Patch Notes

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Introduction

Below are hopefully all of the patch notes which are applicable to Project 1999 (and even a few which are beyond the project timeline at the end for completeness). See Beta Patch Notes for earlier (inapplicable to Project 1999) notes.

This page also included are other sources of information from the Everquest developers, such as "Producers Letters" or blog posts, as well as a few notes from beyond the classic period. (which are included both because the staff sometimes includes features from them on Project 1999, and because players mistakenly remember them as being part of the classic timeline, so having them here can help them correct that perception).

Most of these notes originally came from Allakhzam's collection, but because it didn't have every note some came from elsewhere. Those notes list their origin (all others you can assume came from Allakzham). See Patch Note Sources for further research information.

In order to help differentiate the historically interesting but irrelevant parts (eg. stuff about the fan faires, sound card problems, etc.) from the stuff Project 1999 players care about, the templates {{Relevant}} and {{End}} have been added, and can be used to indicate which sections are relevant to Project 1999. These sections will have a light green background.

All current significance markings are a best guess only! No one except Nilbog currently knows for certain which notes will be relevant to Green and which won't.

PLEASE FEEL FREE to improve formatting, add wiki links, etc.!

Beta Era

Project 1999 only seeks to re-create the published version of EverQuest, and so all Beta Patch Notes are by definition irrelevant to the project. However, such notes may make interesting reading for EverQuest fans.

Classic Era

The classic era lasted from 3/16/99 to 4/24/2000, about one year and one month.

Core Classic Era

March 16, 1999 - Game Launches - First patch server message

(NOTE: taken from: http://web.archive.org/web/20010312012332/http://www3.jcss.net/~rpg/eqi/news/99-3-15.htm)

March 16, 1999

---

Welcome to EverQuest! Please contact customer service (888-GAMES-02 or "Technical Support" in the chat) if you have any problems creating an account or logging into the game.

April 6, 1999 News Bit from John Smedley

Music works on all sound cards. If you still aren't getting music, double check to make sure that music is turned on in-game. In addition, you may not have correct drivers, and/or you may not have it set properly. In any case, either call our tech support or go to the tech support area in chat. Please be advised that music DOES have a performance impact on the game, although it is a small one.

Frame Rate Speedup - Our resident graphics genius sped up the game a fair amount. Those of you in areas like Greater Faydark should see some real improvements.

Corpse Bug - We've been tracking a nasty little bug that would make corpses disappear. I'm sure many of you know firsthand about this one. We finally nailed it and it should be safe to die again ;)

There's a whole bunch of other stuff that has been fixed as well and is listed in the patch message.

Just as an FYI we did find a server-side bug that's been fixed and we will probably have to down the servers one at a time to update since this bug is one that really needs to be fixed.

One final Item: Yes, glide on banshee's is coming back. It should be in later this week.

- John Smedley, President and CEO: Verant Interactive, Inc.

April 6, 1999 First Known Content Patch of Classic EQ

(NOTE: auto-translated from japanese and taken from here: http://web.archive.org/web/20010312012253/http://www3.jcss.net/~rpg/eqi/news/99-4-1.htm)

(UPDATE: English notes found here: http://web.archive.org/web/20001007194710/http://www.eqtrade.com/cgi/news.pl?id=20)

 We will be opening up a new section on the EverQuest website solely dedicated to the Test Server. Once the Test Server section is available, changes and bug fixes made to the Test Server will be documented, so that you may help us test the changes.
 
 As for server updates, from this day forward, we will be updating the regular EverQuest servers every Tuesday morning at 3:00am Pacific Standard Time.
 
 We will be performing a patch and server update at 3:00am Pacific Standard Time on Tuesday, April 6th. The patch contains the following additions and fixes;
 
 1. Crashing while giving newbie items to NPCs.
 2. Going link-dead would cause the character to regenerate extremely quickly.
 3. Various sound related crashes were fixed.
 4. Created items disappearing from characters after zoning.
 5. Characters able to use skills, which are not allowed for their specific class.
 6. A limit to the successful hit and spell messages has been implemented that should reduce the number of unneeded messages sent to the players.
 7. After slaying a creature, the player will receive a proper faction hit.
 8. Occasionally, after being disconnected, users would crash upon re-logging into the server.
 9. The DLS sound system is now enabled.
 10. A new text command, "/reply " has been implemented. This will allow players to reply to the last character that sent a private tell message.
 11. Many adjustments to the faction system were made.
 12. Multiple quest-related bugs were fixed.
 13. A slew of quests were added.
 14. A number of new music tracks were added to various zones.
 15. Occasionally, sound settings would reset to default, while graphically, the slider bars appeared to be correct.
 16. Various safe zones were eliminated to prevent exploitation.
 17. Some equipped weapons and items would draw into the user interface overlays, which would result in the client crashing.
 18. It was possible to strafe at normal speed while rooted or sneaking.
 19. All hybrid classes now receive meditate at level 12.
 20. Experience over level 30 will now be reflected properly on the user's experience bar.
 
 - The EverQuest Team

Dolalin: Also, this is when Bixies got their faction adjustments:

(http://www.eqtrade.com/cgi/news.pl?id=19)

 Patch Changes [ ShadowMaster at 06:59 CST ]
 EQVAULT:
 Endareth informed me that the most recent patch did some interesting things to EverQuest. Here's the undocumented changes:
 
 After logging in this morning for a quick game before work, I found what seems to be an undocumented addition to the new patch. After killing a Bixie, it gave me my faction
 adjustments! Down with the Bixies, and up with the Defenders of the Forest. As I understand, in beta this was included, but was taken out for final release, and I guess 
 it's now back in. Also, /loc seems to have been modified, no more direction. This is fair enough, as it kind of invalidated the Sense Heading skill as it was.
 
 Thanks

April 13, 1999

(NOTE: This patch message auto-translated from Japanese and taken from here: https://web.archive.org/web/20020615112048fw_/http://www4.big.or.jp/~kenzi/eq/old-04.html)

(UPDATE: Found an English version: http://web.archive.org/web/20001205214700/http://www.eqtrade.com/cgi/news.pl?id=17)

 April 12th, 7:00pm
 ------------------
 We will be updating the servers at 3:00am Pacific Standard Time on Tuesday, April 13th. A patch is required.
 The following changes were made:
 
 1) The proper model will appear while selecting a previously created character in the Character Selection screen.
 2) Players will be properly notified when entering a PK(Player Kill) region.
 3) Users should no longer fall through the world.
 4) The Sun and Moon are now visually back.
 5) Glide 3 has been enabled for use with Banshee boards (please note that the 3dfx Glide drivers required can be found at www.everquest.com).
 6) Character corpses should no longer abruptly disappear or decay extremely quickly.
 7) Player's corpses should now appear at the feet of the NPC that dealt the deathblow.
 8) Various crash bugs.
 
 - The EverQuest Team

April 14, 1999

(NOTE: Found here: http://web.archive.org/web/20001205214700/http://www.eqtrade.com/cgi/news.pl?id=17 )

 April 14th, Noon
 -----------------
 1) Two server side zone related crashes have been resolved.
 2) A bug with the charm spell which caused players to be killed.
 3) A small number of players were having their characters become corrupt -- additional safeguards have been implemented to prevent against this occurring, 
 however, we feel that the changes made eliminated the problem.
 4) A few minor NPC combat related exploits have been rectified.
 
 - The EverQuest Team

April 15, 1999

(NOTE: Found here: http://web.archive.org/web/20001205214700/http://www.eqtrade.com/cgi/news.pl?id=16 )

 April 15th, 5:00pm
 ------------------
 The server update last night went flawlessly, and has appeared to resolve a zone crash problem which 
 was occurring. Our next server update is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, April 20th at midnight 
 Pacific Daylight Time. An updated list of changes and bug fixes will be posted on the EverQuest news 
 section on the login server.
 
 UUnet has informed us that they will be performing an upgrade to their San Diego router at 3:00am on 
 April 20th.
 
 - The EverQuest Team

April 16, 1999 Test Server update

(NOTE: auto-translated from japanese and taken from here: http://web.archive.org/web/20010312012916/http://www3.jcss.net/~rpg/eqi/news/99-4-16.htm)

From the Test Server page (Note: Applies only to Test Server):

Test server update 4/16

• When NPC trades, it states that you can't buy multiple items such as Magic Scrolls.
• "255" is no longer displayed when Resistance drops below 0.
• No “rain” sound effect when snowing.
• If you become "knocked unconscious", it will no longer be invisible to other players.
• Pick-pockets cannot be made from corpses.
• The F8 key will no longer target the user's pet.
• Even if an item is placed on the ground, it is displayed normally.

If there are no major problems with the above changes, it will be announced to general servers on Tuesday at 12:00 am PDT (PST daylight saving time).

April 20, 1999 Post by John Smedley

Hello All,

Well.. thanks to all of your help we've been able to find a significant corpse dissapearence bug. We feel that this is a significant enough problem to warrant updating the servers during normal hours today, as we don't want anyone else's corpses to dissapear. We've also extended the amount of online time characters above 5th level have to recover their bodies from 8 hours to 24 hours (online).

In nutshell, the Corpse Recovery rules are as follows:

Characters All Levels: If you have no items on your corpse, it will dissapear within 3 minutes.

Characters Level 1-5: Corpse will dissapear within 30 minutes (real time) whether you are online or offline. Those of you wondering why this rule is in place? - There would be WAY to many bodies if we didn't do it this way.

Characters Level 6 and above - Corpse will dissapear within 24 hours if the player is online (being at the character select screen STILL counts as online). Corpses will dissapear within 1 week if the player is offline.

In addition, this server patch will include the following:

1) Warrior's now get a "Bezerker Frenzy" if they are down to under 35% of their Hit Points. 2) Several server side crash bugs have been fixed.

I also wanted to mention that we have begun shipping units to Europe. Units should be in Electronics Boutique in the UK in a few days. Germany and other places in Europe will be hitting shortly...and Austrailia will be seeing units shortly as well.

John Smedley

April 28, 1999 Patch Message

Server Update 4/27/99 7:30 pm

Citizens of Norrath, We are pleased to announce that the hardware upgrade that was performed on our router this morning has appeared to resolve the severe packet loss problems that many players were encountering over the past week. We have been, and will continue to monitor the load on the new hardware to assure that the packet-loss problems will no longer occur on our end. During the router upgrade we transported the Karana server farm to the AT&T CerfNet facility to further reduce the load on our router. Also, the new "Rodcet Nife" server was just brought up to accommodate the additional users that have joined over the past few weeks. After thoroughly testing changes made only for Rallos Zek (PK server), we have activated the new code for the PK server ONLY.

The changes include the following;

1) Pets will no longer kill themselves if their master has invisibility cast on them.

2) Pets will no longer attack other players while they are in guard mode if their master goes link-dead.

3) Pets will now attack opposing combatants while their master is dueling.

4) NPCs will no longer respond to invisible PCs.

Other fixes and changes include:

1) The corpse class tag will not be listed as "Unknown".

2) Players will be given text messages for items that they cannot obtain while looting a corpse, instead of the item disappearing.

3) A number of quests and combat related exploits were fixed.

4) Characters are no longer able to use the disarm command while using feign death.

At Midnight, on Wednesday the 28th, the servers will be brought down for an update.

- The EverQuest Team

April 29, 1999

(NOTE: found here: http://web.archive.org/web/20001007140832/http://www.eqtrade.com/cgi/news.pl?id=12 )

 April 29th, 4:00pm
 ------------------
 As posted yesterday, we will be bringing down all of the servers at midnight tonight PDT, for a server-side update. Our estimated downtime is should be less than two hours. 
 The fixes/changes are listed below.
 
 1) Traveling by boat should be much more stable.
 2) A few various zone crashes.
 3) The corpse class tag will not be listed as "Unknown".
 4) Players will be given text messages for items that they cannot obtain while looting a corpse, instead of the item disappearing.
 5) A number of quests and combat related exploits were fixed.
 6) Characters are no longer able to use the disarm command while using feign death.
 
 We will also be putting up a new client patch on Monday at Midnight as well. A list of the client-side changes will be posted on Monday morning.
 
 - The EverQuest Team

News Bit from John Smedley

 Hello All,
 
 I waited until it was 7:30pm pst tonight to write this update. I wanted to make sure things were stable before I wrote this. Lately every time I give 
 an update something bad happened right after I sent it.
 
 Here's a summary of what was done in the last 2 days
 
 1) We did a major hardware upgrade to our primary router here in San Diego.
 2) We worked with CERFnet to do a router upgrade to their facility here in San Diego.
 3) We moved Karana over to CERFnet
 4) We brought up Rodcet Nife
 
 I think you will find now that the packet loss should be basically gone... at least on our end. We were definetely causing some of the loss before 
 (only when we hit major numbers) but now things are very, very clean running and that is with 23,582 people on just as I write this (a new record).
 
 Does this mean that EVERYONE'S Packet Loss is gone? Absolutely not. BUT, I did some surveys in most of the worlds and about 75% of the people told me their Packet Loss 
 was great. If you are having problems now, do a traceroute to chat.everquest.com and send it to the email address traceroute@verant.com and we will take a look. We take 
 our customers connections very seriously, and if a whole lot of people on one network are having a problem we will do our best to look into it. It doesn't mean we can 
 always get the reaction we want (some networks are just plain bad) but many times we can help find a legitimate problem and help correct it.
 
 Some of you may also not realize what the network statistics we have in game actually are for:
 
 The left hand number is your ping to the server in milliseconds.
 
 The left-middle number (percentage) is your packet loss to the server.
 The right-middle number (percentage) is your packet loss from the server.
 The right hand number is the data rate. THIS IS NOT THE PING. - I love hearing about the "terrible" pings in game of 3000.
 It is my strong belief (forgive me for this rant) that EVERY online game should have this type of meter so that you are getting real feedback about the network status.
 
 John Smedley
 
 Thanks!

May 4, 1999 Login Server update

May 4th, 8:30pm

---

The login difficulties that you may have been encountering over the past 1.5 hours have been resolved. We were able to pinpoint and fix a major bug which has been plaguing the login procedure for quite some time. Now that this problem has been addressed, the login process should be carried out much more swiftly. We apologize for the inaccessibility of the EverQuest servers for this short time, however, this fix should insure future stability.

We have included a revised version of the EverQuest Manual in this patch which includes an amendment to various skills, spells and other game play releated features. The section briefly outlines the modification, introduction, and removal of various features found in EverQuest. This information may also be found at www.everquest.com in the "In Development" section located in "Features". Both of these will be updated on a regular basis.

- The EverQuest Team

May 4, 1999 Patch message

(NOTE: auto-translated from Japanese and taken from here: http://web.archive.org/web/20010501063057/http://www3.jcss.net/~rpg/eqi/news/99-5-1.htm)

(UPDATE: English version found here: http://web.archive.org/web/20001007140832/http://www.eqtrade.com/cgi/news.pl?id=12 )

 May 3rd, 5:00pm
 ---------------
 
 We will be patching a new version of the EverQuest client executable tonight at Midnight PDT. One of the significant additions is the option to utilize auto mip-mapping 
 in Glide mode. Mip-mapping may be activated in the Display menu, located within the Options directory. In addition, we have made numerous bug fixes and game play 
 adjustments, of which are listed below.
 
 1) If you have participated in a fight against an NPC, you will take a faction hit.
 2) Players may no longer disarm an NPC that has a magical weapon armed.
 3) Safe-fall is now working as intended, however, damage from falling is required to advance in the skill.
 4) Players should not see other characters "popping" around while riding the boats.
 5) Trades will properly cancel out when the characters involved walk away.
 6) The Friend's List is now functioning as intended.
 7) A few crash bugs related to failed font calls have been resolved.
 8) Creature and Player corpses should no longer draw into the overlays.
 9) Vampiric Embrace has been modified from it's original design to improve game play.
 10) A number of quest were implemented.
 
 Included in tonight's update is a major enhancement to the populations of both Solusek's Eye and Mistmoore.
 
 Tomorrow night, a revised version of the EverQuest Manual will be patched. The revision will include a new section which outlines the spells and skills that have 
 been modified from their original design to enhance game play.
 
 - The EverQuest Team

May 18, 1999

(NOTE: taken from here: https://web.archive.org/web/20001022094248/http://www.eqtrade.com/cgi/news.pl?id=7)

We will be updating the servers tonight at Midnight PDT, which will require a minor client side update. A few of the notable changes are listed below.

2) While taking part in a guild war, if killed, members of the opposing guild may only loot one item off the corpse.

3) A crash bug related to removing guild members was fixed.

4) A number of new items and quests have been implemented.

The follow changes have been made to spells:

• The Effect of Vampiric Embrace (necromancer and shadowknight) effect has been increased.

• Spell names changed:

 Summon Blade to Summon Fang
 Summon Spear to Spear of Warding
 Summon Mystic Dagger to Dagger of Symbols

• You can no longer be charmed or feared while invulnerable (divine aura)

• Hammer of Requital (Cleric & Paladin) now summons a Hammer of Requital

• High level creatures get a better save vs. Memory Blur (Enchanter) and Atone (Cleric) spells

• Magician pets will no longer run away from combat.

• Crission's Pixie Strike (Bard Song) works better now.

• Selo's Accelerando and Spirit of Wolf will no longer leave ghost icons of each other.

- The EverQuest Team

May 21, 1999 GZ comments on Enchanter spell changes pt.1

(NOTE: auto-translated from Japanese and taken from here: http://web.archive.org/web/20010501063057/http://www3.jcss.net/~rpg/eqi/news/99-5-16.htm)

Enchanter next update

From Enchanter's magic that will be fixed in the next update from Geoffrey Zatkin, EQ Magic:

• The Alliance will probably be upgraded on the next Monday update.
• Whirl Till You Hurl 2 magic will be introduced on Monday and will now affect your opponents at level 30 and above.
• The effect of Whirl (CF, SW, Swarm, etc.) is no longer lost by Bash and Stun.
• Only monsters with level 40 or higher gain resistance to Blur.

May 24, 1999

(NOTE: From https://groups.yahoo.com/api/v1/groups/everquest/messages/335)

May 24th, 6:00pm

---

The servers will be coming down as scheduled tonight at Midnight PDT. The following changes/bug fixes have been made.

• Players will no longer crash when an extremely long group message is received.
• Added the ability to pull one item "charge" from a stack by holding down the "Control" key when left-clicking on the stack.
• After casting a spell at an NPC, if the target were lost before the spell made contact, the caster would crash.
• The "/ignore" command will now ignore emotes also.
• The chat command "/e" will trigger "/emote" instead of exiting to the character selection screen.
• We have added new sound tracks to the Planes, Crushbone, Guk, Mistmoore, Steamfont, and the Estate of Unrest.
• We have reduced the amount of experience lost when dying by 50%.
• A number of new quests have been added to various zones.
• Magician pets (elemental) will now cast minor spells (to make up for their lack of kick)
• New Magician spells on vendors and some Magician spells have moved to different vendors
• New Magician weapons for Summon Fang & Spear of Warding & Dagger of Symbols
• New enchanter whirl spell (check the vendors)
• Whirl now works on MOBS better than it did on the last patch.
• The saving throw against Memory Blur and Atone was reduced (harder to save against) from the last patch.
• AC added to the Rune Series (Enchanter)
• Alliance series works better (Enchanter)
• Enchanter Attack Speed spells now have longer durations (Quickness, Alacrity, etc.)
• Tashan (the entire Enchanter series) is now quicker to cast, costs less mana, and is harder to save against.
• New bard songs have been added to the vendors
• Paladins lose the spell Bravery, and gain the spell Valor
• ShadowKnights and Necromancers gain the Word of Spirit spell (replacing Word of Shadow for the ShadowKnight)
• ShadowKnights lose Haunting Corpse and gain Summon Dead
• Necromancers and ShadowKnights get a new spell - Shadow Vortex.
• ShadowKnights lose Intensify Death (replaced by Shadow Vortex)
• Rangers lose Shield of Barbs and gain Shield of Brambles
• Shorter stun effects will no longer remove longer stun effects (Bash won't get rid of whirl, for example)
• Spell components are now stackable

- The EverQuest Team

(Dolalin: I have found an alternate version of this patch message, here: http://web.archive.org/web/20201006101158/http://www.angelfire.com/va/AKnights/maynews.html )

 The servers will be coming down as scheduled tonight at Midnight PDT.
 
 The following changes/bug fixes have been made:
 
 -Spell research components (runes, words, etc.) are now stackable - in doing so, your old ones will no longer trade, nor will they stack with the new ones. Use the old ones up or ditch them.
 - Players will no longer crash when an extremely long group message is received.
 - Added the ability to pull one item "charge" from a stack by holding down the "Control" key when left-clicking on the stack.
 - After casting a spell at an NPC, if the target were lost before the spell made contact, the caster would crash.
 - The "/ignore" command will now ignore emotes also.
 - The chat command "/e" will trigger "/emote" instead of exiting to the character selection screen.
 - We have added new sound tracks to the Planes, Crushbone, Guk, Mistmoore, Steamfont, and the Estate of Unrest.
 - We have reduced the amount of experience lost when dying by 50%.
 - A number of new quests have been added to various zones.
 - Magician pets (elemental) will now cast minor spells (to make up for their lack of kick)
 - New Magician spells on vendors and some Magician spells have moved to different vendors
 - New Magician weapons for Summon Fang & Spear of Warding & Dagger of Symbols - New enchanter whirl spell (check the vendors)
 - Whirl now works on MOBS better than it did on the last patch.
 - The saving throw against Memory Blur and Atone was reduced (harder to save against) from the last patch.
 - AC added to the Rune Series (Enchanter)
 - Alliance series works better (Enchanter)
 - Enchanter Attack Speed spells now have longer durations (Quickness, Alacrity, etc.)
 - Tashan (the entire Enchanter series) is now quicker to cast, costs less mana, and is harder to save against.
 - New bard songs have been added to the vendors
 - Paladins lose the spell Bravery, and gain the spell Valor
 - ShadowKnights and Necromancers gain the Word of Spirit spell (replacing Word of Shadow for the ShadowKnight)
 - ShadowKnights lose Haunting Corpse and gain Summon Dead
 - Necromancers and ShadowKnights get a new spell - Shadow Vortex.
 - ShadowKnights lose Intensify Death (replaced by Shadow Vortex)
 - Rangers lose Shield of Barbs and gain Shield of Brambles
 - Shorter stun effects will no longer remove longer stun effects (Bash won't get rid of whirl, for example)
 
 The EverQuest Team

May 27, 1999 GZ comments on Enchanter spell changes pt.2

(NOTE: Japanese copy here: http://web.archive.org/web/20010501063057/http://www3.jcss.net/~rpg/eqi/news/99-5-16.htm)

(NOTE: found an English language copy in the eq-bards mailing list archive, added below: https://github.com/dbsanfte/eq-archives/blob/master/mailing-lists/_EQ_Magic/html/159.html)

GZ SPEAKS!

I must admit he does get through his email fairly quick. Here is what I gleamed from him as a result of my messages to him:

• Rune and Mist Series will stack again. This was a bug that slipped through and will be rectified with a patch.
• The short duration on WTYH after ysterdays patch will be reworked. They are trying to find a balance, lets all just be patient. They are working on it.
• Suffocating Sphere was made much harder to resist. As a result they also threw in the chance for damage to be lowered on a successful cast. Probably better for the low levellers, they have more chance to hurt that tree snake now.
• Illlusion spells give some benefits of the given race. But not all. They also give you some of the faction of that race. This was to clarify questions on whether becoming a troll for instance gave the increased hp regen and things of that sort. The answer is maybe. the potential is there, but for each race you will just have to experiement. Any info on this please let me know.
• Alliance Series is designed to give you some of the faction of the targeted creature. There has been debate over what this spell series was meant to do. Now you know.
• We will never get unresistable colour flux or short duration stun spells.
• GZ conceded that Shamans and Enchanters are equals when it comes to buffing. They just do it in different ways he said.
• I asked : "Why do we have to tashan before every spell? Why are we the only class hit with this minimum 15 mana penalty to get successful magic casts?" (note now 10 mana) Response: "You don't have to. Enchanters are the only class with the ability to lower the magic resistance of their targets quickly. Saves against Enchanter spells are the same as against every other type of spell of those types. For example, the save against Root is the same vs. an Enchanter as vs. a Wizard. The only exception is that the Wizard does not get to lower the creatures magic resistance - the Enchanter does."
• Enchanting Items will be added eventually. But he feels we are balanced already without the ability to enchant. I think this sucks myself. What is the name of our class??? He referred to this series as being a "gravy" thing for us, or a little bit extra to make us happy. So don't expect this new line to do anything dramatic when it becomes available.
• Specialisation is still a few weeks off. So don't get too excited.
• This comment after I questioned Verant's priorities: "The expansion is not yet being worked on by anybody but the art team. The rest of the team is fixing bugs and adding more features (like weapon enchantments and specialization)."

June 7, 1999

(NOTE: This patch was not in Allakhazam and came from http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/19990607.html)

The EverQuest servers will be coming down tonight at Midnight PDT for a client and server-side update. Listed below are the newly implemented features and bug fixes which will be updated.

General Changes

• Scrolls are no longer lore items - this means that you can have more than one.
• Research components were made more accessible on higher level mobs.
• Several items will now appear as "Pending Lore" and will become "Lore" in a subsequent update. The servers will only allow ONE 'Lore' item in a character's inventory (that includes the bank) - please make note of any items you own that are 'Pending Lore' - it is YOUR responsibility to have those items sold or traded by the time (approximately one week) we change them to 'Lore.' We will not be responsible for items lost when this change is made.

Zone Enhancements

• Additional treasure has been added to Permafrost Keep, and some of the items already there have been enhanced - now is the time to plan that Permafrost excursion!
• The bandits of West Karana are increasing their presence! You'll find more bandit camps there, as well as bandits traveling between those camps and elsewhere.
• The spawn rates in many outdoor areas has been increased - this should make it easier to find things to kill.
• Bug fixes and newly implemented features:
• Charmed and Feared characters can no longer use skills.
• The appropriate text message is given while attempting to attack while charmed.
• 'Procing' (items that cast spells) weapons no longer break Bard's singing.
• Players vision will now return to normal if killed while drunk.
• Tree Form spells will change the caster into a human male in a zone without trees.
• Red and Blue armor will now appear the proper color for AMD users.
• While accessing the /bug screen, the in-game chat bar will no longer remain active.
• If the inventory window is up and the spell book is open, the user will not remove items from their inventory when clicking on the spell book.
• A number of quests were fixed as well as implemented.
• A Bad language filter has been implemented. Typing "/filter" will toggle it on and off.
• Pets that have been commanded to sit will no longer to appear to stand up while they are supposed to be seated.
• While in the full screen view, users may now toggle the translucent overlay backgrounds on and off by pressing the "~" key.
• Players may now loot corpses in shallow water or lava by typing "/loot" while the corpse is targeted.
• We have implemented an Auto-follow command. To auto-follow another player, target the character, then type "/follow". You must be grouped with the character in order to successfully carry out the command.
• A Role Playing switched has been added so that players may identify other characters who wish to make known they are Role Playing. To activate the Role Playing switch, target your character and type "/roleplay", if the character is +PvP, the name tag above their head will appear as a darker shade of Red, whereas a non-PvP players name will appear purple.
• If the user drops a backpack containing spells on the ground, the spells will no longer disappear.
• Medicine Bags, when dropped on the ground, will no longer vanish.
• The proper text is given when a trade window is canceled between players.
• Arrows will now be drawn from the quiver is the ammo slot is empty.

Spell Changes

• The Bard spell "Denon's Desperate Dirge" will now require the use of Mana.
• No spell or effect that accelerates the process of mana regeneration will work on a Bard.
• '/pet report health' will now have your pet message you with a health report.
• Lightning Blast (Druid) has been modified to its intended form of finishing the Invoke Lightning series.
• When you fizzle, you will lose a less mana then before. The fizzle rate has NOT changed.
• There is now a CAP on the amount of mana lost from any single fizzle.
• Spell Scrolls are no longer lore items. This means you can hold more than one.
• Tuyen's Songs now have range.
• Eye of Zomm will no longer work in conjunction with pets - you can now have one or the other. Sorry.
• Wave of Enfeeblement (now Vampiric Curse) and Circle of Death (both Necromancer) will not work for the next week or so while we make a fix on them.

Trade Skill Changes

• Jewel Craft - All of the jewelry has had increased magical properties (pre-existing jewelry items remain unchanged).
• Fletching - When fletching arrows, they will be produced in sets of 5, instead of 1.
• Baking, Blacksmithing, Brewing, and Pottery have been changed to either return items on failure and be able to produce multiple items and quantities on success.

Example:

Baking muffins, success means the player will receive three muffins and retaining the muffin tin, however, when unsuccessful, the player will still get the muffin tin back and lose all other components. Another example would be if a player wishes to sharpen a rusty short sword. If the player succeeds, they will receive a tarnished short sword, however, failure will result in retaining the rusty weapon but losing the sharpening stone.

June 8th, 1999

(NOTE: This patch message auto-translated from Japanese, found on this site: http://web.archive.org/web/20020812174059fw_/http://www4.big.or.jp/~kenzi/eq/old-06.html)

6/8/99 6:30 pm

• Last night, we updated the data that made the wizard's bolt spells ineffective against creatures. The issue has been revised and is currently being tested on a test server. We will continue to test new changes and update the server late at midnight on PDT Wednesday if there are no problems.
• I mentioned that the item is Pending Lore, but it is not displayed as a bug. It will be fixed in tomorrow's patch.
• We added faction conversion function to PvP. If a player PKs another player, the player who killed him / her will modify the faction related faction.

We have extended and activated specialization skills:

Specialization brings two things to your character.

(1) Specialization reduces spell mana consumption. This begins gradually (slightly depending on the situation) and increases with specialization skills.

(2) Specialization reduces the chance of fizzle spells. There are five types of specialization. But you can only focus on one specialization. The first specialization that reaches 51 will be gathered, and other specializations will not rise above 50. Choose wisely.

Example: Mildred the Magnificent (Wizard) has 50 Evocation and Abjuration Specialization skills. Mildred decided to become an Evocation expert. She visited the Guildmaster and made 1 point 51 for Specialize. Other specialization skills can no longer be increased from 50.

-EverQuest Team

June 11, 1999

(NOTE: This update message auto-translated from Chinese, found on this site: https://web.archive.org/web/20011206145013/http://www.everquest.com.tw/patch_199906.html)

As a large number of players went online at midnight, we decided to change the update time from midnight to 7am PDT. Therefore, we will update the EverQuest ™ server on Thursday 6/10 7:00 AM PDT. In addition to the previously announced new features and bug fixes, two additional amendments are added as follows.

• Rewritten sea travel, hoping that the effect of taking a boat will be more stable (players should not be kicked off the boat as often).

• High-level non-player characters with the ability to summon characters can only use the summoning ability if the characters cause more than 10% damage to the NPC.

June 15, 1999 Server Update Announcement

(NOTE: This update message auto-translated from Japanese, found on this site: http://web.archive.org/web/20020812174059fw_/http://www4.big.or.jp/~kenzi/eq/old-06.html)

Server Update

6/13/99 3:30 pm

EverQuest server PDT will be down for client-side update from Tuesday morning at 7:00 am This patch fixes specializations in the guild trainer. It will be displayed in the chat window if you click on a specialization skill. Down time is about 1 hour.

-EverQuest Team

June 27, 1999

(NOTE: auto-translated from Japanese, from http://web.archive.org/web/20001006103908/http://www3.jcss.net/~rpg/eqi/news/99-6-16.htm)

(UPDATE: English version found here, correct date adjusted: http://web.archive.org/web/20001206030200/http://www.eqtrade.com/cgi/news.pl?id=6 )

 Due to the situation which occurred on the CerfNet servers on Tuesday and Thursday night, we have had to place most of our resources towards rectifying 
 the problem on the live servers. However, we were able to make a few various changes to the Test server, some of which will be propagated to the live 
 servers on Monday. The features and bug fixes are listed below.
 
 - Currently, when a character dies, they return with 25% of their Mana and Health, in addition, they have a massive hit to their stats. - This will NOT 
 remain true, and we will be removing it next week.
 - Nagafen's Lair and Permafrost have been revamped with new treasure, items, etc. In addition, changes have been made to NPC spawning to the them.
 - A number of fixes were made to Research.
 
 The following fixes have been made to spells.
 
 - Vampiric Curse / Bond of Death (formerly Circle of Death) now work with their new effects
 - Fufil's Curtailing Chant (BARD) now works on monsters
 - Magician pet attack spells have been slightly increased.
 - Incapacitate now works for Enchanters (lvl 44 spell)
 - Wizard "Casting Times" for damage spells have been slightly reduced
 - Necromancer poison spells have had their damage doubled and their duration cut in half. They will do EXACTLY the same amount of damage, but in half the 
 pervious amount of time.
 - Necromancer and Shaman disease spells have had their duration reduced. Their damage has been upped to compensate.
 - Hungry Earth (Necromancer) is now researchable - check your book
 - Research for Thunderclap (Wizard) is now correct - check your book
 - Research for Fire Spiral of Al'Kabor (Wizard) is now correct - check your book
 - The Magician Burnout series has been made a bit better.
 - The reagent for Burnout III has been removed (Magician) Tuyen's Songs (Bard) have had their damage increased.
 - New Bard Songs have been added to vendors.
 - New Wizard Spell "Bonds of Force" on Wizard vendors.
 - Mana Sieve (Enchanter) has been changed. It is now an instant spell (instead of a DOT) and costs less mana (with less effect).
 
 If all of the changes prove effective, we will be updating the live servers with this data on Tuesday morning of the 29th.
 
 - The EverQuest Team

July 7, 1999

(NOTE: auto-translated from Japanese, from http://web.archive.org/web/20010312012034/http://www3.jcss.net/~rpg/eqi/news/99-7-1.htm)

Note, Important, Please Read

Made a temporary change to the Test server rules to test the new PvP team code. This test lasts about a week. If you play during this period, please understand that this is a PvP situation and will be killed by the player. If you don't like this, it is recommended that you play on a regular server until you return the Test server to normal rules.

In addition to testing the PvP team code, we will also try to balance the initial team and the range of possible PK levels. Please be aware that these items may change at any time.

The team is organized as follows:

• Team1: High Elf, Wood Elf, Half Elf
• Team2: Dwarf, Gnome, Halfling
• Team3: Human, Barbarian, Erudite
• Team4: Ogre, Troll, Dark Elf

Members of one team are killed by members of the other three teams, but cannot be killed in the same team.

PvP level limit is set to +/- 8 for Rallos Zek (normal PvP server) +/- 4 for this server.

The following is a brief list of new changes:

• PvP's effect of Faction is removed until an attacker flag can be introduced (if we decide to do so).
• If you are killed by a person with PK flag ON (+ PvP), you will be revived in the state of Mana0. This is considered "nuked mage syndrome".
• Increased Warrior's Hit Point, inherent magic resistance, and the chance of hitting critical hits beyond normal critical hits.
• Pets no longer open locked doors.
• When a character revives with resuscitation magic, all the magic on that character is released and replaced with a “ressurrection effect” that disappears over time. This is to prevent you from participating in battle immediately after resuscitation.
• Before moving this patch to a regular server, document changes to the client and server.
• Also, the upgrade to Rogue is still being tuned--Apply Poison is technically complete, but this is up to Make Poison as Make Poison is in the final tuning phase.

July 13, 1999 Test Server patch

(NOTE: from https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.games.everquest/oX2aZ7Mf7NA/Royw0kCvyEwJ and http://web.archive.org/web/20020206130950/http://eqvault.ign.com/archive/19990711.shtml) (Test server notes)

• Root spells will now overwrite spells with both positive and negative

movement components in a more consistent pattern.

• Banish Undead and Banish Summoned (LVL 49 CLERIC, NECROMANCER, MAGICIAN, DRUID, etc.) have been changed from All or Nothing saving throws to a regular saving throws. This will make them easier to use against high level creatures.
• Magician summoning spells that produce multiple items have been changed to summon more items as the Magician's level increases.
• All Poison and Disease DOT spells have received tuning.
• Druid DOT's (stinging swarm series) has been adjusted to do more damage over a shorter period of time.
• Immolate (DRUID) now does more damage, but has a shorter duration.
• Mesmerization (ENCHANTER) has been changed to a straight AOE radius spell - it will no longer hang in the area. The AOE radius has been increased, as has the range.
• Ice (LVL 49 DRUID) has been changed from an AOE spell to a single target DD spell.
• Rage (SHAMAN) has been upgraded to a LVL 49 spell - Fury remains level 34.
• Invisibility spells (Invisibility, Gather Shadows, Camouflage, etc.) will now blink before they wear off.
• Hitting F1 twice, or /pet target will now target your pet. The Duration on Pack Regeneration (DRUID) has been increased.
• Shield of Lava (MAGICIAN) has had its mana cost reduced.
• The Research entries for Intensify Death and Hungry Earth (NECROMANCER) have been updated.
• New high level Necromancer spells have been added to vendors.
• A new Wizard spell Chill Sight has been added to the Wizard vendors.
• The Magician's Summon Heatstone and Summon Coldstone spells will now work as long as the Stone is held or worn (the spell effect will never wear off).
• The Insight spell (ENCHANTER) now adds Wisdom, not Intelligence. Brilliance still adds Intelligence.
• The Tashan series (ENCHANTER) has had the recasting time reduced.
• Research for higher level spells has been made a bit easier.
• Spells that Add HP now work better on pets.
• The Necromancer's replacement spell for Charm (Screaming Terror) is on the vendors. Play with this spell - it is different from any other spell of this type that you have ever seen.
• Shrink (SHAMAN) has been put in to the game. It is a Level 19 spell, and available in all Shaman starting cities. This spell will only be castable in dungeons. It will not leave an icon on your screen - Shrink will last until you zone.
• High level Bard song (LVL 40+) will be slightly easier to sing (less missed notes).

July 16, 1999 Test Server patch

(NOTE: Japanese source here: http://web.archive.org/web/http://www3.jcss.net/~rpg/eqi/news/99-7-16.htm)

(NOTE: English source found here: http://web.archive.org/web/20020206130950/eqvault.ign.com/archive/19990711.shtml)

New Patch Message

The EverQuest Patch Server was updated with the following message:

July 16th, 5:00pm

---

The following changes and game play enhancements have been made to the Test Server,

• The "r" key will now initiate the "/tell" command.
• The /surname command has been added, which allows a player of 20th level or greater to issue his or her character a last name.
• If a character is knocked unconscious, and has no stamina, the player will still regain consciousness.
• Players are no longer able to cast Shadowstep next to a zone point and teleport to an area past the teleport region, which is inaccessible to other characters.
• If a player is too far from a corpse while attempting to perform the /loot command, a message will now be given.
• If the user was under the effect of either Treeform or Minor Illusion, then had Spirit of Wolf cast on them, the player would be able to move in their altered state - This is no longer possible.
• If a character is blinded, the chat box will no longer flash.
• The Eye of Zomm now allows the caster to travel up and down.
• If a shuriken or throwing knife is equipped, then unequipped, the weapon will no longer remain on the character model.
• When player dispels minor illusion, the character's weapons will no longer disappear from the character model.
• Monk trainers will now train Instill Doubt.

- The EverQuest Team

Plane of Fear Era

July 26th, 1999 Plane of Fear launched

(NOTE: Japanese source here: http://web.archive.org/web/20001006140853/http://www3.jcss.net/~rpg/eqi/news/99-7-16.htm )

(NOTE: English source found here: http://web.archive.org/web/20010422010411/home.tampabay.rr.com/estembler/tristram/tristram_eqnews.htm )

July 26th, 8:30pm

---

The EverQuest servers will be coming down at 7:00 AM Pacific, tomorrow morning for an update. The estimated downtime is approximately 2 hours. This update will require a minor client-side download. The following enhancements and new features will be activated once the update is complete.

General Announcements

We are currently in the process of finishing up final internal testing for Tallon Zek, the new PvP-Teams server. We expect that it should be coming on-line this week. Once the date nears, a better estimate on the time of launch and further information regarding the Tallon Zek server will be made available.

The Fear Plane is now on-line. However, before adventuring to the Fear Plane, we advise you to heed the following advice:

Traveling the planes is not like visiting a dungeon. People die in dungeons.

People die hard on the planes.

Dying on a plane means that you might die in a place where your body may be extremely hard to recover, or in an area that you have no idea how to get back to. Big, nasty monsters will jump you at inopportune times, spells may work differently and once valid tactics might go right out the window.

The planes are dangerous places to adventure, and massive player slaughter will happen on a regular basis.

We are not saying this to goad you in to going - this is an honest disclaimer. So don't say we didn't warn you.

Trade Skill Enhancements

• Baking Chocolate and Fish Head Soup now work as designed.
• Pottery has been enhanced by new items that can be made through the trade skill that will help the player-driven economy. Additionally, some of the profits of other pottery made items have been adjusted to facilitate this change.
• Make and apply poison is now working in the game. To apply poison a Rogue must sit and click a piercing weapon on a poison to apply it. When the Rogue attacks there is a chance the creature will become poisoned. The poison will need to be reapplied if the player changes zones.

New Features

• The ability to report player whom are harassing has been implemented. This is done by typing "/report" - the previous 10 lines of text will be saved to the server for Customer Support representatives to review. This command may only be performed once while on-line, you must then log out and back in to use it again.
• The "r" key will now initiate a reply to the last player whom sent the user a tell.
• The /surname command has been added, which allows a player of 20th level or greater to issue his or her character a last name.
• When a player consumes alcohol, a message will be given to players within the area.

Game Play Enhancements

• If a character is knocked unconscious, and has no stamina, the player will still regain consciousness.
• Players are no longer able to cast Shadowstep next to a zone point and teleport to an area past the teleport region, which is inaccessible to other characters.
• If a player is too far from a corpse while attempting to perform the /loot command, a message will now be given.
• If the user was under the effect of either Treeform or Minor Illusion, then had Spirit of Wolf cast on them, the player would be able to move in their altered state - This is no longer possible.
• If the Eye of Zomm makes contact with a zone-point, the spell will immediately wear off.
• Players may now target Drakes much easier.
• Several "Safe Zones" have been Fixed.
• A number of quests have been both enhanced and added.
• Helmet colors are now displayed properly on Barbarians.
• If a character is blinded, the chat box will no longer flash.
• If a shuriken or throwing knife is equipped, then unequipped, the weapon will no longer remain on the character model.
• Monk trainers will now train Instill Doubt.

Spell Additions and Enhancements

• The Eye of Zomm now allows the caster to travel up and down.
• When player dispels minor illusion, the character's weapons will no longer disappear from the character model.
• Some 44th and 49th Damage spells have had slight modifications made to them:
• Gasping Embrace (Enchanter) has been re-tuned in the style of other DoT spells to make it more party friendly.
• Retribution (Cleric) has had a typo fixed, and does about ten percent less damage now.
• Ice (Druid) has had its damage lowered by a few points to match the damage done by Starfire.
• Rend (Wizard) is now available on certain Wizard vendors (lvl 49 spell)
• Shock of Swords (Magician) now does more damage.
• Succor's (DRUID) casting cost has been raised to match the casting cost of the Circle, Evacuate and Portal spells.
• Wizard Portal and Evac spells have had their AoE radius range upped to match Druid Circle spells.
• Necromancer research components that did not previously stack should now stack.
• The Bug that allowed Screaming Terror to work Outdoors has been fixed.
• Vampiric Curse (NECROMANCER) damage has been upped.
• Share Wolf Form (DRUID) has had its Area Effect Radius reduced. This means that party members who want to be turned into wolves should stand near the caster, while those that do not should stand further away.
• Hitting F1 twice, or /pet target will now target your pet.
• The Duration on Pack Regeneration (DRUID) has been increased.
• Shrink (SHAMAN) has been put in to the game. It is a Level 19 spell, and available in all Shaman starting cities. This spell will only be castable in dungeons. It will not leave an icon on your screen - Shrink will last until you zone.
• A Quest for Ice Comet has been added.
• A Quest to help casters with research has been added. Good aligned races should check North Karana, while those with a more malign disposition should check South Ro.

- The EverQuest Team

August 10, 1999 Patch

(NOTE: Japanese source here: http://web.archive.org/web/20001006140853/http://www3.jcss.net/~rpg/eqi/news/99-8-1.htm)

(NOTE: English source found here: http://web.archive.org/web/20010422010411/home.tampabay.rr.com/estembler/tristram/tristram_eqnews.htm)

August 10th, 5:00pm

• Box of Abu-Kar Update*

We will NOT be removing the Box of Abu-Kar from player's inventories as previously mentioned. A decision was made to allow the item to remain.

- The EverQuest Team

August 9th, 6:30pm

The servers will be coming down tomorrow at 7 AM, Pacific, for an update. A list of the updates will be posted on the in-game news tomorrow morning. The approximate downtime is 2 hours.

Fear Plane Update

Due to an influx of shallow souls into the Plane of Fear, Cazic Thule has banished all mortals below level 46, from this point forward, from entering. In addition, Cazic has further refined the combat abilities of his minions within the Plane. These changes will begin to take effect after the update is complete.

Guild News

We are aware of the guild problems (unknown guild tags over characters) which are occurring on a few of the servers. Our programming team is in the process of fixing this problem, and it should be moving over to the live servers early next week, pending thorough testing.

To accommodate the increase in new guild requests, beginning tonight, guilding will be occurring every night at 6pm, Pacific.

Update News

The update that will be performed on the servers tomorrow morning will include a few additional enhancements, of which are listed below.

• A zone crash problem.
• An enhancement to the Fear Plane which includes, a base limit of level 46 for entry into the Fear Plane, and NPC encounter adjustments.
• Paralyzing Earth now Wizard and Necromancer useable
• The Mana cost on some Magician damage shields has been slightly reduced
• Alter Plane: Hate and Alter Plane: Sky have been changed into higher level spells.
• Succor: Ro (Druid) is now a level 39 spell (previously a typo as a level 49 spell)
• Curse of the Simple Mind (Enchanter) now lowers both Int AND Wis.
• Shadow Vortex (Necro) should be more effective.

- The EverQuest Team

August 10, 1999 Abu-Kar update

(NOTE: Auto-translated from Japanese from this website: http://web.archive.org/web/20001006140853/http://www3.jcss.net/~rpg/eqi/news/99-8-1.htm)

8/10, 5:00 pm

• Box of Abu-Kar Update *

Box of Abu-Kar will not be removed from player inventory. I decided to leave that item.

August 26, 1999

(NOTE: English version found here: http://web.archive.org/web/20010210085939/www.eqic.net/patches.htm)

The Test Server has now been converted to a PvP-teams server for testing purposes. In addition, the following changes have been made.

• PvP spell damage is 60 percent that of player vs NPC damage.
• If a player is rooted by another player, then hit by a spell from another player, the root effect is removed.
• Experience is no longer lost when dying to a DoT spell only on the Pvp and PvP-teams server.
• It is no longer possible to loot from a player's weapon or ammo slots.
• When a warrior is dual wielding whips, both hands will lash out when attacking.
• If a character unsuccessfully cast Minor Illusion, the Minor Illusion Icon would appear and the character would be unable to move. This will no longer occur.

We have also added approximately 70 new text emotes. For information regarding the new emotes, please refer to the EverQuest_Manual in your EverQuest directory.

- The EverQuest Team

Also:

We will be converting the Test server over to the PvP-teams rules beginning at 10 am PDT, tomorrow morning. It is estimated that Test will remain a PvP-teams server for the next 1-2 weeks.

Listed below are some enhancements made to the Test server recently.

• Rangers may now perform critical hits with bows - this will begin at level 12.
• The Dodge and Parry skill caps for Rangers have been raised significantly.
• Rogues may now perform critical hits with throwing weapons. - this will also begin at level 12.
• The ability to apply poison at lower levels was increased significantly for Rogues.

- The EverQuest Team

Also:

As many of you know, a change to reduce kiting made on the Test server. If a creature is pursuing the user or it's target and it is not fleeing, it will not take damage from a DoT spell. If the creature is rooted, meleeing etc, it will take damage from a DoT.

Example: A Shaman casts spirit of the wolf on himself, then affliction on a creature. The Shaman is careful to run ahead of the creature to keep it in pursuit of him but just out of melee range. While the creature pursues the shaman and is not in melee range, the creature takes no damage from affliction.

Example: A Shaman casts Affliction on a creature. The creature engages either the shaman or his warrior buddy in combat. The monster will take full affliction DOT damage. If a creature stops to cast a spell or use an ability or engage in melee, or is rooted or fleeing, that creature takes full damage from all DOT spells. If a creature is chasing its target and its target is out of melee range, the creature takes no DOT damage.

- The EverQuest Team

August 31, 1999

(NOTE: English version found here: http://web.archive.org/web/20010210085939/www.eqic.net/patches.htm)

(UPDATE: And here: http://web.archive.org/web/20001206015200/http://www.eqtrade.com/cgi/news.pl?id=4 )

 We apologize for the short notice for this Server Update, but it was necessary to correct some problems that had arisen.
 This server side patch contains the following:
 
 1. Rangers now get Critical Hits with Bows.
 2. Rogues now get Critical Hits with Thrown Weapons.
 3. Parry and Dodge Skill Caps for Rangers have been raised.
 4. The DoT bug realted to not getting experience or a corpse has been fixed.
 5. New PvP rules: You can no longer loot any weapons that the victim had equipped in his primary, secondary, or ranged weapon slots.
 
 Please note: This patch DOES NOT contain any changes to Necromancer's Pets, OR the Kiting/DoT changes.
 
 A warning message, "You feel yourself begin to appear." is displayed before invisibility wears off.

September 13, 1999

Bug Fixes

• Players levitating should be easier for other PCs to see.
• When charmed/feared and killed players should not be returned to the character selection screen.
• Lore items in containers that are dropped should not be destroyed.
• Charged items, such as the Staff of the Observers, should correctly report the number of charges remaining after zoning.
• Corpses should remain lootable even if a player goes linkdead while looting
• A player under the effect of charm or fear can no longer open their spellbook or sit in order to escape the effects of these spells.
• A player using online help should no longer be locked into the help screen if another party initiates a trade.
• Non-melee items equipped in weapon slots should no longer mutate if the pc is charmed.
• Extremely large NPCs, ie Vox, should not suicide when stuck.

New emotes

• Here is a list of new emotes that have been added to the game: agree,

amaze, apologize, applaud, plead, bite, bleed, blink, blush, boggle, bonk, bored, brb, burp, bye, cackle, calm, clap, comfort, congratulate, cough, cringe, curious, dance, drool, duck, eye, gasp, giggle, glare, grin, groan, grovel, happy, hungry, introduce, jk (just kidding), kneel, lost, massage, moan, mourn, peer, point, ponder, puzzle, raise, ready, roar, salute, shiver, shrug, sigh, smirk, snarl, snicker, stare, tap, tease, thank, thirsty, veto, welcome, whine, whistle, yawn.

PVP Changes

• In order to make PVP combat between spellcasters and melee types more

viable some changes to PVP spell effects have been made. All damage spells cast in PVP combat will do less damage to the PC than the same spell would do to an NPC. When a PC is under the effect of a root-type spell there is a 20% chance that they will break free when a direct damage spell is cast upon them.

Spell Changes

• Levitate : All players may now cancel this effect.

• Paralyzing Earth now Wizard and Necromancer useable.
• The Mana cost on some Magician damage shields has been slightly reduced.
• Alter Plane: Hate and Alter Plane: Sky have been changed into higher level spells.
• Succor: Ro (Druid ) is now a level 39 spell (previously a typo as a level 49 spell.
• Curse of the Simple Mind (Enchanter ) now lowers both Int AND Wis.
• Selo's Consonant Chain (Bard ) should now work better.
• Shadow Vortex (Necro ) is more effective.
• Screaming Terror is now an all or nothing save. This should stop the 'train' problems that it was causing.
• Gravity Flux will now research correctly for Wizard s.
• Lich and Bond of Death are now researchable for Necromancer s check your tomes.
• The different types of Words of Collection and Words of Acquisition are now more easily identifiable.
• Dead Man Walking (Necromancer ) has been renamed Dead Man Floating .
• Ignite Bones (Necromancer ) has had the movement component removed. This means that it will no longer break root and snare spells, and that it will now stack with the darkness line.
• Syvelian's Anti-Magic Aria (Bard ) has been fixed.
• A bug in some of the AoE code has been fixed. AoE spells will now effect more monsters.
• Some Magician Summoned items are now lore items. Items that have turned lore have had other small benefits added to them.
• Dance of the Fireflies (Druid) has been changed from Divination to Conjuration.
• Rangers have gained the spell Dance of the Fireflies (level 15)
• High Level Enchanter Illusion spells have had the remainder of their deffects implemented.
• Magi research components have been added to more monsters throughout the world.
• There is a new pet command: /pet taunt and /pet notaunt. Pets default to /pet taunt
• The Rods for the Ice Comet quests will now pop much more often.
• Envenomed Breath (Shaman ) has had its damage raised slightly.
• Scourge (Necromancer and Shaman ) has had its damage raised slightly.
• Enchantment of Light and Enchantment of Brilliance (Enchanter ) have been replaced by new enchantment spells. These spells have been added to a hidden vendor somewhere in the game.
• quests for Necromancer s to research their pet
• Alter Plane: Hate and Alter Plane: Sky have been changed into higher level spells.
• Succor: Ro (Druid) is now a level 39 spell (previously a typo as a level 49 spell.
• Curse of the Simple Mind (Enchanter) now lowers both Int AND Wis.
• Selo`s Consonant Chain (Bard) should now work better.
• Shadow Vortex (Necro) is more effective.
• Screaming Terror is now an all or nothing save. This should stop the 'train' problems that it was causing.
• Gravity Flux will now research correctly for Wizards.
• Lich and Bond of Death are now researchable for Necromancers check your tomes.
• The different types of Words of Collection and Words of Acquisition are now more easily identifiable.
• Dead Man Walking (Necromancer) has been renamed Dead Man Floating.
• Ignite Bones (Necromancer) has had the movement component removed. This means that it will no longer break root and snare spells, and that it will now stack with the darkness line.
• Syvelian`s Anti-Magic Aria (Bard) has been fixed.
• A bug in some of the AoE code has been fixed. AoE spells will now effect more monsters.
• Some Magician Summoned items are now lore items. Items that have turned lore have had other small benefits added to them.
• Dance of the Fireflies (Druid) has been changed from Divination to Conjuration.
• Rangers have gained the spell Dance of the Fireflies (level 15)
• High Level Enchanter Illusion spells have had the remainder of their effects implemented.
• Magi research components have been added to more monsters throughout the world.
• There is a new pet command: /pet taunt and /pet notaunt. Pets default to /pet taunt
• The Rods for the Ice Comet quests will now pop much more often.
• Envenomed Breath (Shaman) has had its damage raised slightly.
• Scourge (Necromancer and Shaman) has had its damage raised slightly.
• Enchantment of Light and Enchantment of Brilliance (Enchanter) have been replaced by new enchantment spells. These spells have been added to a hidden vendor somewhere in the game.
• quests for Necromancers to research their pets have been added.

Pets

• High level pets (44th and 49th lvl spells) do less damage
• Pets will now navigate some outdoor and dungeon areas better

DoT Changes

• If the monster is in melee with you, there is no change to how a DoT spell works.
• If the monster is running away from you (fear, wounded, etc.), there is no change to how a DoT spell works.
• If the monster is moving when the damage from the DoT is applied (happens every few seconds), it will take 66% of the damage that it would have taken.
• DoT spells have all had their duration slightly increased. If the monster moves for 18 seconds during a fight, it will take as much damage from the DoT as it would before the patch. If the monster moves for less then 18 seconds during a fight, your DoT will do more damage then it would have done before the patch. If the monster moves more then 18 seconds during the fight, it will take less damage then it would have before the patch.

September 14, 1999

(NOTE: From here: http://web.archive.org/web/20010210085939/www.eqic.net/patches.htm)

Trade Skills:

• Tailoring: More items have been added to the trade skill. The instructions on how to make the new items were also added. The difficulty of some tailor-made items was lowered making them easier to produce. New patterns now exist to round out the tailor-made items.
• Brewing: New liquor can now be made. The instructions are hinted at in the game.
• Pottery: The Mortar and Pestle is now droppable and Vials are now stackable
• Bowyer: More slots have been added to the Fletching Kit. Dual-cam bows have been added.
• Fletching: The range of normal store-bought arrows has been reduced. Players may now make a cheaper more effective arrow with the fletching skill. Nock vendors now sell all arrow components.

Items:

• Lustrous Russet Armor, the Hero Bracer, Order of Thunder and the Box of Abu-Kar have been returned to their previous statistics.

Also:

We apologize for the unexpected server downtime. We try to avoid unscheduled downtime, but it is at times unavoidable.

There has been no change to spell damage other than those detailed in the DoT and PvP sections of the patch notes below. However, if you are testing spell damage by casting on yourself the numbers returned will be reduced by the changes made to PvP combat. The damage done to an NPC remains unchanged.

September 22, 1999

Magic

• Illusion: Werewolf (enchanter) now stacks with other attack speed

spells.

• Casting times on the higher level Ward series (Cleric, Magician,

Necromancer & Druid) have been slightly lowered.

• The Lich (Necromancer) spell will now provide more mana.
• Surge of Enfeeblement (Necromancer) should now work consistently.
• Enchanter Wolf Illusion is now Outdoors only.
• Paralyzing Earth can now be scribed by Necromancers.
• Thicken and Crystallize Mana now produce their proper potions.
• All research quest combinations should now work.
• Eyes of the Cat now provides infravision as the description states.

General

• Summoned food and water will now disappear when the user logs out.
• If the player is under the effect of Minor Illusion, and exits the game, upon reentry to the game, the Minor Illusion icon will remain.
• Summoned items will no longer remain indefinitely when placed within a bag in the bank.

September 28, 1999

(NOTE: from https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.games.everquest/cDPw7CoNcNE/v9d3Q_a5T9cJ)

September 28th, 7:00am

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The following changes have been implemented with the latest patch, most importantly, changes to corpse resurrection. It should be noted that all corpses generated previous to this patch may not be resurrected, however, all corpses generated from this point forward may be resurrected with the changes listed below applying.

• Corpses that are older than 2 hours cannot be resurrected.
• Corpses that are produced from a duel cannot be resurrected after 10 minutes.

General Enhancements

• A Yes/No request window is now brought up when ever turning in the PK note to the Priest of Discord.
• It is now possible to manually reorganize icons within the spell book. This may be performed by right-clicking on the currently placed icon (the icon will then be highlighted), then right-clicking on the desired slot you wish to move it.
• Pet damage inflicted during PvP combat has been slightly reduced.
• It is now possible to place items marked as "No Drop" in the bank.
• Experience and looting rights is now awarded based on group aggregate damage (i.e. If a group's combined damage if greater than an individual player, the group members will be given the exp. and looting rights).
• NPC corpses will only remain for 8 minutes, even while looting.
• If a party member goes link-dead, the remaining members will be notified.
• Pets with less than 20 hit points cannot receive hit point buffs.
• When viewing an invisible PC with See Invisible, the name will be shown in parentheses over the character.
• All beneficial speed spells may be canceled left-clicking on the spell icon.

We have also made revisions to the /text command section of the EverQuest manual.

Fennin Ro Specific Enhancements

• Experience and looting rights is now awarded based on group aggregate damage (i.e. If a group's combined damage if greater than an individual player, the group members will be given the exp. and looting rights). We will be gathering the results of this data throughout the day, and if need be, incorporate this change on other "live" servers.

- The EverQuest Team

Temple of Solusek Ro Era

October 13, 1999

(NOTE: From here: http://web.archive.org/web/20010210085939/www.eqic.net/patches.htm)

We are excited to announce the implementation of the new "Optional" patch system. This new system will allow players to download new optional files such as zones, music, character animations, etc. After the EverQuest executable is run (everquest.exe), and once the download is complete, you will receive an option to patch the "optional" files. If "Yes" is selected, the optional files will begin downloading, if "No" is selected, you will bypass the optional files and continue. Please note that this optional patch requestor will appear every time everquest.exe is run.

In addition to the optional patch program, the following changes and enhancements have been made:

Optional Patch

• A new zone, The Temple of Solusek Ro, is now available via the optional patch.

General Enhancements

• Experience and looting rights are now awarded for group aggregate damage. This is now true for ALL servers. We still consider this change in 'TEST' and will conduct a poll as to whether it positively addresses the kill stealing situation in approximately 2 weeks.
• As mentioned on Saturday, Rubicite armor will no longer spawn. The new class specific quests to obtain the new armor are now in for each class that could wear Rubicite.
• Journeyman's Boots will no longer spawn where they did but rather are the products of a quest.
• To address trade fraud (players removing items/money immediately prior to trading to deceive the other player), items/money may only be removed by clicking on the "Cancel" button.
• When receiving a text message from either an NPC or PC speaking in a language other than "Common Tongue", if the user's language skill is high enough, the language being spoken will be noted preceding the text.
• The fishing pole will now appear in the player's hand whenever the fishing skill is used.
• A number of quests were both added and enhanced throughout the zones.

Trade Skills

• A number of new items have been added to Blacksmithing.

Spell Enhancements

• Some of the Items that Magicians summon with their spells have been made better or had their effects increased.
• Fufil's Curtailing Chant, Tuyen's Chant of Flame and Tuyen's Chant of Frost have all had their effects slightly increased.
• The Burnout Series has had the negative HP component reduced (improvement) and the stat buff increased (improvement). Because of this, the spells are no longer permanent. They now have a 15 minute duration. Burnout III has also had its casting cost reduced.
• Illusion: Werewolf attack speed component now works as intended.
• Insipid Weakness will research as intended.

- The EverQuest Team

October 20, 1999

(NOTE: From here: http://web.archive.org/web/20010210085939/www.eqic.net/patches.htm)

10/20, 8:00 am

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The Following enhancements have been made with the update:

General Enhancements

• If a user is killed due to self-inflicted spell or melee damage, experience will be lost.
• When using a levitation spell, players are now vulnerable to attack from both waterbound and landbound creatures
• A number of enhancements have been made to balance the class specificarmor quests implemented last week.
• A bug was resolved which resulted in a quest reward not being given approximately 1 percent of the time.
• This has been fixed.

Spell Enhancements

• Spirit Cap has been made slightly more mana-efficent.

Announcements

• Transfer of Accounts and in-game Properties (Ebay, etc.)

This is a reminder that, as per the EverQuest License Agreement, ownership transfer of accounts, characters, items (except for in-game trading/selling/buying), and any other game related properties are expressly forbidden. Doing so is in violation of the License, done at your own risk, and we (989 Studios/Sony Online Entertainment/Verant) are not responsible for any issues resulting from such a transaction, including but not limited to fraud, sales of banned or suspended characters, purchased character's bad reputations, etc.

• High Risk Areas and Corpse Retrievals

This is a reminder that the following zones/encounter types are high risk and may result in irretrievable corpses: The Plane of Fear, Dragon Encounters (Vox/Nagafen), and the forthcoming zones, the Plane of Hate and the Plane of Sky. Should members of your party fall in battle it may be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to recover their corpses (for example, they might be at the feet of a big red dragon). GMs and Guides can only help with Corpse Retrievals if there is a bug involved, and while this is true for all areas in the game, because of the extreme danger of the Planes and Dragon Encounters, we felt it important to remind our players of these issues.

• NPC Spawning Issues

This is a reminder that some NPCs are part of what we call 'encounter tables', in which only one encounter (NPC(s)) are present at any given time. Thus, while searching for rare and hidden NPCs throughout the world, it may be necessarily to slay common NPCs in the area you are searching in order to get the rare NPC to appear.

- The EverQuest Team

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10-21-99

Listed below are two changes that went up yesterday which we forgot to mention:

• Cancel Magic may only be used on group members.
• Dragons are now able to see invisible.

- The EverQuest Team

October 28, 1999

(NOTE: from https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.games.everquest/V7mxSVQkiFM/xSpY3JS52poJ)

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October 28th, 7:00am

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General Enhancements

User Adjustable Clipping-plane

We have recently implemented a user adjustable clipping-plane. This will allow players with higher-end hardware to move out the distance at which the 3D world geometry is drawn into view, as well as the ability for players with lower-end hardware to pull this distance in, to further improve frame-rate. To utilize this new feature, you may do so by adjusting the clipping-plane slider bar located in the "Options"-"Display" directory, in-game. Sliding the bar left will reduce the distance at which the geometry is drawn in to view, whereas sliding the bar to the right will expand this distance. The following rules apply as to which zones the adjustable clipping-plane may be used in:

- The clipping-plane can be pushed back in outdoor zones only.

- Zones designed with heavy fog (e.g. tox, innothule, etc), the clipping-plane can only be adjusted slightly.

Additional chat filters have been added to filter out any unwanted text.

Zone Enhancements

Kedge Keep has been enhanced with both new items and creatures. Please keep in mind, Kedge Keep was tested thoroughly in-house only, therefore, some additional tuning enhancements may need to be made now that it is available on the live servers.

Class Enhancements

Warrior - % increase on critical hits

Rogue - +8 poison resistance

Paladin - +8 disease resistance

Ranger - +4 Fire +4 Cold resistance

ShadowKnight - +4 Poison +4 Disease resistance

Monk - +8 Fire resistance

Shadowknights may now use the following spells:

• LifeTap may now be cast at level 9.
• LifeSpike may now be cast at level 15.
• LifeDraw may now be cast at level 30.

The LifeTap, LifeSpike, and LifeDraw spell scrolls may be purchased from any ShadowKnight spell vendor.

To make room for these new spells, the following spells are no longer available for ShadowKnights:

• Reclaim Energy
• Mend Bones
• Voice Graft

Spell Enhancements

• Level 35+ casters will now automatically meditate while sitting.
• Invoke Fear (Necromancer, Enchanter, SK, and Cleric) has both had it's casting time and mana cost reduced.
• Charm spells now message the message when they break (Enchanter, Bard, Necromancer, Druid)
• Magician pets now have new spells.
• Ensnare (Druid) has had it's casting time reduced.
• High level Necromancer and Magician pets now look different.
• Illusions (Enchanter) have had their duration increased.
• Tishan and Markar's Clash spells (Wizard) have had their casting times reduced.
• Some in-game Bardic instruments have had their stats increased to appropriate levels. Items effected are the Minotaur horn, Small Brass Trumpet, and the Drum. Some non-magic instruments have been made magic. These are the Mistmoore Battle Drums, the Lute of the Gypsy Princess and Kelin's Practice Lute.
• Bards with magic gloves and magic instruments may now punch creatures that require magic to damage.

New Emote Animations

The following emotes now have unique animations:

/bored /yawn /agree /amaze

/boggle /gasp /apologize /plead

/grovel /applaud /clap /bleed

/hungry /blush /cackle /chuckle

/giggle /snicker /cough /burp

/cringe /duck /curious /puzzled

/stare /dance /veto /disbelief

/snarl /glare /peer /whistles

/drool /kneel /point /shrug

/ponder /raise /ready /salute

/shiver /tap /thanks /bow

Item Enhancements

- A number of existing high-level weapons models have been replaced with new, much more visually appealing versions.

Trade Skill Enhancements

Enhancements have been made to the Tinkering trade skill to facilitate underwater breathing.

- The EverQuest Team

November 1, 1999

[Kunark News Release]

EVERQUEST POSITIONED TO AGAIN CONQUER ONLINE WORLD WITH EVERQUEST: THE RUINS OF KUNARK EXPANSION PACK

• Expansion Pack Features All-New Continent, More Than 20 New Adventure

Zones and an Enhanced 3D Engine - FOSTER CITY, Calif., November 1, 1999 -

989 Studios, a Sony Computer Entertainment Group Company, announced today that its highly anticipated EverQuest®: The Ruins of Kunark™ expansion pack, which is an add-on to the most successful online role playing game ever released - EverQuest -will be available in March 2000. The expansion pack will provide the more than 225,000 current EverQuest gamers with an all-new continent, more than 20 new adventure zones, numerous characters, an additional playable race and an enhanced 3D engine.

"EverQuest has a wildly devoted fan base who are constantly craving new challenges and experiences in the massive world of EverQuest," said Jeffrey Fox, vice president, marketing, 989 Studios. "EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark continues the legacy of EverQuest and takes it many steps further with a more detailed world that offers 40 percent more gameplay and breathtaking graphics."

EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark takes players on a mystical quest to the continent of Kunark, home of the Iksar race. On the continent, players face all-new challenges and rewards in their quest for dominance and survival. EverQuest fans can get more information and an early look at EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark by visiting the exclusive expansion pack web site at www.everquest.com/kunark.

Existing EverQuest players will be able to purchase the expansion pack directly online; pricing information is currently under discussion. New players will be able to purchase a retail version, which will include all aspects of the original EverQuest, along with the increased features included in the expansion pack EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark.

989 Studios - EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark

EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark Key Features

New continent "Kunark," located south of Faydwer More than 20 new adventure zones featuring both beginner and advanced zones including: lakes, jungles, crypts, caves, dungeons, ancient towers and underground castles New playable race, the Iksar (Lizardman) A new cast of visually stunning non-player characters; grey dragons, reptilian monsters, giant scorpions, man-eating plants and more More object animations featured throughout Kunark that include earthquakes and other violent natural phenomena A highly detailed world with three times the amount of polygons and larger textures than the EverQuest world All-new ships that will sail from both Antonica and Faydwer to Kunark Newly created art by famous fantasy artist Keith Parkinson Increased level difficulty range allows players to advance further in the game.

The most successful online role-playing game ever released, EverQuest features a multitude of adventures and quests with an interactive storyline that evolves according to a player's individual decisions. Players can choose to begin the game in any of the three continents, with more than 90 adventure zones and 13 cities. Each of these continents feature: diverse species, economic systems, alliances and politics. Throughout this adventure, players form groups, strategic alliances and gather magical artifacts in their perilous and exciting quest to conquer the world of Norrath.

The Station@sony.com is the official provider of EverQuest, with software updates and news about the game, message boards and other community features, as well as an easy-to-use billing system for EverQuest's monthly subscription fee of $9.89.

Verant Interactive is an independent development studio that develops cutting-edge online games. Based in San Diego, California, Verant Interactive has a staff of over 70 employees who consist of the development teams responsible for the online games Tanarus and EverQuest.

989 Studios, a Sony Computer Entertainment Group Company, is a wholly- owned division of Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. and is the third-largest PlayStation® software publisher in North America. Headquartered in Foster City, California, with additional development studios in San Diego and Santa Monica, 989 Studios develops software for the PlayStation game console and online markets. 989 Studios is a recognized leader in the entertainment software industry, with top franchise titles such as NFL GameDay™, Twisted Metal®, Jet Moto®, Cool Boarders® and EverQuest™.

November 3, 1999 Plane of Hate opens

(NOTE: From here: http://web.archive.org/web/20010210085939/www.eqic.net/patches.htm)

Listed below are the enhancements introduced in this patch.

Item Enhancements

The entire set of the Armor or Ro (Paladin class specific armor) and Darkforge (ShadowKnight class armor) has received an increase in AC.

Class Enhancements

Rogue Specific

• The minimum backstab damage is now same as their level.
• Rogue poison now procs on first chance after it is applied - it is no longer random.

Zone Enhancements

Following the Halloween event which took place on Sunday night, the Plane of Hate was officially opened with new unique armor, weapons, and items. Please note, to enter the Plane of Hate, you must be at least 46th level or greater.

In addition, the EverQuest patch program has been altered such that there is no longer a seperate "Optional Patch" request window. The Optional patch may now be selected via a button on the standard patch window.

- The EverQuest Team

November 15, 1999

(NOTE: From here: http://web.archive.org/web/20010210085939/www.eqic.net/patches.htm)

Due to the Sprint router problem, which is resulting in players being unable to connect to the EverQuest servers, we have decided to perform the update which was originally scheduled for tomorrow morning, to now.

PvP and PvP-Teams

Any spell that results in a "Fear" or "Charm" effect may no longer be cast on other players. Please note that this change will only be active on Rallos Zek (PvP), Tallon Zek, and Vallon Zek (PvP-Teams).

- The EverQuest Team

November 16, 1999 Q&A with GZ

(NOTE: Taken from here: http://web.archive.org/web/20000229195356fw_/http://everquest.station.sony.com/p_archmage991115.html)

Q: When I party, how much experience does a pet take from my group.

A: When you group, the pet takes a minimal to zero experience share from your party. This is different from soloing - when you solo, your pet does take a percent of the experience that you would ordinarily have gotten.

On average, a pet will take about a .5 to 1 (out of 100) percent party experience share. From personal summoning experience, a pet is always worth having in a group if you are in an environment that is pet friendly.

Q: Is there a different saving throw for Root and Grasping Roots?

A: No. Root and Grasping Roots use exactly the same saving throw algorithms. The fact that Grasping Roots does a single hit of damage when it immobilizes the creature does not get figured in to the saving throw math - if the creature fails its save verses Grasping Root, damage is applied. If the creature makes the save, no damage is done.

Once again, there is no difference between the saving throw for Root and Grasping Root (or any of their higher level versions), urban myth notwithstanding.

Q: What is the difference between Root, Enstill, Immobilize and Paralyzing Earth?

A: The Root (and Grasping Root) series of spells are a bit confusing because they do not upgrade like most other EverQuest spells.

First a bit of information on Root spells. When a Root spell is cast, the Target gets a saving throw. If the saving throw succeeds, then the Target is not Rooted. If the saving throw fails, then the Target’s movement is reduced to zero. Every designated time increment after that, the Target gets a reduced percent saving throw to break out of Root.

The Target gets an additional reduced percent saving throw every time they are damaged - by melee or by magic.

This being said:

Root (and Grasping Roots) are the baseline from which all other Root spells are measured.

Enstill (and Ensnaring Roots) have a longer potential duration then Root. You would use this spell if you were trying to keep a creature out of combat. If you plan on damaging the creature, then use Root. If you just want the creature to stay out of the way (say you are fighting two creatures), then you would use Enstill.

Immobilize (and Enveloping Roots) have a quicker casting time then Root, and have slightly longer potential durations. This is in all ways an upgrade to Root, with the only downside being the higher mana cost. You would use this spell when you expect the creature to be within melee range of you and casting time is important.

Paralyzing Earth (and Engulfing Roots) both have four times the potential duration of Root and twice the potential duration of Enstill. It is in all ways an upgrade to Enstill. You would use this spell in the same circumstances that you would use Enstill.

As a note, each of the Druidic Grasping Root spells do more damage then the previous versions.

Q: How do the new Monk / Necromancer / ShadowKnight changes to Feign Death work?

A: Feign Death was recently changed by the Tuning Team to reflect evolving gameplay issues. Since two of the three classes that get Feign Death get it through spells, I thought this might be a good place to explain the changes.

Previously, when you used Feign Death (and assuming you cast the spell successfully or, in the case of the Monk, made your skill roll) hostile monsters would decided that you were dead and wander off. When you later got up, they would still remember that they were angry with you. If you were within sight, they would immediately come after you. If not, they would come after you at some later point. This might happen within a few minutes, or could happen even a few hours later. The only way to be absolutely sure that a monster had forgotten about you was to zone.

With our new changes, about a third of the time that you successfully Feign Death, the monster will immediately forget about you, similar to an Enchanter casting Memory Blur. If they do NOT forget about you, they will immediately come after you when you stand up. No more monsters coming back at irregular amounts of time - it should be immediate or not at all.

This is a change - the old way, if you Feigned Death a single time, the monster would always remember you. This way, they remember you about two-thirds of the time.

Using the old Feign Death, you could Feign Death multiple times to try to confuse the monster. After about seven or eight times doing this, most monsters would eventually forget they were mad at you.

With the new Feign Death, if you Feign Death once the monster has about a 65 percent chance of remembering you. Twice and the monster has about a 50 percent chance of remembering you. Four times means about 20 percent, and six times means about 8 percent. This is very similar to the old Feign Death.

Another addition to the new Feign Death involves a monster "going home." When you Feign Death, most monsters will return to where they were before the fight. If a monster returns to its initial location, it will immediately forget about you greater then 90 percent of the time. Therefore, if you Feign Death and stay down long enough for a monster to "go home," you should be safe when you stand up a majority of the time. If the monster is still mad at you, it will return immediately, rather then wandering back later at some irregular interval.

• Late Breaking News

After further testing and watching these changes on the Live verses the Test Server, we will be changing Feign Death again on the next patch.

New changes will make it so that if the monster is less then level 35, the monster will always forget about you. If the monster is greater then level 35 it will use the changes detailed above.

Q: Why is [X] spell worse then [Y] spell? I used [insert name of program that strips spell information here], and...

A: OK - STOP. All of those nifty programs that supposedly strip out the information for our spell are nice for reading what class can cast the spell, or the text that the spell displays when it is cast - but then again, a good website can tell you that. I've checked out a lot of those programs, and I have yet to see one that ACCURATELY tells the effects of a spell.

At this point, I would trust information from websites more then I would from one of these programs. The information from webistes usually comes from players who have gotten the data first hand.

Q: When my ShadowKnight casts Lifetap, it takes more mana then when my Necromancer casts it. Is this a bug?

A: This is not a bug. It does take more mana for your SK to cast a Lifetap spell then it would take a Necromancer of the same level.

We did a lot of Internal and Test Server testing on this one, and set the mana cost to a level that we felt was appropriate to the level of power that we wanted to add to the SK. ShadowKnights gave up three fairly ineffective spells for three spells that will help to reduce their downtime. Until this point, the only healing that a ShadowKnight had access to was their 22nd level spell Vampiric Embrace. With the addition of the three Lifetap spells, the ShadowKnight now has access to limited healing abilities - they can siphon life from other creatures and add it to their own. These spells will not be mana efficient for dealing damage - SK DoT spells will be much more effective in that regard. These spells will, however, let the ShadowKnight reduce her downtime by siphoning life at the end of a fight or from a nearby light green.

Q: Changes to Cancel Magic

A: Cancel Magic (and all of its variants) were recently made into Party Only spells - similar to Invisibility. This was done for the same reasons that we made Invisibility Party Only - to cut down on player abuse. Some players of more malicious intent were casting Cancel Magic on other players to get rid of their beneficial Buff style spells. This got around our play nice policy - effectively letting a NON PVP player adversely effect another NON PVP player.

To combat this, we made Cancel Magic Party Only. This means that you can only cast the spell on Party Members. The exception to this is if the target of your spell is a Player AND is not under their own control - say from a charm or a Fear spell. In this case, all Players are allowed to cast Cancel Magic on the effected player (to help get rid of the Charm or Fear). We feel that this solution will let players have the best of all possible worlds for Cancel Magic.

Q: Why are there no Bard Songs for Bard levels 39, 45, 47 and 49?

A: When we were finishing up the Bard class, we wanted to leave some room for expansion during the evolution of EverQuest. Because Bards get one song per level, if we had given them all fifty songs there would have been no room for expansion - aside from taking away older songs.

Expect to see new songs coming soon. These songs will not be anything that radically redefines the Bard class - but they will be additions that help keep the Bard interesting at high levels.

Non-Spell Questions

Q: Is it true that I get more experience when I party?

A: Yes. If you kill a monster solo, you get X experience. If a party of two kills a monster, you get X + P (P = Party Experience Addition), divided by two (half of that experience for each of you). The bigger your party, the bigger that P is - the Party Experience Addition is larger for three people then for then for two, and larger for four people then for three, etc.

As a side note, pets do NOT count towards P (2 players and 2 pets still count as a party of 2).

Q: Who made all of those wonderful spell graphics?

A: One of our extremely talented artists Scott McDaniel designed all of the spell graphics. I was involved to the point of saying "we need some graphics for these spells - and they should look cool." Scott did the rest.

Q: In every screen shot you always have a Skull Staff. Which staff is it that you carry?

A: Contrary to popular belief I do not carry a Staff of Writhing or a Staff of Discord. I carry the Skull Staff of Geoffrey. Sometimes its good to be the Arch Mage.

November 16, 1999 Patch Message

November 16th, 4:30pm

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Feign Death was recently changed by the Tuning Team to reflect evolving gameplay issues. Since two of the three classes that get Feign Death get it through spells, I thought this might be a good place to explain the changes.

Previously, when you used Feign Death (and assuming you cast the spell successfully or, in the case of the Monk, made your skill roll) hostile monsters would decided that you were dead and wander off. When you later got up, they would still remember that they were angry with you. If you were within sight, they would immediately come after you. If not, they would come after you at some later point. This might happen within a few minutes, or could happen even a few hours later. The only way to be absolutely sure that a monster had forgotten about you was to zone.

With our new changes, about a third of the time that you successfully Feign Death, the monster will immediately forget about you, similar to an Enchanter casting Memory Blur. If they do NOT forget about you, they will immediately come after you when you stand up. No more monsters coming back at irregular amounts of time - it should be immediate or not at all.

This is a change - the old way, if you Feigned Death a SINGLE TIME, the monster would ALWAYS remember you. This way, they remember you about two-thirds of the time.

Using the old Feign Death, you could Feign Death multiple times to try to confuse the monster. After about seven or eight times doing this, most monsters would eventually forget they were mad at you.

With the new Feign Death, if you Feign Death once the monster has about a 65 percent chance of remembering you. Twice and the monster has about a 50 percent chance of remembering you. Four times means about 20 percent, and six times means about 8 percent. This is very similar to the old Feign Death.

Another addition to the new Feign Death involves a monster "going home." When you Feign Death, most monsters will return to where they were before the fight. If a monster returns to its initial location, it will immediately forget about you greater then 90 percent of the time. Therefore, if you Feign Death and stay down long enough for a monster to "go home," you should be safe when you stand up a majority of the time. If the monster IS still mad at you, it will return immediately, rather then wandering back later at some irregular interval.

FEIGN DEATH UPDATE

After further testing and watching these changes on the Live verses the Test Server, we will bechanging Feign Death again on the next patch.

New changes will make it so that if the creature is less than level 35, the monster will always forget about you. If the creature greater then level 35, then the monster will use the changes detailed above.

- The EverQuest Team

December 1, 1999 7:00am

The following changes and enhancements have been introduced with the latest patch:

Monk Enhancements

-The Feign Death changes which were mentioned on November 16th are now live.

Spell Enhancements

• Tashan (Enchanter) and Malise (Magician/Shaman) spells now stack.
• The Pet bug (where if you have a pet, certain monsters can attack its owner anywhere in the zone) has been fixed.
• Alenia`s Disenchanting Melody (Bard) should now work.
• Screaming Terror (Necromancer) has changed. It is no longer a "Run Away" Fear spell - instead the targeted creature will cower in terror until it takes damage (similar to the Enchanter's Mesmerize spell).
• The Environment limit (Dungeons only) has been removed.
• Pact of Shadow (Necromancer) now has a 12 second recast time
• Summon Waterstone (Magician) has been added to the game.

- The EverQuest Team

December 7, 1999 Brad's post

This was not an official patch note, but was a post Brad "Aradune" McQuaid made on the official EverQuest forum. Taken from: [1].

Sha' Rite' Mon 12/7/99 A repost of the Brad's comments here for your viewing pleasure. The original thread is in the forums at www.everquest.com

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Several members of the EQ team, with some initial help from a player's email, put the following document together listing both enhancements and 'nerfs' we've made to the game since launch. And while we probably forgot some things, both negative and positive (please let us know and I'll update the document), I think it puts in perspective the ratio of positive vs. negative changes to the game we've made. I also feel it heartily invalidates the assertion that we are out to make the game harder or to have players advance slower overall, or that 'all we do is nerf'.

The following is broken down by class, and then addresses those changes made that affect the whole game. Changes we feel are positive from just about any perspective are denoted with a '+', and those some players might consider a 'nerf', but that we felt were important for the long term health of the game, are denoted with a '-'.

(again, I'm sure we've forgotten some things, both '+' and '-'; please feel free to comment and add items).

WIZARDS:

• + Added additional means by which to obtain Ice Comet
• + Made Researching much easier
• + Added more high level spells
• + Added more Class Specific Quests
• + Added more Class Specific Items
• + Enhanced High Level (35+) Meditation
• + Enhanced AoE Spells to let Wizard effect more creatures
• + Added Plane Travel Spells
• + Enhanced Specific Wizard Stun Spells
• + Added AoE slow monster spell (c.f. Bonds of Force)

RANGERS:

• + Introduction of better average armor that is easier than most to get
• + Critical Bow hits
• + Many new quests requiring a tracker to find outdoor spawn
• + Made Ebony Blade group friendly
• + More variety of items obtained via the Forage skill
• + Increased defensive skill caps (parry, dodge)
• + Added innate resistance to fire and cold
• + Added more Class Specific Quests
• + Added more Class Specific Items
• + Added additional Ranger Spells
• + Changed Some Spell Casting Skills to allow easier Skilling (c.f. Dance of the Fireflies)

DRUIDS:

• - DOTs changed negatively, making Kiting less efficient
• + DoT changed positively to enhance group play
• + Many new quests requiring a tracker to find outdoor spawn
• + Increased druid's tracking ability
• + Added more Class Specific Quests
• + Added more Class Specific Items
• + Enhanced High Level (35+) Meditation
• + Enhanced Pet/Charmed Animal Pathing
• + Enhanced Some Druid Anti-Movement Spells (c.f. Ensnare, Grasping Roots, etc.)
• + Lowered the Casting Level of Some Druid Teleport Spells

PALADINS:

• + Added Archery
• + Added innate resistance to disease
• + Added more Class Specific Quests
• + Added more Class Specific Items
• + Increased stats of Armor of Ro items

SHADOWKNIGHTS:

• + Spell changes (added lifetap)
• + Made Harm Touch less resistible
• + Added innate resistance to poison and disease
• - DOTs changed negatively, making Kiting less efficient
• + DoT changed positively to enhance group play
• + Added more Class Specific Quests
• + Added more Class Specific Items
• +/- Feign Death Changes - Better for Low Level Character, Better for High Level once learning curve has passed
• + Made Certain Spells Harder to Resist (c.f. Invoke Fear)
• + Changes to Pet Appearances

CLERICS:

• + Added more Class Specific Quests
• + Added more Class Specific Items
• + Enhanced High Level (35+) Meditation
• - Resurrect Changes (Players come back sick)
• + Made Certain Spells Harder to Resist (c.f. Invoke Fear)
• + Reduced the Casting Time of Some Spells (c.f. Word of

Healing/Health, Ward Series)

MONKS:

• +/- Feign Death Changes - Better for Low Level Character, Better for High Level once learning curve has passed
• + New tailoring armor
• + Added items that boost stats, etc.
• + Added innate resistance to fire
• + Added more Class Specific Quests
• + Added more Class Specific Items

NECROS:

• - LifeTap/Dots changed
• + Some Lifetap Spells Made more mana efficient
• - High Level (39+) Pets weakened
• + DOTs made more efficient
• + Added more Class Specific Quests
• + Added more Class Specific Items
• + Enhanced High Level (35+) Meditation
• + Necromancer Pet Buff Spells Strengthened
• + Added Special Items to let Necromancers Summon Stronger Pets
• + Corrected Bug that let monsters attack you from far distances through your pet
• + Lots of New Spells (c.f. Screaming Terror, Pact of Shadow, Vampiric Curse, Bond of Death, Summon Corpse, etc.)
• + Enhanced Call of Bones Series
• + Enhanced Screaming Terror
• - Added a Recast Time to Pact of Shadow
• + Made Certain Spells Harder to Resist (c.f. Invoke Fear)
• + Added New Looks to Necromancer Pets
• - Removed Charm
• + Enhanced Pet Pathing
• + Reduced the Casting Time of Some Necromancer Spells
• + Made Research Easier & Fixed Broken Research
• + Added Quests to let Necromancers Quest (instead of Research) their pets
• + Enhanced Effectiveness of Some Spells (Shadow Vortex, Surge of

Enfeeblement, Ignite Bones, Dead Man Floating, etc.)

Magicians

• + New summon item spells
• - High Level (39+) Pets weakened
• + Better mid+ level pets (they cast spells now)
• + Added more Class Specific Quests
• + Added more Class Specific Items
• + Enhanced High Level (35+) Meditation
• + Magician Pet Buff Spells Strengthened
• + Enhanced Pet Pathing
• + Added Special Items to let Magicians Summon Stronger Pets
• + Corrected Bug that let monsters attack you from far distances through your pet
• + Made Magician Research Easier - especially for their pets
• + Added Spell Effects to most Magician Summoned Items
• + Enhanced AoE Spells to let Magicians effect more creatures
• + Reduced Mana Cost of Damage Shields
• + Reduced Casting Time of Ward Series
• + Made the Malise Series Stack Better
• + Made the Burnout Series Better

BARDS:

• + Added stat and other bonuses to instruments
• + Added more Class Specific Quests
• + Added more Class Specific Items
• + Corrected Bug that let monsters attack you from far distances through your pet
• + Added Addition Effects to Some Bard Songs
• + Added New Bard Songs
• + Added Ability for Bards to Punch 'Magic Only' Creatures
• + Increased the Power of Some Bard Songs (c.f. Chant Series, Fifil's, etc.)

WARRIORS:

• + Added critical melee hits
• + Later increased chance of critical hits
• + More Hit Points
• + Innate Magical Resistance
• + Added more Class Specific Quests
• + Added more Class Specific Items
• + Added Berserking

ROGUES:

• + Added Poison skill
• + Thrown Weapon Critical Hits
• + Minimum Backstab Damage Implemented
• + Minimum Backstab Damage Later Upped
• + Hide/Sneak Enhanced
• + Added innate resistance to poison
• + Added more Class Specific Quests
• + Added more Class Specific Items
• + Improvements to Poison Skill

ENCHANTERS:

• + Jewelry Trade
• - High Level (39+) Pets weakened
• + Added more Class Specific Quests
• + Added more Class Specific Items
• + Enhanced High Level (35+) Meditation
• + Made Tishan stack better and removed recasting time
• + Corrected Bug that let monsters attack you from far distances through your pet
• + Made Certain Spells Harder to Resist (c.f. Invoke Fear)
• + Increased Durations of All Illusions
• + Made Research Easier
• - Made Illusion Wolf OD Only
• + Added Mana Enchant Spells to Allow Item Enchantment
• + Made Enchanter Pets Look Different
• + Enhanced Certain Spells (curse of the simple mind, etc.
• + Added More Effects to High Level Illusion Spells
• + Better Pet Pathing

SHAMAN:

• + Added Shrink Spell
• - Took too long to recognize Alchemy bug
• - High Level (39+) Pets weakened
• + Added more Class Specific Quests
• + Added more Class Specific Items
• + Enhanced High Level (35+) Meditation
• + Made Malise stack better and removed recasting time
• + Better Pet Pathing
• - DOTs changed negatively, making Kiting less efficient
• + DoT changed positively to enhance group play
• + DoT's Made Stronger
• + Corrected Bug that let monsters attack you from far distances through your pet
• - Removed Charm Spell
• + Increased the Duration of Buffs

ALL MELEE:

• + Purchasable Potions added, giving more versatility to melee classes and adding a money sink to the game to help the economy

ALL CASTERS:

• - Removal of Manastone
• + Made it such that you can see meditating (levels 35+)
• + Implemented Specialization

ALL:

• + HALVED experience loss death penalty
• - Removal of weightless box spawn
• + Purchasable weightless box added
• - Introduction of Frenzy code (after level 19)
• + New emotes and animations
• + New graphics for weapons
• + Populated Plane of Fear
• + Populated Plane of Hate
• + Populated Kedge Keep
• + Populated and added Temple of Solusek Ro
• + Increased range for evac and teleport spells
• + Added second boat between Freeport and Butcherblock
• + Added class specific quests for many classes
• + Increased treasure and experience gain rewards for many older quests
• - Upgraded NPC AI such that if an NPC is stuck it can teleport around obstacle
• + Added /follow command
• + Added adjustable clipping plane
• + Added /yell command
• + Added /friends list
• + Increased frequency and complexity of dynamic quests and events
• + Added ability to rearrange spells in spellbook
• + Added additional chat filters

-Brad

December 8, 1999 7:00am

The following general enhancements have been introduced with this patch.

• /Pet No Taunt and /pet taunt now works
• Bard Levitation is now working as intended.
• A number of spears are now available to the Shaman class.
• Dazzle and Entrance (enchanter) have had their casting times reduced.
• A number of NPC guards have received an increase in stats.
• Screaming Terror is now functioning as intended.

Zone Specific Enhancements

As previously mentioned, Paw becoming a mid-level dungeon is imminent. So heed our earlier warning!

Both Fear and Hate planes have been enhanced, in terms of how often loot is dropped by NPCs.

Race Enhancements

Barbarians, Ogres and Trolls may now slam magic mobs when equipped with magic shoulders.

• The EverQuest Team

December 8th Patch Addendum

(NOTE: Found here: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.games.everquest/M_RAbHrNQTY/GXVqbCXDQvsJ )

On the patch message yesterday, we forgot to mention that Shamans may now train in Alchemy.

• The EverQuest Team

December 14, 1999

• A revision was made to a bug with Dragons, which was introduced with the patch last week.
• The new Necromancer spell, Summon Corpse, is now live and functioning as intended.

December 21, 1999

After a week of thorough testing, the Summon Corpse spell is now functioning properly (we promise!), and available on all servers.

• In addition, it is now possible to cast Cancel Magic on non-grouped players on the PvP and PvP-teams servers.
• All changes were made on the server-side, therefore no patch is required.

From everyone on the EverQuest team, and Verant Interactive, we would like to wish all of you safe and happy holidays.

December 22, 1999 Q&A with GZ

(NOTE: taken from http://web.archive.org/web/20000229195356fw_/http://everquest.station.sony.com/p_archmage991222.html)

Q: How do spell fizzles (and missed notes on songs) work?

A: When you cast a spell, we call a fizzle check. There is always a 5% chance of succeeding (regardless of how low your appropriate skill is) and a 5% chance of failure (regardless of how high your appropriate skill is). What modifies a fizzle check are (a) your appropriate skill (Abjuration, Evocation, Brass, Wind, etc.) (b) your primary statistic (Intelligence for Magi, Wisdom for Priests, Dexterity and Charisma for Bards) (c) the difficulty of the spell and (d) the level of the spell.

When you gain a new rank of spells, any spell that you cast of that rank has a 20% chance of fizzling. This assumes that (a) your appropriate skill (Evocation, for example) is at its maximum value (b) that you have a minimum of 75 in your appropriate statistic (Intelligence, etc.) and (c) that we did not set the difficulty of the spell to less then average (some spells we assign a lower difficulty, making them easier to cast - to date, we have not made any spells with higher difficulty).

If your appropriate statistic is greater then 75 (Intelligence, Wisdom, etc.), we reduce your fizzle percent by 1% for every X points of your statistic above 75.

Each spell assumes that you have a skill equal to (5 * level you go the spell). A Wizard getting Bind Affinity (Wizard gets her 4th rank spells at level 12, so 5 * 12 =60) would have that spell assuming that she had a 60 Alteration skill for purposes of casting. With a 60 skill in Alteration (the appropriate skill) and a 75 intelligence, our wizard would have an 80% chance of successfully casting Bind Affinity. For every skill point that our Wizard has above 60, the percent chance of fizzling goes down by 1%, to a minimum of a 5% chance of fizzling. Thus, three levels (15 skill points) after our Wizard gets Bind Affinity, she will be able to max out her Alteration and have a mere 5% chance of fizzling the spell.

A high intelligence would help her to max out her ability to cast Bind Affinity without fizzling earlier.

Q: How many HP does the Paladin ability Lay On Hands heal?

A: Lay on Hands (Paladin ability, useable once every game day) heals 25 HP per level of the Paladin.

Q: Did you ever consider giving the Paladin a Full Heal with Lay on Hands?

A: No. It was decided very early on (pre Alpha) that giving the Paladin a Full Heal would be too easy to abuse. We didn’t want people making “throwaway” Paladin’s to pop full Heals on their primaries, nor did we want people bringing hordes baby Paladins on Dragon Raids to keep other characters alive. Giving the Paladin a Full Heal would also have taken away from the primary healing class of EverQuest - the Cleric.

From an RP standpoint, we decided that it made sense to have the Paladin’s healing abilities increase as her power and faith grew.

Q: How do Focus Objects work?

A: A recent addition to EverQuest are Focus Objects - objects that let you focus your powers of Conjuration and summon more powerful pets. Magicians may quest for four different Focus Objects in the Temple of Solusek Ro. Powerful Magicians and Necromancers may find more potent Focus Objects during their travels.

All Focus Objects can be identified in that they have the Reclaim Energy spell on them. [Warning - other objects may also have Reclaim Energy]

Most Focus Objects only work on a specific type of summoning. The Magician’s Torch of Alna, for example, will only enhance the Conjuration of Fire Elementals. Other Focus Objects will only work with high levels of Conjuration - they will not enhance low level summonings.

Focus Object must be held to work.

Pets summoned with Focus Objects tend to have greater skills, better ability scores and more HP.

Plane of Sky Era

January 20, 2000

(NOTE: Found here: https://groups.google.com/g/alt.games.everquest/c/JnDyJE1SdRs/m/GDyzC4OScIoJ )

January 20th, 7:00am

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Announcements

The Plane of Sky is now open!!! As a reminder to our customers, the alternate planes of reality do not necessarily follow the same physical or ethereal rules as Norrath proper. Enjoy!

Today is patch day! The EverQuest servers have been patched with the following changes:

General Changes / Fixes

- Some changes have been made to the exit of Nagafen's Lair into the Lavastorm Mountains. This will hopefully reduce if not solve the bug that causes people to fall into lava when exiting Nagafen's Lair. Please let us know how this goes.

- Due to feedback received from the customers concerning the density of fog during rainstorms, visibility has been increased.

- All drops of steel weapons have been replaced with higher quality fine-steel weapons of the same type. This change was made to reduce the amount of new currency coming into the world at the mid-to-upper levels. The fine-steel weapons are in all cases superior to the steel weapons that were dropping, they just sell to vendors for less money.

- Casting times have been implemented on several activatable items. This was done to correct issues that could arise from people chain-casting these items.

- The safe-point (the point which you return if you fall below the world) in Kithicor has been moved near the entrance to Rivervale, a safer part of the zone.

- Corrected a bug that caused AC to be improperly displayed for higher level characters. Your AC should now reflect all of your items.

Additional Bug Fixes:

- Corrected a bug in the client that could cause a crash if you were spammed with emotes by someone on your /ignore list. - Corrected a bug that allowed ships to move faster when disarmed - Corrected a bug that caused the Aqualung to lose its charges if dropped on the ground. - Fire Giants in Nagafen's Lair should now recover properly when stuck in lava. Consider yourself warned. - The Instill Doubt skill has been disabled on the PvP servers.

Spell Changes

- Shadow Vortex is now a "drain" spell.

- Siphon Strength will now stack with strength buffs and debuffs

- Panic the Dead cast and recast delays have been reduced. In addition, the spell is less resistable.

- Angstlich's Appalling Screech had its radius increased slightly.

- All Wizard AoE damage and stun spells have had their radius slightly increased

- Yonder will now interact better with levitate.

- Form of the Great Wolf had its speed component increased.

- Terrorize Animal had its casting time reduced and is less resistable.

- New magician's spells have been added. Check your spell vendors.

- Reoccurring Amnesia has been made more effective.

- NPCs will now treat the "Cancel Magic" series of spells as hostile.

- Previously, NPCs did not mind if players dispelled all of their buffs before attacking. Now they will.

- The Fear and Charm series of spells now properly notify the caster when they break. No, seriously, we're certain this time.

- Harmtouch now does more damage beginning at level 41.

Levitation Changed

Due to the implementation of casting times on activatable items, the code that disallowed refreshing of the Levitation spell while it was active is no longer necessary and has been backed out. The Levitate spell may now be refreshed while the spell is in use.

Quests and Items

- The Armor of Ro should be more obtainable. We will continue to evaluate and adjust the rarity of other class-specific armor components to make the pieces obtainable in a reasonable amount of time.

- We have changed the reward of a newbie quest in the Qeynos area from a level 49 scroll to a level 1 scroll. The issuance of a level 49 scroll was a typo in the quest data, allowing new characters to amass an abnormally large amount of currency.

- The stats on the reward for the Rogue Redemption quest have been increased to make it better than the favorite dropped-weapon for the level range.

- Ravenscale boots will now drop as frequently as other Ravenscale items.

- The Mask of Deception may now be equipped by the appropriate races.

Fletching Update

All arrows created with the new Silver-Tipped Arrowhead (formerly the Bladed Arrowhead) are now magical in nature, and may be used versus magical creatures. All existing items in your possession will automatically morph into the new magical items. Additionally, each successful attempt to create magical arrows will yield 10 arrows instead of the previous 5. As such, the vendor buy-back value has been decreased accordingly.

Paw

The difficulty of Paw has been decreased. We found that many of the gnolls in the new Paw had too many hitpoints, making the dungeon more difficult than it should have been for the desired level target. Please let us know how this change affects the viability of the dungeon.

The Plane of Fear

The item-drop percentages in the Plane of Fear have been increased. This change was supposed to have occurred in the last patch, however the data was not exported. It has been tested and equipment drops are now occurring at a much higher rate.

The Plane of Hate

The item-drop percentages on roaming and fast-spawning NPCs in the Plane of Hate have been decreased. Previously, these NPCs used the same drop-percentages as the slow-spawning NPCs, causing overall drop percentages to be extremely high.

Also, the inhabitants of the Plane of Hate no longer fall for illusions, and tend to "Hate" everyone.

Monk Enhancement

A monk's speed in hand-to-hand combat will now improve with level, beginning in the high 20s. This will result in higher level monks doing substantially more damage in a given time-frame.

Though this change does increase the power of the average monk, it should be stressed that the monk is now even more in need of true tank classes who have the ability to taunt upset creatures off them. We want to stress that the "taunt factor" of a monks fist has NOT been increased, though it may appear so due to your increased damage.

Paladin/Shadowknight Enhancement

Paladins and Shadowknights now have a higher hitpoints and higher skill caps on Bash and Taunt.

The additional hitpoints will be noticeable for Paladins and SKs over level 25. This was done because the Paladins, SKs, and Rangers had the same HP base, which upon further consideration is not compatible with our vision of those classes' roles. This change will basically put Paladin and SK HPs midway (in terms of Hit Points) between rangers and warriors of the same race.

The taunt skill was increased because SKs, and in particular, Paladins had difficulty taunting opponents off of Rangers, Monks, Rogues, and Warriors due to their lower damage output. Though the Paladin and SK will never equal the warrior in their ability to taunt, this change in addition to some of the taunting spells should help them become more effective tanks.

Bash was increased because Paladins typically aren't switching to two-handed weapons, choosing instead to continue using the bash skill. Most warriors, being ogres, trolls, or barbarians for the most part, do not worry about bash and instead opt for slam, which uses the same skill. Paladins are typically the only characters who use a shield throughout their lives.

Rogue Enhancement

Whenever a rogue is invisible, whether by spell, potion, or skill, they are now also invisible to undead.

This change was made to add a definite class-advantage to the rogue, allowing them to do something that no other class could do. It is the first step in a multi-step process to improve the rogue class.

Wizard Enhancement

Level 35 or above wizards will find that their spells (Magic, Cold, or Fire) much less likely to be resisted. This effect stacks with the Staff of Temperate Flux and enchanter, shaman, and magician resistance debuffs.

This change was made to increase the effectiveness of wizards at about the level that all spell-casting classes start seeing their resistance rates go up. Wizards specialize in direct magical damage. It makes sense that they should be better at causing that damage than the other classes.

Bard Enhancement

Bards will now receive the Meditate skill at 10th level. This skill will be granted automatically the first time a bard zones after reaching 10th level, and cannot be trained further. It will have the effect of decreasing the amount of time that it takes a Bard to memorize their songs. Previously, it would take 50th level bards upwards of 2 minutes to memorize a song. Now it is much faster.

Druid Enhancement

The skill cap on a Druid's tracking skill has been increased. This change was implemented based upon general public opinion that the former cap was far too low for the skill to be even marginally viable.

Feign Death and Pets

After a serious discussion regarding the Necromancer's Feign Death tactic, as well as reviewing public opinion on the matter, we have implemented a change. As we would like everyone to understand why we feel this change was necessary, here is a summary of the issue:

Problem:

Feign death allows you to become an invalid target in all circumstances, providing offensive tactics that are abusive. For this ability to remain balanced, the pet should follow the same rules as invisibility. Offensive tactics used by other classes involve the creature getting a saving throw verses the effect. Since creatures do NOT get a direct save verses feign death (as you cast it on yourself), and since you can retry the combat once you have feigned death, there is very little risk to necromancer himself. As this tactic involves charming an NPC and turning it against another NPC, which could be part of the same spawn, it allows for Necromancers to solo MUCH bigger rooms than any other class could. This situation is well beyond what would preserve game balance for any other class (soloing the Bloodthirsty Ghoul room and Ghoul Lord room, for example).

Example:

While there are many examples of how the Necromancer Feign Death tactic is abusive, one of the most egregious occurs in the Ghoul Lord room of Lower Guk. The room consists of 2 Bok Ghoul Guards and the Ghoul Lord himself. Using the current system, a level 50 Necro can easily solo the room at virtually no risk to himself. The Necro can get into the room quite easily with Invis To Undead. To clear the room he uses Screaming Terror on one Bok and Charms the other. When the Ghoul Lord rushes him, he feigns. The Lord then turns on the charmed Bok and kills it, taking considerable damage during the fight. The Necromancer waits until the Ghoul Lord returns to its spawn point. When the necromancer gets back up, he is in no danger of being attacked due to the way Feign Death works now. He then charms the 2nd Bok and Feigns again. The fight goes on and the 2nd Bok is killed. When the Necromancer gets back up he has a VERY wounded Ghoul Lord AND nearly full mana. The Lord is now an easy kill, and the Necro collects his special items.

Solution:

Ideally, Feign Death should work like Invisibility, where summoned pets suicide and the charmed ones break Charm. We do not want, however, to adversely affect lower level Necromancers to such a large degree. What we do recognize is the need to prevent higher level Necro's from exploiting key spawn points. Hence, when you Feign Death, any charmed NPC will immediately break Charm. However, summoned NPCs (pets) will NOT be affected. While this still allows the use of the Feign Death tactic with your summoned pet, it does not imbalance the game and many dungeon spawns to the degree that charming an NPC does.

Manastone Changed

The players have raised many concerns about the power of the Manastone, which no longer drops. They cite that people without a Manastone are not as welcome in expeditions to the outer planes and other areas as people with them. Since dropping additional Manastones via quest or removing them from the existing populace is not desirable, we've decided to make it so that the Manastone will no longer function in the alternate planes. Furthermore, it will not function in any of the zones included with the Kunark Expansion.

We apologize to those adversely affected by this change. Our general goal is to avoid making changes to items in peoples' possession, however we felt this change was, all things considered, warranted and for the benefit of the game as a whole.

- The EverQuest Team

January 28, 2000

January 28th, 7:00pm Emergency Patch

The servers are currently being brought down individually for an emergency update. This update is being done to correct a bug in the server code that led to the instability that the servers have experienced over the past week. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Included with this patch are several changes that were not supposed to occur until the regular patch next week. These changes are inseparable from the changes required to fix the network problems, and as such are being implemented a little earlier than we would like. There will be additional changes in the next patch that we wanted to include with the current changes, however to reduce overall downtime and customer inconvenience, they are being postponed until next week.

Changes in Current Patch

Warriors

Warriors now have a chance to strike a "Crippling Blow" when berserk. "Crippling Blow" is much the same as a "Critical Hit" with increased damage and an integral stun.

Magicians and Necromancers

We discovered a bug whereby all NPCs will not utilize their "Dual Wield" skill unless they have a weapon equipped in their off-hand. This bug would not allow magician and necromancer pets to use their "Dual Wield" skill unless handed two weapons by their masters. Since magician pets could not wield weapons at all, they never used their "dual wield" skill.

Correcting this bug would cause all NPCs above the mid-20s to suddenly begin using their "dual wield" skill to attack players with their off-hand. This would cause a drastic shift to game balance, as most non-pet NPCs are generally considered balanced.

Magicians may now equip their pets with weapons. This will allow their pets to utilize their "dual wield" skill, thus increasing the number of attacks that the pet can make per round.

Since magician pets can now wield weapons, an ability previously reserved for necromancers, high level necromancer summons (44 or above) will now randomly cast spell effects upon the creatures they fight.

An additional change has been made to make it easier for necromancers and magicians to equip their pets. Previously, necromancers had to equip their pets with two *different* weapons in order enable them to "dual wield". This change allows magicians and necromancers alike to hand their pet two *identical* weapons, thus making it easier for them to get their pet to "dual wield".

These changes drew our attention to the disparity that exists between melee characters and caster pets. Both of these pets, after the initial round of changes, could wield certain weapons that would significantly increase their attack speed. We acknowledge that necromancers always had this ability, and apologize for our delay in addressing it, but weapons will no longer increase the attack speed (lower the attack delay) of a pet.

In the near future, several new spells are planned for necromancers of level 12 and above, including a new type of necromancer-only spell that is very group-friendly. We were planning to include these new spells with the changes in pet/weapon interaction, but those additions require downtime best restricted to the planned update schedule. We expect to implement the new spell effects in the next patch, tentatively scheduled for next week.

- The EverQuest Team

February 3, 2000 8:00 am

The following changes have been implemented on the live servers:

Spells

• Lay On Hands: Enhanced to heal more hitpoints per level.
• Enveloping Roots: Casting time reduced to match Immobilize
• Skin Like Nature: Small Damage Shield added. This will stack with other shields.
• Insidious Fever: Casting time reduced.
• Insidious Malady: Casting time Reduced.
• Burnout series: Negative HP component removed to bring it in line with the Necromancer's Intensify/Augment death series.

Songs

• Syvelian's Anti-magic Aura: Potency increased.
• Shauri's Sonorous Clouding: Now also grants See Invisible. Party

members can now see each other while under the effect of this song.

Additionally, the following songs have been given a slightly larger radius:

• Selo's Accelerando
• Agilmente's Aria of Eagles
• Shauri's Sonorous Clouding
• Tarew's Aquatic Ayre

PvP-Teams Change

Customers on the PvP-Teams servers have been plagued by a tactic known as "Bind Rushing". Casters would bind themselves in a hostile area or dungeon, and attack everyone of an opposing race in the area. Sooner or later the caster would die. They would then respawn, memorize a few spells, then jump back in to attack their wounded opponents.

As a first step in combating this practice and improving life for those on the PvP-Servers, casters will now respawn with zero mana after being killed by another player in a duel or open combat.

This code is new for those on Tallon and Vallon Zek. It has been in place for some time on Rallos Zek and works very well there.

The Plane of Sky

All spells that grant levitation will no longer function in the Plane of Sky. This affects spells cast by Wizards, Enchanters, Shamans, Druids, Necromancers, and Bards. The Plane of Sky is designed to be completed in certain fashion, and the existence of these spells allowed the islands to be completed out-of-order.

A teleporter will be placed on the first island in the next patch to allow people access to the room below.

• The EverQuest Team

Paineel Era

February 17, 2000 7:00 am

NOTE: Although these notes only mention "New Necromancer spells are now in game", this is believed to also be the patch in which new Magician pet heal spells are added (as per [2]).

Announcements

The City of Paineel, home to the infamous Heretics of Erudin, is now available via the Optional Patch. In addition, Erudites may now also be Shadowknights in addition to the other classes available to them. All Erudite Necromancers, Shadowknights, and Clerics who worship the God of Fear, Cazic-Thule , now start in the City of Paineel. As such, if you wish to create a character of this type from this point forward, you must download the Paineel zone-files via the Optional Patch.

Please note that if you downloaded the Paineel zone files recently, you must run the Optional Patch again to insure you have the correct version of the files.

In related news, all of the entrances to the Qeynos Catacombs have been fixed.

Enjoy!

The following changes have been implemented on the live servers:

Spell Changes

• The recast delay for many of the Shaman buff-spells have been reduced.
• "Reoccurring Amnesia" has had its casting time reduced.
• "Yaulp" and "Augmentation" should now stack.
• "Solidarity of Vision" has had its duration increased.
• The Druid spell, "Skin Like Nature", has been returned to its former status due to popular opinion. As such, the damage-shield component has been removed and the regeneration component has been re-applied.
• "Sense Magic" has been replaced in all cases by the "True North" spell. If you have already inscribed the "Sense Magic" spell, the spell icon will now automatically reflect "True North".
• A bug that existed with several damage-shield spells, causing their damage to be subtracted rather than added when stacked, has been corrected. The spells will now stack properly.
• The "Feign Death" spell, when cast by a Necromancer, will now have a fixed duration. The Necromancer will receive several warnings prior to the spell wearing off. This change was necessary because some Necromancers found a way to gain experience through their pet while being AFK for an extended duration, such as being in bed for the night. Note: This does not affect Shadowknights or Monks.
• New Necromancer spells are now in game. Check your spell vendors.
• Alchemy has been revamped. Check with your local Shaman.
• DOT (Damage Over Time) spells will no longer hinder camping.

General Changes/Fixes

• The dungeon of Paw has again received a minor update to slightly reduce the difficulty of the zone.

• All known issues with the SBLive soundcard have been corrected.

• From this point forward, deleting a character will cause all corpses belonging to that character to likewise be deleted. This change was made primarily to stop a no-drop transfer bug. It also has the added effect of cleaning up corpses for characters that people no longer intend to play.

• Crippling Blows will now display the correct damage in the "You have scored a Crippling Blow (###)" line.

Corpse Looting Exploit

Recently, an exploit was discovered that allowed certain unsavory individuals to loot the corpses of other players without their consent. The precise symptom of this is that the owner would find their corpse stripped of everything except for no-drop items, and items in a bag with no-drop items. This exploit was fixed in this patch.

If you were affected by this exploit recently, you are entitled to a reimbursement of your lost items assuming that we still have a record of what you had. Please contact a GM in-game to arrange for an investigation.

During the course of the investigation, people who have exploited this bug will be subject to disciplinary action by our GM staff up to and including item wipes, suspension, and/or banishment.

Rogue Enhancements

Rogues received several enhancements as part of this patch:

• The chance to score a critical hit with a throwing weapon has been increased significantly.

• When throwing a weapon from behind the NPC in question, a rogue now has a chance to score a "Deadly Strike", for enhanced damage above and beyond that of a critical hit.

• A new rogue-specific ability has been added to the "Hide" skill. It is called "Evade". This skill has the effect of lowering the amount that the targeted NPC hates the rogue, and has the potential of making the engaged NPC switch to another target (preferably a tank) within the rogue's group. It is essentially a "reverse taunt". This ability helps mitigate the negative effects of the rogue's exceedingly high damage-output potential. It also will in-turn help the rogue do even more damage as the NPC is much more likely to expose its back. It is engaged by targeting the NPC you wish to "Evade" and pressing the "Hide" button. As a note, you must not be in combat mode in order to use this ability.

Mistwalker

The Mistwalker will once again cast its spell as often as it used to prior to the last patch. However, the resulting pet will now automatically "dissipate" after one combat round. The change that reduced the "proc" percentage on the weapon was made due to an unintended interaction between the pet and the target when several users of this weapon were attacking the same target. Since the new pet now automatically dissipates after one round, the reduced "proc" percentage was no longer necessary.

Class-Specific Armor Quests

Class-Specific armor quests, especially those belonging to Clerics, Paladins, and Shadowknights, have been reduced in terms of how long it will take the average person to acquire the armor. These classes, and others that found particular pieces of their armor exceedingly difficult to obtain should find it much easier now.

In addition, a bug that hindered completion of the Bracer of Ro quest for some races has been corrected.

Tallon Zek

Loot rules for PvP deaths on the PvP-Teams server, Tallon Zek, have been changed from "Coin + 1 item" to "Coin Only". This change was made to study the impact of loot-rules upon server population in reference to the loot/efficiency disparity between caster and melee characters. This change is a test, and may or may not be retained or rolled out across the other PvP servers, pending the results of the server population study over the next few weeks.

Plane Changes

Several changes have been implemented in the Planes as part of this patch:

• Characters will now lose all enchantments upon entering the Plane of Sky.

• Due to the fact that the levitate-series no longer works within the Plane of Sky, a teleporter has been placed to allow entrance into the quest room.

• A teleporter has been placed within the Plane of Hate in order to give non-casters a way out of the zone besides death, potion, or group teleport.

Loot Messages

Messages indicating what has been looted from a corpse will now be broadcast to everyone within the looters group. This change was made due to public request and to encourage trust within the group. We may, in the future, employ filters to allow people to choose whether or not they wish to receive loot messages.

Fiery Avenger

The greatly anticipated defining blade of the Paladin , the "Fiery Avenger", is again available within game via a quest. The *first* devout Paladin to wield this blade and be validated by a GM in-game will be publicly congratulated within a patch message and on the Official EverQuest web-site at www.everquest.com.

- The EverQuest Team

February 17, 2000 (Later)

(NOTE: This patch wasn't in Allakhazam and came from http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20000217b.html)

Here's some more information on spell changes which weren't in the patch message:

• Mana costs for enchanting metals has been reduced.
• Dyn's Dizzying Draught has been altered slightly. It now reduces AC, Agility, and drains mana as well as spinning the target.
• Blanket of Forgetfulness has received a minor upgrade.
• Burnout III now has a slightly higher haste bonus.

February 17, 2000 (Addendum)

(NOTE: This patch message found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20010210085939/www.eqic.net/patches.htm )

There's one minor issue with Paineel that we neglected to mention in the patch message. At the entrance to the city, there is an elevator that must be activated with a key. The "keyhole" in this instance is a rock that is on the ground near the lift. A minor bug exists that does not allow people to click on the rock to activate the elevator. In order to activate the elevator, players will need to hold the key on their pointer, hover it over the rock, and press the "U" key. This will be fixed in a future patch.

In addition, the patch message made reference to a teleporter being placed within the Plane of Hate. The information provided concerning this teleporter was incorrect. The information should read as follows:

- A bug exists within the Plane of Hate that sometimes causes people to be transported to an inactive portion of the zone, from which there is no exit. A teleporter has been placed within this area to transport people who are trapped back to the entrance of Hate.

- The EverQuest Team

February 23, 2000

Today's patch was primarily comprised of server-side changes in preparation for the release of EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark. Only one gameplay-affecting issue was updated as a result of this patch:

• Being killed by another player in a duel will now cause you to re-spawn with zero mana.

This change was implemented to counter a strategy used by casters where they would duel to reduce downtime between fights, thus allowing groups to engage creatures that they normally would not be able to.

• The EverQuest Team

March 21, 2000

(NOTE: This patch found here in eqnews.txt with patch zip: https://web.archive.org/web/www.everquest.com.tw/download/patch/EQ_Patch_20000321.zip)

 March 22nd, 7:00pm
 -----------------------------
 
 Though a little late in coming, we wish to congratulate Musk of Celestial
 Crusade on the Tunare server for being the first to obtain the Fiery
 Avenger.  He is the first of what surely will be many to follow the path of
 Nobility and Sacrifice in search of the coveted blade.  We also received
 word that Musk wanted to thank the guild of Celestial Crusade, and in
 particular, Drool Darklighter, who assisted in completing the tasks
 necessary to acquire the weapon.
 
 Congratulations to Musk and everyone involved!
 
 -The EverQuest Team
 
 March 21st, 11:00am
 -------------------
 
 ***UPDATE MESSAGE***
 
 This morning's update consisted primarily of server-side changes to improve performance of the game engine in general.  However, there are several changes to note:
 
 *Spell Changes*
 
 - Skin Like Nature has had its damage shield removed and has regained its regeneration component.  We're certain this time :)
 - Many Shaman buff spells have had their recast delay removed.  You can now cast them on multiple people without having to wait between each cast.
 - The Wizard spell "Rend" was improperly saving versus cold.  It now saves versus Magic.  
 
 
 *Bug Fixes and General Enhancements*
 
 The spawning problem in Solusek's Eye (SoldungA), related to the spawn of the Clockwork gnomes, will be fixed later today in a zone patch.  
 
 The +/= key will no longer take screenshots. 
 
 You can now adjust your clipping plane by using the SHIFT/- and SHIFT/+ key combinations. 
 
 You can now view the Message of the Day by typing /motd.
 
 Corrected a bug in the /follow process that would cause your character to loop around to the right at times when following someone.
 
 Corrected a bug that would cause item-loss associated with trading a container marked LORE. 
 
 Corrected some grouping bugs that had the potential to cause the client to crash. 
 
 
 *Feign Death and Pets*
 
 The Feign Death spell will no longer wear off.  This change had been made due to an issue that was discovered that allowed Necromancers to solo creatures while feigned and AFK.  
 The change had some unintended effects, as we discovered that there are a few cases where someone could be legitimately feigned for a longer period. Instead of having the spell 
 wear off, any summoned pet will automatically suicide 2 minutes after its owner feigns.  This is the solution requested by most of the players who voiced an opinion, and should 
 serve the same goal as the original change.
 
 
 - The EverQuest Team

March 29, 2000

This morning's update consisted primarily of server-side changes to improve performance of the game engine in general. No items, spawns, spells (with the exceptions below), etc., were changed as a result of this patch.

Area Effect "Fear" spells will no longer work in PvP. This affects a bard song, as well as the Cleric "Wave of Fear" spell.

Corrected a bug with some of the Resurrection spells that caused them to return too little experience.

We plan on publishing data and item changes next week if all goes well on the Test server. We apologize to those who are inconvenienced by having to wait for the expected changes.

• The EverQuest Team

April 10, 2000

Patch Day

The following is a list of changes that were implemented on the Live EverQuest servers today:

Spells

• You will now receive a message when attempting to mesmerize a creature that is immune to that type of spell.
• You can now right-click-and-hold on bard songs to determine what instrument skill is used by the spell.
• Dyn's Dizzying Draught has had its casting time lowered significantly.
• Corrected a bug in the Druid root + damage spells (Enveloping roots series) that caused the spell's damage to have a chance of breaking the spell. They work much better now.
• The Magicians Phantom Armor series now grants HP regeneration.
• The Druid spell, dance of the fireflies, has been changed from "Outdoor only" to "Night only". It may now be cast in dungeons.
• Corrected a typographical error that allowed high level magicians to inscribe the Malosi spell. It was not intended for magicians under level 50.

General Changes/Fixes

• Items have gained the ability to be restricted by Deity. If a deity restriction is placed upon an item, it will show when you right-click-

and-hold on the item.

• The AC on the mid-level cleric quest armor has been increased.
• The Terror Mask will now cast "Fear" instead of "Call of Bones" as previously announced. The "Call of Bones" effect was placed on this item by mistake.
• The Mempo of Likato now grants AC.
• The Quest for the Short Sword of Morin has been fixed.
• Some spawn-time problems in Mistmoore have been repaired.
• Five spawn-time problems were identified in regards to the Armor of Ro (Paladin) quests. They have been fixed and Paladins should have a much easier time of obtaining their armor.
• Pets should now attack Willowisps on command.
• Many spell-gems and icons have been changed to reflect the appropriate action of the spell. Be sure to reacquaint yourself with your spell line-up.
• Fixed a bug that caused targetable bard songs to ignore the instrument in use.

Kerra Ridge

Kerra Ridge has been completely revamped. The target level-range for the zone has been slightly increased. In addition, many new quests have been added to the zone. The faction for Kerrans has been changed so that those who killed them indiscriminately before today's update can take part. Be warned that the Kerrans still do not like everyone.

Paw

Paw has received another minor difficulty adjustment. In addition, item drop percentages have been increased.

The Plane of Hate

The Plane of Hate has received an item-drop/spawn-time revamp. Take care in your exploration of this zone as many things have changed.

• The EverQuest Team

April 17, 2000 4:00 pm

EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark (upgrade) should now be arriving on doorsteps around the world. Please note that attempting to create an Iksar character will not work until the expansion zones are officially opened within the next week.

We ask that if you attempt to create an Iksar character out of curiosity that you do not proceed past the "History" page (the page that speaks of your lifestyle) in the character creation process. Once at this page, please use the "Back" button to get back to the character creation screen. Pressing "Next" on this screen will cause the name you have selected to go into the "used name" list, making it unavailable for future use.

We appreciate your cooperation.

- The EverQuest Team

Today's Patch

Today's patch consisted of preparations for the launch of Kunark, as well as some new art. The following spell changes were also included:

• Corrected a bug with a new bard song that allowed them to charm anything, such as deities and dragons.
• Added a lesser included wisdom effect with "Brilliance " as well as a lesser included intelligence effect with "Insight ". These spells will no longer stack.

- The EverQuest Team

April 19, 2000 4:00 pm

As part of the emergency update completed last night, a change was implemented that increases the amount of damage done by someone wielding a 2 handed weapon.

This change was made due to a statistical imbalance in the way that damage is calculated at the mid-to-upper levels. A person wielding a one-handed weapon of a given ratio was able to do more damage than when wielding a two-handed weapon of the same ratio.

We would like to stress that no change has been made to the amount of damage done by people wielding one-handed weapons. The net result of this change is that people choosing to wield two-handed weapons will now do more damage than they did before.

-The EverQuest Team

April 21, 2000 7:00 am

Greetings everyone!

This morning's update is one of the final updates necessary for the EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark launch scheduled to take place on Monday.

As part of this update, a new EverQuest Patch Program was sent to your system. For those who have installed the Ruins of Kunark, this update has added a button labeled "K-Patch" to the patch program control panel. Within these patch messages, Ruins of Kunark players may be asked from time to time to press the "K-Patch" button following the download of the regular patch. This will allow them to download Kunark- related updates when they are required.

If you have not installed EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark, you will not see a "K-Patch" button.

In addition to the Kunark-related changes made today, a bug that lowered the maximum damage of two-handed weapons that was introduced earlier this week in the Emergency Update was also corrected. Finally, the art update yesterday implemented a solution that we've been promising: Male barbarians can now see their shields.

We continue to appreciate everyone's patience while we get the servers ready for Kunark.

Thank you.

• The EverQuest Team

Kunark Era

Core Kunark Era

April 24, 2000 - Kunark Released

April 24, 2000 3:00 pm

Hello All,

Due to the unfortunate problems we have had with our order processing system, it doesn't look like every person that ordered Kunark will receive it in a timely fashion. We sincerely apologize for this unanticipated problem. We expect that roughly 90% of the people who ordered will be receiving their orders by today.

Because of the problems we have had we will be refunding anyone who ordered Ruins of Kunark on or before Wednesday April 19th and does not receive their orders by today for their shipping costs, as well as crediting their accounts for one month of gameplay. This applies to International orders as well.

We'll be taking care of these refunds via email at kunarkrefund@verant.com, and it will be necessary for anyone that wants to take advantage of this refund to send us your Station Name, billing name and address on the account and the date you placed the order. Please also include "Kunark Refund" in the subject line.

We are very sorry for the problems that have come up.

The EverQuest Team

April 27, 2000

Hello all,

I wasn't able to get this in the patch message this evening, but I'd hope you'd help spread it around. I'm also having new /MOTD's put on the servers to be sure that people get the word.

/movelog registered accounts from Veeshan and Bristlebane will be moving to Saryrn, Xegony and Bertox to The Seventh Hammer.

I'd like to remind everything that corpses will not follow the account, so everyone will want to make sure that there corpses are looted, or they will be lost. I'd also like to note that more people requested the move than we will be able to accommodate, and we appreciate everyone's understanding in this matter.

-Gordon

April 28, 2000

(This patch was not in Allakhazam. It came from http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20000428.html)

Spells

• "Scale of Wolf" is now group-only. You must be grouped with the target in order to cast this spell upon them. This change was made due to the fact that Scale of Wolf overwrites Spirit of Wolf , which may be more desirable in some situations.
• The "Cannibalize II" spell has been enhanced.
• Corrected a bug with "Song of the Sirens" that caused an unintended level-cap to affect the spell. Bards should now be able to charm everything that they once could with this spell.

Binding in Timorous Deep

Due to a feature within the zone, players can no longer bind within Timorous Deep. This functionality was intended in the zone prior to launch, as binding presents a possible balance issue. Players who are already bound in this zone will retain their binding location until they bind someplace else.

Iksar Quests

A few items associated with the Iksar newbie warrior quests have been repaired. The EverQuest team would like to extend thanks to those who reported the problems.

Iksar Factions

As announced in the patch server message yesterday, this morning we corrected a bug in Iksar faction that allowed them to travel outside Kunark without fear of being attacked by most things. In the event that any young Iksar find themselves in a bind/death loop, please /quit, log in another character, and /petition for assistance.

Server Splits

The recently announced server splits will be completed roughly two hours after the other servers come up from this patch. Movelog registered accounts from Veeshan and Bristlebane will be moved to Saryrn, and Xegony and Bertox to The Seventh Hammer. As requests to move were very strong, we were not able to move everyone who requested. We appreciate everyone's understanding.

May 12, 2000

(NOTE: This patch was not in Allakhazam and came from http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20000512.html)

Newbie Guards

As we are sure many people are aware, there are guards that exist specifically for the purpose of giving new characters a place to run in order to be saved from a certain death. However, as many people have mentioned, these guards are frequently either dead, or engaged by players choosing to hunt them. This makes things very frustrating for newer players, and with the large influx of new players due to the release of EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark, we decided that a change was warranted.

Though we do not have a problem with players choosing to hunt guards, the newbie guards themselves, specifically the ones at the gates of cities and in the vicinity of newbie zones, need to remain alive under most circumstances. To that end, we have buffed up these newbie-protecting guards, made them immune to magic, and given them some pretty good healing properties, in order to make them less attractive to people hunting them.

In addition, though we have left the guards inside cities as-is from the perspective of power, we've also found a problem with the respawn rate. Previously they were typically on a six-minute timer, making them spawn much faster than an equivalent NPC would in a dungeon. We have normalized the respawn time of guards inside cities to bring them in line with dungeon NPCs.

May 16, 2000 10:00 am

Patch Day

General Changes

• Sounds have been updated for NPCs in Kunark. Your Iksar should no longer sound like humans.
• Dark Elven worshipers of Solusek Ro and Bristlebane will no longer be natively KOS to the outpost in the Overthere. Take care that if you have taken actions allowing you to be judged sufficiently by your deeds, you may still find yourself KOS.
• Increased the number of frightfingers in the Plane of Fear. Previously only 3 frightfingers would pop per respawn.
• Several problems with the guards that were buffed up last week have been addressed. Some guards that should not have been buffed have been fixed. In addition, due to the level of the new guards, they all gained the ability to innately see-invisible. The level of those guards has been reduced so that they no longer automatically get this ability, making it a bit easier to sneak by them.
• Many quests have been updated and/or fixed, both in terms of ease of completion and reward.

Item Updates

• Corrected a typo that had the Canyoneer Pike marked as NO RENT, causing it to disappear on logout.
• Corrected the model for the Axe of the Iron Back . It was showing as a 2H sword when equipped.
• The Halcyon Broadsword was mistakenly marked as an artifact. This has been corrected.
• Corrected item icons for various pieces of Burynai Hide Armor . It was displaying improperly in the inventory slots.
• The Skull Mask of Innervation has been changed so that it must be worn to activate its effect.
• Corrected a problem with the Scourgetail Whip whereby the damage and delay figures were transposed yielding a 30 damage, 5 delay weapon.
• The "Illusion: Iksar " spell scroll is now droppable/tradeable.
• The Goblin Eye Poker now looks like a dagger instead of a small sack.
• Cone of the Mystics , which incidentally also looked like a small sack, now looks as intended.
• Corrected a typo that had the Goblin Skull Crusher 's effect set to the "Lull " spell, which is not appropriate for a melee weapon. The "Lull " effect has been replaced with an appropriate effect.
• The Pouch of Mistletoe Powder will now impart its effect on the targeted character.
• Mosquito Wings are available in game once again.
• Many items had incorrect usage restrictions, and have been repaired.

As always, we strive to avoid making negative changes to items that already exist in game. However, there are cases where a particularly unbalancing error has been made, such as with the Scourgetail Whip mentioned above, where the item in question must be fixed in interest of maintaining game balance.

We will continue to repair problems, add content, and enhance gameplay in both Kunark and EQ proper. We appreciate everyone's support.

Thank you,

The EverQuest Team

May 25, 2000 8:00 am

Patch Day

Greetings all! The following changes have been implemented on the Live servers:

Spells/Songs

• Voltaic Draught, a high level wizard direct damage spell was

improperly saving versus resistance to cold. It now appropriately saves versus magic.

• The higher level bard song by Brusco was improperly healing the

target instead of damaging it. This has been corrected.

Items

The Shadowknight class-specific quest armor, Darkforge armor, has had its weight decreased substantially.

The Runed Fighter's Staff, previously useable by Monks and Warriors, has been restricted to Monks only. The statistics on this staff are much more powerful than normally allowed for warriors. This change is retroactive and will be reflected on items currently in inventory. Though we strive to avoid negatively adjusting items after they have been earned, this item presented a balance issue, making the change necessary. We apologize to warriors that currently own this weapon.

A data error with the Symphonic Saber, causing it to report "Item out of charges", has been corrected. Due to the dynamics of this particular issue, current owners will need to contact a GM to trade this item out for a new, properly working version of the item.

The Burning Rapier (rogue weapon) has been enhanced. In addition to an increase in statistics, it received a stronger spell effect. The lightsource effect on the weapon has been removed due to an aesthetic rogue desire to be "sneaky" :)

The effect on the Hangman's Noose will now work properly.

General Changes

• Some NPCs in Dalnir were casting spells much too powerful for their level. They have been adjusted.
• Pathing information has been updated in Highkeep. NPCs and pets should have a much easier time of navigating the zone.
• Some Quest-NPCs were not spawning properly in Rathe Mountains. These issues have been corrected.
• A handful of problems reported with research practice via the Concordance of Research have been corrected. All practice-rune recipes should now work correctly.
• Gorilla's in Burning Wood now have a new texture set that properly reflects their undead status.
• Fishing should now work properly in Kunark zones.
• /yell now reports the proper direction to people hearing the yell.
• Corrected a bug that gave some races the impression that they were allowed to start their character in Cabalis. They were never actually allowed to create the character there, however the indication that they

could has been fixed.

• Corrected sound issues that were causing some crashes to the desktop in certain cases.

We are in the process of patching music files (*.XMI) for zones in which music does not currently work. There are 55 small files (around 2K each) that will be patched over the next couple of days to enable music in all of the affected zones.

The zone of Timorous Deep has been tuned and itemized. Certain aspects of the changes have made certain areas of the zone more dangerous, but the reward should be well worth the risk. Feel free to visit this zone and search out its treasures at your leisure. Note: These changes went in on Monday.

Upon investigation, we discovered a deficiency with the amount of experience being rewarded in many Kunark zones (mostly dungeons). The affected zones have been updated, and adventurers should notice the greater experience reward in return for the increased risk and challenge associated with these zones.

• The EverQuest Team

June 6, 2000 8:00 am

• Patch Day*

Greetings! The live servers have been updated to reflect the newest data on the Test Server:

• General*

• Some new spells are available for the hybrid classes. Check your

Kunark spell vendors.

• Found and corrected a problem causing people to fall to their deaths

upon zoning. The majority of these issues should no longer occur.

• Corrected outstanding issues with several quests, including the Brain

Bite, Shackle of Rock, and the Barnal Flamehands quest.

• Increased treasure in many Kunark zones including The Emerald Jungle,

Sebilis, and the Frontier Mountains.

• Upon review we've increased the drop-rate of level 51+ spells in

Kunark. They should be more plentiful now.

• Updated pathing information in many zones, making it easier for pets

and other NPCs to get around the zones.

• Items*

• A problem with the spell effect for the Luminary Two-Handed Sword.

Current owners of this weapon will need to contact a GM to trade their sword out for a working one.

• The Gunthak Harpoon is now rentable. It will remain in your

possession when you leave the game.

• A couple pieces of Blood Ember armor have been reduced in weight.
• Reduced the weight on several Monk weapons found in Kunark.

• PvP Teams Servers (VZ/TZ) and Illusions*

Due to an outstanding bug that allowed a player to permanently mesmerize or stun opposing team members when coupled with an illusion, illusions will now automatically cancel when the person wearing the illusion casts an offensive spell upon any player-character. Players should keep this in mind before attacking with spells in an area where their faction standing is less than desirable.

Illusions are defined as any spell that makes a character look different than they actually are. This includes all racial illusions, as well as other illusions such as Treeform, Wolfform, and the Call of Bones series.

• Risk and Reward*

The concept of risk and reward is very important to the game of EverQuest. Ideally, situations that provide a greater reward should also provide substantial risk. Over the past several weeks, we've been identifying areas in game where risk and reward are at a disparity, and making necessary adjustments.

In most cases, those adjustments are in favor of increasing the reward for a specific action. For example, we recently increased the experience awarded in many Kunark zones to offset the sometimes- considerable risk associated with adventuring there. We also do this quite frequently by increasing the reward associated with a quest by enhancing the item, as we did last week with the Burning Rapier quest.

However, in some cases there are instances where reward is far in excess of the risk involved, and we will be correcting these issues like those above as we come across them. For example, there are many cases where a solitary and stationary outdoor creature has a "fast spawn", yielding the reward of fast experience-gain without the commensurate risk.

Though it is not our policy to announce changes to individual NPCs, we did want to let you know that you will see risk/reward disparities corrected over the next several weeks.

• PvP Teams (VZ/TZ) Character Transfers*

As many people playing upon the PvP-Teams servers are aware, Vallon Zek and Tallon Zek have different rules regarding looting rights from PvP combat. Vallon Zek allows the victor to loot all coin plus one item from the fallen, whereas Tallon Zek allows only coin-loot with no right to loot items.

Due to the fact that the looting rules were changed on Tallon Zek post- production, we've decided to allow characters on both servers a one- time character-move. Registration for the move will open at 6:00pm PDT on Friday, June 9th, 2000, on both servers, and will be open through 12:00pm PDT on Monday, June 12th, 2000. You can register for the move by executing the "/movelog yes" command during the registration window. There is no limit to the number of people that we will allow to move between Tallon and Vallon Zek, so there is no reason to rush to enter the command.

Please remember that once you register for the move, your decision can not be rescinded. The actual character-move will take place sometime next week, at a time to be announced later. Please keep in mind that corpses are not moved in a character-move, so we'd recommend against leaving unclaimed corpses around after Monday of next week if you've asked to be moved.

Questions about the move process will be addressed in the Gameplay Message Forum available via www.everquest.com.

• The EverQuest Team

Updates Not Included in This Patch Message:

• Banshee Aura has had its duration increased.
• Scale of Wolf and Spirit of Scale will no longer be canceled by being

the target of a melee attack. Ranged attacks and spells will still cancel the spell.

• Shaman can now cast Charm Animals
• Some enchanter and shaman spells have had their casting times/mana

costs altered.

• Augment , Glamour of Kintaz , Rapture , and Clarity II have had their

mana cost lowered.

• Root spells that cause damage (Druid roots, Hungry Earth ) now work

properly.

June 15, 2000 8:00 am

Patch Day

Hello everyone,

Over the past few weeks, a portion of the EQ team has been working on The Hole, in preparation of its release in the near future. Even so, a number of changes and additions were made in today's patch. Most of the changes are in regards to quests:

• The "Fleshy Orb" quest has been completed
• We've received word that "Fabian" has been spotted somewhere on Norrath.
• Froglok Forager s and Hunters should been seen more regularly.
• Lord Grimrot should be seen more frequently.
• Skill in tailoring is no longer required to craft The Robe of the Lost Circle .

A few items have also been changed this week:

• The Robe of the Lost Circle has been enhanced.
• The Staff of Temperate Flux and the Rod of Insidious Glamour now have a short casting time associated with their activatable effect (See Below).
• The Gunthak Harpoon is again NORENT, meaning that it will disappear when you log off (See Below.)

Casting Times on Staff and Rod

We received word a few weeks ago that some people were using these items to "spam" other players with their spell-effect messages, causing them to disconnect. Though /ignore will allow you to filter out text messages caused by people on your /ignore list, it will not allow you to filter out spell-effect messages for spells cast upon you.

The short casting time should prevent the problems associated with the targetable and activatable effect on these weapons, however you will have to stand still to use them now.

Gunthak Harpoon

In the last item patch, we made the mistake of making this weapon "rentable", meaning that it does not disappear upon logoff. Basically, one of our game designers heard that the weapon was NORENT, concluded that it must be a bug, and took the initiative to fix it. Unfortunately, the stats on this weapon, despite its disadvantages of weight and its non-magical composition, make it much too powerful for its location and difficulty in obtaining it.

For these reasons, the weapon is once again NORENT, and will disappear the next time that you log out. This is a retroactive change and will affect weapons already in possession. We do apologize to those who acquired it within the last week expecting that it would be a permanent weapon.

Chat / Login Process

The Chat and Login server components are now completely separate, meaning that players will no longer have difficulty logging in due to an excess of people in the chat server.

- The EverQuest Team

The Hole Era

June 22, 2000 9:00 am

Today's Updates

The Hole

We are pleased to announce the opening of The Hole, a high-level dungeon on the continent of Odus. The Hole is a complementary addition to EverQuest, available to all subscribers regardless of their Kunark status. The files necessary to enter The Hole are available via the "Optional Patch" button at the bottom of the patch program interface. The files are quite large (about 9MB total), so if the download is going slowly, you may want to postpone downloading the files until later.

As mentioned above, The Hole is a high-level dungeon, designed to support characters starting at about level 40. It should be regarded as extremely dangerous. As a note, jumping in The Hole from Paineel is NO LONGER A SHORTCUT TO TOXXULIA FOREST. The GMs will not recover corpses for people who fall, or jump, or attempt to levitate into The Hole.

Vallon Zek is now Coin-Only

As we announced earlier this week, due to the number of people specifying interest in "coin-only" loot on Vallon Zek, versus those wishing to retain item- loot, we have implemented "coin-only" looting rules for PvP combat on Vallon Zek.

Resurrection

Previously, players had to be resurrected within two hours after death in order to receive any experience back as part of the resurrection. Due to the increased size and difficulty associated with Kunark zones, we've raised this limit from two hours to three. This should assist players and make it easier for them to obtain an experience-returning resurrection within the time limit.

Warping

We put in some code that should help decrease the "ghosting" (NPCs appearing to be some place they aren't) being reported in some of the larger Kunark zones. Please let us know how this goes.

Locked Doors

We noticed few weeks ago that it is common practice to use NPCs to open locked doors rather than by using the services of someone that is able to pick locks. In order to protect and increase the value of the abilities of the lock-picking classes, NPCs have gained the ability to walk through locked doors without opening them.

Vox and Nagafen

Over the past couple of weeks, we've received more and more reports of these dragons being bested by smaller and smaller groups of higher- level (high 50s) adventurers. As we've always felt that Dragons should be special encounters that require a large number of people, we were left with some choices.

One choice available to us was to increase the power of the dragons to a level where the level 60 folks would find them challenging. This would have the disadvantage of forever placing them out-of-reach for those who did not buy Kunark, and place them further out-of-reach for those who did, but are just now approaching the levels where they could go on Dragon raids. Another possible solution was to make the dragons flee (depop) when engaged by a more powerful group of people. This would have the undesired effect of allowing some people to deny others the experience of fighting a dragon.

Instead of raising the bar as mentioned above, we've instead decided that dragons, or at least these two dragons, should have the magical ability to pick their own fights. Players of level 53 or above will now encounter some difficulty when attempting to assist in combat with these dragons. This should help 40s and low 50-level characters with their chances to encounter a dragon without worry of getting forced out by much higher level players. In addition, it also has the added effect of creating a natural progression from the younger dragons of Antonica to the elder and more formidable dragons of Kunark.

-The EverQuest Team

June 29, 2000 7:00 am

Patch Day

Though today's patch is primarily comprised of fixes to various bugs that have been reported by the players, we're also pleased to announce a few enhancements:

• Ranger spell "Jolt" now has a lesser casting time.
• Many new recipes for the "Make Poison" skill are now in game.

Features include: Several new poison books, stackable components, new suspensions, some purchasable components, and players now have the ability to purchase vials. Please check your vendors.

• Increased spell-drop percentages in three difficult Kunark zones

where drops were less than should be expected.

• Corrected an error in the drop rate for a couple cleric spells making

them unavailable.

Quest Fixes

• Fixed the "Minotaur Horns" Quest
• Fixed a misspelling in the guild-note for Erudite clerics worshipping Cazic-Thule .
• Fixed a misspelled keyword in the Trueshot Longbow Quest.
• The guild note for gnome clerics now states the appropriate gender for the guildmaster.
• Fixed the "illegible cantrip" Quest.
• Fixed the "Hunt for Meat" Quest.
• Removed Jinkus Felligan's doppelganger from Halas.
• Fixed the "Travis Two Tone " quest.
• Fixed the "Aglthin Dasmore " quest.
• Fixed the "Gather Components " quest.
• Fixed the "Lion Meat " quest.
• The Fleshy Orb quest and "Fabian " should really be fixed now. These were not correct after the last patch due to a data export issue.

Item Fixes

• Fixed spelling of "Basilisk Egg"
• The Brass Ring is now worn on the finger, instead of the waist.
• Fixed the "Broken Minotaur Lord's Horn"
• Fixed race/class restrictions listed for the "Bullsmasher". Item listed some inappropriate classes.
• Fixed race/class restrictions listed for "Patchwork Armor". Items listed some inappropriate classes.
• Fixed the model for the "Cast Iron Rapier".
• Fixed Race/class restrictions for the "Crushbone Belt". Item listed some inappropriate classes.
• Fixed the mundane "Electrum Peridot Bracelet" so that it would equip in the proper slot.
• The "Bloody Mantle" may now be equipped.
• Fixed the effect on the "Canyoneer Pike". Current owners of this item will need to trade it out with a GM in game.
• Fixed the "Howling Harpoon". Item was previously casting its spell upon the wielder, rather than the target. The fix will be automatically applied to existing items.
• Fixed the icon for the Degenerated Guk Weed.
• Fixed the icon for the Enshrouded Veil.
• The Splitpaw Hide Tunic will now look like "Leather" when equipped.
• "The Crusade of 1312AG" and "The Forbidden Tome" will now remain with the character after logout.
• Fixed race/class restrictions listed for the "Mortificator Staff". Item listed an inappropriate class.
• Fixed the icon for the Spectral Bow. In addition, removed "BRD" from the class listing since Bards do not have the Archery Skill.
• Removed excess classes listed on the "Silk Lined Steel Helm".
• Fixed the effect on the "Theurgist Mace". Current owners of this item will need to trade it out with a GM in game.

Miscellaneous

• Fixed bug that caused NPCs to say "cant open politethnks.txt"
• Fixed bug that caused NPCs to say "Can not open file NERDRGATT.txt"
• Fixed "cannot open file guards.txt" bug with Butcherblock dwarves
• Fixed "Cannot open item2monster.txt" problem with goblin whelps in Butcherblock .
• Lizardman mystic s no longer think that the Feerrott belongs to the Sabretooth Gnolls.
• Fixed a ghost in Field of Bone who was inappropriately labeled as living, causing "undead only" spells to fail.
• Improved pathing in Sebilis .
• Improved pathing in West Freeport .
• Fixed the color of several spell-gems.
• Fixed recipe for a "Block of Clay " in the Basic Pottery book.
• Stone Skeletons in Lake Rathe can now be affected by "undead only" spells.
• Fixed several merchants who did not have wares to sell.
• Fixed several dozen spelling and grammar errors in NPC text and the spell database.
• "Folded Sheet Metal " may now be crafted via blacksmithing .
• The "Unfired Urn ", "Onyx Encrusted Urn ", and "Small Bowl " may now be crafted via Pottery .

- The EverQuest Team

July 19, 2000

(NOTE: This patch was missing from Allakhazam and came from http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20000719.html)

Miscellaneous Changes/Fixes

• The "Safe Points" have been moved in Field of Bone and Lake of Ill Omen to someplace "safer".
• You can no longer cast invisibility on any pet.
• Foul language issued through /emote will now be handled by the profanity filter.
• Corrected a bug that allowed linkdead players to walk through locked doors.
• Rangers above level 50 will now do double damage with Archery against non-moving, non-rooted targets. These restrictions allowed us to enhance archery without creating a new kiting problem.
• Corrected a bug that had rangers doing less melee damage than was intended except when fighting an NPC who was also a ranger.
• Pets, both PC and NPC, will no longer cast "Gate".
• A large rat says, "Hit by non-melee for XXX damage", is history. The new message given probably isn't the source of never-ending humor that the old one was.
• Updated pathing information in Innothule Swamp.
• Corrected many, many, MANY spelling and grammar errors in the world.
• Fixed a large number of spell gems and spellbook icons. Take care to take a look at your spell lineup to familiarize yourself with the new gems/icons.

Poison

• Implemented the high level Rogue poisons (level 51+).
• Increased Rogue "Make Poison" skill cap.
• Substantially reduced chance to fail "Apply Poison".
• Rogues will now automatically sit when right-clicking on a poison.
• Failure to make a poison will now return the vial.

General Crafts

• The Ant's Potion may now be used anywhere.
• The small and large reinforced wristband may now be crafted.
• The small and medium studded shoulderpads, cloak, and belt may now be crafted.
• The medium reinforced mask may now be crafted.
• Sealed Poison Vials can now be crafted.
• The Thermal Cloak may now be tinkered.
• The "This item is trivial..." message in craft skills has been replaced with "You can no longer advance in skill from making this item.

Items

• The Elven Paladin Newbie Tunic may now be worn by Half Elf paladins.
• The Murky Vial will now properly affect the target instead of the player.
• Increased stats on many Plane of Sky items.
• There was evidently more than one "Fine Steel Dagger" running around in the world. Some of them have been renamed "Serpent's Tooth".
• The effect on the Staff of Undead Legions has been changed to something a bit more useful.
• The Deepwater Helm now has a significant casting time. The function of its spell allowed a mana-free heal even though it was intended to be a buff.

/consent

Some people were spamming others with /consent, causing them to disconnect. As a result, /consent can now only be done once every two seconds. Should you be harassed via this tool, please use /report. Also, please take care to avoid accidentally /consenting someone, as it will be two seconds before you can undo it.

Cazic-Thule and the Feerrott

There has been a significant change to the factions in the Feerrott and Cazic-Thule. Take care not to get killed by NPCs that previously left you alone. The significant upside to this change is that the "Cazic Gate/Portal" can be made much safer in nature for those who work on their faction.

Regen Effects

This week we corrected a bug that caused regen-type spells (e.g. Regeneration, Chloroplast, Regrowth, etc.) to overwrite DOT spells. As a result of this fix, players can no longer accept a regeneration spell while under the effect of a DOT. However, if the regen spell is already in place, the DOT will stack, but not replace the regen spell. This will allow users of beneficial DOTs, such as Call of Bones, to continue using their DOT while under the affect of regen.

Keyed Dungeons

The key for Charasis (Howling Stones) is now NODROP per the patch message from a couple of weeks ago. Furthermore, when your character dies, keys for Charasis, Sebilis, and Veeshan's Peak, will no longer remain with your corpse, but will instead return with your character to its bind point. We made this change to reduce the difficulty and corpse-loss potential of these zones, and eliminate the need to do the key quests multiple times.

Barbed Scale Whip

In the last item patch, this item was changed from its original stats to something inferior, as the game designer was not aware that it was already in-game. It has been changed back to its original stats.

Hiding Corpses

A new command has been implemented in the EverQuest client. This command (/hidecorpses) allows players to suppress the display of player and NPC corpses on the screen. This can be very useful once you've entered a zone with a large number of corpses, causing framerate to decay. It will be particularly useful in the planes. The command supports the following arguments:

• ALL: Hides all corpses except yours.
• ALLBUTGROUP: Hides all corpses except yours and those of people in your group.
• NONE: No longer hides corpses.

For community reasons, this option must be set after entering each zone, and will not affect corpses made after you enter the zone. You can reset it while in the zone in order to suppress display of corpses made since you originally set it.

Resurrection

The resurrection confirmation box will now report the name of the person casting the spell as well as what spell they are casting. Furthermore, experience will not be "removed" from your corpse until you accept the resurrection by choosing YES. Previously, any resurrection spell, if declined, would cause the experience to be unrecoverable.

July 20, 2000

(NOTE: Allakhazam did not have this patch, it came from http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20000720.html)

Emergency Patch

Due to the problems encountered in yesterday's patch, some additional data has been moved to the live servers today. As part of this patch, three new changes are included:

• /Consent no longer gives other players permission to loot your corpse. Instead, it only gives them the ability to drag your corpse using the /corpse command. This change is due to player request stemming from number of customer service issues raised by some players who were using /consent as a way to steal the belongings of other players. The change will eliminate those concerns and make the game more enjoyable for all of those involved.
• Yesterday's patch changed the way spell-damage messages are reported to the caster. The new text was dark blue, making it hard to distinguish from the background when in HUD mode. The text color has been changed to "yellow" due to player request.
• Duel messages will no longer be broadcast to the world unless the winner of the duel is over 10th level. This should greatly reduce the number of duels with inappropriate names that have been occurring in the game.

We would like to apologize to everyone for the problems stemming from yesterday's patch, and let you know that we have taken steps to greatly reduce the possibility that something of that nature could happen in the future.

July 26, 2000

(NOTE: Allakhazam did not have this patch, it came from http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20000726.html)

Chat and Login

Today's patch contains some new features for the EverQuest chat and login servers. In addition, it enables support for some international keyboard layouts.

• Tab again switches between fields in login and registration.
• #time will display a time/date stamp.
• #reply will send a private message to the last person to message you.
• Tab will cycle through the last few people to send you a private message.

Rooms may now be closed by staff members. These rooms are in gray, and no one will be able to enter them until a staff member opens them. Attempting to enter a closed room will display a message.

• EverQuest, including Chat and Login, now supports some international keyboard layouts. Information can be found at http://everquest.station.sony.com/support/general/keyboard_layout.jsp.

August 1, 2000

(NOTE: Allakhazam did not have this patch, it came from http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20000801.html)

Today's patch contains some changes that we are sure everyone will enjoy

• Canned emotes (e.g. /point) now work on NPCs. In addition, the range for canned emotes has been increased.
• /who all 'guildname' should now work for players who have /roleplay turned on.
• Preferences for the mouselook will be saved in your options file. Those who turn mouselook off each time when starting EQ will only have to do it once more.
• The 'Chat Filter' tab in 'Options' now has an option to filter messages caused by damage shields hitting others.

Fast Drop

Our most exciting change today is an option that allows players to avoid accidentally dropping items on the ground. The new client allows players to set 'Item Dropping' preferences on the 'General' options tab. The three options that can be set are:

• FAST DROP: Items are dropped without confirmation.
• CONFIRM: A confirmation box will be displayed whenever you try to drop an item.
• NEVER: You are not allowed to drop items on the ground.

Alternatively, you can also set these options using the /fastdrop command. The arguments are:

• ON: Same as option 'Fast Drop' on the General Tab.
• OFF: Same as option 'Confirm' on the General Tab.
• NEVER: Same as above.

Please note that whatever your setting, coin will always be dropped without confirmation. Additionally, the FastDrop option only applies to items being dropped upon the ground. Handing items to NPCs will still work regardless of your FastDrop setting.

It is highly recommended that you use option 'CONFIRM', as GMs will not reimburse any items that are accidentally dropped.

August 9, 2000

(NOTE: Allakhazam did not have this patch, it came from http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20000809.html)

Character Purge

Time has come to do some cleanup on character data across the servers. On August 23rd (Pacific), we will be doing a system-wide cleanup of level 1 characters. All level 1 characters that have that have not been played within 30 days from the date of the purge will be deleted. As GMs will not be able to restore any characters that are deleted, please be certain to log in any level 1 characters that you wish to keep prior to the purge.

Guide Application

The Guide Application is now back up at http://guideapp.everquest.com. If you are over 18 years of age, have a good customer-oriented attitude, enjoy helping your fellow player, and are interested in joining the Guide Program, we will be pleased to review your application.

Kunark Users

A new file, emeraldjungle_chr.s3d, is included as part of todays patch. This patch adds additional displayable NPCs to the Emerald Jungle. Please run the "Kunark Patch" by pressing the "Kunark Patch" button on the bottom of the patch program UI prior to entering EverQuest.

General Enhancements

Text messages that wrap will be indented on subsequent lines. This means that if a person or NPC says something that is more than one line long, all subsequent lines will be indented a few spaces. This should make it a lot easier to pick out separate messages. The spells "United Resolve" and "Heroic Bond" had their levels transposed accidentally. Rather than putting them back as intended, United Resolve has been changed to Heroic Bond, which means you might have two copies of that spell in your spellbook. Feel free to move one to the back. Clerics get a new group spell at 58 to compensate. The Wurmslayer is now a one-handed slashing weapon. The /help command will now list all /-commands available to you. Rangers, Paladins, and SKs now have mana equivalent to that of a pure caster with the same stats. This will give those hybrids a good deal more mana, regardless of their stats. NORENT items, items that disappear when you log out, will now show a "NORENT" tag when inspecting the item. Most summoned items now have the word "summoned" in their name.

Changes/Fixes

Small Studded Tunic recipe now works. Scaler recipe now works. High Elves can now use the Moss Covered Twig and Branch. Iksar can now wear the Crescent headband. The Shintl Lowbrew quest will now work. The Rusty Rapier now looks like a rapier. Elven Wine can now be brewed. Some pelt-dropping animals were always dropping ruined pelts, rather than pelts of quality. This has been repaired. The Guild-invite toggle in display options will now work. The faction problems with the Charasis Key Quest have been resolved. Many pathing errors have been repaired. Repaired a bug that caused some anomalies after being charmed or feared. Repaired a bug that kept the Unswerving Hammer of Faith and Flaming Sword of Xuzl from disappearing.

Dragons

Rumor has it that some new dragons have been spotted in Kunark. It should be noted however that the dragons can be engaged from much further away than is intended. Rather than hold off implementing these dragons for another week, we've decided to implement them now and fix the problem in the next patch. Enjoy :)

New Command For Tracking

New option for those with tracking: /trackplayers. The command will work for all players with the tracking skill. The command has two settings:

ON: Default setting, same as it is now. Players will show up in the tracking window. OFF: Players will not show up in the tracking window.

Client Customizations

Upon starting EverQuest, a new file (EQCLIENT.INI) will be created in your EverQuest directory. This file contains customizable settings for:

Colors for text messages in the in-game chat window Default screen viewing mode Default travel speed (run or walk) The documentation will be included in the online manual in your EverQuest directory once the design is finalized over the next several weeks, but the working document is posted below. We felt that people would rather have access to the customizations right away while we're in the process of building them. Modifying this file is optional.

EQCLIENT.INI Documentation

The [TextColors] section contains entries for various text colors in the client. All colors are to be set with Red, Green, and Blue values, in decimal. Valid settings for each color range between 0 and 255. "Black" (0 red, 0 green, and 0 blue) will be white in overlay mode, and black in normal mode.

Here is a list of user colors to use as a guide when editing the file:

1 - Say
2 - Tell
3 - Group
4 - Guild
5 - OOC
6 - Auction
7 - Shout
8 - Emote
9 - Spells (meming, scribing, casting, etc.)
10 - You hit other
11 - Other hits you
12 - You miss other
13 - Other misses you
14 - Some broadcasts (duels)
15 - Skills (ups, non-combat use, etc.)
18 - Default text and stuff you type
20 - Merchant Offer Price
21 - Merchant Buy/Sell
22 - Your death message
23 - Others death message
24 - Other damage other
25 - Other miss other
26 - /who command

The [Defaults] section contains some default setting for the client. Here is a list of valid settings:

RunMode - TRUE for run, FALSE for walk.
ScreenMode - NORMAL for the default window view, FULL for the full view with overlays.

August 17, 2000

(NOTE: Allakhazam did not have this patch, it came from http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20000817a.html)

This patch contains eqmain.dll, which is used by the EverQuest login/chat frontend. The following changes have been implemented:

1. help now accepts arguments. #help #command will return help for the requested command.

Errors issued within the chat/login server frontend now display an "Error Number". Please have this error number ready when requesting technical assistance.

August 17, 2000

(NOTE: Allakhazam did not have this patch, it came from http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20000817b.html)

Some additional changes were included in today's patch that were not listed in the patch message earlier today. This patch message is a replacement for the one posted earlier:

Miscellaneous Changes

• /trackplayers now supports a "GROUP" option, allowing trackers to exclude all player characters, except ones in their current group.
• The EQCLIENT.INI has some new features, including one allowing logging (/log) to be on by default. Updated documentation for the EQCLIENT.INI file is at the end of this patch message.
• Activatable items, such as Journeyman's Boots, can now be activated by the corresponding number-key if placed in a hotbox.

Items that are "out of charges" now display "Charges: None" when inspecting the item.

• Attack-speed buffs and debuffs will now stack correctly. In other words, lower level spells will no longer overwrite higher level spells of the same type.
• The "U" key (short for "use") has had its functionality enhanced. It now does the equivalent of a single left-click and single right-click at the center of the screen. In addition to opening doors, it will now consider and inspect PCs, consider NPCs, and use bankers, merchants, and guildmasters.
• Fixed the way that spell-effect icons are displayed on the UI. Previously, after adding several "buffs" to a character, one of the icons would be placed down in the chat window.

Chat/Login Server

This patch contains eqmain.dll, which is used by the EverQuest login/chat frontend. The following changes have been implemented:

1. help now accepts arguments. #help #command will return help for the requested command.

Errors issued within the chat/login server frontend now display an "Error Number". Please have this error number ready when requesting technical assistance.

Looking for Group Flag

Players can now indicate that they are "looking for a group" by typing /LFG. This command will flag your character in both zone-specific /who lists, and the server-wide "/who all" list with "LFG". The LFG flag will remain active until you either enter a group or log out. Players can search for other players who are LFG by using filters in the /who command. For instance, to find rangers between level 40 and 50 who are looking for a group across the server, type "/who all ranger 40 50 lfg".

It is our hope that this flag will make it easier for players to seek out group members, allowing for more adventuring with less preparation time.

Updated EQCLIENT.INI Documentation

If the file does not exist it will be generated by eqgame.exe with default values. If an entry in the file is missing it will be added by eqgame.exe with default values.

The [TextColors] section contains entries for various text colors in the client. All colors are to be set with Red, Green, and Blue values, in decimal. Valid settings for each color range between 0 and 255. "Black" (0 red, 0 green, and 0 blue) will be white in overlay mode, and black in normal mode.

Here is a list of user colors to use as a guide when editing the file:

1 - Say
2 - Tell
3 - Group
4 - Guild
5 - OOC
6 - Auction
7 - Shout
8 - Emote
9 - Spells (meming, scribing, casting, etc.)
10 - You hit other
11 - Other hits you
12 - You miss other
13 - Other misses you
14 - Some broadcasts (duels)
15 - Skills (ups, non-combat use, etc.)
16 - Disciplines or special abilities
17 - Unused at this time
18 - Default text and stuff you type
19 - Unused at this time
20 - Merchant Offer Price
21 - Merchant Buy/Sell
22 - Your death message
23 - Others death message
24 - Other damage other
25 - Other miss other
26 - /who command
27 - yell for help
28 - Hit for non-melee
29 - Spell worn off
30 - Money splits
31 - Loot message
32 - Unused at this time

The [Defaults] section contains some default setting for the client. Here is a list of valid settings:

RunMode - TRUE for run, FALSE for walk.
ScreenMode - NORMAL for the default window view, FULL for the full view with overlays.
Log - TRUE for logging on, FALSE for logging off.

AUGUST 23, 2000

(NOTE: Allakhazam did not have this patch, it came from http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20000823.html)

Level 1 Character Purge

We've decided to postpone the previously announced purging of level 1 characters that had not been played in the past 30 days. Should we reschedule this process in the future, we will again give fair warning prior to implementing the purge.

Today's Changes

Today's patch consists mostly of content changes within EverQuest, such as new quests, corrections to existing NPC texts, and adjustments to spawn times associated with quest NPCs and other NPCs in general.

/help will now display emotes, guild commands, and normal commands separately.

/sit will cause your character to sit. "/sit off" will cause your character to stand.

"/cast #" (where # is 1 to 8) will cast the spell memorized in the corresponding slot.

"/book #" (where # is the even displayed page number divided by 2) will take you to the corresponding page of your spell book. For instance, to flip to page 27/28, type "/book 14".

"/doability #" (where # is 1 to 10) will fire the specified ability. Abilities 1-6 are those that are set on the "Abilities" page; Numbers 7-10 represent those that are set on the "Combat Skills" page.

/whotarget can be typed to do a /who on the targeted PC.

"/language #" (where # is a number corresponding to the desired language) selects the chat language to use in general communication.

"/language help" displays a list of available languages and their corresponding number. "/language" alone displays the current language.

/meditate causes you to sit down, open your spellbook, and begin meditation.

In "HUD" mode, the Chat Box will now take advantage of higher resolutions to display more text before wrapping down to the next line.

Fixed a bug that allowed users to /quit out of the game immediately without penalty. Normal operation is supposed to cause /quit to leave the character in-game and linkdead for a period of time to discourage this action.

Again changed the functionality of the "U" ("use") key. It will no longer inspect players or loot corpses. All other changes implemented in the last patch stand.

Added new customizable color options to the EQCLIENT.INI. The working documentation for this is below.

Corrected a bug that caused items that ran out of charges to "disappear" when the last charge was used. The item never really disappeared, and would reappear after re-logging. It no longer appears to disappear.

Updated EQCLIENT.INI Documentation

If the file does not exist it will be generated by eqgame.exe with default values. If an entry in the file is missing it will be added by eqgame.exe with default values.

The [TextColors] section contains entries for various text colors in the client. All colors are to be set with Red, Green, and Blue values, in decimal. Valid settings for each color range between 0 and 255. "Black" (0 red, 0 green, and 0 blue) will be white in overlay mode, and black in normal mode.

Here is a list of user colors to use as a guide when editing the file:

1 - Say
2 - Tell
3 - Group
4 - Guild
5 - OOC
6 - Auction
7 - Shout
8 - Emote
9 - Spells (meming, scribing, casting, etc.)
10 - You hit other
11 - Other hits you
12 - You miss other
13 - Other misses you
14 - Some broadcasts (duels)
15 - Skills (ups, non-combat use, etc.)
16 - Disciplines or special abilities
17 - Unused at this time
18 - Default text and stuff you type
19 - Unused at this time
20 - Merchant Offer Price
21 - Merchant Buy/Sell
22 - Your death message
23 - Others death message
24 - Other damage other
25 - Other miss other
26 - /who command
27 - yell for help
28 - Hit for non-melee
29 - Spell worn off
30 - Money splits
31 - Loot message
32 - Dice Roll (/random)
33 - Others spells
34 - Spell Failures (resists, fizzles, missing component, bad target, etc.)

The [Defaults] section contains some default setting for the client. Here is a list of valid settings:

RunMode - TRUE for run, FALSE for walk.
ScreenMode - NORMAL for the default window view, FULL for the full view with overlays.
Log - TRUE for logging on, FALSE for logging off.

VOICE SUPPORT, AUGUST 24, 2000

(NOTE: Allakhazam did not have this patch, it came from http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20000824.html)

Voice Recognition Support

We are pleased to announce that EverQuest now supports standardized voice recognition technology. If you have a standardized voice recognition package (such as Dragon NaturallySpeaking) on your system, you can refer to the EQROKManualSupplement.doc (or .txt) file in your EverQuest directory for information about using the new features.

Voice Recognition

EverQuest now supports standardized voice recognition packages, such as Dragon Naturally Speaking(r).

Activating Voice Recognition

You must already have a voice recognition engine, such as Dragon Naturally Speaking, installed on your system, and have the default user (this was "Unknown" for me) trained, etc. You do NOT have to run the engine yourself, the game will do that for you.

Once in EQ, bring up the chat bar (hit enter) and type in "/voice". Make sure it gives you the message, "Voice Recognition will be *ON* the next time you run the game..." If it does, then quit all the way out of EverQuest like the message instructs you to do and re run it.

After you have done this, you should get a message in the chat box when you get back in letting you know that Voice Recognition is Enabled. You must turn the Microphone on though. Typing in the /microphone command (/mic also works, perhaps even /mi) will toggle the microphone on/off. Voice commands and dictation are ignored when the Mic is off, and the game starts up with the microphone off.

Other related typed commands:

/vrdelay - Allows the user to set how long EQ will Sleep in the main rendering loop in order to improve voice recognition response. The higher the delay, the lower framerate will be, so it is recommended that the user start with "/vrdelay 1" and go up by one each time until they are happy with the voice recognition response time. Use the lowest number that provides adequate response time.

August 30, 2000

(NOTE: Allakhazam did not have this patch, it came from http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20000830.html)

Today we modified the EverQuest client to implement the following changes

• Corrected a bug that would cause players to crash if they entered the game, exited to the server selection screen, and tried to reenter the game.
• Corrected a bug that caused delays when switching between UI modes due to the text wrapping change implemented last week.
• The /book command (/book #) now accepts pages 1 through 50, and will switch to the proper page.
• Opening your spellbook will automatically cause you to begin meditating providing that you have the skill.
• Removed the /meditate command since it is no longer necessary.
• You can now activate a hotkey while the spellbook is open by pressing the corresponding number-key.
• The "/target [name]" command can be used to target other players by name. Please note that this ability is subject to the range to the target.
• EverQuest will now write the original default colors when creating the EQCLIENT.INI file, rather than the new colors that were put in a few weeks ago.
• The @-character can be used in emotes to indicate a target. For instance, if you target "a gnoll" and type "/emote laughs cruelly at @", the output will be, "Playername laughs cruelly at a gnoll".
• People with the /LFG (Looking for Group) flag set will now have their over-head name prefixed with an asterisk. Remember that you can search for people looking for a group by using the "/who" and "/who all" commands. Typing "/who all ranger 40 50 lfg" will return a list of all rangers between 40 and 50 that are looking for a group.
• The "Sense" series (Undead, Animal, and Summoned) will no longer point you towards people's pets.

Note on Voice Recognition

Last week we implemented voice recognition technology in EverQuest. To use this new feature, please refer to the EQROKManualSupplement.doc file in your EverQuest directory. Please note that you must already have a voice recognition engine that is compliant with the Microsoft Speech API (SAPI), version 4.0. The voice recognition technology was tested with Dragon NaturallySpeaking(r) v4.0. Check with the developer of your software to find out if it is SAPI 4.0 compliant.

ILLUSIONS EXPLAINED, August 31, 2000

(Allakhazam fail: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/19992002.php)

Why are enchanters not given the ability to cast these very same race/creature illusions upon either the group as a whole, or individuals in a group? (You already HAVE the code for specific-case faction issues with the already in-game illusion series of spells)

I agree that the code exists, is in game, and would be easy to do. Our reasons for not implementing illusions on others via enchanters is that its not what we had in mind for them. It's part of the premise for the enchanter class.

Are you explicitly saying that in order for an enchanter to cast any illusion spell on themselves/others that a faction adjustment MUST take place and that for this reason, Verant would not attempt to try to code a spell allowing an illusion change to any NPC model in a particular zone? Or would Verant consider allowing enchanters to create illusions with no faction adjustments?

Illusions always have faction adjustments. They adjust the "race" portion of the faction formula. The game/faction engine does not allow someone to appear as a different race without adopting the faction settings for that race. As such, special allowances have been made for every race that can be illusioned. Opening more races to this would require a massive revamp of the faction engine and how it interacts with illusions. That revamp would constitute a major change to what defines EverQuest. Furthermore, the diversity the various areas in the game would surely lead to some bugs that would be implemented in the course of the revamp. Given these reasons, a change along these lines does not have benefits that outweigh cost.

Aside from faction issues, are you saying that by essentially allowing the 'minor illusion' spell to also include NPC models, in addition to the myriad of other object models in a particular zone, that this creates some sort of a problem? If so, could you please elaborate?

I think that I covered this one above. If I need to elaborate further, please let me know.

- Gordon

September 13, 2000

(Allakhazam fail: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20000913.html)

Guild Maintenance

We are in the process of preparing to do maintenance on the guild database. To that end, guild creation and activation will be on hold for the next three weeks. After that time, we may be running a process to remove inactive or under-subscribed guilds from the system. We would ask and recommend that those in guilds with under 10 separate members (on separate accounts) consider merging and deleting the under-subscribed guild.

In addition, it's apparently become common practice for people wishing to register a guild to enter the chat server and advertise there for help creating the guild. This will no longer be permitted. People wishing to submit a guild must organize prior to entering the chat server. Advertising for assistance within the chat server could result in a short-term (24 hour) suspension for the account.

Epic Weapons Era

September 19, 2000

(Allakhazam fail: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20000919.html)

Level 1 Character Purge

The Level 1 character purge announced several weeks ago will take place on Wednesday, September 27, 2000, at 7:00am PST (GMT-7). Any level 1 characters that haven't been played within the previous 30 days will be deleted. If you wish to keep any level 1 characters that you may have, please log in and play them between now and 9/27.

As a testament to our on-going goal to constantly provide more content for EverQuest players, today's patch primarily consists of *many* content-additions to the game.

New Epic Quests

We are pleased to announce that we have implemented new "Fiery Avenger" style quests for every class in the game (including paladins). The ultimate reward for each quest boasts a custom model with unique particle effects. We think that you will be pleased.

Rangers

Last week we completed in-depth testing of melee and defensive skills for all melee-centric classes. In the course of these tests we determined that the ranger class was not performing to its intended level, and have made the following changes:

The "Jolt" spell has had its casting time reduced. The Skillcap on Dodge and Parry has been increased.

Monks

High-level monks can now carry increased weight without penalty. The additional allowance is granted at levels 55 and 60.

Cleric

• Celestial Elixir was failing due to multi-tick cure components that are incompatible with that configuration. We have therefore removed the cure components and increased the healing provided by this spell.
• After a great deal of consideration, we have concluded that the Mark of Karn spell is imbalanced and requires correction. This spell's current function makes melee classes without dual-wield far less desirable members of the group. As such, the spell has had its duration decreased, its recast-time increased, and its "heal per hit" value decreased.

Fungal Regrowth

'Fungal Regrowth' is now a self-only spell. It was being used as an offensive spell by virtue of its 'snare' effect upon the target. Furthermore, we ruled out making it 'group only' as with other spells that have this issue, due to a class-balance concern. The spell was reducing the group's desire for classes capable of casting regenerative magic.

Attack Speed Buffs

In this patch we corrected a bug that would cause any "Haste" item combined with any "Haste" spell to automatically yield maximum haste, regardless of the level of "Haste" granted by each individual component. This fix increases the usefulness of better "Haste" equipment and spells. The downside to this is that those who usually have both items and spells active will see a reduced attack-speed unless outfitted with the best equipment and spells.

High-Level Dungeon Balancing

Veehshan's Peak and Sebilis have received loot adjustments in order to address disparities in risk and reward. For the most part, the quality of the "common" loot in Veeshan's Peak is at least as good as the "rares" from Sebilis.

Low-Delay Weapons and Damage Bonus Changes

In accordance with our announcement several weeks ago, two low-delay weapons can now only be equipped in the off-hand. Included in this change are the Mosscovered Twig and the Barbed Scale Whip. The delay on these weapons and the associated damage bonus to weapons in the primary hand made these weapons much too powerful for their availability and the risk associated with their acquisition.

In addition, two-handed weapons have had their damage-bonus modified. The damage-bonus for low-delay two-handed weapons (27 or below) created a problem similar to the weapons above and has been reduced. The damage-bonus has not changed for normal-delay (28-39) two-handed weapons. The damage bonus for high-delay two-handed weapons (40+) has been increased.

Server Selection Screen

It has come to our attention that new players often think that the high-population servers are better, based upon the logic that if everyone else is there, it must be a good server. However, in Massively-Multiplayer games, less populated servers are often considered superior for gameplay. Therefore we have marked servers that would benefit from new characters as preferred servers, listing them in "green" in the server selection window. The preferred servers have populations such that an influx of new people would benefit the server rather than cause overpopulation.

Custom Emotes and AFK

Animations with custom emotes have been implemented. Current canned emotes such as /point allow a target other than the current target to be specified. That will continue to work. So if you type "/point Baobob", the usual text will come up. However, you can add custom text to the emote, but you must specify the target as "say" as the target. For instance:

/point say points at a gnoll, indicating that he is ready to kill it. ...your character will execute the /point animation, and the text output will be: "CharacterName points at a gnoll, indicating that he is ready to kill it."

Finally, you can now set a custom message for when you are /AFK. Type "/AFK " (without the brackets) to set your custom AFK message. For instance, if you type "/afk Grabbing a snack", you will reply with "Grabbing a snack" when someone sends you a /tell.

Skill Gain

The skill-gain rate of many skills is now further modified by character stats. This will allow those with natural affinities towards certain skills to improve at a greater rate.

Trade Skills Enhanced

Many of the trade skills in game have received massive enhancements, including dozens of new craftable items, new fishing and foraging items, and other things to be discovered once in game.

In addition, trade-skill specialization has been implemented. Players will be able to exceed 200 points of skill in one of the generally available tradeskills. This includes:

• Baking
• Blacksmithing
• Brewing
• Jewelcraft
• Tailoring
• Fletching
• Pottery

Once above 200 points in one of these skills, no other skill will be able to exceed 200. Specialization restrictions do not include class or race-specific trade skills such as Alchemy, Make Poison, and Tinkering. Players with race or class-specific trade skills will be able to exceed 200 points of skill in that skill, plus any generally available trade skill.

The enhancement of trade skills is an on-going project. Further enhancements will be made in the coming weeks.

September 28, 2000

(Allakhazam fail: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20000928.html)

General Changes

• NPC corpses level 55 or over will now last 30 minutes before decaying. This should help those on large multi-group encounters who need some prep-time before looting items.
• The item "Woe" has been repaired. If you receive the "Item out of charges" message when your "Woe" attempts to fire its spell, please contact a GM to trade out the item.
• The spell "Mark of Karn" has been changed. The recast-time has been reduced significantly and the Hitpoint-return is now scaled inversely based upon the delay of the weapon. In addition, a hitpoint return will only take place when the target is hit with a primary melee weapon, or the primary hand if you are unarmed.
• Some more tradeskill component vendors have been placed within the world to make certain tradeskills easier to use in your home town.
• "AFK" and "LD" status will now be reported above player's heads.

Fleeing NPCs

Last week's patch caused NPCs to flee more than before due to a bug that was fixed. After evaluating the situation, we decided to reduce the chance to flee, but not to the extent that it was reduced before. NPCs were previously much more "brave" than they should have been.

As part of the same change, charmed NPCs also began fleeing when low on health. We've determined that this is not a good situation for the players. As such, we have stopped charmed creatures from fleeing per player request.

Level 1 Character Purge

The Level 1 character purge has been completed. All level 1 characters that have not been played within the past 30 days have been deleted.

New Server Active

Tholuxe Paells, a new server open to new characters only, is now active and ready for play. Enjoy! As a reminder, /movelog registration will take place on Mithaniel Marr and Tunare Friday evening from 6PM to Midnight (PDT: GMT-7). Registered characters will be moved to a second new server, Drinal, early next week.

User Interface Changes

Many UI enhancements were made in today's patch:

Moving and Resizing Windows

The data windows in the full screen "HUD" mode may now be moved by clicking in the upper left-hand corner, moving them to where you want, then clicking again. The "spell effect" and "chat" windows can be resized by clicking on the lower right-hand corner, dragging to the appropriate size, and then clicking again. Coordinates for window locations in each resolution are stored in the EQCLIENT.INI file.

Bugs with Several Commands Fixed

We fixed a problem with /book, /sit, and /doability that allowed them to be executed at inappropriate times, such as while charmed or feared. They should now only function when the native button would have functioned if pressed.

Miscellaneous Additions

Added the following /-commands:

/camp: Causes your character to camp out. You must be sitting to use /camp. /disband: Will disband you from your current group, or turn down an invitation to join another group. /invite: Will invite the target into a group, or accept an invitation if one is pending. /attack: Will toggle the state of "Auto-attack". You may also add a parameter of "on" or "off" to explicitly set the state. In addition:

( CTRL-1 through CTRL-8 will cast the spell in the specified spell-slot.

• ":" (colon: Short for /emote) and "'" (apostrophe: Short for /say) will now bring up the chat line in the same fashion as the /-key and ENTER.
• The "R" key (by default) takes you into reply-mode as always, bringing up a reply to the last person sending you a /tell. However, you can now TAB and SHIFT-TAB to cycle through the last 10 people that have sent you /tells.

Pauses in Socials

You may now enter pauses in social batches with the /pause command. /pause takes an argument from 1 to 600, with the value being equal to the number of tenths of seconds (i.e. /pause 100 will yield a 10 second pause).

For example, a social consisting of:

/sit off /cast 1 /pause 100 /sit on ...would cause you to stand up, cast the spell in slot 1, wait 10 seconds after you've STARTED casting the spell, and sit down.

Furthermore, you can also use the /pause command on the same line as another social by separating the commands with a comma. Even though the pause command is specified first, it is executed AFTER the command on the same line.

For example:

/sit off /pause 100, /cast 1 /sit on ...would have the same effect as the example above. It is important to note that the comma can only be used to separate a /pause command from another, and MUST be specified first on the line.

Emote Codes

The @ symbol has been replaced with a series of %-codes that expand into various pieces of information, and now works in ALL chat channels (emote, say, shout, ooc, auction, group, guild).

The new %-codes are:

%T - Returns the current target. %S - Returns the subjective gender-specific pronoun for the target (He, She, It). %O - Returns the objective gender-specific pronoun for the target (Him, Her, It). %P - Returns the possessive gender-specific pronoun for the target (His, Her, Its). %R - Returns the race of the target (only works on Player characters). For example, if you have a target of "a gnoll", the following emote:

/point say points at %T indicating that he is ready to kill %O. ...Your character will execute the "point" animation with a text output of "CharacterName points at a gnoll indicating that he is ready to kill it."

October 3, 2000

(Allakhazam fail: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20001003.html)

Today's patch consisted mostly of server-side changes, additions, and fixes regarding NPCs and quests. The only item of public note is that the Ragebringer can no longer be equipped in the ranged slot. A data entry error caused it to be initially allowed it to be equipped in that slot.

Guide Program

Looking for a Challenge? Would you like to dedicate some time each week to helping your fellow players? Have you ever wondered how you might better serve the gods of Norrath? If you can picture yourself spending about six hours per week walking through the moonlit deserts of Southern Ro, basking in the saunas of Lavastorm, and working as a team to make Norrath safer and more enjoyable for all, then...

Please point your browsers to: http://guideapp.everquest.com

Fill out the Guide Application today! The EverQuest Guide Program might be the new challenge you seek, or the new adventure you never imagined.

Server Split to Drinal

Accounts on Mithaniel Marr and Tunare will be moved to the Drinal server following the patch. The source-servers, along with Drinal, will remain down for a period of time following the completion of the patch in order to allow the split to take place.

November 15, 2000

(Allakhazam fail: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20001115.html)

Today's patch includes the announced code-updates to use technology included with DirectX 7. You must have DirectX 7 or higher installed in order to play EverQuest. Please refer to http://everquest.station.sony.com/support/system_requirements.jsp prior to contacting technical support for procedures prior to contacting technical support.

Today's patch also includes the new 'Sound Engine' that we've been speaking about for some time. The new sound engine supports additional EAX features and should address the concerns of SBLive users that have been posted in the past.

Movelog for Povar and Tarew Marr

The /movelog window will be opened for Povar and Tarew Marr on Saturday 11/18 and Sunday 11/19 from 6PM PST (GMT-8) to Midnight. All players wishing to have all of their characters moved (on a per-account basis) from those servers to the new split-server should execute '"/movelog yes' during the windows.

The physical character move will take place next week on Tuesday or Wednesday. Please check the scheduled downtime page of www.everquest.com for a firm time when it is decided. Remember that corpses will not follow you to the new server, so anyone deciding to move will want to be sure that all corpses are looted prior to the time of the actual move.

As this patch features new /movelog logic to eliminate problems with people being left behind, players should not count on customer-service intervention after the physical move if they were unable to execute the command during the window. You will need to be present and execute the command in order to move.

Spell Changes

• Pixie Strike: Made it less resistible by reducing the secondary resist.
• Song of Twilight: Increased duration. Made less resistible by removing the secondary resist. Allowed it to be cast at any time of day.
• Fixed the effect on the Necromancer Epic Quest Item. The effect was checking resist on each tick instead of running full course.
• Increased the duration of the effect on the Enchanter Epic Quest Item.
• Fixed the 'Modulating Rod' so that it can be used by the appropriate races.
• Fixed the Lost Staff of the Scorned.
• Maniacal Strength will now correctly overwrite the level 49 Strength spell.
• The Death Pact and Divine Intervention spells will now stack appropriately with other spells that have similar effects.
• Modified the 'Jonathan's' line of songs to remove the 'skin' effect in order to allow bards to use them more effectively in combat. In addition, we made them 'Self Only' spells rather than 'Single Target' spells in order to allow bards to remain in combat while singing them.

General Fixes/Changes

• Fixed a bug that caused an NPC on 'Sister's Isle' to attack people who were fighting pirates.
• Removed Paladins as an authorized class for piercing weapons in game since they do not have the piercing skill.
• The 'Belt of the River' quest should now work correctly.
• Fixed all known problems with the class-specific epic quests.
• Implemented some new race-specific quests for Iksar.
• Positively modified most Epic Quest Items. Please check your items to see your changes. Note: Not all changes will be evident by looking at the item.
• Fixed the NPC bosses in the Plane of Sky that were not dropping the correct loot.
• Your bread tin will now be returned when baking bread.
• Fixed the Wellford Fargin keyword problem in Firiona Vie.
• Made the 'Gravebinder' a magic weapon.
• Repaired the Forager Bag. It was causing people to lose weight when placing items in the bag. It is supposed to have a weight reduction component, but was not supposed to cause weight loss.
• Taunt: Increased effectiveness above level 50. Previously, creatures above level 50 could not be taunted by means of the taunt skill. Now, most creatures below the character's level can now be successfully taunted. As a note, the chance to taunt a creature above 50th level is smaller than that of a creature below 50th.

Client Enhancements

• You now have 10 pages of 10 hotboxes each when in full screen mode.
• You can now customize 10 pages of 12 socials each, increasing the total number of available socials by 108.
• Fixed a bug with the keyboard.txt file causing some keys to translate incorrectly.
• Fixed a bug that caused some window positions to save improperly at higher resolutions.
• All key mappings are now stored in the EQCLIENT.INI file.
• Fixed all known problems with the clipping plane slider. Users should now see differences for the entire range of adjustment in zones that support an adjustable clipping plane.
• Players on PvP servers will no longer show '[LD]' over their heads when linkdead. In addition, these same players will no longer show as 'LinkDead' in the /who list.
• Players can now set custom text colors while in game. /usercolor: Usage '"/usercolor UserColorNumber R G B' where 'UserColorNumber is the number of the color as indicated in the EQCLIENT.INI file, and R, G, and B are red, green and blue respectively. All changes will be automatically saved to your EQCLIENT.INI file.
• OPT files in your EverQuest directory now have a number after the character name indicating the server number. As such, you will now be able to have characters of the same name on two separate servers with different custom options.
• The eqlog.txt file now has a name that includes the server number and character name. For instance, if your character is named 'Bobb', and you are on Server 1, your log text file name would be eqlog_01_Bobb.txt.
• Added two new entries to the 'Defaults' section of the EQCLIENT.INI file: AttackOnAssist=TRUE|FALSE - Sets whether or not your autoattack turns on automatically when assisting. Defaults to 'TRUE'. ShowInspectMessage=TRUE|FALSE - Sets whether or not you see the 'Soandso is inspecting you' message. Defaults to 'TRUE'.
• Custom key mappings have been greatly enhanced. You can now set two keys, a primary and an alternate, for each function in game. In addition, things that were previously not customizable can now be set to a key of your preference. Left-click on the key identifier to set the primary key, right-click to set the secondary.
• Added the /note command. /note will append the following text to a file called 'notes.txt' in your EverQuest directory. For instance, typing '/note This is a note' will put 'This is a note' on the next line in the notes.txt file.

November 16, 2000

(Allakhazam fail: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20001116.html)

Today's follow-up patch addresses the following issues from yesterday's patch

• The spell Torpor received an unintentional reduction in effectiveness.
• Illumination in game was not as bright as it should have been.
• Pet using classes unintentionally gained the ability to summon multiple pets.
• Bard songs were reacting poorly with invisibility/hide/sneak.
• Hitpoints were being reported incorrectly to clients.
• Changing resolutions would cause some to crash.

In addition, the following changes were left out of yesterday's patch message

• Fixed a bug that would cause some to not be able to cast after being feared.
• Data for group members and targets will be updated more frequently. This change should reduce complaints of warping and slow * hitpoint and other updates.
• Bards received increases in the skill cap for their instrument skills.
• Changed the default combo for casting spells from CTRL-1:8 to ALT-1:8, as CTRL was interfering with players ability to strafe.

November 21, 2000

(Allakhazam fail: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20001121.html)

Today's patch addresses a few problems noted by customers since last week's big patch. The following changes were made:

• Fixed some problems with sound volume being set above the maximum or below the minimum.
• Fixed a problem that caused sound volume to be reset regardless of the slider setting upon zoning or entering game.
• Fixed a bug that would cause some sounds to be unduly amplified whenever the volume slider was moved.
• Fixed a bug causing pink fringes to show on whiskers in association with mipmapping.
• Fixed a bug with /usercolor causing settings to be saved in the wrong slot.
• Fixed weapon scaling problems with off-hand weapons and those carried by dwarves.
• Fixed a bug that caused the client to display an amount of experience in slight disagreement with the server.
• Fixed the Paladin Epic Quest reward, which was procing a spell that would do around one million points of damage if left to its * own devices.
• Fixed a faction problem that made some quests designed to be doable by anyone, regardless of race or class, undoable.
• In other news, the Tarew/Povar split server, Xev, will be up following the patch today. Xev is named for Xev Bristlebane, the god of fortune. We would have named the new server under its full name if not for an attempt to avoid confusion between the existing "Bristlebane" server (named for Fizzlethorpe Bristlebane) and Xev.

November 29, 2000

(Allakhazam fail: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20001129.html)

Today's patch includes updates to the client to address some problems reported by people in regards to the DX7 update, as well as other gameplay issues:

• Corrected an older bug that would cause people to stop gaining or losing faction with associates when the primary faction was at its maximum or minimum. Players will now be able to further modify associate factions in the appropriate direction.
• Random-effects on weapons carried by pets will now behave as if the pet is a player character rather than an NPC. The change last patch reduced them to a rate below player characters. As part of this patch, target-specific random effects will only work if the target is the intended type. For instance, a weapon that processes 'Dismiss Summoned' will only 'go off' on a summoned NPC instead of everything.
• Added some code that should address if not eliminate a problem reported by people whereas the client would 'freeze' for a second or two every few minutes. For those who do not have IRQ sharing and/or driver problems, this should address the issue.
• Made final positive modifications to several Epic Quest rewards. Included in these changes: the SK weapon will now allow you to bash while carrying it.
• Fixed a problem that gave people problems when exiting the game and attempting to get back in.
• Added some code to address reports from people who find exiting from the character-select screen back to the server-select screen rather slow when mip-mapping is enabled. Most of this problem is due to routines in DX required to release resources consumed by mip-mapping and may not be addressable until the next version of DirectX is adopted.
• Changed customizable key mappings so that the ESC key will clear the 'NOKEY' setting instead of the 'Backspace'. This means that you can now assign 'Backspace' to a function in game.
• Corrected a sound problem that would cause certain sounds to be played 'rapid-fire' under some circumstances. There is still a potential for this to happen with some other sounds that will be addressed in a patch in the near future.
• Corrected a problem in Kedge Keep that made the top encounter more difficult than intended after the server had been up for a while.
• Higher level Magician, Necromancer, and Shadowknight pets now have the ability to dual-wield without being handed weapons. The calculation used to determine whether or not this ability exists takes several things into account, but for the most part 39th level and above summons (higher for the Shadowknight) will have this ability. It is possible that you could get a 'good' 34th level pet that will, or a 'bad' 39th level pet that will not have this ability.
• Bards of the land, hark unto me: The notes have been scribed on tattered parchment, two score and nine, for you they are meant. Abandon your mates, though they may fume, and follow the call of the seafarer's tune. (the level 49 song is now available).
• The Monk's hand-to-hand skill cap has been raised to a level equal to their one-handed blunt skill.

Remember! Only a few days left until the launch of EverQuest: The Scars of Velious. Reserve your copy at your local retailer today!

Velious Era

Core Velious Era

December 5, 2000 - Velious Released

December 5, 2000

(Allakhazam fail: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20001205.html)

Emergency Patch

This morning's patch was to correct a problem with the EverQuest client that caused those trying to exit The Hole or The Plane of Hate to crash and not be able to reenter the game.

As part of this patch we've added a new /-command. /dynamiclights [on/off](on by default) will turn on or off your ability to view dynamic lighting in game, such as that created by a torch or lightstone. Dynamic lighting uses CPU power. We've found that those participating in large raids with many people can increase their framerate by setting this to off for the scope of the raid.

New settings to this option will take place after you zone, and the preferred setting is stored in the EQCLIENT.INI

December 6, 2000

(Allakhazam fail: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20001206.html)

Today's patch requires that Velious subscribers press the "Velious Patch" button on the patch program UI.

Emergency Patch

We appreciate everyone's patience while we address a few issues as tens of thousands of new players check out Velious. This emergency patch addresses several issues:

• The transparent inventory screen will no longer come up in 640x480 resolution. It was not supposed to come up as the available screen space is not large enough to house the new screen.
• "Disabled" windows in full screen mode will no longer interfere with mouse clicks.
• Addressed some item drop bugs in Skyshrine that had the highest-level loot dropping off of yard fodder. This has been addressed with a retroactive item change. We apologize for the inconvenience.
• Several disciplines (Resistant, Trueshot, Unholyaura, and Holyforge) have been upgraded. Please read the updated EQManual_Supplement.doc (or .txt) in your EverQuest Directory.
• "Dragon Circles" have been fully implemented. In short, you will not be able to receive a teleport to a dragon circle unless you've been to the circle before and carry a soulbound souvenir that spawns at the circle. Please read the updated EQManual_Supplement.
• Innate class-based resistances implemented a year or so ago did not take into account levels 50 through 60 with exception to those provided to the warrior. As such, each class that has class-based resistance bonuses (with exception to the warrior) will get an additional bonus as they level from 50 to 60.
• The problem of blank faction messages being reported to the players has been corrected.
• Screenshots are again enabled.

Overall the Velious launch is going very well. We are happy to see that the problems found so far are minor and that we can address them quickly.

December 7, 2000

(Allakhazam fail: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20001207.html)

Today's patch addresses a few issues brought up by players over the last several days:

• Fixed an issue with /split that would cause people to go linkdead in the event that they used the command in quick succession.
• Fixed a bug where you could not edit socials or skills (via the hotbutton window right click) in fullview mode if you had hidden your "MainMenu" window.
• Fixed a bug where you would not see hotbuttons in "normal" mode if you had hidden that window in fullview mode.
• Fixed it so you can't use hotbuttons when looting, trading, banking, or using a merchant in fullview mode (which is how it is in normal mode, but with the inventory working in fullview mode now it wasn't blocked properly for that).
• Fixed the message for the /dynamiclights command to report properly.
• Fixed a problem where INI setting were not being read properly if you had camped or went LD to server select then reentered the game. This was causing various UI problems with window positions and colors being wrong.
• Fixed a problem with Sirens Grotto - Some people entering the zone were getting stuck.
• Fixed a problem with passage from Skyshrine to Cobalt Scar. Travel in that direction was supposed to require a key.
• We believe we fixed a problem where NPCs sometimes would hit a pet-owner no matter how far away the owner was from the pet and the NPC.
• Corrected loot drops in Thurgadin.
• We again appreciate patience while we stabilize following Velious launch.

December 8, 2000

(Allakhazam fail: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20001208.html)

We appreciate everyone's continued patience over the past couple of days, and are happy to see that the problems that have been experienced are relatively minor compared to those of the past. Tonight's patch is expected to be the last one we'll have to do for a while, so we hope to have you enjoying Velious over the weekend non-stop.

Today's patch corrects the following issues

• The user interface problems that occurred as of last night have been addressed, such as window positioning and transparency. Also addressed were problems with targeting, enabling and disabling windows, and switching to and from resolutions above 1280x1024.
• Corrected a problem that would cause some Voodoo card users to lock up when killing giants.
• Added messages for some new skills that some NPCs have (e.g. Rampage, and Flurry).
• Fixed items and item drops in a number of zones.

December 19, 2000

(Allakhazam fail: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20001219.html)

Today's patch primarily consists of tuning of Velious zones as well as content and other additions. In addition, the following changes have been implemented on the Live servers:

• High-end items that have a activatable (right-click) healing effect have in several cases had their casting times increased.

Factions for some of the higher end encounters in Velious have received some adjustments. Basically, "bad acts" receive more weight than "good acts". For instance, if "A" hates "B" and "B" hates "A", killing "A" will hurt your faction with "A" more than it will help your faction with "B".

• The stamina reduction with "Resurrection Effects" has been replaced by a slight attack-speed debuff.
• The Ranger's Trueshot discipline now works correctly. It was previously only working versus other player characters.

The Shadow Knight's "Unholy Aura" discipline has received an enhancement. When in use, harmtouch resistances will be checked versus disease instead of magic. In addition, harmtouch will resist in the same fashion as lifetap spells, meaning that unless the creature is immune to disease, you should get full damage most of the time.

• The spell attached to the "Fiery Defender" can now be partially resisted instead of being "all or nothing". The net result is that the average damage will be higher.
• The Paladin "Holy Forge" discipline will now give paladins triple the normal chance of scoring a critical hit. Each critical hit has a percent chance to be scored as a critical blow.
• Added parameters to the /camp command (the command that will cause you to camp out if you are already sitting). "/camp server" will take you back to the server selection screen. "/camp desktop" will take you out to the desktop following a successful camp. Despite popular request, "/camp spawn" will not be implemented.
• Walruses now indeed sound like they should.
• Added the /chatfontsize [0 to 5] (default is 1) command. This command will allow players to adjust the size of the font in the chat window.

January 9, 2001

(Allakhazam fail: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20010109.html)

We're happy to present today's patch, which focuses primarily on addressing issues that have been brought forth by EverQuest players. We appreciate the opportunity to spend some time focusing on specific issues important to you. Today's patch includes the following:

Disciplines

• The 'Resistant' Discipline now lasts 5 minutes instead of the previous 1.
• The 'Holy Forge' Discipline now lasts 5 minutes instead of the previous 2.
• The 'Weaponshield' Discipline now lasts 20 seconds instead of the previous 15.
• The 'Leechcurse' Discipline now lasts 20 seconds instead of the previous 15.
• The 'Deftdance' Discipline now lasts 15 seconds instead of the previous 10.
• The 'Puretone' Discipline now lasts 4 minutes instead of the previous 2.
• The 'Sanctification' discipline now lasts 15 seconds instead of the previous 10.
• The 'Unholy Aura' Discipline now gives a 50% bonus to Harmtouch (compared with the previous 25%) and causes it to save versus * disease, which should result in even fewer resists in most high-level encounters.

Spells

• The spell 'Strength of Nature' is now available to Rangers.
• The spell 'Resist Disease' is now available to Paladins.
• 'Lay on Hands' has been improved starting at 40th level.
• The 'Summon Corpse' spell is now available to Shadowknights.
• Corrected a bug that was causing damage while using the 'Trueshot' Discipline to be the same regardless of the quality of your bow.
• The spells 'Focus of Spirit' and 'Visions of Grandeur' now stack.
• 'Harmtouch' is now resisted as if it were a 'Lifetap' spell, meaning that it is all-or-nothing, and nearly unresistable with exception to encounters that are immune to magic or out of the acceptable level range. In addition, maximum damage for Harmtouch has been increased starting at 40th level.
• We fixed a bug that caused 'Lure' type spells (Wizards) to be resisted more than they should have been in certain types of encounters.
• Melee attack timers will no longer be reset when a SK, Paladin, or Ranger cast a spell. Previously these classes had to wait a full attack delay after casting before they would attack via melee again.

Miscellaneous

• You may now adjust the clipping plane in the Hole. Previously, the clipping plane was fixed. Many people requested the ability to bring the clipping plane closer to allow them to improve their client's performance.
• Fixed several problems with trade-skill components that were not dropping. Also added some new recipes.
• Fixed the Iksar 'Shackle of Steel' quest.
• The additional options for /camp (/camp server, /camp desktop) have been implemented. /camp server will take you to the server-selection screen. /camp desktop will cause EverQuest to terminate and take you to the desktop.

Root and Snare

Root-type spells and 'snare' type spells now use a separate spell effect.

Previously, 'Root' spells would overwrite any snare effect upon the target. When the root would wear off, the target began moving at full speed. With this change, when root wears off, snare will still be in effect. This has a few added effects on the other end.

For instance, root will no longer cancel SoW or Journeyman's Boots effects. It also allowed us to correct a long-standing bug that was allowing bards to cancel root on themselves by playing Selo's Accelerando if Selo's was in effect at the time that the bard was rooted. As mentioned in a previous patch where the first part of this bug was fixed, this was not the intended effect.

Looting NODROP Items

A new command is now available to EverQuest players.

In order to prevent the accidental looting of NODROP items, the /lootnodrop command has been added to the client. The command supports three options: ALWAYS (Default) - You will be presented with a yes/no confirmation box when attempting to loot any NODROP item. SOMETIMES - You will be presented with a yes/no confirmation box when attempting to loot any NODROP items that your race and/or class cannot use. NEVER - NODROP items will be looted without confirmation.

It is highly recommended that you do not change this from the default option, as the GM staff cannot assist in cases of accidental looting.

January 14, 2001 Producer Letter

Taken from: a Wayback machine snapshot on 1/24/2001

January 14, 2001

Hello all, Since the launch of EverQuest: The Scars of Velious, the EverQuest Live team has been working on a number of things, from addressing issues in Velious to adding additional content to other portions of the world. At this same time, we've been working towards a point where we can stop tweaking class-based abilities, and declare with confidence that they are as "balanced" as we can make them.

It is a foregone conclusion that the diversity of EverQuest's population will never let us reach a point where everyone will be perfectly satisfied with their class's abilities, as nearly every change we make tends to bother some people while pleasing others. Still, we are confident that we can reach a point where problems in our current game systems can be reduced to the point that those left are either negligible in their impact, or offset inversely by a similar problem affecting gameplay in an opposite direction. We're nearly there, but following heated debate and the review of material and opinions sent in by the players, we've decided to make some exciting and unprecedented changes to a game system that has remained intact since release: the experience system itself.

While the EverQuest Message-board FAQ states that the experience system is not subject to post-production changes, it also explains that as developers of an ongoing MMORPG in a dynamic world, there are times that we need to be flexible and address issues as necessary. Though it has always been our goal to avoid changes to core systems whenever possible, our additional goal of finalizing class balance takes precedence in this case.

We're going to depart from our usual method of releasing information by giving everyone some specific information in regards to how these systems currently work, and how they will work after the patch. It is very important to us that everyone understands our goals, and the fact that these changes are helpful to all of the players. We can only do that by giving you the details necessary for you to draw your own conclusions.

Zone Experience

The first and perhaps easiest to explain change that we are making to the experience system is the modification of what we call the "Zone Experience Multiplier", or 'ZEM'. Currently, every creature in game of a given level yields a fixed amount of "Base Experience" (experience before it is allocated to group members). That base experience is then multiplied by the ZEM which is set to a value in correlation with the risk in a particular zone compared with the reward; at least, that is the goal.

Recently we evaluated many underutilized dungeons and considered reasons why they might be underutilized. Some people suggested that proximity of bind locations plays a part, and as such we are considering adding more binding locations to the game. We of course will not allow everyone to bind on the doorstep of a dungeon, but these changes should hopefully reduce the potential run for a melee class. While additional binding locations probably will not be in the next patch, we did want to discuss our thoughts on the matter.

Another suggestion, one that probably has the most merit, is that some dungeons are too risky given everything concerned. The natural conclusion is that we should increase the reward in order to offset the added risk. Our contention is that most people would rather be grouping and fighting their way through a dungeon because it's more fun, but feel "forced" to sit outdoors and camp zero-risk single spawns because it is safer and thus more efficient. While that statement might be true in an ideal world, it usually results in crowding in these popular outdoor zones (for example, Lake of Ill Omen or Oasis). The crowding in these zones really results in less efficient progress than one could make in a dungeon given a good group, but is still SAFE, at least ensuring that one will not have to tolerate "going backwards".

We can increase the reward of a particular dungeon in two fashions: We can either put in good loot, or we can change the ZEM. The problem with increasing the quality or quantity of loot is that if the loot is good enough, it's more likely to draw people far above the desired level range for the dungeon, making it some place that appropriately leveled folk choose to avoid. The second problem with the ever-increasing quality of loot is inflation: as good loot becomes more widely available, its value and the prestige value from owning it declines.

In this case, we decided that the most appropriate action for several underutilized dungeons would be to increase the ZEM; that is, increase the amount of experience that everyone gets when adventuring in the zone.

As of the next patch, you will receive additional experience (per kill) in the following zones:

• Droga increased by 12%
• Nurga increased by 12%
• Solusek's Eye (SolA) increased by 13%
• Najena increased by 13%
• Befallen increased by 13%
• Paw increased by 13%
• Permafrost increased by 13%
• Kaesora increased by 18%
• Qeynos Catacombs increased by 20%
• Runnyeye increased by 20%
• Kerra Ridge increased by 20%
• The Hole increased by 25%

Grouping Bonus

We've always been the first to say that EverQuest is designed to promote grouping. Those who prefer to solo should be able to do so with some restrictions, but probably will not be able to go everywhere and do everything like a well-oiled, or like multiple well-oiled groups. This is a main foundation of EverQuest, and is what drove our decision to implement a class-based system where classes have strengths and weaknesses that complement each other.

Aside from making it so that the best gear requires groups, either to get quest items or get the best gear directly, our goal was to make it so that groups could advance faster than a solo player. One way we tried to reach this goal was by putting experience bonuses in dungeons, so our changes mentioned above should certainly help in that area. Another way we tried to reach that goal was by giving a per-kill experience bonus based on the size of the group.

One thing that has been confirmed by many of our high level players, both inside and outside the company, is that the "best" groups can already advance faster in a grouping situation than by any one member camping a single spawn. However, it has been pointed out that not everyone has the opportunity to get in the "best group". This led to many players choosing to "camp the single spawn" because they then do not have to worry about someone else getting their character killed. This in turn exacerbated the problem, as many players chose to "camp the single spawn" from creation to old age, and are just beginning to experience grouping and learn group-skills at about the time that dungeons become the most unforgiving. The inevitable result is that the level 50 "dungeon newbies" contribute to the fact that the group isn't the "best group".

Our goal is to get people grouping earlier, and provide them enough of a bonus where they do not feel that they are losing ground during the learning process. We feel we can do this by doubling the grouping experience bonus and by scaling it up based on the size of the group. Currently, the bonus is an additional 2% experience per group member, not counting the first one, leading to a maximum bonus of 10%. Following the next patch, the bonus will be as follows:

• 2 person group - 2% total bonus.
• 3 person group - 6% total bonus.
• 4 person group - 10% total bonus.
• 5 person group - 14% total bonus.
• 6 person group - 20% total bonus.

This bonus is applied to the total experience reward for killing a creature prior to distributing it to the group.

Many people have pointed out that when killing in a group you get less experience per kill. This is of course true, but what is often missed is that you can kill many more creatures, and creatures of a higher level when in that group. For instance, a good two-person group should be able to kill things of a higher level over twice as fast as a solo person should. Now, we're going to give them even more of a bonus for doing so, AND make it easier for people to find pickup groups on the basis of getting higher scaled bonus.

Finally, we very well may decide to revamp and/or readjust NPC populations and/or experience multipliers in the future in order to ensure that groups adventuring there find them worthwhile.

Experience Penalties - Description

I think that it would be appropriate to say that most players are aware that there are different experience requirements for advancement based upon the race and class you choose to play. Ogres, for instance, require more experience to level than Halflings, and Shadowknights require more experience to level than Warriors. As such, an Ogre Shadowknight requires FAR more experience to level than a Halfling Warrior does. What some people have discovered is that when in a group, everyone shares in this penalty. Before getting into our plan, I think that its important to talk about what our goals were regarding experience penalties and the group sharing in that penalty.

When EverQuest player characters were being designed, it was immediately apparent that some races and classes would be more powerful than others given versatility and other factors. Later, it came to light that the concept of being "more powerful" began to break down at the upper levels, given that everyone capped at the same level. We could not let any one race or class be immensely more powerful than another at that final point, as it would essentially put parts of the game off limits to those who chose the less powerful classes. While we did a good job of making races vary in power, but not so much as to be unbalancing, the same could not be said for classes. Still, though classes would be roughly equivalent in regard to the compelling reason to play them through versatility, the experience penalties were kept.

In regards to the sharing of the experience penalty, it was apparent in beta, before the penalty was shared, that those playing characters without an experience penalty leveled faster than those that did. It was obvious that this would occur, but it was to the extreme that a group of friends, all playing together, would become separated to the point that they could no longer group efficiently in the mid to upper-mid levels. So we chose to distribute experience in the group on the basis of the total experience of each member rather than the level, in order to keep groups together.

As such, a level 20 Troll SK, having more experience total than a Human Wizard of the same level, would get more experience from each kill, while the total experience for the kill was unchanged. Essentially, the SK would take part of the Wizard's share were everything distributed equally to begin with.

Experience Penalties - Resolutions

Over the past week the EverQuest team has been considering experience penalties in all their forms. We had many meetings where the issue was hotly debated from both sides. We had to consider not only the effect on the individual player, but also the effect of any changes on the game as a whole. Eventually, we nearly unanimously decided the following:

Race-based penalties are appropriate. An ogre, for instance, does indeed make a better warrior than a halfling. It is not so little that the faction and size problems make up for it, and not so much that it is really unbalancing at upper levels, but enough that the penalty should apply. Secondly, the penalty is not so severe (compared with class-based penalties) that it would cause groups to break up on the journey from one to sixty due to level differences. Class-based penalties are not appropriate. Classes are roughly equivalent in power throughout the level ranges, and the versatility does not make up for that penalty. In fact, the majority of changes made to classes in the name of balance in the last year were based on the assumption that, at the high end, each class should still be roughly as needed and balanced as any other. Penalties, in any form, should not be shared with the group. Players know that no one class is immensely more powerful/valuable than another, and as such it is not fair to ask them to share a burden. If classes with penalties were really more powerful or valuable than the other classes, then it might be right, but that isn't the case here. Furthermore, sharing of penalties causes people to reject potential group members on the basis of them "sucking" too much experience. We're going to fix it. Class-based experience bonuses (which warriors and rogues get) are also not appropriate, as they cannot be so if penalties are not. However, we've decided to leave this as-is, since the bonus is not so severe as to be unbalancing. Bottom line: we don't feel the bonus is enough to warrant a fix that could be interpreted as a 'nerf'. Experience Penalties - Implementation Though people often refer to the class-based penalties as the "Hybrid Penalty", most classes have a penalty. Hybrids just have the largest. A hybrid requires 40% more experience to level than standard, Monks require 20% more, and Intelligence casters require 10% additional experience.

Unfortunately, we cannot change the experience tables themselves without running each character (which number in the tens of millions) through an "Experience Converter" without existing players changing levels spontaneously. While some might argue that we should grant free levels to everyone with a penalty, that would not be in the best interest of gameplay. After all, who would want a paladin with level 40 skills (skills in the player-sense, rather than the character-sense) in your level 60 group tomorrow? Everyone earns his or her experience under the rules that exist at the time.

This means that we must address the penalty differently: basically, for every kill, after all grouping bonuses and zone bonuses are applied, the experience will be split up according to level, rather than experience. For those classes that do not have a penalty, they will then be given that share. Those classes that have a penalty will get their share, multiplied by their experience penalty. Essentially we are creating extra experience to give to those with a penalty after everyone else has gotten their share.

Since penalties are always a value over "1", this results in the creation of additional experience. And, since shares are determined by level rather than total experience as before, a character will get just as much experience for a kill based upon the size and level of the group, regardless of the class makeup. Finally, everyone in the group gains experience at a faster rate because we're creating the additional experience for those with penalties out of thin air, rather than taking it from other members of the group. That means that after implementation, those without penalties will get more experience for every kill than they would have if they ever grouped with a class with a penalty.

Now you'll notice that we are dividing up experience based upon the LEVEL makeup of the group. For instance, if a level 20 and a level 21 group together, the level 21 will get more experience per kill. That is however only fair since the level 21 does actually contribute more value to the group.

There is a problem, however, with this 'new' formula. Death penalties are currently based off of the level before your current one. Secondly, everyone suffers the same numeric experience loss on death as anyone else of their race, regardless of class or class-based experience penalties. What this means is: if I am a cleric, and you are an SK of the same level and race, we both die and lose the same numeric value of experience (Example: 100,000 experience points). When we go back to recover from death, you as the SK will get your 100,000 points back faster than I will as a cleric, since all of the experience you get is multiplied by your class-penalty (1.4). Essentially, I lose and gain experience at 1.0, but you lose at 1.0, and gain at 1.4.

This is a balance issue we decided was also necessary to address. If we are going to make the statement that class experience penalties should not exist, we then have to do it on both ends (with exception to the two classes that we've decided to leave as-is). As such, rather than losing the same numeric value, loss on death will ALSO be multiplied by the experience penalty. Since everyone currently loses experience as if they are a warrior of their own race, we do not want anyone to lose more relative experience (e.g. experience such that recovery from death is more difficult). Hence, we further multiply the experience loss on death by the class experience modifier for warriors (0.9).

In our example above, my cleric would lose 90,000 XP on death at my level (Same as before since clerics do not have an XP penalty), but your SK will lose 126,000 XP (Same as before, plus something to offset the experience gain bonus). Death is, however, still easier to recover from for both classes since we create experience out of thin air for every kill.

We felt that it was important to announce this as well since those with penalties will see a larger portion of their "bubble" lost upon a death, but will now recover that experience much faster. It's VERY important to understand this. Again, if you play a class that gets a bonus now when you make a kill, you will also lose more due to death. Please remember this when, after your first death post-patch, you see a greater experience loss on your screen: you are ALSO gaining more experience for each kill.

Summary

The changes that we are making in the next patch should have a profound impact upon the game:

Classes no longer have a true class-based experience penalty, making it easier for people to play the class that they want to play, rather than the class that they feel compelled to play due to faster advancement. Race based penalties are no longer shared with the group, and in truth are not severe enough to greatly impact the advancement speed of any particular race. Even the race with the worst penalty will level no slower than a human monk does now, and in truth will level faster due to the other changes that went in. The grouping bonus increase, in addition to the other changes, makes grouping much more efficient, without reducing the current efficiency of soloing for those who prefer that route. Experience modifiers turned up in the other zones should encourage people to spread out, have more fun, and allow those staying behind in other areas to have more fun themselves since the area is less crowded. All players, assuming that they have an experience penalty, or ever group with anyone who does, will level faster. Many of these changes are quite involved in regards to their implementation, and as such we want to be sure that everyone interested understands them. Alan "Absor" VanCouvering will be happy to answer any questions that you may have on the EverQuest Message boards. Until then, we sincerely hope that these changes will help all players, whether "uber" or "causal", experience and enjoy EverQuest to their greatest potential.

For Brad McQuaid, Jeff Butler, and every dedicated member of the EverQuest Team,

Gordon Wrinn Associate Producer, EQLive Sony Online Entertainment

January 17, 2001 3:00 am

Baltimore Fan Faire - Last Chance

Monday is the registration deadline for the Baltimore Fan Faire! We are almost sold out so hurry and visit http://everquest.station.sony.com/fanfaire/fanfaire.html before you miss your chance to attend this event!

Patch Day

The primary focus of today's patch is to implement changes noted in the new Producer's Letter which can be found at http://everquest.station.sony.com/news/letter.shtml (Patch_Notes#January_14.2C_2001_Producer_Letter)

It is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you read the Producer's Letter before playing EverQuest. It contains some unprecedented and exciting enhancements to gameplay.

In addition to these changes, the following changes have been implemented:

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that caused "root" and "snare" type spells to function incorrectly when stacked. They should now stack properly.
• Fixed a bug that negated the "instrument modifier" for bards using Selo's, causing them to run slower than they otherwise would.
• Fixed a bug that allowed two or more spells that grant levitation to stack. Levitation spells should not stack.
• The "Track Corpse" spell now works.
• Tracked down and eliminated several bugs that were causing a very small percentage of people to crash when zoning or upon entering the game.
• Fixed a problem with some Ulthork armor that caused it to disappear on death if the wearer was of extremely low level.
• Tserrina's Whip has been fixed. If you received one prior to today's patch, you will need to trade out your whip with a GM in order to get one that works correctly.
• Last week's patch attempted to fix Celestial Elixir, Celestial Healing, and Torpor, so that they would stack another similar spell, unintentionally causing it to stop stacking with standard regeneration spells. This has been fixed. The downside to this fix is that these spells will now overwrite the "Call of Bones" series. As the three former spells are cast to save a character's life, this solution appears to be the most beneficial for all of those involved.
• The stronger /lootnodrop options will no longer prompt you for confirmation when looting your own corpse. It is highly suggested that everyone reset their option to the strongest security available:

/lootnodrop ALWAYS (always ask for confirmation).

• Added some code to address an issue reported by a few players, that being that an NPC named "Ragefire" would die and not leave a corpse. Though we were unable to reproduce this problem in testing, the code we added should function as a catch-all for this problem. Please be sure to let us know how this goes.

Changes/Enhancements

• While not mentioned in the Producer's Letter, the Zone Experience

Modifier has also been increased in Guk (guktop), by roughly 12%.

• "Lay on Hands" has been enhanced again to heal more hitpoints.
• Overlooked in the last patch message, new spells were made available

to Rangers and Paladins in the upper levels.

• "Voice of the Berserker", a beneficial spell, no longer drains mana

over the duration of the spell.

• The maximum duration of "Strength of Nature" has been increased.
• A new spell for magicians is now available in game.
• The "Shield of the Eighth" spell will now last a number of minutes

equal to your level.

• You can now use the arrow and enter keys to select characters in the

character select screen. In addition, the last character you chose will be automatically hilighted when entering that screen. This value is stored in the EQCLIENT.INI file as "LastCharSel=0-7"

• The ranger's "Trueshot" discipline has had its damage increased after

analyzing data from its fix last week. Prior to the last patch, all bows, while under the discipline, were hitting as if they were 45dmg bows regardless of the delay. Last week's patch fixed it so that damage was based on the damage of the bow. This weeks patch increases damage bonuses in relation to delay (longer delays yield better damage bonuses).

• You can now reverse the left and right channels on your speakers

using the /reversesound command. This should be very useful for those who have had to place their speakers backwards due to cable lengths.

• Made some improvements to Paw, Mistmoore, and The Hole, to address

some concerns brought forth by the players. Both zones had some problems that would cause them to be exceedingly difficult in some cases.

- The EverQuest Team

January 24, 2001

• QA Openings*

Our Quality Assurance department is looking for some AVID EQ gamers to join us as testers at the San Diego branch. If you would like more information please visit www.verant.com or mail your resume to resume@station.sony.com with "QA Openings" as the Subject.

Applicants should include their time playing EverQuest, and their number of characters and their respective classes and levels as part of their resume.

• Small Patch*

The EverQuest Team is currently hard at work evaluating, planning, and documenting our project plans for the current year. As such, we did not plan game updates during this period, forecasted to last a few weeks.

However, given today's server maintenance being performed by our Operations Team, we were able to include a few small updates. These include some minor polishing on the Plane of Mischief, as well as the placement of the wizard's Velious teleport spells on merchants.

Very soon, we'll be back to our continual plans to enhance the game world. We'll be sure to let you know what we have planned as we can.

- The EverQuest Team

January 31, 2001 3:00 am

• File Download*

The file just downloaded contains some new art for use in game in the future.

- The EverQuest Team

February 2, 2001

(Allakhazam fail: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20010202.html)

Siren's Grotto Changed

Update: We also made several changes to Siren's Grotto to address player concerns with the difficulty of the zone.

File Download

More future art was added.

February 21, 2001 3:00 am

Patch Day

Today's patch contains a wide variety of enhancements and changes. Due to the number of changes being made, this list is primarily a summary. Extended descriptions of the changes and the reasoning behind them can be solicited on the EverQuest Message Boards.

Spell and Skill Changes

Druids, Shaman, and Clerics:

• Superior Healing moved to level 51 for shamans and druids.
• Casting difficulty of Superior Heal reduced (less fizzles)
• New level 55 Druid and shaman spell, Chloroblast, similar to remedy for clerics.
• New Druid spell at level 60, upgrade to superior healing, Natures Touch.
• Created a new spell effect for Celestial Healing, Celestial Elixir,

and Torpor. This will allow them to stack with all other spells, save spells of the same type (Heal over time). Prior to this, all heal-over- time spells followed the same rules as regeneration spells.

• Reduced the casting difficulty of Remedy.
• Lowered recast time on Wake of Karana

Paladins:

• Added Endure Magic spell at level 30
• Added Resist Magic at 55
• Moved Guard spell from 49 to 39
• Moved Armor of Faith from 53 to 49
• Added New level 53 paladin spell: Divine Glory
• Added New level 59 spell: Celestial Cleansing
• Defense skill cap made exactly same as warriors
• Added Yaulp 4 at 60 and enhanced.

Shadowknights:

• Removed artificially inflated mana cost for pre level 50 lifetap

spells. Please note that post-50 lifetap spells never had an inflated mana cost.

• Moved Spirit Tap to level 55
• Moved Drain Spirit to level 57
• Added Drain Soul at level 60
• Grim Aura added at level 22 and enhanced
• Moved Shieldskin to level 34
• Pet buff added at 29
• Added Diamondskin spell at 59
• Defense skill cap made exactly same as warriors
• Due to the recent improvements to "Harmtouch", it is doing much

more damage than it would before and unbalances PvP. As such it will now do less damage in PvP (68% of PvE, down from 80%). In addition, Shadowknights on the PvP servers were routinely killing themselves via non-XP losing means and attacking other players with Harmtouch immediately upon respawn. In order to address this situation, Harmtouch is no longer automatically "recharged" by death on the PvP Servers.

• The "Lifeleech" discipline now increases hit probability in

addition to its other effects.

Rangers:

• Added Endure Cold at 22
• Added Skin Like Nature at 59
• Added FireFist at 22
• Moved Bramblecoat from 49 to 39
• Added Spikecoat at 49
• Added resist cold at 55
• Added Panic Animal at 22
• Moved Jolt to 51
• Moved Spirt of Wolf from 39 to 30
• Added Cinder Jolt (fire-based Jolt spell) at 55.
• Offense and weapons skill made identical to warriors
• Added See Invisible at 39

Bards:

• Added new level 20 Bard Song: Cassindra`s Chant of Clarity
• Bards defensive skill made exactly the same as a warriors
• Changed it so that the bard spell Denon's Desperate Dirge to

increase damge by 10pts per level over 45. Also made it so the spell does 20% more damage using the Puretone discipline.

Magicians:

• Added new level 59 spell: Valiant Companion
• Added new level 39 spell: Summon Companion
• Rain spells no longer count pets against total number of entities

they can damage (all rain spells)

• Added level 29 spell for Mages: Expedience

Enchanters:

• Lowered recast time on Visions of Grandeur

Bug Fixes

• Aggressive and Defensive disciplines have been fixed. Before they

would only affect damage taken and not affect damage dealt out. Now they affect both as designed.

• Fixed the bug with going to the spellbook when the inventory window

was up in fullview mode. It should work now. Also, fixed a minor bug where if you were in normal mode and tried to go to the spellbook from inventory via /book or the keymapped key it would not go, and it would make the done button not work properly for the inventory mode.

• Fixed NPC melee ranges to be the same as for player characters. In

other words, if you can hit the NPC, he can hit you. This bug was a problem with one dragon that could be hit, but could not hit back.

• Fixed a bug that made it impossible to "Call of the Hero" someone

out of water or lava.

• Fixed the proc on the Chilled Scythe. Owners of this item will need

to swap it out with a GM.

• The Kromzek Surveyor Scope now fits in the "Ranged" slot rather

than the "Ammo" slot as before.

• Fixed a bug that caused the two single-target bard snare songs to

break too soon in some cases.

• Fixed a bug whereby NPCs would consider the race of a player prior

to the loading of the faction table upon zoning or logging in. This would cause people to be attacked by things that normally like them.

• Players should now be properly removed from the group regardless of

how they exit the game.

Misc Changes

• Added text labels to the fullview inventory window "body" slots

(Available only to Velious Subscribers)

• Added the ability to toggle those labels on and off. Use

/invwinlabels [on/off] (or no arguments to toggle). This is saved in the eqclient.ini file in the [Defaults] section with the key InvWinLabels=[TRUE/FALSE]

• Increased the pre-50 bind-wounds cap for rogues and warriors.
• Pickpocket now works to a max of 5 levels below you, or level

45...whichever is greater... You can pickpocket NPC up to level 55 if you are level 60.

• The mouse pointer will now move at a multiple of its normal speed

when you adjust the MousePointerSpeedMod setting in the eqclient.ini file. You can set that multiple on-the-fly with the /mousespeed command.

• The "AutoHelp" feature that can be set under the options menu has

been enhanced. Spell casters in particular might want to turn it on and try depressing the ALT key. It's perfect for refreshing your memory in regards to your spell lineup.

• If you are interrupted while trying to cast a spell that uses a

component, you will no longer use that component. Jewelers should be very pleased with this change.

• Reduced the casting difficulty (fizzle rate) of all spells over

level 56. Spells have always previously been set up so that it's usually more efficient to use a spell from a previous circle than the current one. The formula did not take into account the fact that everyone stops at 60.

• Changed it so that players will now lose experience when they die

in the Arena in Kael Drakkel. It seems that people were fighting giants in that arena in order to avoid the death penalty.

• Naked PC corpses that have experience and are above level 30 will

now last 3 hours instead of 3 minutes.

• Avatar and Focus of Spirit should now stack
• Raised the pre and post 50 bind wounds cap for paladins, clerics,

druids, and shaman.

Item Changes

• The effect on the "Frost Giant Beard" can now be used at 35th level rather than level 50.
• The Wurmslayer will now fit in a bag.
• Iksar can now use the Ashenbone Shield
• Chandged Crystallized Shadow leggings to rentable
• Changed Gorilla Hide Leggings to show up as leather, was cloth before
• Changed Envy from a piercing weapon to a shield so players could Bash with it. Envy is a parrying dagger.
• The Shralok Pack is now LORE. It was set to pending-lore some time ago.
• The Guardian and Sentry Armor bracers are no longer LORE.
• Donal's Breastplate can now only be used on any individual target once every 7.5 minutes. This addresses some of the balance issues that became apparent given the existence of a mana-free complete heal.

Trades and Crafts

• Fixed the Gator Roll baking recipe.
• Repaired the notetext instructions for creating a Mixing Bowl with pottery.
• Repaired Holgresh Fur Cap and Holgresh Fur Moccasins tailoring recipes.
• Made it so that the file is returned in addition to the hammer when a character fails to forge any of the various chain jointings.
• Repaired Recipe for Enchanted Tier`Dal Adamantite Bracelet
• Made it so that the Dwarven Smithy Hammer is returned on a failure to forge Brellium Chain Jointing.
• Repaired Field Plate Boots smithing recipe
• Changed the name of the smithed Enchanted Cabilis Scale armor to Imbued Cabilis Scale armor for naming convention reasons.
• Repaired the recipe for converting 3 Enchanted Large Adamantite Bricks into 1 Enchanted Block of Adamantite in the Tier`Dal Forge, it was previously only possible in the Oggok Forge.
• Made it so that the Bread Tin is returned upon a failure to bake bread.
• Mithril and Velium Bonings will be stackable.
• Mithril Studs will be stackable.

NPC AI - Hate

We've made a number of changes to NPC AI, specifically to the section dealing with target-selection, or what's commonly referred to as "Hate". It is not so much that NPCs react differently to hate now than before, but that we've changed the way that hate is awarded.

• We reduced the amount of hate that can be caused by a proc. Due to

the high proc rates at upper levels, the amount of hate generated from procs, and the spells that were selected for those procs, made keeping the attention of the creature much too easy a task for the tank. Simply, it nearly eliminated the challenge of keeping a foes attention at levels above 50.

• We've capped the amount of hate that can be awarded to most

casters, specifically for debuff-type spells like the Malo and Tash series. The hate calculation for these spells takes into account the number of hitpoints of the NPC and did not "play nice" with the increased HP limit of Velious. It explains why Enchanters, for instance, would complain that casting a Tash spell would lead to near- instant death.

• We've redressed the amount of hate generated by heal spells.

Previously, and *partly* due to a bug, the high level heal spells such as superior heal or complete heal would generate no more hate than greater heal. In fact, so little hate was generated by these spells that it made controlling NPC aggression trivial. Heal spells will now generate an amount of hate more in line with the number of hitpoints actually healed. Due to our desire to leave the lower level game more or less untouched, two separate caps have been placed for targets level 50 or below, and 51 or above. Heal spells will generate significantly less hate for targets below level 51 than those at or above that level.

• We've also re-evaluated ways that players have to reduce their own

hate. While spells in place to allow this are OK, the Evade skill (possessed by rogues) let them out of their damage too easily. A rogue that successfully evaded would immediately drop to a level of hate lower than someone who was in the awareness range, but hadn't done anything to really upset the creature such as damage it or heal its foe. This problem was exacerbated by the increase of the size of the hate list implemented with Velious.

Tracking

Tracking now works in full view for all classes that can use it, and sports a nifty scroll bar that allows players to see everything on the list. In addition, the /trackplayer setting is now saved to the eqclient.ini file.

The following options have been put in for Rangers only:

• /tracksort
• /trackfilter

• /tracksort options beginning with R are reverse order

Hybrid Casting

Hybrids that cast spells in combat were taking double penalties at higher levels. The casting times of their spells went up, and the amount of melee damage they do per second went up. This results is having to take longer to cast spells, and losing more damage/second for each second taken in casting. To help offset this, Rangers, Paladins and Shadowknights casting non-beneficial spells that have casting times greater than or equal to 3 seconds, now get a 3 % reduction in casting time for each level over 50. 3% at 51, 6% at 52, etc., to 30% at 60. Again, this applies only to non-beneficial spells.

- The EverQuest Team

February 21, 2001

(Allakhazam fail: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20010221b.html)

Shralok Pack and Pending Lore

It's apparent that some EQ players, primarily those who started playing after the introduction of the LORE tag, did not know what the "Pending Lore" tag meant. "Pending Lore" means that in the future, an item WILL become LORE, making it so the character can possess only one. When this change occurs, the server deletes additional items upon login.

The Shralok Pack is one of those items. However, due to the number of people unaware of the meaning of the tag, we've changing it back to "Pending Lore". Players who had the item disappear from their characters can contact a GM to have their characters restored to the time of the last backup.

Going forward, we will work to distribute additional notification when making a change of this type. To that end, the Shralok Pack will become a LORE item in the very near future, and players should take steps to remove all items and get rid of additional packs. It should be noted that there is no guarantee as to which pack(s) will be deleted when the server reduces the total number owned to one, so you will want to destroy any superfluous packs manually.

Healing and Hate

A team member has asked that we clarify the changes to the way hate is awarded in healing. The important point that may not have been clear below is that there is a cap on the amount of hate that can be awarded for any particular heal spell. For a target below level 51, no heal spell can generate more than 800 hate, regardless of the number of hitpoints healed. For targets level 51 or above, the cap is higher, but does not approach the total hitpoints of a fully buffed warrior.

Casting Difficulty

The patch message mentioned that the casting difficulty for spells above level 56 was reduced. The actual value is spells of level 51 or above. These spells should fizzle less than they did before.

Crashing on Zoning

We tracked down and eliminated another bug that was causing some people to intermittently crash upon zoning. If you were affected by this problem you should notice better performance.

March 6, 2001 3:00 am

Patch Day

General Changes

• Doubled the chance gain skill points in skills that are above 200.
• Fixed a bug that disallowed casting of the Donal's Breatplate on

others once casted upon yourself.

• The spell scrolls for Grim Aura should now all reflect usability by

SKs

• Fixed a bug that would allow melee players to open a spellbook via

/book or alt+b.

• Merchants will now recognize Iksar as a valid race.
• New bind locations have been added to three zones in the world - One

on Antonica and two others on Kunark. NPCs at these locations can fill you in on the details. Good hunting.

• The casting time for four cleric brestplates sporting the "Celestial

Healing" effect has been increased to one minute. We understand that this severely limits the use of that effect and we are currently discussing alternate effects to place on those items in the next patch. We did, however, need to address the 300pt per tick regen that could be placed and kept on the group tank. When we've decided on the new affect, it will be applied to those items retroactively.

• Numeric skill values will be shown on character skill display for

skill values over 100. Values under 100 still show the qualitative identifiers.

• Players have expressed concern about accidentally inspecting other

players. You can now turn on or off your ability to inspect other players by typing /inspect.

• Those of you with z-axis mouse wheels on your mice may use them over

the chat window.

• Fixed "Breath of the Sea". It was mistakenly set to be unresistable.
• Same-zone evac-type spells will now cause you to reload the current

zone. This is a necessary step to ensure that you are removed from all hatelists and clean up your pet.

• "Voice Graft" will no longer show the spawn number (Jobaber00) of

your pet.

• You will now receive a message when you are being bandaged.
• The tracking skill cap for Druids has been raised to 125. It was the

intent for druids to be better at tracking than they were, however before the scroll bar, smaller skill numbers were often considered better. With the tracking improvements from the last patch, this increase was appropriate.

• Increased the number of hitpoints healed by Celestial Cleansing.

NPC AI Adjustments

• Level 60 players with the taunt skill will now have a chance to

taunt creatures that are level 60 to 65. Previously, players could only taunt creatures below their level.

• NPCs that are mesmerized or stunned will now only add a very small

amount of hate when they see you cast beneficial spells on their enemies. Prior to this, they would add full hate when they saw you do this. This is why NPCs would always jump the cleric after breaking Mez.

• Fixed a bug that would cause NPCs to add too much "temporary hate"

when a player would sit down in front of them.

• The maximum amount of "hate" that an NPC can add when witnessing a

heal to targets above level 50 has been decreased substantially.

• Hate from heals is also now calculated at a lesser number than the

number of hitpoints healed. Previously, healing one hitpoint would cause one point of hate. Now, healing 3 hitpoints will cause 2 points of hate.

Velious Music

Velious subscribers should run the Velious Patch to pick up new mood music for some Velious Zones. Let us know what you think of the new compositions.

EQGems

A new "mini-game" has been added to the EverQuest client. EQGems is our first effort aimed towards allowing people to engage in different activities while playing EverQuest. Based upon the success of EQGems, we may explore opportunities for other mini-games in the future, even some that are multiplayer in and of themselves. Type /gems to play.

- The EverQuest Team

March 9, 2001 12:00 am

• E'ci and The Rathe Movelog*

We will be opening a new server and moving characters from the E'ci and The Rathe servers to this new server upon the request of the customer. If you choose to move your characters to the new server, please be aware that all of your characters on the old server will be moved to the new server.

To request to have your characters moved to the new server, all you need to do is type "/movelog yes" into the chat window while playing a character on that server during the time that the move log is open.

We will be opening the move log for these two servers on Friday, March 16th, 2001 at 6:00 pm. PST (which is Saturday morning at 2:00 am GMT). We will be closing the move log on Sunday, March 18th, 2001 at 11:59 pm PST (7:59 am on Monday the 19th GMT). The new, yet unnamed, server should be opened some time during the week of March 19th. We'll announce the exact date as soon as we can.

There are a few things to keep in mind when choosing to move your characters to the new server. The most important thing to keep in mind is that character corpses will not be moved with the characters. So it is important to make certain that you have looted all of the corpses that you want to loot before the characters are moved.

Also, characters names are unique on the new server. Because characters will be moving from two separate servers onto the new one, there may be cases where two characters with the same name are created on the new server. Because character names must be unique, one of the two characters will be chosen at random and have an 'x' added to the end of their name. If you find that one of your characters has had an 'x' tacked onto their name after the move and you would rather have a new name, please contact your GM by using the /petition function. The GM will help you to change the name of your character.

Guild structures do not follow the characters to the new server. We will be unable to reestablish guilds until at least a week has passed after the split. On any day after the new server has been up for eight days, the guild leader can /petition for a GM to help them reestablish the guild. Please do not petition for this before seven days have passed, we will not be able to set up your guild before then.

We will not be moving characters back to the old server, so make certain that you want to move your characters before you type "/movelog yes". And we will not be moving characters for those that fail to execute the movelog command during the stated window of opportunity.

- The EverQuest Team

Warrens Era

March 14, 2001 3:00 am

EverQuest Turns Two

Two years ago this Friday, EverQuest was launched, forever changing the course of online gaming. Today EverQuest boasts nearly 360,000 active subscribers, and a two-year retention rate of 65%. Peak usage tops 89,000 simultaneous users with average peak usage at roughly 87,000. The EverQuest community continues to grow daily.

We've put up a page on the EverQuest website to help celebrate EverQuest's achievement and to thank our loyal fans. Over the next couple of days we will be posting interesting content from EverQuest's humble beginnings, as well as a few surprises. Check it out! http://everquest.station.sony.com/2ndanniversary/index.jsp

Ever Changing, Evolving, Expanding

The Warrens

As part of our two-year celebration, we're pleased to announce the release of "The Warrens", a free expansion zone located on Odus. "The Warrens" is a low-to-mid level dungeon and the home of the Kobolds on Odus. You can patch the Warrens by running the "Optional Patch".

In addition to filling-out the continent of Odus, "the Warrens" will also serve as a platform to try out some of the new ideas brought forth by members of the team and the public aimed at addressing some common gameplay issues. We would like to see what options might be open to and enjoyed by the players in the future.

The first issue addressed in the Warrens is the problem of higher level characters competing with lower level characters for loot on lower level creatures. To address this issue, in the Warrens, a group that "outclasses" a particular foe will not receive any loot that is MAGIC, LORE, or NODROP. All other loot will drop. "Outclassing" a foe is defined as having a group makeup such that no one in your group receives experience from the kill. This can happen if, for instance, the foe is "green" to all group members, or if the group makeup is of such a wide level range that the system determines the fight was unbalanced using regular experience rules.

Any time that an NPC would have dropped special loot and does not due to it being outclassed, a message indicating that the combat was "trivial" will be displayed to the group.

As time goes on, we will be implementing new gameplay subsets and adjustements in the Warrens. Please be sure to let us know what you think!

The Planes

The Planes of Fear and Hate have been updated as part of our two-year celebration. Adventurers in the Plane of Fear will notice that some high-level foes are now available. Rewards for former "boss npcs" have been moved down to underlings that are roughly as powerful as the old bosses were.

The Plane of Hate has also received a large update, but this one also includes the opening of a previously undiscovered part of the zone, now full high-level expansion-oriented content. Much as with Fear, rewards from bosses have been moved.

Epic Quests

As part of the Plane updates, we've made several adjustments to Epic quests for a number of classes. Previously, questers of many classes were put in direct competition with regular non-questing adventurers for a few coveted spawns. In these cases, a new step has been added to separate the "Epic Encounter" NPCs from the "Epic Quest" NPCs.

For those who are mid-quest, all quest requirements have remained the same. In other words, if you turn the same items into the same NPC, the same reward applies. What has changed is that some components may be in a different location from where you expect them. It is recommended that you check with the last NPC in line or other adventurers to find where you need to go next.

Patch Day

Along with the big announcements above, today was a patch day as well:

• Fixed a bug that allowed exploitation of the period of time between

character control being established and loading of character faction tables.

• Fixed the Dagger of Frost. Its special item flags were improperly

removed in the last patch.

• The spell, Mark of Karn, has been enhanced to heal more per hit.

- The effect on the Celestial Elixir Breastplates has been changed to the enhanced Mark of Karn. The casting time on these items has also been changed to 9 seconds.

• NPCs in Thurgadin will no longer stop traveling when you /hail them.
• Fixed a problem present in Nagafen's Lair and the Plane of Hate that

caused framerate to drop over time.

• Shift-clicking on a stack of items will cause you to pick up the

whole stack. This is in addition to CTRL-clicking on a stack, which will cause you to pick up one. These both also work for coins now as well as items.

• In addition to the above, holding down the shift key while clicking

the "Sell" button in the vendor screen will cause you to sell the entire stack of items if a stack is selected. For example, you can sell 20 peridots by selecting the stack, and shift-clicking "Sell". I'd recommend though that you give them to your neighborhood cleric first though :) The ability to buy stacks is on the list for implementation in the near future. - There are a ton of new recipies for trade skill users out there. Check your books. - There are a bunch of new quests as well.

• It appears that we fixed a bug with the Mend skill that caused it to

be unavailable for a few seconds after it was supposed to be ready for use. Let us know if there are any further problems.

• Foraging items will now yield a message giving you some idea of what you've foraged.

Please remember that the /movelog for the Rathe and E'ci is scheduled for this weekend. Please read the message below for details on the /movelog.

A Message From Customer Service

We regularly receive requests from customers that want their characters moved from one server to another, or from one account to another. Unfortunately, due to the EverQuest EULA, the number of requests that we receive, the desire to maintain stable server communities and economies, and other problems associated with character moves, we can not move characters across servers or accounts.

It is important for the integrity of the server that items from a server remain on that server. We also feel that it is important that characters that have built up a reputation, good or bad, have to live with the consequences of their decisions, and are not allowed to retreat from that reputation by changing servers.

The only exception to this rule is when we open a Movelog for moving a large number of characters to new servers. At no other time will we move a character in such a fashion.

- The EverQuest Team

March 27, 2001 2:00 am

Fan Faire Reminder

Registration for the San Diego Fan Faire closes on Wednesday, March 28th, and we are running out of spaces. Once all the spaces are taken, we will not be accepting any further registrations (or walk-ins). So if you plan to attend sign up before someone else gets your spot. Head over to www.everquest.com to register.

Patch Day

Spell Changes and Additions

• A new teleportation spell has been added to the game for both Druids

and Wizards. These are self-only gate spells to the Dreadlands. These spells should be available on the more exclusive spell vendors in Norrath.

• Increased the drop rate on some Kunark spells to coincide with the

narrowing of the creatures carrying those spells as the game evolves.

• Wizards now have access to a new type of spell that only works on

certain types of target. Generically called 'bane' spells, a few are now available in the game. May your quest for such spells be successful.

Item Changes

• Changed the effects on the Singing Steel Boots and Greaves. After a fair amount of concern from players, we have removed the summon food and water effects from these items. They have been replaced with modified versions of Aria of the Eagles (boots) and Appalling Screech (greaves).

• The Incandescent Bracer can now be worn on the wrist rather than the waist.

• The Incarnadine Breastplate must now be worn to activate.

• Changed spell effects on Pauldrons of the Fearsome and Fearsome Shield to right click and worn to activate.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that was causing some players to zone into the Warrens at the wrong location.

• Corrected an error with the Bixie Sword Blade, changing its delay from 6 to 16.

• Fixed a bug where Iskar Monks were unable to Feign Death after Foraging.

• Kodiaks in the Great Divide are now seen as animals.

• Toxdil, the wandering rogue poison vendor, will now sell to characters even when he is away from his home.

Enhancements

• Fixed a problem that occurred when players mistyped /guild. Typing /guildd in the chat window is the shortcut for typing /guilddelete. /guildd now has a confirmation box so that such an error should no longer lead to the accidental deletion of a guild.

• Added /showspelleffects. Using this toggle ('on' or 'off') a player can turn on or off the display of particle effects for spells. This will only affect spells, not world effects like waterfalls or weapon particle effects. This should allow you to turn off many of the effects that hamper rendering performance, inducing effects of spells, while still being able to see some of the awesome effects, like those on certain paladin weapons...

• Added server-side filtering for chat and combat messages. This will allow you to turn off guild chat, shouts, auctions, oocs, 'my misses', 'others misses', 'others hits', 'attacker misses me', PC spells (all options), NPC spells and Bard songs (all options) at the server instead of at the client. This can reduce that amount of data sent to you over

your connection, and can help those with slower connections with better performance and connectivity.

• Ships will now be announcing their arrival in most zones. They will also be announcing their progress to any zone they travel through. Any of those zones that they are not currently making announcements in will be added in the next patch or two.

• Shift - Left and Shift - Right will now repeat in the chat window. This means that when editing what you've typed, you can just hold down the Shift and Left Arrow keys and the cursor will move left until it reaches the beginning of the line or until you release the keys.

• The spell slot number will now show up in front of the spell name when you press Alt to cast a spell using the Alt-Spell Number method.

• View perspective in wolf form has been fixed. First-person view will now be on level with the wolf, rather than a few feet above it. At the same time, perceiving other players in wolf form will appear to be standing on the ground instead of floating a few feet above it.

• Trade skill success and failure messages will be sent to the craftsperson's group instead of just the craftsperson, as long as the craftsperson is using the proper ingredients. Failure of the craftsman to use the proper ingredients will result in no failure message being sent.

• In order to prevent a few trade scams, money can no longer be removed from a trade window. You will have to cancel the trade and start over to adjust the amount of money involved in the trade.

• We're now sending hitpoint updates to the casters of direct damage spells no matter how far away they are when the spell lands. This will allow those casters that try to stand as far back as possible to get updates even when their range indicates that the messages should be surpressed.

Quest

Several new quests have been added as well, so don't be afraid to talk to the folks of Norrath, they might have new information for you.

- The EverQuest Team

March 27th, 6:00 pm

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20011228012911/http://boards.station.sony.com/ubb/everquest/Forum1/HTML/000002.html

Server-Side Filter Clarification

If you use the Chat Filter options in game to turn off OOC, Shout, Auction, Guild Chat, Damage Shields or any form of combat miss, this filtering will occur on the server automatically. This means that once you turn them off, these messages will not even be sent to your computer.

All other messages will remain filtered on the Client Side (by your computer rather than the server) even if you turn them off, until you type /serverfilter ON. When you do that then they will be filtered at the server. This may, however, prevent you from seeing certain spell particle effects and possibly some damage animations. /serverfilter OFF will allow these messages to be sent to your computer once again.

The advantage to filtering things on the server rather than at your computer is that it reduces the amount of data that needs to be sent to your computer. For people that don't have the best connections to the Internet, and/or for those in locations where a lot of data is being sent (such as in raid situations), server-side filtering should make the game more stable.

- The EverQuest Team

March 28th, 1:30pm

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20011228012911/http://boards.station.sony.com/ubb/everquest/Forum1/HTML/000002.html

IMPORTANT NEW MESSAGE

Combine Button Containers

First of all thank you to everyone who posted the problem with the Velious Tailoring recipes and other recipes that appeared to be broken after the patch.

With the most recent patch, we fixed a bug that is causing some confusion with these recipes.

There was a bug that allowed certain recipes to work in any container of its type, where they were intended to work only in special containers of that type. For example, there are recipes that were intended to only work in the Coldain Tanner's Kit that could be completed in any Sewing Kit. That bug was repaired along with some other minor bugs associated with combine button containers in this last patch.

Please make sure that you are using the proper container as instructed by in game instructions or npc's when combining trade skill components or quest components in any combine button container.

The Velious Tailoring Recipes are currently functioning in the Coldain Tanners Kit. We apologize for the inconvenience.

- The EverQuest Team

March 30, 2001

(Allakhazam fail: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20010330.html)

Client Patch

Tonight we patched out a new EverQuest client. This client will address issues reported by those using video cards that require square textures, and who are crashing or experiencing garbled textures.

We are working on the other problems reported. As always, please be sure you have installed DirectX 7 or higher, and have also installed the latest drivers for your video card. It is very important that the video drivers are installed AFTER DirectX.

April 4, 2001 3:00 am

New and Changed Features

• Guild Message of the Day. Guild Officers and Leaders will be able to type /guildmotd to set up a Guild Message of the Day (GMotD). From then on any time a member of that guild logs in they will see the message with the name of the message sender added at the front, so you will know who sent the message. Any guild member will also be able to read the GMotD by typing just /guildmotd and the message will be displayed again. The GMotD will be erased if the server comes down, however. You will have to reset the GMotD when the server comes back up.

• /assist changed and improved. It should be much more reliable now. It also will target whatever the assisted person has targeted. The assisted person does not need to have auto-attack on for /assist to work.

• Fixed a problem with /corpse that kept it from working on corpses that were too far above or below you.

Skill Change

• Foraging changed so that if you are getting the hungry and thirsty messages, your next successful forage will always be drink or food. We have also decreased the chance of foraging fishing grubs a bit and increased the chance that you will forage water.

Spell Changes

• Acumen now overwrites See Invisible.

• Translocate now has the proper spell gem.

Bug Fix

• Fixed many crash problems for Windows 2000 users. This fix will most likely also aid some folks that are not using Windows 2000 that are having problems.

Item Changes

• Velious racial plate helm quests have been added that will allow you to 'trade in' your existing helms for ones with textures. We have decided to allow the players (or their characters) to chose whether they wish to have the new helmet textures or to continue to use helmets that show no graphics.

• Five and ten charge versions of Potions of the Bone Field have been added.

• Kilva's Skin of Flame potion has been changed. It no longer has the same effect as the Kilva's Blistering Flesh potion.

• Removed the tinting from Dark Forge and Resonant armors. Tinting was never really intended to be on those pieces and, frankly, they look better without it.

Miscellaneous Items

• Reduced the 'bottleneck' for getting Howling Stone keys by increasing the availability of one of the quest items.

• Erudite guards will now be much less friendly to Kobolds.

• Vendors are once again selling the Coldain Tanner's Kit.

'Combine' container changes

We've made a change to 'combine' containers. In order to prevent people from accidentally destroying items, all containers with a 'combine' button will not combine any items that do not form a complete recipe. This will be a huge boon to craftspeople all across Norrath. But this removes the only drawback to using trade containers as backpacks. Their reduced weight and often greater carrying capacity made them more desirable as bags, with the compensating risk that you might just lose something if you made a mistake.

We will be increasing the weight of portable 'combine' containers somewhat. Where some of these containers weighed under 1 pound, they will now weigh as much as 4 pounds for the largest sewing kit.

Along with this we are making a change to tailor made backpacks. In case you didn't know, most tailor made packs have a built in weight reduction of 5%. We are raising that to 10%. We will also be displaying the weight reduction of all containers with the information shown on a right click.

- The EverQuest Team

April 4, 2001 11:30 am

EverQuest Classic Edition

There is a new package for EverQuest. It's a small box with a small price. Here's a bit from the press release for details:

---

SAN DIEGO, CA - April 3, 2001 - Sony Online Entertainment announced today that its classic edition of EverQuest(tm) is now available for the SRP of $9.99, a price point that will attract new users to a continuously growing community. EverQuest, the most successful massively multiplayer online role-playing game ever, will be available in both a jewel case and mini box versions at retail stores nationwide. "Newbies" will enjoy all the amazing aspects of the original EverQuest from creating their own specialized characters to embarking on perilous and excitement filled journeys across three continents.

---

- The EverQuest Team

April 17, 2001 3:00 am

Food Changes

• Food items now have a 'duration'. This means that some food items

will not sustain a character as long as others, and some items will sustain your character longer than they did before.

Bug Fixes

• We THINK we've fixed the problem with the Dusty Werebat. This fellow

has been steadfastly refusing to appear where and when we ask him to. We've worked out a deal with his agent, and we think he'll be back to work with this patch.

• Corrected an anomaly with hit point bars that occurred when a

character was healed or damaged by spells. This could be seen, for example, when a character was healed and the hit point bar would go up and then quickly go back down a bit right afterwards. There was no error in the assignment of healing or damage previously, just in the way it was being displayed.

• Fixed the visual bracer bug where other people would see a different

bracer graphic than you would. Now everyone (including the wearer) will always see the same bracer texture. If you have two bracers that have a different look (one is leather and one is steel, for example), make sure that the one you want to show up graphically is on your right wrist inventory slot, because this is the one that the game will choose to show for you (unless you take off the left one and put it back on, which will show the left one, but that is only temporary, and it will go back to showing the right one after you zone or reenter the game).

• Fixed zoning problem in Nurga to Droga that caused characters to be

facing the wrong way when they zoned, often causing confusion that lead to accidentally zoning back the way they had come. You should be facing the right way when you make that zone transition now.

Zone and Quest Changes

• The marauding Tar Goos will no longer be assisted by the Geonids.

This should make at least one quest more available.

• Grobb should now have a couple of ovens. Hopefully this will allow

Troll bakers to keep their fellows full of carbs and ready to fight.

• Fixed a bug that occurred when selling stacks of items. Previously,

if you had 4 bat wings and sold them one by one to the merchant, the merchant would have 4 bat wings for you to buy, but if you sold all four at once to the merchant he would only have one for you to buy. Now he will have 4 in either case.

• We have increased the spawn rate of Venril Sathir and his skeletal

remains. Please note that only Rangers and Druids will be able to trigger the spawn for the skeletal remains, and those remains will only be dropping items for those epic quests. Hopefully these changes will dramatically reduce the competition and resentment over this spawn.

• We have reduced resistances to some spell types on some NPCs in Sky

Shrine and the Tower of Frozen Shadow. This is the beginning of our overview of the resistances of NPCs in Velious.

Improved and New Features

• When you /consent someone it will give them the ability to drag all

of your corpses.

• You can now buy stacks of combinable items (such as rations, water,

etc...) from merchants. It works the same way as sell in that you can hold down shift to buy a full stack and control to buy just one item.

• Added the ability to change the color of all windows at one time with

/wincolor (all windows that can be changed, that is). You can now use /wincolor ALL 0 0 100 2, for example, instead of having to set each window separately.

• Right-clicking items while looting will 'auto-equip' them. This will

work just as if you had picked the items up and dropped them onto the 'auto-equip' area of your character profile. So if there is already a piece of equipment on your character in the spot where the looted item would normally go, it will drop into your inventory, if you have room for it.

• The tab key will no longer toggle between you and your last target

when the chat bar is up. When the chat bar is open the tab key will take you through the list of your most recent /tell names or /reply names. When the chat bar is closed the tab key will switch you between yourself and your last target.

• /assist has an added parameter. /assist on and /assist off will

determine whether or not your character auto-attacks when you use /assist. So if you type /assist off, from that time forward using /assist will NOT engage your character's auto-attack. This change will be persistent, so it will remain as you left it when you log out. /assist also now has a range of 200 feet.

• The destroy confirmation requestor now shows the name of the item you

are trying to destroy, or it just says money if you are destroying coins. This should greatly reduce the chance of accidentally deleting the wrong item. PLEASE read the text in the destroy confirmation box to be certain that you are destroying the right item before choosing to destroy it.

• Hailing Player Character will now say 'Hail Playername', rather than

just 'hail'.

• Added /charinfo command. Currently this command only reports the zone

where the current character is bound. We may add further information as things progress.

• You will now see how much damage your character has taken when he is

hit by a spell that causes instant damage (DOT damage is not reported).

Item Changes

• We've made a change to the Red Scabbard that should relieve most of

the problems warriors were having with their epic weapon occasionally disappearing during conversion between the two-handed weapon and the two one-handed weapons. What will happen now is rather simple. The very next time you use the container to combine the weapons (or break them apart), the old scabbard will disappear and a new one will replace it.

THE NEW SCABBARD AND THE SWORDS WILL APPEAR ON YOUR CURSOR, rather than in your inventory. So once you have combined them, make sure to place them in your inventory. And don't panic, the items didn't disappear. :) But also MAKE CERTAIN THAT YOU HAVE ROOM IN YOUR INVENTORY FOR ALL THREE ITEMS (the two swords and the scabbard, which is a container and needs to be able to fit into your main inventory). If you end up with a No-Drop container on your cursor with no place to put it in your inventory, you will have a problem...

Also, right now the new scabbard is a little bugged. Right now you won't be able to open the new scabbard until you camp out once after it is created. We're working on fixing that bug. We decided to make this change even with this small bug to help relieve everyone of the problems with the old scabbard.

This new scabbard will have a special ability. It will be able to recreate the epic weapons if you have lost them. Simply place a Sword of Runes (summoned by a Magician) into the scabbard and hit the combine button. The scabbard will convert the temporary power of the Sword of Runes into the permanent epic sword.

Customer Service WILL NOT be replacing the old scabbards with the new ones. That will be done by the game itself once you have completed the quest and combined the swords for the first time.

• Changed the size of the Weighted Axe from Tiny to Large (after all,

it's a big two-handed axe...). If you have one in a bag now, be aware that it probably won't fit back into that bag again once you take it out.

• No Rent Items will no longer be immediately deleted from your

character inventory upon disconnection with the server. If you are disconnected from the servers, or even if you log out, your No Rent items (such as summoned food and water) will remain on your character as long as you log back to that character within 30 minutes. After thirty minutes those No Rent items will be deleted. There may be some extreme cases beyond our control (such as hardware failures) where No Rent items will not be on your character even if you log back in within the 30 minute timeframe. No reimbursement will be given for No Rent items lost in this manner.

• Grand Master Wrist Wraps have been fixed and should now create the

"Pouch of Quellios" as intended. If you have one of these items and it still does not work, please contact a GM using /petition and ask them to switch yours for a new one.

• Snow Storm Mask should now function properly.

• The Ring of the Frozen Flame should now be working properly.

• The slow effect on the Willsapper proc has been reduced.

• The weight of Skewers has been increase to a weight of 3.

• Velious Monk armor appearances have been changed. If you're wearing

these items, you probably already noticed this, but we thought we'd announce it anyway. New textures will be showing on the Plane of Growth dropped armors and on the questable armors. Because the Velious textures can be a strain on some systems, the textures for these new armors will not be loaded by default by the game. If you want to see the new textures you will have to edit your EQClient.ini and change the line LoadArmor23=FALSE (the default) to LoadArmor23=TRUE.

Trade Skill Changes

• Bards that worship Sol Ro will now be able to wear the Imbued jewelry made for their god. For those that not only sing around the campfire, but sing about the campfire!

• 'World' Trade Containers (those that are stationary) have been fixed. Previously when a character tried to combine items in a world container that did not match a recipe, the items would seem to disappear. But if the character closed and reopened the container, the items were still in it. Those items should no longer seem to disappear.

• The speed of Selo's Song of Travel, the effect of the Singing Steel Breastplate has been increased a little.

Spell Changes

• Removed Gem component from the following spells. They will now only

require the metal components. These are the Enchant spells for making cultural armor.

Enchant Velium Enchant Mithril Enchant Adamantite Enchant Steel Enchant Brellium

• Changed the spell component for the following Magician spells from

Lapis Lazuli to Malachite. They now use the same reagent as every other Magician pet spell.

Minor Summoning: Earth Minor Summoning: Water Minor Summoning: Fire Minor Summoning: Air Elemental: Earth Elemental: Water Elemental: Fire Elemental: Air

• Added Casting Text to the Following spells (the messages in brackets

will now appear upon a successful use of the spell):

Panic Animal (soandso flees in a state of total panic!) Terrorize Animal (soandso runs away in terror!) Repulse Animal (soandso is utterly repulsed!) Acumen (soandso's eyes tingle)

• Cannibalize IV now exists. This spell is now available in Velious.

• Cannibalize II and III have had their effects improved. They now

return more mana to the caster than they did before.

Class Specific Changes

• Monk weight allowance has been increased. Every 15 levels monks will

get an extra 1 stone weight allowance. The post 50 weight allowance has also been increased by 2 stone.

Level 15, Limit 15 Level 30, Limit 16 Level 45, Limit 17 Level 51, Limit 18 Level 55, Limit 20 Level 60, Limit 24

• Disarmed traps will remain disarmed for a somewhat longer time than

before to allow larger groups to get past the traps before they go off.

April 17, 2001 (Later)

(Allkakhazam fail: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20010417b.html)

We're sorry that we've had to patch again so quickly. We found a problem with the change we made to the Red Scabbard. This patch is intended primarily to fix that issue.

Food Changes

Along with the other changes mentioned in the patch message, some player-made food items will now have an effect on your character beyond just keeping him from being hungry. We'll leave it up to you to discover the rest.

We've also added the ability to right-click food to 'force' your character to eat it. This will cause the food to be eaten immediately (though your character can only eat so much food at one time). Food eaten this way will only last half as long as food eaten naturally by the character.

Run the Velious Patch

If you want to see the new Monk textures you will need to make the changes mentioned in the patch message. But you will also need to run the Velious Patch in order to get those textures to show up.

Skewer Change

We didn't actually change the weight of Skewers, we changed the weight of Spits. Sorry for the confusion.

Bug Fixes

Buying a duplicate lore item will no longer cause you to crash.

Clarification

To clear up some confusion, we wanted to let everyone know that we have changed the timing of the spawn of the Venril Sathir remains. It no longer appears directly after the death of Venril Sathir. And we also urge you to read the patch message below about the changes to this creature.

Also since we're patching to fix bugs, we decided to throw in a new feature.

%M used in a macro will now place the name of your pet (if you have one) in the text of your macro.

Bag Positioning: Now bags will stay where you put them. Simply open a bag and move it to where you want it. The bag will remember it's location and open up there again next time. This will be persistent and will be remembered when you log out.

There are two things to know about this new feature. The first is that the default position of every bag is going to be the same. So if you open one bag and then another, their windows will stack on top of each other. Don't let this alarm you, the first bag window didn't close. Just move the top bag to the desired location and you'll see the bottom one.

The other thing to know is a bit more complicated.

The saved locations for opening bags are linked to the bank or inventory slot that the bag is in, not to the bag itself. So if you open a bag that is sitting in your first inventory slot and move the bag window to a new location, it is the inventory slot that remembers the position and any bag opened from that inventory slot will open in the saved position. Take that bag from the first slot and move it to the second inventory slot and it will open in the location set for the second inventory slot. It will not remember where it was opened before.

Experiment with it, it will make more sense once you try it.

Venril Sathir

We have increased the spawn rate of Venril Sathir and his skeletal remains. Please note that only Rangers and Druids will be able to trigger the spawn for the skeletal remains, and those remains will only be dropping items for those epic quests. Hopefully these changes will dramatically reduce the competition and resentment over this spawn.

April 18, 2001 Luclin Announced - Press Release

SONY ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT EXPANDS EVERQUEST(r) UNIVERSE WITH "EVERQUEST(r): SHADOWS OF LUCLIN(tm)"

• Massive Additions in Store for SOE's Premier Role-Playing Game--

SAN DIEGO, CA - April 18, 2001 - Sony Online Entertainment announced today its new expansion pack, "EverQuest: Shadows of Luclin" for the Internet's most popular role-playing game, "EverQuest(r)." The new expansion pack will introduce EverQuest fans to an enchanting moonscape packed with new adventure zones, new items, creatures and spells, a new playable character class and more. Supported by a complete graphic overhaul, "Shadows of Luclin" will allow EverQuest players to witness their world in unprecedented splendor.

"'Shadows of Luclin' will give EQ fans a beautiful uncharted territory to explore," states Jeff Butler, Producer, Sony Online Entertainment. "Whether you're a devoted long-term fan looking for new challenges or just discovering online gaming for the first time, 'Shadows of Luclin' is filled with enough captivating adventures to support all levels of EverQuest players."

"The Shadows of Luclin" takes voyagers to a satellite hovering ominously above the world of Norrath. An area of great mystery, magic, and perplexity, Luclin is divided into a land of light, ruled by Discord, and a land of shadow, ruled by Order. Each side of this amazing world will present many new secrets, treasures and unique monsters.

"Shadows of Luclin" key features:

• New adventure zones, including a new starting city
• All new, highly detailed player-character models
• Massively enhanced 3D graphics engine
• An all-new player character race
• Challenging new quests, items to trade and sell, NPCs and more

"EverQuest: The Shadows of Luclin" is due to ship in Q4 2001. For more information visit the official Shadows of Luclin Website at http://www.everquest.com/luclin.

Continuing to grow with top-selling expansions "The Ruins of Kunark (tm)" and "The Scars of Velious(tm)," "EverQuest" proves to be the largest fantasy world ever created online. During peak periods, more than 88,000 adventurers and dragon slayers have explored the world of Norrath simultaneously. The active global EverQuest subscriber base is comprised of players from various countries throughout the "real" world, including the U.S., England, Canada, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, France, Italy and Australia.

May 8, 2001 3:00 am

• • PvP changes **

We have made the first of our upcoming changes to the PvP aspects of EverQuest:

• Consider: /Consider will only have three results when used to

consider a Player Character. The character will show as 'green' if he is below the range that allows you to attack him. The character will show as 'white/black' if he is within your ability to attack. And the character will show as 'red' if he is above your range. This will only take effect on PvP servers.

• Sanctuary Levels: Characters below level six will not be able to

engage in PvP combat, unless they take part in a Guild War, duel or use the Arena. This will, obviously, only take place on PvP servers.

• De-Leveling: Characters that lose levels will only retain the combat

skills of a character two levels higher. This means that if a character of level 10 somehow loses 5 levels, that character will only have skills that would be available to a 7th level character. This change will apply to all servers (it has to, code-wise). So the two level buffer is there to make certain that people that lose levels during normal gameplay will be minimally affected (hopefully not affected at all), while those that purposefully lose levels with the intent of causing other players grief will find themselves at no great advantage.

These are the first of the things that we plan to. We are taking a careful, step-by-step approach to changes whenever we can, and we have other changes planned for upcoming patches.

• • Quest Changes **

• We've made a change to the Velious armor quests. The folks in Kael

and in Skyshrine that give out rewards for these quests are now being stricter about who they will reward quest items to. You will have to be considered an 'ally' (see Features section below) by these NPCs in order to be able to complete these quests. If you are doing quests for the Coldain, however, they are somewhat less picky, and they only require that they consider you 'kindly' to reward you for your labors.

• The Black Silk Cape will now drop more frequently.

• • Bug Fixes **

• Attacking with a two-handed piercing weapon will now 'gray-out' the

attack button as it should.

- Text that once read: "You cannot remove this affect." now reads "You cannot remove this effect." Changed by popular demand... :)

• Food Emotes: Forcing your character to eat by right clicking food

will now properly display the appropriate emote to those in the area.

• Fixed a problem that often made it difficult to loot really large

NPCs.

• • Item Changes **

• The Shield of Tsunami can now be equipped in the secondary slot.

• Quivers now reduce the delay time on bows, the better the quiver the

faster your bow. We will not be listing the speed increase a quiver will give your bow, but you can tell the good quivers by their ability to reduce the weight of your arrows (better-made or magical quivers have this property).

• The Ivory Handled Falchion should now 'proc' without telling you that

it is out of charges. You may need to contact your GM to replace the item with a new version if it is still acting strangely.

• The Opal Bracelet is now a wrist item, not a finger item. Be aware,

once you remove it from your finger, it will not go back onto that finger, it will only fit on your wrists, as it should.

• The Large Dragonbone Shard will no longer appear to be a Staff of the

Gathering.

• The Ring of Levitation will now poof when all the charges are used

up, and should display the correct number of charges.

• The Priceless Velium Reinforced Bow now has a range of 200 instead of

a range of 0.

• The Refined Mithril Blade should now be equipable in both primary and

secondary slots.

• The Unicorn Horn should now have a graphic.

• The Hammer of Flattening has been changed from tiny to large. This

might cause you a little reorganization in your inventory.

• Runebranded Stone Buckler is now labeled as a shield and can be used

to bash.

• The Ring of Pureblood is now a finger item, not a waist item.

• • Spell Changes and Additions **

- Translocation spells: Five new Wizard 'push' spells have been added (Translocate: Fay, Tox, North, Combine and Group). Translocate spells send the group to the location, while the Wizard remains behind. Translocate Group sends everyone in the group (except the Wizard) to their own bind points. Translocate Group can be found on NPCs in Velious (and they won't give them up easily). The others are available on an exclusive vendor. All Translocate spells (even the original Translocate) have confirmation boxes that must be accepted before the target will be sent. And Wizards can no longer Translocate themselves.

• Some lower 39th and 44th level Velious spells have had their drop

rates increased.

• GM Resurrection has had it's name changed from ResurrectionGM to

Customer Service Resurrection so that players will be able to better tell when they are getting a resurrection from the GM staff. GM resurrection will no longer have Res effects, and will leave the newly Ressed with full Hit Points and Mana.

• Divine Aura and spells of that type (Divine Aura - cleric, Divine

Barrier - cleric, Kazumi's Note of Preservation - bard, Harmshield - necromancer, Quivering Veil of Xarn - necromancer) will now prevent the caster from being stunned when hit for their duration.

- The Eye of Zomm series of spells will no longer work in Kedge Keep. This change was made to prevent an exploit.

• • Feature Additions and Changes **

• Looting text has been changed. You will now see a -- before and after

any loot messages. This has been changed primarily to help prevent any fake looting messages from being thought of as real.

• When you loot an item, you will receive a text message telling you

what you have just looted.

• Expanded Friends List: The Friends List will now hold 30 character

names. And each character has its own friends list. You can find and edit this list with a text editor, if you need to, outside the game. You can locate the text files in your EverQuest directory. The files will look like this: _<#>.ini. The default Friends List for existing and new characters will be your old Friends List.

• The destroy or drop item confirmation box will now close if you

accidentally pick up another item while they are open. This should prevent accidentally deleting or dropping the wrong item.

• When selling to a merchant, you can no longer sell items that are

inside a container by having the container selected and clicking the sell button. The merchant will tell you that you need to empty the container before the merchant will buy it. This should prevent folks from accidentally selling items that they did not know were in those containers.

• You can now move items around inside containers that are in the bank.

- There is a new /consider message: "regards you as an ally". This is the highest level of friendliness that an NPC will register using the /consider command. The faction required to reach this rating is significantly higher than 'warmly'.

- The EverQuest Team

May 8, 2001 4:30 pm

• • Fan Faire **

The Fan Faire in Minneapolis is half way sold out. There are just over two more weeks left to register so don't delay! For each of these events, we get countless e-mails asking if there is any space available after we have sold out... and then it is too late! So don't wait until registration is closed! Register now and be sure your spot is reserved!

• • Guild Wipe for Guilds without enough members **

On May 15th we will be performing another servers-wide guild wipe for any guild with less than ten members. Remember, it is always a requirement to have ten members in your guild. These ten members must all be characters from separate accounts (only one member from each account will be counted for the ten member total). So if your guild does not have ten members on Tuesday, May 15th, it will be deleted.

We're sorry for being so harsh about this rule, but there is a distinct limit to the number of guilds that we can support, and the rules for maintenance of a guild are clear.

- The EverQuest Team

May 14, 2001 6:30 pm

• • Important announcement about the next patch **

Our next patch is planned for May 30th, probably some time in the wee morning hours here on the West Coast.

The important part of the message is not that, though. It's this:

Due to some of the things we are going to be doing, there is a small chance that some corpses might disappear during the patch. GMs will have the ability to verify any corpses that are lost. That means that they can help you get them back if you do indeed lose one. It also means that I should remind everyone that attempting to scam a GM about a lost corpse could mean banning.

• • IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU PETITION TO HAVE A MISSING CORPSE **
  • PROBLEM ADDRESSED WITHIN 5 DAYS OF THE PATCH! **

We will not be recovering corpses that might be lost after that time. In fact, it would be best for you to petition immediately if you have a problem. Don't wait. If you are worried about a corpse that you were unable to deal with before the patch, then please log in an check on it right away after the patch.

So please make certain that you have as many of your corpses cleaned up as possible before the next patch. We're not expecting a lot of corpses to disappear, but the fewer lying around, the less chance of them disappearing.

Thanks.

- The EverQuest Team

May 22, 2001 6:30 pm

• • Updated EQManual_Supplement **

The EQManual_Supplement.doc and EQManual_Suppliment.txt have been updated. The majority of the updates occurred in the description of the EQclient.ini file and the descriptions of the in-game "slash" commands. This document also includes things like a listing of the emotes available, instructions for changing windows and text colors, and other additions to the original manual, and is a good first source for EverQuest information and help.

- The EverQuest Team

May 30, 2001

• • • Important Reminder ***

Due to some of the things we are going to be doing, there is a small chance that some corpses might disappear during the patch. GMs will have the ability to verify any corpses that are lost. That means that they can help you get them back if you do indeed lose one. It is also important to understand that attempting to scam a GM about a lost corpse could mean banning from EverQuest.

• • IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU PETITION TO HAVE A MISSING CORPSE PROBLEM

ADDRESSED WITHIN 5 DAYS OF THE PATCH! **

We will not be recovering corpses that might be lost after that time. In fact, it would be best for you to petition immediately if you have a problem. Don't wait. If you are worried about a corpse that you were unable to deal with before the patch, then please log in and check on it right away after the patch.

So please make certain that you have as many of your corpses cleaned up as possible before the next patch. We're not expecting a lot of corpses to disappear, but the fewer lying around, the less chance of them disappearing.

Thanks.

- The EverQuest Team

• • • Patch Message ***

• • Zone Changes **

• Runnyeye has been changed. Something is up in Goblin land...

• • Spell and Song Changes and Bug Fixes **

• We've been fixing holes in the spell stacking code. For the most part

the changes fix bugs that allowed tricks to get spells to stack that were never intended to stack.

• Increased duration on Bard Charm songs to 18 seconds from 12 seconds.

• Fixed the Spell Scroll for Imbue Amber so that Erudite Clerics of

Cazic Thule can scribe it.

• The casting messages for Necromancer pet summoning spells have been

changed to be more appropriate.

• • Features and Interface Changes **

• The variable %t will now work with /assist. So you can use /assist %t

if you wish. Though it should have exactly the same effect as /assist without the %t.

•  %r returns "corpse" for corpses and "NPC" for targeted NPCs.

• Sense traps failure message text color has been changed to user color

15 (same as other skill messages). The success message was already set to user color 15.

• Ignore Lists now work the same way that the Friends List does. It has

been expanded to 30 names per character per server. The new ignore list is stored in the same ini file as the friends list _<#>.ini). The first time a character is created or loaded after the patch their new ignore list will be a copy of the old ignore list, but will from then on be unique to the character.

• The Alt key now works in several new situations. It will now show

item names when in the trade window. Because the trade items of the local player and the trading partner are so close together, the item names of the trading partner will always show up unless the player positions their mouse pointer over the local player part of the trade window, which will cause the game to only show the local player's trade item names.

• The Alt key will show item names for items in your bank.

• The Alt key will also pop up names for merchant items and corpse

items when you hold it down in merchant mode or loot mode.

• The Alt key will even pop up names for items in open containers when

held down and the mouse cursor is over the open container window (they don't show up otherwise).

• The client will now automatically reject a /duel request from any

player that is on your /ignore list. Some players were using this to annoy players that had ignored them.

• You also will no longer see /consent messages from people that are on

your /ignore list (this was also something people were doing to annoy people that had ignored them).

• /who GUILD (and the GUILD must be in caps) will now show you the

members of your guild in your zone. You can also specify a guild name, such as /who "Irontoe Brigade".

• /safelock command added. /safelock will lock the EverQuest interface

(mostly just mouse clicks, keyboard commands/movement, and most slash commands) with the password that you supply to the command. You must use this command a second time, supplying the same password, to unlock the interface. Passwords are NOT case-sensitive. So to lock your interface, you would type /safelock password. You would do the same to unlock it. REMEMBER: If you forget what password you typed, you will need to reboot your machine.

• • Item Changes **

• All the shields in the game that have the Ribcage graphic should now

also have the ribcage icon when they are in your inventory.

- Tinkered Watchman helm should show up now.

• Ring of Pureblood is now equipable only on your fingers instead of

your waist.

• Grand Master's Leg Wraps and Fists of the Grand Master are now No-

Drop. They were intended to be No-Drop when they were created.

• Peacekeeper Staff and the Bug Collection box are no longer equipable.

There are problems that can arise when containers can be equipped, so we had to disable that for these items.

• Sewing Kits: No existing sewing kits are being changed with this

patch. But from now on, kits sold on vendors will be somewhat different. Large Sewing Kits will have 8 slots. Deluxe Sewing Kits will have 10 slots and weight slightly more than the Large Sewing Kit.

• Changed the color of the Kael SK quest armor from a very pretty blue-

green to a more appropriate reddish-gray.

• • Other Stuff **

• Changed the spelling of Troubador to Troubadour for the 55th level

bard title. :)

• King Tormax's spawn rate has been adjusted to be more in line with

that of his counterparts in Velious. This is not the sort of thing that we will usually announce, as spawn times and things of that nature are part of the dynamic content of EverQuest. We're announcing this, however, to help avoid some confusion.

- The EverQuest Team

May 31, 2001 2:00 am

• • • Patch Addendum ***

This evening we put in another patch to correct some issues that arose with the patch yesterday. The changes implemented include some that weren't announced previously:

• Resist-debuffs will do 1.5 times their normal value for PvP

encounters. In other words, if the spell did -60MR in PvP before, it does -90MR in PvP now. PvE (combat versus NPCs) remains unaffected.

• Faction-loss for PvP kills on Vallon and Tallon now only occur

against factions within the hometown of the person killed. In other words, if you kill an Erudite in Erudin, you will only lose faction with the factions in Erudin, not the factions in Paineel. - Turning in the Tomb of Order and Discord will have no effect on Vallon and Tallon.

• On all PvP servers, only the person who gets the killing-blow in PvP

combat will have looting rights. We would prefer to implement some sort of "majority damage" logic however this should solve most of the issues associated with uninvolved players "ninja-looting" the loser in PvP encounters.

- The EverQuest Team

June 4, 2001 3:00 am

Today's patch consisted only of server-side data, and does not contain anything that would normally be announced.

- The EverQuest Team

June 27th, 2001 3:00 am

(NOTE: This patch was not in Allakahazam and came from http://web.archive.org/web/20010926095411/http://www.neriak.com/)

Gameplay Changes

- Aggro Changes: We've made an adjustment to the way that NPCs choose their targets. It's a rather simple change, one that makes a lot of sense. But we want you to be aware of it so that it won't surprise you too much, and so that you won't think that it is a bug. NPCs are now much more aware of the vulnerability (or, more precisely, the invulnerability) of their targets. NPCs will now be very unlikely to waste their time attacking a target that they can't harm.

- Spell and Item Interruption: Ducking will now interrupt a spell instantly. You will no longer be able to sit while using items or casting spells. This will not affect bard songs, which will still work as they always have, but will affect all items, even those with song-like effects.

Spell Changes

• Skin Like Nature and Natureskin should stack with more spells now (though not with each other).

• Aegolism can now be clicked off.

• Imbue Ivory has had its casting level lowered to 29.

• Shard of the Core will be tradable now.

• Shroud of Hate and Visions of Grandeur should stack properly now.

• Several new Translocation spells have been added.

• Call of the Hero will no longer remove the target from NPCs' hatelists if the target is not summoned far enough.

• Egress will now work indoors.

• Wind of the North, Wind of the South, Markar's Relocation and Tishan's Relocation have had their additional restrictions removed, and can now be cast from any zone where other similar spells can be cast.

• Summon Companion can now be used by Necromancers, Shamans, Enchanters, Shadowknights in addition to Magicians.

• Deadeye should now stack with Dead Man Floating, but should not stack with Acumen.

• Plainsight will now stack with Dead Man Floating, but not with Acumen.

• The Great Divide portal spells are now 39th level instead of 44th level.

• Spirit of the Oak will no longer be overwritten by any beneficial spells.

• Paralyzing Poison spells should no longer be broken by direct damage spells.

• Hsagra's Wrath and Porlos' Fury now have a 5 second recast delay.

Item Changes

• The effect on the 10th ring should have fewer stacking conflicts with haste buffs.

• The effect of the Monk epic, Celestial Tranquility, will stack with the higher end haste spells. Keep in mind - the highest haste will always win out. This means that the spells will stack, the haste components will not.

• Speed of the Shissar has had its duration increased from 20 minutes to 30 minutes. This effect should no longer conflict with Call of Earth.

• Bone Ring of Condemnation will no longer be usable in the secondary slot, it will only be wearable on the finger.

• Druid Skyshrine Quest armor has had a color change so that it will look more unique.

• Circlet of Shadow will no longer drop in-game. The Circlet of Shadows, can now be found in its place. This item differs from the original only in that it has a five-second casting time. Existing Circlets of Shadow will retain the same functionality as before, though we may change existing Circlets at some future date.

Quest Changes

• King Tormax is now a little more particular about who he gives quests to.

• The Iksar Shaman 6th Skull/cudgel quest should be working now.

• Rumor has it that there is a new source for green dragon scales in Norrath.

PvP Changes

• If you go link dead on a PvP server and are killed you can still be looted.

• When a player becomes invisible (or hides successfully) every other player that had them targeted will lose their target. This is true for all servers, but has the greatest implications on PvP servers. The use of spells that allow you to see through invisibility will prevent you from losing your target if that target hides or goes invisible.

• Faction hits on Rallos Zek: Killing a person in one of his or her home cities will cause a faction hit with residents of that city.

Miscellaneous

• We've addressed a lot of spelling and grammatical errors over the past few weeks. For example we have corrected all misspellings of "deity" in messages to the player, changed Cantana to Cantata and others.

• The 'Fab Four' in Dagnor's Cauldron will no longer assist Undertow Skeletons.

• Instill Doubt/Intimidation can no longer be used while sitting, and sitting after starting it will cancel it.

• Mastery of language skills now occurs at 100, not at 101. This was a problem for masters of a language, since language skills could not go over 100.

• The messages for eating and drinking now say "Chomp... Chomp," or "Glug... Glug..." so that they can't be copied with emotes.

• Helms on Barbarians, Trolls, and Ogres should no longer block the first person view when in combat.

• Sirens Grotto has been changed a bit. It should be a more interesting zone now.

NOTE

Boisterous shouts can be heard across the lands as carriers herald the arrival of the latest volume of their city's newspapers. Citizens rush to get a copy of these publications to read the featured articles, latest gossip, and community news for their home town.

- The EverQuest Team

June 29, 2001

(NOTE: Found here: http://web.archive.org/web/20010725175604/http://eq.castersrealm.com/viewarticle.asp?Article=3626)

In the Emergency patch of June 29 we performed the following fixes:

• We fixed the bug with feign death spells that was causing it to fail and sending a "Your spell has been interrupted" message.
• We fixed the way that NPCs were treating pets. They were accrediting more hate to pets than they should have.
• We also fixed a bug with factions that was making it impossible to raise some factions. There may still be factions that you can't raise because there are no methods for raising them, not because of a bug. If you get a faction message you will also get a faction gain (or hit).

• We also added a message that will let you know when you can no longer gain or lose faction with a certain group. It will say:

Your faction standing with could not possibly get any worse.

or

Your faction standing with could not possibly get any better.

That was the essence of the patch last night. Sorry about the problems.

Alan

July 10, 2001 3:00 am

• • Bug Fixes **

• The "NPC unerringly sticks on pet" AI bug implemented in the last

patch has been fixed. This resolves a bug that occurred a short while ago that would cause pets to be the focus for most attacks by NPCs.

• Fixed the animation problem where an animation played on the upper

body would get stuck. This could be seen by starting to cast a spell and then walking forward while it was playing the casting animation.

• Fixed a bug that wouldn't allow a player to target an invisible PC or

NPC with the F7 or F8 keys even if they had See Invisible up.

• Stacking issues with 'change form' type spells have been corrected.

Lich and Clarity will no longer stack, nor will Spirit of Wolf and Wolf Form.

• The bug with screenshots that some people experienced when using 32-

bit color mode should be fixed.

• • Item and Vendor Adjustments **

• Changed the forged Antonian Javelins to be stackable.

• Gnome Skin Sleeves are now droppable and rentable.

• Spiderling and Spider Silks are now stackable

• Spider Legs are now stackable.

• Tarnished weapons worth slightly more to the vendors than the rusty

ones.

• Reduced the weight of the monk only Black Pantherskin armor.

• All Sheets of metal and Folded Sheets of metal are now stackable.

• Rangers will now be able to wear Girdle of Reflection

• There is now a vendor in Felwithe that sells the Enchant Ores series

of enchanter spells.

• • Zone and Quest Changes **

• The Crazed Ghouls should be less of a problem in Unrest.

• The Monk red headband quest should now be available again.

• We've added a few more Yew Leaf spawns.

• Reevaluated the values of the various fish fillets. All fish vendors

should return to normal, but they won't be paying as well for certain fishy items. This resolves a problem that was created with the increased value of player made food items all over Norrath. Some of food items were made too valuable, and merchants were complaining to their union leaders...

• The EverQuest Team

July 24, 2001 3:00 am

• • Item Changes **

• Silver Chitin Hand Wraps' haste effect has been repaired.
• The Smite scroll no longer lists Enchanters as a class that can use

it.

• The Augment Death scroll no longer lists Shadowknights as a class

that can use it.

• Many pelts have been made stackable. Those that are not stackable now

are quest items that will not be made stackable.

• • Spell Changes **

• Focus of Spirit will now stack with Voice of the Berserker.
• Barrier of Force will now stack with Protection of the Glades.
• Manaskin and Protection of the Glades will now stack.

• • Trade Skill Changes **

• Repaired some class/deity combinations on two of the deity specific

pottery Idols.

• • Changes to Sullon Zek **

• There are no faction hits for killing half-elves in any city.
• If an Erudite of Paineel is killed in Paineel the killer takes a

faction hit (existing rule).

• If an Erudite of Erudin is killed in Erudin the killer takes a

faction hit (new rule).

• Bards can't cast harmful spells on boats.
• If a character kills a higher level character, the higher level

character will always lose experience. This is in addition to the fact that any player killed within the + or * 5 level range will lose experience.

• Goods and Neutrals will now be able to turn in Greater Insignias for

a Magician only summon corpse potion usable only at levels over 45th.

• Characters under level 6 will no longer be immune to PvP in many

adventure zones. Players will be notified when they enter such zones.

• • Misc. Changes **

• /target playername will now work on invisible targets as long as the

character doing the targeting has the ability to see invisible.

• • NOTE **

Boisterous shouts can be heard across the lands as carriers herald the arrival of the latest volume of their city's newspapers. Citizens rush to get a copy of these publications to read the featured articles, latest gossip, and community news for their hometowns.

• The EverQuest Team

^^^ GREEN IS HERE ^^^

August 15, 2001 3:00 am

• • Spell Changes **

• Celestial Tranquility and Call of Earth will now stack
• Some stacking issues with Torpor have been corrected.
• Celestial Cleansing will fizzle less now
• Cannibalize should fizzle slightly less often now

• • Zone Changes **

• Updated some pathing in Runnyeye, Paineel, Siren's Grotto and Kedge.
• The Drowned Citizens are back, for sure this time.
• Fixed a bug that was not allowing some NPCs in Kael to see invisible

creatures as they should.

• Restored "charmability" of most NPCs (merchants will remain

uncharmable) in Kael due to fix of combat AI bug listed bellow under Miscellaneous Changes.

• • Item Changes **

• The Giant Tree Flayer is now Large instead of Tiny.
• Staff of Temperate Flux has been changed to main hand only.
• Ring of Frost Spiders can now be worn.
• Robe of the Seacaller should now be equipable.

• • Trade Skill Changes **

• Imbued Field Plate Boots should be working properly now.

• • Sullon Zek Changes **

• Changed the way resists are calculated when a Player Character casts

a spell on another Player Character on Sullon Zek. Resist modifiers based on level will now be more smoothly distributed and will allow lower level characters a slightly better chance to land spells on higher level characters. At the same time giving lower level characters a slightly better chance to resist spells cast on them by higher level characters.

• Characters below 6th level cannot be pick pocketed in any zone.
• Guards have a better chance of aggro'ing a rogue that fails at

picking pockets near guards.

• • Miscellaneous Changes **

• Fixed a recently introduced combat AI bug that caused NPCs to focus

unduly on attacking pets rather than PCs

• Added a few crowns to the list of items that can be traded in for new

crowns with new textures. The same NPCs that were interested in trading out your helms will now trade your crowns. Please keep in mind that they will not be trading them back to you. Once you get the new look it's yours to keep, even if it clashes with your favorite eye shadow.

• • NOTE **

Boisterous shouts can be heard across the lands as carriers herald the arrival of the latest volume of their city's newspapers. Citizens rush to get a copy of these publications to read the featured articles, latest gossip, and community news for their hometowns.

• The EverQuest Team

August 22, 2001 3:00 am

• • Crashing Bug Fixes **

• Fixed the problem that was causing zones to crash in some instances.

• Corrected a bug that would cause some people to hang up while waiting

for a sound event between the splash and character-select screens.

• • Item Change **

• The Green Flower should be working again.

• • Spell Change **

• Fixed a stacking bug that allowed multiple Levitation buffs to stack.

• • Sullon Zek Changes **

• The Resist code changes we made with the last patch should be working

properly now. Here is the text about that change:

"Changed the way resists are calculated when a Player Character casts a spell on another Player Character on Sullon Zek. Resist modifiers based on level will now be more smoothly distributed and will allow lower level characters a slightly better chance to land spells on higher level characters. At the same time giving lower level characters a slightly better chance to resist spells cast on them by higher level characters."

• Cancel Magic spells should now work across teams.

• Characters should no longer disappear when Mesmerized or stunned.

Stonebrunt Era

August 29, 2001

Located on the small continent of Odus, the Stonebrunt Mountains are rich with vegetation and distinctive hills that give way to the towering Mount Klaw; the largest mountain in Odus and home to the Kerran village of Kejeka. The zone of Stonebrunt is designed to be a mid-level, outdoor zone similar in scope and scale to the Lake of Ill Omen on Kunark, which has proven to be a very popular zone in EverQuest.

September 11, 2001 3:00 am

• • Spell Changes **

• Changed all enchanter mesmerization spells so that they overwrite

Screaming Terror

• Changed Shaman epic effect (Curse of the Spirits) so that it would

not conflict with certain Damage over Time spells.

• The Emissary of Thule Necromancer pet is now immune to fear

• Beneficial buffs that don't have an ability drain component on them

can now be clicked off.

• • Miscellaneous Updates **

• The server selection screen now only gives information on whether or

not a server is up instead of providing player counts. In addition, the "count" option on the /who command has been restricted to internal personnel. Servers on the server selection screen are still ordered from least-populated to most populated in order to assist players in choosing the least populated server.

• Harla Dar has been repaired (this happened sometime earlier than

today, but we wanted you to know).

• Reactivated broken zone line between Qeynos to the Sewers. A dead

halfling was stuck in the drainpipe and has been removed.

• Fixed a long-standing bug that was causing Feign Death to fail when

several characters were on the NPC's hate list along with the character using Feign Death. We'd like to extend much thanks to the monk community who helped us track this one down. Also fixed a problem with the monk's 'Block' skill which inadvertantly was recapped at a lower than normal skill level in recent months. Kudos to "Faned" of the "Monkly Business" bulletin board who brow-beat Gordon with the facts until he gave in and looked at the code :)

• As announced earlier this week, the Belt of the Cenobite was made

useable by some inappropriate classes/races in the last patch. This has been corrected.

• Several quest components in zones with the Trivial Loot Code will now

be lootable regardless of level.

• • • Norrathian News ***

Boisterous shouts can be heard across the lands as carriers herald the arrival of the latest volume of their city's newspapers. Citizens rush to get a copy of these publications to read the featured articles, latest gossip, and community news for their hometowns.

• • • Announcing Test of Tactics III ***

Yes you heard right, Test of Tactics will be making its return to the lands of Norrath in October and November. This event will present teams of 18 members in a battle to the death. Only the strong of body and mind will survive and come out of the arena victorious. For more information on the event and sign up for please look on Harpy's Head Tavern at http://everquest.station.sony.com/hht/events/.

• The EverQuest Team

September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack Response

"The staff of Sony Online Entertainment wish to extend their condolences and prayers to the victims, and the families of the victims, lost in today’s horrific events. We share in your grief during these difficult times."

The quote from our front page expresses how we all feel here in the office. I only want to extend my personal sympathies to all the families that this has touched.

We have received many letters, and I want to thank you all for sending them in. It's obvious that we will all be different people from here forward. If I don't dwell on this in my responses here it is only because I know that none of us will forget what has happened, and that you come here for entertainment not reminders of tragedy.

Alan

September 13, 2001

Sony Online Entertainment, is asking for your help in locating someone involved in the recent terror:

Sony Online Entertainment needs your help in locating Gregory Trost. Gregory is a nephew of an SOE employee and his last known location was the 86th floor of Tower Two in the World Trade Center. With the tragic events that took place on September 11, the Trost family is anxious for any information regarding Gregory. If you have any information on Gregory's whereabouts, please contact Sony Online Entertainment at this special address. greginfo@station.sony.com

[Editor Note: Gregory Trost was later found to be among the nearly 3000 people killed in the World Trade Center disaster.]

September 25, 2001 3:00 am

• • Spell Changes **

• We have removed the changes to bard song stacking that were made with

the recent emergency patch. We will be reviewing those changes for possible update in a future patch.

• • Item Changes **

• The Shaman Epic effect has been returned to its previous effect (and

it should conflict with fewer Damage over Time spells, as was the intention for the change made last patch).

• • Quest Changes **

• Ivory Sky Diamond is now dropping as it should.

• Fixed an error in a Stonebrunt quest where an NPC was handing out the

wrong reward.

• • Miscellaneous **

• Added some code that might fix a bug with female hair and Erudite

hoods that caused them to fail to appear sometimes when a helmet was removed. This would cause some characters to look as though the back of their head was missing at times.

• Mouselook will now work a little differently when in the first two

third-person camera modes (overhead and chase). They will work similarly to first-person mouselook (i.e. your character's heading will change when you move the mouse left or right, the left and right movement keys will cause your player to strafe, and the camera angle will pitch up or down when you move the mouse forward or back). These changes should make those first two third-person camera modes more useful.

• The EverQuest Team

September 30, 2001

Firiona Vie server is available on Test now:

Or it will be very shortly... You can get to this server by running testeverquest.exe from your EverQuest directory. Please read the Test Server disclaimer (available in the Test Server patch message) carefully before playing on the Test Server.

Here is part of the message from the Test Server.

• • • Firiona Vie Server ***

The new Firiona Vie Server is now available for testing. As usual, please keep in mind that this is a Test server and we will be changing things as time goes by. The Test Server Disclaimer shown above applies to this server as well. Please be aware that when the server 'goes Live' all existing characters from the beta periods will be removed.

There are many special rules for this server. We will be keeping an updated list of these rules on our Developer's Corner message board. Please head over to www.everquest.com and head to the message boards for the most recent information about this server.

Here is the preliminary list of rules. To read this information later, you can refer to the testeqnews.txt file in your EverQuest folder.

• Firiona Vie Server Feature List *

This is a new server, not a split server. Nor will there be any transfers to this server.

Characters will be wiped before the server goes Live.

This is a PvE (Player vs. Environment) server, NOT a PvP (Player vs. Player) server. In other words, it's a standard 'blue' server with the same rules and features regarding PvP as the vast majority of our servers. It is not one of the 'Zeks'.

Auction restricted to city zones: Qeynos, Surefall Glade, Highkeep, Freeport, Rivervale, Erudin, Halas, Neriak, Grobb, Oggok, Greater Faydark, Ak'Anon, Kaladim, Felwithe, Paineel, Cabilis, Kael and Thurgadin.

Beneficial buff spells will not work on characters 20 levels lower than the caster.

Each character will be assigned an "alignment" upon creation. This alignment will be described in brief on the character creation screen (in the same location the their Deity is described).

Each character will be able to change their alignment once any time after they reach 10th level if they choose. A character is not required to change alignments, but may do so any time after attaining 10th level. The player will be able to chose from a list of alignments based on their race, class and deity.

A character's alignment will determine whether or not they can group or guild with other characters. (Note: The Guild portion of this code has not yet been implemented, and no guilds will be forming on this server until we can get it working).

A character's alignment will determine an experience bonus or penalty when grouping with other characters.

A character's alignment will determine if they can cast beneficial spells on other characters (including resurrections).

Language skills will improve only through group chat in the same zone and from /say.

Languages will only improve 1 point each hour and will be capped at level*5+5 skill points.

Common will not exist. A Human language will be added and only made easily available to certain races.

One character per account.

The Trivial Loot Code will be in effect in all zones.

Very few items will be No-Drop. Exceptions will include things such as newbie notes and epic weapons.

Bind Affinity will be restricted for all characters to locations where melee characters can bind on other servers.

/emote will be language specific

All characters will be /roleplay.

/alignment will display the alignment of your character and probably a more detailed description of that alignment.

• Trivial Loot Code *

Briefly, the Trivial Loot Code works like this: If a character kills an NPC and that NPC does not give them experience, then the Trivial Loot Code takes effect. If any member of a group does not get experience for a kill, the Trivial Loot Code will take effect. The Trivial Loot Code prevents magical, lore and no-drop items from appearing on the corpse. Normal items and coins will appear on the corpse in all cases as usual.

October 5, 2001 Press Release * Graphics Upgrades

THE WORLD OF EVERQUEST® GOES HIGH RESOLUTION WITH EVERQUEST: THE SHADOWS OF LUCLIN™ EXPANSION

-Old World Environments To Rival Luclin's Beauty With Improved Graphics-

SAN DIEGO, CA * October 5, 2001* Sony Online Entertainment Inc., (SOE) announced today that EverQuest®: The Shadows of Luclin™ will launch with an additional CD-ROM featuring a complete upgrade to all textures throughout the original world of Norrath and all previous expansions.

"We are pleased to make this surprise announcement," said Brad McQuaid, Chief Creative Officer & Vice President, Sony Online Entertainment. "EverQuest players will be amazed at the clarity the texture upgrade provides and we feel the gameplay experience will be richly enhanced."

When EverQuest originally shipped in 1999, the development team utilized 32 x 32 low-resolution pixels because of graphics technology at the time. With the advent of superior graphic cards, the upgraded texture resolution featured in EverQuest: The Shadows of Luclin will be 256 x 256 pixels and occasionally as large as 512 x 512 pixels. This vast improvement in quality will make Norrath appear more vibrant and detailed than ever before.

"We have gone through the entire game and applied the new higher resolution textures by hand," said Scott McDaniel, EverQuest Art Lead, Sony Online Entertainment. "The sheer size of EverQuest has made this upgrade quite a project. To see the old zones in high resolution is really exciting for the entire team."

EverQuest: The Shadows of Luclin features over 24 new zones, rideable mounts, all new character models, new facial animations, and over 120 new spells and will be available on retail shelves in December 2001. For more information visit the official Shadows of Luclin website at .

The Station (www.station.com) is the official provider of EverQuest, with software updates and news about the game, message boards and other community features, as well as an easy-to-use billing system for EverQuest's monthly subscription fee.

Sony Online Entertainment Inc. (SOE), the online gaming division of Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment, is a worldwide leader in massively multiplayer online gaming. Headquartered in San Diego, California, SOE develops, publishes and distributes entertainment for the PC and online markets. With more than 10 million registered users, SOE's award- winning website, The Station® (www.station.com) hosts a variety of entertaining games and player communities spanning all genres. In addition to blockbuster hits EverQuest® and Jeopardy! Online, SOE has an array of cutting-edge online games in development such asPlanetSide, Star Wars Galaxies™ and Sovereign™.

October 8, 2001

Item Changes

• Increased the duration on Song of the Deep Seas (the proc on a bardic weapon) dramatically.

• Modified the effect of Feast of Blood (weapon proc) it is now a DoT lifetap

• Added a texture to Flayed Barbarian Skin Leggings.

• Added Illusion: Barbarian to the Flayed Barbarian Hide Mask.

Miscellaneous Changes

• The last language used by your character will be stored in your

eqclient.ini file when you log out. This means that if the last character you were playing was speaking Elvish, then when you log back in with any character, that character will be speaking Elvish if he can, otherwise it will be set to a default language (most often Common).

Magic System Changes

There is a more detailed explanation of these changes posted on our Developer's Corner. Please visit there for more details (either at www.everquest.com or http://boards.station.sony.com/ubb/everquest/cgi- bin/Ultimate.cgi). Here is a summary of the changes:

• The level-based spell resistance bonus inherent in super-high level

NPCs has been reduced significantly.

• Several NPCs have had their resistances reduced. Each of them was

examined carefully, and resistances changed as seemed appropriate. For some of these NPCs other things were changed as well to compensate for their increased susceptibility to spells, such as armor improvements or perhaps greater hit points, if needed for that NPC.

• NPCs that were highly magic resistant in order to make them immune to

certain spells can now be given specific immunity to those spells. This means that they can be made immune to critical spells, as intended, and still be generally less resistant to magic. Players will receive a message similar to the one that is already given for Mesmerization spells when they cast a spell on an NPC that it is specifically immune to.

IMPORTANT NOTE: It is very important to note that we have not made any NPCs immune to spells that they were not already immune to. Many NPCs that were previously immune to spells due to their high innate resistance to magic have had that resistance reduced and specific immunities added. So if you see an immunity message after attempting to cast a spell on an NPC that you hadn't seen such a message from before, understand that the NPC was already immune to that spell before due to high resistances, and the only difference is that it now has lower resistances in general and specific spell immunity (which is why you are seeing the message).

Melee Changes

After extensive research, testing, and evaluation we have completed the melee portion of our class balancing. To be clear, these changes apply just to the combat aspect of melee classes. Any issues with non-combat skills, spell effects, spell selection, or non-combat aspects of classes will be evaluated in the near future. With the completion of the melee combat balancing, we will be moving onto spells and spell casting classes.

Due to the extensive nature of these changes, we can't describe them in detail here. A detailed summary will be available on our Developer's Corner message board. Please visit www.everquest.com and our forums for more information.

Summary of Melee Changes

• Two-Handed Weapons have been given an increased damage bonus for

characters over level 50. Also, certain post-epic quality two-handers have been improved.

• Warriors have had their taunt skill cap increased to 230 at 60th

level. Also, the Blades of Strategy and Tactics can now be used in either hand.

• Rogues, as the primary user of piercing weapons, will benefit from an

improvement in the quality of a few existing high-end daggers. At some future date new piercing weapons will be added to the game to fill gaps in equipment availability.

• Monks will now be on an improved combat table at levels 55 and again

to a better table at 60. Monks now have the ability to Triple Attack at 60th level. The minimum damage done by Flying Kick will be greatly increased for monks starting at 51st level and scaling up to level 60. We also intend to add more monk weapons in the future to fill equipment gaps.

• Rangers have their Double Attack skill cap raised to 245. They have

also gained an innate offensive bonus that starts at level 55 and increases until level 60. Ranger's Defense skill cap has been raised to 220, and their Riposte skill cap has been raised to 185.

• Paladins and Shadowknights, besides the benefits they gain from the

two-handed weapons change mentioned above, have also been moved to the same combat tables as warriors. In the future we intend to examine the existing one-handed weapons useable by knights for possible upgrades. We are also increasing the Taunt skill cap for these two classes to 220.

• Bards have had their 1h blunt and 1h slash skill caps increased to

250. Their piercing skill cap has been increased to 240. Their Offense skill cap has been raised to 252. Bards are also being moved to the same combat table with all the other melee and hybrid classes (save monks who have separate tables after level 55). Bards Parry skill cap has been raised to 185 as well. Finally, the Singing Shortsword can now be equipped in the off hand and still give full song enhancing benefits.

Please read the detailed explanation of these changes on our Developer's Corner message boards at http://boards.station.sony.com/ubb/everquest/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi

Firiona Vie (Roleplaying Preferred) server goes Live

Our newest special rules server is now available. Firiona Vie is designated as roleplaying preferred. There are many special rules for this server, please read over them carefully before playing. We will be keeping an updated list of these rules on our web site at http://everquest.station.sony.com/guidebook/firionavie.jsp .

Firiona Vie Server Feature List

• This is a new server, not a split server. Nor will there be any transfers to this server.
• Characters will be wiped before the server goes Live.
• This is a PvE (Player vs. Environment) server, NOT a PvP (Player vs. Player) server. In other words, it's a standard 'blue' server with the same rules and features regarding PvP as the vast majority of our servers. It is not one of the 'Zeks'.
• Auction restricted to city zones: Qeynos, Surefall Glade, Highkeep, Freeport, Rivervale, Erudin, Halas, Neriak, Grobb, Oggok, Greater Faydark, Ak'Anon, Kaladim, Felwithe, Paineel, Cabilis, Kael and Thurgadin.
• Beneficial buff spells will not work on characters 20 levels lower than the caster.
• Each character will be assigned an "alignment" upon creation. This alignment will be described in brief on the character creation screen (in the same location that their Deity is described).
• Each character will be able to change their alignment once any time after they reach 10th level if they choose. A character is not required to change alignments, but may do so any time after attaining 10th level. The player will be able to chose from a list of alignments based on their race, class and deity.
• A character's alignment will determine whether or not they can group with other characters.
• A character's alignment will determine an experience bonus or penalty when grouping with other characters.
• A character's alignment will determine if they can cast beneficial

spells on other characters (including resurrections).

• Language skills will improve only through group chat in the same zone and from /say.
• Languages will only improve 1 point each hour and will be capped at level*5+5 skill points.
• Common will not exist. A Human language will be added and only made easily available to certain races.
• One character per account.
• The Trivial Loot Code will be in effect in all zones.
• Very few items will be No-Drop. Exceptions will include things such as newbie notes and epic weapons.
• Bind Affinity will be restricted for all characters to locations where melee characters can bind on other servers.
• /emote will be language specific
• All characters will be /roleplay.
• /alignment will display the alignment of your character and probably a more detailed description of that alignment.

• • Trivial Loot Code **

Briefly, the Trivial Loot Code works like this: If a character kills an NPC and that NPC does not give them experience, then the Trivial Loot Code takes effect. If any member of a group does not get experience for a kill, the Trivial Loot Code will take effect. The Trivial Loot Code prevents magical, lore and no-drop items from appearing on the corpse. Normal items and coins will appear on the corpse in all cases as usual.

For detailed information about the alignment system on the Firiona Vie server, please visit our web site: http://everquest.station.sony.com/guidebook/firionavie.jsp

• • NOTE **

Boisterous shouts can be heard across the lands as carriers herald the arrival of the latest volume of their city's newspapers. Citizens rush to get a copy of these publications to read the featured articles, latest gossip, and community news for their hometowns.

• • A Tale from Norrath **

Adventurers, glory seekers, and plunder-hungry knaves,

A few new tavern tales have been circulating from across the Deep. It appears that strife and civil unrest have once again plagued the lands of Kunark. Stories of treachery and terror within the ranks of the Sarnak have spilled forth from the mountain fortress of Chardok.

Only a few of the most cunning spies have made their way into the Sarnak hive during this brief time of turmoil, and their reports may have serious implications. The Brood of Di`zok seems to be more organized than before. Their leadership is becoming more structured... and much more brutal. Production in the mines appears to be increasing and soldiers have been amassing in great numbers.

Other tales have come from this mountain fortress as well. Terror squads and interrogators have decimated the ranks of reported Sarnak traitors. These squads have been working under the leadership of one of the Sarnak Collective's newest council members, Korucust. It can only be presumed that this cleansing is another step towards strengthening the foul brood.

These tales are hard to confirm, since many of your adventurous kind are prone to drink and to the occasional mistruth. If these tales are true, it would only stand to reason that new dangers may reveal new wealth and glory. Perhaps it is time for you to gather your best gear, finish your mug of ale, and head out to investigate.

Good luck adventurers.

• The EverQuest Team

October 31, 2001

(Allakhazam fail: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20011031.html)

By the pricking of my thumbs

• A con man in The Temple of Solusek Ro has been warned by the gods not to tease people about special weapons.
• Forest Barley can be found now, if you like that sort of thing.
• There are fewer blind frogloks in Guk.
• Small trees will fall more frequently in one of the Karanas.
• Be careful in your travels over the next few days. Something is amiss on Norrath.

Trick or treat!

November 7, 2001

Project M Implemented

Tonight we have patched something to the PvP servers that many players have been waiting for. The ability to play that gnoll, orc, or the cute and fuzzy rat. On your character select screen you will notice another button in the upper right part of your screen called "Monster". Clicking this button will randomly place you in a low-level NPC in a random zone. You will be given full control of the creature to do with it what you like. You may hunt and kill other creatures. You may even attack other players.

Some things to remember when playing your own personal monster (NPC).

• You will not be able to interact with players or NPC's other than

moving and hitting attack.

• You cannot speak, trade, sell, or do anything else that a player can

do.

• You will spawn with normal loot for the monster you are playing and

Player Characters will be able to kill you for loot and experience.

• If you are a spell casting monster you might want to take a moment to

memorize some spells.

• Once you die, you will return to the character select screen where you

may choose to return as another NPC or play your normal character.

• You may gain experience, levels, and skills as this NPC, but once you

die, it is all lost. You will need to start over the next time you choose to be a NPC character.

• You can't zone as a monster.
• Monster PCs (MPCs) can not loot, sell, or gain items. They only get

what they start out with.

This ability to play a monster is being implemented for PvP servers only as we have no plans to implement non-consensual PvP on a non PvP server.

However, we are still working with this system. We may find other ways to implement Project M on the non-PvP servers that are acceptable. We aren't done looking at the possible uses of this new feature.

PvP Server Related

• Guards, when seeing PCs in combat, will now attack the one that they

like the least (the one with the lowest appropriate faction). If all the PCs involved are highly regarded (have very high faction) the guards will allow them to resolve their own issues without interfering.

• Guards should also refrain from attacking PCs that are attacked by

pets of any sort.

• Sullon Zek now has an across the board experience bonus of 20%, and

the experience loss on all deaths on Sullon Zek is now 50% less.

Zone Specific Changes

• Kael now has specific bind locations, located only at the entryways.

This means that binding will only be possible in those areas.

• Trivial Loot code has been removed from the Stonebrunt Mountains and the Warrens.

• Added a melee bind location to the dock in Iceclad.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that allowed corpses to exist inside walls. Now if a

corpse ends up in a location that is not 'valid' the corpse will be moved to the 'safe coordinates' of the zone. Also, the /corpse command will now summon your own corpse to you anywhere in the zone as long as that corpse is on the safe spot of the zone. This should prevent corpses from being stuck in walls.

• Fixed it so that Critical Hit damage messages match the actual damage done.

• The visible damage bonus modifier on two-handed weapons has been

corrected. The value that was displayed was incorrect, no change has been made to the damage bonus itself.

Item Changes

• Fixed an issue with the Bardic Epic weapon. Now if the bard has his

Epic and an instrument that gives bonuses to songs, the best effect will take precedence, rather than the Epic bonuses always being used.

• Cloak of Imperception should now have charges. You will need to

exchange your old one for a new one with your GM within the next five days.

• Donal's Chestplate of Mourning has unlimited charges again.

Gameplay/Interface Changes/Additions

• We have changed the way the /consider command works. We have added a 'light blue' area between green and blue. NPCs that used to /consider green but gave experience will now /consider light blue, as well as NPCs of slightly lower level than those greens. You will always get experience for something that is light blue. You will not receive experience for greens. At the same time, by including lower level NPCs in the light blue /consider, we have increased the range of lower level NPCs that will grant experience. This will be most noticeable for characters of higher level.

• Added /targetgroupbuff. Type /targetgroupbuff on to activate, off to turn it off. When on, all group buff spells you cast will require a target but will affect everyone grouped (and in range) with that target, even if it is not your own group. When it is off your group buff spells will act normally. This will only work with group buffs

that have a duration, and will not affect heals, portals or change form spells.

• Added code that will put one item onto your cursor if it won't fit into your inventory due to a cancelled trade or looting items (and

other cases). This will only work if there is not already an item on the cursor.

• Added code that prevents player characters from dropping coins on the ground. This should prevent the loss of coins due to accident or scam.

• Made a modification to the chase camera mouselook code. Moving the mouse forward or back in this camera view will make the camera move up

and down, and the camera also automatically pitches to keep your character in view.

• You now see the number of hit points you are healed, and you also now see how many hit points you heal when healing others.

Skill Changes

• Bard Piercing cap was raised to 250 at 60th level.

• Foraging and Fishing will now result in a wider variety of items,

especially in zones that have unusual items available to forage or fish (such as quest items). Quest and unique items were too common in zones that had them, often making it hard to use those skills to obtain items such as food and drink. These quest and rare items will now actually be rarely foraged or fished, as they should have been. Such items will still be available, even to those with low foraging skills, but they will be more easily found by those who have practiced the skills.

• • • Norrathian News ***

Boisterous shouts can be heard across the lands as carriers herald the arrival of the latest volume of their city's newspapers. Citizens rush to get a copy of these publications to read the featured articles, latest gossip, and community news for their hometowns.

• The EverQuest Team

November 8, 2001 3:00 am

• • Follow-up Patch **

We had a couple of bugs pop up in yesterday's patch. Rather than having everyone wait to see them fixed we've elected to roll them in now:

Bards lost the ability to use item effects while moving. This has been fixed.

Monks can now train mend again.

Fixed a collision problem that caused people to fall through some walls.

Fixed a problem with /targetgroupbuff that allowed people to cast combat portal spells on others.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

• The EverQuest Team

November 28, 2001

• • Server Outage for Shadows of Luclin Launch **

In order to update our server for the launch of EverQuest: Shadows of Luclin, all servers will be taken down starting at noon on Monday, December 3rd. They will be brought back up again on Tuesday, December 4th at 8 am (Pacific Time * which is -8:00 GMT).

We regret the down time that setting up the new expansion requires. Shadows of Luclin offers some exciting new content as well as a fantastic new graphics engine. We hope that you'll agree with us that Shadows of Luclin is well worth the extended patch time.

Thanks for your patience.

• • DirectX 8.0 or higher Required for EverQuest **

When we update the servers on December 3rd for Shadows of Luclin, we will also be updating a lot of the code for the existing game. This code is written specifically for use with DirectX 8.0 and higher, and should provide better performance to most of our customers. The improvement will be most noticeable for people using newer hardware.

This will require that all EverQuest players update their DirectX to version 8.0 or better to play EverQuest. We will be providing an instructional page to help people with this upgrade in the very near future at www.everquestlive.com. If you want to test your DirectX 8 configuration and drivers sooner rather than later, you can do so by running "TestEverQuest.exe" in your EverQuest directory and logging on to the Test Server. Please view the patch message there for information should you have any problems logging in.

• The EverQuest Team

December 3, 2001

• EQClient INI Setting*

There's some confusion about the information that's been released on the Test server over the past couple of days, and that confusion is resulting in some people having trouble playing EverQuest. To clear it up:

The GraphicsDLL setting in your EQClient.ini file should read "GraphicsDLL=EQGfx_Dx7.dll" regardless of what server you are playing on or what version of DirectX you are running. If you are having problems getting in to EverQuest, specifically, problems crashing prior to reaching character select, please check and set this entry in your EQClient.ini as necessary.

Also, as a reminder, all EverQuest subscribers will need to have DirectX 8.1 or better installed on their system in order to play beginning Tuesday morning. The latest version of DirectX can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/directx.

• The EverQuest Team

Luclin Era (Post-Project 1999)

December 4, 2001 6:00 am

Welcome to Luclin

"As you know, youngster, we of the League of Antonican Bards have made it our primary goal to travel to places before others. It is our duty to see what hasn't yet been seen and to make song of it when we return. We carry news, song and spirit to all of Norrath. We have also taken it upon ourselves to carry personal news in the form of letters wherever possible. And that's what I've called you here to talk about.

...

No, I am not assigning you the duty of establishing a mail route into Grobb. We've lost far too many young bards trying to do that. Recruitment of smart young lads and lasses is nearly impossible when they all think that we plan to send them out to become bard fillet. We've only been able to recruit youngsters that no other guild wanted because they were so...

...

No, of course I don't mean you.

Now stop interrupting.

I have a job for you. You know, don't you, that Al'Kabor has once again been clomping about using his powerful magics without much regard for consequences, don't you?

...

/em sighs.

Ok, your FIRST task is to read up on current events! ()

Your second task is to find out if the rumors about his recent experiments are true. They say (and "they" are pretty reliable) that things such as noble-looking Kerrans calling themselves the Vah Shir, strange beasts of burden and new spells and songs have started showing up on Antonica. They also say that this is all due to the experiments of that Erudite Wizard Al'Kabor. You are to head out to one of the great wizard spires and investigate. If you can, interview one of these cat people and bring us back one of these horses they talk about...

...

Maybe you should talk to my assistant about things like directions out of the city and where you can find some shoes more appropriate for travel."

All this you overhear as you wait outside for your turn to talk to the loremasters of the League of Antonican Bards.

The door opens and you see a dejected and confused looking young bard step out. Following him out the door you hear a bellow,

"I also expect you to let everyone know that we are NO LONGER trying to establish mail routes to Grobb! Trolls can't read very well anyway."

Shadows of Luclin opens up new adventures and new challenges, as well as new rewards for those with a spirit of adventure.

Are you up to the challenge?

Notes for Shadows of Luclin customers

IMPORTANT: do not lose your Shadows of Luclin CDs. Because of the immense amount of data on the three Shadows of Luclin CDs, you will not be able to just copy the executable file into a new directory and download the rest of the expansion. We have placed restrictions on the amount of data that customers can download from our patcher so that massive patching as a replacement for reinstalling from the disk will not impact our other customers. So if you have a hard drive problem or you wish to install EverQuest on a new computer, you will need to have your CD to do so.

TECH SUPPORT: Please visit our Tech Support Center at if you have any problems with your Luclin installation.

/facepick * this new command will allow those of you with Shadows of Luclin to change your characters face. It will only work for characters using the new models. If you've turned off Gnomes and your character is a Gnome, you will not be able to use this command on that character. And it will, obviously, only work for those with Shadows of Luclin installed.

/dismount * This command allows your character to dismount from a horse if for some reason he has lost the ability to do so using the bridle. There is no /mount command, only the bridle will allow you to mount a horse.

Other Changes with this Patch

Along with our preparations for the introduction of Shadows of Luclin, we have made a few other changes with this patch:

• • Gameplay Changes **

• Increased the amount of mana given by high Intelligence and Wisdom

scores, as well as that granted by items and spells.

• Fixed a bug that was causing rogues to critical with every use of a

thrown weapon.

• Fixed a bug that caused the experience bar to displaying incorrectly

after leveling. This also seemed to cause a crash in certain cases when in F10 view.

• • PvP Changes **

• PVP looting will now display to the group.

• Empty corpses will no longer disappear when looted by an enemy

player, they will decay at the normal rate for empty corpses.

• Guards in 'guard zones', such as cities, will continue to protect

characters that they find the least offensive (the one with the highest faction). But guards in outdoor zones will be less likely to join in a fight. They will only come to the aid of people that they like. Otherwise they will not get involved in PvP combat.

• Etched Peridot of Nature will be removed from all locations,

including those held by players on their characters or in their banks. This item was not intended to be available until Shadows of Luclin went live, and then only in Luclin zones.

• • Spell Changes **

• Spells that heal less than 10 points of damage will not generate a

message to the player.

• Velious portal teeth (Great Divide, Wakening Lands and Cobalt Scar)

are no longer required to teleport to those locations. These items are also no longer soul bound.

• Fixed a bug with the Bard Song of Occlusion

• • New Commands **

• /stand now implemented. We've added this command because not everyone

speaks programmer and would think that the logical reverse of /sit would be /sit off. :)

• /particledensity command * Switches particle density on the fly

without having to click it in the menus and exit the game.

• • Some new things you'll see **

• We now have the ability to flag an NPC as non-targetable. This in

effect renders the NPC non-attackable as well. Clicking on one of these NPCs will cause your current target selection to clear. This functionality is used primarily for the presentation of content. For instance, if we want an NPC to spawn and tell you a story, he can tell his story without being attacked mid-sentance by other players. It also opens up some pretty interesting content avenues. As an example, we can make NPCs unharmable until you do a quest "stripping them of their power".

• There are several new item classes (types) in the world. For example,

there are weapons that do enhanced damage versus certain races (e.g. Perhaps you'll find a +2 vs froglok sword, or a +4 vs Bear club. In addition we can do the same type of thing with types of creatures (+3 vs humanoid, +1 vs Undaed). We've also added elemental modifiers (e.g. a +4 Fire sword). The bonus value is calculated as and increased DMG stat on the weapon, except that the elemental portion is run through the resistance system before calculating the strength of your hit. There are some items out there with bonuses to some more interesting stats, but we'll leave it to you to figure them out :)

• There's a lot more out there. Be prepared to reevaluate your

assumptions and redefine the way you approach the world. Proposed solutions to situations and quests that you might have previously written off saying, "They can't do that in EverQuest", might be exactly the way you need to approach the problem at hand. As fellow gamers, we envy you as you approach Luclin and find everything fresh, new, and waiting to be solved. And to those of you who aren't first to solve the quests or adventure in the new areas, we urge you to do so with your friends, and leave the spoiler sites out of it. Good luck on your journies.

Note on New Features

EverQuest: The Shadows of Luclin contains many new features which have yet to stand up to the scrutiny of 400,000 experienced players. Without doubt there will be some situations where we need to reevaluate the gameplay-impact of some of those features and adjust them accordingly to maintain game integrity. As an example, we think that they might accelerate and decelerate too quickly, but will have to wait until we see them used by a broad spectrum of players before we can make a final determination. We thank you for your patience in these matters.

• • Note on Impending Features **

As we approached our launch date we found that several features which are planned are also not yet ready for prime-time. We're currently working on the following items, many of which will be implemented in the very near future:

• Extra flora in outdoor zones. Sprigs of grass, small bushes, flowers,

etc.

• A robuste merchantile system in the bazaar that lets you flag

yourself as a merchant, set prices, and conduct business without having to conduct business manually with each buyer and seller.

• We will be polishing up issues regarding tinted items in game. In

other words, things that shouldn't tint with a tinted item (e.g. your skin) won't tint when the feature is complete.

• Light beards on high elves, dark elves, half elves, and dwarf females

will be tintable along with the hair color. We are going to leave in the ability for you to change your appearance until after we've added more customization options.

We thank you for your patience and patronage as we implement these features. Good luck with your adventures on Luclin!

- The EverQuest Team

December 6, 2001 3:00 am

• Fixed Bugs*

• Fixed a bug that was preventing characters from being bald (those

that were allowed to).

• Halved the speed of the new Skeleton walk and run animations because

they were playing about twice as fast as they should have been.

• Fixed a bug that was causing all of the facial features (hair, beard,

etc...) to switch back to default in certain cases when you switched from one face to another (faces with special eyes, like the faces with eye patches and white eye).

• Fixed a crash bug with /follow.
• Found and Fixed the crash bug with soldungb and everfrost and other

places.

• Fixed transparency code with i810 display adapters
• Fixed a problem introduced into the sound engine that causes

framerate problems and sound stutter in some places.

• Fixed a crash bug that had to do with dying from your familiar

effect.

• Research the group buff bug and fixed it.
• Fixed a crash bug with root and gate.
• Various item and content fixes.

• Hot Items* (The items we're considering top priority)

• Bard issues: We're working to correct the problems bards have been

experiencing with their songs.

• K6 Processors: We're working to fix, or provide a work-around for

problems AMD K6 users are experiencing when entering some zones.

• Armor layer tinting (e.g. tinting your armor without tinting your

skin)

We are reviewing the issues sent to us as they are sent in and will be doing daily patches as necessary to get everything working to your and our satisfaction as quickly as possible. Please remember that EverQuest users need to have DirectX 8.1 and the appropriate drivers for their video card. Visit our tech support center first if you are having issues:

http://everquest.station.sony.com/support/luclin/index.jsp

Thank you,

• The EverQuest Team

December 7, 2001 3:00 am

• Fixes*

• Shaved 10 seconds of zoning for every subscriber.
• Made it so familiars don't get agroed on.
• Fixed several zone crash bugs
• Changed a paladin spell * a design error in the spell trivialized

several aspects of the high-end game.

• Fixed several item and content problems.
• Fixed several faction issues * some faction information released with

Luclin deviated from norm.

• The EverQuest Team

December 10, 2001 3:00 am

• Patch Changes*

• Fixed a problem that resulted in excessive swapping for people with

particles turned off.

• Fear spells should again be working correctly.

• AoE fear spells will no longer work versus players on PvP Servers.

• Fixed a crash caused by a familiar dying.

• Fixed a bug with the "Alternate Advancement" system. An artifact from

the removal of the class-based experience penalty several months ago resulted in hybrids gaining AAXP much faster than they should, and warriors and rogues gaining it slower. AA-point cost was designed to be the same regardless of class.

• Increased the experience cost per AA-point overall after analysis of

point accruals accross the game.

• Corrected several zone-crashes. Also implemented a workaround to

prevent the Hollowshade crash while we investigate the problem further.

• Fixed several miscellaneous bugs that were causing crashes or had the

potential to cause crashes on varied systems.

• Fixed a bug that caused some people to crash when reentering the game

after exiting.

• Addressed a good number of content-related issues (quest problems,

bad items, etc).

• Luclin Install*

• We found that the default install directory for Luclin may be wrong

for some people, specifically those who have copied their EverQuest files into a directory different from their initial installation.

• Also, we've received a number of calls from Luclin subscribers who've

tried logging in to their character on a friends computer that does not have an install of Luclin on it. This will not work as the files necessary for you to view Luclin content are not present unless Luclin has been installed.

• We've added code to point out both of these cases in the future.

• Continued Plans*

• As we wrap up the technology-related issues over the course of this

week, making sure that everyone who wants to play EverQuest can play EverQuest, the programming team will shift their focus to aesthetic issues such as animation speed/timing, armor tinting, face-picker operation, etc. We do indeed plan on getting to all of these issues in the very short term.

• The content-team, however, is hard at work on content-related issues

right now, and stands ready to address any broken quests, items, encounter-imbalances, etc., that you may run across in your adventures. Please feel free to visit our forums off of www.everquestlive.com and submit a comment through the Developer's Corner.

Thank you for your patronage,

-The EverQuest Team

December 11, 2001 12:00 am

• Patch Changes*

• Fixed a memory leak that was causing excessive swapping when moving

between outdoor Luclin zones.

• Implemented some changes to zoning that should improve times,

especially for modem users.

• Fixed several potential crash bugs.
• You can now only have 100 unused points in your alternate advancement

pool.

• Fixed the bug that prevented non-Luclin subscribers from seeing the

Vah Shir model.

• Addressed many content-related problems. We appreciate the reports

we've received.

• Continued optimizations of the 3D engine.

The EverQuest Team

December 12, 2001 12:00 am

• Patch Changes *

• Several changes to hair functionality: Expanded beard color choices

for Erudite males, pushed back the camera a bit for human males when making hair selections (so they can see themselves) and fixed it so that the camera will no longer rotate around Erudites while in hair selection mode of character creation. Also fixed a bug with the left selection arrow sometimes not changing hair color.

• Fixed the "Entering Luclin" message bug. This was only an errant text

message, it was not causing any crashes or keeping anyone out of the game.

• Fixed a bug where Vah Shir with an intelligence over a certain amount

could not be created.

• Fixed a bug with faction-affecting items: They were giving a bonus to

all factions instead of just the intended faction

• Fixed a problem with arrows and quivers that would result in the

person being logged out.

• Adjusted the cost of Combine Platemail to be inline with its stats

and other armor available within game.

• Made several gameplay changes to The Grey. A single group having the

ability to simultaneously engage and prevail against 35+ experience- giving creatures is not in line with the desire for risk vs. reward and the promotion of balanced groups.

• Removed some bad NPCs in Chardok.
• Tuned encounters in The Fungus Grove, Maiden's Eye, and Dawnshroud

Peaks.

• Clarified some quest dialog in Sanctus Seru.
• Tuned The Deep, also improved the variety of drops.
• Improved pathing in The Temple of Ssraeshza
• Improved pathing in Sanctus Seru
• Improved pathing in Echo Caverns
• Added some newbie beastlord quests in the old world.
• Removed the "Lore" tag from the "Darkened Knight's Bracer"

The EverQuest Team

December 13, 2001 12:00 am

• • Texture Cache **

In an effort to improve loading and zoning times, we've added the ability to cache textures to your hard drive. One of the things that your computer is doing when you load up the game or change zones is building textures and putting them into RAM on your computer. Each time you log in or zone the game has to create the textures you need and put them into RAM for use during gameplay.

This, obviously, takes a little time.

We have added an option that allows you to save that information to your hard drive rather than creating it each time you log in or zone.

This does have a few drawbacks. It will require a lot of hard drive space to store these textures. In the most extreme case it could use up as much as 1.5 GB of hard drive space, though this would be the extreme. It could, however, easily use 500 MB of space on your hard drive. And because writing all this data to your hard drive takes a little time, the first time you use this feature it will take a bit longer to log in.

The game will never allow you to fall below 500 MB of space on your hard drive when creating the texture cache. This is to prevent any problems with a shortage of space on your hard drive. But it also means that you will need to have plenty of hard drive space free to use this option; 500 MB plus the amount needed for the texture cache.

Also, if you change any of your setting for graphics {like changing the texture quality) it will have to rewrite these files, meaning that your first log in after making such a change will take longer than usual as it writes these files to your hard drive.

The benefits is that once you have allocated the hard drive space and logged in to create the needed files, the game can then read that information directly into RAM from your hard drive rather than creating them each time you log in or zone.

What this feature does not allow you to do is to increase the settings above those that are recommended. If the game suggests that you only use ten models, turning on the Texture Cache will not make it a good idea to turn on more models. This feature will not change that. Those recommendations are based on the amount of RAM you have available and your video card. The hard drive cache does not effectively add RAM to your machine, it just allows the game to save time creating the textures that your existing RAM and video card use.

There are two ways to activate this feature. You can check the 'Texture Cache' box in the Options screen, or you can turn it on from within the eqclient.ini file. To activate it, add the following line to the eqclient.ini file:

TextureCache=TRUE

This could improve load times dramatically depending on your settings. The more models and graphics features you have turned on, the greater the potential decrease in loading times you will see using the Texture Cache.

Remember: This will require a lot of hard drive space, so be certain that you have a lot of free hard drive space if you turn this option on. The more stuff you enable (models, texture quality, etc.) the more space you will need.

We expect this to be of greatest benefit to folks with 256 megs of RAM and a lot of hard drive space. The more RAM your system has, the less benefit you should expect to see by using the texture cache.

• Patch Changes *

• Fixed a pathing problem in the waters of Acrylia Caverns
• More fixes for face and hair issues: Most notably a bug with Erudite

male hair color arrows changing the hair style instead of the color.

• Fixed a problem that was causing the % to crash some people when

using in tells.

• Addressed several potential crash bugs.

December 14, 2001 3:00 am

• Removing or killing your familiar will no longer have the possibility

of killing you directly. It can, however, take you down to very few hit points...

• Skyshrine key is soulbound once again
• Custom Velious helms should now be visible
• Plate helmets should now be visible on Vah Shir
• Female humans should no longer see the inside of their heads when

firing a bow

• Using the ESC key to exit the /facepick menu should no longer lock

the right mouse button

• Fixed an issue with several transparencies, including Vox and Nagafen

spots, Kael giants helms, halfling helm and old dark elf model hair

• The Kneel and Grovel emotes are no longer switched
• The BACK and NEXT buttons on the last page of the keyboard options

now work properly.

• The 'ALT' pop-up for spells memorized will no longer show up if the

memorized spells window is not open

• Removed the mipmap setting from in-game Options-->Display menu. The

mipmap setting found at the options menu before log in is now the valid way to change mipmapping settings

• Improved the pathing in Echo Caverns
• Staff of Living Sand and Skull-Shaped Sacrificial Hammer should no

longer say that they are out of charges.

• The Ruthless Bracer is now a wrist item, not a shoulder item

December 18, 2001 3:00 am

• • Patch Changes **

• Added tools to help us track serverside zone issues that have come up

since the release of Luclin in an effort to solve some continuing problems.

• Orb of Lost Souls will now have a casting time.
• Geomantic Focus has had its effect changed.
• Fixed a problem that prevented Barbarian custom Velium helms from

being visible to other PCs.

• Corrected a problem with horse acceleration and deceleration in

extremely low framerate situations. Acceleration and deceleration now seem the same at high and low framerates.

• Fonts should display correctly, regardless of desktop settings.
• Hoober and his pet have returned. Yes, we used the singular... only

one pet.

• The wind instruments "ivory horn" and "ivory flawless horn" can now

be equipped.

• Added Beastlord Guildmasters to Firiona Vie and The Overthere
• Added several merchants to Freeport (North and East) to round out the

availability of trade supplies there.

• • Note about upcoming changes to the Temple of Veeshan **

In the next patch, we are making a few changes to the monster population in Temple of Veeshan. Places that were previously safe to camp, may not be any longer. Please be sure to not camp deep within the Temple of Veeshan on Wednesday night, or you may be unpleasantly surprised following the patch.

• • NOTICE TO CONSUMERS -* WINDOWS 95 EVERQUEST PLAYERS **

We very much regret that the dramatic upgrades to EverQuest on December 4, 2001 has made EverQuest and all expansions incompatible with Windows 95.

If you are running under the Windows 95 operating system and, therefore, can no longer play EverQuest, and your account was in good standing as of December 3, 2001, you may be entitled to receive a refund of the purchase price for the EverQuest product(s) you recently bought and any subscription money paid for the period December 4, 2001 onward.

In order to obtain a refund, you may do any of the following:

(1) Call (858) 537-0898 M-F, 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. PST (this is NOT a toll free call) or (2) Send an email to refunds@soe.sony.com or (3) Send a written request for a refund to:

EQ Refunds 8928 Terman Court San Diego, CA 92121

Please include in your email or written request your name, address, telephone number, email address and station name (but NOT your password).

You will be asked for information verifying your request and, upon the issuance of a refund, your account and characters will be permanently removed from EverQuest. Please allow four to six weeks for processing.

• The EverQuest team

December 20, 2001 3:00 am

• Bug Fixes *

• Fixed a bug with sleeves not showing properly when wearing robes

• Item Changes *

• Aqualung charges should now work properly

• Trade Skill Changes *

• Regular, medium quality, high quality, mithril, brellium and

adamantite rings, as well as their enchanted versions are now stackable.

• Added a few trade skill vendors to Ak'Anon
• Added ore, clay, pottery sketch, baking, and brewing vendors to

Felwithe to round out the tradeskill supplies available in Felwithe and Kelethin.

• Crafted fishing flies, special fishing poles and special baits now

add a fishing skill bonus.

• Made all Bait and flies equipable in the Ammo slot.
• Added clay, ore and brewing supply vendors to Halas.
• Added several trade skill vendors to Oggok.

• Localization Information *

Localization on the EverQuest login/chat server has been fixed so that users can once again select French and German. Japanese and Korean have also been added.

To obtain the text files which enable a language, go to the Advanced Options screen in the patcher and click on the appropriate language box before clicking on "Download".

• Soulbinders *

A new group has appeared in Norrath (and on Luclin as well). Rumor has it that these 'Soulbinders' have dedicated themselves to research on the power and essence of our inner being. Some call them fanatics, as they claim that knowledge of the spirit that dwells within will lead them to an understanding of the whole of existence. Citizens often treat them with the same respect and distance that they treat the Priests of Discord. However, these Soulbinders have dedicated themselves to public service, and for them that service falls along their lines of specialty...

The next time you find yourself far away from home, you might seek the services of a Soulbinder.

/ooc: We've added these "Soulbinder" NPCs to all cities that player characters can start in, as well as Firiona Vie, The Overthere, Shadowhaven and Iceclad at the request of players. It is our hope that these new NPCs will help players by reducing the time it takes to find a bind from another player character.

---

December 28, 2001

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• Some spots in ToV no longer safe to camp out due to New Drakes and

Wurm spawns being added.

• A bug allowing multiple pets to be summoned has been fixed.

.....................................................................

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January 8, 2002 3:00 am

---

• • Items **

- All beastlord-usable items are now useable by their requisite races - Regular, medium quality, high quality, mithril, brellium and adamantite rings, as well as their enchanted versions are now stackable. (this time we mean it) - Made Rune Encrusted Short Sword rentable (was No Rent, should not have been) - Fixed Shadowscream and all related recipes so that they return the correct mallet - Reduced the price of the Fuligan Soulstone of Innoruuk and Cloudy Stone of Veeshan - Reduced the price of the first two keys for the Plane of Air - Coterie Mask of the Dead has been retroactively changed to have 5 charges as originally intended - Gauntlets of the Blood Fiend - Warrior has been removed from the wearable classes - Shiny Trinket of Speed - An appropriate level of haste has been added to this item

• • Interface **

- Added /tgb as a short version of /targetgroupbuff

- /shownames now works with the following parameters: no parameter = display the current setting. off = don't show player names over their heads 1 = show only first names of players 2 = show First and Last Name 3 = show First, Last, and Guild (if any) 4 = show Title (if any), First, Last, and Guild (if any)

Also, the LFG, AFK and LD tags will always show if names are not off. There will no longer be brackets around them, and LFG will now appear at the end of the name with the AFK and LD tags (instead of being a * at the beginning)

- A player character will always have a name over its head, even if they are skeletons (unless /shownames is off), with the exception of some rare cases when players are turned into certain NPCs - Added /ttell. This will send a tell to the player character that is currently your target. The command will also allow corpses as a valid target. /ttell'ing a player's corpse will auto-tell that player (this was actually patched earlier along with an emergency patch) - Added IRC style '/me' as a synonym for /emote (this was actually patched earlier along with an emergency patch) - Added '/send' as a synonym for /tell (this was actually patched earlier along with an emergency patch)

• • Spells **

- Necromancer Group spells should now be working, they were only affecting the caster. This includes spells such as: Degeneration, Succession of Shadows, Crippling Claudication, and Zavfeer's Theft of Vitae. These spells have also had their duration increased. Mind Wrack will be fixed soon. - Shadowknight "Torrent" spells have also been fixed and have had their duration increased as well - Flowing Thought effects will now stack - Meditating on a horse occurs only while not in combat - Mark of Retribution should work as intended - The Decession spell now requires you to be in the same group - Levitation can no longer be used in The Deep - Fixed a problem that was still allowing people to Cast Eye of Zomm in Ssra Temple - Fixed a problem that was still allowing people to cast Call of the Hero in Ssra Temple - NPCs that cannot be stunned will once again take damage from damaging stun spells (this was actually patched earlier along with an emergency patch) - Critical heals and nukes now display damage numbers (this was actually patched earlier along with an emergency patch)

• • Zones **

- Characters will no longer take falling damage when in the Bazaar - Characters can now bind in the Nexus

• • Alternate Advancement **

- Made it so the percentages of Spell Casting Fury Mastery scale a bit more - Fixed Soul Abrasion to work with a few spells that it didn't work with before - Dire Charm *should* no longer break (this was actually patched earlier along with an emergency patch) - Mental Clarity and Body/Mind Rejuvenation now give mana regeneration both when standing and medding, as intended

• • Miscellaneous **

- Added a few new socials: /nudge, /pat, /flex, /fidget, /purr and /smack - Changed the automatic targeting code so that it won't automatically target someone that cast a beneficial spell on you - Adjusted the timing of the Luclin Spire activations to more closely match the announcements by the Scions. This has the net effect of reducing the time between portal activations

- The EverQuest Team

.....................................................................

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January 17, 2002

---

• • Patch Update **

Today we are sending you a couple of new DLL files that should do the following:

- May improve performance in indoor Luclin zones

- Should improve zoning time in many cases, especially in zones with many objects/trees. May also reduce the "hitch" when other players zone in, though it probably won't remove it completely

- May reduce the cases where some players experience a performance reduction after being in a zone for a while

- Fixed a bug that was causing some portions of spell effects and the "bolts" in bolts spells to not show up.

- Generally improve stability.

How these changes affect individuals will vary, but we hope that this will improve game performance a bit over all.

- The EverQuest Team

.....................................................................

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January 23, 2002 3:00 am

---

• • • Patch Information ***

• • Quests **

- Ragefire portion of the Cleric Epic quest has been changed. Please see the Developer's Corner on our web site for more details - Added Quest NPCs to Thurgadin, Kael and Skyshrine for Beastlord quest armor - Gravel leaf tea will now fit in the combine container for the associated quest - Grimling Blood should now be dropping - Idia in the bard guild in Kelethin was telling you to turn in a quest item to the incorrect NPC. Changed quest text to reflect the correct NPC to hand the item to - In Iceclad, Keref Spiritspear won't be so unreasonable when you complete the task that he asks of you - Citizens in skyshrine no longer defend the 'vermin' spiders - Increased the drop rate of the Staff of Elemental Mastery: Earth - Bloody Shak Dratha Hearts should now be dropping - Quest of Nobility should now be working properly - Increased the spawn rate of Brother Qwinn tenfold

• • Items **

- Adjusted statistics on equipment that was dropping in the Umbral Plains. Many of the items had AC that was inconsistent with the armor types of the classes. The AC has been reduced on some pieces and raised on others. In all instances where the AC was dropped a different statistic was raised. Several items received a significant upgrade while others were downgraded - Also in regards to Umbral Plains armor, Ranger has been removed from the plate class armor that was dropping and have been added to the usable classes on the chain equivalent. Bards have been added to the plate equipment list. This might mean that some Rangers will have armor that they can't use. Our Customer Service personnel will trade out that armor for the chain equivalent - Ghoulbane is now No-Drop - SoulFire charges can only be used by Paladins (though they can be used from inventory) - Raised the armor value on many Beastlord specific armor pieces - Added effects to a few of the Wild Lord's armor pieces - Added Vah Shir to Imbrued Plate Mail useable races - Rhino Hide armor is now Druid and Monk usable - The Crustacean Shell Shield is now magic - Scroll of Knowledge can now be equipped in the primary, secondary, and range slots - Scroll of Enlightenment can now be equipped in the primary, secondary, and range slots - Thought Horror Fangs can now be thrown - Iron Scroll of War must now be worn to activate - Cloak of Thorns right click effect should work now - Runed Bone Fork is now equippable primary, secondary and ranged. The "range" value has been removed to prevent people from accidentally throwing them - Spider Fur Collar has been given weight 0.0 to be consistent with other pieces - Dark Cloak of the Sky must now be worn to activate - Sage's Crown is now No-Drop to match every other Velious quest armor - Icicle Circlet is now No-Drop to match every other Velious quest armor - Bone Collar of the Possessed should no longer cause players to crash when inventory is opened - Idol of Rallos Zek can now be used by ShadowKnights - Helm of Grim Blessings can now be used by Wood Elves - Flayed Skin Bracer is no longer a Lore item - Greaves of Avoidance can now be used by all races - Steel Threaded Wrist Wraps are no longer lore - Bravado's Breastplate now grants a larger Hit Point bonus - Guise of the Hunter can now also be worn by human bards and rogues - Primal Cudgel now has the proper effect - Added "Recommended Level" equal to the current item use level for the several items. All of these items require the player to be level 51+ to equip them and/or use their effects. Setting the "Recommended Level" field like this just lets the player know what level they need to be to use the item. The actual utility of the item was not affected in any way, this change is purely informational - Several items have been changed to be not useable by Iksar. They had been erroneously set as Iksar useable in the last item patch. These were primarily items that were usable by Beastlords (and were therefore changed to allow all Beastlord races to use them), but that had been specifically restricted from use by Iksar due to their inherent armor value

• • Zones **

- Shades in Umbral, Maiden's Eye and Vex Thall are now considered undead - Placed portals to and from Great Divide and Nexus - Added many new items to better round out the rewards for high-level Luclin encounters

• • Horses **

- Implemented horse trade in quests. There are now four stable hands who will buy back specific colored bridles located in the stables in the Bazaar - Being stunned will now stop players on horses. Not stopping them when stunned was causing warping and other bad things - Knockback spells, and spells that throw you into the air, now affect people on horses properly - Horses now levitate when their rider should. - Fixed a bug that was causing the client to crash when attempting to follow someone while on a horse. /follow should also now work when the person you are following is on a horse

• • Spells **

- Wizard Familiar spell scrolls will now increase in purchase cost with the spell level - Several spells will no longer be interrupted, spells such as the 'proc' generated by Instrument of Nife - Several spells that were not functioning in the planes have been fixed and now work in the planes - Bards should now gain singing skill when singing and should no longer gain skill in an instrument when they are not using one. - Characters are no longer damaged by damage shields when using throwing weapons - Atol's Spectral Shackles has had its casting difficulty reduced - Made some changes to Nature's Recovery to make it more stackable

• • Visual Issues **

- Wolves and warders should no longer appear to be very small - Characters no longer lose their hair or beard when their illusions wear off - Weapons should now appear properly (sometimes they wouldn't show up at all) when a player zoned in - Characters in wolf or bear form (or other races that aren't player races) should no longer have parts of them tinted based on the armor the player was wearing - Bear form should now look correct to people that zoned in after the spell was cast on them - May have fixed the problem with extra mouse cursor showing in game - Fixed a problem with NPCs, PCs and some objects not being visible in some zones (Wakening Lands, Plane of Growth, Emerald Jungle and Swamp of No Hope)

• • Performance Issues **

- More work on reducing zone times for Luclin city zones - "Hitch" created when player characters enter a zone should be gone now - Fixed a bug that could cause the client to crash in some cases where a character tried to purchase an item from a vendor but didn't have enough money - Characters with pets that zone (horses, familiars and warders) should now be able to zone from North Qeynos to Qeynos Hills

• • New Features **

- Holding shift while clicking the resolution in the options in game will reduce the resolution. If you are already in 640x480 though, this does nothing. Normal click increases the resolution as it always has and still wraps back to 640 after the highest resolution your machine supports. - Using 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 resolutions, the /wincolor command, and getting the inventory window in fullview mode are now available to all EverQuest players (these features were restricted only to Velious owners)

• • PvP **

- It is no longer possible to bandage others of the opposing deity team on Sullon Zek

• • Alternate Advancement Abilities **

- Lowered the reuse time on Rampage AA ability from 15 minutes to 10 minutes - Rampage is now fixed. Previously was only hitting one target - Mass Group Buff button should work properly when zoning - Casting Reinforcement should now work on all buffs cast, not just those cast on yourself - The Discipline Duelist should now be doing the correct damage when using Chaotic Stab - LifeBurn should now reset properly after being interrupted - Dire Charm should now reset properly after being interrupted - Fixed the Quick Buff ability to work as described - Leech Touch should refresh properly now - Exodus and Nexus Gate now have a casting time of 1/10th of a second

• • • Do you want to join us? ***

So you got your Epic weapon... and now spend your free time holding weekly sight seeing tours to the Temple Veeshan, along with nightly Luclin lunar dinners. If on top of all this you know the name of more Dragons than relatives, we would like to invite you to apply to join our San Diego EverQuest QA Team! For more info please go to our Job Employment site ( http://www.station.sony.com ) to read up on all the juicy details. If you're interested please submit a resume, including your EQ playtime and information on characters owned.

- The EverQuest Quality Assurance Team

• • • Fan Faire News ***

• Congratulations to Union of Power! *

The guild Union of Power has the most pre-registered players attending the Fan Faire! This means that they will be given a two hour slot from 5-7:00 p.m. on Saturday in the Intel Arm Yourself for Adventure Game Room! Everyone else will be limited to an hour of play time.

• Walk-ins *

Registration is closed, but we will be accepting walk-ins at the Dallas Fan Faire! However, there is a limited number of spaces left! Registration will be at 6:00 p.m. The cost for walk-in registration is $95 to be paid at the door.

Cindy Archuleta Community Relations Manager Sony Online Entertainment

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February 1, 2002

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On Monday the 5th we'll be making a change to the way our Live and Test patching works.

A little while ago we combined our Test patcher with our Live patcher. The intent was to remove the confusion that having two patchers can cause and to encourage more people to play on Test.

Well, we're going back to the old way. We are going to split the Test patcher and the Live patcher back into two separate programs.

This means that in order to access the Test Server you will need to run TestEverQuest.exe, which you will find in your EverQuest directory. To play on the Live Servers just start EverQuest as you always have.

There are a few advantages to separating the two patchers. Splitting them up makes it a little easier, as a player, to be sure that you are headed to the right server when you double click the icon. It's also a little more intuitive for those that want to run the game in two directories.

Using two directories for EverQuest does use up a lot of hard drive space. However, for those with enough space that play regularly on both Test and on Live servers, this is a safer and faster way to work. Using the same directory means that each time you change servers (Live to Test or Test to Live) you will have to patch. The data on the Test Server is very rarely the same as that on Live servers.

And for us internally it makes it easier to test new patchers. It gives us one more step for testing. Now we can push a patcher to the Test Server and try it out there after internal testing and before it goes to the Live servers.

In any case, we've decided to move back to the old way. Starting on Monday, February 5th, 2002 you will need to run TestEverQuest.exe to patch and play on the Test server, and Everquest.exe to patch and play on the Live servers.

• Patch Message Addendum *

The command line argument "/test" should no longer be used to play on the Test Server. Anyone using this should remove this argument from their shortcut. Please manually select "TestServer" from the Advanced Options window to use the Test Server. On Monday, February 05, TestEverQuest.exe will once again be used to patch and play on the Test Server.

- The EverQuest Team

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February 13, 2002 3:00 am

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• • General **

- Improved sound for many users. Should eliminate a lot of the "choppy" sound issues - Fixed one of the link-death-while-zoning bugs - Characters who disconnect while zoning shouldn't be 'stuck' for an inordinate amount of time - Renamed all will-o-wisps and will o' wisps to Fred. - Reconsidered and changed Fred to willowisp. - Pets no longer pace. Pets will now, when close to you, STOP. - Many higher level NPCs now have a random delay before they initially spawn. This means that they will appear at a more random time interval after servers or zones are brought up. This is designed to provide a fairer distribution of these NPCs across all time zones - If you right click to auto-inventory an item that you are looting and it will not fit into your inventory, the item will simply appear on your cursor as if you had left clicked on it

• • Gameplay Related **

- NPC and PC corpses can now be /considered to find out how long until they decay, and PC corpses additionally tell you how long you have to resurrect them - The timer for corpses is now seven days for any corpse over level five, whether the player is on-line or off-line or any combination of the two - Characters below level eight will no longer see light blue cons - Spires will no longer try to teleport you to Luclin if you do not own the expansion, and therefore will no longer move you to the 'safe point' in the zone when it can't take you to the Nexus - Pets can now be targeted by typing their full name after the /target command (or at least enough of it to distinguish it from the owner) - Knockback now works correctly when on a horse - Summoning a horse in Plane of Sky will no longer allow you to levitate - Gating when in the same zone that you are bound no longer causes problems - Horses will no longer disappear when a character is moved to the 'safe point'

• • Trade Skill Related **

- Added several trade skill items to Grobb; including a brewing supply vendor, a brew barrel, a baking vendor, a standard forge, a pottery cooking mold vendor, a kiln, a pottery wheel, and a sketch vendor. - Added water flasks to two merchants in the Bazaar - Added high quality ore vendors to Bazaar, Kaladim, and Qeynos that sell a limited supply of HQ Ore - Fixed an inconsistency with the armor class of Enchanted Imbued Dwarven Plate compared to the armor class of other Dwarven-smithed plate armor - Batwing Pie, Bug Bites and Deadly Medley now exist - Repaired the recipe for Superior Gnomish Spirits\Gnomish Cleaning Substance - Increased the drop rates of cultural armor temper components - Added hilt mold vendors to more cities

• • Quest Related **

- Made adjustments to the Whistling Fists quest - Reduced the spawn time of the Zordak Ragefire in SoldungB. He will now reappear every 24 hours - Repaired some problems with the Luclin Owlbear Dart and Vah Shir Runed Totem quests

• • Spell Related **

- Eye of Zomm and Eye of Tallon are now non-KoS in a fashion similar to familiars - Koadic's Endless Intellect stacking has been fixed. If a player has Koadic's Endless Intellect on them and anyone casts Breeze, Clarity, Clarity 2, Boon of the Clear Mind, Gathering of the Mind, or Gift of Pure Thought on them, it will fail and the Koadic's will remain. - Mind Wrack gives mana instead of taking mana away - Charm is immediately removed from charmed NPC's when the character that charmed them casts invisibility - Made some small improvements to Marzin's Mark - Corrected some stacking issues with Nature's Recovery - Blast of Frost scroll has been made available for Beastlords - Self-only level 51+ spells will no longer fail to cast if the caster has a lower level character targeted. - Egress should once again force a 'zone' to clear aggro - The damage component of Elnerick's Entombment of Ice no longer causes the spell to have a chance at breaking its root component - Snakes in Lavastorm and Paineel are now animals - Hammerheads are now animals - Treants in the Plane of Growth are now plants - Timorous Deep gators, fish, and raptors are now animals - Rock Hoppers in Hollowshade Moor, Shar Vahl and Shadeweavers are now animals - Paludal and Fungusgrove Wetfang Minnows are now animals - Underbulks and Shik`Nar in Fungusgrove are now insects - Rhino Beetles in Shadeweavers Thicket and Hollowshade Moor are now insects - Shrooms in Fungusgrove are now plants - Lightcrawlers in Mons Seru are now insects

• • Zone Related **

- Fixed some of the pathing issues in Maiden's Eye - Dawnshroud Rockhoppers are now giving the proper faction hits - Fixed a pathing bug in Paludal Caverns that prevented NPCs from pursuing characters up cavern walls - Fixed a bug with the clipping plane in outdoor Luclin zones - The Oggok guards will be less friendly to Marsh Bears - Fixed some bugs in the Umbral Planes that were causing NPCs to get stuck - Added content in the Umbral Planes to make it more... entertaining

• • Alternate Advancement Related **

- Act of Valor should now work properly - Re-implemented the Improved Familiar ability. It will now summon an improved familiar that is better then the greater familiar and is very resistant to all spells. It is not immune to spells though, just extremely resistant. - Warcry should now work properly - Life Burn now considers hit points from items and should no longer be interrupted - Area Taunt should be no longer affect creatures on heights or floors above and below the warrior

• • Discipline Related **

- Added the following /disciplines for Beastlords: Level 51: The Discipline of Resistant Level 54: The Discipline of Fearless Level 55: The Discipline of Protective Spirit Level 60: The Discipline of Bestial Rage

• • Item Related **

- Expendable items no longer use mana when 'casting' a spell - Extra damage from either elemental or bane damage should now work for special attacks like backstab - Shield of Auras can now be used by Necromancers - All pieces of Black Pantherskin Armor are now Beastlord useable - Steelsilk Helm should now be visible when using the new models - Windspeeder's haste is now a permanent effect - Shield of Mental Fortitude is now actually a shield and also has a different graphic - Drape of the Deep Thinker now has a robe texture when equipped - Orb of Lost Souls can no longer be "Held" - Dark Cloak of the Sky from 'worn to activate' to 'Race/Class to activate'. The previous change that made it 'worn to activate' was an error. - Items that add bonuses to the Lock Pick skill should function properly now

• • Firiona Vie **

- The Trivial Loot Code present on the Roleplaying server will no longer affect items that are marked solely with the No-Drop flag. No- Drop items that are also Magic or Lore will continue to behave as they did prior to this patch.

- The EverQuest Team

• • Tales **

Grand Master Glox sat silently staring into the black waters of the Cabilis aqueducts, his thoughts tracing and retracing the recent visions that had upset his nights. The Lord Cazic was trying to tell him something, but he could not yet decipher what it was. The hand on his shoulder startled him and he turned quickly, striking the intruder with a quick blow to the chest. The figure crumpled to the cold ground.

Glox stood over him with a look of horror, it was one of his own pupils he had struck. He lay bloodied and bruised at Glox's feet breathing heavily with much effort, he was obviously dying. The pupil reached up toward Glox with something in his hand. Glox took the items from his hand and peered at them intently. There were two items, one was a glistening serpentine scale, the other an ancient stone symbol. Glox recognized the symbol almost immediately with horror. It was the symbol of the Soriz, the ancient Iksar tribe that had been the slaves of the Shissar empire. Glox looked down at his pupil again. "Where did you get this?" The dying Iksar used his last ounce of energy to point up toward the night sky and the moon of Luclin. "sSs... Ssraeshza... has... returned..."

• • A Call to Arms! **

Have you long dreamed of aiding your fellow adventurer? Do you enjoy travelling the world and meeting new and interesting people? Are you over the age of 18 with an EverQuest account in good standing and some free time? If so, then the EverQuest Guide Program may be for you! If you feel compelled to join our ranks, point your web browser to https://guide.everquest.com/guideapp/ and fill out an application!

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February 17, 2002 3:00 am

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- Increased the drop rate on some 55-60th level Kunark spells that were overly rare. - Added water and high quality ore to vendors in the Bazaar, as promised in the Feb 13 patch. - Fixed a spawn problem in north Temple of Veeshan. - Fixed a few minor issues with the Whistling Fists quest.

- The EverQuest Team

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February 25, 2002 3:00 am

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- Fixed a problem with the Gnome sitting animation

- Fixed a bug that was causing some people to crash when repeatedly right-clicking spell gems

- Made adjustments for Quellious monks attempting to do Iksar Shackle quests

- Fixed a bug in the way that Alternate Experience was being distributed. Extra experience was being generated for an ungrouped character with all experience going to the Alternate Experience pool. Too little experience was going into the Alternate Experience pool for people grouped that were applying less than 100% of their experience to the Alternate Experience pool.

- Fixed stacking issues with Circle of Seasons and Talisman of Epuration

- Wild Lord's armor effects are now level restricted

- Fixed a bug with necromancer pets that was preventing them from gaining the healing benefit of lifetaps. It turns out that this was affecting all NPCs. It should now be working properly for both pets and NPCs.

• • • Fan Faire Registration is Open ***

Registration has opened for the Seattle Fan Faire! We will be at the Doubletree Seattle Airport Hotel on April 19-20. Register early and join us for a great time! Visit http://everquest.station.sony.com/fanfaire/en/index.jsp for registration and all of the details!

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March 7, 2002

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• • Patch Information ***

- Fixed a problem with Alternate Advancement ability Combat Fury that was causing rangers using archery and rogues using throwing to have a lesser chance to critical than normal. This did not affect warriors

- We think we've fixed many of the issues that were causing 1018 errors. At the very worst players should be able to log back in faster now

- Fixed a problem that was causing quests to give no Alternate Experience to a character when that character had all experience going into their Alternate Experience pool

- Fixed a bug that was causing Claw of the Savage Spirit, Earthen Band and Breastplate of Day to show a negative statistic modifier

- Fixed an issue with some ATI-based video cards that was causing the inventory screen to flash

- All Levitation spells will now be stripped when entering a no- levitation zone. There was a bug that caused the game to only strip the first Levitation spell found

- Earrings of Endless Speed are now no-drop

- Fixed a bug that was displaying erroneous and duplicate faction messages

- Also added some Tradeskill recipes for items dropping in Akheva and Maidens eye

- Tradeskills (including Alchemy and poison) now take %skill modifying items and buffs into consideration

- Scallywag's Arm Plates (Legends Only) are now wearable in the arms slot (was errantly flagged for the chest slot)

- All soft wicker pieces are now wearable by Beastlords

• • A Tale **

Prime Heirophant Vek leaned over and looked into the jeweled case silently. The young mystic behind him nervously fingered the cudgel hanging from his belt. He knew what was coming. The hold of the faceless had firmly taken hold of his heart and was beginning to squeeze.

Vek turned to him quietly and simply said, "Find them." He then walked silently out of the room.

Hierophant Zand turned to the young Mystic, "Do as he has asked. Do not return until you have the skulls of the ancients in your possession." The young Mystic stumbled as he ran out of the room, visibly shaking.

Zand looked down into the empty skull case. Something glittered softly in the corner of the case. Zand reached in and picked up a small earring, emblazoned with the symbol of the Kunzar.

Zand walked quietly out of the room, and somewhere the soul of a dead emperor laughed with unholy malice.

• • Another Tale **

Halor slashed frantically at the creature before him. He swung down hard, cleaving the great worm in two. Unfortunately there were many more were that came from. Bauric climbed over a rock and stood next to Halor, fighting off another of the worms.

Halor suddenly felt a sharp pain in his right heel and spun violently around, causing his journals to fly out of his pack and onto the hard stone floor. He swung at the worm larva with his sword knocking it away, but too late. The worm had wounded him badly, he could no longer hold himself up on the wounded ankle and he fell to the floor with a crash. Bauric cried out in pain as one of the larger worms bit into his arm. That was the last thing Halor saw before the horde of worms squirmed across the stones and overcame them.

- The EverQuest Team

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March 19, 2002

We wanted to start by letting everyone know how grateful we are for all of the suggestions for improvements that we've received both in EMail and on the various class and server boards. We appreciate all the help you've provided us.

Changes for Low Level Characters

- Characters no longer lose experience for death below level 11 - Characters now begin first level with a stack of 20 food and drink - Items no longer appear on a corpse if you are below level 10, they reappear with the character - When a character "dings" level 10 you will be informed that your items will now be on your corpse - Characters will no longer appear with a Tome of Discord. They must get one from the Priest of Discord - New resurrection, evacuate and corpse summoning spells have been added at lower levels - We've moved the newbie bind points closer to where characters first start out, not outside in their newbie areas - Halflings and Gnomes have new classes available to them: Halfling Rangers and Paladins as well as Gnome ShadowKnights and Paladins. All of the necessary NPCs and items should be available for these new classes

Alternate Advancement Abilities

- Divine Stun is now an activated ability on a 30 second reuse timer with a chance to interrupt NPCs up to level 60 - Most targeting issues with Alternate Advancement abilities should be fixed - Rampage should now consider all viable targets, including PvP targets - Metabolism should be working properly now - Scribble Notes should reduce memorization times to an even greater extent than it did before

Spells/Songs

- Fixed a bard lockup bug that would occur randomly with during cast time - Fixed a song bug that was causing songs to be stuck on, triggered by contact proc buffs procs (such as Boon of the Garou) - The new Cleric and Paladin Resurrection line of spells are now available on vendors - The new corpse summoning spell is now available on vendors, as are the appropriate coffins - The new Evacuate spells are now available on vendors - Memory Blur, Mind Wipe, Blanket of Forgetfulness, Memory Flux, Glamour of Kintaz and Rapture have been given a greater chance of clearing the 'hate list' - Glamour of Kintaz and Rapture also have longer durations - Egress and Abscond have a reduced mana cost and a lesser chance to fizzle - Judgement has been improved to make it a better upgrade from the previous spell in the spell line - Shaman group buff spells (Tumultuous Strength and the Talisman spells - Cat, Brute, Rhino, and Raptor) have been improved to be more in line with the single target versions of those spells. - Added a new line of spells for Magicians that summons focus items - /pet get lost will now kill the buff as well as the familiar - Marzin's Mark now stack with Protection of the Glades - Improved the way that Abolish Disease/Poison and Counteract Disease/Poison work - Fixed it so that whenever a player loses the chance to click on a resurrection dialogue box (such as entering the inventory screen), the game will react as if the user had clicked "no". This should prevent cases where the player can not be resurrected unless they logged out - "Sense" spells should now work while on a horse - Shield of Auras effect has had a stacking issue with Clarity fixed and the component removed - Skin of Shadow has had its night only restriction removed - Demi Lich is now a level 56 spell - Arch Lich has been improved - Translocate spells no longer require that the target be grouped with the caster. Also, the dialog box for this spell will remain longer - Added Sicken and Tainted Breath to a merchant in Shar Vahl - Levitation spells now check to see if you have a second Levitation type spell when it wears off before hurling you to the ground - Eye of Tallon has a longer duration - Spell memorization speed should now take +Meditate% skill items into account - Bard song memorization time should now be faster and is affected by attributes

Zones

- Changed safe spot in Kedge Keep to actually be a safe spot - The Beastlord trainer in Firiona Vie is now more friendly to Beastlords of all types - Vyzh`dra the Cursed has been adjusted to help balance the risk versus reward associated with the encounter

Items

- Sleeper's Tomb Key is now Soulbound - Wand of Casual Blessings is not longer usable by Half-Elves, and is usable by Dark Elves and Gnomes. It also now looks like a staff and not a bag - Corrected some of the Velious quest helm graphics. All helms of this type are no longer displaying a graphic (as intended) and the 'customized' plate helms should all now have graphics (also as intended) - Custom Malevolent Crown should now be the same color as the rest of the armor set - The Beastlord Epic item has been changed to be more in line with other epic items - Grimling Tribal Headdress is now a "head" item and should be equippable - Thexian Loop has had its Haste increased - Headband of Many Visions now grants Deadeye instead of See Invisible - Shield of the Swamp should now have a graphic - Shield of Auras should now have a graphic

Combat

- Pets are now more likely to avoid NPC ripostes - Wizards now have an inherent chance to score a critical blast with their damage spells after 11th level. This ability does not lessen the chance of scoring a critical hit with Alternate Experience abilities that grant criticals

Client/Interface

- Added /dopropertinting command. This command allows you to turn on and off the "DoProperTinting" option in the eqclient.ini file. Activating this command should correct most tinting issues (such as armor tint also tinting the character's skin). But if it causes issues you can toggle it off by using /dopropertinting off - Added /chat commands, that allow players to create their own chat channels. Please read the eqmanual_supplement.doc in your EverQuest directory for more information - Added /hitsmode command. This command allows you to more finely control how you see hits, including seeing them in a window other than your chat window. Please see the eqmanual_supplement.doc for more details - Added /clearhits to clear the current hits in the M2-M5 modes of the /hitsmode command. Again, please see the eqmanual_supplement for more information - Added /showgrass command. This toggles the radial flora (Luclin only) on and off - Added options in the Options screen (under Chat Filter) for filtering out Melee and Spell criticals. Options are All/Me/Off. These can also be activated using the /filter command, and will affect critical hit, critical blast, exceptional heal, and crippling blow messages - Changed /filter to allow you to toggle the various chat filter settings (still also lets you toggle the badwords filter) - Changed /channel to allow you to set your default chat channel. It also now saves this setting in the INI file - Changed the /targetgroupbuff command to be 'persistent'. The state of the switch will be stored in the eqclient.ini file and will be remembered when you log out or zone - Fixed the double messages received when "Soandso's song ends" - Mend should be working properly. "Can not use Mend for x seconds" can still appear, but you now should be able to use mend at the appropriate time - Fixed bug in the client that caused a "You are out of Ammo message" even when you still had ammo - Messages should no longer be lost while you are zoning - Corpses that are made to appear at the "safe spot" of a zone for any reason can now be moved using /corpse as long as the person using the command has /consent for that corpse - Added "AllLuclinPcModelsOff" line to the eqclient.ini file which, if set to TRUE, will skip the loading of all of the Luclin PC models (except the Vah Shir, which always gets loaded no matter what this is set to). This should allow players to set the loading of each race and sex individually for their normal game play, but then quickly turn all models off for a raid or other such circumstances - Added /rtarget function (can be used as /rt). This function targets the last character to send you a /tell. It follows all of the rules for /target - Messages sent to you while you are zoning should be saved and sent to you when you reach the other side of the zone. Messages should no longer be lost while zoning (unless zoning takes more than about 10 minutes for any reason) - You should be able to keep typing whatever you were in the middle of typing when you zoned... but it might not be processed till you're in the new zone - If someone is on your ignore list and they do a /random, you shouldn't see it anymore

Pathing

- Corrected some pathing in Ak'Anon that was preventing some NPCs from reaching certain areas - Corrected some pathing issues in Acrylia Caverns - Corrected a problem with the entrance from Hollowshade Moor into Paludal Caverns that was preventing Beastlord Warders from entering the zone

Miscellaneous

- Many cases where characters would stab themselves with their weapons when sitting should have been eliminated. - Player characters no longer broadcast their location when they are stationary. This should reduce the resources used and improve gameplay. - Fixed a problem that was causing some users to see blocky, unblended terrain where terrain types meet. - Critical hit messages from spells now take into account PvP damage calculations. The actual damage was calculated correctly, it was just displaying wrong on the critical message. - Fixed canoes, they should move forward and backwards normally again. - We have been working to prevent characters from being stuck in the game after link death in such a way that prevents the player from logging back in. Players should be able to log back in no more than 5 minutes after going link dead in all situations. - Added Sharvahl as a "home zone" for Vahshir when taking PvP racial faction hits into account . - We have fixed the ATI flashing problem that some players with certain cards were having when inventory window was up.