APRIL 12, 2005

Headlines:

• A new button has been added to character select: Return Home. If a character has not been played in the past 6 hours, this button is enabled and pressing it will log the character into the game in their starting city.
• If a character is logged out for more than an hour, full health, mana, and endurance will be granted upon logging in. This is still a bit under development. You may not be quite at 100% but very close.
• Re-envisioning has begun!
• Over 600 Spell modifications.
• New zone art for the character select screen and character creation. Crossing the bridge while in Explore mode will allow you to enter the world. Note that all characters are in the same area now. There are no longer class specific areas.
• New Hot Spots!*
• The Warrens
• Netherbian Lair
• Echo Caverns
• The Scarlet Desert
• The Tower of Frozen Shadow
• The Hole
• The Grey
• Howling Stones
• The Halls of Betrayal (Chardok B)
• There are 2 new keyboard shortcuts in the Command section in the Options menu, Open Inventory Bags and Close Inventory Bags. Setting these, then using them will open/close all your general inventory slot bags (bag1-bag8).
• Added a teleportation stone to Arena in Plane of Knowledge.*

Re-envisioning Specifics:

• Many modifications have been made to the cast times, recast times, mana costs, and damage potential of many single target direct damage spells. The largest changes have been in level 1-50 spells, but many 50+ spells have been adjusted as well. These changes have caused the damage-per-second potential and/or the damage-per-mana values of these spells to be increased and should benefit the classes who use these spells in nearly all cases. Note that this also includes special purpose spells such as undead and summoned direct damage spells. Please check the in game descriptions for specific changes.*
• The 750 cap on mana increase spells has been removed.*
• The hard-coded level 52 NPC cap on Fear spells has been removed. We will be adding new fear spells in the near future which will allow players to fear higher level NPCs.*
• Assassin's Feint will now work on NPCs level 60 and higher.*
• Spells with poison counters no longer have innate aggro added. The spells themselves still generate aggro based on their other properties, but you will see a reduction in the amount of aggro generated in many cases.*
• NPC's innate 20% resistance against rain spells has been removed.*
• You will now receive messages in your chat window when you are healed by any heal-over-time spell. This includes both short term HOT spells as well as long term regen spells. You will receive the message if the spell actually gave you health back, so will not receive messages when at full health. These messages can be turned off through a new filter in the options window.*
• Ranger, Beastlord, and Paladin heals have been upgraded. See the spell descriptions in game for details.*
• The AC cap and percentage return on AC over the cap for monks has been increased.*
• Increased the knock back effect on the Warrior AA Press the Attack.
• Theft of Thought will no longer return only partial mana from NPCs over level 52. In addition, the spell was changed so that it will only return as much mana as the NPC has if that is less than the amount that the spell is trying to steal. So it will steal 400 mana from an NPC that has 1000 mana, but it will only steal 100 mana from a NPC that has 100 mana.*

Spells, Skills & AAs:

• Increased the effectiveness and decreased the casting time of the Ranger AA Auspice of the Hunter.*
• Increased the amount of damage absorbed by the Bard AA Shield of Notes.*
• Increased the damage done while using the Bard AA Dance of Blades.*
• Added a negative resistance mod to the Shaman AA Virulent Paralysis so it is more likely to land on NPCs now.*
• Modified the proc chance on spell Lightning Channeling and Storm Channeling. Both of these spells now have an increased proc chance.
• Sound of Divinity and Sound of Might will now use their own separate shared spell timer.
• The spell enhanced learning can no longer have its duration increased by Alternate advancement skills and/or focus effects.
• Flames of the Valiant and Flames of Redemption should now proc more often and be resisted much less often.
• Protection of the Wild should no longer be overwritten by Strength of the Hunter.*
• Spirit of the Panther and Spirit of the Leopard have been modified. NPCs were able to trigger the effects of these spells at a much higher rate then players. The rate of NPCs triggering these effects has been lowered to match PCs. Additionally, the base damage of the effect has been lowered, and the spell will now only land on PCs and pets that are a part of your group.
• Removed the focus effect limiters from Persuasive Gaze, the focus effect found on the enchanter epic 1.5. It now works on any detrimental spells up to level 70 the same way the focus effect on the enchanter epic 2.0 does.*
• Fixed a problem with focus effects that reduce hate. It was not using the highest effect if more than one focus effect was worn.
• Dragon Fang and Leopard Claw will now generate less hate.

Items:

• Items that have a combat or clickable spell effect that was changed due to the spell changes in this patch have either had their proc rate adjusted to compensate or use a new spell to maintain their damage potential.
• The Anguish chest pieces now have additional worn mods and a new spell focus effect.
• The Anguish wrist pieces now have additional worn mods.
• Mirrored Mask will no longer conflict with other recast timer based items such as the Soul Orb.
• Hammer of Rancorous Thoughts is now a 39/25 weapon with a 225pt proc.
• Dragonkiller is now a 34 (+2 magic)/21 weapon.
• Mace of Grim Tidings is a 32/22 weapon.
• Broken Mandible of the Broodqueen is now a 12/18 weapon and has a +5% mod to backstab.
• Fang of Kessdona now has +12% mod to backstab.
• Crescent Palemoon now has the focus Aneuk Glare. It also has +15 avoid, +4 spell rune and +4 regen.
• Aegis of the Amber Moon now has +3 shielding, +4 dot rune, +6 regen.
• Bladewhisper Chain Gloves of Journeys now has Cleave V as the worn effect.
• Bladewhisper Chain Legguards of Journeys now has the focus of Alacrity of the Ikaav.
• Summoned: Burning Shank should proc more often.
• Eye of Yar`Lir is now called "Oculus of Yar`Lir".
• Bracelet of the Corrupter now has +2 mana regen.
• Wristband of Spectral Corruption now has +2 mana regen and +20 attack.
• Bracer of Corrupted Souls now has +2 mana regen and +20 attack.
• Bracer of the Debauched now has +2 mana regen and +20 attack.

Missions, Quests & Events:

• Added the following new Dragons of Norrath missions.
• House of the Autumn Rose (Norrath's Keepers Only)
• Plunder the Hoard (Dark Reign Only)
• A Goblin's Escort
• Halfling's Treasure Map
• Signal Fires
• Sudden Tremors

These will show up on the usual mission givers once you have enough faction.

• Modified the shards awarded for many of the Dragons of Norrath missions to better reflect how long they are taking to complete.
• Changed the adventure "The Gilded Scroll" to fix some situations that could cause players to be unable to finish the mission. Now the Noble Kirin Scholar will not spawn before the real scroll is found. We also fixed a problem that could, in very rare cases, cause the real scroll not to be placed on an NPC.
• The corrupted drake adds in the Vishimtar encounter will now respawn correctly after a failure.
• Made a change to Burning Woods that should reduce the number of NPCs that get stuck under the world . This should make the hornets easier to find.
• Increased the drop rate for the Collector's Fire Hornet Wing and Collector's Iksar Witch Doll.
• We've extended the 6th anniversary scavenger hunt so that it will be available through Sunday, the 17th.
• Changes were made to all Muramite Proving Ground trials. The major changes are: Adaptation is slightly easier, the trial of Ingenuity was significantly changed, and NPC resists in all single group trials were lowered.
• Corrected a problem that was causing some NPCs in the Muramite Proving Grounds to show up in the wrong part of the zone.
• In the Citadel of Anguish it's no longer possible to fight Arch Mage Vangl without completing the Keldovan, Jelvan, and Hanvar events first.
• The Warden Hanvar encounter has been made more challenging; you may wish to bring some extra allies with you.
• Beware, if you are too close to a wall the swarm adds in the Mata Muram encounter will spawn directly on top of you.
• Increased the drop rate for the Tongue of the Zun'Muram off Zun'Murum Tkarish Zyk in Txevu.
• Changed the quest that gives alternative access to Txevu. When you hail the golem at the end of Inktu`ta it will check your items and flags and do the following:
• If you do not yet have a Qvic flag, the golem will give you the Splinter of the High Temple.
• If you do have a Qvic flag, the golem will give you whichever High Temple pieces you are missing.
• If you already have a Txevu flag, the Cipher of Txevu item, or all three fragments of the High Temple, the golem will ignore you.
• Likewise, when you complete the Qvic backflag, if you have the Splinter of the High Temple from completing Inktu`ta you will automatically receive whichever High Temple pieces you are missing.
• This change allows the combination of Inktu`ta and the Qvic backflag quest to count for Txevu access and the two can be completed in any order. This change is not retroactive.
• A bug was fixed so that Alkron Wyrmsong will no longer give bards a cloth cap when an error is made during the quest for Epic 2.0.

NPCs:

• Modified King Xorbb in Beholder. He will now drop Slime Crystal Staff 100% of the time.
• Players can no longer attempt to give stacks of items to NPCs. The NPC would treat the stack as one item and you would lose the rest. There is now a check to help with people putting in a stack of items and losing them.
• Items given to an NPC by a PC will no longer count as a Task item when looted.
• NPC pathing code has been reviewed and some changes have been made which should prevent NPCs from becoming stuck and eventually becoming invisible. Please let us know if you see this happen any more.
• The Cube Fragments in the Gates of Discord Sewer trials will no longer get stuck in the geometry.
• The Soulbinder at the Firiona Vie outpost is now able to bind you to that area.

Tradeskills:

We have changed the chance to gain a skill up when using tradeskills. Previously there was a large increase in the average number of combines needed for a skill increase for skill values of 160 through 190. This made sense when 200 was the skill cap. We have changed the algorithm to remove the harsh spike in combines required for skill ups from 160 to 190, making it a more reasonable to increase all the way up to 300. For more details please see the post here: http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/board/message?board.id=Trade&message.id=5800

• Alabaster Beak and Ivory Stormrider Canine are now marked as usable in tradeskills.
• Dragons of Norrath brewing items now drop off NPCs. They were only available through foraging before.
• Added the race name to the Unfired Cookie Cutters. New item names are: Unfired Barbarian Cookie Cutter, Unfired Gnome Cookie Cutter, Unfired Troll Cookie Cutter and Unfired Animal Cookie Cutter.
• Added the recipes for four cookie cutters for Luclin beasties. The sketches and molds should be easily found on vendors.
• Added the appropriate effects to Dragons of Norrath potions.
• The recipe for dough made from Rock Hopper Egg now uses Rockhopper Egg. It turns out that there were two items with similar names, but the one used in the recipe doesn't drop in game.
• Removed the recipe for chain jointing that was used in Planes of Power armor. This recipe was removed because the jointing is no longer used in any recipes.
• You will now only need to collect half the number of items for the level 65+ Vah Shir racial armor pattern book quest.

Server Stability:

• We believe we have corrected the problem with the excessive server lag that has been happening in most raid zones. A guild from one of our live servers was willing to come over to our test server and verify the raid in pofire was working properly without causing the zone to lag out. They were able to complete many of the stages of the raid successfully and even multiple times without issue. There was one instance of a mob warping after getting in a bad location, but we have made vast improvements from its current state. We have also improved our logging code to better detect similar problems should they occur again in the future. Please let us know if you experience any problems related to this.
• The memory leak problems that have recently been affecting the world servers has had much progress. Several memory leaks related to the previous update have been corrected, and server stability has improved measurably as a result. We will continue to monitor the servers closely for memory leak issues.
• A zone crash in Chardokb related to the Korucust encounter has been fixed.
• A zone crash related to guild tribute being toggled while a player was being charmed or feared has been fixed.

Chat Filtering:

• Pet responses to commands (except for /pet leader) are no longer broadcast, but go only to the owner of the pet.*
• Pet responses to commands can now have a selected color and be redirected to any chat window.*
• Pet spell-casting messages can now have a selected color, be redirected to any chat window, and be filtered to not show at all.*
• Assassinate, Deadly Strike, Slay Undead, and Finishing Blow messages will now be displayed in the Melee Critical message color and redirect/filter as other crits.*

Mail System:

• You now have quick access to all of your character mailboxes on the current server from any of your characters.

Title Suffixes:

• The title system now supports title suffixes. The first use of this new feature are the server titles.

Guild Hall (Guilds):

• Added a guild tribute master to the guild hall.
• The guild bank no longer accepts NORENT items.
• Fixed a bug that allowed players with out the proper flags to remove items from the Guild bank.
• Using any Eye of Zomm type spells in a guild hall will no longer take the client to server select.

Bazaar/Barter:

• Added and Augment pool and Augment Solvent Merchant in the Bazaar.
• Added new search criteria to the Bazaar search: min level, max level. Any items which match all other search criteria, yet have a rec or req level outside the boundaries set in the new fields will not be returned by the search.
• The barter UI code has been improved. There were some issues related to keeping the client properly synchronized with the server which have been fixed. It now more accurately tracks changes in inventory when multiple players are interacting with a buyer. Also, if a buyer has a LORE item, any buy-lines that require the LORE item will now automatically disable because the buyer would not be able to complete the transaction (because it would result in two lore items on the buyer). Previously this was causing a client-server sync issue that would result in a player being disconnected.
• Barter Search Window: Right-clicking on the item sought by Buyers found in a search will display that item. You now have to right click on the Buyer's name to get the search path.

UI:

• Fixed an issue causing custom UIs to show bad data in unused buff slots.
• The Task display now properly displays tasks with a large number of elements.
• On character select, if you want to go back into the tutorial, just click the tutorial button below the list of characters. It is no longer a toggle button.

Miscellaneous:

• Increased the maximum level range spread for LDoN adventures from 7 to 10 so you can now group with someone 10 levels above or below you.
• Critical heals now produce a message similar to other spells that crit.
• Fixed corpse looting bugs for corpses that have been summoned or moved out of dynamic zones.
• Closing multiple bags while using the bank no longer causes the client to crash.
• The raid locking system had various bugs which are now fixed. Please let us know if you encounter any problems with the raid tool.