MARCH 19, 2002

We wanted to start by letting everyone know how grateful we are for all of the suggestions for improvements that we've received both in EMail and on the various class and server boards. We appreciate all the help you've provided us.

Changes for Low Level Characters:

• Characters no longer lose experience for death below level 11.
• Characters now begin first level with a stack of 20 food and drink.
• Items no longer appear on a corpse if you are below level 10, they reappear with the character.
• When a character "dings" level 10 you will be informed that your items will now be on your corpse.
• Characters will no longer appear with a Tome of Discord. They must get one from the Priest of Discord.
• New resurrection, evacuate and corpse summoning spells have been added at lower levels.
• We've moved the newbie bind points closer to where characters first start out, not outside in their newbie areas.
• Halflings and Gnomes have new classes available to them: Halfling Rangers and Paladins as well as Gnome ShadowKnights and Paladins. All of the necessary NPCs and items should be available for these new classes.

Alternate Advancement Abilities:

• Divine Stun is now an activated ability on a 30 second reuse timer with a chance to interrupt NPCs up to level 60.
• Most targeting issues with Alternate Advancement abilities should be fixed.
• Rampage should now consider all viable targets, including PvP targets.
• Metabolism should be working properly now.
• Scribble Notes should reduce memorization times to an even greater extent than it did before.

Spells/Songs:

• Fixed a bard lockup bug that would occur randomly with during cast time.
• Fixed a song bug that was causing songs to be stuck on, triggered by contact proc buffs procs (such as Boon of the Garou).
• The new Cleric and Paladin Resurrection line of spells are now available on vendors.
• The new corpse summoning spell is now available on vendors, as are the appropriate coffins.
• The new Evacuate spells are now available on vendors.
• Memory Blur, Mind Wipe, Blanket of Forgetfulness, Memory Flux, Glamour of Kintaz and Rapture have been given a greater chance of clearing the 'hate list'.
• Glamour of Kintaz and Rapture also have longer durations.
• Egress and Abscond have a reduced mana cost and a lesser chance to fizzle.
• Judgement has been improved to make it a better upgrade from the previous spell in the spell line.
• Shaman group buff spells (Tumultuous Strength and the Talisman spells - Cat, Brute, Rhino, and Raptor) have been improved to be more in line with the single target versions of those spells.
• Added a new line of spells for Magicians that summons focus items.
• /pet get lost will now kill the buff as well as the familiar.
• Marzin's Mark now stack with Protection of the Glades.
• Improved the way that Abolish Disease/Poison and Counteract Disease/Poison work.
• Fixed it so that whenever a player loses the chance to click on a resurrection dialogue box (such as entering the inventory screen), the game will react as if the user had clicked "no". This should prevent cases where the player can not be resurrected unless they logged out.
• "Sense" spells should now work while on a horse.
• Shield of Auras effect has had a stacking issue with Clarity fixed and the component removed.
• Skin of Shadow has had its night only restriction removed.
• Demi Lich is now a level 56 spell.
• Arch Lich has been improved.
• Translocate spells no longer require that the target be grouped with the caster. Also, the dialogue box for this spell will remain longer.
• Added Sicken and Tainted Breath to a merchant in Shar Vahl.
• Levitation spells now check to see if you have a second Levitation type spell when it wears off before hurling you to the ground.
• Eye of Tallon has a longer duration.
• Spell memorization speed should now take +Meditate% skill items into account.
• Bard song memorization time should now be faster and is affected by attributes.

Zones:

• Changed safe spot in Kedge Keep to actually be a safe spot.
• The Beastlord trainer in Firiona Vie is now more friendly to Beastlords of all types.
• Vyzh`dra the Cursed has been adjusted to help balance the risk versus reward associated with the encounter.

Items:

• Sleeper's Tomb Key is now Soulbound.
• Wand of Casual Blessings is not longer usable by Half-Elves, and is usable by Dark Elves and Gnomes. It also now looks like a staff and not a bag.
• Corrected some of the Velious quest helm graphics. All helms of this type are no longer displaying a graphic (as intended) and the 'customized' plate helms should all now have graphics (also as intended).
• Custom Malevolent Crown should now be the same color as the rest of the armor set.
• The Beastlord Epic item has been changed to be more in line with other epic items.
• Grimling Tribal Headdress is now a "head" item and should be equippable.
• Thexian Loop has had its Haste increased.
• Headband of Many Visions now grants Deadeye instead of See Invisible.
• Shield of the Swamp should now have a graphic.
• Shield of Auras should now have a graphic.

Combat:

• Pets are now more likely to avoid NPC ripostes.
• Wizards now have an inherent chance to score a critical blast with their damage spells after 11th level. This ability does not lessen the chance of scoring a critical hit with Alternate Experience abilities that grant criticals.

Client/Interface:

• Added /dopropertinting command. This command allows you to turn on and off the "DoProperTinting" option in the eqclient.ini file. Activating this command should correct most tinting issues (such as armor tint also tinting the character's skin). But if it causes issues you can toggle it off by using /dopropertinting off.
• Added /chat commands, that allow players to create their own chat channels. Please read the eqmanual_supplement.doc in your EverQuest directory for more information.
• Added /hitsmode command. This command allows you to more finely control how you see hits, including seeing them in a window other than your chat window. Please see the eqmanual_supplement.doc for more details.
• Added /clearhits to clear the current hits in the M2-M5 modes of the /hitsmode command. Again, please see the eqmanual_supplement for more information.
• Added /showgrass command. This toggles the radial flora (Luclin only) on and off.
• Added options in the Options screen (under Chat Filter) for filtering out Melee and Spell criticals. Options are All/Me/Off. These can also be activated using the /filter command, and will affect critical hit, critical blast, exceptional heal, and crippling blow messages.
• Changed /filter to allow you to toggle the various chat filter settings (still also lets you toggle the badwords filter).
• Changed /channel to allow you to set your default chat channel. It also now saves this setting in the INI file.
• Changed the /targetgroupbuff command to be 'persistent'. The state of the switch will be stored in the eqclient.ini file and will be remembered when you log out or zone.
• Fixed the double messages received when "Soandso's song ends".
• Mend should be working properly. "Can not use Mend for x seconds" can still appear, but you now should be able to use mend at the appropriate time.
• Fixed bug in the client that caused a "You are out of Ammo message" even when you still had ammo.
• Messages should no longer be lost while you are zoning.
• Corpses that are made to appear at the "safe spot" of a zone for any reason can now be moved using /corpse as long as the person using the command has /consent for that corpse.
• Added "AllLuclinPcModelsOff" line to the eqclient.ini file which, if set to TRUE, will skip the loading of all of the Luclin PC models (except the Vah Shir, which always gets loaded no matter what this is set to). This should allow players to set the loading of each race and sex individually for their normal game play, but then quickly turn all models off for a raid or other such circumstances.
• Added /rtarget function (can be used as /rt). This function targets the last character to send you a /tell. It follows all of the rules for /target.
• Messages sent to you while you are zoning should be saved and sent to you when you reach the other side of the zone. Messages should no longer be lost while zoning (unless zoning takes more than about 10 minutes for any reason).
• You should be able to keep typing whatever you were in the middle of typing when you zoned... but it might not be processed till you're in the new zone.
• If someone is on your ignore list and they do a /random, you shouldn't see it anymore.

Pathing:

• Corrected some pathing in Ak'Anon that was preventing some NPCs from reaching certain areas.
• Corrected some pathing issues in Acrylia Caverns.
• Corrected a problem with the entrance from Hollowshade Moor into Paludal Caverns that was preventing Beastlord Warders from entering the zone.

Miscellaneous:

• Many cases where characters would stab themselves with their weapons when sitting should have been eliminated.
• Player characters no longer broadcast their location when they are stationary. This should reduce the resources used and improve gameplay.
• Fixed a problem that was causing some users to see blocky, unblended terrain where terrain types meet.
• Critical hit messages from spells now take into account PvP damage calculations. The actual damage was calculated correctly, it was just displaying wrong on the critical message.
• Fixed canoes, they should move forward and backwards normally again.
• We have been working to prevent characters from being stuck in the game after link death in such a way that prevents the player from logging back in. Players should be able to log back in no more than 5 minutes after going link dead in all situations.
• Added Shar Vahl as a "home zone" for Vah Shir when taking PvP racial faction hits into account.
• We have fixed the ATI flashing problem that some players with certain cards were having when inventory window was up.

Addendum:

• When a character "dings" level 11 you will be informed that the character will lose experience upon death.
• Raised the amount of experience gained in lower-level dungeons.
• Spell casters no longer need to see their spell book when meditating. Once a character has the meditation skill, it will function when the character is sitting down.
• The experience curve from levels 30 to 50 has been smoothed.