Update

Wurm Online – Node Update

When it was first announced that the way botanizing & gathering on tiles would be changing, I was a little reluctant to get excited. I decided to play it safe and just approach it with a ‘let’s wait and see’ approach, and I’m so glad that I did.

Normally characters would run around, right click and interact with a tile, and you’d botanize or gather on that tile with no real visual indication on if you’d receive anything, and it felt like a lot of RNG. With this latest change, players will be able to SEE if the tile contains a node you can harvest, and then the amount of items harvested, quality, and specific items, are skill based.

I love it. I love being able to visualize what’s being harvested, and being able to head directly to the area I want instead of trying every single tile where I might not get anything at all.

After a few minutes of running around, I had a good selection of harvested items. It doesn’t feel too underwhelming, and while the items I harvested were nothing exciting, my skills are also not that great, so it felt on par as far as balance goes. This gives me a renewed reason to wander around exploring and harvesting the bits and bobs that I can SEE instead of passing them all by. Maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks after all.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

EQ2 Hotfix Notes

Hotfix April / 7 / 2009
GENERAL

  • An issue that was causing UI icons or elements to look blurry and low-quality has been resolved.
  • An issue that was causing low-quality textures on player characters after switching from third person to first person view has been resolved.

 EVERNIGHT ABBEY

  • Marcus Thex should turn aggro now once all five clan leaders have been slain.

 ITEMS

  • The Dancing Satyr has learned how to dance and is anxious to show off his new moves.
  • Bite of the Wolf will now trigger properly and apply to the warden.
  • Restitution Master 1 should no longer drop from spell tables.
  • The Signet of the Flame Disciple has been changed from +3 spell critical bonus to +3 spell critical to be more inline with the other quest rewards.
  • Vampire and Void Bane proc stacking has been fixed such that additional pieces of gear will increase the damage and proc rate, but will not add additional procs. This is the originally intended functionality.
  • The Stone Tower void shard jewelry set now has Deflection Chance as its 3-piece bonus instead of deflection skill. The block and deflection bonuses should now be roughly equivalent.
  • Corruption of the Elements should now proc on offensive spell casts.

 MYSTMYR MANOR

  • Rhul’maldis should no longer occasionally never respond to the volatile liquid.

 PVP

  • An issue that might cause no infamy gain when multiple players are attacking a single target has been fixed.

 SPELLS

  • Tortoise Shell will once again work properly on group members
  • An issue that would cause Surging Tempest to get into an unusable state has been resolved.

 TRADESKILLS

  • The Advanced Armorer Service quest now requires the new improved version of fulginate kite shields.
  • Scholars’ volume 12 books now once again contain recipes for idols, symbols, tomes, and orbs.
  • Jeweler Far Seas writs now correctly accept the new secondary items.
  •  An issue where Adornments would disappear when upgrading or imbuing items through tradeskills has been fixed.

 WARD OF ELEMENTS

  • Najena should respawn when players watch the flythrough then leave the instance and return.
  • Aiden’s banishes have been re-timed to be closer to the beginning of a land phase, giving players more time to get back to the tower.
  • Aiden’s adds have been linked into sizable groups instead of all in separate encounters.
  • Digg should no longer chain-kill players that die and are rezzed during his fight.

I’m glad to see the changes being added today, especially the warden epic portion, that one was causing a lot of anger for some druids out there. The fix to Evernight Abbey is another good one, I wanted to write about that dungeon for a guide but it was quite frustrating since for the weekend it wasn’t functioning properly.

EverQuest Update Notes (March 12th)

The servers are down for an 8 hour patch (ack!) and here’s what has been added!

 

3/12/2009
*** Highlights ***

– Guild Creation Tool: Players can now get their guilds created in-game by using the Guild Management window. When opening the Guild Management Window (Alt + G) when you are not in a guild, you will be asked if you would like to create one. All existing guild naming rules still apply. Only one guild is permitted per server per account. Guilds cannot be created while in a shroud.

– Pet Window Improvements: The functionality of the Pet Window has been improved by allowing players to customize each button individually. These changes also allow players to add commands that they pick up via AAs. We’ve also added some new commands including a pet hold command. (See UI: Pet Window Improvements below)

– Enhanced Raid Window: We’ve updated the raid management window to allow for sorting and expedition / shared task management improvements. Also added AFK, dead, and out of zone status. (See UI: Enhanced Raid Window below)
*** Items ***

– Nakk’s Enduring Bauble now looks just like the gem from a ring, instead of a ring.
– The Durus Faycite Shard: Gorenaire’s Chant of Frost, and Durus Faycite Shard: Talendor’s Chant of Flame now increase the duration of their respective songs by 1 tick instead of increasing the damage.

 
*** Spells ***

– Cantata of Rodcet now increases HP and Mana regen by 61/70/75 and 50/58/62 for Ranks 1/2/3, up from 51/60/65 and 42/50/54
– Fixed a problem with Performance resonance that was causing it to focus a number of effects that it shouldn’t have.
– Lowered the endurance cost on Wheel of Fists to 253/288/307 down from 316/360/384.
– Lowered the endurance cost on Whorl of Fists to 308/351/374 down from 385/439/468.
– Modified the stacking order of the Calanin’s Synergy discipline to better stack with other similar abilities including the effect from Deceivers Blight Strike and other spells that use the same effect.
– Talisman of the Stalwart scrolls can now be scribed by druids.
– The combat proc granted by Arcane Arietta will now cause additional damage for bards based on their wind instrument mods. This only effects the procs for the bard herself, and not the rest of the group.
– The endurance cost for Calanin’s Synergy has been increased to 385/439/468 up from 308/351/374. The duration in the effect has been increased by 6 seconds.
– The Twincast Self Buff spells are no longer focused by duration extension focuses.

 

*** Tradeskills ***

– Fixed a bug with the Pure sealed power-sources made via tradeskills. They were opening one tier behind where they should (so the Tier 1 took Tier 2 raid to open.)  They should now open properly with the proper tier of content.
– Fixed an issue with Dull, Murky and Foggy Sealed Energeian Orbs that could prevent them from opening properly.
– The following spells created by spell research now create a duplicate scroll instead of the original scroll. The original scrolls are now no trade. This does mean that you may have a no trade version currently, unfortunately there is no reasonable solution for a refund that is not able to allow players to create infinite scrolls. This change is intended to prevent players from creating infinite scrolls for free. 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.
– The research spell Odium can now be researched by priests as intended.
*** NPCs ***

– Dragorn Muramites should be providing a normal amount of experience again.
– Fenden Helter has decided to mark down many of his items.
– Additional items have been added to Fenden Helter in Dragonscale and are available for purchase.
*** AA ***

– Modified how the AAs Animation Empathy and Advanced Pet Discipline function to support the new Pet changes to the User Interface and Pet controls.
– Replaced the Skill Cap adjustments on Third Spire of Ancestors and Third Spire of the Savage Lord with a bonus to minimum damage to avoid certain stacking conflicts.
– Adjusted the stacking order on Rogue’s Fury to better stack with various Rogue disciplines, including Deadeye and Deadly Precision.
*** Miscellaneous ***

– Made various zone stability improvements.
*** UI: General ***

– Enhanced the Raid Window. (See UI: Enhanced Raid Window)
– The Pet Window has received a revamp! (See UI: Pet Window Improvements)
– Added chat window text output for users being invited to raids even when the raid confirmation popup is turned on.
– Added a button in the options general tab that toggles display of pet owner names on pets.
– Fixed a bug that sometimes caused two players to appear to share ownership of the same mercenary when they zoned simultaneously with unsuspended mercenaries.
– You should no longer be spammed with focus effect messages when you have an active mercenary .
– For custom UI creators, ListboxColumns can now have their own tooltips instead of just the Listbox.
*** UI: Enhanced Raid Window ***

– Updated the raid management window to allow for sorting and expedition / shared task management improvements. Also added AFK, dead, and out of zone status.
– Created the /comparetaskraid (Shared Task – Raid) and /compareexpedraid (Expedition – Raid) commands to list the players that are not in both lists.
– Updated the expedition window to allow for simplified raid and shared task invitations.
– Updated the shared task window to allow for simplified raid and expedition invitations.
– The group numbers in the raid window are now color coded in order to better differentiate between groups when sorting by group.
– Column headers now each have their own tool tip.
*** UI: Pet Window Improvements ***
 
– You can now assign buttons to all pet commands in the pet window.
– Pet target will be displayed under your pets hp bar so you will always know who your pet is attacking.
– Added toggleable buttons throughout the pet UI for sit/stand, follow/guard, focus, hold, taunt, and spell hold.
– Added new pet text based commands. You will now be able to toggle all states off or on, or simply toggle the state with a pet text based command. For example, /pet focus on, /pet focus off, and /pet focus.
– Added a new pet attack command to switch your pet to attack the new target regardless of AA’s or level; great for new and low level players. The old command will still exist as qattack.
– Added a pet hold functionality.
– New pet focus + pet hold functionality (call this pet state “pet convergence” ). Now, when you turn on both the focus and hold states, your pet will attack SPECIFICALLY what you want it to and when finished won’t attack or aggro or do anything else.
– Improved /pet back off. Fully clears the hate list and stops your pet from doing whatever it was doing before.
– Pet follow is now on by default when entering zones.
– Added the pet owner’s name below the pet name text (i.e., “Soandso’s pet”).
– When right clicking a pet button, commands not available to you are filtered out.
– Added messages your pet will say when issued different commands to clarify the intended behavior.
– The state of all pet buttons are now persisted across zoning and logging (except sit and follow that default to their appropriate settings when zoning).
– The UI layout of the pet window is now stored across zoning and logging.
– Integrated pet help has now been implemented and put into the EverQuest pet info window. Click the question mark next to the pet close box to access the pet help dialog.
– When enchanter pets are summoned, they properly only have the Get Lost command, unless they have the special grant pet command SPA/AA.
– Pet spell hold is now available as a command in the pet window.

– New –

EQUI_GuildCreationWindow.xml

– Changed –

EQUI.xml
EQUI_DynamicZoneWnd.xml
EQUI_HotButtonWnd.xml
EQUI_OptionsWindow.xml
EQUI_RaidWindow.xml
EQUI_TaskWnd.xml
SIDL.xml

 

– The EverQuest Team