Patch tomorrow, Feb. 21st, 2006Follow

Or, the opposite end of the spectrum where combines eat items they should return.

More specifically, which zone do you think will the first to have some emergency patch and why?

Here are my top two choices:

1. Freeport because of some xp issue (like getting an AA each time you hail an NPC).

February 21st, 2006
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*** Headlines ***

- Prophecy of Ro Launches!
- The Desert of Ro and the city of Freeport have been revamped
- Alchemy system has received an overhaul
- New Hot Zones


*** Prophecy of Ro Launches! ***

As a demi-god, Mayong Mistmoore -- the greatest vampire ever known -- is threatening Norrath and its gods. Druzzil Ro, the goddess of Magic, has seen the future and the darkness that lies ahead. Now, the time has come to heed Druzzil Ro’s calls as she opens the planes of Rage and Magic and a passage through time to the long lost Elddar elven city of Takish-Hiz. Draw your swords and prepare your magic to face the greatest fight of your lives.

The full story is available in-game in your Storyline window.


*** Prophecy of Ro Features ***

- Spheres of Influence - Spheres of Influence will appear in expansion zones as visual effects, like soft blue lights, whirling winds, or spinning axes. Any player or non-player character that enters the area of the sphere is subject to its effects. In order to see Spheres of Influence, you must have Player particles enabled in your display options.

- Auras - Players can create Spheres of Influence called Auras. There is an Auras window available in the Character section of your EQ menu which shows your currently active auras and gives you the ability to remove them with a right-click. Player auras are available through mission rewards and events much like spells. In order to see Auras, you must have Player particles enabled in your display options.

- Destructible Objects - Destructible objects, like walls, doors, and siege engines, are used in many of the new expansion zones. These are terrain objects that have a health points which can be depleted and, when the object has reached low enough health, it will crumble and break. As you damage the objects you will see it break down until it is completely destroyed. You can identify an object that is destructible because it will pulse when you put your mouse over it.

- Zone Traps - Traps in EverQuest are now represented by objects that can be seen or hidden. As you would expect, traps trigger if you move into their range and you or your party, and sometimes the entire zone, can be affected by them. Rogues and bards have the ability to sense traps, reveal them to those around them, and disarm them. All traps in the game have been converted to use this new trap system.

- Player Traps - Traps are available to players in the same way as spells and abilities, through specific quests, mission rewards, and off spell or discipline vendors. Once a trap has been memorized, it can be created by using the spell or discipline. The trap will remain in the area it is summoned until it is triggered, disarmed, removed by the player who set it using the new Remove Trap skill, or expires.

- Buff Filters - Players can now filter beneficial spells cast upon them and their pets. By right-clicking on any active buff showing in your Effects window, you can select to remove it and/or select that it will never be allowed to take effect on your character again. Pet owners can also click off buff icons in the Pet window and apply filters to them. The list of spells being blocked can be found in the Blocked Buffs or Blocked Pet Buffs windows in the Character section of your EQ menu.

- New Bank Space - Available bank space has been increased by 8 slots.

- /Claim Item - If you have received the Prophecy of Ro /claim item from the retail box, Stable Ward Kyle in the Bazaar may be able to help you use it to upgrade your old horse to a warhorse. Paladins or Shadowknights who have the Holy or Unholy Steed AAs and the /claim item can upgrade their special mounts to a warhorse by visiting Stable Ward Rames as well.

- New Tradeskills - Event Coordinator Baublie Diggs has a test for you to prove your abilities!

See the Prophecy of Ro manual (Prophecy_of_Ro.pdf) downloaded to your EverQuest directory for more information!



******************
***Live Updates***
******************

*** Zone Revamps ***

- Freeport has been redone. East, West, and North Freeport have been replaced with a brand new East and West Freeport. All your old friends should still be there and more.

- Desert of Ro recreated. North Ro, Oasis, and South Ro have been replaced with a new North Ro and South Ro. Watch out for Sand Giants while checking out the new scenery.


*** New Guild Functionality ***

- There is now an "Alt" button to flag a member of the guild as an alt character (this can be done by an officer on anyone, and by anyone on themselves).

- The "Hide Alts" button will hide anyone in the guild list who is flagged as an alt. This defaults to off.

- A "B" is no longer appended to the status of bankers. Instead there are two new columns, Banker and Alt, which have the status in them. You can sort by either Banker or Alt by clicking on the header.


*** New Raid Functionality ***

- There is a new raid loot option: Entire Raid. This will allow any raid member to loot NPCs killed by the raid.


*** New Hot Zones ***

- The time has come to once again update the "Hot Zones" throughout Norrath. The previous zones have been reverted to their former states and the following zones are now a great place to go for experience and fun:

Level 20: Najena
Level 25: Iceclad Ocean
Level 30: Rathe Mountains
Level 35: Frontier Mountains
Level 40: Gulf of Gunthak
Level 45: Velketor's Labrynth
Level 50: Fungus Grove
Level 55: Old Sebilis
Level 60: Cazic Thule


*** Spells ***

- Increased the duration and lowered the mana cost of Talisman of the Tribunal.

- The Test of Efficiency spell should no longer conflict with Peace of the Disciple or Grace of the Order.

- Increased the damage and lowered the mana on Touch of Inruku to better match the rest of the spell line's progression.


*** AAs ***

- The way that the wizard AA Mana Burn works has been modified. The new version will use a maximum of 3000 mana instead of draining your whole pool and will do 4 damage for every point of mana spent. This is a raw channeling of magical energy that cannot be focused and will not critically hit. The ability is unresistable by normal creatures, but certain special creatures may be immune to the effects. Like the previous version, once a Mana Burn ability has affected a target, no other Mana Burn abilities will be able to affect that target for the next minute. Upgraded versions of the ability, Mana Blast and Mana Blaze, are available at level 65 and level 70 and use a maximum of 6000 and 9000 mana respectively. The original Mana Burn ability has been refunded and can be repurchased by Wizards interested in the new version.

- Gift of Mana will no longer be used up when you cast a 0 mana spell and now has a chance to trigger on heals other than just instant heals, including heal-over-time and percent healing spells.

- Rogues and Bards have a new AA ability called Thief's Intuition. This ability goes hand-in-hand with the new trap system and allows those classes a chance to automatically sense nearby traps. The new AAs can be found in the Class tab.

- There are new special mounts available for Paladins and Shadowknights under the Class AA tab.


*** Events ***

- The planar projection for defeating Mithaniel Marr was not rewarding the correct character flags. This has been fixed.

- Raids in Dynamic zones in Gates of Discord now require a minimum of 12 people to be started.

- Sendaii the Hive Queen raid will now lock out the expedition after the glowing egg is broken.

- NPC’s should no longer re-spawn after being killed in the Controlling the Beast mission set in Stoneroot Falls.

- The mission "Taking Control" from Stoneroot Falls now only requires 3 people to start it.

- Adjusted the rewards on monster missions so they scale better based on how long it’s actually taking to complete the mission.

- It should be much more difficult for Stefan Marsinger to die within one of the Greater Faydark spires.

- Various magician epic mobs should no longer double, triple, or quadruple spawn for every mage that enters the zone.

- A number of changes were made to the Demi-Plane of Blood, including pathing fixes, tuning tweaks, and bonuses for defeating Mayong. For more information, see the EQLive forums.


*** Missions ***

- Monster Mission XP rewards have tuned to better account for the amount of time required to complete the mission. Longer missions now give more XP while shorter missions give less. In addition, the way XP is rewarded has been refactored so it scales better as you gain levels.

- In Stoneroot Falls, mission givers Kelliad and Widdlethorpe will now offer you missions that you have completed previously in each of their story arcs when requesting the mission that you are currently on.


*** Tasks ***

- Added a timer to normal tasks. You can now only complete a task once every 15 minutes. As with shared tasks, the time counts from when you initially get the task, so if it took you longer than 15 minutes to complete the task, you can immediately get another one.


*** Tradeskills ***

- Alchemy has undergone some changes resulting in modifications to old recipes as well as introducing new recipes and potions, smoother progression in the skill, and significant cost reductions.

- Potions - All old-style (10 charge, non stackable) alchemical potions have been removed and replaced by an equivalent potion in the revamped system. These new potions are stackable up to 20 per stack. Note: Due to an error that did not show up on our testing, this was not completed, but only partially done. Some players will have their items exchanged, some will not. The old potions will still function, despite the fact that there will be no way to make them. You can still make the new potions using the new recipes once the community discovers them. We will correct this error and do this exchange the next patch after it has been re-tested.

- Recipes - All recipes that point to the old-style alchemical potions no longer exist. New recipes have been created for all of the new potions and will use new herbs.

- Herbs - Many old herbs have had their prices altered and new herbs have been introduced, both as purchased components as well as dropped components.

- Planar Fletching Kits are now tradeable.

- Changed Othmir Short Beer to use a bottle instead of a Cask.

- Deep Orc Essence now requires less meat.

- Disabled the spell research creation of the spell Draught of Lightning. This was done because it is a quest derived spell.

- Some very old erudite only combines have had their trivials adjusted up from being no-fail to on par with other combines of that era.

-The Research Recipe to make Unholy Bellow has been disabled.

- The Rusty Mining Pick used by Druids has changed names, but works exactly the same.


*** Items ***

- Changed the Slot12 Tradeskill augments that have Cleave, Ferocity, Furious Bash, Improved Dodge, Improved Parry and Sharpshooting to be worn effects instead of focus effects.

- Made a few minor modifications to damage ratios on some of the Demi-Plane of Blood weapons.

- Set a cap on the maximum amount of skill bonuses you can get from certain worn effects. The caps are for bash (100), backstab (125), dragon punch (100), eagle strike (100), flying kick (100), kick (100), round kick (100), tiger claw (100), and frenzy (125).


*** General Bug Fixes ***

- Players will no longer see their breath in first person while on a boar mount.

- Froglok jump animation will now play at normal speed.

- Skeleton illusions will now function correctly on boar mounts.

- PCs will no longer warp to the location they were charmed or feared when those spells wear off.

- The autofire ability will now turn off when a player sits down or loots a corpse.

- Charmed PCs will no longer disappear after being stationary for a few seconds.

- When alt-tabbing out of full screen mode and then re-entering the game, you should now properly be put back into full screen mode into of windowed mode.

- Players marked as group leaders in a raid would sometimes not have functioning leader abilities. This could happening when reforming groups in the raid and has been fixed.

- Players will no longer remain encumbered by coin after donating that coin to a guild tribute master.

- If a player is wearing an item with a focus effect and casts a delayed spell that utilizes that focus effect, it will no longer be negating if they use a clicky effect before it lands.

- Fixed sync issues with removing shared tasks and tasks from a player.

- Throwing axes will no longer throw an entire stack, instead only a single axe will be consumed from the range slot.

- The map window should now be available to all players.

- Fixed a problem that was causing several of the Dragons of Norrath items to have the wrong colors.

- The EverQuest Team