JULY 5, 2007

Highlights:

• AA Window Changes: The AA window has been revamped and many of the AA lines have been consolidated to make them easier to find.

The biggest change you'll notice when you first open the AA window is that there are only 4 tabs now - General, Archetype, Class and Special. The first three tabs are fairly self explanatory and the Special tab will hold any AA that doesn't fit into other tabs. For example, the "Glyph" (expendable) AAs will be on the Special tab and various AAs that have been used for progression for several expansions will live on this tab as well.

With the new UI, there are a series of drop down menus you can use to view only certain sets of AAs. Additionally, all of the column headings can be clicked to order the visible AAs by that column in either forward or reverse alphabetical order. Finally there is a "Can Purchase" button in the new UI that will narrow the list down to only the AAs that you currently qualify to purchase.

In the past, new AAs have been created that were pure upgrades to existing AA lines from previous expansions. These added many ranks of similar abilities, each with its own name. To cut down on the amount of data that each of the new tabs holds, many of those types of AA lines have been consolidated into a single line. This should make it easier for you to see where you are in a line without the need to search through multiple tabs. You will still have all of the AAs you had previously, but their names and ranks may have changed and you may need to recreate hotkeys for some of the abilities in order to ensure you are using the highest rank's effect.

• Item Window Changes: The Item Window has a new look and some helpful new functionality. We've changed the window to be easier to read and you will now find a button in the middle of the window that will let you toggle between the item's base stats and its stats with augmentations. In addition, the name of the item will change colors depending on if you can use it or not.
• Triple Attack has been implemented as a skill for those classes that had it innately before. You will automatically receive the appropriate skill for your level with this patch. Characters becoming eligible for triple attack after the patch can receive it by visiting their guild master.
• Misty Thicket Revamp: Halflings across the world of Norrath rejoice as the hills of Misty Thicket flourish into a new paradise.

Recently Reported Issues:

While some of the other issues that were resolved in this update were reported via bug reports, here are a few we'd like to highlight this update.

Issue: Guilds not able to send guild wide emails with text in the body.

Summary: All of the players in the guild are able to send in game mail messages to the entire guild that have text in the main body. The email is sent, there is a subject line, but none of the text entered in the body of the mail.

Status: In-Game emails should now send correctly to guilds. The maximum message size is now set to 4500 characters. The address list will display "Too many addresses to display" if it is longer than 500 characters but the message will still be sent.

Issue: Enchanter Epic 1.5.

Summary: The Cryptic Page in Ocean of Tears could no longer be located after the zone was revamped.

Status: The note was moved to an island to make it easier to find.

Issue: Task - Pepe's Got a Brand New Bag.

Summary: NPC Rion is not giving the correct item for the task 'Pepe's Got a Brand New Bag'.

Status: If you ask Rion "Where is Pepe?" after you receive the poison sac back from Rion, he will now properly give you the doll.

Issue: Black Wolf Tooth.

Summary: Players are unable to find the drop 'Black Wolf Tooth' for an armor quest.

Status: The black wolf tooth was added to other black wolves throughout the newbie areas of the game.

Items:

• Jagged Claws of Rending have returned to being weapons built specifically to destroy Draz Nurakk.
• Staff of the Hiveslayer and Wingcrusher now have a type 4 socket type, instead of type 7.
• Darkfell Bow is no longer bard useable.
• Twisted Staff of Temporal Paradox is now useable by beastlords.
• Paza's Cursed Remains can now be equipped in the ammo slot and cast time is reduced to 2 seconds.
• Type 13 and 14 Purity augments are available for purchase from Trader Vallarines in Katta Castrum.
• Augmentation solvents to dissolve (destroy) the purity augments are available for purchase from Trader Difius in Katta Castrum.
• Bulwark of the Firebringer and Buckler of Corruption are now monk and beastlord useable.
• Twisted Staff of Temporal Paradox is no longer dwarf useable.
• Increased stats on several Solteris items.
• Increased spell effects on Solteris items.
• Increased mods on most Solteris items.
• Added one extra potion belt slot with Solteris belts.
• Solteris items vendors will temporarily buy back equipment for 100% of the cost.
• Changed augments in TBS from Katta Castrum and the habitats to be useable in socket type 8 in addition to socket type 7.
• Re-added the spell focus effect back to Valorium Belt of Devotion that was mistakenly removed.
• Increased the number of items summoned by Ton Po's Mystical Pouch and by Dusty Worker's Soriz Pouch from 20 to 100.
• Slightly increased charge amount on Pure Energeian Orbs.

Quests & Events:

• Lowered the minimum players required to attack Rallos Zek's final form in Plane of Tactics to 1 people.
• Updated the valid zone for some older Ocean of Tears quests to the new Ocean of Tears.
• The Goblin Dojo event can now be started with 6 players instead of 12.
• Added faction adjustments to several raids in Ashengate.
• The Monk epic event in the Ocean of Tears will again spawn a reward chest.

Spells:

• To help balance the way healing items work from class to class, healing-based AAs no longer work on heals cast from items. Items that cast healing spells that are not castable by normal players and were previously affected by healing AAs have had their healing amount increased accordingly.
• The 30 second global cool down on the bard song Brusco's Boastful Bellow has been changed to a 30 second spell cool down.
• The spell cool down on Bind Affinity has been removed.
• Long term heal-over-time (HoT) spells will now display their messages after zoning.

NPC:

• Made Jala and Lyjak in Shar Vahl less greedy in their merchant dealings.
• The Hatchet and Redfang events in Demi-Plane of Blood will now drop back flag items.
• Bark at the Moon and Rampaging Servant pets will now enrage properly.
• Mage pets from The Serpent's Spine will now spawn pre-equipped with a full set of Phantom Plate armor.

Tradeskills:

• New Cultural Symbol QUESTS have been implemented. At this time it is only the quests, and not the other upcoming cultural drop changes. If you still have one of the old quests they can still be completed. The NPCs will still respond. The target NPCs are still up and still dropping the items as they were before. You just will not be able to get the old quests any more as the NPCs will now only give out the new quests.
• The recipe for making the unfired runed potion vials used for throwing have changed. There are no new items, just a reorganization of what is used in order to make them less expensive to create. The Art of Delicate Throwing Things books have been updated with recipes that match the changes.
• The alchemy potions Distillate of Antidote X, Distillate of Immunization X, and Distillate of Regeneration X now require Hypericum instead of Wormwood. You can find Hypericum where you would find Wormwood.
• Fixed the naming on the pattern books to match the patterns they make.
• Fixed the failure return on some Fishy brewing.
• Fixed the Additive in the spell research recipe for War March of the Mastruq.

Missions:

• The task leader should no longer change when the leader zones.
• Zhisza - Counter Attack: All 3 major (named) mission targets will now return home when idle if they have moved from their spawn location.

AA:

• Consolidated many AA lines. AAs that were logical extensions of previous abilities have been consolidated into single lines. For example instead of 5 different AA lines to increase critical spell hits, there will now be 1 AA line with more ranks.
• There are 4 new expendable AAs available:
• Glyph of Stored Life - Stores some of your heath in a protective shield around yourself. Your health is returned when your protection fades or is lost.
• Glyph of Frantic Infusion - This ability increases the damage done by your pet in three steps. The first step will increase your pet's minimum damage by 10%, the next by 15% and the final step by 20%.
• Glyph of Angry Thoughts - This ability increases the hate you generate by 30%.
• Glyph of Courage - This ability increases many forms of damage.
• There are now additional ranks of the AA "Mastery of the Past". Ranks 4 through 9 will allow you to increase the maximum level of spells that are immune to fizzling to the following levels: 61, 63, 65, 66, 68, 70. Note that the new Mastery of the Past AAs are tied to the level cap increase expansions. Ranks 4, 5 and 6 are Omens of War AAs and Ranks 7, 8 and 9 are Serpent Spine AAs.
• Added Mastery of the Past to all casting classes which did not have the AA previously.
• Corrected issues with Touch of the Cursed in certain instances.
• Spell Casting Deftness, Quick Damage, and Quick Buff now work on spells with a minimum casting time of 3 seconds instead of 4 seconds so they are consistent with how spell casting foci work.
• Alternate Abilities that are interrupted by player death will now have their timers reset appropriately.

Zones:

• Misty Thicket Revamp: Halflings across the world of Norrath rejoice as the hills of Misty Thicket flourish into a new paradise.
• Buffs will no longer count down while you are in the Guild Lobby.
• The entry orb into Solteris now allows 85/15 entry into the zone.
• The Kerra Catfish, thought to recently be extinct, have been found again and are breeding strongly.
• Characters should no longer get stuck in the geometry when Level of Detail is set to minimum in The Buried Sea zone.
• The Ghost's Vengeance spell will no longer cause the Ghost, Guardian of Razorthorn event to crash.
• The Atlas entry for Ocean of Tears should now point to the new map.
• Moved one of the fights with King Odeen away from the hot springs. Hopefully this will improve performance for some players. Also reduced the number of NPCs in the zone by about one third.

Miscellaneous:

• A long and outstanding projectile weapon problem has been fixed. Previously, if you shot an arrow or a projectile spell such as a firebolt, the visual representation of the projectile would actually hit its target after the player was notified of the hit. Now it is synchronized such that the output to the player's chat window is appropriately updated with the projectile hit information when the visual representation of the projectile actually hits its target.
• The /who command should now process quicker.
• The Tip Window for Dragons of Norrath merchants should now show correctly.
• Solvents that destroy augments now display a destroy message instead of safely remove message.
• Drakkin should now receive the level up messages directing them to new zones at level 20, 25, and 30.
• /melody now terminates for bards when they get silenced. They should no longer get spammed with "You can't cast now, because you are silenced" messages.
• Loot permissions are now passed as part of corpse messages and are updated to the world when loot permissions are changed except if a corpse is ported to another zone.
• If a merchant has no items to sell, it will now use the welcome that contains no item names.
• Armor should no longer disappear after using illusions.
• Updating the price of an item without changing the price will no longer increment item count in the bazaar search.
• After attempting to invite a player that does not exist or is not logged in, an error "Player soandso was not found." is now displayed in red text.
• The Link All button will now wrap links onto the following chat line. This will allow a list of items spread over multiple lines to be sent over chat channels. If the amount of text is long enough that a link can't fit on the line without exceeding the text limit, only the links that fit will be shown.
• You can drag corpses through teleporters once again.
• When auto attacking an NPC, characters will no longer lose a fraction of a second from the delay on each swing.
• Faction losses/gains while shrouded (not in a monster mission) will now affect your main character appropriately.
• Players that camp out on a boat and use the Return Home button should now get sent back to their home city.
• Reduced the amount of push generated by melee-based attacks.
• Corrected the error that was causing some items to incorrectly display Damage Shield Mitigation.

User Interface Changes:

• A problem has been addressed and fixed regarding full screen mode. Previously, users would experience "bleed through" where background applications would sometimes draw through the EverQuest window in full screen mode, and where the mouse cursor might periodically change to the background application's mouse cursor. This mouse issue appears to have been fixed, and the "bleed through" of background application drawing has been significantly reduced.
• GUI handling of containers with an odd number of slots has been changed. The last slot will be aligned with the container icon if it exists. This could affect some custom UI skins.
• Using the escape key to close the petition window should no longer cause a crash to desktop.
• Froglok characters should now appear with their selected look after character creation.
• Vah Shir and Guktan illusions should now appear with matching heads and body colors.

Changed:

• EQUI_PotionBeltWnd.xml
• EQUI_AAWindow.xml
• EQUI_ItemDisplay.xml
• EQUI_OptionsWindow.xml
• EQUI_DynamicZoneWnd.xml

Previously Updated:

• Lowered the hit point value for all of the adds spawned in the mission "Counter Attack" in Zhisza.
• Reduced the hit points of several of the adds in the mission "Confront Emperor Vaakiszh."

• Blue: Modified / Deleted
• Red: Added