MAY 11, 2005

Headlines:

• Many quests in city zones that give XP as a reward now give significantly more.
• Four new missions are available that take you back to Qeynos, Unrest, Befallen, and Hate's Fury.
• Veteran's Rewards will be available on May 13th. You can find out more details about these rewards at http://eqlive.station.sony.com/lowsrc/news_section/newsview.jsp?story=50003.
• The required levels on many spells level 50 and below have been changed so that all casting classes will now receive at least 1 new spell every level.
• Great new functionality has been added to the mail system. Some of the major features are listed below, but also check the bottom of the patch message for details.
• Multiple recipients, including a dynamically generated guild mailing list.
• EverQuest mail forwarding. You can now have your EverQuest mail forwarded to the e-mail address registered with the station account of the character you are playing. NOTE: you cannot reply to the forwarded mail.
• New Address Book. You can now setup mailing lists on your client and store your friend's addresses in your address book.

Spells & Skills:

• Players who only have the first two ranks of the Spell Casting Fury AAs will now do double damage on a successful spell crit, the same as if they had the third rank.
• Players who only have the first two ranks of the Ingenuity AA will now do double damage on a successful spell crit, the same as if they had the third rank.
• DoT spells for nearly all classes have been adjusted to scale better as players gain levels. Additionally, most of these spells have had their casting time significantly reduced. A number of additional changes have been made. Please see in game descriptions for updated information.
• Pet heals are now generally more efficient, have shorter cast times, and will remove poison and curse effects in addition to disease effects.
• Frost Guard now has a 1 hour duration.
• Rangers now gain the ability to triple attack starting at level 60.
• Berserker's Frenzy skill now has a minimum damage cap starting at level 51.
• The return on AC over the cap has been increased for monks, paladin, and shadowknights of level 50 and higher.
• Based on player feedback, we have removed the notification to the caster that occurred whenever a heal-over-time spell made an exceptional heal and added new functionality to let the caster know when their spell has worn off.
• All caster, priest, and hybrid classes now learn Meditation at level 1.
• All priest and hybrid classes now learn Channeling at level 1.
• All detrimental spells that have a duration will now notify their caster when they wear off.
• All hybrid classes now learn Abjuration, Alteration, Conjuration, Divination, and Evocation at level 1.
• All buffs that last at least 24 seconds and do not go to the short buff window will now notify their caster when they wear off.
• Share Wolf Form will no longer have its buff timer decremented in the Guild Hall.
• Shield of Notes and Dance of Blades will now properly reset if they fail to take hold.
• Lich Sting and Reaper Strike now grant a buff to the group as well as the Shadow Knight triggering the effect. The benefit for the Shadow Knight will be significantly larger then the benefit to the rest of the group.
• Kessadona's Flash of Insight is now known as Kessadona's Roar and has been changed to be a direct damage cold based spell.

Items:

• Seal: Mastery of All is now no-drop on the Firiona Vie server.
• A Gem-Etched Key was dropping off of common crocodiles in Plane of Earth. This erroneous drop has been removed.
• The Rod of Shaded Wrath has been slightly upgraded.
• Many items with over 165 hps were given type 8 slots instead of type 7 slots.
• The Tainted Heartstone and Charm of Exotic Speech will now properly give full stats when all uncommon languages are mastered.
• All flowers of functionality are now inventory clickable.
• All armor and weaponry on the Dragons of Norrath vendors now have an additional type 9 augmentation slot.
• New type 9 augments can now be found on the Dragons of Norrath vendors.
• Some additional weapons on the Dragons of Norrath vendors are now rogue usable.
• Blightbringer's Pants of the Grave now has the focus effect Venom of Anguish.
• Improved the damage/delay ratio of some of the weapons on the Dragons of Norrath vendors.
• Beaded Hoop of Demise now has +10 combat effects and +5 strikethrough.
• Chains of Anguish now has the focus effect Avariciousness of the Ikaav.
• Shroud of the Surging Storm now has the focus effect Avariciousness of the Ikaav.
• Ring of Deterrence now has the focus effect Avariciousness of the Ikaav.

Quests & Events:

• When Brevik Kalaner combines the high temple pieces to form the Cipher of Txevu, the player will now also receive Qvic access if they do not already have it.
• When zoning into Kod`taz, if a player has the Inktu`ta high temple piece as well as Qvic access, they will now receive any other high temple pieces they may be missing.
• Removed the large particle effects from King Gelaqua's room in Riftseekers. This should help with reported visual lag issues in that area.
• Fixed a spawn issue in Firiona Vie involving Hero Goxnok and a Drachnid spy.
• Guttertusk the Cruel has been spotted wandering the city of Dranik.
• Raids in Gates of Discord dynamic zones now require a minimum of 12 people to start.
• Corrected a problem that was causing the Kunark dragons to not drop their spells or, in the case of Trakanon, his teeth.
• Vyril Nightfire in Mistmoore is seeking adventurers to help destroy the new inhabitants of the castle.

Tradeskills:

• Added a new alchemy recipe to create Essence of Froglok. It can be made in much the same way as the other essences.

Missions:

• We have made improvements to how mission rewards are given in situations where the mission was completed while a member was zoning, charmed, feared, or dead.
• Your mission token or any item you receive at the completion of your mission will now automatically go into an open slot in your inventory. You will not see it on your cursor anymore. If your inventory is full then the token or item will be attached to your cursor the next time you zone.
• Savil Tranquilsong has made an important breakthrough in his work uncovering the history of Unrest and is looking for adventurers around levels 55 to 70 to assist him. Seek him out in the Butcherblock Mountains if you are interested in helping.
• Rumors have been circulating of increased activity around Hate's Fury and a growing discontent among the merchants of the Broken Skull Clan. A merchant in the Crypt of Nadox is looking to hire a few hearty souls around levels 55 to 70 to help keep the Clan in check.
• Guard Freklin in Qeynos Hills has gotten himself into hot water after being caught sleeping on the job and is now stuck on gnoll watch. He is looking for adventurers around levels 15 to 35 to help him get back into the good graces of the guard.
• The ancient necromancer Marnek Jaull has returned to the dark halls of Befallen and kidnapped the daughter of a paladin of Prexus for use in his evil rituals. Derin Mausrel, uncle of the kidnapped girl, has traveled to West Commons in search of adventurers around levels 30 to 40 to help him rescue his niece and destroy the necromancer once and for all.

User Interface:

• There is a completely new interface for the chat filter.
• The Bandolier "auto swap" will now maintain its state through relog.
• There is a new Merchant Interface window. Items are now displayed in more intuitive list.

Miscellaneous:

• Added Label EQType 134 - Currently Casting spell. Added it to Casting window.
• Bug fix for entering the game by walking through the arch in explorer mode of character selection. If you were logged out in an instanced zone, you will not see multiple of each character if that zone was not up.
• For servers that have movelog command enabled, players will now see what servers have their current name in use already.
• We have changed the text description of certain flags on the item inspection window. NO DROP is now NO TRADE and NO RENT is now TEMPORARY.
• Names above players/NPCs should now be visible at twice the distance they were before.

E-Mail Features:

• Audio and text notifications of new mail.

Mail Window

• New Options and Address Book buttons.
• The Options button brings up the options window (with the Mail tab selected).
• The Address Book button brings up the address book window.
• New "Reply All" button.
• New "TO" field visible in the view pane (where you read your email). It shows all recipients, except those that are BCC.

Mail Composition Window

• New "From" field that shows you who you are when sending an email.(Useful now that you can quickly switch between the mailboxes of your different characters on the current server).
• You can now send to multiple recipients at once, by separating them with comas. You can also use an address book entry name.
• When pressing "Reply All" from the Mail Window, the lists found to match exactly (both name and addresses) with an entry in your address book are compacted to the name only, other entries are written in full.
• The Sync button is there to synchronize your TO field with your address book. This is mainly useful when replying to all: it helps you add new entries to your address book or update old ones. In the latter case, you will be notified of the differences: name differs by case, addresses removed, addresses added. The note field is preserved during the update.

Address Book Window

• New window to edit your address book.
• Fields for name, addresses and note.
• Checkbox to make the entry name private, which means that during address expansion, the addresses will be written as if you had selected them individually, not in the mailing list format.
• Automatic update of the "Guild" entry. [Transient (not saved) and read-only.] If you leave the guild, the entry disappears. If someone is added/removed from the guild, your address book is updated.

New Options Tab for the Mail System

• Address book filename, configurable per character.
• If you select an existing address book file, it loads it.
• If you select a new filename, it creates it with the current in-memory address book state.
• The address book can be edited by hand, or copied between installations.

Mail Forwarding Option

• When turned on, incoming email is forwarded to the email address you registered in your Station Account.

Revised Command-Line Syntax for Sending Mail

• More than one recipient is now allowed. Use the comma to separate them.
• If you need a space, for an example if you are sending to a mailing list that contains a space in its name, then you need to enclose the whole list of recipients between double-quotes.
• To make a recipient BCC, precede it with a -.
• Addresses written in the command-line are expanded according to the address book rules.