Patch message 12-7-05

[Perseverence Rewarded]

December 7th, 2005
_____________________


*** Headlines ***

~ Holiday Festival ~

M.C. Tinkerton needs help repairing his Clockwork Party Machine in time to celebrate 3199! The party machine's dance gyroscopes, firework cannons and party favor dispensers are fully functional, but the most important piece, the machine's primary party motivator, was stolen at the zero hour. M.C. Tinkerton seeks adventurers to steal back the primary party motivator from the Dark Mistletoe giants, a grouchy clan of frost giant nomads in the Great Divide. Seek out M.C. Tinkerton in the Plane of Knowledge for further details.

~ New Arena ~

A new arena zone is now available off of Lake Rathe!


*** Tradeskill ***

- Shield of Maelin now uses the proper quill.
- The following LDoN spell research recipes have been disabled: Death's Despair, Instinctual Panic, Eidolon Bellow, Soulless Panic, Angstlich's Echo of Terror, Jitterskin, Unholy Bellow, Shadow Bellow, Call of the Muse, Guidance.
- Jar of Clockwork Grease is now made with a Small Grease Jar in a toolbox. A Small Grease Jar is made the same way a clay jar is, except that you use a Small Grease Jar Sketch.


*** Events, Missions & Tasks ***

- Additional text has been added to "Investigate a Disappearance" that should help clear up a confusing spot late in the task.
- Soulseeker, Death's Sigh can no longer drop more than once per kill.
- The Mask of the Hidden quest in the Ascent now resets properly after 1 hour of inactivity.
- Monster Mission experience now properly takes into account hell level modifiers. These modifiers smooth out the experience curve to lessen the impact of the old hell levels (30, 35, 40, and 45). Inclusion of these modifiers in the monster experience will cause you to gain more experience than before during hell levels, essentially returning it to a normal level, but you will gain slightly less experience than before when you are not on a hell level.
- Within Monster Missions, you will now find Shards of Wisdom that will impart upon you the experiences of the creature you inhabit at the time. Looting one of these shards will grant the experience to your main character upon successful completion of the mission.
- Aid Fimli in the Plane of Knowledge will now offer to trade you a Cloak of Lesser Pernicity for a Cloak of Greater Pernicity. This is for players who wish to have the original cloak instead of the new, attunable cloak.
- Clockwork Commander Cogswain has outfitted his clockwork models with upgraded weaponry for the War Machines monster mission that begins in Lavastorm. He only has a limited supply of Clockwork Models in commission, so be careful with them.
- Farsoth Mal has regained some of his power deep within the Lair of Splitpaw. Defeating him may prove a bigger challenge than before!
- Dinner invitations to Dreadspire Keep are now flame-resistant and reusable.
- The Performer event will now respawn properly after a failure.
- The respawn time on many NPCs in the Demiplane of Blood has been significantly increased.


*** Items ***

- Archaeologist Flottwit has uncovered a cache of older Darkhollow items and is currently searching the bazaar for some of the newer items for comparison. If you have a Depths of Darkhollow item that changed from tradeable to no trade with the last patch and you'd prefer to have the old tradeable item instead, give the no trade version to Flottwit and he'll give you the old tradeable item in return. Flottwit will only be around until the next patch.
- Heartlight is now no-drop, poof-on-death, and no-rent.
- The mixing bowl and oven now identify Rockhopper eggs more clearly.
- The Cultural Charms should now be tradeable on Firiona Vie.
- Sporali Battle Hammer of Spirits and Daybreak, Bringer of Light have had their proc chances modified.
- Vule's Frozen Heart and Frozen Heart Shards now have +30 atk, +3 accuracy, and reduced weight.
- The hitpoint and mana values on the following items have been increased: Ring of Dark Mists, Dark Void Shoulders, Jagged Coral Choker, and Pristine Illsalin Stonecraft Mask.
- Some of the Depths of Darkhollow hp/mana augmentations were increased too much in the last patch and have been reverted to their old values.


*** NPC ***

- Hatchet the Torturer will now always leave a corpse when slain.
- Nitram Anizok has become interested in some of the clockwork that are near the Plane of Innovation entrance. He will now wander from his workshop and explore the entry to the plane for a few minutes before returning to his workshop.


*** Titles ***

- Corrected an issue that prevented server-based suffixes for the Cazic Thule server from being displayed properly.


*** Spells ***

- Renamed "Zombie Malaise" to "Wurine Guard" and "Wurine Guard" to "Zombie Malaise". This is to correct an inconsistency in the naming.
- Corrected the spelling of "Thief" in the description for the spell Enduring Vision.
- Capitalized "Eyes" in the spell Thief's Eyes.
- Fixed issues with the Aura of Arcanum spells to allow better stacking with other resist buffs.
- Summon Companion will now summon a pet even when you have Steadfast Servant up.
- Field of Vision spells will now stay persistent through zoning.


*** AAs ***

- Gift of Mana will no longer trigger on any spell that costs no mana to cast.
- The monk AA Eye Gouge is now more effective and will stack better with other attack debuffs.
- The magician AA Elemental Agility should now properly cause your pet to be hit less often.
- Guardian of Ro ranks 2 and 3 will now properly increase the damage that your Guardian of Ro does.
- Attempting to use Living Shield before the cool down is finished should no longer result in an error message.
- When Bards use the Origin ability it can now be interrupted by ducking.
- AA's should no longer vanish from your AA list until you zone.


*** UI ***

- A bug where the UI could not be reloaded more than a few times has been fixed.
- The 'Skills' option on the EQ menu has been moved down into the player information sub-menu.
- Added new EQType label "Target of Target Name", type 135, at the request of the UI community.
- Added optional "CloseButton" button to the Story Window at the request of the UI community. The default UI doesn't have this button, but if UI creators want it they can add one now.
- The UI XML parser has been slightly optimized, slower computers may notice a slight decrease in load times.
- Through a change to defaults.ini, the way the Evolving Item XP Transfer window opens should no longer obscure parts of the window.
- A Bazaar Search UI bug where the All Effects filter would no longer bring up weapons with combat effects has been fixed.
- The bandolier window is now persistent across a zone change.
- Hotkeys in the hotbar as well as in the actions window will remain useable when you exit a monster mission.
- It is no longer possible to get 2 group leaders in the same group in the raid window.
- In the Bard Songs Window, all icons should now appear the same size and not overlap each other.
- Fixed a bug with groups and raids where if group member with a shared task /raidinvites a separate player with a different shared task, the group players become bugged.
- Fixed a crash related to minimizing the chat window to as small as it can go.
- Swapping to a weapon configuration that includes a light source in the bandolier should now activate that light source.


*** Miscellaneous ***

- Corpses that were under the world when a zone starts up are now moved to the safe spot of the zone.
- Sharvahl and Hollowshade now use Luclin night settings for the sky. Previously there was no sky in these zones.
- The /safelock command now prevents the Esc key from altering in game windows while safelock is activated.
- You can now no longer summon a horse while controlling a boat.
- If a tracking class enters a monster mission that has a template with track, their sort track will now work correctly afterwards.
- /Dzadding a character that is zoning should no longer cause various bugs.
- Various atlas typos have been corrected. Grobb was spelled Gukta; even the trolls could spell enough to tell that was wrong.
- New Half Elves can now claim Kelethin as their starting city.
- Fixed a problem most often seen in the Tutorial where Arias would attack the player if they use the hide ability. This was a general bug; any NPCs that were told to follow the player because of a script would agro when the player tried to hide.
- The '/who all' command will now filter searches for Frogloks.






- The EverQuest Team

[Xislaben]

- Shield of Maelin now uses the proper quill.

Yay bugfix.

- The following LDoN spell research recipes have been disabled: Death's Despair, Instinctual Panic, Eidolon Bellow, Soulless Panic, Angstlich's Echo of Terror, Jitterskin, Unholy Bellow, Shadow Bellow, Call of the Muse, Guidance.

Awe, so some ldon spells were researchable, just not the one I wanted

- Jar of Clockwork Grease is now made with a Small Grease Jar in a toolbox. A Small Grease Jar is made the same way a clay jar is, except that you use a Small Grease Jar Sketch.

This is, if it is what I think it is, maybe the nicest thing a dev's ever done for tinkerers. No more reliance on rare-ish foraged PoI items for 280ish tinkering? I'll take a few pottery subcombines any day of the week and twice on sunday over foraging in PoI

[Rawckett]

- Jar of Clockwork Grease is now made with a Small Grease Jar in a toolbox. A Small Grease Jar is made the same way a clay jar is, except that you use a Small Grease Jar Sketch.

This is, if it is what I think it is, maybe the nicest thing a dev's ever done for tinkerers. No more reliance on rare-ish foraged PoI items for 280ish tinkering? I'll take a few pottery subcombines any day of the week and twice on sunday over foraging in PoI

It seems the only thing that has changed is how the foraged Clockwork Grease is combined. Instead of combining it in the pottery made Small Clay Jar, you combine it in a Tool Box with: clockwork grease(2), small grease jar. Hopefully they will make the small grease jars stackable.

[Mannwin Woobie]

Unfortunately, I don't think that is what it is. I am assuming they change the recipe

from: 2 x Clockwork Grease, in a Small Clay Jar
to: 2 x Clockwork Grease + 1 Small Grease Jar, in a Toolbox.

However, it is still a benefit. From what it says, the Small Grease Jar is NOT a container, like the Small Clay jar is. So, you can make a bunch of them and put them in your bags, then do combines in the toolbox. With the small clay jar (container), I would have to make the jars one at a time, put it in an open main slot, put the grease in the jar and combine. Repeat.

Now I can make a bunch of jars and hold them in my bags, then do a bunch of toolbox combines. Sounds much easier on the hands and fingers

edit: hehe. You beat me by a minute, Rawckett

[Xulan]

- The following LDoN spell research recipes have been disabled: Death's Despair, Instinctual Panic, Eidolon Bellow, Soulless Panic, Angstlich's Echo of Terror, Jitterskin, Unholy Bellow, Shadow Bellow, Call of the Muse, Guidance.

Those are/were PoP era spells (retroactively), except for Call of the Muse and Guidance. I got my 61 via parchment and the 62 via research (thankfully before it was disabled) because I got sick of turning in parchments =) Too cheap to just pay DoN crystals for them.

- A bug where the UI could not be reloaded more than a few times has been fixed.

It sure will be nice to change characters without having to check my map and target ring everytime to see if I will crash or not the next time I zone/switch characters =)

[Rawckett]

However, it is still a benefit. From what it says, the Small Grease Jar is NOT a container, like the Small Clay jar is. So, you can make a bunch of them and put them in your bags, then do combines in the toolbox. With the small clay jar (container), I would have to make the jars one at a time, put it in an open main slot, put the grease in the jar and combine. Repeat.

I hated that part. Haha. Glad that will be gone and hopefully these clockwork jars are stackable, as I am sure that is what the intent is anyway.

edit: hehe. You beat me by a minute, Rawckett

[Xislaben]

It seems the only thing that has changed is how the foraged Clockwork Grease is combined. Instead of combining it in the pottery made Small Clay Jar, you combine it in a Tool Box with: clockwork grease(2), small grease jar. Hopefully they will make the small grease jars stackable.

Yeah I still like my way better, no rarish forages!

Wishful thinking. Now where to find lvl 46+ foragers...

[Rawckett]

Yeah I still like my way better, no rarish forages!

Wishful thinking. Now where to find lvl 46+ foragers...

I think next expansion they will be introducing gnome rangers

[Phantron]

Most of these spells are from the fear revamp that do not belong to any era, but it was clearly intended that the lower end fear spells are bought from DoN merchants while the higher one is obtained by some kind of Muramite Rune turn in.

I'm guessing it's made unresearchable not because 100 DoN crystals are hard to get, but that you can actually sell those scrolls back to the DoN merchants for more crystals.

[YurienStonebow]

I think next expansion they will be introducing gnome rangers

if there are gnome rangers they won't need to have the forage ability. they can jsut look in front of them and pick it up while they walk

[Xulan]

Most of these spells are from the fear revamp that do not belong to any era, but it was clearly intended that the lower end fear spells are bought from DoN merchants while the higher one is obtained by some kind of Muramite Rune turn in.

I'm guessing it's made unresearchable not because 100 DoN crystals are hard to get, but that you can actually sell those scrolls back to the DoN merchants for more crystals.

If so, I wonder if you can no longer get them via etheral parchment turn-ins.

[Ngreth Thergn]

I hated that part. Haha. Glad that will be gone and hopefully these clockwork jars are stackable, as I am sure that is what the intent is anyway.

I did not touch the "result Item" So if the final result did not stack before it will not stack now.

the Small Grease Jar does stack. The new sketch stacks.

The unfired small grease jar does NOT stack... (silly people that stack wet clay items get a clay lump!!!)

The "Jar of Clockwork Grease" stacks or does not stack just as it did before. I did not change the item itself, just the recipe that MAKES the item. And yes I am being lazy and not looking it up right now to see if it stacks or not.

[uncleshmoozo]

- Nitram Anizok has become interested in some of the clockwork that are near the Plane of Innovation entrance. He will now wander from his workshop and explore the entry to the plane for a few minutes before returning to his workshop.

Dang it all ... He doesn't actually stand INSIDE his workshop anymore. He used to stand in the back of his little workshop building which allowed a rogue with the Shroud of Stealth AA to stroll back to his shop, wait for the one wanderer in the area to wander out of range, and then open his merchant window and re-engage sneak-hide mode to do some shopping. Now he stands out in front of the building within agro range of several static spawn mobs who all come running over to beat on you if you try that. This means the one group of players who used to have the ability to buy from him at any time of day no longer can (unless they can stand take down several planar level clockworks all at the same time).

/sigh

[andyhre]

The end product, the Jar of Clockwork Grease, did stack, so presumably as Ngreth says, it still will stack.

From my perspective, this seems like a real boon. Instead of two pottery combines, one creating a non-stacking unfired item, the other a (non-stacking obviously) container, we now get a single tinkering combine using all stackable items.

Thanks very much!

Andy/Guiscard (and little Gnomedeguerre)


EDIT: Ah now I see it is still pottery, just that the 2nd item is not a container. Still, a plus and much apprecaited.

[Taushar]

Dang it all ... He doesn't actually stand INSIDE his workshop anymore. He used to stand in the back of his little workshop building which allowed a rogue with the Shroud of Stealth AA to stroll back to his shop, wait for the one wanderer in the area to wander out of range, and then open his merchant window and re-engage sneak-hide mode to do some shopping. Now he stands out in front of the building within agro range of several static spawn mobs who all come running over to beat on you if you try that. This means the one group of players who used to have the ability to buy from him at any time of day no longer can (unless they can stand take down several planar level clockworks all at the same time).

/sigh

That really blows. I worked hard to get my Rogue to 63 and get him SoS so he can make the trip on behalf of my Gnome Tinker. If he can't safely buy the items like before, it's a step backward, not forward. Yet another nerf for us. I certainly hope this will be fixed soon.

Taushar