Test Update 08/08/2017 - Patch Notes and Discussion

Discussion in 'Test Update Notes and Bug Roundup' started by EQ Dev, Aug 7, 2017.

  1. EQ Dev Developer

    August 8, 2017
    _____________________


    *** Items ***

    - No-rent items will now be removed from keyring slots after logging out for 30+ minutes in the same fashion that no-rent items are removed from standard inventory slots.
    - Returned the original bard spell to Darkened Breath of Harmony.
    - Many Item based proc effects for recent expansions now have a different spell particle.
    - Wand of Everlasting Water will only summon 20 water.
    - Increased the stack size of fishing bait items to 1000.
    - Added the heirloom flag to most 12+ slot, lore, no-drop containers.
    - Fixed a number of miscellaneous book/note items that were not displaying the correct text.
    - Fixed a number of lore group items that were missing the name of their lore group.
    - Removed the placeable flag from a number of shroud/monster mission items.
    - Removed the ability to place Ghostly Bridle, Samhain Costume, and Burning Dead Robes in key rings as temporary items were not intended to fit into the key ring.
    - Fixed a number of cases where the level required to activate the effect on an item did not match the level required to wear the item.
    - Changed bard items that grant Amplification effects (Bloodfiend`s Throat Gem, Phosphorescent Rapier of Light, Shadowsong Cloak, and Voice of the Serpent) to unlock a passive AA ability which grants the same effects. The buff triggered by these items is now a shadow buff similar to other items that unlock passive AA abilities.
    - Changed Bloodmetal Inlaid Gnollish Totem to unlock a passive AA ability which grants AC rather than applying a buff that grants AC. The illusion benefit is now a shadow buff similar to other items that unlock passive AA abilities.
    - Changed how Gunthak Grit is applied when using Gunthak Swabby's Eyepatch to function like standard illusion benefit buffs.
    - Fixed the typo in Rarundel's Memory Stone.
    - The following items will now fit into the Illusion Key Ring: Bloodmetal Inlaid Gnollish Totem, Guise of the Ancient Gods, Gunthak Swabby's Eyepatch, Shroud of the Council, and Visage of the Daft Trickster.
    - Adjusted the buff stacking of mount and illusion benefits that increase maximum HP:
    - - Mount and illusion buffs that previously used slot 11 to increase maximum HP have been moved to slot 13 to allow AA abilities such as Pact of the Wurine or Pact of the Wolf to coexist with these buffs.
    - - Mount and illusion benefits that previously triggered a second 'Fortitude' component have had the HP component consolidated into the primary buff.


    *** Tradeskills ***

    - The scroll for Focus Mass Runed Spellcaster's Essence can now be researched using Runic Charta Arcanum.
    - Increased the chance to forage tradeskill components rather than food in Gates of Discord zones.


    *** Quests And Events ***

    - Queen Velazul Di`zok (Raid) - The Queen will no longer summon the same captain that she has just killed.
    - Queen Velazul Di`zok (Raid) - Modified the Queen event so that the warcasters no longer cast Enveloping Smoke all at the same time. They are also a LOT more vulnerable to area of effect spells.
    - Uqua (Raid) - The door puzzle messages now use the Event Messages filter. The keys on the bench now look like keys instead of bags.
    - Harmony of the Soul (Quest) - Killing Muramites in Barindu near where the Kyv Runner died will now indicate when they could have dropped the Encrypted Note, but did not. The message indicating the Muramite had the note will now always display.
    - Lady Vox (Raid) - Lady Vox should no longer proc a huge damage nuke when she has the Scimitar of the Mistwalker equipped.
    - Alternate Access: Qvic (Quest) - The Vial of Foul Toxins is now a right-clickable item that must be used near the water source in Yxtta. This change should help address problems with lag in Yxtta.
    - Beastlord - An Epic Request - Corrected a bug that prevented your warder from being recognized during the event.
    - Mistmoore Catacombs: Scion Lair of Fury - Fixed a bug where the lockout timer was not given on success.
    - Hunter of Dulak's Harbor - Added several missing rare targets.
    - Hunter of The Crypt of Nadox - Added a missing rare target.
    - Hunter of The Crypt of Decay - Assassin Kakoo will now correctly update this achievement.
    - Hunter of The Dawnshroud Peaks - An Age Old Rockhopper will now more consistently update this achievement.
    - Conqueror of The Rujarkian Hills - Hidden Vale of Deceit and War March of Imal Ojun will now correctly update this achievement.
    - Conqueror of Takish-Hiz - The Palace Grounds will now correctly update this achievement.
    - Fixed a bug where the following achievements had overlapping requirements: Conqueror of The Prison of the Forsaken, Conqueror of The Reef of Coirnav, Hunter of Torment, the Plane of Pain, Hunter of The Plane of Storms, Hunter of Drunder, the Fortress of Zek, and Hunter of Eryslai, the Kingdom of Wind.
    - Many of the raid bosses in The Broken Mirror will now leave corpses on raid success.
    - Fixed a bug where one or more of the possible bosses for these LDoN dungeons was broken:
    - - Deepest Guk: Drowning Crypt - Jinta Savant Grisk, Madakan, and Oime Ugun
    - - Miragul's Menagerie: Frosted Halls - The Dream Defiler
    - - Mistmoore's Catacombs: Ritualistic Summoning Grounds - Dierdri the Raven
    - - Takish-Hiz: Balancing Chamber - Chancellor Etometh, Lord Pasreet, and Shadow Assassin Juni
    - - Takish-Hiz: Sunken Library - Master Architect Naida


    *** Spells ***

    - Gift of Xev will only summon 20 pods of water.
    - Corrected an issue where a number of long duration buffs would display a heal over time message every 6 seconds.
    - Fixed a number of combat abilities that were not listed in the right-click menu when creating a hotkey in the combat abilities window.
    - Fixed a bug that prevented undead summoned minions from being treated as undead creatures.
    - Wizard - Corrected the icon on Chaos Scintillation.


    *** NPCs ***

    - Elishia Blackguard in Jaggedpine Forest will now /con as a rare creature.
    - Reduced the respawn time of The Sleep Walker in Plane of Valor.
    - Corrected an issue where a number of NPCs were missing the rare creature designation. Ex: Tarris Ellarn, Shardwing, and Zed Sticklebush.
    - Corrected an issue where a number of raid NPCs were missing the correct difficulty designations. Ex: Faydedar, Phinigel Autropos, and Venril Sathir.
    - Corrected the consider message for a number of creatures that were not correctly reporting that 'This creature looks relatively weak.'
    - Many NPCs treated as bosses are now immune to memory blur and highsun effects and will exhibit boss pet tanking behavior. This change mostly affected bosses in Cazic-Thule 2.0 and Gates of Discord zones.
    - Many NPCs in classic zones like Qeynos and Neriak are now wearing their robes and other chest items instead of merely carrying them.
    - Lord Elgnub's spawn time has been reduced to what it was in classic.


    *** Progression Servers ***

    - The tutorial will now unlock when Gates of Discord unlocks.
    - Fippy, Vulak, Ragefire, and Lockjaw will now open at approximately 2pm Pacific time the Monday after a completed vote if the vote is successful.
    - The Veeshan's Peak revamp will open with Omens of War.


    *** Miscellaneous ***

    - When a chat channel is full, new channels will now properly spin up and add new players as needed.
    - Pick zones with grouping have been improved.
    - - When entering a zone, if you do not have a pick zone timer, you will be placed in the zone where all of your group members are and get a timer.
    - - If your group members are not all in the same instance of the zone, you will be placed in the default zone and you will not get a timer.
    - The command /outputfile missingspells should no longer list spells that cannot be scribed. Ex: Recourse spells triggered by spells that can be scribed.
    - The commands /Outputfile 'spellbook' and 'missingspells' have been updated:
    - - These commands will now list combat abilities in addition to spells
    - - Entries are now sorted by level then alphabetically by spell name
    - - Missingspells will now list the lowest rank you do not have
    - - - Ex: If you do not have any rank it will only list rank 1, if you have rank 2 it will only list rank 3.


    *** UI ***

    - Fixed an issue that caused events that are not available on your current server to be displayed in the calendar window.
    - The member list in the expedition window can now be sorted by clicking on the column headings. Column width can also now be adjusted.

    - Changed -


    *** Previously Updated ***

    - Lady Vox (Raid) - Lady Vox cannot wield her drops, preventing her from equipping the dreaded Scimitar of the Mistwalker.
    - Berserker Epic: Kerasian Axe of Ire (Quest) - The Handful of Prism Grains is now restricted to Gates of Discord instead of Omens of War.
    - The Rathe Council (Raid) - Added logic to prevent the Rathe Council members from respawning instantly when slain.
    - Load balanced versions of Kod'Taz, Broken Trial Grounds will have normal population.


    - The EverQuest Team
  2. Orbital101 Augur

    Does the people that exploited this will get there DDD achievements removed? (at least the last 2) We spent many hours *again* this year and was able to get to Quarm without exploiting this for some to log in and do the achievement in 20 some minutes in our faces.. Its not fair to let them keep the achievements.

    and a bit off topic but DDD also need to be tune down next year... It some what force you to do some type exploit at is because its unbeatable... I will remind you all to do so a month or two before it goes backup...


    and wth no new hunters :mad:
    Ishtass likes this.
  3. josh Augur



    not sure what the intention is with this change but, this will make the event harder. right now they all cast it once and we can use that to our advantage, if they are casting it at random times than it could theoretically be recast to the point where enveloping smoke is on everybody in range the entire time the warcasters are up. It's a dot, not a dd, so them all casting it at once is beneficial. Maybe you wanted to change electric blast so they don't all cast it at once? If the intention is to actually make the queen harder, may i say that i disagree strongly with that decision.

    Edit: to add to this, the room is really small, and enveloping smokes ae range is 100. it should be half that at most, if not 25. for guilds who are trying to avoid getting hit by it there are very few locations where the queen can be tanked safely. shortening its range would allow you to keep the punishing nature of messing up the warcasters but make it a bit easier to avoid that punishment.
    Zunnoab and Sancus like this.
  4. Bigstomp Augur


    Since they aren't making your melee suck right off the bat, just blow them up.
    To me this sounds like a massive make easier bit to the event.
  5. Raisethedead New Member

    Superb prioritization yet again over finishing DoT revamp, thanks.
    menown, WonderBard and ShadowMan like this.
  6. josh Augur


    I don't know where you are getting that they wont cast it at the start. to me it sounds like any one of them could cast it at any time. probably one will cast it at the start then another a few tics later and then another. keeping the dot on melee practically until they are dead. also, even if they don't cast at the start, everything is easy if you can kill it before it causes problems but not every guild can do that, nor should they be required to. avoiding event mechanics should be a bit more complicated than throw all the dps in the world at it so the mechanic wont happen.

    I don't know that the other change is a good one either. unless it means that warcasters can only spawn once, but my reading of it suggests that they simply can't spawn twice in a row. so if warcasters are not up there is basically a 50/50 shot of them spawning instead of 1/3 since neither of the two that are already up can spawn.

    It's just dumb to have the warcasters be so much more punishing than any other set of adds.
  7. Brohg Augur

    Are they not? Or are they spacing their casts so melee DO suck right off the bat, and also recasting it in turn so the dot : can't be avoided with good play, and is persistent while they're up, and is pretty much guaranteed to still be on for its full duration after the last warcaster dies, so in total melee is MUCH MUCH more screwed?
    svann likes this.
  8. Brohg Augur


    Yep, that's definitely the change. It feels like a pretty significant nerf since presently no raid is in the habit of killing Captains FOR the Queen, but that avenue is now open. If a raid just cannot handle a solo warcaster every 2.5mins, then they can kill Captain Seldar to head that off (spawning another grip of some other mobs, with some more millions of hp the raid now has to deal out inside the timer, but at least they're not warcasters?) and then take their chances at the next 20% break of the warcasters coming back anyway, 4 strong… seems like a really terrible plan, but it's a new possibility?

    I think there ought to have been six Captains, with significantly higher hp, that are one-shots each. Event starts with a random two, and Queen spawns a random one of the undeployed Captains at the hp breaks, shanking a random living captain if there are two up.
  9. Phrovo1 Augur

    ooooooor...use ranged dps for the warcasters
  10. Galleyan Augur

  11. Xyroff-cazic. Director of Sarcasm

  12. Galleyan Augur


    Nope, I mean the one where players have their Mistwalker pet spawn dead, unless this is the "fix to the item" as opposed to simply not allowing her to equip it. Some clarification would be appreciated, dev.
  13. Evil.Iguana Elder

    "- Many NPCs treated as bosses are now immune to memory blur and highsun effects and will exhibit boss pet tanking behavior. This change mostly affected bosses in Cazic-Thule 2.0 and Gates of Discord zones."

    What does pet tanking behavior mean? Are GoD bossed going to work like MotM bosses and screw mages and beastlords over again with excessive aggro? I sure as hell hope not. I put up with that unbalanced garbage on Phinegal from launch through the last expansion and if it is coming back you need to make balance changes to pet classes that let us drop aggro.
  14. GoldenFrog Augur


    There is 1 new mob in Nadox and 4 in Dulak's.

    So there's that.
  15. Zunnoab Augur

    If this is too long for devs to read I'll summarize:
    Enveloping Smoke as a duration effect does no direct damage harm meaning staggering the casts actually makes it much worse by both ensuring the Amnesia effect stays longer and causing even more cumulative damage by lengthening the time the DoT stays up.

    Now for the much longer reply:
    First of all thank you for looking into the Queen.

    A better solution if the intention is to tone it down is to make Enveloping Smoke overwrite the Queen's DoT, lower the DoT damage on it, or (perhaps too extreme a nerf of them) make them cast enveloping smoke after a time instead of their DD, or even stagger a new moderate AE DD and then cast smoke if you take too long? Again I know that might be too hard a nerf.

    Approximately 40 seconds after they pop they cast Electric Blast, a large (300) radius direct damage stun with a slight mana drain. THAT is bad if it is cast together, but that is why the raid must kill them quickly since it seems like an intentional punishment for defeating them too slowly. To be clear I'm not complaining about that. It's just a situation in which staggering the spells would make a difference, since they cast a direct damage. Of course because the mobs in this event have massive regeneration, if the raid takes so long that they ever even see Electric Blast, it's unlikely the Queen could be defeated before the enrage timer fires to begin with. It would not surprise me if many players in the top guilds don't even know Electric Blast exists

    As the post quoted below says though, it doesn't matter if one or one hundred mobs cast Enveloping Smoke at once. Staggering their casts would only help if it were a direct spell effect. The only way to lessen its effect is to make it avoidable like Electric Blast is or to nerf the spell effect itself.

    Again, thanks for looking into it regardless. I still don't like the rolling nerfs and the cumulative damage it's done to raid performance, but it means a lot that this has been looked into. I just really, really hope if the intention was to lessen Enveloping Smoke's severity this is looked into before it goes live, because as it stands on test it actually makes the warcasters even more dangerous, if I understand the notes.

    You know I always examined their range as a radius rather than diameter. Actually visualizing the 200 diameter circle is quite dramatic. I'm quite fond of our current tanking location, but we may need to move it depending on which Captain spawn location the warcasters are coming from, to avoid the initial AE hitting the entire raid. Of course this staggered cast change would make that moot, but hopefully they notice and fix that if they did not intend to make Enveloping Smoke more severe (which, of course, staggering it does quite dramatically).
  16. Nuttmeg Augur

    So, by the tutorial not unlocking until GoD, (ie never on Agnarr), you are effectively saying you prefer lower level characters to be perpetually blocked from appropriate content gear drops by level cap magicians using auto-fire pet macros.

    Can't you give us ONE zone where the auto pathing, track through doors, over bridges, and around hairpin turns Magician pets aren't stealing/one shotting all the gear mobs while they are completely afk?
  17. Anhari Augur

    If you play on Agnarr, you knew going in that the last expansion would be PoP (With LDON included). It was stated on the announcement, and in the FAQ. To complain that the tutorial won't release till GoD is moot.

    Yes, DBG is not going to address mage pets till much later if at all, but we as a community should just learn to "take it" with a grain of salt. Yes it sucks, but it is what it is. lets just play the game and try to have some fun!
  18. Brohg Augur


    It would be quite welcome if the more plain self-haste items did this as well.

    Twitching Speed
    Marvelous Visions
    Miraculous Visions
    Captain Nalot's Quickening
    Haste
  19. Prathun Developer

    The problem with the Mistwalker pet spawning and immediately dying was fixed as well. The midcycle hotfix was a short-term way to address the problem with Vox going full ham if she had the scimitar, while the full update is a comprehensive spell fix that should mean it works as intended in all situations.
    This will be mentioned in the update notes for the August patch.
    Sumonerr_Tunare likes this.
  20. Prathun Developer

    This is going to be a slightly complicated answer.

    Pet tanking behavior 1: Pets can tank. Over 90% of NPCs use this behavior since the December 9th 2015 update.
    Pet tanking behavior 2: Pets can tank only if no player characters are within melee range. This is the way everything used to work prior to the December 9th 2015 update.
    Pet tanking behavior 3: Pets cannot tank. A portion of the hate that pets generate is attributed to the pet's owner. NPCs that have the MotM buff use this behavior.

    On progression servers:
    The Cazic-Thule 2.0 bosses were using behavior 3. After the August 2017 update they will continue to use behavior 3.
    The Gates of Discord bosses were using behavior 1. After the August 2017 update they will use behavior 2.

    On non-progression servers:
    The Cazic-Thule 2.0 bosses were using behavior 1. After the August 2017 update they will use behavior 2.
    The Gates of Discord bosses were using behavior 1. After the August 2017 update they will use behavior 2.

    For reference, here are the relevant bits from the Dec 9, 2015 update notes:

    *** NPC ***
    - Adjusted how NPCs choose a melee target in relation to player pets:
    - - It is now possible for a pet to be the target of an NPC's melee attacks if it has the highest aggro with other players in range.
    - - This behavior can be adjusted on a per NPC basis and will currently be disabled for all current and previous raid difficulty NPCs.
    - - It is additionally possible for some NPCs to ignore the hatred generated by pets and instead attribute a portion of that hatred toward the owner. This behavior will be in play on raid targets on progression servers.
    Ishtass and Evil.Iguana like this.