Upcoming patch info

[GremlinClr]

Upcoming for July 9th

By now, you've probably heard that we're working on our next expansion, The Lost Dungeons of Norrath. We're attempting some interesting new technology and some awesome new design ideas. Keep your eyes open for website updates about that.


But, this column isn't about expansions, it's about upcoming Live features, and we have plenty of them for you this month.


We've been working on a lot of zone revamps, both partial and more complete. Nine zones were updated this month for Live servers, and Legends will be getting a new revamp as well. That's a lot of zones! We're addressing issues in those zones that players have had concerns about, with the intent to make them a little more interesting and desirable to play in. Check them out; we think you'll like what we've done with the zones.


Oh, and for those of you that celebrate Independence Day, have a safe and explosive 4th!



Several partial zone revamps coming to the Live servers. Droga and Nurga will be moving from Legends to the Live servers with our next update. Along with those zones, we have completed partial revamps of several other zones: The Deep, Charasis (Howling Stones), Dragon Necropolis, Siren's Grotto, The Hole, The City of Mist, and Velketor's Labyrinth. We chose these zones to update based on feedback from players, and have implemented changes that will make these zones more entertaining to play in. If you haven't been to one of these zones in a while, you may want to go back and revisit them after our next update.



Grieg's End changes going to the Legends server. Grieg's End is one of the more interesting zones in EverQuest, but the original design made pursuing the content in this zone a bit complicated. The redesign includes new encounters, items, traps, and events that make the zone a challenge for the experience group, with plenty of events for a raid group. These changes will revitalize this zone and should make it one of the more popular places for characters of the appropriate level to visit.



Tradeskill trivial failures will be reduced. Obviously even a great master can make mistakes. EverQuest players, however, have expressed that they feel master tradeskillers fail on trivial items too frequently. We have reviewed the trivial failure chances and have made a change to the way they work. The greater the skill of the character relative to the skill needed to complete a recipe; the less likely he is to fail on a trivial recipe.



Damage Over Time Spell Foci update. We have implemented a change to focus items for Damage over Time (DoT) spells. Focus items improve aspects of certain spells when they are cast. Originally, DoT spells were included in a group of other spells that some focus items affected. But the nature of DoT spells is very different than other spells, and the affect of these focus items on DoT spells was not what we wanted it to be. To correct this, we have changed the Extended Affliction line to Burning Affliction, which cause DoT spells to do more damage, instead of having a longer duration.



New Imbue, Enchant, and Thicken spells will be introduced. Certain trade skill recipes rely on magic spells used to make normal items into magical items. To make creating these magical items a little more convenient, we will be introducing new Imbue, Enchant, and Thicken spells that create five magical items rather than just one. These spells require five components and take longer to cast and use more mana, but they should make creating these items much more convenient.



Newbie quests will be added for Erudites, Trolls and Ogres. New characters, especially if played by new players, need some time to get acquainted with the area surrounding their starting city. One of the best ways to get those characters out into the world is to send them on quests. We have been introducing new quests for new characters to each of the starting cities. The next update will include quests for young Trolls beginning in Neriak, Ogres in Oggok and for Erudites starting out in Erudin, completing the updated newbie quests for all races.



Area of Effect spells that do not affect your group in PvP will also not affect your Raid. Taking on large tasks on a PvP server can be complicated by the fact that Area of Effect spells damage your own raid and not just the monsters. It makes sense that since these spells do not affect your group on a PvP server, they should not affect your raid.



We've updated character creation descriptions. Players will now be able to right-click the class, race or statistic buttons during character creation to see a detailed explanation of the item clicked. This will help folks when making decisions about what they want their character to be.



Also, as a heads up to players that have created their own user interfaces for EverQuest, these are the interface files that we expect to change next week.


EQUI_Optionswnd.xml

UQUI.xml
EQUI_charactercreate.xml

Just got this from the newbie zone, yay trivial changes.

[Verdandi]

...completing the updated newbie quests for all races.

Except barbarians...and iksar...and vah shir... :P

Lots of good news though, all in all. I wonder if trivial failures will ever reach 0%. But even 1 or 2% less losses is a good thing!!

[Lilosh]

Verdandi: Frizznik said that anything 200 points below your skill level will be no fail. :-)


This was unofficial, on test, YMMV, but it seemed pretty definite.

-Lilosh

[Reflan]

That will be nice, but to tell you the truth, it wasn't failing on metal studs and other things of pretty much zero cost that ever bothered me much. It's a step in the right direction, certainly. Where to draw the line is arguable. But if you have to be 200 points above what you're making for a zero failure rate(or a LOT lot less than the extended runs of "5%" you sometimes see), quite a few things will still fail as much as ever. Probably most of the things I care about, like low skill tempers, etc.

I consider something like a skill needed of 80 or 123 to be a very low skill item for someone with 250 skill, that he shouldn't really be failing on to any notable degree.

Because of that, it may be that the trivial changes won't have quite the impact on us that we might hope for. It will be great for people making leather padding, for instance, but people will still fail a lot of woven mandrakes, etc. Nice, but ... well, it could be a little more radical of a change. When you truly master a great many things, you don't mess them up at all, or about as often as lightning strikes. When's the last time you forgot how to walk, or couldn't remember your toilet training? Or forgot how to peel a carrot, or couldn't remember how to put gas in your car? Do you mess that up, oh, 5% of the time? No, of course not. But you don't mess it up 2 or 3% of the time either. That's not what mastery is.

If the 5% still holds for things long since trivial, but not quite 200 points below your skill level, your failure rate will still be pretty high on things that you've long since "mastered." A great many things, probably most things that most tradeskillers care about, will be unaffected by the change if you need to be anywhere near 200 skill points above the combine to stop failing it.

We'll see, I guess. But I'm not getting very excited yet.

[Tinile]

I believe it will scale percentages depending on skill. A 200 will fail less then a 100 and 250 may be no fail on items under 50.

[Krazick]

...completing the updated newbie quests for all races.

Except barbarians...and iksar...and vah shir... :P

Lots of good news though, all in all. I wonder if trivial failures will ever reach 0%. But even 1 or 2% less losses is a good thing!!

Correct about the Barbarians (at least none listed here yet).

The Iksar do have some...but never really considered "newbie" quests.

And the Vah Shir do have Class Specific Quests, that can be done by other races... if they get the starting slate via a MQ.

[Prizzle]

And potters wont likely fail on the kiln, which is one of the major advantages of this new rule.

[lonewylfe]

The Vah Shir do have the class specific, but it's not on the lines of the other newbie quests, since it doesn't net them a whole suit of armor (even if that whole suit is a pita to get).
I have to agree with the others, I hope they scale in some kinda of trivial non-failing...there's not much that seems to be under 50 trivial in the first place (imo).

[Pojodan]

Vah Shir have their class specific weapons (Which are not much better than the newbie weapon you get for free) that are a huge PITA to get since you need 135+ skill in one area then 4 other people with 135+ skill in their areas to get the weapon which, by the time you're high enough to get it, is far weaker than anything you've aquired elsewhere.
They also have 'newbie' armor quests that are not class specific.. basically just getting 4 NO DROP items from various MoBs in Shadeweavers, the tunic being aquirable at about lvl 12, that is if you can evne find the Mobs that drop the thing since there's only two spawns and they're rare to show up from either and you need 4 items that they don't drop every time.

[Daeanor]

What we need is a "meticulous" AA skill that reduces trivial failure to something like 0.1% as long as it's trivial.

[Lunariel]

I think this is great improvement. It may promote some more interaction between GMs.

For example wood elf cultural tailoring require blue diamonds to go through 3 trivial subcombines before the final attempt. With the current rules, you can expect to lose almost 15% of your gems. With this you can get it below 5% instead. You just have to be a GM brewer, potterer and smith too.

And the trophies are even better. They require 3 subcombines too. Instead of losing 5% of your gems and 10% of your seals, a GM jewelcrafter/potterer combination will have about 2% loss on the gems and 2% on the seals.

The clear winners are GM potterers if they can't fail the kiln anymore. And having to do an extra kiln combine always were kind of unfair for them.

Then it's the GM brewers. There is are a lot of expensive tempers, especially for PoP and Cazic Thule recipes. In addition to making drinks, they can now help out tailors and smiths.

GM smiths will like it too. Sheets, rings, etc. will fail less which means less loss of expensive temper.

The other GMs won't get much on their own though. Most expensive trivial subcombines are from those 3 tradeskills above. Which also reveals some of the flaws of the game. The extra kiln combine and the dominance of temper as roadblocks for smiths and tailors.

[Reflan]

Trophies were specifically an item I was not expecting to be seeing made much better in one very important way, and that way echoes what might happen(or not happen, that is) with other expensive subcombines.

Mounting the gems for the trophy is a very expensive proposition. VERY.

I blew five mounted black sapphires in a row in about 30 seconds time, about 3500pp, at 200 JC. And that was for just ONE of the gems.

Mounting the gems is supposed to be trivial long before 200 JC. And five failures in a row is no 5% failure rate. And failing expensive combines like this hurts much more than failing cheap ones.

That's why it's not the steel bonings I'm cheering to be seen made easier. It's the stuff established tradeskillers make, sometimes out of very expensive items, sometimes on a common basis. Most of this stuff is well above skill level of 50, so even a 250 master will still fail it plenty if the basic formula for failure remains 5% and doesn't tape off very radically. For instance, if 4% failure rate means you need to be 150 points over the trivial points, 3% means 100 points over the trivial rate -- it will not mean much to even 250 masters, since so many of their important and expensive combines involve putting expensive items through combines with skill levels of 80 to 130 or so.

Blue diamond cultural armor -- how many chances do you have to lose blue diamonds on trivial combines? Whether your effective failure rate is 5% or 15%, that's still a LOT of blue diamonds you use, especially since the success rate of the final combine is about 40% at best, and you may need quite a few combines to actually get a piece. Your actual number of blue diamonds lost in trivial combines per armor piece produced is quite high. I've had quite a few runs of 5 or more failures in a row on BD plate -- bracers seem to be the worst for me. Out of maybe 25 or 30 combines, I've made 5 bracers at 250 skill in smithing/brewing/pottery.

Mistletoe sickles -- tons of trivial combines result in many, many items lost per sickle.

Anyway, those were just examples and everyone knows many more. Changing from say a 5% failure rate to an "adjusted" 4% failure rate on what I really make and spend one heck of a lot of money making -- is not going to thrill me at all. Being able to fail fewer or even no metal bits at all really does nothing notable to fix things.

[Cigarskunk]

Newbie quests will be added for Erudites, Trolls and Ogres.

Well, good news atleast is that they've finally given the poor trolls some newby quests.

Bad news of course is that this means that they apparently feel that trolls are going to be staying in Neriak long enough to give us newby quests - whimper.

The next update will include quests for young Trolls beginning in Neriak, Ogres in Oggok and for Erudites starting out in Erudin, completing the updated newbie quests for all races.

I wonder if they know that this means that there are still a few races that won't have any real newby quests yet?

[TheGiantOne]

Well.....

Hmm..I am not impressed myself. I was not so much worried about failing on something that might cost me 1k in materials as a grandmaster as I was something the other day that really cost.

I am a grandmaster 250 skill + trophy in Fletching. I spent 150k on 2 stonewood compound bows and failed on both.

Thats what Verant should look at and fix not this menial loss of 1k on a combination.

If they want to fix this then make it to where a true grandmaster 250 skill and a trophy has less than a 5% chance of failing not this 70% chance of failing as an example on the above bow.

After all they should take into consideration it cost 150K to get to become a Grandmaster 250 skill + trophy in fletching.

And make it worth having the trophy instead of letting anyone over 200 skill make one ::doh::.

Again just my opinion. Again I am not impressed by the update.

[Lilosh]

I am a grandmaster 250 skill + trophy in Fletching. I spent 150k on 2 stonewood compound bows and failed on both.

I'm not sure I see the "problem" here.

The high end stuff has about a 50% success rate, if it's anything like cultural. Maybe lower , I've never worked with elemental items.

I don't see how two failures merits an overhaul of the system.

-Lilosh