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LIVE UPDATE 20: February 21, 2006 -- KINGDOM OF SKY (expansion)

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*** Headlines ***

- The Kingdom of Sky expansion is here!
- Player-versus-Player servers have arrived!
- New level 50+ tradeskill writs and tasks are now available!
- Compare your current equipment to potential purchases with handy tooltips! 

*** Kingdom of Sky ***

- The EverQuest II team is pleased to announce the arrival of our second expansion: Kingdom of Sky!
- In Kingdom of Sky, explore the dangerous Dragon Isles, high above the land of Norrath.
- Improve your character's powers and customize your arsenal of abilities with the all-new Achievements system for level 20+ players who own KoS.
- Experience many exciting challenges as you make your way to the new adventure and tradeskill level cap of 70 and new guild level cap of 50.
- Discover thousands of new items, including profession hats and all-new armor sets.
- Embark upon exciting new quests as you unravel the intricate storyline in Kingdom of Sky, including new Heritage quests and Signature quests that advance the lore of EverQuest II.
- Of course, while you explore all the massive zones in Kingdom of Sky, you'll be able to take on more than 30 new Collection quests, gain many new titles for your character, and acquire dozens of new items for your home.
- Take each other on in two new Arenas with four new Arena Champions. When you purchase Kingdom of Sky, you can /claim the Aviak Hatchling, a fearsome champion with its origins in the Overrealm.
- Kingdom of Sky is available in your local retail outlet or via digital download. It can be purchased online at The Station Store: https://store.station.sony.com/

*** Player-versus-Player ***

- Outright war has erupted between the citizens of Qeynos and Freeport!
- Now's your chance to choose a side on one of our new PvP-ruleset servers.
- Experience pulse-pounding action and test your skills against other players!
- For information on the PvP ruleset, please read the PvP Overview:
  * http://eq2players.station.sony.com/en/news_ff.vm?FeatureName=pvp_combat&section=development
- There are 5 new PvP servers available:
  * Nagafen (US)
  * Darathar (UK)
  * Talendor (DE)
  * Gorenaire (FR)
  * Vox (Station Exchange)

*** City Guards ***

- Guards no longer politely banish enemies from their city. Instead, they attack any intruders that they dislike and can be attacked in return!
- New guards have been enlisted to protect the cities of Freeport and Qeynos, and existing guards have undergone extensive training to ensure they are capable of protecting the areas to which they are assigned.

*** Desert of Flames ***

- Players who completed "A Final Note" and deleted "Delving Into Darkness" can now get "Delving Into Darkness" again from the Antiquitor.
- You'll now have a greater chance to find pages for the books "The Poems of Alyarrah" and "Of Maj'Dul Am I."
- "Wrapping it All" Up can now be completed a maximum of 30 minutes after the Godking has been defeated.
- Shoulder Pads of the Dark Disciple have a more brawlerly look.

*** Gameplay ***

- You can now use status points to pay for house upkeep even if you are not in a guild.
- An issue in which a character could appear to be in different places on different machines after jumping off a griffon has been fixed. 

*** Quests ***

- Characters who are not in guilds can now do level 50+ writs.
- The recipe for the Shroud of the Manastone during "Stiletto's Orders Intercepted" now requires a sullied medium quality badger pelt instead of an Etched Hide Plate.
- The recipe for the Dull Granite Tomahawk during "An Axe From the Past" now requires a piece of severed ash instead of an Ash Stave.
- If you delete the Dusty Blue Stone and have not yet started the quest, you can hail Vida again to get another. 
- Disciple Telas`velle should now be giving out writs in the same manner as other writ givers.
- Many of the older quests in the Qeynos Villages and Freeport Districts have had slight requirement changes to better streamline them with the new character progression.
- Corrupted dryads and skittering scavengers will now update the "Outlying Qeynos, Creature Catalog" quest.
- The DWB quest now only requires 15 harvests of ore/lumber.
- Inexperienced Freeportians will now be offered the chance to assist Mooshga in the Commonlands before aiding the Militia in the Ruins.

*** Items ***

- Imbued rings have had their stats modified to be more focused toward the imbued stat. Pristine Imbued rings of both common and rare varieties now carry the greatest benefit with decreasing benefit in the lower quality rings. The trigger percentage for the effects the imbue grants has been increased for all imbued rings.
- "Blissful Awareness" (Quest reward from "High Shaman of the Rockpaw" in The Qeynos Caves) has been retired this fashion season.
- Food and drink should now function and examine the same as they did before Live Update #19.
- All harvestable objects now have a maximum stack size of 50.

*** Zones and Population ***

- Many more beings throughout Norrath recognize their own sentience.
- The shortcut teleporter in Solusek's Eye is now functional.

*** Combat ***

- Spell and combat art casts will not fail after the initial cast due to being too far away as long as the target stays within 2x the spell's range. It actually really works this time. For real.
- Heroic Opportunities completed by a stealth art will no longer cause your stealth be stuck in an unusable state.
- Triggered spell effects will now only trigger as many times as they are supposed to, even if the trigger action happens multiple times at once. For example, if 5 mobs hit you at exactly the same time while you had "Ruse" up, you would do great damage to every creature that hit you. It will now only trigger one time.
- NPC racial abilities that placed reactive taunts on players will no longer taunt other enemies that strike that player.
- Procs will only occur on the first successful attack of a single combat art, not each attack. For example, if a single combat art strikes 5 times, the proc will only have a chance to trigger once during that art rather than 5 times.
- Combat arts will no longer be more likely to trigger a proc if you are using a slow delay weapon. These weapons will still retain a slightly greater chance of triggering a proc on auto-attack, but combat arts will no longer proc more or less often based on the delay of a weapon.
- The examine information for Rogue and Predator offensive stances has been corrected. It previously stated that the stances decreased parry, even though they do not.
- Spells that increase max health will scale your current health so you keep the same percentage.

Assassin changes:
- The stealth effect for Sneak Attack will now trigger much faster.

Brigand changes:
- Amazing Reflexes will break if the Brigand takes damage. Its reuse timer after breaking is 30 seconds. Additionally, it no longer increases hate but provides a brief movement speed bonus after it breaks.
- Ruse now triggers only on melee damage and does not have a power cost when it triggers.

Illusionist changes:
- Personae requires a 10 second casting time as with other permanent pet summons.

Monk changes:
- Silent Palm has a shorter duration but does not break when taking damage.

Paladin changes:
- Ranged Paladin spells can now be interrupted as normal.
- Cry of Conviction has a slightly larger radius.
- Sigil of Heroism will not affect an ally that has a spell from the Amends line on them.
- The Power Cleave line no longer requires the use of a two-handed weapon.

Ranger changes:
- Trick Shot's hate gain no longer increases as it is upgraded, and its duration has been lowered to 5 seconds.
- The stealth effect for Shrouded Attack will now trigger much faster.
- Shadow will now allow the Ranger to perform stealth-based attacks.

Shadowknight changes:
- Ranged Shadowknight spells can now be interrupted as normal.
- Cruel Aura has a slightly larger radius.
- Grim Coil's casting time has been halved.
- The Cleave Flesh line no longer requires a two-handed weapon and its wisdom debuff has been increased.

Swashbuckler changes:
- False Blade's hate gain no longer increases as it is upgraded, and its duration has been lowered to 5 seconds.

Troubador changes:
- Alin's Serenade should no longer produce more than 41% hate reduction.

Warlock changes:
- Netherous Realm's debuff effect will no longer cause triggered effects other than its own.

*** Tradeskills ***

- New writs and society tasks have been added for high-level artisans!
- 100 Aerated Mineral Waters can now be stacked with each other.
- Base level 50 Provisioner-made beer can be used as a Homemade Beer component.
- Various recipes for level 19 and below spells and arts have been added or moved to the appropriate level.
- The recipes for "Speechless" have been moved from level 28 Scholar books to level 30.
- "Prismatic Pulse" has been moved from level 27 Sage books to level 29.
- "Icy Coil" has been moved from level 29 Sage books to level 27.
- "Amplification" has been moved from level 24 Sage books to level 21.
- "Flametongue" has been moved from level 26 Sage books to level 25.
- "Dazzling Seal" has been moved from level 25 Sage books to level 26.
- Fuel prices have changed--some will go up slightly, while some will go down slightly, but the pricing structure is now more uniform overall.

*** Art ***

- The waypoint wisp has an all-new look!
- The colors for the pink, green, purple, red, and yellow saddled Armored horses have been adjusted.

*** User Interface ***

- When you get a tooltip for an item that your class can use, you will also see the tooltip for any items you currently have equipped that the item could replace. These tooltips appear on items in any location except for hotkey bars and the equipped icons around the paper doll.
- Examine windows and tooltips have been streamlined for Weapons, Armor, Shields, Expendables, House Items, Ammo, General Items, and Spells & Combat Arts.
- In Single Click Except Attack mode, single-clicking an enemy that already hates you will attack that enemy.
- The zone you are entering has been added to the onscreen message. You can filter this using Options -> User Interface -> Popup Messages -> Locations
- By popular request, jewelry shows its slot again (examine and tooltip).
- /whoraid output is now formatted more closely to /who.
- /whochannel will now correctly show off-world channel members.
- Items links will now work correctly in tells sent to other servers.
- You can now set the middle mouse button to toggle auto-run under Options -> Controls -> Movement Keys.
- Many windows have been updated to use the new style tooltips for item icons.
- Characters changing their appearance should no longer be shown in newbie starter gear (unless that's what they're wearing).
- Gamma values should remain constant when switching between fullscreen and windowed mode.
- The target window will no longer resize and send the epic flag off the bottom of the window.
- The client will now remember if it was maximized in windowed mode and, when the game is restarted, will restore to its maximized state.
- The guild window will now sort by adventure class names correctly.
- The quest helper can no longer be resized so small that the scrollbars fail to display properly
- The quest journal will now have a tooltip for rewards.
- The tradeskill UI will now update its component counts if your inventory changes.
- An option has been added to override icon tinting when spell requirements (e.g. not stealthed) are not met. Look in Options -> UI -> Spell Icons to turn the spell requirements off.
- Your success or failure at tradeskilling is now recorded in your chat window.

*** Power User Tweaks ***

- Added the ability to speed up the timeout on the new instruction buttons
  * instruction_close_time [seconds]
  * Default is 10 minutes (600 seconds)
  * This can be changed on the command line or eq2.ini
- Added the ability to ignore the new instruction buttons
  * instruction_ignore_all [0|1]
  * Default is false
  * This can be changed on the command line or eq2.ini
- If you add the line "target_allow_pet_member_toggle 0" to your eq2.ini, F2-F6 will not switch targets to the group member's pet if the player was already targeted. Nor will it switch targets to the group member on [SHIFT] + (F2-F6) if the pet was already targeted. 
- If you add the line "target_allow_pet_self_toggle 0" to your eq2.ini, F1 will not switch targets to your pet if your character was already targeted. And it will not switch targets to your character on [SHIFT] + (F1) if your pet was already targeted. 

*** UI Files Updated ***

eq2ui_examine.xml
eq2ui_gamedata.xml
eq2ui_journals_active.xml
eq2ui_loginscene.xml
eq2ui_mainhud_impliedtarget.xml
eq2ui_mainhud_persona.xml
eq2ui_mainhud_target.xml
eq2ui_specialelements.xml
eq2ui_tradeskills.xml

-The EverQuest II Team

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