Today's patch message has sparked a few questions, you can find them here on Developer's Corner. February 13th, 3:00 am ------------------------------ ** General ** - Improved sound for many users. Should eliminate a lot of the "choppy" sound issues - Fixed one of the link-death-while-zoning bugs - Characters who disconnect while zoning shouldn't be 'stuck' for an inordinate amount of time - Renamed all will-o-wisps and will o' wisps to Fred. - Reconsidered and changed Fred to willowisp. - Pets no longer pace. Pets will now, when close to you, STOP. - Many higher level NPCs now have a random delay before they initially spawn. This means that they will appear at a more random time interval after servers or zones are brought up. This is designed to provide a fairer distribution of these NPCs across all time zones - If you right click to auto-inventory an item that you are looting and it will not fit into your inventory, the item will simply appear on your cursor as if you had left clicked on it ** Gameplay Related ** - NPC and PC corpses can now be /considered to find out how long until they decay, and PC corpses additionally tell you how long you have to resurrect them - The timer for corpses is now seven days for any corpse over level five, whether the player is on-line or off-line or any combination of the two - Characters below level eight will no longer see light blue cons - Spires will no longer try to teleport you to Luclin if you do not own the expansion, and therefore will no longer move you to the 'safe point' in the zone when it can't take you to the Nexus - Pets can now be targeted by typing their full name after the /target command (or at least enough of it to distinguish it from the owner) - Knockback now works correctly when on a horse - Summoning a horse in Plane of Sky will no longer allow you to levitate - Gating when in the same zone that you are bound no longer causes problems - Horses will no longer disappear when a character is moved to the 'safe point' ** Trade Skill Related ** - Added several trade skill items to Grobb; including a brewing supply vendor, a brew barrel, a baking vendor, a standard forge, a pottery cooking mold vendor, a kiln, a pottery wheel, and a sketch vendor. - Added water flasks to two merchants in the Bazaar - Added high quality ore vendors to Bazaar, Kaladim, and Qeynos that sell a limited supply of HQ Ore - Fixed an inconsistency with the armor class of Enchanted Imbued Dwarven Plate compared to the armor class of other Dwarven-smithed plate armor - Batwing Pie, Bug Bites and Deadly Medley now exist - Repaired the recipe for Superior Gnomish Spirits\Gnomish Cleaning Substance - Increased the drop rates of cultural armor temper components - Added hilt mold vendors to more cities ** Quest Related ** - Made adjustments to the Whistling Fists quest - Reduced the spawn time of the Zordak Ragefire in SoldungB. He will now reappear every 24 hours - Repaired some problems with the Luclin Owlbear Dart and Vah Shir Runed Totem quests ** Spell Related ** - Eye of Zomm and Eye of Tallon are now non-KoS in a fashion similar to familiars - Koadic's Endless Intellect stacking has been fixed. If a player has Koadic's Endless Intellect on them and anyone casts Breeze, Clarity, Clarity 2, Boon of the Clear Mind, Gathering of the Mind, or Gift of Pure Thought on them, it will fail and the Koadic's will remain. - Mind Wrack gives mana instead of taking mana away - Charm is immediately removed from charmed NPC's when the character that charmed them casts invisibility - Made some small improvements to Marzin's Mark - Corrected some stacking issues with Nature's Recovery - Blast of Frost scroll has been made available for Beastlords - Self-only level 51+ spells will no longer fail to cast if the caster has a lower level character targeted. - Egress should once again force a 'zone' to clear aggro - The damage component of Elnerick's Entombment of Ice no longer causes the spell to have a chance at breaking its root component - Snakes in Lavastorm and Paineel are now animals - Hammerheads are now animals - Treants in the Plane of Growth are now plants - Timorous Deep gators, fish, and raptors are now animals - Rock Hoppers in Hollowshade Moor, Shar Vahl and Shadeweavers are now animals - Paludal and Fungusgrove Wetfang Minnows are now animals - Underbulks and Shik`Nar in Fungusgrove are now insects - Rhino Beetles in Shadeweavers Thicket and Hollowshade Moor are now insects - Shrooms in Fungusgrove are now plants - Lightcrawlers in Mons Seru are now insects ** Zone Related ** - Fixed some of the pathing issues in Maiden's Eye - Dawnshroud Rockhoppers are now giving the proper faction hits - Fixed a pathing bug in Paludal Caverns that prevented NPCs from pursuing characters up cavern walls - Fixed a bug with the clipping plane in outdoor Luclin zones - The Oggok guards will be less friendly to Marsh Bears - Fixed some bugs in the Umbral Planes that were causing NPCs to get stuck - Added content in the Umbral Planes to make it more... entertaining ** Alternate Advancement Related ** - Act of Valor should now work properly - Re-implemented the Improved Familiar ability. It will now summon an improved familiar that is better then the greater familiar and is very resistant to all spells. It is not immune to spells though, just extremely resistant. - Warcry should now work properly - Life Burn now considers hit points from items and should no longer be interrupted - Area Taunt should be no longer affect creatures on heights or floors above and below the warrior ** Discipline Related ** - Added the following /disciplines for Beastlords: Level 51: The Discipline of Resistant Level 54: The Discipline of Fearless Level 55: The Discipline of Protective Spirit Level 60: The Discipline of Bestial Rage ** Item Related ** - Expendable items no longer use mana when 'casting' a spell - Extra damage from either elemental or bane damage should now work for special attacks like backstab - Shield of Auras can now be used by Necromancers - All pieces of Black Pantherskin Armor are now Beastlord useable - Steelsilk Helm should now be visible when using the new models - Windspeeder's haste is now a permanent effect - Shield of Mental Fortitude is now actually a shield and also has a different graphic - Drape of the Deep Thinker now has a robe texture when equipped - Orb of Lost Souls can no longer be "Held" - Dark Cloak of the Sky from 'worn to activate' to 'Race/Class to activate'. The previous change that made it 'worn to activate' was an error. - Items that add bonuses to the Lock Pick skill should function properly now ** Firiona Vie ** - The Trivial Loot Code present on the Roleplaying server will no longer affect items that are marked solely with the No-Drop flag. No-Drop items that are also Magic or Lore will continue to behave as they did prior to this patch. - The EverQuest Team ** Tales ** Grand Master Glox sat silently staring into the black waters of the Cabilis aqueducts, his thoughts tracing and retracing the recent visions that had upset his nights. The Lord Cazic was trying to tell him something, but he could not yet decipher what it was. The hand on his shoulder startled him and he turned quickly, striking the intruder with a quick blow to the chest. The figure crumpled to the cold ground. Glox stood over him with a look of horror, it was one of his own pupils he had struck. He lay bloodied and bruised at Glox's feet breathing heavily with much effort, he was obviously dying. The pupil reached up toward Glox with something in his hand. Glox took the items from his hand and peered at them intently. There were two items, one was a glistening serpentine scale, the other an ancient stone symbol. Glox recognized the symbol almost immediately with horror. It was the symbol of the Soriz, the ancient Iksar tribe that had been the slaves of the Shissar empire. Glox looked down at his pupil again. "Where did you get this?" The dying Iksar used his last ounce of energy to point up toward the night sky and the moon of Luclin. "sSs... Ssraeshza... has... returned..." ** A Call to Arms! ** Have you long dreamed of aiding your fellow adventurer? Do you enjoy travelling the world and meeting new and interesting people? Are you over the age of 18 with an EverQuest account in good standing and some free time? If so, then the EverQuest Guide Program may be for you! If you feel compelled to join our ranks, point your web browser to https://guide.everquest.com/guideapp/ and fill out an application! February 4th ------------------------------ ** Changes to the EverQuest patcher ** A little while ago we combined our Test patcher with our Live patcher. The intent was to remove the confusion that having two patchers can cause and to encourage more people to play on the Test server. Well, we're going back to the old way. We are going to split the Test patcher and the Live patcher back into two separate programs. This means that in order to access the Test Server you will need to run TestEverQuest.exe, which you will find in your EverQuest directory. To play on the Live Servers just start EverQuest as you always have. There are a few advantages to separating the two patchers. Splitting them up makes it a little easier, as a player, to be sure that you are headed to the right server when you double click the icon. It's also a little more intuitive for those that want to run the game in two directories. Using two directories for EverQuest does use up a lot of hard drive space. However, for those with enough space that play regularly on both Test and on Live servers, this is a safer and faster way to work. Using the same directory means that each time you change servers (Live to Test or Test to Live) you will have to patch. The data on the Test Server is very rarely the same as that on Live servers. And for us internally it makes it easier to test new patchers. It gives us one more step for testing. Now we can push a patcher to the Test Server and try it out there after internal testing and before it goes to the Live servers. In any case, we've decided to move back to the old way. Starting on Monday, February 4th, 2002 you will need to run TestEverQuest.exe to patch and play on the Test server, and Everquest.exe to patch and play on the Live servers. * Patch Message Addendum * The command line argument "/test" should no longer be used to play on the Test Server. Anyone using this should remove this argument from their shortcut. Please manually select "TestServer" from the Advanced Options window to use the Test Server. On Monday, February 4th, TestEverQuest.exe will once again be used to patch and play on the Test Server. - The EverQuest Team