DECEMBER 4, 2001

Welcome to Luclin:

"As you know, youngster, we of the League of Antonican Bards have made it our primary goal to travel to places before others. It is our duty to see what hasn't yet been seen and to make song of it when we return. We carry news, song and spirit to all of Norrath. We have also taken it upon ourselves to carry personal news in the form of letters wherever possible. And that's what I've called you here to talk about.

...

No, I am not assigning you the duty of establishing a mail route into Grobb. We've lost far too many young bards trying to do that. Recruitment of smart young lads and lasses is nearly impossible when they all think that we plan to send them out to become bard fillet. We've only been able to recruit youngsters that no other guild wanted because they were so...

...

No, of course I don't mean you.

Now stop interrupting.

I have a job for you. You know, don't you, that Al'Kabor has once again been clomping about using his powerful magics without much regard for consequences, don't you?

...

/em sighs.

Ok, your FIRST task is to read up on current events! (http://everquest.station.sony.com/luclin/al_kabor.jsp)

Your second task is to find out if the rumors about his recent experiments are true. They say (and "they" are pretty reliable) that things such as noble-looking Kerrans calling themselves the Vah Shir, strange beasts of burden and new spells and songs have started showing up on Antonica. They also say that this is all due to the experiments of that Erudite Wizard Al'Kabor. You are to head out to one of the great wizard spires and investigate. If you can, interview one of these cat people and bring us back one of these horses they talk about...

...

Maybe you should talk to my assistant about things like directions out of the city and where you can find some shoes more appropriate for travel."

All this you overhear as you wait outside for your turn to talk to the loremasters of the League of Antonican Bards.

The door opens and you see a dejected and confused looking young bard step out. Following him out the door you hear a bellow,

"I also expect you to let everyone know that we are NO LONGER trying to establish mail routes to Grobb! Trolls can't read very well anyway."

Shadows of Luclin opens up new adventures and new challenges, as well as new rewards for those with a spirit of adventure.

Are you up to the challenge?

Notes for Shadows of Luclin customers:

IMPORTANT: do not lose your Shadows of Luclin CDs. Because of the immense amount of data on the three Shadows of Luclin CDs, you will not be able to just copy the executable file into a new directory and download the rest of the expansion. We have placed restrictions on the amount of data that customers can download from our patcher so that massive patching as a replacement for reinstalling from the disk will not impact our other customers. So if you have a hard drive problem or you wish to install EverQuest on a new computer, you will need to have your CD to do so.

/facepick (Or hit the "Face" button on the inventory screen in full view mode) - this new command will allow those of you with Shadows of Luclin to change your characters face. It will only work for characters using the new models. If you've turned off Gnomes and your character is a Gnome, you will not be able to use this command on that character. And it will, obviously, only work for those with Shadows of Luclin installed.

/dismount - This command allows your character to dismount from a horse if for some reason he has lost the ability to do so using the bridle. There is no /mount command, only the bridle will allow you to mount a horse.

Other Changes with this Patch:

Along with our preparations for the introduction of Shadows of Luclin, we have made a few other changes with this patch:

Gameplay Changes:

• Increased the amount of mana given by high Intelligence and Wisdom scores, as well as that granted by items and spells.
• Fixed a bug that was causing rogues to critical with every use of a thrown weapon.
• Fixed a bug that caused the experience bar to displaying incorrectly after leveling. This also seemed to cause a crash in certain cases when in F10 view.

PvP Changes:

• PvP looting will now display to the group.
• Empty corpses will no longer disappear when looted by an enemy player, they will decay at the normal rate for empty corpses.
• Guards in 'guard zones', such as cities, will continue to protect characters that they find the least offensive (the one with the highest faction). But guards in outdoor zones will be less likely to join in a fight. They will only come to the aid of people that they like. Otherwise they will not get involved in PvP combat.

Item Changes:

• Etched Peridot of Nature will be removed from all locations, including those held by players on their characters or in their banks. This item was not intended to be available until Shadows of Luclin went live, and then only in Luclin zones.

Spell Changes:

• Spells that heal less than 10 points of damage will not generate a message to the player.
• Velious portal teeth (Great Divide, Wakening Lands and Cobalt Scar) are no longer required to teleport to those locations. These items are also no longer soul bound.
• Fixed a bug with the Bard Song of Occlusion.

New Commands:

• /stand now implemented. We've added this command because not everyone speaks programmer and would think that the logical reverse of /sit would be /sit off.
• /particledensity command - Switches particle density on the fly without having to click it in the menus and exit the game.

Some new things you'll see:

• We now have the ability to flag an NPC as non-targetable. This in effect renders the NPC non-attackable as well. Clicking on one of these NPCs will cause your current target selection to clear. This functionality is used primarily for the presentation of content. For instance, if we want an NPC to spawn and tell you a story, he can tell his story without being attacked mid-sentence by other players. It also opens up some pretty interesting content avenues. As an example, we can make NPCs unharmable until you do a quest "stripping them of their power".
• There are several new item classes (types) in the world. For example, there are weapons that do enhanced damage versus certain races (e.g. Perhaps you'll find a +2 vs froglok sword, or a +4 vs Bear club. In addition we can do the same type of thing with types of creatures (+3 vs humanoid, +1 vs Undead). We've also added elemental modifiers (e.g. a +4 Fire sword). The bonus value is calculated as and increased DMG stat on the weapon, except that the elemental portion is run through the resistance system before calculating the strength of your hit. There are some items out there with bonuses to some more interesting stats, but we'll leave it to you to figure them out.
• There's a lot more out there. Be prepared to reevaluate your assumptions and redefine the way you approach the world. Proposed solutions to situations and quests that you might have previously written off saying, "They can't do that in EverQuest", might be exactly the way you need to approach the problem at hand. As fellow gamers, we envy you as you approach Luclin and find everything fresh, new, and waiting to be solved. And to those of you who aren't first to solve the quests or adventure in the new areas, we urge you to do so with your friends, and leave the spoiler sites out of it. Good luck on your journies.

Note on New Features:

EverQuest: The Shadows of Luclin contains many new features which have yet to stand up to the scrutiny of 400,000 experienced players. Without doubt there will be some situations where we need to reevaluate the gameplay-impact of some of those features and adjust them accordingly to maintain game integrity. As an example, we think that horses might accelerate and decelerate too quickly, but will have to wait until we see them used by a broad spectrum of players before we can make a final determination. We thank you for your patience in these matters.

Note on Impending Features:

As we approached our launch date we found that several features which are planned are also not yet ready for prime-time. We're currently working on the following items, many of which will be implemented in the very near future:

• Extra flora in outdoor zones. Sprigs of grass, small bushes, flowers, etc.
• A robust merchantile system in the bazaar that lets you flag yourself as a merchant, set prices, and conduct business without having to conduct business manually with each buyer and seller.
• We will be polishing up issues regarding tinted items in game. In other words, things that shouldn't tint with a tinted item (e.g. your skin) won't tint when the feature is complete.
• Light beards on high elves, dark elves, half elves, and dwarf females will be tintable along with the hair color. We are going to leave in the ability for you to change your appearance until after we've added more customization options.

We thank you for your patience and patronage as we implement these features. Good luck with your adventures on Luclin!

DirectX:

PLEASE NOTE: Windows versions 98, ME, 2K, and XP *MUST* have DirectX 8.1 installed. Windows 95 users must have DirectX 8.0a installed. Please visit our Tech Support Center at http://everquest.station.sony.com/support/luclin/index.jsp if you have any problems with your Luclin installation. DirectX can be obtained at http://www.microsoft.com/japan/directx/.