Manastone and other removed items

First, let me clarify, this is not a post asking for it to be reintroduced, or anything like that. I'm bored at a place I cannot play and I have heard many different reasons over the years of why exactly this was taken away, and not allowed in future zones.

Does anyone know the full history (and true history) of why it was removed and decidedly not allowed back (unless you drop a bunch of Nobles on Live)?

I'm curious as to the history, and I guess any other histories of removed items that you know of?

I guess some other questions like The Ring of Fire event from Acrylia Caverns....a guildie who mentioned to us that Mass Buff used to work with port spells which got hotfixed inside of twelve hours (that would have been awesome to use/have, honestly).

Gem Encrusted Ring supposedly was removed, but it drops on Agnarr as far as I know.

Anything else you all know of?

Manastone would be too much fun. They only allow a certain amount of fun to be had while playing on the TLPs.

Also, an important sub-question would be, were manastones that already dropped in-game allowed to be retained by players that got them, and if so, why did they choose to do that instead of removing them from players that already got them?

I played in 1999, but I honestly can't remember if players that already had them got to keep them.

As far as I have read, they did, but they only worked in Classic-Velious zones as far as I know.

Luclin and beyond, it does not function?

They kept them. I still have one on Xegony. Manastone only works in Classic zones. It doesn't work in Kunark or Velious. It used to work in some non-combat zones like PoK but they was changed at some point. I can't remember the last time I tried to click it though.

They never removed an item entirely from game as far as I'm aware. They removed items from drop table (Manastone), made different versions of items and swapped what drops (Circlest of Shadow(s)), or nerfed an item retroactively (Donald BP CH effect or Cleric Velious BPs). But I can't think of any time where they just removed all of any item from game.

I suspect their concern is Manastone would be overpowered on a server. Sort of like a BFG in the hands of a ranger. Which is sort of a silly idea considering how easy TLP servers are.

Manastone would definitely be a fun classic toy. It's useless outside of that!

I also had a mana stone for a long time on live. It was so incredibly useful. This was even before origin, bit we had idols that were close to the same thing. They took you to your home town. I remember, as a cleric, binding at my camp and porting to akanon to manastone + complete heal myself to full mana in no time at all.

mmm good times.

Manastone only works in zones that were released before Kunark.

They worked in the Hole too, which was released after Kunark.

It no longer drops and is restricted to classic zones because it breaks the game, I had one on my cleric during original EQ and you could spam mana stone then complete heal yourself and go from 400 mana to 2400 mana in about 12 seconds, which is basically flowing thought 200. On top of this, if you were playing with people you trusted, you could hand them the mana stone and they could spam it to get full mana within about 40 seconds while the cleric complete healed them. Remember the effect is -60 hp for +20 mana with instant cast and no cool down. This made balancing any raid encounter very difficult if the devs had to expect clerics to be full mana 100% of the time and to enable future raid encounters and to prevent future xp zones from being trivialized they stopped it dropping and restricted usage to classic zones only. Since by then everyone had already trivialized the basic zones with gear and levels, it wasn't that big of a deal to allow usage in those zones. This did leave the ability to bind at your camp, port somehow to any classic zone, mana stone to full as a cleric and gate back, but zone loading times and the time to do this made it less and less attractive an option and it rarely gets used these days. It also was really not a good option when you couldn't bind at your camp and of course it was inconvenient to be bound there instead of where you normally would prefer to be bound.

And zones that havent been revamped. They started to chip away the classic zones it worked in.

I still have my manastone and it was very useful during LDoN era to blast back up to full in between dungeons. Thats the last era i remember using it.

Gem Encrusted Ring should still drop off trash in VP.

Manastone camp would make efreeti look like disneyland.

I don't know for sure on Live, but ZAM lists it as only available from the Nobles "Where is Marcia Attilmagad" or whatever quest.

It may drop on TLP for whatever reason, but I wonder why it was taken out of Live.

I should correct myself here, it's about 170 mana per second with complete heal, which is actually FT 1020

Seems game breaking to me if left in.

I believe it dropped from specters. I seem to remember people camping it in Feerott and it was immediately apparent how broken it was. The one toy I wish I had had a chance to play with in its original form is the Moss-covered Twig.

It used to work in bloodmoon keep raids. I havent been able to test it in awhile but when it was current, it definitely worked.

Dropped from evil eye in Lower Guk.

Box of Abu-Kar dropped off spectres or maybe it was all high level mobs. Another item that was pulled. I remember the patch notes and they said peole could keep them because they had been in the game for such a long time. Like a whole 3 months.....

Manastones were removed from the game about 6 months after original release, on the same patch that removed Rubicite, guise, and moved jboots out of najena. It was removed because it was too powerful due to cleric CH. From what I remember, all 4 of these items were causing a lot of problems in the game so Verant decided to do something about it. Rubicite BP was considered extremely strong for a non-raid boss drop, and was a huge drama camp, manastones were too OP because of cleric CH (and also caused a lot of drama at the camp), jboots in najena was another huge drama camp, and I'm not entirely sure what problems were caused by the guise.

I'm not entirely sure when they put in the zone restriction for manastone, I don't believe it was right away as I feel like I remember seeing people using it in original kunark and velious but I could be wrong. I tried to look up the zone restriction change to it and all I can find are reports from back in 2001 of the change, which would be after velious launched.