Greetings Fellow Norrathians! I was asked by Windstalker and a few other prominent Norrath citizens to come and expand on the information about the Rum Cellar Campaign as well as give some hints about what we have in store for the future. Some of the big questions we received were asking about the play styles that the Rum Cellar zones will be concentrating on, and the sort of drops that’ll be inside the 6 different zones. I will start off by saying we really felt that our original release of Altar of Malice was a little light on content for casual to mid-skill level players. So this release is really concentrating on that. Although there should be something for everyone, the heroic, advanced solo and raid content is more concentrated on those play styles. The Rum Cellar raid is meant, as far as difficulty and itemization, to supplement those who are finding it difficult to get through the tier 1 and tier 2 level raid targets. This raid should be able to support some pick-up raiding and really add a good amount of loot to progression. So what will be dropping in this Rum Cellar campaign? The heroic content should have drops for everyone, solo, casuals, heroic, and hardcore players alike. There are new green adornments that will be dropping in the solo/advanced solo zones as well as new heroic green adornments located in the heroic and event dungeons. Expect to be able to obtain both blue heroic and green heroic gems. We have made some really cool rare drops as well as additive drops [In the Ill Will, Rancor, Nox Incessit style accessories], along with new armor and appearances, and some new very special additions to armor adornment sets. Collections for Rum Cellar have a very nice end line reward, very much in the spirit and power of the Mithril Ring of Amplified Power. Some other specifics are: Solo and Advanced Solo drops: Blue Malice Shards for purchasing tier 1 heroic armor. Heroic collections drop from named encounters. High end armor piece via a new quest. Chance for rare elite mercenary. Heroic specific drops: Red zeppelin flying mount (obtained through collection drops from a named encounter). High end armor piece via a new quest. Special War Rune that add an 8th bonus to current armor gems. Chance for rare elite mercenary. We’ve also got tons of achievements, many of which are hidden, and a bunch of new titles. Also, a live update releasing alongside Rum Cellar will include quality-of-life improvements to Scouts and Fighters and Summoners. Scout and Fighter improvements focus on increasing ability damage as well as making backend changes to allow for dynamically adjusting each archetype independently for continued tuning. This will be the first pass of several aimed at bringing interactivity and fun to Scouts and Fighters and moving away from an over-reliance on auto-attack damage. Summoner changes focus on improving the functionality of pets, including both UI customization and the long-awaited pet tab on the character information window. We invite you to check out the Rum Cellar Campaign before it launches, and you can help out our team by beta testing this now. Information on this can be found here. So what are we doing now and what is in the future? As far as the content for the future, we will most definitely be expanding the world of Norrath! We are currently in development of a substantially larger campaign release for later this year that will include a new overland zone (all new Geo courtesy of our terrain tool) and new dungeon themes that will include heroic, advanced solo and raid zones – as well as new signature lines, quests, collections, achievements and more. Fabled and agnostic zones are still on our list of things to do, but we aren’t scheduling those yet. Right now our focuses are performance, class tuning, and new campaign content and features. Speaking of features, did we also mention that All Access members will be able to pull AA points in and out of stacks without having to respec their entire trees? Oh yeah!! We appreciate everyone’s honest feedback and we appreciate those of you who have joined us at the EQ2 subreddit to chat with us about this upcoming content. We’ll see you on April 28 with the release of the Rum Cellar Campaign Kyle “Kander” Vallée Lead Designer, EverQuest II Daybreak Games, LLC
"UI customization" Is there any way the devs can put in what ui elements have been edited in patch notes please(what xml elements specifically)? I asked this before with the feedback forums but didnt really get much of a response im afraid
I would also like to say please take a closer look with the summoner pet changes! scout pet damage on test is lower than the mage pets damage on live(on the single target dps front) and the necro pet tank is bugged with a few AA's and still does not have a new appearance!
Is there any form of timescale on the future passes? Or are we looking at a pass every 3 month kind of thing?
I'll go ahead and say it because I've already decided to drop my All Access subscription when it runs out in May (not because of this "expansion", just a myriad of reasons - customer support, forum drama, reddit, - just the general direction of the company), but to me it's obvious this is the kind of content that in past years we would have gotten for free if we had purchased AoM. While that bothered me a little, I could just pass on buying it and it wasn't that big of a deal. However, now I see that it will have drops better than the advanced solo/solo instances in AoM. That smacks of pay to win to me. I know they need money, I get it, but this just adds to the sinking feeling I have about not just this game but Daybreak in general (affects my desire to play Landmark or hold out excitement for EQNext). It feels like a money grab. I want to support them, but not this way.
This is one of the most glaring flaws of the AoM expansion. I literally thought it was a bug when I saw that my tank pet looked exactly like the one that came before it. I seriously hope it is updated so that it finally has an appearance of its own. The Conjy tank has the same problem. Hell, just pick and large cool looking enemy to replace its appearance for now at least.
Ok, I'll admit it. I'm getting a little excited for this campaign. I was not a big fan of AoM and I'm really looking for something new and fun to do. And Uplifting Voice II? Heck yeah.
A definite concern is the time scale on the scout changes. There was no response to the feedback threads or any details on the plan moving forward, so far 3 months later we've gotten a blanket bump to CA damage and 1-2 ability fixes. I do appreciate getting a version of Marauder's Vaunt that actually does something, just annoyed at the prospect of waiting another 6-12 months before we see any real improvements. Questions: - What is the timeline to finish these class changes? - How often can we expect each iteration? - What is 'fun' to you? CA dps is one thing, but that's just one aspect.
I have one question. With these packs, say I skip one but decide to buy the following one. Will I be able to do so without having to buy this pack? And will it be that way for all packs. Thanks in advance for any answer you can give me on this. Moonpanther
Hi Kander, Thanks for the update, it's long overdue and much appreciated. Every single time in the past that there had been one of these "additive" items in the game, it was always better for DPS classes and so healers were left to run these zones countless times for the other 4-5 people in the group, while never being the "need" person in the group themselves, since the items were always better for other classes. Is there a healer version this time around or are we once again just gearing out the rest of the group? Is there any kind of ETA on the improvements to other classes? It's not mentioned anywhere in the future plans and there were pages and pages of healer (and all other) class feedback back when those threads were open. Can you please clearly confirm that no more "Expansions" (in the old sense) are planned for the game? Third party sites such as massively claim that this what Windstalker told them, but they provide no direct quotes. I think many people would appreciate just a clear answer such as: "no more expansions planned, just campaigns" (if that is indeed the case).
I would implore you to start scheduling the Fabled EoF dungeons if you want to keep players who don't intend to buy the DLC playing. Just holiday events don't cut it.
