Test Update 4/13/16 - Patch Notes and Discussions

April 13, 2016
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*** Items ***

- Changed the parcel system so that when sending items with LORE augmentations they are checked on the recipient to ensure they don't already have the augmentation. The item and its attached augmentation will be parceled back to the sender in these situations.
- Corrected Shield of the Dark Waters to function as a shield.
- Vander's Bane can now summon imps at full power every four seconds. Any imps summoned within the next four seconds will be lower level and smaller.
- By popular demand! All visual ornaments will now change the icon of the item they modify into the icon of the ornament.
- It should be possible to complete the achievement for wearing a set of the Golden Hero Hero's Forge ornaments even if the character did not purchase the set from the marketplace.


*** Quests & Events ***

- Ancient Heroes - Lady Vox - Corrected a bug that prevented the task from updating when opening Lady Vox's Hoard.
- Reduced the respawn timer on the Top Shard of the Jarsath Medallion by half. Also made the pieces used to make the all the medallions for entry into Veeshan's Peak 'no destroy'. The Priest of Discord, however, will still take these items as tribute.
- The broadcasts for the tipsy gnome run that occur before midnight PST will now occur on the correct days.
- Corrected the issue that prevented the Agent of Change from functioning properly in /pick zones.
- Wither and Decay and Anashti Sul, Damsel of Decay (Raid and Group) - Bimbly Ironstein can help you to [leave] the instance and return to the static version of Sul Vius: Demiplane of Decay.
- Wither and Decay and Anashti Sul, Damsel of Decay (Raid and Group) - All chat messages for these events will now use the Event Messages color and filter.
- Anashti Sul, Damsel of Decay (Raid and Group) - Gift of Endless Life and Gift of Living Death now block Gifts of Anashti Sul. This should prevent being struck by the damage component of Gift of Living Death multiple times within the same volley.
- Anashti Sul, Damsel of Decay (Raid) - Being inside the area of effect of a Tendrils of Pestilence aura will now change the screen color to indicate the imminent danger. Make sure to turn on post effects if you wish to see this visual warning.
- Anashti Sul, Damsel of Decay (Raid) - The Tendrils of Pestilence hazards will despawn after a few minutes.
- Anashti Sul, Damsel of Decay (Raid) - *Entering* the Tendrils of Pestilence aura will no longer result in damage, though standing in one still will. This should prevent being struck by the Tendrils of Pestilence multiple times within the same second.
- Anashti Sul, Lady of Life (Raid) - Curse of Health will now block the effects of most healing spells triggered by passive AA abilities. This applies to: Recourse of Life, Healing Light, Cascading Theft of Life, Tunare's Grace, and Vehement Recompense.
- Wither and Decay (Raid) - The titular bosses, Wither and Decay, have had their health lowered by 10%.


*** Spells ***

- Added special messaging so that spells which fail due to a caster or target requirement check will now tell you why in most cases.
- Enchanter - The Mind Shatter line of DoTs has been increased in power and efficiency. It will no longer stack with itself above level 70 when cast by the same caster.
- Enchanter - The Strangle line of DoTs has been increased in power and efficiency. It will no longer stack with itself above level 62 when cast by the same caster.
- Enchanter - The Baffling Constriction line of DoTs has been increased in power and efficiency. It will no longer stack with itself when cast by the same caster.


*** AA ***

- Corrected an issue where spells that deal damage as a percentage of the target's health as well as Mana Burn spells were not reporting the damage dealt to anyone but the caster.
- All fade abilities when activated will now make the caster the last possible target of their attackers' rampage attacks regardless of whether the caster successfully escapes from combat.
- Consolidated the purchased versions of the following glyph AA abilities to be the second rank of the previous tier glyph to which they logically upgrade:
- - Glyph of the Master is now rank 2 of Glyph of Dragon Scales
- - Glyph of Lost Secrets is now rank 2 of Glyph of Arcane Secrets
- - Glyph of Genari Might is now rank 2 of Glyph of Draconic Potential
- - Glyph of the Cataclysm is now rank 2 of Glyph of Destruction
- Consolidated the 5 Dragons of Norrath progression AA abilities to a single line with 5 ranks.
- Wizard - Adjusted ranks 13-16 of Mana Burn so that the damage added to incoming spells is applied as a static amount.


*** Progression Servers ***

- Corrected an issue that was causing NPC Harm Touch to deal more damage than is intended.
- Chloroblast and Nature's Touch are available for purchase from Rushka Deklamoor in the Commonlands tunnel and Srendon Gladetender in Greater Faydark when Velious has unlocked.
- Hybrid discipline tomes are available for purchase from Bakrav Uramis in Commonlands when Velious has unlocked.
- Pathing for Veeshan's Peak 1.0 has been restored to its original version. This should prevent the wandering NPCs from all piling up in a bad location.
- Blumblum Swigwater can now be found in Cobalt Scar. Yelinak can now be found in Skyshrine. Narandi will now spawn correctly at the end of the 10th Ring War in Great Divide.
- Derakor the Vindicator is no longer visiting Skyshrine on progression servers.
- The classic version of Plane of Mischief has been repopulated by many inhabitants that had previously gone missing.
- Nortlav the Scalekeeper can be found in the Hole once Velious has been unlocked.
- Buffed bosses that use spells now have an aura that applies the Presence of the Mighty effect. Presence of the Mighty increased damage from spells. The damage increase from their spells should roughly match the increase from their melee.
- All buffed bosses will regenerate less health in combat. Velious era buffed bosses will mitigate less incoming damage.


*** Collections ***

- Moved and inaccessible collection location in Fate Rewards the Bold. Fixes DBG Tracker issue EQ-658.


*** Miscellaneous ***

- A number of adjustments have been made to the Alcohol Tolerance skill:
- - A higher Alcohol Tolerance skill will now have a bigger impact on how intoxicating a drink will be.
- - A higher Alcohol Tolerance skill will now result in a quicker recovery from the effects of intoxicating drinks or spells.
- - Alcoholic drinks now have varying degrees of potency that can be viewed when inspecting an item.
- In the spirit of the anniversary we've applied a bit of polish to the merchant/banker theme music.
- Group chat, raid chat, and fellowship chat messages are now queued for display while zoning similar to tell messages and guild chat.
- Reduced the rate that NPCs hit by melee combat will emit sound.
- Adjusted the animation system so that attack animations take priority over taking damage animations.
- Improved the message displayed to group and raid leaders when a member of their party requests an instance while a member of that party already belongs to an instance.
- Added an option to control whether or not to randomize the selection of the loading screen music.
- Corrected an issue where buffs that have an endurance upkeep cost but are not a combat ability effects would not fade when the caster ran out of endurance.
- Many Luclin zones will spin up new instanced versions when they are populated by enough adventurers.
- - Velious zones with open raids no longer have a maximum player limitation.
- Removed the embedded Legends of Norrath (LoN) client from the EverQuest client. If you wish to continue playing LoN, please download and use the standalone client available at www.legendsofnorrath.com.
- Corrected an issue that prevented the Plane of Knowledge book in Blightfire Moors from showing up on the find list.
- Made a number of adjustments to the classic Dracolich model to improve targeting and melee combat with these NPCs.
- Addressed an issue that was causing some parts of the Hero's Forge Tipsy Gnomework armor sets not properly appear.
- Hot Zones now randomly rotate between three possible zones for each level range and are currently set to rotate every 3 months. Talk to Franklin Teek in the Plane of Knowledge to find your Hot Zone and earn bonus loot and experience!


*** UI ***

- The AA window now has a sort-able timer column.
- There is a new setting in the raid options window for the raid leader that, when checked, will automatically fill people into groups.
- You can now save over existing hot button sets, spell sets, and extended target sets by selecting them in the save menu.
- - This new menu works like load and delete.
- - The new save menu has an option 'Add New Set', which works as before.
- Fixed a graphical UI bug that would happen with multiple of the same illusion in your key ring and removing one of the items.
- Made room for heroic stats to show numbers greater than 999.
- Added a Collected / Not Collected status on collectible items. This will show as Not Collected if any of your achievements can be incremented or completed by collecting the item.
- The Parcels tab will now properly sort chronologically instead of alphabetically when sorting by Sent date.
- Alerts associated to events will now disappear when the event has ended.
- Cleaned up some missed references to EQ Players when support was removed for it.
- Converted the options window to have its General tab layout its elements using a vertical layout box to ease adding / removing options.
- Added an option called 'Auto Show Rewards' that will control whether or not the rewards window will appear when you've been granted a reward or when logging in with pending quest rewards. Please note that if you have pending rewards over the cap, it will still show the rewards window regardless of the setting.
- Added a 'Clear Note' button to the Parcels window.


- Changed -
EQUI.xml
EQUI_AAWindow.xml
EQUI_Inventory.xml
EQUI_ItemDisplay.xml
EQUI_MerchantWnd.xml
EQUI_OptionsWindow.xml
EQUI_RaidOptionsWindow.xml
EQUI_TCGStartupWnd.xml
EQUI_TCGWnd.xml


*** Previously Updated ***

- Corrected the descriptions for collection items found in Crypt of Sul to properly match their achievement names.
- The icon for Dichotomic Reinforcement has been changed to help differentiate it from other enchanter spell effects.
- Shadowknight - Corrected a timer conflict with Mindless Hatred and Reaver's Bargain.
- Laughter fills the air as the end of March ushers in a brief increase of Bristlebane's influence over Norrath.
- Captain Krasnok (Raid) - Corrected an issue that would prevent you from entering Krasnok's chambers after he is defeated.
- Captain Krasnok (Raid) - Corrected an issue where Krasnok would not reset properly after defeating unworthy raiding parties.
- We have reduced the time needed to gather the keys to Veeshan's Peak in the following ways:
- - An ancient Jarsath is now about three times as likely to spawn rather than a placeholder.
- - The bloodgill marauder will respawn twice as fast.
- - Verix Kylox's Remains is not almost twice as likely to spawn rather than a placeholder.
- - The shard of the Kylong medallion that spawns in the Kaesora library will respawn twice as fast.
- - The rotting skeleton has had its chance to spawn instead of a placeholder slightly increased.
- - The pained soul has had its chance to spawn instead of a placeholder slightly increased.


- The EverQuest Team

Can you clarify this one, are you removing the Legends of Norrath link from the EQ button?

While most of us do not play LoN the majority of us do claim our free LoN packs.

Thank you for the changes to hot zones and chat messages. I hope you picked some better hot zones than the last batch and did you happen to add any for 95-100?

Overall this looks like a great patch! Thank you devs & coders! Keep up the good work!

Of all the things they put effort in to, they change hotzones that people out level in a week. Likely to ones that people will also complain about. Yay for placating the too lazy to go find a zone on their own complainers.

Yet, we still have broken group gear in TBM that the dev team refuses to acknowledge is a problem. Plenty of other lingering stuff as well that actually impacts 90% of the player base. Wonder why the player base gets more and more bitter? It's wasting limited resources on things that don't matter to most when there are plenty of things that really do need work or time could be put in to future content instead. Hey, maybe they could have created an actual 17th anniversary reward that both group and raid geared characters could obtain and desire.

And there are nerfs in this patch

Speaking as someone who has been pretty unhappy by a lot lately, let's be honest here. The hotzone changes have been asked for a long time now by a lot of people, and the implementation of those changes is way more than I think any of us ever expected. This is something that I not only think is cool, but something I will actually use a lot, now that I went from being a hardcore raider to a filthy casual who plays only alts.

In agreement with Utaerx; the hot zone change has been requested over and over again for a long time. I can certainly understand frustration about other things being broken/lacking, but IMO this change was long overdue. Kudos to the devs for getting it done.

I love this patch.....New Hot Zones especially .....Thx Dev's

Great patch, thanks a lot devs!

On test the Hot Zones go from 20 - 95 and are: Paludal, Nedaria, Dalnir, Stone Hive, Emerald Jungle, Scarlet Desert, Sebilis, The Deep, Blackfeather Roost, Drunder Fortress of Zek, The Hive, Direwind, Fortress Mech, The Foundation, Arthicrex, Pillars of Alra

Keeping in mind that test has double XP the level 95 Pillars of Alra quest is rewarding 28 AA for completion and 1.6 AA per light blue mob kill(Rogue grouped with a merc). Can't recall how this compares to the current level 90/Alternate hot zone quests on live.

What exactly does this mean? How was is applied before and how will it apply now?

I hope this includes telling us when spells do not land because you have to be under the mob (belly caster) for them to land, like most dragons and a number of other mobs. Rather than the current, "Your spell was resisted".

If so, thank you so much.

Huge thumbs up on this. The previous nerf of fade meant I could never get off of rampage during raids. Assuming this works on all mobs, that is.

Kind of a shame since you finally fixed (for me at least) the issue with the LoN client crashing EQ. Oh, well, I'll have to install the standalone client.

I hope this includes "a dracoliche" raid mob in Plane of Fear: Revisited.

Not a huge issue but if it works like I hope, it is something that I like.

Not a huge issue but if it works like I hope, it is something that I like.

Believe it just means you will get the set amount 19200 and it cant be modified in any way?

This was my interpretation as well. The SPA (484 I think it was?) is new and I haven't tested it, but, seeing as they didn't change any of the values, I think it's a pretty good guess that SPA 484 works like SPA 297 (which is what mana burn uses on live) except the damage doesn't crit.

If these pets only lasted 10 seconds as described, this would be not a big deal. But they last longer than that, more like 30 seconds. Not a huge deal most of the time, but a big difference before and after if using Imbued Ferocity.

Were strong pets to overwrite weak pets, as they might be, the IF issue would be lessened. Is that the case?

Yeah, I assume 484 just gets added in after all the mods and crits are checked where 297 were added in somewhere before crits.

First, thank you for fixing/improving so many issues that were tied/stemmed from issue tracker items! Secondly, its awesome that on one of them you noted that in the patch notes, and we'd love to see more of that in the future!!

Yeah I saw the nerf to Wizards/Casters DPS but I expected that. Hopefully they don't go too far on Wizards since Dzarn said he was shining up the Nerf Bat (TM) (C) for them "soon" (TM) (C)

It should affect everyone that casts spells (procs count) while the NPC has mana burn on them