APRIL 18, 2007

Highlights:

New Veteran AA! We are proud to introduce our 9th Veteran AA - Armor of Experience!

New Hot Zones! A brand new set of zones have been selected to be "Hot." The previous zones have had their experience levels returned to normal but the special events in those zones remain.

The following zones are now "Hot":

• 20 - Netherbian Lair
• 25 - Crypt of Dalnir
• 30 - Crystal Caverns
• 35 - Iceclad Ocean
• 40 - The Scarlet Desert
• 45 - The Burning Wood
• 50 - Dranik's Scar
• 55 - Acrylia Caverns
• 60 - Dragon Necropolis
• 65 - Wall of Slaughter

Be on the lookout for a new NPC in Plane of Knowledge that may need your help finding his lost possessions in the new "Hot Zones."

Items:

• Increased the damage focus on Refined Energeiac Silk Sleeves.
• Added fire damage focus to Corrupted Energeiac Silk Sleeves.
• Tradeskill Energeiac items are no longer lore.
• Standard augments no longer fit into socket type 13 or 14.
• Improved Fabled Bow of Storms.
• Tradeskill Energeiac maces are now all useable by clerics and high elves.
• Centehua is no longer stealing items from Velora Spinefin.
• Improved Raid TSS Class Items.
• Added cold damage focus to Hoop of Elemental Mastery.

Quests & Events:

• Some bugs were fixed in the Solteris raid 3.
• The sixth raid in Solteris should now reset properly.
• Fixed the ice walls in the Hearol the Tactician raid.

Spells:

• Cryomancy and Pyromancy will no longer proc on self-only spells.
• Self-only DoTs will no longer give damage messages to the player if they are filtered.
• DoT shielding now correctly works when others cast a DoT spell on the player, not when the player casts on himself.
• The druid debuff Skin to Vines will now land on all targets except Undead, Summoned, and Construct.
• The two nukes from the druid spell Winter's Flame now fire independently. The ice component can land if the fire component is fully resisted, and vice versa.
• The druid damage shield Fernspur is now instant cast.
• A new level 75 druid spell has been discovered in the Serpent's Spine! The Rank I version can be purchased from the druid spell vendor while the Rank II version is a world drop.
• The two nukes from the ranger spell Summer's Dew now fire independently. The ice component can land if the fire component is fully resisted, and vice versa.
• The wizard nuke Wildmagic Strike can now trigger Gift of Radiant Mana.
• The wizard instant cast nukes (Flashfires, Cloudburst Strike, and Cold Snap) have been reduced in effectiveness slightly.
• The wizard nuke Ethereal Conflagration has been increased in effectiveness slightly.
• The necromancer nuke Demand for Blood has been increased in effectiveness slightly.
• The enchanter proc buff Mana Recursion properly recurses additional strikes 10% of the time, up to a maximum of four additional strikes.
• The enchanter proc buffs Mana Flare and Mana Recursion now fire a maximum of 20 times before fading.
• The Shaman Pact of the Wolf alternate advancement ability no longer stacks with other illusion spells.

NPC:

• Population has been thinned out in the East and West Ashengate instances.
• Drakkin, orcs, griffons, and boars in Ashengate are no longer highly resistant to fire-based spells.
• NPCs in Atiiki are more aware of their surroundings.

Tradeskills:

• Added tradeskill flag to dye extracts.
• Cultural Items have had a name update.
• Created new colored Trader's Satchels for use in the bazaar. Brown handmade backpacks were also snuck in.
• Changed the icons for cut gems used in jewelry making. Additionally, changes to the icons for inks and some of the thickeners for spell research were made.
• Added the note "Of Colors to Carry" to Merchant Tekrama. This note is the riddle for making colored hand made backpacks.
• Non-gnomes will now need to use a gnomish recharging kit in order to recharge gnomish devices. Gnomes will be able to make collapsible and deluxe gnomish recharging kits as well.

AA:

• Reduced the cost of the Druid AA line "Gathering of Spirits" by 1 point per rank. If you have previously purchased any rank of this AA you should have a refund for 1 point per rank when you next log in.
• Placed the Druid AA "Gathering of Spirits" on a different timer than the "Spirit of the Ancient Grove" line (and associated previous lines.)
• Increased the duration of the Bard AA "Bladed Song" to 1 minute.
• Corrected an issue with Nightmare Stasis' Doom Effect not being cast on the NPC when the effect wore off.
• You should now receive the correct AA title after purchasing the required number of AA points.

Zones:

• Unrest and Lesser Faydark have had a recent bloom of mushrooms!

Miscellaneous:

• /who command specifies dead players with *RIP*. This will only show on /who and not /who all.
• You can no longer create a campsite by dragging two corpses near you.
• Banner names should now show up correctly in the Find window.
• Buyers should now see updated prices next to the Buy button if a Seller makes a change while they are browsing the wares.
• A new graphics optimization has been added to EverQuest to improve framerate performance so that gameplay is more enjoyable. Auto Portal Volume Optimization has been implemented in the vicinity of objects which contain large numbers of inner objects. In some cases we have tested the optimization and have seen a 15 percent gain in frame rate.

You can toggle apv optimizations off and on with the slash command, "/apvoptimizations." When EverQuest is loaded it checks for an "APVOptimizations" key value pair specified in the eqclient.ini and turns portalizing off or on depending on this value. If a value does not exist in this file it gets set to on by default and written to the eqclient.ini file. Once changes are made to the state of the apv optimizations, the eqclient.ini file will be updated accordingly.

• A certain time between two /say commands is not required anymore. Good people don't spam.

Future Tradeskill Changes:

We will be making a change to the cultural armor that will nullify the usage of all existing drops in the cultural armor and symbol crafting process. For the slot 12 raid augments, only the drops for the seals will be changing, the rest of the drops required for the various steps of the slot 12 raid augments will be staying the same. Those of you who have stockpiles will want to make use of them as best and quickly as possible, as once the changes go in, the currently existing cultural recipes will no longer work. This change will even out the disparity of drop rates between different races and remove the extreme rarity of some items.

For more detailed information please see the "Upcoming Cultural Changes" sticky thread in the Artisans Way forum of the official EverQuest forums.