March 19, 2009

EQ Patch Notes – March 19th

3/19/2009

*** Highlights ***

– Pet hold can now be used with charmed pets again (as long as the owner has the AA).
– Put separators back into raid window. Separators will now appear between sorting groups for all sorting criteria except for “by name.”
*** Quests & Events ***

– Added a check to make sure there are miscreants in Shadow Haven when they are supposed to be there.
– Bristlebane’s party will now show up in, er, minitab as expected.
– Added a default “Hail” dialog to each kill target in the Justice of the Tribunal 10th Anniversary task that will let you re-engage if you already hailed that NPC but failed to kill him.
*** NPC ***

– Modified the spawn rates of several NPCs in Fabled PoP that drop the “Swarm Pet” Weapons to normalize the rate that they appear. Most spawn rates were increased but some were reduced that were appearing too frequently.
*** Tradeskills ***

– Fixed the broken coffin poison bottle.  Now it can make any NORMAL poison combine as well as the original coffin bottle combines.
– The following spell research recipes now create a duplicate (tradable) scroll instead of the original (no-drop) scroll.  For real this time!  Skill: Champion’s Aura, Skill: Poison Spikes Trap, Skill: Master’s Aura, Skill: Bloodlust Aura, Spell: Blessed Aura, Spell: Decrepit Skin, Spell: Aura of the Muse, Spell: Elddar’s Grasp, Spell: Puratus, Spell: Moonshadow, Spell: Ghost of Renewal, Spell: Mind Shatter, Spell: Chaos Flame, Spell: Iceflame Guard, Spell: Mind Flay, and Spell: Spirit of Oroshar.
*** Pets ***

– Pet hold can now be used with charmed pets again (as long as the owner has the AA).
– Now only PC pets will display their owner’s name under them.
– Telling your pet to attack another target when focus is turned on will now cause it to switch targets and focus exclusively on the new target.
– Fixed a bug where telling your pet to attack a new target when focus is turned on would fail if the pet hated the new target the most already (even if the new target was not already its target).
– Casting swarm pets or familiars should no longer disrupt the state of the buttons on your pet window when you already have a normal pet up.
– Pet target hit points are now updated even if you are not targeting the pet’s target.
– Fixed several other bugs that were causing the buttons in the pet window to become out of sync with the server or to reset upon zoning.
– Qattack will now only change the pet’s target if the pet did not already have a target.  This is contrasted with the regular attack command which will force the pet to change targets (if focused or not).  Qattack now simply adds the target NPC to the pet’s hate list, so that it will attack that target at a later time when its other targets are dead.
*** UI ***

– Put separators back into raid window. Separators will now appear between sorting groups for all sorting criteria except for “by name.”
– When sorting by group, empty slots should always be shown after filled slots for each group. Also group leaders should always be at the top of each group.
– When sorting by anything but group, all the empty slots are removed and not displayed.
*** Previously Updated ***

– Fixed a problem with Atler Flamejabber.  He should now reappear in his correct location after someone has completed his quest.
– Nettle Higglesbury should now correctly gather some rabble rousers around him once he’s finished his pie.
– Fixed an issue with Bristlebane’s parties not showing up as expected after 20 hours.

Fabled Loot, Leveling, and Epics

I haven’t actively gone after any fabled in game. The really good amazing stuff is either camped – or it’s held hostage by encounters that there’s no way I could kill, even with friends. Later last night it was suggested I begin working on the druid 1.5 pre-quest (difficult to work on 1.0’s when the named you need are fabled up) and so I was heading to Plane of Growth for some foraging when a fabled encounter walked into view. I had no idea who they were – but as coincidence would have it, they did drop a nice clicky for me! My first fabled drop and it’s not so bad. 

As I mentioned, yes. I decided to begin working on the druid 1.5. Ideally I’ll do the 1.0 as well but with fabled up for the next month it makes it a little difficult, and I’d rather own my 1.5 anyhow. My first task was to head to Jaggedpine forest, a zone I have not been to in many moons. It looked almost exactly as I remember it way back when. After speaking to my npc there I headed to Plane of Growth (no fabled Tunare up) to forage a nut, which took most of my evening. Thankfully Tipa’s tweets on belly button line kept me entertained and slightly disgusted, either way. 

Before heading off with a guild mate to work on my druid epic, we hung around Stoneroot and managed to ding the little druid level 70. It surprised me because when I started playing her again she was level 63 – only a few days to get to 70 without even trying. Of course it shouldn’t surprise me after the speed in which the necromancer leveled (from scratch) but it still makes me giggle. 

By the time I managed to forage the one item I needed, it was getting late and I was getting tired, so I called it a night and headed to bed. Today I’ll pick up on it again as I’m sure there are plenty more things that need to be foraged, and it’s easy to get it done while I do other things. Inching the druid up a few more levels will be nice, though not on the top of my list of priorities. I still haven’t completed the new deity quests that are in place and for some reason servers came down last night at 2am and should not be back up until 8am – I have no idea why. The MoTD claimed it was for a hot fix, though I’m not quite sure what hot fix takes 6 hours to implement. Guess we’ll see!

The new LoN items today are great! For EQ2 it’s a parrot for your shoulder, in EQ it’s a special frost particle effect. Be sure to check out the LoN free loot items for EQ’s 10th anniversary. Even if you don’t play the game there’s no beating free items. 

I should have some role play posts to add here soon, it’s been a little while and I’ve missed it. We’ll see how that goes! In the mean time, happy adventuring no matter where you find yourself.