DECEMBER 18, 2003

Headlines!

• Melee Enhancements Part 1.
• New Spell Effects Live.
• Casino Now Open In Shadowhaven.
• HEAR YE! HEAR YE! Check with your Town Crier for new editions of your hometown paper!

AA REFUND:

• Extended Notes 3 and Sionachie's Crescendo have been refunded (More details below). If you had these bard AAs and were close to 30 AA points stored, make certain that you spend enough points to have 30 or less unspent AA points before you zone. All AA points over 30 are removed when you zone.
• Improved Reclaim Energy has been refunded to magicians due to changes with the amount of energy received when cannibalizing their pets. If you have this Magician AA and were close to 30 AA points stored, make certain that you spend enough points to have 30 or less unspent AA points before you zone. All AA points over 30 are removed when you zone.

Melee Enhancements:

We have been building an enhancement to the melee system, and the first part of it is now Live.

The yellow bar now represents endurance rather than stamina.

All Disciplines now require an expenditure of endurance to use. They still have a re-use timer, and they can't be used more often than the timer allows.

Disciplines have now been divided into a few different timers.

We have also added a few of the new melee skills to the game. These are the skills that do not use the new "opening" system, but can be used without an opening present. The "reactionary" skills and the opening system will remain on Test for further tuning.

Warriors have been given a mitigation boost. This affects all warriors at all levels.

Monks have been given the ability to dodge blows from attackers behind them. This affects all monks with the Dodge ability.

All existing disciplines can be purchased as tomes in either East Commons or the Plane of Knowledge. To learn a discipline, the Tome must be turned into your guildmaster.

Several new disciplines have been added for warriors, monks and rogues who are above level 60.

Play King's Court in Shadowhaven!

Shandeling's Roost in Shadowhaven now houses a game of chance. To play you will need to buy a King's Court Token. You then take this token and turn it in to any of the dealers. Based on what your hand turns out to be, you will be awarded a prize. The highest hands will return a gold ticket as the prize. This Ticket can be turned in to win prizes such as a Guise of the Deceiver, Fungus Covered Great Staff, or Holgresh Elder Beads. Good luck to all that play!

Items:

• Purchased augments, that have not been bound to an item yet, can be sold back to Dible Hedledrap in South Ro.
• Caerlyna in the Bazaar will trade your containers for tokens and will trade tokens for containers. This will allow player characters to sell those tokens in the Bazaar. Folks that buy the tokens can then take them to the Caerlyna and trade them in for the appropriate container. You can exchange most weight reducing tradable containers for a token.
• We've changed the +12 Wis on the Copper Medal of Rapture to +12 Int. Really, we have!
• We have lowered the minimum duration to 5 ticks on Affliction Efficiency I-IV and Affliction Haste I-IV foci.
• Timeless Coral Greatsword will no longer claim to be out of charges when it procs. If you own one of these swords, you will need to petition a GM and ask them to replace your current Coral Greatsword with a new one.
• Phylactery is no longer usable by all classes, only MAG NEC ENC WIZ CLR SHA DRU.
• The Delightful Orb of Forgotten Magic now only procs for characters level 35 and above.
• The following items that had the Invigor effect now have Serpent Sight or Ultravision: Orb of the Crimson Bull, Abram's Axe of the Stoic, Tolan's Darkwood Boots, Mrylokar's Greaves, Singing Steel Vambraces, Crown of Rile, 5 Dose Potion of Wolves Blood, 5 Dose Potion of Fleeting Languor, 10 Dose Potion of Wolves Blood, 10 Dose Potion of Fleeting Languor, Potion of Wolves Blood, Potion of Fleeting Languor, Spiroc Wingblade, Spirit Caller's Boots, Spirit Weaver's Boots, Frozen Efreeti Boots, Ring of the Crimson Bull, Rune Crafter's Boots, Wolf Caller's Boots and Camii's Bracer of Vigor.
• The effects on Abram's Axe of the Stoic and Spiroc Wingblade are now Worn to activate, not procs.

Spells/Songs:

• New spell effects! Just about every spell in the game has been given a new spell effect. If you have your spell effects turned off, you may want to turn them back on.
• Fixed the bard AA Channeling Focus. It was allowing 100% recovery from missed notes in most instances. We have restored it to the 5%/10%/15% values as documented in the AA window.
• Fixed a problem with short-duration pets (Rage of Zomm, cleric hammers, wizard flaming swords and such) so that they will no longer dissipate before engaging the target NPC.
• Reclaim Energy will now return 75 percent of the mana used to summon the pet, 95 percent if the caster has Improved Reclaim Energy.
• Lull spells with duration less than 5 should no longer be lasting as if they had duration 5. This will reduce the duration of some lull-type spells to their proper duration.
• Fixed a problem that caused Protection of the Nine to block Blessing of the Nine.
• We corrected an issue where the same druid damage over-time spell cast on an NPC by two different druids would not stack.
• Bulwark of Vie was reducing spell damage as well as melee damage. It now only reduces melee damage.
• Eye of Zomm will no longer cause players summoned pets to suicide if commanded to kill the eye.
• Improved the melee damage on pets focused by Ritual Summoning.
• The magician epic pet can now Enrage when focused by Minion of Darkness.
• Increased the offensive capabilities of most pets when focused by Summoner's Boon.
• We have removed the Stamina effects from many spells.
• Fixed a bug that would cause issues with pet hit points, and could cause them to be unable to move if their hit points got too low. This may also address other issues with pets using hit-point boosting items.

Alternate Advancement:

• Extended Notes 3 and Sionachie's Crescendo have been refunded. If you had these bard AAs and were close to 30 AA points stored, make certain that you spend enough points to have 30 or less unspent AA points before you zone. All AA points over 30 are removed when you zone. You may, of course, repurchase these AAs.
• Extended Notes and Sionachie's Crescendo no longer affects harmful area-of-effect spells.
• Jamfest has been fixed. It will now affect the bard's group, not just the bard.
• The Archetype AA ability Spell Casting Deftness was not reducing the casting time for the wizard spell Harvest. It does now.

Tradeskills:

• Merchants will not pay more for a tradeskill product than the cost of the components needed to make it. However, they will still sell those products for the same amount.

Zones and Quests:

• Maelin will now respond as though you have the Quintessence, as long as you are flagged for time. It is also now possible to receive any of the earlier progression flags, even if you have already earned access to the Plane of Time.

User Interface:

• Tell windows now log the name of the person sending tells in the chat log.
• Tell windows now blink when a tell is received, even when the window is not minimized.
• Fixed a problem that caused users some ATI cards to be unable to see the /find path or the targeting ring.
• We have added a new combat ability windown which allows you to make up to eight hot keys for disciplines and other new melee abilities and displays any current melee effects. The window can be opened by pressing Alt+C. The keys are accessible using either the mouse or Ctrl+1-8.

Miscellaneous:

• Added some explanation text to the targetindicator.ini file that help explain how to modify the targeting ring.

UI Files:

• AttackIndicator.tga
• EQUI.xml
• EQUI_CharacterCreate.xml
• EQUI_CombatAbilityWnd.xml
• EQUI_CombatSkillsSelectWnd.xml
• EQUI_GroupSearchWnd.xml
• EQUI_PlayerWindow.xml
• EQUI_SkillsWnd.xml