Tag: EQ2

I’ve been working very dang hard to help Nostalgia reach level 30 in order to purchase a T1 guildhall. Actually three of us have been working very hard, there’s Kasul with over 500,000 guild status now, Ecor who just showed up out of no where and offered to help us level who finally hit 100,000 status yesterday, and myself who has over 500,000 status spread across multiple characters. The guild events window is filled with nothing but writs as of late. We’re so close we can practically taste it, and yet we’re not quite close enough. That happens though, when you have so few people working towards a huge goal. It takes time. Aside from leveling the guild (each writ gives 0.5% now at T8) Kasul and myself donated the 125p between us to purchase the hall, and also have the 14,000,000 status required for amenities. I toured the T1 guildhall located in Gorowyn, and it’s beautiful. It may be a little small, but I still think it’s fantastic and once we are able to purchase it, it will be even better. 

Since I’ve been doing pretty much nothing in game besides help Nostalgia get to 30, I didn’t even have a chance to check out much of the update yesterday. I did of course make an effort to check out the new housing bits. There are a lot of them and they’re all wonderful. They range from new rugs to banners to chairs stools and couches with an unrest theme. You can find pictures of them all here. Wonderful job on those. 

Being able to scale furniture was another big hit with me. I made a few acorn chairs proper size for my characters. I removed the 3 mystical mirrors I was using for my aquarium and enlarged one so that just the rippled effect is showing and not the bright orange boarder. I shrunk books that didn’t fit in the shelves, as well as my large sales crates. I shrunk all of the LoN paintings that were covering the walls, and condensed them all in a mural type setting. I shrunk some tables to the size of proper coffee tables for the new unrest couches that I’d placed. 

I heard others talking about the new purple shinies, and the new quests in sinking sands involving D.I.R.T.Y money but I haven’t had time yet to check it out. Hopefully I’ll meander my way over there some time today or later this week, we’ll see. I heard a lot of people complaining they noticed no change with the dual core support added — but I certainly noticed a difference. From what I had heard and read, you would most likely see a difference with particle effects, and cloth simulation as well as shadows. I run on the 2nd highest setting all of the time and it runs exceptionally smooth now. 

There are some fantastic halloween items coming out when that goes live, rumor had it they would be included in this update, but I don’t believe they were. One change I did not enjoy – they adjusted my wardens epic to sit on her back rather then at her hip. It cuts off her head. It also rests over top of her shield, so she has both her shield and her epic sword showing and it just looks weird. I did a /feedback when I saw that in beta a while ago and hope it gets changed. 

All things considering, great update. Hopefully Nostalgia will hit 30 and I’ll have a little more time to explore the changes!

Also! A huge hello to ‘Pouncequick’ who said hi to me in game yesterday out of the blue, mentioning they read my blog. So /wave and /hug – always a pleasure to meet a reader (and any fellow writers!)

Game Update 49 October / 7 / 2008
SPECIAL EVENTS

During “Raising the Banner”: A team of dedicated excavators and researchers have begun to uncover a remarkable find in the dunes of Sinking Sands. They have numerous tasks for any recruits willing to help defend the site, excavate relics, maintain their assisting clockworks and provide crafted supplies for the team. They cannot fathom how important this project is and how it is fated to reshape the world of Norrath for years to come!

GUILD HALLS

Construction of the Guild Halls has been completed.  Guilds of qualifying levels can now purchase halls in a variety of locations.  Smaller halls can be found in North Qeynos, South Freeport, Kelethin, Neriak, and Gorowyn.  Medium halls are found in South Qeynos and North Freeport, and large halls are found off the shores of Antonica and Commonlands.  Click on the corresponding doors, or mariner bells on the docks, to access these new structures.

With the work completed on the coastal fortresses in Antonica and Commonlands the involved parties have retired to their cities and the guards have been recalled to the barracks.

MULTICORE SUPPORT

EQII now runs better with more than one CPU.
The game automatically detects if you have more than one CPU.
There is an option to control whether the game uses multicore mode in the Options Window under Display -> Performance.
If you’re running multiple clients on the same computer you may want to disable multicore mode.
Game clients prefer running on CPUs other than the first CPU.
Setting the multicore option has no effect on machines with one CPU.

HOUSING & HALLS

You can now pay upkeep on your house or guild hall up to 12 weeks in advance.

Wall-placed house items now use a different method to stick to the wall that should keep them from disappearing into the world geometry.

The payments tab has been renamed to “History” and will now display payments and credits to the escrow account.

The deposits tab will only display contributions to the escrow account from players.

GAMEPLAY

The experience requirements for levels have been significantly lowered primarily affecting the 20 thru 70 level range.  Along with the experience changes, the drop rate for Adept I spells has been increased slightly.

QUESTS

The Invasion of the Vale quest is now a more appropriate level for its difficulty.  The Shattered Vale in Antonica now has an escape point inside it.

GUILD RECRUITMENT

Guilds will no longer appear in the guild recruiting list if they don’t have any recruiters online.

MENTORING

Mentoring other players now grants greater achievement reward for the mentor.
0-5 level difference: 0% bonus
6-10 level difference: 50% bonus
11-20 level difference: 100% bonus
21-30 level difference: 150% bonus
31-50 level difference: 200% bonus
51+ level difference: 300% bonus

This bonus is only applied to achievement experience gained through combat or loot items, not through quests or exploration.

Mentors will now receive experience when their apprentice has disabled combat experience.

ITEMS

Most house items can now be scaled in size, by using shift + mousewheel while moving or placing them.  Picking them up again will reset the size to default.  Shift and the + and – keys on the numpad also work.

You can no longer turn auto consume on while using a griffon or sokokar.

Bayle’s Amulet and the Trinket of the Venerated Fanatic can now be mounted and used as a house item.

SPELLS

Spells which do not expire have been made uninterruptable.  There are some exceptions which include spells which summon pets or have limited uses.

Bruiser
Divide and Conquer should now properly apply hate to the entire encounter.

Fury
Natural Mask should now gray out when casted.

Ranger
Thorny trap should now work properly for evil rangers on pvp servers.

ACHIEVEMENTS

Defiler
Enhance: Fuliginous Sphere will now work correctly.

Sorceror
Ward of Sages should now toggle properly.

Templar
Blessings is now toggleable and has a recast of 2 seconds.

SHADOWS

Shadows should no longer disappear unexpectedly.

TRADESKILLS

Merchants in the Maj’dul courts are now selling a wider range of ancient teachings recipes.

Alchemy
Rare cure potions have been removed and standard cure potions have been upgraded to cure the appropriate levels of effects.  This in turn should help reduce some of the demand for dusts.

Carpentry
With the advent of scalable furniture, carpenters no longer require recipes that make items of different sizes.  The following redundant recipes were removed:  comely teak table, small teak table, large light cedar table, vale briarwood guest bed, large vale briarwood corner bar, small redwood room divider, small tynnonium brazier, small purple lilies, small white lilies, embellished rug, eccentric alder chair.  Existing items will not be affected.

Carpenters studying the architecture of Unrest have designed a number of new recipes for furnishings in a similar style, to replace the redundant recipes that have been retired.

Tailoring
Artisans have designed some new recipes for threadbare and sackcloth vests, and will continue to work on more vest-type cloth armor appearances for the future.
 
Scholars
Merchants in the courts of Maj’dul are now stocking some additional “Ancient Teachings” recipe scrolls.

PVP

Illusionists on their epic quest should no longer take lose faction with Freeport when using the Lucan illusion and then removing it.

The additional experience multiplier for PvP kills has been reduced slightly.

USER INTERFACE

Status values on the housing window will now display separators so large numbers are easier to read.

There is now an option in the Persona window to block voice invites.

ZONES

Veeshans Peak
The gem drop rate of Veeshan’s Peak has been slightly increased to account for the more frequent patterns.

Each of the bosses in Veeshan’s Peak now drop an additional gem.

The Taskmaster in Veeshan’s Peak has made new use of his arcane knowledge! Raiders Beware!

Kelethin
A few of the fae in Kelethin react to a good aligned arasai now.

FAN FAIRE FEEDBACK

Tunare’s touch has reached the door step of the Teir’dal.  The druid ring in Darklight Wood has sprouted a Blessed Shrubbery.  Druids and adventurers alike should seek out the ring to extend their travel possibilities.

Better search filters for the Recipe window and Tracking window:
Instead of a direct match, each word must be present
Words preceded with ‘-‘ (hyphen) must not be present to be matches
i.e. recipe filtering with “rigid bow” would show ‘rigid scale bow’
i.e. recipe filtering with “gno -therm” would show ‘gnomish level’ but not ‘gnomish thermometer’

If you find a Lore and Legend item for a Lore and Legend quest that you’re on, the tooltip will indicate whether you’ve already examined it or need to examine it.

Sir Valinayle in Stormhold now corrects himself after calling Stormhold Befallen.

Removed the option to go to Prize of Prexus and The Maid for the Mist on the mariner bells unless someone in the group is on that part of the quest.

Deleting a quest from your quest journal will now select the next quest in the list.

Ever since Gorown released a quest that rewarded a house item fish trophy that could hang on a wall people have been designing aquariums in game. There’s quite a popular thread about them, and how complex or simple people have turned these designs into. Of course, there’s also the people who complain that now EVERYONE has an aquarium. With the 5 new plushies added to the Everfrost revamp, there’s even more of a reason. 

So this is an aquarium in the works, on the Najena server, Freeport 5-room house in South Freeport. It’s quite simple to make, using Oggok tables (rock base), Satherian coffins, some hanging mine lanterns, and of course the actual plushies that make up the sea creatures and whatever tid bits the customer had in their house already (ie: treasure chest and skulls). It’s not turning out too badly so far. Once we’re able to re-size furniture, I want to attempt to cover three sides with mystical mirrors, and see what the effect looks like. We’ll see how that goes though. Snow drift used for the ‘bubbles’ as a side note.

There is a 4h downtime today for EQ2 and I, like many others, are REALLY hoping and excited that this is more then likely the implementation of GU49. I spent the majority of yesterday working on guild status, trying to inch our way closer to 29. We won’t be able to purchase a hall right away, we’ll need at least one more level. Thankfully it shouldn’t be too long of a grind to get that one more level – I hope.

I did around 40 writs yesterday while I watched random movies. Stargrace has surpassed the 50,000 faction mark with Ironforge exchange (at least in my mind) and has become more of a permanent fixture in the building then an actual character. She’s almost reached 200,000 guild status, which is close to Silhouette’s 300,000 and Petites 80,000. 

I spent a portion of yesterday building an aquarium for a friend as well. A huge one in an upper portion of their 5-room house. I’m eager to finish it but I was curious as to whether or not I would want to manipulate the size of any of the items I used. I think perhaps the snowdrift (which I used to create ‘bubbles’ and some of the sea creatures themselves. Being able to resize items is going to be wonderful for us decorators, although I have been fairly content with the size of things ‘as is’ it will be nice to create themed character homes, or be able to stretch out a rug across a specific area (or a table, if I’m using it for a floor etc). I know the acorn chairs I’d love to enlarge, as well as the dresser that came as a void storm quest. 

Of course there are lots of other goodies coming out in GU49 including the dual core support (noticeable mostly with particle effects imo) and the new quests in sinking sands which I’m sure will be packed. 

I hope everyone else is just as excited, it should be a good one! Oh, and please remember Nostalgia is always looking for more amazing people to join our ranks if you’re interested, drop me a line.

Yesterday actually saw no posts here on MmoQuests as I was dragged away by wild polar bears to their den and forced to listen to– er wait that may have just been a dream. Well, it was a quiet weekend none the less. I played a little WAR but I’m having a few issues (these have nothing to do with the game itself nor guild or anything so please put those flame torches away!) and is an issue that lots of people have to deal with. The issue of course is ‘which server’. I have my order characters guilded in CoW on Averheim which is great. We’re allowed 3 guilded characters total across both order and destruction. I created a Witch Elf on Thorgrim, but there was no one around to toss me an invite. Aside from CoW influencing where I play, I have one friend on Kragg, and myself I’d like to play on a roleplay server – but who wants to play alone. I really want to settle to one character (or two) and not 10. 

I also played EQ2 a fair amount on Sunday, working those writs. I’m really trying to push the guild to level 30 for guild halls. When I logged off last night we were 50% through level 28, and I’m going to work on writs today and at least try to hit level 29. Then it will just be one more writ to go for level 30. Won’t that be fantastic? I think it will. For the size of the guild, and having only been around since early May, Nostalgia is doing wonderful. Of course I should have started pushing for guild levels earlier, but until the release of the halls came up there was never really a reason to aside from cheaper mounts and 5 room housing. 

I’m also working on Beckett MOG issue #16 articles, and I hope people have been enjoying issue #15. Of course that issue does come with house items and it always seems to make everything look pretty. I’ve decided I dislike working on deadlines, but they’re a fact of life. 

I meant to get some Guild War action in, but then got side tracked by a million other things so that’s on the back burner. Still loving the fact that I have no monthly fee to worry about and can take my time. Civilization is sitting here ready to be installed too. Lately it seems I’ve been less interested in classic MMO’s and more interested in other games that may or may not have an online component. Interesting, for me at least.