Want to know what’s coming up next in GU49? Be sure to check out the official SOE forums for all of the details – in the mean time, here are the notes! Looks some some fantastic stuff is coming! REMEMBER that this is just the TEST NOTES so anything and everything can change before these go live.
SPECIAL EVENTS
During “Raising the Banner” (GU49): A team of dedicated excavators and researchers have begun to uncover a remarkable find in the dunes of Sinking Sands. They have numerous tasks for any recruits willing to help defend the site, excavate relics, maintain their assisting clockworks and provide crafted supplies for the team. They cannot fathom how important this project is and how it is fated to reshape the world of Norrath for years to come!
GUILDHALLS
Construction of the Guild Halls has been completed. Guilds of qualifying levels can now purchase halls in a variety of locations. Smaller halls can be found in North Qeynos, South Freeport, Kelethin, Neriak, and Gorowyn. Medium halls are found in South Qeynos and North Freeport, and large halls are found off the shores of Antonica and Commonlands. Click on the corresponding doors, or mariner bells on the docks, to access these new structures.
With the work completed on the coastal fortresses in Antonica and Commonlands the involved parties have retired to their cities and the guards have been recalled to the barracks.
GAMEPLAY
- The experience requirements for levels have been significantly lowered primarily affecting the 20 thru 70 level range. Along with the experience changes, the drop rate for Adept I spells has been increased slightly.
QUESTS
- The Invasion of the Vale quest is now a more appropriate level for its difficulty. The Shattered Vale in Antonica now has an escape point inside it.
GUILD RECRUITMENT
- Guilds will no longer appear in the guild recruiting list if they don’t have any recruiters online.
MENTORING
- Mentoring other players now grants greater achievement reward for the mentor.0-5 level difference: 0% bonus
6-10 level difference: 50% bonus
11-20 level difference: 100% bonus
21-30 level difference: 150% bonus
31-50 level difference: 200% bonus
51+ level difference: 300% bonus
- This bonus is only applied to achievement experience gained through combat or loot items, not through quests or exploration.
- Mentors will now receive experience when their apprentice has disabled combat experience.
ITEMS
- Player made house items can now be scaled using shift+mousewheel.
- You can no longer turn auto consume on while using a griffon or sokokar.
- Bayle’s Amulet and the Trinket of the Venerated Fanatic can now be mounted and used as a house item.
SPELLS
- Spells which do not expire have been made uninterruptable. There are some exceptions which include spells which summon pets or have limited uses.
Bruiser
- Divide and Conquer should now properly apply hate to the entire encounter.
Fury
- Natural Mask should now gray out when casted.
Mystic
- The Auspice line should now toggle correctly.
Templar
- The Redoubt line should now toggle correctly.
Ranger
- Thorny trap should now work properly for evil rangers on pvp servers.
ACHIEVEMENTS
Defiler
- Enhance: Fuliginous Sphere will now work correctly.
Sorceror
- Ward of Sages should now toggle properly.
Templar
- Blessings is now toggleable and has a recast of 2 seconds.
SHADOWS
- Shadows should no longer disappear unexpectedly.
MULTICORE SUPPORT
- The game automatically detects if you have more than one CPU.
- EQII now runs better with more than one CPU.
- There is an option to control whether the game uses multicore mode in the Options Window under Display -> Performance.
- If you’re running multiple clients on the same computer you may want to disable multicore mode.
- Setting the multicore option has no effect on machines with one CPU.
TRADESKILLS
Alchemy
- Rare cure potions have been removed and standard cure potions have been upgraded to cure the appropriate levels of effects. This in turn should help reduce some of the demand for dusts.
Carpentry
- With the advent of scalable furniture, carpenters no longer require recipes that make items of different sizes. The following redundant recipes were removed: vale briarwood guest bed, vale briarwood corner bar, small redwood room divider, small purple lilies, small white lilies, tall redwood streetlamp, tall potted redwood streetlamp, embellished rug, eccentric alder chair. Existing items will not be affected.
- Carpenters studying the architecture of Unrest have designed a number of new recipes for furnishings in a similar style, to replace the redundant recipes that have been retired.
Tailoring
- Artisans have designed some new recipes for threadbare and sackcloth vests, and will continue to work on more vest-type cloth armor appearances for the future.
Scholars
- Merchants in the courts of Maj’dul are now stocking some additional “Ancient Teachings” recipe scrolls.
PVP
- Illusionists on their epic quest should no longer take lose faction with Freeport when using the Lucan illusion and then removing it.
USER INTERFACE
- Status values on the housing window will now display separators so large numbers are easier to read.
- There is now an option in the Persona window to block voice invites.
ZONES
Veeshans Peak
- The gem drop rate of Veeshan’s Peak has been slightly increased to account for the more frequent patterns.
- Each of the bosses in Veeshan’s Peak now drop an additional gem.
- The Taskmaster in Veeshan’s Peak has made new use of his arcane knowledge! Raiders Beware!
Kelethin
- A few of the fae in Kelethin react to a good aligned arasai now.
FAN FAIRE FEEDBACK
- Tunare’s touch has reached the door step of the Teir’dal. The druid ring in Darklight Wood has sprouted a Blessed Shrubbery. Druids and adventurers alike should seek out the ring to extend their travel possibilities.
- Better search filters for the Recipe window and Tracking window:
Instead of a direct match, each word must be present Words preceded with ‘-‘ (hyphen) must not be present to be matches
i.e. recipe filtering with “rigid bow” would show ‘rigid scale bow’
i.e. recipe filtering with “gno –therm” would show ‘gnomish level’ but not ‘gnomish thermometer’
- If you find a Lore and Legend item for a Lore and Legend quest that you’re on, the tooltip will indicate whether you’ve already examined it or need to examine it.
- Sir Valinayle in Stormhold now corrects himself after calling Stormhold Befallen.
- Removed the option to go to Prize of Prexus and The Maid for the Mist on the mariner bells unless someone in the group is on that part of the quest.
I’m so excited about multi-core support. Its really sad when I can play newer games on maximum settings (like Age of Conan) and get much better framerates than a five year old game like EverQuest II. Hopefully with this change I’ll be able to keep shadows on without causing my framerates to drop like a two ton heavy thing.
About time for the multicore support. Hopefully it’ll also address the random computer resets in Vista issue at the same time.
Lots to love in those notes… it’s about time they included exclusions in the search filters. And scalable furniture is going to go a long way toward solving the sarnak size issues… Kasul might actually be able to sleep in a bed without his feet hanging off the end now!
Hope multicore support is all that they’ve promised it will be, as well.
Think they’ll keep around the bone chip collection and quests that follow it? I don’t have high hopes for the evil side on Najena to finish before GU 49 goes live. Let’s hope so, anyway! :)