OCTOBER 16, 2002

Odd New Objects in the Land:

Folks across Norrath and on Luclin have reported seeing odd new objects in various locations. They appear to be some sort of magical portal, though local spell casters have yet to discover how they arrived or exactly what their purpose is. They have determined, however, that these objects are slowly building in power. Attempting to use these portals at this time can have unexpected results. Experts recommend that adventurers avoid these objects until they know more. For more information on these odd devices, visit www.planesofpower.com.

Important Notice Regarding Alternate Advancement Reimbursement:

Due to the changes made to Manaburn, Rods of Mystical Transvergance and a previous change to Innate Regeneration, we are reimbursing several Alternate Advancement (AA) abilities.

Once you log in today, if you have any of these abilities, please check your AA window immediately! If you have more than 30 unspent points, IT IS VERY IMPORTANT that you make certain that your character has 30 or fewer AA points before The Planes of Power launches on October 21st! The return of these AA points may put your total number of unspent points over the 30 point maximum. Your pool will be reduced to 30 the first time you log in after the launch of Planes of Power on October 21st.

We will be refunding all Alternate Advancement points in the following abilities:

• Innate Regeneration.
• Manaburn.
• Mental Clarity.
• Quick Summoning.

Refunded Alternate Advancement points may be spent in any way you choose. None of these abilities is being removed, and of them only Manaburn is changing.

NOTE: Cannibalization, Gather Mana, and Mind and Body Rejuvenation will not function if you do not have the necessary prerequisite, Mental Clarity 3.

Alternate Advancement:

• Mana Burn will only land any given target only once every minute. If a cast of Mana Burn is unable to land, the timer will not be used.
• Spell Casting Mastery once again works in the same manner that it did before the previous patch.
• Spell Casting Fury and Soul Abrasion will now stack.
• Illusion Tree and Minor Illusion will no longer be affected by Permanent Illusion.
• Fixed Purify Soul. It should now cure poison, disease, damage over time spells as initially intended.
• Reduced the reuse timer on Divine Resurrection from 72 hours to 36 hours.
• Reduced the reuse timer on Mend Companion from 144 minutes to 36 minutes.
• Reduced the reuse timer of Warcry from 72 minutes to 36 minutes. Increased its duration from 5 seconds per rank of the ability to 10 seconds per rank of the ability.

Defensive Changes:

• Decreased Monks' ability to mitigate damage (please see the Developer's Update on www.everquestlive.com for more details).
• Improved the ability of Paladins, Shadowknights, Warriors and Bards to mitigate damage in some situations.
• Upgraded Warrior dodge cap to 190.
• Upgraded Paladin, Shadowknight and Bard dodge cap to 170.
• Upgraded Ranger and Beastlord dodge to 170 and defense to 240.

Spells:

• Complete Healing will now heal a maximum of 7,500 hit points.
• The Rod of Mystical Transvergance spell has been altered. The spell has been renamed to "Mass Mystical Transvergance". When cast, this spell summons a Rod of Mystical Transvergance for everyone within 300 feet. This rod is no drop and contains 3 charges of Mystical Transvergance. Each charge restores 360 mana at the cost of 450 health. A player may only use a charge from the rod once every 5 minutes.
• Additionally, there is a new "Rod of Mystical Transvergance" spell for sale in the Bazaar. This is a single target spell that summons a rod with 3 charges of Mystical Transvergance. This rod has the same abilities and restrictions listed above. This spell is a targeted summon that costs 400 points of mana to cast.
• Changed the way Focus stacks with other strength and dexterity buffs.
• Circle of Seasons will overwrite Resist Cold.
• Dance of the Blade should now stack with McVaxius's Rousing Rondo.
• Harness of Spirit and Rage should now stack properly.
• Fufil's Curtailing Chant should now stack with Occlusion of Sound.
• Protection of the Glades should now overwrite Blessed Armor of the Risen.
• Blessed Armor of the Risen should now stack with Lunar Whispers.
• Fixed a bug that was causing some applications of spells and ranged attacks from great distance to go unnoticed by NPCs.
• Contact Innates (such as Boon of the Garou) should now be working for bards.
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause helmets and sometimes hair to disappear after an illusion was cast.
• Bard songs should now blink on recipients other than the bard.

Encounters:

Due to the number of Luclin encounters requiring original Rods of Transvergance to be defeated by a reasonably sized force, a number of those encounters have been be re-tuned to shorten their duration.

Interface:

• New Alarm feature added. When you first log in you will see a pop up asking if you wish to set an alarm and if so for how long. There is also an option to choose to never see that pop up again. If you choose this option you will need to set ShowAlarmWindow=TRUE in your eqclient.ini file in order to see the pop up again. The alarm will trigger after the time you set has elapsed, no matter what character you are playing on whatever server, up until the moment you log out.
• /played now displays how long you have been playing this session and, if an alarm has been set, how long until that alarm sounds.
• /pet sit down should now work on charmed NPCs.
• Added 3 new context menu options for chat windows: Reply To, Tell a friend, Tell a Raidmember (for future use). Each of which has a submenu containing the list of Reply targets, Friends, or Raidmembers, as appropriate. Clicking on the player's name will place "/tell " on the chat entry line, and move the focus there, closing the menu.
• Changed /loadskin. It now brings up a window that will allow you to select a skin from a list, determine whether to use the INI or not, then load the skin.

Beastlords:

In order to allow us to better tune warders, we have made changes to the way that these pets work. Previously a Beastlord would summon a pet using an ability button and then use level-appropriate buff spells to increase the pet's level. Because of the way this mechanic works, it was very difficult to tune these pets. Hopefully this will have the side benefit of making things a little easier on Beastlords by reducing the number of steps required to cast the pet.

Beastlords will now summon their pets using spells rather than an ability. The series of spells that was previously used to buff the pets will now simply summon the appropriate pet.

Unfortunately, these pets will no longer zone with the Beastlord, and will need to be resummoned (instead of rebuffed) after zoning.

We have made some adjustments to these pets already.

• Added the casting time reduction that is already in place for Paladins, Rangers and Shadowknights to Beastlords.

Items:

• Merchants now highly value the Staff of Forbidden Rites and will only sell them at an extremely high price.
• Dance of the Blade should once again stack with Nature's Melody and Song of the Deep Seas.

Trade Skills:

• Made it slightly easier to get skill increases while doing Tailoring, Tinkering, Smithing, Baking, Brewing and Alchemy. Made it slightly more difficult to get skill increases with Pottery and Fletching.

Miscellaneous:

• Fixed an issue that was causing zones to crash in some circumstances.
• Fixed an issue that was causing merchants to behave erratically while handling certain quantities of items.
• Player Character corpses with no items will decay in 3 real life hours, not 7 days.
• Fixed a bug that was causing Lay Hands to not heal enough damage.
• Zoning while on a horse on a boat will no longer cause you to appear on the other side in the water.
• /face (face picker) will no longer work while under the effects of an illusion.
• Taunt should be more effective and more dependent on the level of the Taunt skill for PC's and NPC's below level 60.
• Levitation can no longer be cast on Traders in the Bazaar.

List of UI files updated or added with this patch:

UPDATED.

• EQUI.xml
• EQUI_Animations.xml
• EQUI_FriendsWnd.xml
• EQUI_OptionsWindow.xml
• EQUI_PetInfoWindow.xml

NEW FILES.

• EQUI_AlarmWnd.xml
• EQUI_LoadskinWnd.xml

Fan Faire:

Greetings Norrathians! The portal to the San Francisco Fan Faire has been updated to include a full schedule, forums, hotel information and more. Registration is still open but the reservations are going fast. If wish to join the fun, teleport over to: http://everquest.station.sony.com/fanfaire/ to reserve your spot and see what's new! Those of you who have already registered, we'll see you on the weekend of November 8th in San Francisco!