrong effect type. The effect is now permanent.

NPCs:

• NPCs returning bags empty - NPCs that return items that they do not need were returning all containers empty, regardless of what was inside the container. NPCs that refuse unusable items will now also return bags with their contents intact.
• NPCs returning multiple items - If a character gave an NPC multiples of the same item, the NPC would only give back one of them if he did not want them. We have fixed this so that now those items will be returned. Such items will be stacked on your cursor. Just click the item that is on your cursor into your inventory and the next one will appear on your cursor. Keep clicking them into your inventory until you have them all back. BE WARNED that any of these items that you have not returned to your inventory will be lost if you zone or go linkdead before you get them back into your inventory.
• The Spirit of Rage - This undead gorilla is now flagged as undead.
• Solusek Ro's Guards - These guards will be much more attentive to their lord and will aid in his defense.
• NPCs healing too much - We have corrected a bug that was causing some NPCs to regain hit points when they turned to run away. The affected NPCs will be of all sorts and in many zones.
• Giant Yellow Jackets - The chance to find a thorax on the corpses of these creatures seemed too low, so we have increased it.

Zones:

• Veeshan's Peak - We have changed this zone to make it more appealing, particularly for those playing with one or two groups. We have removed the restriction against using gate in this zone and modified the zone population. Over all, the zone will be better to play in.
• Acrylia Caverns - We have fixed an issue with the first two seals that was causing the door to the 3rd seal to open without the 3rd seal spawning, and without the events being completed correctly. Now the door will only open under proper win conditions, and whenever the door opens the 3rd seal should be available.
• Plane of Nightmare - We have changed the logic for entry to the Thelin Poxbourne event in Plane of Nightmare. When you talk to Thelin, he will now remember your raid and only allow those of the same raid into your maze. Only three groups maximum will be allowed through the portal into any one maze. If your group is not in a raid, he will allow three non-raided groups through into the same maze. If there are three non-raided groups in the maze and you try and get a fourth through, he will act as any other raid would and tell you that he has already let enough people in the maze.
• Planes of Water and Fire - We have changed some of the spells used by the mini-bosses in these two zones. They should be a little easier to resist now.
• Halls of Honor - We have removed a recently added summoning ability from NPCs. We have introduced a less intrusive method of preventing the ability to use area of effect abilities on huge groups of NPCs in the zone.
• Bastion of Thunder - The tower bosses will now be dropping some loot every time (rather than sometimes not dropping any) like the other Planes of Power bosses.

Quests:

• Added Honey Mush Bread to Cabilis Vendors - This is an item needed for a quest that was unavailable.
• Officer's Cloak - If you have combined your Officer's Cloak in the Security Satchel or you wish to upgrade to the new Officer's Cloak of Service, speak with Scout Derrin in Grimling Forest.
• The Skull of Torment quest - This quest, in Kurn's Tower, should now work.

Alternate Advancement:

• Elemental Form - In order to make the Magician Elemental Form abilities a bit more usable, we have reduced the reuse time from 72 minutes to 15 minutes.
• Alternate Advancement timers - We fixed a bug that allowed AA timers to be reset early.
• Mass Group Buff - We have made this ability available to Beastlords.

Miscellaneous:

• Characters getting stuck in the world - We have fixed a bug that would cause a character to stay in game for extended periods of time after going linkdead. This bug was causing people to receive a 1018 error because their character was still in the world and could prevent them from logging back in for a long period of time.
• Big Dwarves - Fixed a bug that was causing Dwarves that had their size increased twice to start to see the insides of their faces while attacking. This was making even the stoutest Dwarves a bit uncomfortable and self-conscious.
• Tread water animation fix - We corrected a bug that would occasionally cause the treading water animation to stop animating.

Interface:

• Hit Point percentages display in windows - The Target window, Player window and Group window now display hit point percentages. This is something that many player created interfaces use and, considering the popularity of this feature, we have decided to add it to the default interface. In the Target and Group windows, the hit point percentages will disappear if the appropriate target/groupmate does not exist.
• /report - We updated the text message given when you use the /report feature to better reflect what text is actually attached to the report.
• More Tips of the Day added - We have updated the Tips of the Day with more tips and cleaned up a few spelling errors with the existing tips.
• Combining Stacks of items - Attempting to combine stacked items in a container will no longer work. The items must be separated first. This change will prevent items from being lost due to accidentally combining with them stacked. A dialogue will pop up, warning the player to separate the objects.
• Bankers no longer take items - In order to help prevent people from losing items by giving them to their banker instead of putting them into their bank, players can no longer attempt to trade with bankers. A message will tell you to right-click the banker if you wish use your bank.
• Guild Management - The Guild Management window will now take your setting for "show offline" into account when first displaying the window. The delimiter used in the file created when the "Dump" button is pressed has been changed to a [Tab] from a comma, as commas were causing confusion when used in the public and private notes.

Interface File Changes:

• EQUI_TargetWindow.xml
• EQUI_PlayerWindow.xml
• EQUI_GroupWindow.xml