JANUARY 17, 2001

The primary focus of today's patch is to implement changes noted in the new Producer's Letter which can be found at http://everquest.station.sony.com/main/letter.jsp.

It is highly recommended that you read the Producer's Letter before playing EverQuest. It contains some unprecedented and exciting enhancements to gameplay.

In addition to these changes, the following changes have been implemented:

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug that caused 'root' and 'snare' type spells to function incorrectly when stacked. They should now stack properly.
• Fixed a bug that negated the 'instrument modifier' for bards using Selo's, causing them to run slower than they otherwise would.
• Fixed a bug that allowed two or more spells that grant levitation to stack. Levitation spells should not stack.
• The 'Track Corpse' spell now works.
• Tracked down and eliminated several bugs that were causing a very small percentage of people to crash when zoning or upon entering the game.
• Fixed a problem with some Ulthork armor that caused it to disappear on death if the wearer was of extremely low level.
• Tserrina's Whip has been fixed. If you received one prior to today's patch, you will need to trade out your whip with a GM in order to get one that works correctly.
• Last week's patch attempted to fix Celestial Elixir, Celestial Healing, and Torpor, so that they would stack another similar spell, unintentionally causing it to stop stacking with standard regeneration spells. This has been fixed. The downside to this fix is that these spells will now overwrite the 'Call of Bones' series. As the three former spells are cast to save a character's life, this solution appears to be the most beneficial for all of those involved.
• The stronger /lootnodrop options will no longer prompt you for confirmation when looting your own corpse. It is highly suggested that everyone reset their option to the strongest security available: /lootnodrop always (always ask for confirmation).
• Added some code to address an issue reported by a few players, that being that an NPC named 'Ragefire' would die and not leave a corpse. Though we were unable to reproduce this problem in testing, the code we added should function as a catch-all for this problem. Please be sure to let us know how this goes.

Changes/Enhancements:

• While not mentioned in the Producer's Letter, the Zone Experience Modifier has also been increased in Guk (Upper Guk), by roughly 12%.
• 'Lay on Hands' has been enhanced again to heal more hitpoints.
• Overlooked in the last patch message, new spells were made available to Rangers and Paladins in the upper levels.
• 'Voice of the Berserker', a beneficial spell, no longer drains mana over the duration of the spell.
• The maximum duration of 'Strength of Nature' has been increased.
• A new spell for magicians is now available in game.
• The 'Shield of the Eighth' spell will now last a number of minutes equal to your level.
• You can now use the arrow and enter keys to select characters in the character select screen. In addition, the last character you chose will be automatically hilighted when entering that screen.
• This value is stored in the EQCLIENT.INI file as 'LastCharSel=0-7'.
• The ranger's 'Trueshot' discipline has had its damage increased after analyzing data from its fix last week. Prior to the last patch, all bows, while under the discipline, were hitting as if they were 45dmg bows regardless of the delay. Last week's patch fixed it so that damage was based on the damage of the bow. This weeks patch increases damage bonuses in relation to delay (longer delays yield better damage bonuses).
• You can now reverse the left and right channels on your speakers using the /reversesound command. This should be very useful for those who have had to place their speakers backwards due to cable lengths.
• Made some improvements to Paw, Mistmoore, and The Hole, to address some concerns brought forth by the players. Both zones had some problems that would cause them to be exceedingly difficult in some cases.