SEPTEMBER 4, 2002

Please note: there are a lot of changes going into the game with today's patch. Some of these changes (such as the changes to resistances and spell stacking) will change aspects of the game that may make gameplay different. Keep this in mind when you log in. With system-wide changes like these it is entirely possible that there are still bugs. Please report these bugs using /bug, and know that we will work to fix them as fast as we can. But also note that some intended changes might appear as bugs (perhaps a spell no longer stacks with another spell). Feel free to report these as bugs if you are unsure. But please keep in mind the changes listed here as well.

Petitions:

• /viewpetition displays the petition you have in the queue, if any.
• /deletepetition deletes the petition you have in the queue, if any (unless that petition is currently being viewed by CS staff).

Keyrings:

We will be resetting all keyrings with this patch. This will mean that all existing keys in the keyrings will be removed. You will need to place keys back onto the keyrings. Keys are added to the keyring by using the key. The keyring is a part of the character, not a space in inventory. To find out what keys you have just type /key and the game will give you a list. If you have recently deleted a key, please contact your GM for a replacement.

Experience Changes:

• We have smoothed out level progression from 50-60. This should mitigate the "penalty effect" that occurs in levels 51, 54 and 59. Note that it will cost the same experience to level from 50 to 60 as it did before. Also, death experience loss will appear different in some levels. This is an unfortunate side effect that must remain to prevent some experience exploits.
• We have rebalanced the rewards for killing NPCs for characters over level 50. NPCs that are considerably weaker than you will give you less experience. NPCs give more experience the higher level they are, and for the best results you should fight the most challenging monsters you can reasonably manage.

Spells:

• Fixed the "You have been healed for X damage" message. It once again reports the actual amount of damage healed.
• Added a message telling the caster when NPC can't be charmed.
• Fixed a bug with duration boosting Alternate Advancement abilities and foci that was only allowing the first 12 buff slots to be modified as opposed to all 15.
• Fixed a bug that was allowing focused and Alternate Advancement ability enhanced damage spells to do more damage than they should (meaning that both the Alternate Advancement and the Focus improve the base damage. The focus damage was never supposed to compound with the added AA damage.)
• Enchanter spells that have a hit point component and a stun component can now be partially resisted.
• The Enchanter "visage" series has had their recast time reduced to make them more useful.
• Shadowknight and Necromancer Drain type spells can now be clicked off by the recipient of the beneficial portion of the spell. For example; Shadowknights and their group members can now click off the effects of spells such as Torrent of Hate. While the target of spells such as Shadowbond can click it off if they so choose.
• Torrent of Hate should no longer overwrite Call of the Predator.
• Repaired some problems with Beastlord stat buffs - specifically that the higher level ones weren't always better than the lower level ones.
• Furious Strength made available to Beastlords at Level 54.
• Dexterity made available to Beastlords at Level 57.
• Stamina made available to Beastlords at Level 57.
• Divine aura is now available to Paladins at level 51, instead of level 55.
• Harmshield made available to Shadowknights at level 51.
• Augment Death made available to Shadow Knights at Level 60.
• Death Peace made available to Necromancers at level 60.
• Flaming Sword of Xuzl has casting time reduced from 6 to 2.5 seconds, recast increased from 2.5 to 60 seconds and mana cost lowered from 600 to 250.
• Unswerving Hammer of Faith has casting time reduced from 6 to 2.5 seconds, recast increased from 2.5 to 60 seconds and mana cost lowered from 600 to 250.
• Added a new line of spells for Shadowknights, Voice of Darkness. Merchants in Echo Caverns have been able to appropriate many of these new spells, but Voice of Terris has so far eluded them.
• Added two new Mesmerize type spells for Bards, one at level 40, and one at level 58. Rumor has it that Serilia Whistlewind has recovered the melody written by Sionachie, but has been unable to locate the transcript for the Dreams of Ayonae.
• Whispers in the taverns of Katta Castellum speak of recently discovered Ancient melodies. Brave adventurers search far and wide for the song of the ancient combine empire, and the Lullaby of Shadows.
• Higher level PCs will be more resistant to lower level NPCs' spells.
• Increased the number of spells that can be in effect on a given NPC to 30.

Spell Stacking Changes:

We've made two changes to the way spells stack.

Damage Over Time (DoT) spells are spells that linger on the target doing damage. Until today two different characters could not have the same DoT spell on the same target. As long as one copy of the spell was active any new version of the spell would not take hold. After today the same DoT spell cast by different casters can affect the same target at the same time. Also, if you cast a DoT spell on a target and you already have that spell active on it, the spell will refresh. (Note: It will not be possible to stack Lifeburn).

This does not allow for inferior spells to stack along with superior spells. (Example: Two Necromancers can both land Boil Blood on the same target. However, Heat Blood, being an inferior spell, will still not stack.)

Several DoT spells that have debuff components such as Tuyen's Chant of Frost and Breath of Ro will not stack due to the balance issues of having several hundred points of Resistance debuffs on a single NPC.

We've also rewritten the way that spells stack with other spells with the same benefits (for example, two spells that give bonus hit points). Generally speaking spells may now 'bounce' off each other (neither overwriting the other) and stacking issues should now be easier to resolve. In specific:

• Warder's Protection should have considerably fewer stacking and overwrite issues. Thanks to the folks at the Ranger's Glade for all of their help in 'tracking' this down.
• Druid Damage Shields should now all stack in the correct order.
• Druid HP buffs are no longer overwriting stronger cleric HP buffs.
• Harness of Spirit and Visions of Grandeur should interact a bit more sanely.
• Existing effects should no longer be stripped off when the incoming spell isn't going to take hold.
• Boon of Garou and other illusions now interact the right way.
• Spells that have both group and single target versions (and no special coding to tell them otherwise) now mutually overwrite each other.

Resistance Changes:

We've made some fairly drastic changes to the way the spell resistance system works. Previously, there was only the smallest benefit to having resists over a certain value. We've reworked resistance in its entirety, completely replacing the old system with one that is more logical.

The idea behind the changes is pretty simple: Resists should matter in a way that makes sense.

Important things to note about the new resistance system:

• Resists matter more for PCs. There are now tangible differences between having 50, 150, and 250 in a given resistance, for example. Resistance buffs, bard songs, and resist gear have actual value, all the way up the line.
• Conversely, resistances also matter more for NPCs. Some NPCs became more vulnerable to things they have always been vulnerable to, other NPCs became more resistant to things that they were inclined to be somewhat resistant to.
• Resistance debuffs should also have more value, all the way up the line. For the first time, resistance debuffs now have the ability to bring NPCs that were lure-style only down into the range of being hit by normal spells.
• The hard level limit involving players casting on NPCs has been removed. This used to be referred to in EQ folklore as the "Six Level Limit" (It was actually 1.25 times the caster's level, but more people likely thought about it the other way.) This means that in the vast majority of cases, there is at least a small chance that a person will be able to connect a spell with an NPC, even if they are out of that NPC's traditional level range.
• Overall, against NPCs that have medium-to-high resistances of a given type, expect to see more full hits, fewer partials, but more full resists in the new system. Taken over time, the damage done by PC casters to semi-high resistance NPCs should be approximately the same, but will definitely improve when the proper debuffs are applied (we wanted to make sure that this did not turn into a universal nerf of casters).

We look forward to seeing how these changes play out in front of a larger audience.

Line of Sight Changes:

• For spells that require Line of Sight (LoS), the LoS check is now at the beginning of the spellcast, not the end.
• Spells that require but do not have of LoS will now fail immediately.
• Harmful spells require LoS.
• Most Beneficial spells still do not require LoS.
• Bind Sight type spells do not require LoS.
• Any beneficial spell containing a Cancel Magic component requires LoS.

Priest Changes:

• Clerics gain the Bash skill beginning at level 25. They will have a maximum skill of 125 at level 50, 165 at level 60.
• Clerics gain Hammer of Judgement - a level 56 summoned hammer with a powerful and frequent proc effect.
• Clerics gain Yaulp V - a level 56 self-only melee and mana regen buff that adds haste, dexterity, mana regeneration and stamina regeneration.
• Clerics gain Ethereal Elixir - a level 60 group version of Celestial Elixir, the heal-over-time spell.
• Clerics gain Ethereal Light - a level 58 upgrade of Divine Light, the single target heal spell.
• Clerics gain Ethereal Remedy - a level 59 upgrade of Remedy, the single target heal spell.

Sound and Music:

• We've started work on the sound and music engine. If you used to have sound/music bugs, the first upgrade today might help a bit. This is the first step down a long road. If your particular sound/music issue isn't fixed, please be patient. There's no need to re-report existing sound/music bugs.

Items:

• Items now display level-restricted statistics besides armor class and damage as a red number with the unrestricted value in parentheses.
• Duration focus items now give focus message when a group spell lands on caster.
• Blessed Coldain Prayer Shawl has been given a minor upgrade.
• Small Cloth Sandals are no longer wearable by large races.
• Fixed the Plane of Mischief boxes.

Pets:

• Changed Specter pets so they're able to equip items and armor.
• Pet-only buffs now automatically attempt to target your pet if you cast them with the wrong target or no target at all.
• Fixed a bug that would prevent the creation of Familiars and Warders if the caster had created more than 99 in the same zone during the current game session.
• The limit on the amount of haste that can be applied to a pet has been changed (aka. The Pet Haste Cap). The amount of haste that can be placed on a pet now scales with the level of its owner. The scaling occurs in a way that is consistent with how much haste a given caster can place on his own pet (using a Level 56 Magician as an example: The idea is that both Burnout IV and Muzzle of Mardu should be useful).

User Interface:

• Deleting Spells from Spellbook: Storebought spells can be deleted from your spellbook. To delete a spell just right-click it to highlight it and tap the DELETE key. Please note: This does not convert the spell back into a scroll. You will have to buy a new scroll if you wish to re-scribe the spell. No reimbursements will be made for deleted spells.
• Item Links: When you inspect an item with Alt-Left-Click, the item inspect window stays up. To paste a "link" to the item you're looking at into your chat bar, click on the item's graphic. That will "speak" a link that others can click on to see the stats of the item, as if they were inspecting it themselves.
• Updated the /note window. The old /note command still works as it always has. But you can now use /note without additional text to produce a text window for entering note text. The /note command window should not break existing skins.
• Fixed a bug with the tracking window that was showing the sorting set for something other than normal for non-rangers (this was just a visual bug).
• Fixed a bug that sometimes caused a crash when zoning with the corpse window open.
• Added UI Label type #74 = Player Title.
• "Reply to" will properly prepend a ;tell in front of names that are from other servers.
• Extended the "reply to" queue to 50 names.
• Fixed some aesthetics with labels. Percentages will never show above 100 now (even during a heal). Corpse HP will always show 0.
• There will now be sound when banking coins.

Bazaar:

• Added Focus Effect search parameter to the Bazaar.
• Items that are no-drop on other servers but tradable on Firiona Vie should now show up in Bazaar searches on that server.

Alternate Advancement:

• Frenzied Burnout no longer makes the pet suicide after the buff's duration ends.
• Fixed a bug that would cause the Dire Charm ability not to reset if an enchanter used it when he already had a pet.
• Fixed a bug that was causing Dire Charm to not give the "this mob cannot be Dire Charmed" message or reset the timer in Cazic-Thule.
• Added the Quest Completion sound to AA point dings.

Quests:

• There is a fellow named Moltak in Sol Temple. Killing him gives a negative faction adjustment with the True Spirit faction. BUT, if you have a very, very bad faction with True Spirit, killing him will also reset your faction to a more tolerable level. So don't mess with this fellow unless folks on the True Spirit faction are willing to kill you on sight.
• Made some modifications to the faction effects of the Wizard Epic quest.
• A powerful warder has been seen in the Skyfire Mountains. Those who seek retribution against Ragefire would be wise to speak to her, she may be able to provide information about his whereabouts.

Miscellaneous:

• Merchants now display up to 80 items in their inventory. There should also be less delay when opening up merchant windows.
• The Help window will now be displayed on startup. This will happen only if it has never been seen before (since this change).
• Sirens should have female voices.
• Bloodgill Goblins should now sound like goblins.
• Several spell caster guild masters are now teaching magic skills. In Shadowhaven: Palomidiar Allakhaji, Loewnsaz Waldalon and Lamukas Kaesoanls. In Echo Caverns: Kelador, Celerik, Wirgus and Yurian.
• Erudites of Prexus now start at the proper location.
• Bards singing songs should no longer prevent group members from /split'ting coins. Only teleportation spells being cast in group will prevent /split'ting. This change was required to keep coin from disappearing if a /split occurred while a person was in the process of leaving a zone.
• Leather Padding can now be made from Rockhopper Hides.