10/20/04 Patch Built 1407T

[insomniac]

Not sure if they let the non beta peoples veiw the patch messages, so here goes (i'll post thoughts later):

Build 1407T 10/19/2004 5:38 pm

*** Important Notice ***

As of this update, all testers need to be running DirectX 9.0C on their systems. If you don't have DirectX 9.0C on your machine, you can download and install it from Microsoft at www.microsoft.com/directX

*** Headlines ***

- Bigger, better heals for priests!

- Pets get new looks and abilities!

- Residents of the Qeynos villages get some new behaviors!

- NPCs get better at using arts and spells!

- Norrath goes factional!

- Treasure chests now less deadly!

- Tradeskill components faster to craft!

- Guilds now created via city registrars.



*** Quests ***

Heritage Quests

- Some updates have been applied to the Stein of Moggok quest.

- The Guise of the Deceiver effect should now reflect the player's gender.

Armor Quests

- All level 20 city armor quest rewards now need to be attuned.

- All armor quests have been re-leveled.

Quest Tuning

- Continued to make updates/modifications to the class/subclass quests.

- Rewards for many Collectible quests have been revised.

- Some quest rewards have been modified to be more in line with the difficulty of the quest.

- Irisor the Insane will no longer continuously respawn.

- Flavor text has been added to all Fixit quests.

- Updates have been made to the following quests:

An Axe for All Ages

Bark Like a Gnoll

Blank Pages

Calcified bone

Cellana's Locket

Collector's Paradise

Continued Complaint

Crossed Swords Access Quest

Deadeye

Deadly Report

Far Seas Requisition # DB0372

Far Seas Requisition # DB0436

Gnoll Miner

Goods Down Below

Great Flood

Gross Report

History of Troll, Part III

Inspect Bookstack

Ire Minions

Letter from the Boss

Little Pests

Moppet Master

Polished Steel Key

Prime Target

Sean Wellfayer

Sleek Wolf Hides

Some Nice Bear Hides

Stolen Bones

Strange Delivery

Tactical Reports

The Vermin's Plague

*** Zones ***

- Dynamic adventure camps have been added to the Commonlands, Enchanted Lands, and Nektulos Forest.

- City ecology behavior has been updated in the following zones:

Castleview Hamlet

Graystone Yard

Starcrest Commune

Zone Modifications:

Antonica

- The zone out from Blackburrow has been moved in order to prevent players from appearing on top of the tunnel mouth.

Chamber of Rulgax

- Treasure has been added to the zone.

Commonlands

- Additional solo content has been added to the zone.

- Spawn timers for Commander Grik'Sna, Commander Du'Nar, General Vhar'Taug, and Lieutenant Vrah'Kna have been updated.

- The size of scorpions in the dune area has been increased.

- Some changes have been made to the Bloodskull orc tower.

Cove of Decay

- Treasure has been added to the zone.

Deathfist Citadel

- Treasure has been added to the zone.

Deathfist Citadel: Onslaught

- Treasure has been added to the zone.

The Far Journey

- Chests will now display an option to "open" them.

The Feerrott

- Additional solo content has been added to the zone.

- The difficulty of some encounters within the zone has been modified.

- Treasure has been added to all named NPCs.

- Factions have been added to the zone.

- Players should now be able to zone into the Temple of Cazic-Thule.

Isle of Refuge

- "Repair supplies" can no longer be purchased.

- The Gruttooth Brutes will now use a one-handed mace, instead of a two-handed.

Nektropos Castle

- Treasure has been added to the zone.

Nektulos Forest

- Additional solo content has been added to the zone.

- Players who die during the Maid for the Mist voyage will now be able to speak to Captain Corrigan to restart their voyage.

- Captain Corrigan will now zone all group members who are on the appropriate quest (Maid for the Mist - Part II).

North Freeport

- Archivist Jindlefog should now spawn correctly.

- Blight Sage Destroz should now spawn correctly.

- Occultist Levonicus should now spawn correctly.

Obelisk of Vul

- Players should now be able to respawn within the zone.

- Additional population has been added into the zone.

- Additional wanderers have been added.

The Overlord's Throne Room

- Treasure has been added to the zone.

Rivervale

- Shakey should no longer appear as a pink box.

Ruins of Varsoon

- Wanders within the zone are now considered group content.

Runnyeye

- Goblins should no longer flee from combat.

Sanctum of Fear

- Treasure has been added to Fright, Dread, Terror, and Overlord Um Nix.

Temple of Cazic-Thule

- Some modifications have been made to Venekor event.

Tomb of Valor

- Respawn and evacuation points have been added to the zone.

Training Grounds

- Treasure has been added to the zone.

- Players can now purchase tickets to use the "Voyage by Sea" mariner's bells. Find the appropriate Harbormaster in Qeynos Harbor or East Freeport.

- City registrars have been added to Freeport and Qeynos. These registrars can be used to create guilds. In order to create a guild you'll need to bring a full group of unguilded citizens and 60 silver to the registrar in Qeynos Harbor or East Freeport.

- Fishing spots have been added to the Isle of Refuge, Commonlands, Sunken City, Freeport Ruins, Oakmyst Forest, Qeynos Ruins, Caves, and the Peat Bog.

- The event on the Blackwater boat should now spawn for groups larger than two.

- Factions have been added to NPCs in the following zones: Antonica, Deathfist Citadel, Deathfist Citadel: Onslaught, Shattered Vale, Oakmyst Forest, the Peat Bog, Thundering Steppes, Enchanted Lands, the Caves, Blackburrow, Chamber of Rulgax, and the Overlord's Throne Room.

- Wanderers/patrollers have been modified in Firemyst Gully, Temple of Cazic-Thule, Sanctum of Fear, Witches' Cove, Stormhold, Tomb of Valor, and Crypt of Betrayal.

- NPCs should now use proper voiceover in Firemyst Gully, Maid for the Mist, Sunken City, Murkwater Nook, the Down Below, and Vermin's Snye.

*** Mechanics ***

Items

- A torch is now available for purchase from certain merchants.

- The price of arrows has decreased.

Spells

- Several Master I scrolls have been set to their correct tier.

- Regrowth: Master I can now be scribed correctly.

- Avatar: Adept III has been upgraded.

- Winds of Renewal: Master I should now scribe correctly.

- Ward of Spirit: Master I can now be scribed correctly.

- Bard Song spells no longer appear to be usable by all classes.

- Nettleshield can now be scribed correctly.

- The tooltip for Wailing Haze has been corrected.

UI - Knowledge Book changes

- Removed Version (Apprentice II, etc.) designations from abilities/spells that do not upgrade

-- This affects Harvest skills, Teleport Home abilities, Sprint, and Racial abilities (Infravision, etc.)

-- This affects Mage: See Invisibility, Group See Invisibility, Magi's Shielding

-- This affects Priest: Revive, Resuscitate, Resurrection, Blazon Life, Cure Noxious, Cure Trauma, Cure Elemental, Cure Arcane

Magic/Combat Arts Systems - NPC Behavior

- NPCs should be more energetic in regard to casting spells and using combat arts.

-- NPCs should have no significant delay using one ability after another, other than standard timers such as re-use and recovery.

-- NPCs now select spells and combat arts from all of their professions, not just Archetype and Class.

-- Overall impact: NPCs should be much deadlier opponents in regard to spellcasting and combat art usage.

Magic System - Profession Changes

- All Healing spells received a significant increase (~40%) in their amount healed

- All Healing spells had an increase (~20%) in their Power cost

- Ward spells now scale similarly to other Healing spells in regard to version. (Apprentice II, etc.)

- Wards were not appropriately scaling with the recent version potency changes in Healing

- Net result: Wards protect for significantly more damage

Pets

- Pets received a revamp in appearance, potency, and additional abilities

- Pet appearances should now change based on both version upgrade and level upgrade. (e.g. The Tier 1 Tellurian recruit does not look the same as the Tier 1 Tellurian Soldier)

- Pets should be noticeably improved even at lower tiers

- Caster pets (Grims and Igneii) should be much more useful, both to the group/caster and in terms of potency

- Fire-and-Forget pets (like the Construct of Logic) and Swarm pets (like the Swarm of Rats) have been slightly decreased in Health, and slightly decreased in damage output.

Traps and Encounters

- Greatly reduced the chances of a small chest being trapped.

- Slightly reduced the chances of a medium chest being trapped.

- Increased the difficulty of group encounters to make them more challenging.

Combat Arts

- Increased the damage of NPC area-of-effect combat arts.

- Beg for Mercy: Master III's hate reduction has been increased.

- Cuss: Master III will now generate more hate.

- Sap will no longer behave identically to Black Jack.

- Evade will now lower more hate at higher levels.

Tradeskills

- Several new alchemy components and recipes have been added in game.

- Decreased the amount of time it takes to complete the following recipe types:

- Refined Components

- Cost Interim Components

- Primary Interim Components

- Basically, this makes everything but Final Products faster to create.

*** Stability and Performance ***

- More optimizations to improve server performance.

- Further server stability fixes.

- Client memory usage reduced.

- Client rendering performance increased.

*** Characters, Appearances, and Rendering ***

- Fixed bug where certain wearable items would be lit by the sun when in an indoor room.

- Fixed bug causing hair to not cast shadows.

*** Controls, Commands, and UI ***


- Options: 'High Quality' default setting now uses High quality textures.

- Options: 'High Performance' default setting now uses Medium quality textures.

- Options: Additional tooltip information for 'Texture Resolution' and Character Texture Resolution' options.

- Options: Added 'Only Hear Voiceover Once', 'Enable Pitch Shifting' and 'Maximum Footstep Distance' options to Audio section.

- Tradeskill UI: You can now close the tradeskill window while in creation mode.

*** Gameplay ***


- 'Friends' can now sell from your house. The number of sellers allowed per house is limited by house size.

- Your Store should now close correctly when camping, quitting, dead, zoning, teleporting, going linkdead, etc.

- Pet's pathing should be more responsive.

- You should no longer get moved to the top of the door when a door closes on you.

- Targeting arrows should now always display above NPCs.

- You should no longer take falling damage while jumping on teleporters.

*** Known Issues ***

- Still working on improving server performance.

*** Art ***

Characters

Fixed alignment bugs on many armor sets.

Fixed issue with female Ogre, Halfling, and Dwarf skin tints not displaying correctly.

Fixed weighting issues on several types of gloves.

FX

Optimized combat arts

Optimized spell projectiles

Optimized many environmental effects

Zones

Fixed stuck/collision issues in the following zones:

- Fallen Gate

- Antonica

- Stormhold

- Freeport Graveyard

- East Freeport

- West Freeport

- Wailing Caves

- Orcish Wastes

- Commonlands

- Beggar's Court

- The Feerrott

- Thundering Steppes

- The Peat Bog

- Qeynos Harbor

- The Down Below

- Runnyeye Citadel

- Stormhold

- Graystone Yard

- Nektulos Forest



*** Audio ***



Sound

Assigned correct footstep sounds to many surfaces.
Added music to zones that were missing it.




Voiceover

Fixed voiceover text bugs on the following characters:
- Mender Brera Pinthumb
- Gretta Steinberg
- Velena Weezlecog
- Zlata
- Master Rysian Gladewalker
- Master Eldin Necrosis
- Delacar Mithanson
- Bartender Julia Florens
- Cornail Stormwrath
- Ashilda Machinry
- Missionary G'Zul
- Dasicar T'Lys

Also, this patch is about a 1 hour and 20 minute download on the worlds crappiest 56k modem . good job SOE

[Stilletto]

Wow thanks for this post.. lots of good info... looks as if the beta testers are doing a good job!!! 8)

[mistium]

I'm glad to see this, thanl you....

[Esperant]

yeah, I was reading that earlier. ROCK ON. All summoning/conjurer/necro/priest classes are probably doing a little tap dance right now. Especially me cause I was hearing about some issues with summoners. Looks like life just got better for us YESssssssss...

Good post!

[Averad]

Anyone have any pics of the new pets?

[insomniac]

Some Thoughts

Originally Posted by Build 1407T

As of this update, all testers need to be running DirectX 9.0C on their systems.

The only reason they would have us upgrade from dx9b to dx9c would be for Pixel/Vertex shader 3.0 support (it'll make the game go faster ). Right now, the only cards with support for DX9c are Nvidia 6800s. So, if your building a computer for eq2 (like me) that logo isnt just for looks, this game WILL run better on nvidia cards.

Originally Posted by Build 1407T

Heritage Quests

Heritage Quests, for those that dont know, are famous EQ1 items that show up in EQ2. Like jboots =)

Originally Posted by Build 1407T

Magic System - Profession Changes
- All Healing spells received a significant increase (~40%) in their amount healed
- All Healing spells had an increase (~20%) in their Power cost
- Ward spells now scale similarly to other Healing spells in regard to version. (Apprentice II, etc.)
- Wards were not appropriately scaling with the recent version potency changes in Healing
- Net result: Wards protect for significantly more damage

Beautiful. Before this patch, If you asked anyone what an ideal eq2 group would be, "2 priests" would be somewhere in that answer. Most people felt the heals were too weak, good to see SOE is listening.

Originally Posted by Build 1407T

Pets
- Pets received a revamp in appearance, potency, and additional abilities
- Pet appearances should now change based on both version upgrade and level upgrade. (e.g. The Tier 1 Tellurian recruit does not look the same as the Tier 1 Tellurian Soldier)

Sweet. Before this there were... lets say 1 and a half different looks for pets. Why 1 and a half? well, when i would cast my pet, he would always be a bad ass looking spider but the second i zoned he turned into a weak looking beetle. i'm not sure if these were the only 2 models, but i've seen level 45s running around with the same beetle as me. Also pets previously hit for crap (think 5 dmg when i nuke for 30-40), so the "potency" part has me hopeful that kabantik no longer hits like a little girl.

Originally Posted by Build 1407T

Traps and Encounters
- Greatly reduced the chances of a small chest being trapped.
- Slightly reduced the chances of a medium chest being trapped.

Last week they put in trapped chests. And, for testing, every chest always had a trap, this sucked.

Originally Posted by Build 1407T

*** Stability and Performance ***
- More optimizations to improve server performance.
- Further server stability fixes.
- Client memory usage reduced.
- Client rendering performance increased.

Every week the video and network lag situation gets better. /applaud
loggin in right now, i'll post pet pics if i see anything new

Edit: i still got the weak beetle pet but i didnt post pick of that one yet, soooo...

edit edit: Dont forget the spider! Which i can no longer summon

Hunting for more...

[Averad]

Originally Posted by insomniac

i'll post pet pics if i see anything new

You better or im finding were you live and doing it for you :P

[Esperant]

so you're telling me there are only 2 pets right now for summoners? LAME. You said you saw a level 45 guy with a beetle for a pet. By then he should a conjurer in which case he should have a monk demon or something like that I thought. Whats going on Insomniac! Explain!

[insomniac]

Originally Posted by Esperant

so you're telling me there are only 2 pets right now for summoners? LAME. You said you saw a level 45 guy with a beetle for a pet. By then he should a conjurer in which case he should have a monk demon or something like that I thought. Whats going on Insomniac! Explain!

k.
That was all pre-patch, so the beetle thing was prolly a bug. there are a couple casting pets, and since they are fleshing out classes right now there will prolly be alot more (have you seen the old spell list?). There are alot more than 2 pets, that just all i've seen. I'm sure i'll see some more, but right now i am battling sony's commodore 64 powered login server.

[Esperant]

ahh I see now. I feel much better. Thanks